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 YOUNG PEOPLE SINGLE AND MARRIED 
 
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TITCOMB'S LETTERS 
 
DR. J. G. HOLLAND'S WRITINGS. 
 
 Complete Works. i6 Volumes. Small i2ino. 
 Sold separately. 
 
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 The Sei^ 2 7'ols. in a box; half calf, gilt top, $5.50; half 
 
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 COMPLETE POETICAL WRITINGS. 
 
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 Foote, and a porr"-Mt by Wyatt Eaton. 8vo, $3.50. 
 
TITCOMB'S LETTERS rt 
 
 YOUNG PEOPLE 
 
 SINGLE AND MARRIED 
 
 BY 
 
 TIMOTHY TITCOMB, Esquire 
 
 FIFTIETH EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1894 
 
Copyright by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER 
 
 1858 
 
 Copyright by 
 J. G. HOLLAND 
 
 1881 
 
 Copyright by 
 
 ELIZABETH L. HOLLAND 
 
 1886 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 AFTER twenty years of an exceptionally pros- 
 perous life, this book has been carefully 
 revised, and is now issued in a new dress. Since 
 it was written, and was so generously received 
 by the public, twenty millions of people have 
 been added to the population of the country, 
 and a new generation of young men and women 
 have taken the places of its first patrons and 
 readers, so that the book has nearlv as fresh a 
 field as it had at its original appearance. 
 
 I have taken almost a pathetic interest in 
 going over these pages. Their earnestness, di- 
 rectness, frankness, hopefulness, and high pur- 
 pose, speak to me of a time when life was 
 unchilled by experience, and enthusiasm was 
 unblunted by contact and conflict with the vari- 
 ous forms and forces of evil. I am painfully 
 
VI Preface. 
 
 conscious that if I had not written this, book 
 when I did, I could not write it to-day. There 
 are some books tliat age can write best, Ijut I 
 am sin-e that they are not books for the young. 
 Truth, health, enthusiasm, and a positive frame 
 of mind, with youthful hopes and sympathies 
 still alive and active, are necessary for the writing 
 of books that shall be influential upon the youth- 
 ful mind and heart ; and I can see no reason why 
 this book may not go on doing the good it has 
 had the credit of doing during all its history. 
 
 The man who revises these letters is so differ- 
 ent from the man who wrote them, that I am 
 sure I have no vanity in saying that they seem 
 to me, in reference to the purpose for which they 
 were written, to form a wise and inspiring book. 
 As such I commend it to all the young who have 
 faith in my instincts and confidence in my judg- 
 ment. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 New York, April, 1881. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 LETTERS TO YOUNG MEN, 
 
 PAG8 
 
 LETTER I. 
 Getting the Right Start , i 
 
 LETTER II. 
 Female Society— The Woman for a Wife, . . lo 
 
 LETTER III. 
 Manners and Dress , 19 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 Bad Habits, 25 
 
 LETTER V. 
 The Blessings of Poverty— Office and Effect of 
 A Profession, 32 
 
 LETTER VL 
 Food and Physical Culture, ...... 40 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 Social Duties and Privileges ^^8 
 
 LETTER Vin. 
 The Reasonableness and Desirableness of Religion, 56 
 
viii Contents 
 
 LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN, 
 
 LETTER I. 
 Dress— Its Proprieties and Abuses, , . . , 6g 
 
 LETTER II. 
 The Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood, . ^^ 
 
 LETTER III. 
 Acquisitions and Accomplishments, . . « . 85 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints, . . .95 
 
 LETTER V. 
 The Claims of Love and Lucre, . > , . ,.104 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 The Prudent and Proper Use of Language, . , 113 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 Housewifery and Industry, ,..,,. 122 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 The Beauty and Blessedness of Female Piety, . 132 
 
Contents. isv 
 
 LETTERS TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 The First Essential Duties of the Connubial 
 Relation 145 
 
 LETTER n. 
 Special Duties of the Husband, 155 
 
 LETTER in. 
 Special Duties of the Wife, 165 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 The Rearing of Children, ...... 174 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Separation — Family Relatives— Servants, . . .183 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 The Institution of Home, 193 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 Social Homes, and Blessings for Daily Use, . , aci, 
 
 LETTER VIIL 
 A Vision of Life and its Meaning, . . . . 2i5» 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG MEN. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 GETTING THE RIGHT START. 
 
 In idle wishes fools supinely stay. 
 
 Be there a will, then wisdom finds a way. 
 
 —Burns. 
 
 1 SUPPOSE that the first great lesson a young man 
 should learn is that he knows nothing ; and that the 
 earlier and more thoroughly this lesson is learned, the 
 better it will be for his peace of mind and his success in 
 life. A young man, bred at home, and growing up in 
 the light of parental admiration and fraternal pride, 
 cannot readily understand how it is that every one else 
 can be his equal in talent and acquisition. If, bred in 
 the country, he seeks the life of the town, he will very 
 early obtain an idea of his insignificance. After putting 
 on airs and getting severely laughed at, going into a 
 bright and facile society and finding himself awkward 
 and tongue-tied, undertaking to speak in some pubhc 
 
2 Tit comb' s Letters. 
 
 place and breaking down, and paying his addresses to 
 some gentle charmer and receiving for his amiable con- 
 descension a mitten of inconvenient dimensions, he will 
 be apt to sit down in a state " bordering on distraction," 
 to reason about it. 
 
 This is a critical period in his history. The result 
 of his reasoning will decide his fate. If, at this time, 
 he thoroughly comprehend, and in his soul admit and 
 accept the fact, that he knows nothing and is nothing ; 
 if he bow to the conviction that his mind and his person 
 are but ciphers among the significant and cleanly cut 
 figures about him, and that whatever he is to be, and 
 is to win, must be achieved by hard work, there is abun- 
 dant hope of him. If, on the contrary, a huge self- 
 conceit still hold possession of him, and he straighten 
 stiffly up to the assertion of his old and valueless self; 
 or if he sink discouraged upon the threshold of a life 
 of fierce competitions and more manly emulations, he 
 might as well be a dead man. The world has no use 
 for such a man, and he has only to retire or be trodden 
 upon. 
 
 When a young man has thoroughly comprehended 
 the fact that he knows nothing, and that, intrinsically, 
 he is of but little value, the next thing for him to learn 
 is that the world cares nothing for him ; — that he is 
 the subject of no man's overwhelming admiration and 
 esteem ; that he must take care of himself. A letter 
 of introduction may possibly procure him an invitation 
 
Getting the Right Start. 3 
 
 to tea. If he wear a good hat, and tie his cravat w'tn 
 propriety, the sexton will show him to a pleasant seat in 
 church, and expect him to contribute liberally when the 
 plate goes round. If he be a stranger, he will find every 
 man busy with his own affairs, and none to look after 
 him. He will not be noticed until he becomes notice- 
 able, and he will not become noticeable until he does 
 something to prove that he has an absolute value in so- 
 ciety. No letter of recommendation will give him this, 
 or ought to give him this. No family connection will 
 give him this, except among those few who think more 
 of blood than brains. 
 
 Society demands that a young man shall be some- 
 body, not only, but that he shall prove his right to the 
 title ; and it has a right to demand this. Society will 
 not take this matter upon trust — at least, not for a long 
 time, for it has been cheated too frequently. Society is 
 not very particular what a man does, so that it proves 
 him to be a man : then it will bow to him, and make 
 room for him. I know a young man who made a place 
 for himself by writing an article for the North American 
 Review : nobody read the article, so far as I know, but 
 the fact that he wrote such an article, that it was very 
 long, and that it was published, did the business for 
 him. Everybody, however, cannot write articles for the 
 North American Review — at least, I hope everybody 
 will not, for it is a publication which makes me a 
 quarterly visit ; but everybody, who is somebody, can 
 
4 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 do something. There is a wide range of effort between 
 holding a skein of silk for a lady and saving her from 
 drowning — between collecting voters on election day 
 and teaching a Sunday School class. A man must enter 
 society of his own free will, as an active element or a 
 valuable component, before he can receive the recogni- 
 tion that every true man longs for. I take it that this 
 is right. A man who is willing to enter society as a 
 beneficiary is mean, and does not deserve recognition. 
 
 There is no surer sign of an unmanly and cowardly 
 spirit than a vague desire for help ; a wish to depend, 
 to lean upon somebody, and enjoy the fruits of the in- 
 dustry of others. There are multitudes of young men, 
 I suppose, who indulge in dreams of help from some 
 quarter, coming in at a convenient moment, to enable 
 them to secure the success in life which they covet. 
 The vision haunts them of some benevolent old gentle- 
 man with a pocket full of money, a trunk full of mort- 
 gages and stocks, and a mind remarkably appreciative 
 of merit and genius, who will, perhaps, give or lend 
 them anywhere from ten to twenty thousand dollars, 
 with which they will commence and go on swimmingly. 
 Perhaps he will take a different turn, and educate them. 
 Or, perhaps, with an eye to the sacred profession, they 
 desire to become the beneficiaries of some benevolent 
 society, or some gentle circle of female devotees. 
 
 To me, one of the most disgusting sights in the world 
 is that of a young man with healthy blood, broad shoul- 
 
Getting the Right Start. 5 
 
 ders, presentable calves, and a hundred and fifty pounds, 
 more or less, of good bone and muscle, standing with 
 his hands in his pockets, longing for help. I admit that 
 there are positions in which the most independent spirit 
 may accept of assistance — may, in fact, as a choice of 
 evils, desire it ; but for a man who is able to help him- 
 self, to desire the help of others in the accomplishment 
 of his plans of life, is positive proof that he has re- 
 ceived a most unfortunate training, or that there is a 
 leaven of meanness in his composition that should make 
 him shudder. Do not misunderstand me : I would not 
 inculcate that pride of personal independence which 
 repels in its sensitiveness the well-meant good offices 
 and benefactions of friends, or that resorts to desperate 
 shifts rather than incur an obligation. What I con- 
 demn in a young man is the love of dependence ; the 
 willingness to be under obligation for that which his own 
 efforts may win. 
 
 I have often thought that the Education Society, and 
 kindred organizations, do much more harm than good 
 by inviting into the Christian ministry a class of young 
 men who are willing to be helped. A man who wil- 
 lingly receives assistance, especially if he has applied 
 for it, invariably sells himself to his benefactor, unless 
 that benefactor happen to be a man of sense who is giv- 
 ing absolutely necessary assistance to one whom he 
 knows to be sensitive and honorable. Any young man 
 who will part with freedom and the self-respect tha^ 
 
6 Titcotnb's Letters. 
 
 grows out of self-reliance and self-support, is unmanly, 
 neither deserving of assistance, nor capable of making 
 good use of it. Assistance will invariably be received 
 by a young man of spirit as a dire necessity — as the 
 chief evil of his poverty. 
 
 When, therefore, a young man has ascertained and 
 fully received the fact that he does not know anything, 
 that the world does not care anything about him, that 
 what he wins must be won by his own brain and brawn, 
 and that while he holds in his own hands the means 
 of gaining his livelihood and the objects of his life, 
 he cannot receive assistance without compromising his 
 self-respect and selling his freedom, he is in a fair posi- 
 tion for beginning life. When a young man becomes 
 aware that only by his own efforts can he rise into com- 
 panionship and competition with the sharp, strong, and 
 well-drilled minds around him, he is ready for work, 
 and not before. 
 
 The next lesser^ is that of patience, thoroughness of 
 preparation, and contentment with the regular channels 
 of business effort and enterprise. This is, perhaps, one 
 of the most difficult to learn, of all the lessons of life. 
 It is natural for the mind to reach out eagerly for im- 
 mediate results. As manhood dawns, and the young 
 man catches in its first light the pinnacles of realized 
 dreams, the golden domes of high possibilities, and the 
 purpling hills of great delights, and then looks down 
 upon the narrow, sinuous, long, and dusty path by 
 
Gettmg the Right Start. 7 
 
 which others have reached them, he is apt to be dis 
 gusted with the passage, and to seek for success through 
 broader channels, by quicker means. Beginning at the 
 very foot of the hill, and working slowly to the top, seems a 
 very discouraging process ; and precisely at this point have 
 thousands of young men made shipwreck of their lives. 
 
 Let this be understood, then, at starting ; that the 
 patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular 
 and legitimate channels of business and enterprise, is 
 not only essential in securing the successes which you 
 seek, but it is essential to that preparation of your mind 
 which is requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, 
 and for retaining them when gained. It is the general 
 rule of Providence, the world over, and in all time, that 
 unearned success is a curse. It is the rule of Provi- 
 dence, that the process of earning success shall be the 
 preparation for its conservation and enjoyment. So, 
 day by day, and week by week ; so, month after month, 
 and year after year, work on, and in that process gain 
 strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that 
 when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall 
 come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep 
 it. The development which you will get in this brave 
 and patient labor, will prove itself, in the end, the most 
 •-aluable of your successes. It will help to make a man 
 of you. It will give you power and self-reliance. It 
 will give you not only self-respect, but the respect qI 
 your fellows and the public. 
 
8 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 Never allow yourself to be seduced from this course. 
 You will hear of young men who have made fortunes in 
 some wild speculations. Pity them ; for they will al- 
 most certainly lose their easily won success. Do not be 
 in a hurry for anything. Are you in love with some 
 dear girl, whom you would make your wife ? Give 
 Angelina Matilda to understand that she must wait f 
 and if Angelina Matilda is really the good girl you take 
 her to be, she will be sensible enough to tell you to 
 choose your time. You cannot build well without first 
 laying a good foundation ; and for you to enter upon a 
 business which you have not patiently and thoroughly 
 learned, and to marry before you have won a character, 
 or even the reasonable prospect of a competence, is 
 ultimately to bring your house down about the ears of 
 Angelina Matilda, and such pretty children as she may 
 give you. If, at the age of thirty years, you find your- 
 self established in a business which pays you with cer- 
 tainty a living income, you are to remember that God 
 has blessed you beyond the majority of men. 
 
 In saying what I have said to you in this letter, 
 I have had no wish to make of you pattern young men, 
 but of this I will speak more fully hereafter. The fash- 
 ion plates of the magazines bear no striking resem- 
 blance to the humanity which we meet in the streets. 
 I only seek to give you the principles and the spirit 
 which should animate you, without any attempt or de- 
 sire to set before you the outlines of the life I would 
 
Getting the Right Start. 9 
 
 have you lead. In fact, if there are detestable things 
 which I despise above all other things detestable, they 
 are the patterns made for young men, and the young 
 men made after them. I would have you carry all your 
 individuality with you, all your blood well purified, all 
 your passions well controlled and made tributary to the 
 motive forces of your nature ; all your manhood en- 
 larged, ennobled, and uncorrupted ; all your piety, ren- 
 dering your whole being sensitively alive to your rela- 
 tions to God and man ; all your honor, your affections, 
 and your faculties — all these, and still hold yourselves 
 strictly amenable to those laws which confine a true 
 success to the strong and constant hand of patient 
 achievement. 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 FEMALE SOCIETY— THE WOMAN FOR A WIFE. 
 
 O woman ! lovely woman ! Nature made thee 
 
 To temper man ; we had been brutes without you. 
 Angels are painted fair to look like you. 
 
 — Otway. 
 
 When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I should live 
 till I were married. — Shakspere. 
 
 IN many of the books addressed to young men, a great 
 deal is said about the purifying and elevating influ- 
 ences of female society. Sentimental young men affect 
 this kind of reading, and if anywhere in it they can find 
 countenance for the policy of early marriage, they are 
 delighted. Now, while I will be the last to deny the 
 purifying and elevating influence of pure and elevated 
 vvomen, I do deny that there is anything in indiscrim- 
 inate devotion to female society, which makes a man 
 better or purer. Suppose a man cast away on the Can- 
 nibal Islands, and not in sufficiently good flesh to excite 
 the appetites of the gentle epicureans among whom he 
 has fallen. Suppose him, in fact, to be " received into 
 society," and made the private secretary of a king with- 
 
Female Society — TJie Woman for a Wife, ii 
 
 out a liberal education. Suppose, after awhile, he feels 
 himself subsiding into a state of barbarism, and casts 
 around for some redeeming or conservative influence. 
 At this moment it occurs to him that in the trunk on 
 which he sailed ashore was a number of books. He 
 flies to the trunk, and, in an ecstasy of delight, discovers 
 that among them is a volume addressed to young men. 
 He opens it eagerly, and finds the writer to declare that 
 next to the Christian religion, there is nothing that will 
 tend so strongly to the elevation and purification of 
 young men, as female society. He accordingly seeks 
 the society of women, and drinks in the marvellous in- 
 fluences of their presence. He finds them unacquainted 
 with some of the most grateful uses of water, and in evi- 
 dent ignorance of the existence of ivory combs. About 
 what year of the popular era is it to be supposed that 
 he will arrive at a desirable state of purification and 
 perfection ? 
 
 Now, perhaps you do not perceive the force of this 
 illustration. Let us get at it, then. When you find 
 yourself shut out from all female society except that 
 which is beneath you, that society will do you just as 
 much as, and no more good than, that of the fair canni- 
 bals, especially if it be young. If, in all this society, 
 you can find one old woman of sixty, who has common 
 sense, genial good-nature, experience, some reading, 
 and a sympathetic heart;, cherish her as you would her 
 weight in gold, but let the young trash go. You will 
 
12 TitcomFs Letters. 
 
 hear nothing from them but gossip and nousense, and 
 you will only get disgusted with the world and yourself. 
 Inspiration to higher and purer life always comes from 
 above a man ; and female society can only elevate and 
 purify a man when it is higher and purer than he is. In 
 thr -element of purity, I doubt not that women generally 
 are superior to men, but it is very largely a negative or 
 unconscious element, and has not the power and influ- 
 ence of a positive virtue. 
 
 Therefore, whenever you seek for female society, as 
 an agency in the elevation of your tastes, the preserva- 
 tion of your morals, and the improvement of your mind, 
 seek for that which is above you. I do not counsel you 
 to treat with rudeness or studied neglect such inferior 
 female society as you are obliged to come in contact 
 with. On the contrary, you owe such society a duty. 
 You should stimulate it, infuse new life into it, if possi- 
 ble, and do for it what you would have female society 
 do for yourself. 
 
 This matter of seeking female society aL^re yourself 
 you should carry still further. Never content yourself 
 with the idea of having a common-place wife. You 
 want one who will stimulate you, stir you up, keep you 
 moving, show you your weak points, and make some- 
 thing of you. Don't fear that you cannot get such a 
 wife. I very well remember the reply which a gentle- 
 man who happened to combine the qualities of wit and 
 common sense, made to a young man who expressed a 
 
Female Society — The Woman for a Wife. 13 
 
 fear that a certain young lady of great beauty and at- 
 tainments would dismiss him, if he should become 
 serious, '"'' My friend," said the wit, '* infinitely more 
 beautiful and accomplished women than she is, have 
 married infinitely uglier and meaner men than you are." 
 And such is the fact. If you are honest and honorable, 
 if your character is spotless, if you are enterprising and 
 industrious, if you have some grace and a fair degree of 
 sense, "and if you love appreciatingly and truly, you can 
 marry almost anybody worth your having. So, to en- 
 courage yourself, carry in your memory the above 
 aphorism reduced to a form something like this : '' In- 
 finitely finer women than I ever expect to marry, have 
 loved and married men infinitely meaner than I am." 
 
 The apprehensions of women are finer and quicker 
 than those of men. With equal early advantages, the 
 woman is more of a woman at eighteen than a man is a 
 man at twenty -one. After marriage, as a general thing, 
 the woman ceases to acquire. Now, I do not say that 
 this is necessary, or that it should be the case, but I 
 simply state a general fact. The woman is absorbed in 
 family cares, or perhaps devotes from ten to twenty 
 years to the bearing and rearing of children — the most 
 dignified, delightful, and honorable office of her life. 
 This consumes her time, and, in a great multitude of 
 instances, deprives her of intellectual culture. 
 
 In the meantime, the man is out, engaged in business. 
 He comes in daily contact with minds stronger and 
 
14 Tttcomb's Letter's. 
 
 sharper than his own. He grows and matures, and in 
 ten years from the date of his marriage, becomes, in 
 reahty, a new man. Now, if he was so fooHsh as to 
 marry a woman because she had a pretty form and face, 
 or sweet eyes, or an amialjle disposition, or a pleasant 
 temper, or wealth, he will find that he has passed en- 
 tirely by his wife, and that she is really no more of 
 a companion for him than a child would l)e. 1 know of 
 but few sadder sights in this world than that of mates 
 whom the passage of years has mis-mated. A woman 
 ought to have a long start of a man, and then, ten to 
 one, the man will come out ahead in the race of a long 
 hfe. 
 
 I suppose that in every young man's mind there exists 
 the hope and the expectation of marriage. When a 
 young man pretends to me that he has no wish to 
 marry, and that he never expects to marry, I always 
 infer one of two things : tliat he lies, and is really very 
 anxious for marriage, or that his heart has been pol- 
 luted by association with unworthy women. In a thou- 
 sand cases we shall not find three exceptions to this 
 rule. A young man who, with any degree of earnest- 
 ness, declares that he intends never to marry, confesses 
 to a brutal nature or perverted morals. 
 
 But how shall a good wife be won ? I know that men 
 naturally shrink from the attemi)t to obtain companions 
 who are their superiors ; Ijut they will find that really 
 intelligent women, who possess the most desirable qual- 
 
Female Society — TJie Woman for a Wife. 15 
 
 ities, arc uniformly modest, and hold their charms in 
 modest estimation. What such women most admire 
 in men is gallantry ; not the gallantry of courts and 
 fops, but boldness, courage, devotion, decision, and 
 refined civility. A man's bearing wins ten superior 
 women where his boots and brains win one. If a man 
 stand before a woman with respect for himself and fear- 
 lessness of her, his suit is halt won. The rest may 
 safely be left to the parties most interested. Therefore, 
 never be afraid of a woman. Women are the most 
 harmless and agreeable creatures in the world, to a man 
 who shows that he has got a man's soul in him. If you 
 have not the spirit in you to come up to a test like 
 this, you ha\e not that in you which most pleases a 
 high-soulcd woman, and you will be obliged to content 
 yourself with the simple girl who, in a quiet way, is en- 
 deavoring to attract and fasten you. 
 
 But don't be in a hurry about the matter. Don't get 
 into a feverish longing for marriage. It isn't creditable 
 to you. Especially don't imagine that any disappoint- 
 ment in love which takes place before you are twenty- 
 one years old will be of any material damage to you. 
 The truth is, that before a man is twenty-five years old 
 he docs not know what he wants himself. So don't be 
 in a hurry. The more of a man you become, and the 
 more of manliness you become capable of exhibiting in 
 your association with women, the better wife you will be 
 able to obtain ; and one year's possession of the heart 
 
1 6 TitcomU's Letters. 
 
 akd hand of a really noble specimen of her sex is worth 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine years' possession of a 
 sweet creature with two ideas in her head, and nothing 
 new to say about either of them. " Better fifty years 
 of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." So don't be in a 
 hurry, I say again. You don't want a wife now, and you 
 have not the slightest idea of the kind of wife you will 
 want by-and-by. Go into female society if you can find 
 that which will improve you, but not otherwise. You 
 can spend your time better. Seek the society of good 
 men. That is often more accessible to you than the 
 other, and it is through that mostly that you will find 
 your way to good female society. 
 
 If any are disposed to complain of the injustice to 
 woman of advice like this, and believe that it involves a 
 wrong to her, I reply that not the slightest wrong is in- 
 tended. Thorough appreciation of a good woman, on 
 the part of a young man, is one of his strongest recom- 
 mendations to her favor. The desire of such a man to 
 possess and associate his life with such a woman, gives 
 evidence of qualities, aptitudes, and capacities which 
 entitle him to any woman's consideration. There is 
 something good in him ; and however uncultivated he 
 may be — however rude in manner, and rough in person 
 — he only needs development to become worthy of her, 
 in some respects, at least. I shall not quarrel with a 
 woman who desires a husband superior to herself, for I 
 know it will be well for her to obtain such an one. if she 
 
Female Society — The Woman for a Wife. \J 
 
 will be stimulated by contact with a higher mind to a 
 brighter and broader development. At the same time, 
 i must believe that for a man to marry his inferior, is 
 to call upon himself a great misfortune ; to deprive him- 
 self of one of the most elevating and refining influences 
 which can possibly affect him. I therefore believe it to 
 be the true policy of every young man to aim high in 
 his choice of a companion. I have previously given a 
 reason for this policy, and both that and this conspire 
 to establish the soundness of my counsel. 
 
 One thing more : not the least important, but the 
 last in this letter. No woman without piety in her 
 heart is fit to be the companion of any man. You may 
 get, in your wife, beauty, amiability, sprightliness, w^it, 
 accomplishments, wealth, and learning, but if that wife 
 have no higher love than herself and yourself, she is 
 a poor creature. She cannot elevate you above mean 
 aims and objects, she cannot educate her children prop- 
 erly, she cannot in hours of adversity sustain and com- 
 fort you, she cannot bear with patience your petulance 
 induced by the toils and vexations of business, and she 
 will never be safe against the seductive temptations of 
 gaiety and dress. 
 
 Then, again, a man who has the prayers of a pious 
 wife, and knows that he has them — upheld by heaven, 
 or by a refined sense of obligation and gratitude — can 
 rarely become a very bad man. A daily prayer from 
 the heart of a pure and pious wife, for a husband en- 
 
1 8 Tit comb'' s Letters. 
 
 grossed in the pursuits of wealth or fame, is a chain of 
 golden words that links his name every day with the 
 name of God. He may snap it three hundred and 
 sixty-five times in a year, for many years, but the 
 chances are that in time he will gather the sundered 
 filaments, and seek to re-unite them in an everlasting 
 bond. , 
 
LETTER III. 
 
 MANNERS AND DRESS. 
 
 So over violent, or over civil, 
 
 That every man with him was God or devil 
 
 — Dryden. 
 
 Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 
 
 But not expressed in fancy ; rich not gaudy ; 
 For the apparel oft proclaims the man. 
 
 — Shaksperk. 
 
 IT is well for young men to obtain, at the very start 
 of their career, some idea of the value of politeness. 
 Some cannot be otherwise than polite. They are born 
 so. One can kick them roundly and soundly, and they 
 will not refuse to smile, if it be done good-naturedly. 
 They dodge all corners by a necessity of their nature. 
 If their souls had only corporeal volume, we could see 
 them making their way through a crowd, like nice little 
 spaniels, scaring nobody, running between nobody's 
 legs, but winding along shrinkingly and gracefully, see- 
 ing a master in every man, and thus flattering every 
 man's vanity into good-nature, but really spoiling their 
 reputation as reliable dogs, by their undiscriminating 
 
20 Titcojnfs Letters. 
 
 and universal complaisance. There is a self-forgetful- 
 ness which is so deep as to be below self-respect, and 
 such instances as we occasionally meet with should be 
 treated compassionately, like cases of idiocy or insanity, 
 except when found in connection with the post-office 
 department or among hotel waiters. 
 
 But puppyism is not really politeness. The genuine 
 article is as necessary to success, and particularly to an 
 enjoyable success, as integrity, or industry, or any other 
 indispensable thing. All machinery ruins itself by fric- 
 tion, without the presence of a lubricating fluid. Polite 
 ness, or civility, or urbanity, or whatever we may choose 
 to call it, is the oil which preserves the machinery of 
 society from destruction. We are obliged to bend to 
 one another — to step aside and let another pass, to 
 ignore this and that personal peculiarity, to speak pleas- 
 antly when irritated, and to do a great many things to 
 avoid abrasion and collision. In other words, in a world 
 of selfish interests and pursuits, where every man is pur- 
 suing his own special good, we must mask our real de- 
 signs in studied politeness, or mingle them with real 
 kindness, in order to elevate the society of men above 
 the society of wolves. Young men generally would 
 doubtless be thoroughly astonished if they could com- 
 prehend at a single glance how greatly their persona] 
 happiness, popularity, prosperity, and usefulness depend 
 on their manners. 
 
 I know young men who, in the discharge of their 
 
Manners and Dress. 2i 
 
 duties, imagine that if they go through them with a 
 literal performance, they are doing all that they under- 
 take to do. You will never see a smile upon their faces, 
 nor hear a genial word of good fellowship from their 
 lips ; and from the manner in which their labor is per- 
 formed you would never learn that they were engaged 
 in intercourse with human beings. They carry the 
 same manner and the same spirit into the counting-room 
 that they do into the dog-kennel or the stable. Every- 
 body hates such young men as these, and recoils from 
 all contact with them. If they have business with them, 
 they close it as soon as possible, and get out of their 
 presence. A man who, having got his vessel under 
 headway on the voyage of life, takes a straight course, 
 minding nothing for the man-of-war that lies in his path, 
 or the sloop that crosses his bow, or the fishing smacks 
 that find game where he seeks nothing but a passage, 
 or interposing rocks or islands, will be very sure to get 
 terribly rubbed before he gets through. 
 
 I despise servility, but true and uniform politeness is 
 the glory of any young man. It should be a politeness 
 full of frankness and good-nature, unobtrusive and con- 
 stant, and uniform in its exhibition to every class of 
 men. The young man who is overwhelmingly polite to 
 a celebrity or a nabob, and rude to a poor Irishman be- 
 cause he is a poor Irishman, deserves to be despised 
 That style of manners which combines self-respect with 
 respect for the rights and feelings of others, especially 
 
22 Titcomb^s Letters. 
 
 if it be warmed up by the fires of a genial heart, is a 
 thing to be coveted and cultivated, and it is a thing that 
 pays, alike in cash and comfort. 
 
 The talk of manners introduces us naturally to dress 
 and personal appearance. I believe in dress. I believe 
 that it is the duty of all men — young and old — to make 
 their persons, so far as practicable or possible, agreeable 
 to those with whom they are thrown into association. 
 I mean by this that they shall not offend by singularity, 
 nor by slovenliness ; that they shall '^ make a con- 
 science " of clean boots and finger-nails, frequently 
 change their linen, and not show themselves in shirt- 
 sleeves if they can help it. Let no man know by your 
 dress what your business is. You dress your person, 
 not your trade. You are, if you know enough, to mould 
 the fashion of the time to your own personal peculiar- 
 ities — to make it your servant, and not allow it to be 
 your master. Never dress in extremes. Let there al- 
 ways be a hint in your dress that you know the style, 
 but, for the best of reasons, disregard its more extreme 
 demands. The best possible impression that you can 
 make by your dress is to make no separate impression 
 at all ; but so to harmonize its material and shape with 
 your personality, that it becomes tributary in the gen- 
 eral effect, and so exclusively tributary that people can- 
 not tell after seeing you what kind of clothes you wear. 
 They will only remember that you look well, and some 
 how dress becomingly. 
 
Marnier s atid Dress. 23 
 
 I suppose that I shall be met here with a protest from 
 employers^ and a kind of protest from the employed. 
 (Counsel to dress well is dangerous, is it ? But every- 
 body now dresses extravagantly ; and, as extravagant 
 dressing is usually very far from good dressing, I think 
 that the danger of exciting greater extravagance is very 
 small. It may be descending into pretty small particu- 
 lars, but it is proper to say that some men can dress 
 better on fifty dollars a year than others can on one 
 hundred, and for reasons which it is my duty to dis- 
 close. There was something in the doctrine of the loafer 
 who maintained that ''extremes justify the means," 
 illustrating his proposition by wearing faultless hat and 
 boots and leaving the rest of his person in rags ; but he 
 had not touched the real philosophy of the matter. 
 
 There is on every man what may be called a dress- 
 centre — a point from which the rest of the dress should 
 be developed or unfolded. A faultless cravat or neck- 
 tie, supporting an immaculate and stylish shirt-collar, 
 is, perhaps, as good a " dress-centre" as can be chosen 
 or adopted. Outside of this, there should not be a no- 
 ticeable feature of the dress except that it is harmonious 
 and unobtrusive. A neck always well dressed will atone 
 almost for negligence in every other department of per- 
 sonal drapery. The main thing is to take some small 
 point of dress and make the most of it, and then bring 
 everything else into modest subordination to it. 
 
 One sees this kind of thing in travelling, We meet 
 
24 TitcomFs Letters. 
 
 multitudes from all quarters and of different national- 
 ities. One, and he is usually a Yankee, wears the best 
 of broadcloth, and the costliest of coats, and looks vul- 
 gar ; while another with a single stamp of good taste 
 upon him, at some central point, is a gentleman at half 
 price. Rich clothes are really a sign of mental poverty. 
 Let the secret of good dressing be thoroughly learned, 
 and we shall hear comparatively little of the cost of 
 dress. Let each young man choose his central idea, 
 plant it and develop it ; and if he has good common 
 sense he will find that he can dress better than he ever 
 could before, with the expenditure of half the money it 
 has usually cost him. 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 BAD HABITS. 
 
 There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
 If the ill spirit have so fair a house 
 Good things will strive to dwell with't. 
 
 — ShakspekE: 
 
 He that has light within his own clear breast 
 May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day ; 
 But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, 
 Benighted walks under the mid-day sun. 
 
 — Milton. 
 
 IT is entirely natural for people to form habits, so that 
 if bad habits be avoided, the good ones will gene- 
 rally take care of themselves. I had no intention when 
 I commenced these letters of saying anything upon dog- 
 matic theology, but I take the liberty of suggesting to 
 those w^ho are interested in this kind of thing that if 
 there be anything that demonstrates total depravity, it 
 is the readiness with which young men imbibe bad 
 habits. I have seen original sin in the shape of " a 
 short six " sticking out of the mouth of a lad of ten 
 years. It is strange what particular pains boys and 
 
26 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 young men will take to learn to do that which will make 
 them miserable, ruin their health, render them disgust- 
 ing to their friends, and damage their reputation. 
 
 Some of the fashionable bad habits of the day are 
 connected with the use of tobacco. Here is a drug that 
 a young man is obliged to become accustomed to before 
 he can tolerate either the taste or the effect of it. It is 
 a rank vegetable poison ; and in the unaccustomed ani- 
 mal produces vertigo, faintness, and horrible sickness. 
 Yet young men persevere in the use of it until they can 
 endure it, and then until they love it. They go about 
 the streets with cigars in their mouths, or into society 
 with breath sufficiently offensive to drive all unper- 
 verted nostrils before them. They chew tobacco — roll 
 up huge wads of the vile drug, and stuff their cheeks 
 with them. They ejaculate their saliva upon the side- 
 walk, in the store, in spittoons which become incorporate 
 stenches, in dark corners of railroad cars to stain the 
 white skirts of unsuspecting women, in lecture-rooms 
 and churches, upon fences, and into stoves that hiss 
 with anger at the insult. And the quids after they are 
 ejected ! They are to be found in odd corners, in out- 
 of-the-way places — great boulders, boluses, bulbs ! 
 Horses stumble over them, dogs bark at them ; they 
 poison young shade-trees, and break down the constitu- 
 tions of sweepers. This may be an exaggeration of the 
 facts, but not of the disgust with which one writes or 
 them. 
 
Bad Habits. 27 
 
 Now, young men, just think of this thing ! You are 
 born into the world with a sweet breath. At a proper 
 ^to^j you acquire a good set of teeth. Why will you 
 make of one a putrescent exhalation, and of the other a 
 set of yellow pegs ? A proper description of the habit 
 of chewing tobacco would exhaust the filthy adjectives 
 of the language, and spoil the adjectives themselves for 
 further use ; and yet, you will acquire the habit, and 
 persist in it after it is acquired ! It is very singular that 
 young men will adopt a habit of which every man who 
 is its victim is ashamed. There is, probably, no to- 
 bacco-chewer in the world who would advise a young 
 man to commence this habit. I have never seen a slave 
 of tobacco who did not regret his bondage ; yet, against 
 all advice, against nausea and disgust, against cleanli- 
 ness, against every consideration of health and comfort, 
 thousands every year bow the neck to this drug, and 
 consent to w^ear its repulsive yoke. They will chew it ; 
 they will smoke it in cigars and pipes until their bed- 
 rooms and shops cannot be breathed in, and until their 
 breath is as rank as the breath of a foul beast, and their 
 clothes have the odor of the sewer. Some of them take 
 snuff; cram the fiery weed up their nostrils to irritate 
 that subtle sense which rarest flowers were made to feed 
 — in all this working against God, abusing nature, per- 
 v^erting sense, injuring health, planting the seeds of dis- 
 ease, and insulting the decencies of life and the noses of 
 the world. 
 
28 TitcomF s 'Letters. 
 
 So much for the nature of the habit ; and I would 
 stop here, but for the fact that I am in earnest, and 
 wish to present every motive in my power to prevent 
 young men from forming the habit, or persuade them to 
 abandon it. The habit of using tobacco is expensive. 
 A clerk on a modest salary has no right to be seen 
 with a cigar in his mouth. Three cigars a day, at five 
 cents apiece, amount to more than fifty dollars a year. 
 Can you afford it ? You know you cannot. You know 
 that to do this you will either be compelled to run in 
 debt or steal. Therefore I say that you have no busi- 
 ness to be seen with a cigar in your mouth. It is pre- 
 sumptive evidence against your moral character. 
 
 Did it ever occur to you what you are, what you are 
 made for, whither you are going ? That beautiful body 
 of yours, in whose construction infinite wisdom ex- 
 hausted the resources of its ingenuity, is the temple of a 
 soul that shall live forever, a companion of angels, a 
 searcher into the deep things of God, a being allied in 
 essence to the divine. I say the body is the temple, or 
 the tabernacle, of such a being as this ; and what do 
 you think of stuffing the front door of such a building 
 full of the most disgusting weeds that you can find, or 
 setting a slow match to it, or filling the c4iimneys with 
 snuff? It looks to me much like an endeavor to smoke 
 out the tenant, or to insult him in such a manner as to 
 induce him to quit the premises. You really ought to 
 be ashamed of such behavior. A clean mouth, ? 
 
Bad Habits. 29 
 
 sweet breath, unstained teeth, and inoffensive clothing, 
 — are not these treasures worth preserving ? Then 
 throw away tobacco, and all thoughts of it, at once and 
 forever. Be a man. Be decent, and be thankful to me 
 for talking so plainly to you. 
 
 But there are other bad habits besides the use of to- 
 bacco. There is the habit of using sirong drink,— not 
 the habit of getting drunk, with most young men, but 
 the habit of taking drink occasionally in its milder forms 
 — of playing with a small appetite that only needs suffi- 
 cient playing with to make you a demon or a dolt. 
 You think you are safe. I know you are not safe, if you 
 drink at all ; and when you get offended with the good 
 friends who warn you of your danger, you are a fool. I 
 know that the grave swallows daily, by scores, drunk- 
 ards, every one of whom thought he was safe while 
 he was forming his appetite. But this is old talk. A 
 young man in this age who forms the habit of drinking, 
 or puts himself in danger of forming the habit, is usually 
 so weak that it doesn't pay to save him. 
 
 I pass by profanity. That is too offensive and vulgar 
 a habit for any man who reads a respectable book to 
 indulge in. I pass by this, 1 say ; to come to a habit 
 more destructive than any I have contemplated. 
 
 Young man ! you who are so modest in the presence 
 of women, — so polite and amiable ; you who are invited 
 into families where there are pure and virtuous girls ; 
 you who go to church, and seem to be such a pattern 
 
30 Tit CO nib' s Letters. 
 
 young man ; you who very possibly neither smoke, noi 
 chew, nor snuff, nor swear, nor drink — you have one 
 habit ten times worse than all these put together, — a 
 habit that makes you a whited sepulchre, fair without, 
 but within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. 
 You have a habit of impure thought, that poisons the 
 very springs of your life. It may lead you into lawless 
 indulgences, or it may not. So far as your character is 
 concerned, it makes little difference. A young man 
 who cherishes impure images, and indulges in impure 
 conversations with his associates, is poisoned. There is 
 rottenness in him. He is not to be trusted. Hundreds 
 of thousands of men are living in unhappiness and 
 degradation to-day who owe their unhappy liv^es to an 
 early habit of impure thought. To a young man who 
 has become poisoned in this way, women all appear to 
 be vicious or weak ; and when a young man loses his re- 
 spect for the sex made sacred by the relations of mother 
 and sister, he stands upon the crumbling edge of ruin. 
 His sensibilities are killed, and his moral nature almost 
 beyond the reach of regeneration. I believe it to be 
 true that a man who has lost his belief in woman has, as 
 a general thing, lost his faith in God. 
 
 The only proper way to treat such a habit as this is 
 to fly from it — discard it — expel it — fight it to the death. 
 Impure thought is a moral drug quite as seductive and 
 poisonous to the soul as tobacco is to the body. It 
 perverts the tone of every fibre of the soul. One should 
 
Bad Habits. 3^ 
 
 have more respect for his body than to make it the 
 abode of toads and Hzards and unclean reptiles of all 
 sorts. The whole matter resolves itself into this : A 
 young man is not fit for life until he is clean — clean and 
 healthy, body and soul, with no tobacco in his mouth, no 
 liquor in his stomach, no oath on his tongue, no snuff in 
 his nose, and no thought in his heart which if exposed 
 would send him sneaking into darkness from the pres- 
 ence of good women. I know a man who believes that 
 the regeneration of the world is to be brought about by 
 a change of diet. If he will add the policy of utter 
 cleanliness to his scheme, I will agree not to quarrel 
 with him. 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 THE BLESSINGS OF POVERTY— OFFICE AND EB 
 FECT OF A PROFESSION, 
 
 The labor we delight in physics pain. 
 
 — Shakspere. 
 
 Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; 
 The rest is ail but leather and prunello. 
 
 — Pope. 
 
 IF there is anything in the world that a young man 
 should be more grateful for than another, it is the 
 poverty which necessitates starting life under very great 
 disadvantages. Poverty is one of the best tests of hu- 
 man quality in existence. A triumph over it is like 
 graduating with honor from West Point. It demon- 
 strates stuff and stamina. It is a certificate of worthy 
 labor, faithfully performed. A young man who cannot 
 stand this test is not good for anything. He can never 
 rise above a drudge or a pauper. A young man who 
 cannot feel his will harden as the yoke of poverty 
 presses upon him, and his pluck rise with every diffi- 
 culty that poverty throws in his way, may as well retire 
 into some corner, and hide himself. Poverty saves a 
 
The Blessings of Poverty. 33 
 
 thousand times more men than it ruins, for it only ruins 
 those who are not particularly worth saving, while it 
 saves multitudes of those whom wealth would have 
 ruined. If any young man who reads this letter is so 
 unfortunate as to be rich, I give him my pity. I pity 
 you, my rich young friend, because you are in danger. 
 You lack one great stimulus to effort and excellence 
 which your poor companion possesses. You will be 
 very apt, if you have a soft spot in your head, to think 
 yourself above him, and that sort of thing makes you 
 mean, and injures you. With full pockets and full 
 stomach, and good linen and broadcloth on your back, 
 your heart and soul will get plethoric, and in the race 
 of life you will find yourself surpassed by all the poor 
 boys around you, before you know it. 
 
 No, my boy, if you are poor, thank God and take 
 courage ; for he intends to give you a chance to make 
 something of yourself. If you had plenty of money, 
 ten chances to one it would spoil you for all useful pur- 
 poses. Do you lack education ? Have you been cut 
 short in the text books ? Remember that education, 
 like some other things, does not consist in the multitude 
 of things a man possesses. What can you do ? That is 
 the question that settles the business for you. Do you 
 know your business ? Do you know men, and how to 
 deal with them ? Has your mind, by any means what- 
 soever, received that discipline which gives to its action 
 power and facility? If so, then you are more of a man, 
 
34 TitconiV s Letters. 
 
 and a thousand times better educated, than the fellow 
 who graduates from a college with his brains full ol 
 stuff that he cannot apply to the practical business of 
 life — stuff the acquisition of which has been in no sense 
 a disciplinary process, so far as he is concerned. There 
 are very few men in this world less than thirty years o't 
 age, and unmarried, who can afford to be rich. One of 
 the greatest benefits to be reaped from great financial 
 disasters, is the saving of a large crop of young men. 
 
 In regard to the choice of a profession, that is your 
 business, and not mine, nor that of any of your friends. 
 If you take to a trade or profession, don't be persuaded 
 out of it, until you are perfectly satisfied that you are 
 not adapted to it. You will receive all sorts of the most 
 excellent advice, but you must remember that if you 
 follow it, and it leads you into a profession that starves 
 you, those who gave the advice will never feel bound 
 to give you any money. You have got to take care o\ 
 yourself in this world, and you may as well choose your 
 own way of doing it, always remembering that it is not 
 your trade or your profession which makes you re- 
 spectable. This leads me to a matter that I may as 
 well dispose of here as anywhere. 
 
 I propose to explain what I meant in a previous letter 
 by the counsel to '' let no man know by your dress what 
 your business is. You dress your person, not youl 
 trade." As the proper explanation of this involves a 
 very important principle, I will devote the rest of thi? 
 
The Blessings of Poverty. 35 
 
 better to its development and illustration. The fault 
 found with this counsel is that it has always been con- 
 sidered best to dress according to one's business and 
 position. 
 
 Manhood, and profession or handicraft, are entirely 
 different things ; and I wish particularly that every 
 young man engaged in reading these letters should 
 understand the reason why. God makes men, and 
 men make blacksmiths, tailors, farmers, horse jockeys, 
 tradesmen of all sorts, governors, judges, &c. The 
 offices of men may be more or less important, and of 
 higher or lower quality, but manhood is a higher pos- 
 session than office. An occupation is never an end of 
 life. It is an instrument put into our hands, or taken 
 into our hands, by which to gain for the body the means 
 of living until sickness or old age robs it of life, and we 
 pass on to the world for which this is a preparation. 
 However thoroughly acquired and assiduously followed, 
 a trade is something to be held at arm's length. I can 
 illustrate what I mean by placing, side by side, two 
 horses, — one, fresh from the stall, with every hair in its 
 right place, his head up and mane flying, and another 
 that has been worked in the same harness every day for 
 three years, until the skin is bare on each hip and thigh, 
 an inflamed abrasion glows on each side of the back- 
 bone where the hard saddle-pad rests, a severe gall- 
 mark spreads its brown patch under the breast collar, 
 and all the other marks of an abused horse abound 
 
36 Titcojnb' s Letters. 
 
 Now a trade, or a profession, will weaf into a man as a 
 harness wears into a horse. One can see the '' trade 
 mark " on almost every soul and body met in the street. 
 A trade has taken some men by the shoulders and 
 shaken their humanity out of them. It has so warped 
 the natures of others th'at they might be wet down and 
 set in the sun to dry a thousand times without being 
 warped back. 
 
 Thus, I say, a man's trade or profession should be 
 kept at arm's length. It should not be allowed to 
 tyrannize over him, to mould him, to crush him. It 
 should not occupy the whole of his attention. So far 
 from this, it should be regarded, in its material aspect, 
 at least, only as a means for the development of man- 
 hood. The great object of living is the attainment of 
 true manhood — the cultivation of every power of the 
 soul and of every high spiritual quality, naturally in- 
 herent or graciously superadded. The trade is beneath 
 the man, and should be kept there. With this idea in 
 your minds — and you may be very sure that it is the 
 correct idea — just look around you and see how almost 
 everybody has missed it. You and I both know physi- 
 cians whose mental possessions, beyond their knowledge 
 of drugs and diseases, are not worth anything. We are 
 acquainted with lawyers who are never seen out of their 
 offices, who live among pigeon-holes and red tape, and 
 busy their minds with quirks and quarrels so unremit 
 tingly, that they have not a thought for other subjects 
 
The Blessings of Poverty. 37 
 
 They are not men at all ; they are nothing but lawyers. 
 Often we find not more than five whole men in a town 
 of five thousand inhabitants. Those who pass for men, 
 and who really do get married and have families, are a 
 hundred to one fractional men, or exclusively machines. 
 
 Elihu Burritt cultivated the man that was in him until 
 his trade and his blacksmith's shop would not stay with 
 him. They ceased to be useful to him. He could get 
 a living in a way that was better for him. Benjamin 
 Franklin was an excellent printer, but he used his trade 
 only as a means. The development of his mind and 
 his manhood went on above it. Printing with him was 
 not an end of life. If it had been, we should have 
 missed his words of wisdom ; some one else would have 
 built the kite that exchanged the first kiss with elec- 
 tricity, and less able men would have been set to do the 
 work which he did so creditably in the management of 
 his country's affairs. It is not necessary that you be 
 learned blacksmiths or philosophical and diplomatic 
 printers, but it is necessary that you be a man before 
 your calling, behind your calling, above your calling, 
 outside of your calling, and inside of it ; and that that 
 calling modify your character no more than it would 
 were it your neighbor's. 
 
 If I have made my point plain to you, you can readily 
 see that I attach very little value to the distinctions in 
 society based on callings, and still less to those based 
 on office. If a man be a man, let him thank his stars 
 
38 Tit comb' s Letters. 
 
 that he is not ajustice of the peace. Of all the appetites 
 that curse young men, the appetite for office seems to 
 me to be the silliest and the meanest. There is nothing 
 which fills me with greater disgust than to see a young 
 man eager for the poor distinction which office confers. 
 An office seeker, for the sake of honor, is constitution- 
 ally, necessarily, mean. I have seen men begin at 
 twenty-one as prudential committees in small school 
 districts, and stick to office until everybody was sick of 
 them. Whether it rained porridge or potatoes, paving 
 stones or pearls, their dish was always out. They and 
 their families always had to be cared for. 
 
 Office always brings obligation and a certain kind of 
 slavery. It brings something more than this — it brings 
 insanity. A young man who allows himself to get a taste 
 of it very rarely recovers. It is like tobacco, or opium, 
 or brandy, producing a morbid appetite ; and we need 
 all through the nation, a new society of reform. There 
 should be a pledge circulated, and everywhere signed, 
 promising total abstinence from office-seeking. To this 
 every young man should put his name. There are 
 chronic cases that may be considered hopeless, but the 
 young can be saved. 
 
 Do not let me be misunderstood ; I have spoken of 
 the thirst for office for the sake of office. My belief is 
 that office should neither be sought for nor lightly re- 
 fused. The curse of our country is that office-seekers 
 have made pl^ce so contemptible that good men will not 
 
The Blessings of Poverty. 39 
 
 accept it, but so far keep themselves removed from 
 politics that all the affairs of government fall into un- 
 worthy hands. When a young man is sought for to fill 
 a responsible place in public affairs — sought for and 
 selected on the ground of fitness — he should decide 
 whether he owes that duty to the public, and perform it 
 well if he does. Office was properly regarded in the 
 " good old colony times." Then it was considered a 
 hinderance to business, and almost or quite a hardship ; 
 so much so that laws were passed, in some instances, 
 compelling men to accept office, or pay a fine. So I 
 would have you to do your duty to the public at all times, 
 and especially in seeing that office-seekers, by profession 
 or constant practice, are crowded from the track and 
 worthy men put on. 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 FOOD AXD PHYSICAL CULTURE, 
 
 Man is the noblest growth our realms supply. 
 And souls are ripened in our northern sky. 
 
 — Mrs. B.A.RBArLP. 
 
 [HAVE noticed that most writers of books for young 
 men have a good deal to say about diet and regimen, 
 and physical culture, and all that sort of thing, those 
 knowing the least of these important subjects invariably 
 being the most elaborate and specific in their treatment 
 of them. There have been some awful sins committed 
 in this business. All the spare curses I accumulate 
 I dedicate to those white-livered, hatchet-faced, thin- 
 blooded, scrawny reformers, who prescribe sawdust 
 puddings and plank beds, and brief sleep, and early 
 walks, and short commons for the rising generation. ^ 
 despise them ; and if there is a being who always touches 
 che profoundest depths of my sympathy, it is a young 
 man who has become a victim to their notions. It is a 
 hard sight to see a young man with the pluck all taken 
 out of him by a meagre diet — his whole nature starved, 
 degenerated, emasculated. 
 
Food and Physical Culture. 41 
 
 i propose to apply a little common sense to this busi- 
 nes;5. If I have a likely Durham steer, which I wish to 
 hcxV'^ grow into the full development of his breed, I keep 
 him on something more than a limited quantity of bog 
 hay. I do not stir him up with a pitchfork before he 
 has his nap out, and insist on his being driven ten miles 
 before he has anything to eat. I do not take pains to 
 give him the meanest bed I can find for him. I know 
 perfectly well that that animal will not grow up strong 
 and sound, fat and full, the pride of the farm and the 
 stall, unless I give him an abundance of the best food, 
 a clean and comfortable place to sleep in, and just as 
 long naps as he sees fit to take. The horse, which in 
 its organization more nearly approaches man than the 
 steer, is still more sensitive to the influence of generous 
 living. How much pluck and spirit will a horse get out 
 of a ton of rye straw ? The truth is, that a good and 
 abundant diet is not only essential to the highest physi- 
 cal health and development of man, but it modifies very 
 hnportantly the development and manifestation of the 
 toul. A man cannot acquire courage by feeding on 
 theories and milk. An Englishman cannot fight without 
 beef in his belly ; and no more can any of us. 
 
 It may be objected to this that we do. not wish for a 
 great animal development in man. I say we do. I 
 declare that the more perfect a man can make his ani- 
 mal nature the better. That animal nature is the asso- 
 ciate—home — servant — of the soul. If it be not v.ell 
 
42 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 developed, in all its organs and in all its functions, it 
 will neither give a generous entertainment to the spirit- 
 ual thing that dwells in it, nor serve it with vigor and 
 efficiency. If strong meat nurses your passions, let it ; it 
 does not nurse your passions any more than it nurses all 
 the rest of you, and if you grow symmetrically where is 
 the harm ? Besides, what would you be without pas- 
 sions ? They are the impelling forces of life. A man 
 with no passion is as useless in the world as if he were 
 without brains. He cannot even acquire the possession 
 of virtue, but is obliged to content himself with inno- 
 cence. If God gave passions to a man, he gave them 
 to him for a natural, full development ; and the grandest 
 type of man we see is that in which we find fully de- 
 veloped and thoroughly trained passions ; and a soul 
 which has not these among its motive forces is like a 
 sailor out at sea, in a boat without oars. This idea that 
 the body is something to be contemned, that its growth 
 and development must necessarily antagonize with the 
 best growth and development of the soul, is essentially 
 impious. No matter where it started — it is all wrong. 
 A perverted and perverting passion is a fearful thing, 
 but a passion in its place is like everything that God 
 makes, " very good." 
 
 I would have you properly understand this kind of 
 talk. I counsel the use of no food that tends to the 
 stimulation of one portion of your system more than 
 another, but I ask you to remember that the best food 
 
Food mid Physical Ctiltiire. 43 
 
 is 3iot too good for you, and that, unless you have a 
 perverted appetite, there is very little danger of your 
 eating too much of it. If I were to be charged with 
 the special mission of degrading a nation, in mind and 
 body — stunting the form, and weakening in the same 
 proportion the mental and moral nature — there is no 
 way in which I could so readily accomplish my object 
 as through food. No nation can preserve its vitality, 
 and its tendency to progress, with a diet of pork and 
 potatoes. Nothing but the ccrealia and the rjitninaiitia 
 will do for this — nothing but bread and muscle. 
 
 I wish I could take you to one of those institutions 
 which will be found in nearly every State, where the 
 outcast and pauper children are gathered for shelter, 
 care, and culture. They come from the gutters, where 
 they have lived on garbage and cold potatoes. Their 
 eyes are red around the edges and very weak, their 
 muscles are flabby, their skin is lifeless in color and in 
 fact. Their minds are as dull as the minds of brutes, 
 and their faces give the impression almost of idiotic 
 stupidity. In six months, wheat and corn bread give 
 them a new body, and a new soul ; and it would be 
 difficult to find a brighter set of faces than fill those 
 crowded halls and illuminate the noisy playgrounds. 
 
 Therefore, I say to you, young men, however falsely 
 y.ou may deal with your back, be honest with your 
 stomach. Feed well — as well as you can afford to feed. 
 Sleep well. If Benjamin Franklin ever originated the 
 
44 TitcomFs Letters. 
 
 maxim, '' six hours of sleep for a man, seven for a wo- 
 man, and eight for a fool," he ought uniformly to have 
 practised by the rule of the last number. Young man, 
 if you are a student, or are engaged in any severe 
 mental occupation, sleep just as long as you can sleep 
 soundly. Lying in bed from laziness is another thing 
 entirely. 
 
 Sleep is a thing that bells have no more business to 
 interfere with, than with prayers and sermons. God is 
 re-creating us. We are as unconscious as we were be- 
 fore we were born ; and while he holds us there, feed- 
 ing anew the springs of life, and infusing fresh fire into 
 our brains, and preparing us for the work of another 
 day, the pillow is as sacred as a sanctuary. If any 
 fanatic has made you believe that it is good for you to 
 be violently awakened from your sleep at an early hour, 
 and to go out into the damp, raw air, morning after 
 morning, with your fast unbroken, and your body unfor- 
 tified by the stimulus of food, forget him and his coun- 
 sels, and take the full measure of your rest. When you 
 get your breakfast down, take your exercise if you have 
 time, or wait until a later hour in the day. Just as 
 much labor can be accomplished in ten hours as in four- 
 teen, with more efficiency and less fatigue, when rest 
 and bodily exercise are properly taken. 
 
 But physical culture — what is that ? A very impor- 
 tant thing, I assure you. Some of you get this in your 
 employments, and are growing up with manly frames 
 
t^ood a?td Physical Culture. 43 
 
 and strong arms. But there are others who are coming 
 up delicately, with spindling shanks, and narrow shoul- 
 ders, and flat chests, and weak arms — great babies, with 
 soft hands and soft muscles, and not enough of physical 
 prowess to undertake to carry a disputed point with the 
 cook in the kitchen. How a woman ever makes up 
 her mind to love such a man as this is a mystery to 
 me. A feminine man is a masculine monster, and no 
 woman with unperverted instincts can love and marry 
 him. A true woman loves a pair of good strong arms, 
 fastened to a pair of broad shoulders, for they can de- 
 fend her, provide for her, and — but I wander from my 
 subject. 
 
 Physical culture perfects a very important portion of 
 the work which good feeding begins. The best mate- 
 rial supplied to the mouth, assimilated by the process 
 of digestion, and carried by the blood to the muscles 
 and all the other structures of the body, is essential ; 
 but these organs, when constructed and supplied, need 
 not only thorough training for the development of power 
 and the acquisition of facility, but for the preservation 
 of their harmony and health. God sets all the little 
 children playing for this. He lays the necessity of play 
 upon them, and those restless little fellows that are 
 always sliding, or skating, or wrestling, or running, are 
 all inspired by a divine impulse. Those little brothers 
 of yours who drive you half insane by their noise, who 
 will not sit upon your knee a minute without some fresh 
 
46 TitconiFs Letters. 
 
 twist of their bodies, are discharging their primarj 
 Christian duties. 
 
 A new world, tossed into space by the Creative Hand, 
 informed with its laws of motion, and set spinning on its 
 axis and careering around its orbit, never stops. It is 
 only the boy who gets lazy as he grows older. God puts 
 him in motion at first, and teaches him to use every 
 physical power he possesses, and he does it faithfully at 
 the beginning. Children who sit still do not live. The 
 mission of play does not cease with childhood. When 
 labor is not capable of doing for you what play has done, 
 and when you have no regular task for your bodily pow- 
 ers, you are to play still. Walking and riding, boxing 
 and fencing, playing ball, pitching quoits, rowing and 
 bowling — all these are as legitimate to the man as the 
 simpler sports are to the boy, and are in a degree essen- 
 tial to his happiness and usefulness. 
 
 I should be unjust to the age were I to omit the men- 
 tion of a special point of '' physical culture " which has 
 been long neglected. You find as you come into man's 
 estate, that hair has a tendency to grow upon your face. 
 It is the mark by which God meant that men and wo- 
 men should be distinguished from each other in the 
 crowd. That hair was placed there in infinite wisdom, 
 but your fathers have been cutting it off from their chins 
 in small crops for thirty to fifty years, thus impugning 
 Nature's policy, wasting precious time, drawing a great 
 deal of good blood, creating a great deal of bad, and 
 
Food ajid Physical Culture. 47 
 
 trying to erase from their faces the difference which was 
 intended to be maintained between them and those of 
 women. If you are a man, and have a beard, wear it. 
 You know it was made to wear. It is enough to make a 
 man with a decent complement of information and a 
 common degree of sensibility (and a handsome beard) 
 deny his kind, to see these smooth-faced men around 
 the streets, and actually showing themselves in female 
 society ! Let us have one generation of beards ! 
 
LETTER V^II, 
 
 rOCIAL DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES. 
 
 Say, shall my little bark attendant sail. 
 Pursue the triumph and partake the gale ? 
 
 —Pope. 
 The primal duties shine aloft like stars ; 
 The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless. 
 Are scatter'd at the feet of man like flowers. 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
 [PROPOSE in this letter to talk to you concerning 
 your relations to society. Many, and I may say 
 most young men fail for many years to get hold of the 
 idea that they are members of society. They seem to 
 suppose that the social machinery of the world is self- 
 operating. They cast their first ballot with an emotion 
 of pride, perhaps, but are sure to pay their first tax with 
 a groan. They see political organizations in active ex- 
 istence ; the parish, and the church, and other impor- 
 tant bodies that embrace in some form of society all 
 men, are successfully operated ; and yet these young 
 men have no part or lot in the matter. They do not 
 think of giving a day's time to society. They do not 
 
Social Duties and Privileges. 49 
 
 think of giving anything to society. They have an idea 
 that the business of society is to look after them ; that 
 they are to be provided for, that seats are to be fur- 
 nished to them in the churches gratis, that the Lyceum 
 is to be kept up for their amusement — that all social 
 movements whatsoever are to be organized and operated 
 without their aid, or that they exist as legitimate ob- 
 jects of their criticism. This is the very stupidity of 
 selfishness. Some of you haven't known the fact until 
 now, and are not very much to blame. It is one of the 
 incidents of what Fanny Kemble once called your '' age 
 of detestability." 
 
 One of the first things a young man should do is to 
 see that he is acting his part in society. The earlier 
 this is begun the better. I think that the opponents of 
 secret societies in colleges have failed to estimate the 
 benefit which it must be to every member to be obliged 
 to contribute to the support of his particular organiza- 
 tion, and to assume personal care and responsibility as 
 a member. If these societies have a tendency to teach 
 the lessons of which 1 speak, they are a blessed thing. 
 Many of the ills of society originate in the fact that its 
 burdens are unequally borne, and that the duties of in- 
 dividuals to it are not discharged. Therefore I say to 
 every young man, begin early to do for the social insti- 
 tutions in which you have your life. If you have intel- 
 lect and accomplishments, give them to the elevation 
 and delight of the circle in which you move. If you 
 3 
 
50 TitcomU's Letters. 
 
 have none of these, show an accommodating disposition 
 by attending the sewing circle and holding yarn for the 
 girls. Do your part, and be a man among men. As- 
 sume your portion of social responsibility, and see that 
 you discharge it well. If you do not do this, then you 
 are mean, and society has the right to despise you just 
 as much as it chooses to do so. You are, to use a word 
 more emphatic than agreeable, a sneak, and have not a 
 claim upon your neighbors for a single polite word. 
 
 Young men have all noticed how easily some of their 
 number get into society, and how others remain out of 
 a good social circle always. They are very apt to think 
 that society has not discharged its duties to them. Now 
 all social duties are reciprocal. Society, as it is called, 
 is far more apt to pay its dues to the individual than the 
 individual to society. Have you, young man, who are 
 at home whining over the fact that you cannot get into 
 society, done anything to give you a claim to social 
 recognition ? Are you able to make any return for so- 
 cial recognition and social privileges ? Do you know 
 anything ? What kind of coin do you propose to pay 
 in the discharge of the obligation which comes upon 
 you with social recognition? In other words, as a re- 
 turn for what you wish to have society do for you, what 
 can you do for society ? This is a very important ques- 
 tion — more important to you than to society. The 
 question is, whether you will be a member of society 
 by right, or by courtesy. If you have so mean a spirit 
 
Social Duties and Privileges. 51 
 
 as to be content to be a beneficiary of society — to re- 
 ceive favors and confer none — you have no business in 
 the society to which you aspire. You are an exacting, 
 conceited fellow. 
 
 You ask me what society would have of you. Any- 
 thing that you possess which has value in society. So- 
 ciety is not particular on this point. Can you act in a 
 charade ? Can you dance ? Can you tell a story well ? 
 Have you travelled, and have you a pleasant faculty of 
 telling your adventures ? Are you educated, and able 
 to impart valuable ideas and general information ? Have 
 you vivacity in conversation ? Can you sing ? Can you 
 play whist, and are you willing to assist those to a pleas- 
 ant evening who are not able to stand through a. party ? 
 Do you wear a good coat, and can you bring good dress 
 into the ornamental department of society ? Are you 
 up to anything in the way of private theatricals ? If 
 you do not possess a decent degree of sense can you 
 talk decent nonsense ? Are you a good beau, and are 
 you willing to make yourself useful in waiting on the 
 ladies on all occasions ? Have you a good set of teeth, 
 which you are willing to show whenever the wit of the 
 company gets off a good thing? Are you a true, 
 straightforward, manly fellow, with whose healthful and 
 uncorrupted nature it is good for society to come in 
 contact? In short, do you possess anything of any so- 
 cial value ? If you do, and are willing to impart it, 
 society will yield itself to your touch. If you have noth 
 
52 TitcomU's Letters. 
 
 ing, then society, as such, owes you nothing. Christian 
 philanthropy may put its arm round you, as a lonely 
 young man, about to spoil for want of something, but 
 it is very sad and humiliating for a young man to be 
 brought to that. There are people who devote them- 
 selves to nursing young men, and doing them good. If 
 they invite you to tea, go by all means, and try your 
 hand. If, in the course of the evening, you can prove 
 to them that your society is desirable, you have won a 
 point. Don't be patronized. 
 
 Young men are very apt to get into a morbid state 
 of mind, which disinclines them to social intercourse. 
 They become devoted to business with such exclusive- 
 ness, that all social intercourse is irksome. They go 
 out to tea as if they were going to jail, and drag them- 
 selves to a party as to an execution. This disposition 
 is thoroughly morbid, and to be overcome by going 
 where you are invited, always, and at any sacrifice of 
 feeling. Don't shrink from contact with anything but 
 bad morals. Men who affect your unhealthy minds with 
 antipathy, will prove themselves very frequently to be 
 your best friends and most delightful companions. Be- 
 cause a man seems uncongenial to you, who are 
 squeamish and foolish, you have no right to shun him. 
 We become charitable by knowing men. We learn to 
 love those whom we have despised by rubbing against 
 them. Do you not remember some instance of meeting 
 a man or woman at a watering-place whom you have 
 
Social Duties and Privileges. 53 
 
 never previously known or cared to know — an individ- 
 ual, perhaps, against whom you have entertained the 
 strongest prejudices — but to whom you became bound 
 by a life-long friendship through the influence of a three 
 days' intercourse ? Yet if you had not thus met, you 
 would have carried through life the idea that it would be 
 impossible for you to give your fellowship to such an in- 
 dividual. 
 
 God has introduced into human character infinite 
 variety, and for you to say that you do not love and will 
 not associate with a man because he is unlike you, is 
 not only foolish but wrong. You are to remember that 
 in the precise manner and degree in which a man dif- 
 fers from you, do you differ from him ; and that from 
 his standpoint you are naturally as repulsive to him as 
 he, from your standpoint, is to you. So, leave all this 
 talk of congeniality to silly girls and transcendental 
 dreamers. Do your business in your own way, and 
 concede to every man the privilege which you claim for 
 yourself. The more you mix with men, the less you 
 will be disposed to quarrel, and the more charitable and 
 liberal will you become. The fact that you do not un- 
 derstand a man, is quite as likely to be your fault as his. 
 There are a good many chances in favor of the conclu- 
 sion that, if you fail to like an individual whose ac- 
 quaintance you make, it is through your own ignorance 
 and illiberality. So I say, meet every man honestly ; 
 seek to know him ; and you will find tha*^ in those points 
 
54 Titcomb^s Letters. 
 
 in which he differs from you rests his power to instruct 
 you, enlarge you, and do you good. Keep your heart 
 open for everybody, and be sure that you shall have your 
 reward. You shall find a jewel under the most uncouth 
 exterior ; and associated with homeliest manners and 
 the oddest ways and the ugliest faces, you will find rare 
 virtues, fragrant little humanities, and inspiring heroisms. 
 Again : you can have no influence unless you are 
 social. An unsocial man is as devoid of influence as an 
 ice-peak is of verdure. If you take a peep at the Hud- 
 son River some bright morning, you will see, ploughing 
 grandly along towards the great metropolis, a magnifi- 
 cent steamer, the silver wave peeling off from her cut- 
 water, and a million jewels sparkling in her wake, pass- 
 ing all inferior barks in sublime indifference, and send- 
 ing yacht and skiff dancing from her heel. Right be- 
 hind her, you shall see a smaller steamer, the central 
 motive power of a plateau of barges, loaded to their 
 guards with the produce of thousands of well tilled 
 acres. She has fastened herself to these barges by lines 
 invisible to you. They may be homely things, but they 
 contain the food of the nation. Her own speed may be 
 retarded by this association, but the work she does for 
 commerce is tenfold greater than that accomplished by 
 the grand craft that shuns abrasion as misfortune, and 
 seeks to secure nothing but individual dignity and fast 
 time. It is through social contact and absolute social 
 value alone that you can accomplish any great social 
 
Social Duties and Privileges. 55 
 
 good. It is through the invisible lines which you are able 
 to attach to the minds with which you are brought into as- 
 sociation alone that you "^an tow society, with its deeply 
 freighted interests, to the great haven of your hope. 
 
 The revenge which society takes upon the man who 
 isolates himself, is as terrible as it is inevitable. The 
 pride which sits alone, and will do nothing for society 
 because society disgusts it, or because its possessor does 
 not at once have accorded to him his position, will have 
 the privilege of sitting alone in its sublime disgust till it 
 drops into the grave. The world sweeps by the isolat- 
 ed man, carelessly, remorselessly, contemptuously. He 
 has no hold upon society, because he is not a part of it. 
 The boat that refuses to pause in its passage, and throw 
 a line to smaller craft, will bring no tow into port. So 
 let me tell you, that if you have an honorable desire in 
 your heart for influence, you must be a thoroughly social 
 man. You cannot move men until you are one of them. 
 They will not follow you until they have heard your 
 voice, shaken your hand, and fully learned your princi- 
 ples and your sympathies. It makes no difference how 
 much you know, or how much you are capable of doing. 
 You may pile accomplishment upon acquisition moun- 
 tain high ; but if you fail to be a social man, demonstrat- 
 ing to society that your lot is with the rest, a little child 
 with a song in its mouth, and a kiss for all, and a pair 
 of innocent hands to lay upon the knees, shall lead more 
 hearts and change the direction of more lives than you. 
 
LETTER VIII. 
 
 THE REASONABLENESS AND DESIRABLENESS 01 
 RELIGION. 
 
 Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends ! 
 
 Hath he not always treasures, always friends. 
 
 The great good man? Three treasures, love and light, 
 
 And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath ; 
 
 And three firm friends, more sure than day and night — 
 
 Himself, his maker, and the angel death ? 
 
 — Coleridge. 
 
 YOUNG men, I hate cant, and I do not know exactly 
 how to say what I wish to say in this letter ; but 
 I desire to talk to you rationally upon the subject of re- 
 ligion. Now don't stop reading at the mention of this 
 word, but read this letter through. The fact is, it is the 
 most important letter I have undertaken to write to you. 
 I know you, I think, very thoroughly. Life looks so 
 good to you, and you are anticipating so much from it, 
 that religion comes to you, and comes over you, like a 
 shadow. You associate it with long faces, and prayer- 
 meetings, and psalm-singing, and dull sermons, and 
 grave reproofs and stupidity. Your companions arc 
 
The Reasonableness of Religion. 57 
 
 gay, and so are you. Perhaps you make a jest of reli- 
 gion ; but deep down in your heart of hearts you know 
 that you are not treating rehgion fairly. You know per- 
 fectly well that there is something in it for you, and that 
 you must have it. You know that the hour will come 
 when you will specially need it. But you wish to put 
 it off, and ''enjoy life" first. This results very much 
 from the kind of preaching you have always listened to. 
 You have been taught that human life is all vanity, that 
 these things which so greatly delight you are vain and 
 sinful, that your great business in this world is to be 
 saved, and that you are only to be saved by learning to 
 despise things that you love, and to love things which 
 you despise. You feel that this is unnatural and irra- 
 tional. I think it is, myself. Now let me talk to you. 
 
 Go with me, if you please, to the next station-house, 
 and look off upon that line of railroad. It is as straight 
 as an arrow. Out run the iron lines, glittering in the 
 sun, — out, as far as we can see, until, converging almost 
 to a single thread, they pierce the sky. What were 
 those rails laid in that way for ? It is a road, is it ? 
 Try your cart or your coach there. The axletrees are 
 too narrow, and you go bumping along upon the sleep- 
 ers. Try a wheelbarrow. You cannot keep it on the 
 rail. But that road was made for something. Now go 
 with me to the locomotive shop. What is this? We 
 are told it is a locomotive. What is a locomotive ? 
 Why, it is a carriage moved by steam. But it is very 
 3* 
 
58 Titcofnb's Letters. 
 
 heavy. The wheels would sink into a common road ta 
 the axle. That locomotive can never run on a common 
 road, and the man is a fool who built it. Strange that 
 men will waste time and money in that way ! But stop 
 a moment. Why wouldn't those wheels just fit those* 
 rails ? We measure them, and then we go to the track- 
 and measure its gauge. That solves the difficulty. 
 Those rails were intended for the locomotive, and the 
 locomotive for the rails. They are good for nothing 
 apart. The locomotive is not even safe anywhere else. 
 If it should get off, after it is once on, it would run into 
 rocks and stumps, and bury itself in sands or swamps 
 beyond recovery. 
 
 Young man, you are a locomotive. You are a thing 
 that goes by a power planted inside of you. You are 
 made to go. In fact, considered as a machine, you are 
 very far superior to a locomotive. The maker of the 
 locomotive is man ; your maker is man's maker. You 
 are as different from a horse, or an ox, or a camel, as a 
 locomotive is different from a wheelbarrow, a cart, or a 
 coach. Now do you suppose that the being who made 
 you — manufactured your machine, and put into it the 
 motive power — did not make a special road for you to 
 run upon ? My idea of religion is that it is a railroad 
 for a human locomotive, and that just so sure as it 
 undertakes to run upon a road adapted only to animal 
 power, will it bury its wheels in the sand, dash itself 
 among rocks, and come to inevitable wreck. If you 
 
The Reasonableness of Religion. 5^ 
 
 don't believe this, try the other thing. Here are forty 
 roads, suppose you choose one of them, and see where 
 you come out. Here is the dram-shop road. Try it. 
 Follow it, and see how long it will be before you come 
 to a stump and a smash-up. Here is the road of sen- 
 sual pleasure. You arc just as sure to bury your wheels 
 in the dirt as you try it. Your machine is too heavy 
 for that track altogether. Here is the winding, uncer- 
 tain path of frivolity. There are morasses on each side 
 of it, and, with the headway that you are under, you 
 will be sure, sooner or later, to pitch into one of them. 
 Here is the road of philosophy, but it runs through a 
 country from which the light of Heaven is shut out ; and 
 while you may be able to keep your machine right side 
 up, it will only be by feeling your way along in a 
 clumsy, comfortless kind of style, and with no certainty 
 of ever arriving at the heavenly terminus. Here is the 
 road of skepticism. That is covered with fog, and a 
 fence runs across it within ten rods. Don't you see that 
 your machine was never intended to run on those roads 1 
 Don't you know that it never was, and don't you know 
 that the only track upon which it can run safely is the 
 religious track ? Don't you know that just as long as 
 you keep your wheels on that track, wreck is impossi- 
 ble ? Don't you know that it is the only track on which 
 wreck is not certain ? I know it, if you don't ; and I 
 tell you that on that track which God has laid down ex- 
 pressly for your soul to run upon, your soul will find free 
 
6o Titcoinb's Letters. 
 
 play for all its wheels, and an unobstructed and happ^ 
 ■progress. It is straight and narrow, but it is safe and 
 solid, and furnishes the only direct route to the heavenly 
 city. Now, if God made your soul, and made religion 
 for it, you are a fool if you refuse to place yourself on 
 the track. You cannot prosper anywhere else, and youi 
 machine will not run anywhere else. 
 
 I suppose that a nice casuist would say that I had 
 thus far talked only of morality — only of obedience to 
 law. But I was only dealing with the subject in the 
 rough, and trying to show vou how rational a thing re- 
 ligion is, and to bring to your comprehension your nat- 
 ural relation to it. I know that the rule of your life is 
 selfishness. I know that you are sinful, polluted, wil- 
 ful, and that you act from low motives. I know that the 
 race to which you belong have all fallen from innocence, 
 and that they have so thoroughly put out the light that 
 God meant should light every man who comes into the 
 world, that, supplementary to the natural moral system. 
 He has, in great benevolence, devised a scheme of reli- 
 gion, embracing salvation. This is Christianity, and its 
 purpose is to get you back upon the track where the 
 race first started. It is a divine contrivance, or plan, 
 Cor accomplishing this purpose. 
 
 Jesus Christ saw the whole mass of human machinery 
 off the track, and going to irremediable ruin just so 
 truly as he did not interfere to prevent it. He camf» 
 and told us all how to get back, through repentance. 
 
The Reasonableness of Religion. 6i 
 
 faith, reformation, the surrender of will, the abnegation 
 of self, and the devotion of the heart in love to God and 
 good will to men. He placed himself upon the track 
 and ran over it, not only showing us how to get there 
 ourselves, but showing us how to run when there. In 
 other words, he exhibited to us a true human life. 
 Then, when he had cleared away all the rubbish from 
 the track, shown us how to get upon it again, how to run 
 when we get there, how to avoid and repair accidents 
 by the way, — when he had done all this, and set his 
 agents at work in carrying out his plans, he went back 
 to Heaven, and now looks down to see how the work 
 goes on. 
 
 Young men, / believe this. I am sure it is true, and 
 I know, and God knows that this plan which he has 
 devised to save you and make it possible for you to lead 
 a true human life, which shall ultimate in life's highest 
 issues, is the only one which can save you. I know 
 that you can never be happy until you have heartily and 
 practically accepted this religion ; and for you to go on, 
 year after year, carelessly, thoughtlessly, spoiling your- 
 self, growing harder, meaner, more polluted, with no 
 love to God and outgushing benevolence to men, is an 
 insult to Jesus Christ and a brutal wrong to that which 
 he came to save. The fact is that sin is the most un- 
 manly thing in God's world. You never were made for 
 sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedi- 
 ence. If you think it is manly to reject religion, and 
 
62 TitcomVs Letters. 
 
 the noble obligations it imposes upon you, it only shows 
 how strong a hold the devil has upon you. It shows 
 how degraded you are ; how the beast that is in you 
 domineers over the soul that is in you. 
 
 Young man, your personal value depends entirely 
 upon your possession of religion. You are worth to 
 yourself what you are capable of enjoying ; you are 
 worth to society the happiness you are capable of im- 
 parting. To yourself, without religion, you are worth 
 very little. A man whose aims are low, whose motives 
 are selfish, who has in his heart no adoration for the 
 great God, and no love of his Christ, whose will is not 
 subordinate to the Supreme will — gladly and gratefully 
 —who has no faith, no tenable hope of a happy immor- 
 tality, no strong-armed trust that with his soul it shall be 
 well in all the future, cannot be worth very much to 
 himself. Neither can such a man be worth very much 
 to society, because he has not that to bestow which 
 society most needs for its prosperity and its happiness. 
 A locomotive off the track is worth nothing to its owner 
 or the public so long as it is off the track. The condi- 
 tions of its legitimate and highest value are not complied 
 with. It cannot be operated satisfactorily to the owner, 
 or usefully to the public, because it is not where it was 
 intended to run by the man who made it. 
 
 Just look at the real object of religion, and see how 
 rational it is. It is the placing of your souls in harmony 
 with God and his laws. God is the perfect, supreme 
 
TJie Reasonableness of Religion. 63 
 
 soul, and your souls are the natural offspring of that 
 soul. Your souls are made in the image of his, and, 
 like all created things, are subject to certain immutable 
 laws. The transgression of these laws damages your 
 souls, warps them, stunts their growth, outrages them. 
 Do you not see that you can only be manly and attain a 
 manly growth by preserving your true relations and like- 
 ness to the father soul, and a strict obedience to the 
 laws of your being? God has given you appetites, and 
 he meant you should indulge them, and that they should 
 be sources of happiness to you ; but always in a way 
 which shall not interfere with your spiritual growth and 
 development. He gave you passions, and they are just 
 as sacred as any part of you, but they are to be under 
 the strict control of your reason and your conscience. 
 He gave you desires for earthly happiness. He planted 
 in you the love of human praise, delight in society, the 
 faculty to enjoy all his works. He gave you his works to 
 enjoy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you re- 
 gard them as blessings from the great Giver, to feed and 
 not starve your higher natures. There is not a true joy 
 in life which you are required to deprive yourself of, in 
 being faithful to him and his laws. Without obedience 
 to law, your souls cannot be healthful, and it is only to 
 a healthful soul that pleasure comes with its natural — 
 its divine — aroma. Is a nose stuffed with drugs capable 
 of perceiving the delicate fragrance of the rose ? Is the 
 soul that intensifies its pleasures as an object of lifa 
 
64 Titcomh' s Letters. 
 
 capable of a healthful appreciation of even purely sen' 
 sual pleasures ? The idea of a man's enjoying life with- 
 out religion is absurd. 
 
 I have been thus particular upon this point, because 
 I love you, and because I know that without it, or in- 
 dependent of it, all my previous talk has very little sig- 
 nificance. I have reasoned the thing to you on its 
 merits, and I urge it upon your immediate attention, as 
 a matter of duty and policy. The matter of duty you 
 understand. I do not need to talk to you about that. 
 Now about the policy. It will not be five years, proba- 
 bly, before every one of you will be involved, head and 
 ears, in business. Some of you are thus involved 
 already. You grow hard as you grow older. You get 
 habits of thought and life which incrust you. You be- 
 come surrounded with associations which hold you, so 
 that the longer you live without religion the worse it 
 will be for you, and the less probable will be your adop- 
 tion of a religious life. If you expect to be a man, you 
 must begin now. It is so easy, comparatively, to do it 
 now ! 
 
 With this paragraph I cease to direct my words par- 
 ticularly to you. What I have said to you, I have said 
 heartily and conscientiously. I shall see you some 
 time. We are none of us to live very long, but if we 
 all act the manly part we were sent here to act, and are 
 true to God and ourselves, we shall be gathered into a 
 great kingdom, whose throne will be occupied by the 
 
TJie Reasonable7iess of Religio7i. 65 
 
 founder of our religion. During some golden hour of 
 that cloudless day, sitting or straying upon some heav- 
 enly hill, watching upon the far-stretching plains the 
 tented hosts of God's redeemed, or marking the shadow 
 of an angel's flight across the bright mirror of the river 
 of life, I shall say something about these letters to you. 
 I shall look you in the face as I say it, to see if you are 
 moved to an emotion of gratitude or of gratification ; 
 and if you should happen to tell me that they made you 
 \)etter, that they led you to a higher development, that 
 they directed you to a manly and a godly life, I should 
 press your hand, and if I should keep from weeping it 
 would be more than I can do now 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 DRESS— ITS PROPRIETIES AXD ABUSES. 
 
 A creature not too bright or good 
 
 For human nature's daily food ; 
 
 For transient sorrows, simple wiles. 
 
 Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles. 
 
 A perfect woman, nobly planned 
 To warn, to comfort, and command. 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
 I have observed, among all nations, that the women ornament themselves 
 more than the men. 
 
 — John Lkdvard. 
 
 1 ACCOUNT a pure, beautiful, intelligent, and well 
 bred woman, the most attractive object of vision 
 and contemplation in the world. As mother, sister, 
 and wife, such a woman is an angel of grace and good- 
 ness, and makes a heaven of the home which is sancti- 
 fied and glorified by her presence. As an clement of 
 
yo Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 society she invites into finest demonstrations all that is 
 good in the heart, and shames into secrecy and silence 
 all that is unbecoming and despicable. There may be 
 more of greatness and of glory in the higher develop- 
 ments of manhood, but, surely, in womanhood God 
 most delights to show the beauty of the holiness and the 
 sweetness of the love of which he is the infinite source. 
 It is for this reason that a girl or a young woman is a 
 very sacred thing to me. It is for this reason that a 
 silly young woman or a vicious one makes me sigh or 
 shudder. It is for this reason that I pray that I may 
 write worthily to young women. 
 
 In getting at a piece of work, it is often necessary, as 
 a preliminary, to clear away rubbish ; and I say at first 
 that I do not write to masculine young women. I deem 
 masculine women abnormal women, and I therefore re- 
 fer all those women who wish to vote, who delight in the 
 public exhibition of themselves, who bemoan the fate 
 which drapes them in petticoats, who quarrel with St. 
 Paul and their lot, who own more rights than they pos- 
 sess ; and fail to fulfil the duties of their sphere while 
 seeking for its enlargement— I refer all these to the eight 
 letters recently addressed to young men. They will 
 find some practical remarks in those letters upon mas- 
 culine development and a manly discharge of life's 
 duties. My theory may be very unsound, but it is my 
 belief, that the first natural division of the human race 
 is marked by the line that distinguishes the sexes. I 
 
Dress "-Its Proprieties and Abuses, yt 
 
 believe that a true woman is just as different from a true 
 man as a true man is different from a true woman. 
 The nature and the constitution of the mascuhne are 
 one, and the nature and constitution of the feminine are 
 another. So of the glory attached to each ; so of the 
 functions ; so of the sphere. Therefore, if there be 
 *' strong-minded women " who read these letters, I bid 
 them, with all kindness, to turn to the other series for 
 that which will most benefit them. 
 
 I shall talk first of that thing which, worthily or most 
 unworthily, engages the minds of all young women, viz. 
 —DRESS. I speak of this first, because it is part of the 
 rubbish which I wish to get out of the way before com- 
 mencing more serious work ; and yet this is not alto- 
 gether trivial. I believe in dress. I believe that God 
 delights in beautiful things, and as he has never made 
 anything more beautiful than woman, I believe that that 
 mode of dressing the form and face which best harmo- 
 nizes with their beauty, is that which pleases him best. 
 I believe the mode of female dress prevalent among the 
 Shaker women is absolute desecration. To take any- 
 thing which infinite ingenuity and power have made 
 beautiful, and capable by the gracefulness of its form 
 and the harmony of its parts of producing the purest 
 pleasure to the observer, and clothe it with a meal-bag 
 and crown it with a sugar-scoop, is an irreverent trifling 
 with sacred things which should be punished by mulct 
 and imprisonment. 
 
72 Titcomb's Letters, 
 
 It is a shame to any woman who has the means to 
 dress well, to dress meanly, and it is a particular shame 
 for any woman to do this in the name of religion. 1 
 have seen women who, believing the fashionable devo- 
 tion to dress to be sinful, as it doubtless is, go to tha^ 
 extreme in plainness of attire which, if it prove anything 
 touching the power that governs them, proves that it is 
 a power which is at war with man's purest instincts, and 
 most elevated tastes. I say it is a shame for a woman 
 to dress unattractively who has it in her power to dress 
 well. It is every woman's duty to make herself pleas- 
 ant and attractive by such raiment and ornament as 
 shall best accord with the style of beauty with which she 
 is endowed. The beauty of woman's person was in- 
 tended to be a source of pleasure — the fitting accom- 
 paniment of that which in humanity is the most nearly 
 allied to the angelic. Surely, if God plants flowers 
 upon a clod they may rest upon a woman's bosom, or 
 glorify a woman's hair ! 
 
 But dress is a subordinate thing, because beauty is 
 not the essential thing. Beauty is very desirable ; it is 
 a very great blessing ; it is a misfortune to possess an 
 unattractive person ; but there are multitudes of women 
 with priceless excellences of heart and mind who are 
 not beautiful. Beauty, so far as it is dependent upon 
 form and color, is a, material thing, and belongs to the 
 grosser nature. Therefore, dress is a subject which 
 should occupy comparatively few of the thoughts of a 
 
Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses. ']i 
 
 true woman, whethe^: beautiful or not. To dress well, 
 becomingly, even richly, if it can be afforded, is a wo- 
 man's duty. To make the dress of the person the ex- 
 ponent of personal taste, is a woman's privilege. But to 
 make dress the grand object of life ; to think of nothing 
 and talk of nothing but that which pertains to the 
 drapery and artificial ornament of the person, is to 
 transform the trick of a courtesan into amusement for a 
 fool. There are multitudes of women with whom dress 
 is the all-prevalent thought. They think of it, dream 
 of it, live for it. It is enough to disgust one to hear 
 them talk about it. It goes with them from the gaiety 
 of the ball room into the weeds of the house of death. 
 They use it as a means for splitting grief into vulgar 
 fractions, and are led out from great bereavements into 
 the consolations of vanity, by the hands of numerators 
 and denominators. They flatter one another, envy one 
 another, hate one another — all on the score of dress. 
 They go upon the street to show their dresses. They 
 enter the house of God to display their bonnets. They 
 actually prize themselves more highly for what they 
 wear than for any charm of person or mind which they 
 may possess ! 
 
 One of the most vulgar and unbecoming things in the 
 world is this devotion to dress, which, in many minds, 
 grows into a form of insanity, and leads to the worship 
 of dry goods and dress-makers. Now it will be impos- 
 sible for me to give you special directions upon this 
 4 
 
74 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 subject of dress. Your dress-maker and your books 
 and, better than all, your own taste and experience, 
 will tell you what colors become your complexion, what 
 style of manufacture best accords with your form and 
 style of movement. I shall only speak generally ; and 
 I say, first, dress modestly. It is all well enough for 
 little girls to show their necks, but for a woman to make 
 her appearance in the society of young men with such 
 displays of person as are made in what is so mistakenly 
 called '^ full dress," is a shame to her. I know what 
 fashion allows in this matter, and fashion has many sins 
 to answer for. Thousands of girls dress in a manner 
 that they would discard with horror and disgust, if they 
 knew the trains of thought which are suggested by their 
 presence. I know young men, and I know there is not 
 one in one hundred who attends a '' full dress party," 
 and comes out as pure and worthy a man as he went in. 
 There is not one in one hundred who does not hold the 
 secret of a base thought suggested by the style of dress 
 which he sees around him. This may tell very badly 
 for young men. Doubtless it does ; but we are obliged 
 to take things as we find them. The millennium has 
 not dawned yet, and we have receded to a considerable 
 distance from the era of human innocence. I tell you a 
 fact ; and, if you are modest young women, you wiU 
 heed its suggestions. If you choose to become the ob' 
 jects of foul fancies among young men, whose respect 
 you are desirous of securing, you know the way. 
 
Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses. 75 
 
 Again, shun peculiarities of dress which attract the 
 attention of the vulgar. I know that a young woman 
 can dress in such a way as to excite a chaste and 
 worthy admiration among her own sex as well as mine, 
 and my judgment tells me that that is the proper dress 
 for her to wear. I feel that it is right and well for her 
 to dress like this, and that it is not right and well for 
 her to dress otherwise. 
 
 Again, dress in such a manner that your attire will not 
 occupy your thoughts after it is upon you. Let every 
 garment be well fitted and well put on — ugly in no 
 point, fussy in no point, nor made of such noticeable 
 material that you necessarily carry with you the con- 
 sciousness that people around you are examining it. 
 Make it always subordinate to yourself — tributary to 
 your charms, rather than constituent of them. Then 
 the society in which you move will see yoti, and not 
 your housings and trappings. ''Jane was dressed very 
 becomingly," or "how well Jane looked," are very 
 much more complimentary comments than "that was a 
 splendid dress that Jane wore ; " and a tolerably acute 
 mind may gather from these expressions the philosophy 
 of the whole thing. 
 
 There is, as a general thing, no excuse for attire 
 which is not neat and orderly, at any time in the day. 
 A thoroughly neat and orderly young woman is pre- 
 sentable at any hour, whether she be in the kitchen or 
 the parlor ; and I have seen specimens of womanhood 
 
76 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 that were as attractive in their kitchens, with their tidy 
 hair and their nine-penny cahco, as in their parlors at a 
 later hour, robed in silk and busy at their embroidery. 
 Materials may be humble, but they may always be 
 tastefully made and neatly kept. There are few habits 
 that a young woman may acquire which, in the long 
 run, will tend more to the preservation of her own self- 
 respect than that of thorough tastefulness, appropriate- 
 ness, and tidiness of dress, and certainly very few which 
 will make her more agreeable to others. 
 
 So, I say, dress well if you can afford it, always 
 neatly, never obtrusively, and always with a modest 
 regard to rational ideas of propriety. Scorn the idea of 
 making dress in any way the great object of life. It is 
 beneath you. A woman was made for something 
 higher than a convenient figure for displaying dry goods 
 and the possibilities of millinery and mantua-making. 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 THE TRANSITIO.V FROM GIRLHOOD TO WOMAN* 
 
 HOOD. 
 
 O mirth and innocence ! O milk and water ! 
 Ye happy mixtures of more happy days ! 
 
 — Byron. 
 
 Vr figure to ourselves the thing we like, and then we build it up as 
 chance will have it, on the rock or sand. 
 
 — Henry Taylor. 
 
 EVERY young woman who has arrived at twenty 
 years of age has passed through three dispensa- 
 tions — the chaotic, the transitional, and the crystalline. 
 The chaotic usually terminates with the adoption of the 
 long skirt. Then commences the transitional dispen- 
 sation, involving the process of crystallization. This 
 process may go on feebly for years, or it may proceed 
 so rapidly that two years will complete it. In some 
 women, it is never completed, in consequence of a lack 
 of inherent vital force, or a criminal disregard of the 
 requisite conditions. This transitional dispensation, 
 which is better characterized by calling it the silly dis- 
 
/S Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 pensation, is so full of dangers that it calls for a sepa* 
 rate letter ; and this I propose to write now. 
 
 The silly dispensation or stage of a young woman's 
 life is marked by many curious symptoms, some of 
 them indicative of disease. As the cutting of the natu- 
 ral teeth is usually accompanied by various disorders, 
 so the cutting of the spiritual teeth in women is very 
 apt to exhibit its results in abnormal manifestations. 
 They sometimes eat slate pencils and chalk, and some 
 have been known to take kindly to broken bits of plas- 
 tering. Others take a literary turn, and, not content 
 with any number of epistles to female acquaintances, 
 send contributions to the press, which the friendly and 
 appreciative editor kindly and carefully returns, or as 
 kindly and carefully loses, or fails to receive. Others 
 still take to shopping and dawdling with clerks who 
 have dawning beards, red cheeks, and frock coats with 
 outside pockets, from which protrude white handker- 
 chief-tips. Still others yoke themselves in pairs, drawn 
 together by sympathetic attraction, and by community 
 of mental exercise on the subject of beaux. You shall 
 see them walking through the streets, locked arm in 
 arm, plunging into the most charming confidences, or, 
 if you happen to sleep in the house with them, yoa 
 shall hear them talking in their chamber until, at mid- 
 night, the monotonous hum of their voices has soothed 
 you into sleep ; and the same voices, with the same un- 
 broken hum, shall greet your ears in the morning 
 
From Girlhood to Womanhood. 79 
 
 Others take to solitude and long curls. They walk with 
 their eyes down, murmuring to themselves, with th^ 
 impression that everybody is looking at them. 
 
 If a young woman can be safely carried through this 
 dispensation, the great step of life will have been gained. 
 This is the era of hasty marriages, deathless attach- 
 ments which last until they are superseded, and delib- 
 erately formed determinations to live a maiden life, 
 which endure until the reception of an offer of marriage. 
 If, during this period, a young woman be at home, en- 
 gaged more or less in the duties of the household, or, 
 if she be engaged in study, with the healthful restraints 
 and stimulus of general society about^ her, it is very well 
 for her. But if she be among her mates constantly, with 
 nothing to do, or if she be shut up in a boarding-school 
 conducted on the high pressure principle, where imagin- 
 ation is stimulated by restraint, and disobedience to law 
 is provoked by its unreasonableness, it is indeed very 
 bad for her. 
 
 It is probable that the theatre is a school of vice 
 rather than of virtue, that the ball-room is a promoter 
 of dissipation, and that indiscriminate society has its 
 temptations and its dangers ; but a female boarding- 
 school, shut off from general society by law, its mem- 
 bers lacking free exercise in the open air, denied the 
 privilege of daily amusements, and presided over by 
 teachers who fail to understand the nature of the pre- 
 cious material they have in charge, is as much worse 
 
8o Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 for mind and morals than all these combined, as can 
 well be imagined. I know female boarding schools that 
 are properly conducted, whose teachers know what a 
 girl is, and what she needs, and who contrive to lead 
 her through this transitional passage of her life into a 
 healthful and rational womanhood ; and I know others 
 whose very atmosphere is that of fever. I know board- 
 ing schools where beaux are the everlasting topic of 
 conversation, and where an unhealthy imagination is so 
 stimulated by. irrational restraints and mutual fellow- 
 feeling, that the foundation of nearly every character 
 is necessarily laid in rottenness. 
 
 If any young woman, in a boarding-school or out of 
 it, should find herself a subject of any of the diseases 
 which I have pointed out, she should seek a remedy at 
 once. If she finds herself moved to go shopping for the 
 simple purpose of talking with the clerks, let her re- 
 member that she is not only doing an immodest and 
 unbecoming thing, but that she is manifesting the 
 symptom of that which is a dangerous mental disease. 
 To begin with, she is doing a very silly thing. Again., 
 she is doing that which compromises her in the eyes of 
 all sensible young men. If she finds herself possessed 
 with unaccountable proclivities to a mineral diet, or a 
 foggy out-reaching for something or other that mani- 
 fests itself in profound confidences with one similarly 
 afflicted, or any one of a hundred absorbing sentimen- 
 talisms, let her remember that she is mentally and moi* 
 
From Girlhood to Womaiihood. 8i 
 
 ally sick, and that, for her own comfort and peace, she 
 should seek at once for a remedy. Her only safety is 
 in seeking direct contact with a healthier and more ad- 
 vanced life, and by securing healthful occupation for all 
 her powers, intellectual and physical. Dreams, imagi- 
 nations, silly talk and twaddle about young men, yearn- 
 ings after sympathetic hearts, the dandling of precious 
 little thoughts about beaux on the knees of fancy, and 
 all that sort of nonsense should be discarded — thrust 
 out of the sacred precincts of the mind — as if they were 
 so many foul reptiles. Get out of this feverish and un- 
 healthy frame just as soon as possible, and walk forth 
 into a more natural, dignified, and womanly life. 
 
 A young woman at this age should remember that her 
 special business is to fit herself for the duties of life. I 
 would not deny to her the society of young men, when 
 she has time for it, and a proper opportunity, but she 
 should remember that she has nothing to do with beaux, 
 nothing to do with thoughts of and calculations for mar- 
 riage, nothing to do but to become, in the noblest way, 
 a woman. She should remember that she is too young 
 to know her own mind, and that, as a general thing, it 
 is not worth knowing. Girlish attachments and girlish 
 ideas of men are the silliest things in all the world. If 
 you do not believe it, ask your mothers. Ninety-nine 
 times in a hundred they will tell you that they did not 
 marry the boy they fancied, before they had a right to 
 fancy anybody. If you dream of matrimony for amuse* 
 4* 
 
82 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 ment, and for the sake of killing time, I have this tc 
 say, that, considering the kind of young men you fancy, 
 you can do quite as well by hanging a hat upon a hitch- 
 ing-post, and worshipping it through your chamber win^ 
 dow. Besides, it is during this period of unsettled no- 
 tions and really shifting attachments that a habit of flirt- 
 ing and a love of it are generated. 
 
 I suppose that coquetry, in its legitimate form, is 
 among a woman's charms, and that there is a legitimate 
 sphere for its employment, for, except in rare natures, 
 it is a natural thing with your sex. Nature has ordained 
 that men shall prize most that which shall cost an effort, 
 and while it has designed that you shall at some time 
 give your heart and hand to a worthy man, it has also 
 provided a way for making the prize he seeks an appar- 
 ently difficult one to win. It is a simple and beautiful 
 provision for enhancing your value in his eyes, so as to 
 make a difficult thing of that which you know to be un- 
 speakably easy. If you hold yourselves cheaply, and 
 meet all advances with open willingness and gladness, 
 the natural result will be that your lover will tire of you. 
 I introduce this subject here, not because I wish to, but 
 because I am compelled to, in order to explain what I 
 have to say upon the habit and love of flirting. 
 
 To become a flirt is to metamorphose into a disgust- 
 ing passion that which, by natural constitution, is a 
 harmless and useful instinct. This instinct of coquetry, 
 which makes a woman a thing to be won, and which J 
 
From Girlhood to Womanhood. 83 
 
 suppose all women are conscious of possessing in some 
 degree, is not a thing to be cultivated or developed, at 
 all. It should be left to itself, unstimulated and unper- 
 verted, and if, in the formative stage of your woman- 
 hood, by initiating shallow attachments and heartlessly 
 breaking them, or seeking to make impressions for the 
 sake of securing attentions which are repaid by insult 
 and negligence, you do violence to your nature, you 
 make of yourself a woman whom your own sex despise, 
 and whom all sensible men who do not mean to cheat 
 you with insincerities as mean as yours, are afraid of. 
 They will not love, and they will not trust you. This 
 instinct, then, is not a thing to be harmlessly played 
 with ; and I know of few more unhappy and disgusting 
 sights than a girl bringing into her womanhood this 
 passion — harmful alike to herself and others. 
 
 The natural and inevitable influence of the devotion 
 of your thoughts — spoken, written, or unexpressed — to 
 beaux and the subject of marriage, while your mind is 
 undergoing a process of crystallization, is to deter that 
 process, to vitiate it, and to make you unworthy in many 
 ways. It is all-important to you at this time to have the 
 counsel of a good, sensible woman, who shall be your 
 senior by at least ten years. She should be a married 
 woman, and, by all means, your mother, unless there 
 be some natural bar to entire communion between you. 
 Do nothing, and give a cherished entertainment to no 
 thoughts which you are unwilling to reveal to this wo- 
 
84 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 man. If your companions persist in keeping subjects! 
 of this character before your mind, leave them — cut 
 them. 
 
 It is necessary that, while your education is actively 
 in progress, your perceptions be kept healthful, and 
 your sentiments unperverted by thoughtless tampering 
 with a subject which you will some time come to know 
 is one of the most serious moment. It spoils a girl to 
 get the idea into her head, that marriage is the chief end 
 of woman, that education is but a preparation for mat- 
 rimony, and that accomplishments are nothing but 
 contrivances for catching a husband. And now, young 
 woman, whose eye traces these lines, I ask you to de- 
 cide how much of this letter belongs to you. How are 
 you living ? What is the principal subject of your 
 thoughts ? I know that I reveal some young women to 
 themselves ; and I only fear that they will find them- 
 selves so bound to their seductive thoughts and fancies — 
 so dissipated and enervated by them — that they have 
 not moral strength enough left to break away from them 
 
LETTER III. 
 
 ACQUISITIONS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS, 
 
 Show us how divine a thing 
 A woman may be made. 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
 IT is a matter of special importance to you that you 
 comprehend and thoroughly appreciate the difference 
 between accomplishments and scientific and literary 
 acquisitions. A woman may have many acquisitions, 
 and no accomplishments, in the usual meaning of that 
 word, and vice versa. As the life of the woman goes in 
 this country, these acquisitions perform their most im- 
 portant office in the process by which they are achieved; 
 — that is, the great work which they do for a woman is 
 that of training and disciplining her mind. Many a 
 woman thoroughly learned Algebra at school, with de- 
 cided advantage to herself, who never makes a practical 
 use of Algebra. She may have been a good Latin or 
 Greek scholar, but, having no important use for her 
 acquisition in practical life, she suffers her knowledge 
 of those languages to fade out. In short, there are very 
 
S6 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 few of her text-books which, in five years after leaving 
 school, she would not be obliged to review with the 
 severest study before she could reacquire the credit she 
 won in her last examination. A woman may have a 
 pet acquisition which she transforms, by her manner of 
 treatment, into an accomplishment. Botany is thus 
 transformed, not unfrequently, into a very graceful 
 thing. 
 
 An accomplishment differs from a science, or a sys- 
 tem of truth of any kind, acquired during the process 
 of education, in that it needs to be permanent, and so 
 far as possible perfect, to be of any use to the individual 
 or to society. Music, drawing, conversation, composi- 
 tion, the French language, dancing — all these in Amer- 
 ica are regarded as accomplishments ; yet of fifty wo- 
 men who acquire either of them, or all of them, not 
 more than two retain them. 
 
 Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green was an intimate 
 friend of mine, or, rather, perhaps I should say, her 
 mother's brother boarded my horse, and I bought my 
 meat of her father. It was the determination of Mrs. 
 Green that her daughter should be a finished lady. 
 During the finishing process I saw but little of her. It 
 occupied three years, and was performed at a fashion- 
 able boarding-school, between the ages of fifteen and 
 eighteen, regardless of expense. When she was finished 
 off, she was brought home in triumph, and exhibited on 
 various occasions to crowds of admiring friends. I went 
 
Acquisitions and Accomplishments. 87 
 
 one evening to see her. She was really very pretty, and 
 took up her role with spirit, and acted it admirably. I 
 saw a portfolio lying upon her piano, and knowing that 
 I was expected to seize upon it at once, I did so, against 
 Miss Green's protestation, which she was expected to 
 make, of course. I found in it various pencil drawings, 
 a crayon head of the infant Samuel, and a terrible ship- 
 wreck in India ink. The sketches were not without 
 merit. These were all looked over, and praised, of 
 course. Then came the music. This was some years 
 ago, and the most that I remember is that she played 
 O Dolce Concento with the variations, and the Battle of 
 Prague, the latter of which the mother explained to me 
 during its progress. The pieces were cleverly executed, 
 and then I undertook to talk with the young woman. I 
 gathered from her conversation that Mrs. Martinet, the 
 principal of the school where she had been finished, was 
 a lady of " so much style ! " that Miss Kittleton of New 
 York was the dearest girl in the school, and that she 
 (Georgiana) and the said Kittleton were such friends 
 that they always dressed alike ; and that Miss Kittle- 
 ton's brother Fred was a magnificent fellow. The last 
 was said ;vith a blush, from the embarrassments of which 
 she escaped gracefully by stating that the old Kittleton 
 was a banker, and rolled in money. 
 
 It was easy to see that the parents of this dear girl 
 admired her profoundly. I pitied her and them, and 
 determined, as a matter of duty, that I would show her 
 
88 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 just how much her accompHshments were worth. 1 
 accordingly asked of my wife the favor to invite the 
 whole family to tea, in a quiet way. They all came, on 
 the appointed evening, and after the tea was over, I ex- 
 pressed my delight that there was one young lady in 
 our neighborhood who could do something to elevate 
 the tone of our society. I then drew out, in a careless 
 way, a letter I had just received from a Frenchman, and 
 asked of Miss Georgiana the favor to read it to me. She 
 took the letter, blushed, went half through the first line 
 correctly, then broke down on a simple word, and con- 
 fessed that she could not read it. It was a little cruel ; 
 but I wished to do her good, and proceeded with my 
 experiment. I took up a piece of music, and asked her 
 if she had seen it. She had not. I told her there was 
 a pleasure in store for both of us. I had heard the song 
 once, and I would try to sing it if she would play the 
 accompaniment. She declared she could not do it with- 
 out practice, but I told her she was too modest by half. 
 So I dragged her, protesting, to the piano. She knew 
 she would break down. I knew she would, and she 
 did. Well, I would not let her rise, for as Mr. and Mrs, 
 Green were fond of the old-fashioned church music, 
 and had been singers in their day, and in their way, I 
 selected an old tune, and called them to the piano to 
 assist. Miss Green gave us the key, and we started off 
 in fine style. It was a race to see which would come 
 out ahead. Georgiana won, by skipping most of the 
 
Acquisitions and AccomplisJuncnts. 89 
 
 notes. She rose from the piano with her checks as red 
 as a beet. 
 
 *' By the way," said I, " Georgiana, your teacher cf 
 drawing must have been an excellent one." I did not 
 tell her that I had seen evidence of this in her own 
 efforts in art, but I touched the right spring, and the 
 lady gave me the teacher's credentials, and told me 
 what such and such' people had said of her. ^' Well," 
 said I, " I am glad if there is one young woman who has 
 learned drawing properly. Now you have nothing to 
 do but to practise your delightful art, and you must do 
 something for the benefit of your friends. I promised a 
 sketch of my house to a particular friend, at a distance, 
 and you shall come up to-morrow and make one. I re- 
 member that beautiful cottage among your sketches ; 
 and I should prize a sketch of my own, even half as well 
 done, very highly." The poor girl was blushing again, 
 and from the troubled countenances of her parents, I 
 saw that they had begun indistinctly to comprehend the 
 shallowness — the absolute worthlessness — of the accom- 
 plishments that had cost them so much, Georgiana ac- 
 knowledged that she had never sketched from nature^ 
 that her teacher had never required it of her, and that 
 she had no confidence that she could sketch so simple 
 an object as my house. The Greens took an early leave, 
 and I regret to say a cool one. They were mortified, 
 and there was not good sense enough in the girl to make 
 an improvement of the hints I had given her. 
 
QO TitcomJjs Letters. 
 
 The Green family resided upon a street that I alvvayj 
 took on \wy way to the post-office, and there was rarely 
 a pleasant evening that did not show their parlor alight, 
 and company within it. I heard the same old varia- 
 tions of O Dolce Concento evening after evening. The 
 Battle of Prague was fought over and over again. The 
 portfolio of drawings (such of them as had not been 
 expensively framed) was exhibited, I doubt not, to ad- 
 miring friends until they were soiled with thumbing. 
 At last, Georgiana was engaged, and then she was mar- 
 ried — married to a very good fellow, too. He loved 
 music, loved painting, and loved his wife. Two years 
 passed away; and I determined to ascertain how the 
 pair got along. She was the mother of a fine boy whom 
 I knew she would be glad to have me see. I called, was 
 treated cordially, and saw the identical old portfolio, on 
 the identical old piano. I asked the favor of a tune. 
 The husband with a sigh informed me that Georgiana 
 had dropped her music. I looked about the walls, and 
 saw the crayon Samuel, and the awful shipwreck in 
 India ink. Alas ! the echoes of the Battle of Prague 
 that came back over the field of memory, and these 
 iading mementoes around me, were all that remained 
 of the accomplishments of the late Miss Georgiana 
 Aurelia Atkins Green ! 
 
 Now, young woman, I think you will not need any as- 
 surance from me that I have drawn a genuine portrait, 
 for which any number of your accpiaintances may have 
 
Acquisitions and Accomplishments. 91 
 
 played the original. What do you think of accomphsh- 
 ments Hke these ? How much do they amount to ? My 
 opinion of them is that they are the shabbiest of all 
 things that can be associated with a woman's life and 
 history. I have told you this story in order to show you 
 the importance of incorporating your accomplishments 
 with your very life. It is comparatively an easy task to 
 learn a few tunes by rote ; to get up, with the assistance 
 of a teacher, a few drawings ; to go through with a few 
 French exercises ; but it is not so easy to learn the 
 science of music, and go through the manual practice 
 necessary to make the science available under all cir- 
 cumstances. It is not easy to sketch with facility from 
 nature. It is not easy to comprehend the genius of the 
 French language, and so to familiarize yourself with it 
 that it shall ever remain an open language to you, and 
 give you a key to a new literature. A true accomplish- 
 ment is won only by hard work ; but when it is won> it 
 is a part of you, which nothing but your own neglect can 
 take away from you. 
 
 And now let me tell you a secret. Multitudes of 
 married men are led to seek the society of other wo- 
 men, or go out among their own fellows, and often into 
 bad habits, because they have drunk every sweet of 
 life which their wives can give them. They have heard 
 all their tunes, seen all their efforts at art, sounded 
 their minds, and measured every charm, and they see 
 that henceforth there is nothing in the society of theii 
 
92 TitcomV s Letters. 
 
 wives but insipidity. They married women of acconi' 
 plishments, but they see never a new development oi 
 any improvement. Their wives can do absolutely noth- 
 ing. The shell is broken ; the egg is eaten. 
 
 The first accomplishment that I would urge upon 
 you, is that of using the English language with cor- 
 rectness, elegance, and facility. There are, compara- 
 tively, few young women who can write a good note. 
 I know of hardly one who can punctuate her sentences 
 properly. I beg of you never to write affection with 
 a singley, or friendship without an i in the first syllable. 
 Such slips destroy the words, and the sentiments they 
 represent. If you accomplish yourself in nothing else, 
 learn thoroughly how to use your mother tongue. I 
 remember one young woman with whom, when in 
 youth, I had the misfortune to correspond. In the 
 barrenness of subjects upon which to engage her pen, 
 she once inquired by note whether I ever saw such '^ a 
 spell of wether," as we had been having. I frankly 
 informed her that I never did, and that I hoped she 
 would never indulge in such another, for it made me 
 cool. She took the hint, and broke off the correspon- 
 dence. 
 
 There are many who can write tolerably well, but 
 who cannot talk. Conversation I am inclined to rank 
 among the greatest accomplishments and the greatest 
 arts. ISlatural aptness has much to dp with this, but no 
 woman can talk well who has not a good stock of defi- 
 
Acquisitions a?id Accomplishments. 93 
 
 nite information. I may add to this, that no woman 
 talks well and satisfactorily who reads for the simple 
 purpose of talking. There must exist a genuine in- 
 terest in the affairs which most concern all men and 
 women. The book, magazine, and newspaper literature 
 of the time, questions of public moment, all matters 
 and movements relating to art, affairs of local interest 
 — all these a woman may know something of, and 
 know something definitely. Of all these she can talk 
 if she will try, because there is something in all which 
 excites feeling of some kind, and shapes itself into 
 opinion. 
 
 But whatever accomplishment a young woman at- 
 tempts to acquire, let her by all means acquire it 
 thoroughly and keep it bright. Accomplishments all 
 occupy the field of the arts. They are things which 
 have no significance or value save in the ability of 
 doing. They become, or should become, the exponents 
 of a woman's highest personality. They are her most 
 graceful forms of self-expression, and into them she can 
 pour the stream of her thoughts and fancies, and 
 through them utter the highest language of her na- 
 ture and her culture. Accomplishments make a wo- 
 man valuable to herself. They greatly increase her 
 pleasure, both directly in the practice, and indirectly 
 through the pleasures which she gives to society. A 
 truly accomplished woman — one whose thoughts have 
 come naturally to flow out in artistic forms, whether 
 
94 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 through the instrumentaHty of her tongue, her pen, hei 
 pencil, or her piano, is a treasure to herself and to so- 
 ciety. Such a woman as this would I have you to be^ 
 There may be something to interfere with your being 
 all this ; but this you can do : you can acquire thor- 
 oughly every accomplishment for which you have a 
 natural aptitude, or you can let it alone. Do not be 
 content with a smattering of anything. Do not be con- 
 tent to play parrot to your teachers, until your lesson is 
 learned, and then think you are accomplished. Do not 
 be content with mediocrity in any accomplishment you 
 undertake. Do not be content to be a Miss Georgiana 
 Aurelia Atkins Green ! 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 UNREASONABLE AND INJURIOUS RESTRAINTS 
 
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments. 
 
 — Shakspere. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that most men have observed the follow- 
 ing facts, from which I propose to draw a lesson : — ■ 
 First, that young married women have a peculiar charm 
 for unmarried young men, and that a young man's first 
 love is almost uniformly devoted to a woman older than 
 himself. 
 
 A marriageable young woman occupies, or is made to 
 occupy, a position of peculiar hardship. Our theory is 
 that a woman should never make an advance towards 
 the man she loves and would marry. Such a step is 
 deemed inconsistent with maiden modesty. I do not 
 quarrel with this, but the effect has been to make young 
 women, who possess sensitive natures, hypocrites. It 
 ought not to do it, but it does. Every modest young 
 woman, possessing a good degree of sagacity, plays a 
 part, almost always, when in the society of young men. 
 
gO Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 The fear is that by some word, or look, or act, she shall 
 express such a degree of interest in a young man as 
 shall lead him to believe that she wishes to marry him. 
 Young women study the effect of their language, they 
 often shun civilities, they put on an artificial and con- 
 strained style of behavior, for fear that some complacent 
 fool will misconstrue them, or some gentleman whom 
 they wish to please will deem them too forward, and so 
 become disgusted. The result is, that a man rarely 
 finds out either the best or the worst points of his wife's 
 character before he marries her. Social intercourse is 
 carried on under a kind of protest, which places every 
 young woman in a position absolutely false before the 
 eyes of young men. Many a woman owes a life of celi- 
 bacy and disappointment to the fact that she never felt 
 at liberty to act out herself. 
 
 With these statements, it is very easy to understand 
 the attractions which a young married woman has for a 
 bachelor, and to explain the phenomenon of a young 
 man falling in love with a woman older than himself. 
 In the first instance, a married woman becomes 
 agreeable because she becomes perfectly natural and 
 unconstrained, her circumstances allowing all the more 
 grateful forms of politeness — the cordial greeting, the ^ 
 complimentary attentions, and the free conversation-— 
 without the danger of being misconstrued. In the latter 
 instance, the woman throws off her constraint in the 
 same manner, because she is in the society of one whom 
 
Vnreasojtable and Injurious Restraints. 97 
 
 she regards as, in reality, a boy. She finds, very much 
 to her surprise, that she has won the boy's heart ; but it 
 was the most natural thing in the world. He had never 
 had a sight' of a woman's nature before. The girls with 
 whom he had associated had always worn a mask. The 
 real hearts behind it he had thus far failed to appre- 
 hend. There is a very general impression among the 
 young men whose affections are not engaged that the 
 best women are married, and that those who are left do 
 not amount to much. They will think differently some 
 time or other. 
 
 Now my idea is that this universal mask-wearing sys- 
 tem should be broken up. It does injustice to all par- 
 ties. If there is, in society, any poor creature in the 
 form of a man whose vanity is so open to flattery that a 
 young woman cannot treat him with natural, cordial 
 politeness, without his thinking that she would like to 
 marry him, and is trying to ensnare him, let him think 
 so, and trust to time and circumstances for justice. 
 Such men are of too little account in the world to pay 
 for carrying a deceitful face, and despoiling the inter- 
 course of the young of its sweetest charms. If you like 
 the society of young men, take no pains to conceal it, 
 but treat them with frank cordiality. No true gentle' 
 man among them will misconstrue you. It is not neces' 
 sary for you to tell them that you calculate to live a 
 maiden life. They know you lie. It will not do to in- 
 dicate to any man of sense that you do not like the at- 
 5 
 
98 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 tentions and society of gentlemen, for he knows better 
 He knows, at least, that you ought to like them, and 
 that if you do not, there is something wrong about you. 
 Don't practise deception of any kind. A man who is 
 frank and open-hearted with you, deserves to be met 
 with a frank and open heart by you ; and in ninety-nine 
 cases in every hundred, men will be honorable and 
 manly with you, if you will lay aside suspicion, and 
 trust them. If a man prove himself unworthy of your 
 confidence, you have your remedy. Cut him, or tell him 
 what you think of him, and bring him upon his knees. 
 
 I have given my advice without many qualifications, 
 but do not misconstrue me. I write upon the supposi- 
 tion that you have common sense, and know what I 
 mean. Some people, I suppose, would present you 
 with a formula by which to conduct all your intercourse 
 with young men. I know a large number of fathers and 
 mothers who will think that, upon this subject, I ought 
 to guard my language, and be m.ore particular ; but I 
 know very well that if you have not sense and prudence 
 enough to take this general counsel, and use it judi- 
 ciously, no qualifications that I could make would be of 
 any service to you. 
 
 1 \XMS\. yoti. I believe you are virtuous young women, 
 with pure hearts and true intentions ; and I know there 
 is no danger to you until you cease to be such. You 
 have an instinct— God's word in your own souls— that 
 tells you when a man takes the first wrong step towards 
 
Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints, 99 
 
 you ; and if you do not repel that step in such a mannei 
 that it will never be repeated, do you suppose that any- 
 thing I could say to you would do you any good ? I say 
 this : that perfect frankness and cordiality in the treat- 
 ment of young men are entirely consistent with the 
 safety of any true woman from insult or offensive famil- 
 iarity. Is your father afraid to trust you out of his sight ? 
 I am not. If I were, I would be ashamed to confess it, 
 particularly if you were a daughter of mine. I believe 
 in you, and I believe, moreover, that if this contempt- 
 ible idea that men are your natural enemies, and that 
 you must cheat them and look out for them, could be 
 got out of the way, and a free and unconstrained social 
 intercourse established between you and them, they 
 would be much better, and you altogether safer for it. 
 
 There is another subject, more or less intimately 
 associated with this, which may as well be treated here. 
 It is very natural for young women to get in the habit 
 of treating only those young men politely whom they 
 happen, for various reasons, to fancy. They " don't 
 care " what the majority of young men think of them, 
 provided they retain the good will of their particular 
 pets. They are whimsical, and take on special and 
 strong likes or dislikes for the young men whom they 
 meet. One is " perfectly hateful," and another is " per- 
 fectly splendid," and so they proceed to make fools of 
 themselves over both parties. Now there is nothing 
 upon which a young man is so sensitive as this matter 
 
lOO Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 of being treated with polite consideration by the young 
 women of his acquaintance ; and I know of nothing 
 which will tend more certainly to make a young man 
 hateful than to treat him as if he were so. There is a 
 multitude of young men whose self-respect is nurtured, 
 whose ambition is quickened, and whose hearts are 
 warmed with a genial fire, by those considerate recog- 
 nitions on the part of their female acquaintances which 
 assure them that they have a position in the esteem of 
 those with whom they associate the sweetest hopes and 
 happiness of life. To be cut for no good cause is to re- 
 ceive a wound which is not easily healed. 
 
 The duty, therefore, which I would inculcate is that 
 of systematic politeness. If you know a young man, 
 bow to him when you meet him. He will not bow to 
 you first, for he waits for your recognition. He does 
 not know whether you esteem him of sufficient value to 
 be recognised. If you pass him without a recognition, 
 you say to him, in a language which he feels with a 
 keenness which you cannot measure, that you consider 
 him beneath your notice. You plant in his heart imme- 
 diately a prejudice against yourself. You disturb him. 
 You hurt him, and this, too, let me admit, very fre- 
 quently without design. You are sensitive yourself, and 
 are afraid he has forgotten you. You think, perhaps, 
 that he would not like to notice you, and would not like 
 to have you notice him. There is a good deal of this 
 kind of thing, doubtless, but it is all wrong. Therf is 
 
Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints. loi 
 
 no man who will not return your bow, and feel the bet- 
 ter for your smile ; and if the young man receiving the 
 attention is poor, and has his position in the world to 
 win, and feels that he has not as many attractions, per- 
 sonal or circumstantial, as others, you have made his 
 heart light, and awakened towards yourself a feeling of 
 cordial good will, akin in many instances to gratitude. 
 
 A young woman w^ho is afraid of compromising her 
 position by recognising men out of her set, or out of a 
 certain line of genteel occupations, shows by how frail a 
 tenure she holds her own respectability. I could name 
 to you women who have not only a recognised but a 
 commanding position in the best society, w4io are as 
 uniformly and systematically polite to the clerk who 
 sells them silks, as to the pets of their circle ; who have 
 a bow and a smile for all with whom they have ever 
 been thrown into personal relations, and who, by this 
 very politeness, more than by any other self-expression, 
 vindicate their place among those whom society calls 
 ladies. There is a kind word for them in every young 
 man's mouth : and no young man would ever think of 
 presuming upon such politeness for the indulgence of 
 an offensive familiarity. Such women have a sacredness 
 in his eyes that no other women possess, and he would 
 offend them in no way, for the world. 
 
 The advice I have given you in these matters is partly 
 for the benefit of your sex, and partly for mine. I be- 
 lieve that there should be a far more rational mode of 
 
I02 Titconib's Letters. 
 
 intercourse between young men and young women thau 
 at present exists. I believe that every legitimate attrac- 
 tion that your society has for young men should be free 
 and unconstrained. I believe that there is no good 
 reason why a young married woman should be more; 
 attractive to a bachelor than yourselves, and that in the 
 degree in which they are more attractive, do you wrong 
 yourselves and the young men of your acquaintance. I 
 believe that it is well for you, and well for young men, 
 that they should be attracted to you by a frank behavior 
 on your part, which will place them at their ease, and 
 exercise upon them all that good influence which a pure, 
 strong, outspoken female nature is so well calculated to 
 exert. 
 
 Young men and young women, to use a cant phrase 
 of the day, are " in the same boat." But a few years 
 will pass away before they will be the bosom compan- 
 ions of each other, and the fathers and mothers of the 
 land. It matters everything to them that they under- 
 stand each other; and to this end, in my judgment, an 
 intercourse between them should be established upon a 
 very different basis from that which is now maintained 
 by society. It should be more simple, more ample, 
 more natural, more trustful, and more heartily consid- 
 erate. There is nothing in the history of the race to 
 prove that anything has ever been preserved or won to 
 virtue by a sys^tem of essential falsehood, or a policy of 
 arbitrary constraint. Many a girl feels this^ and will 
 
Uitreasonable and Injurious Restraints. 103 
 
 feel it to her dying day. To tie a young woman up to 
 the meanly cautious conventionalisms of the day, is to 
 prepare her as a helpless sacrifice to the first design- 
 ing villain who insinuates himself into her confidence. 
 Many a woman groans to-day in bondage to a drunk- 
 ard, a libertine, or a dolt, who only needed to have been 
 allowed to know men better to have secured a proper 
 companion. 
 
 I say, then, to you, young women, reform this thing 
 altogether. It is in your hands. I give you the idea : 
 I leave you to carry it into practice. You do not need 
 that I should tell you how to do it. If you are not 
 vicious, there is nothing for you, in your mind and 
 heart, to conceal. Be simply yourselves, taking all 
 possible care to make yourselves what you should be. 
 Learn to think kindly of all young men, save those 
 who, you have reason to believe, possess black hearts 
 and foul intentions — those who are enemies of your sex 
 and social purity. Treat every young man well, both 
 for his sake and your own. You shall thus be the light 
 of many eyes, and your kind heart, thorough good man- 
 ners, and transparent nature, cannot fail to attract to 
 you those whose true nobility is the most strongly 
 touched by that which is best in womanhood. One of 
 those will become your companion, I am inclined to 
 think, if human nature, meanwhile, do not suffer some 
 remarkable change. 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF LOVE AND LUCRE. 
 
 Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare. 
 
 And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair. 
 
 — Byron. 
 
 YOU calculate when you are married to be married 
 to the man you love, and no other ; yet there are 
 a good many chances that you will be influenced in 
 your choice by other considerations. But you should 
 never think of marrying a man simply because you love 
 him. You may love a man who has personal habits 
 that will make you miserable. You may love a man so 
 lazy or so inefficient that your whole life will be neces- 
 sarily a continued struggle with poverty. You may love 
 a man who has no adaptation to you — who is surly and 
 stupid and unresponsive : who can give no satisfactory 
 return of your affection, and who will repulse every 
 demonstration of your fondness. You may love a man 
 who is supremely selfish. When you become bound 
 for life to a man, he should be one who can make you 
 happier than you would be alone. There are doubtless 
 
The Claims of Love and Lucre, 105 
 
 some instances of a love so noble and so self-sacrificing 
 that it Avill welcome poverty and want, with the object 
 of its desire, as being far better than riches without 
 it I will not quarrel with this. I only say that, gen- 
 erally, competence (I do not mean wealth) is necessary 
 to that degree of comfort without which love fails of its 
 sweetest exercises and most grateful rewards. Love for 
 a man is only one reason why you should marry him. 
 There may be a round dozen of reasons why you should 
 not. 
 
 A woman's heart is a very queer thing, on the whole. 
 It falls in love in the most unaccountable way, with the 
 most unaccountable men. It is a hard thing to reason 
 with, and a much harder thing to reason about, yet 
 there are some things which may be said to those whose 
 judgment is not yet blinded by a passion that contemns 
 reason. You should marry a man to whom you will 
 be willing to bend, or one whom you know you can 
 manage without his knowledge, or with his consent. 
 The instances arc verv rare in which two strong wills 
 can harmonize in close companionship. They must 
 both be governed by principle, and be mutually forbear- 
 ing from principle. I have seen noble instances of this, 
 but not often. The law of nature is that the wife shall 
 bend to the husband — that her will shall, at last, be sub- 
 ject ; yet there are instances of true affection between 
 man and woman in which subjection on the part of 
 the man becomes the law of nature, the woman's judg- 
 5* 
 
io6 TitconilPs Letters. 
 
 ment being the best, and her will the strongest. In 
 these cases, the female mind possesses masculine char* 
 acteristics and the male mind feminine characteristics ; 
 and it is just as proper that her mind should govern in 
 these instances as that the male mind should govern in 
 others. But there is something unnatural in this, after 
 all — or something, I should say, out of the common 
 order of things. 
 
 If a woman sincerely believe that there is no man to 
 whose will she can gladly subordinate her own, let her 
 seek out a feminine man, and make suit for his hand. 
 A noted female vocalist, whom all of us love, had the 
 credit of doing this. He gave up even his religion for 
 her, though that may not have cost him much. I pre- 
 sume that she governs him, and I have yet to learn that 
 the union is not thoroughly a happy one. After all, if 
 the lady were a graceful subject of a kingly intellect, I 
 cannot help thinking that she would be in a more nat- 
 ural position, and one in which she would be happier 
 than she is now. 
 
 You are placed in a position of peculiar temptation. 
 You have ambitions to be something more than pretty, 
 accomplished, and loved — at least, some of you have. 
 You want a career. As a woman, you see that you can- 
 not have one, save through a matrimonial connection. 
 You wish to do something — to be something — to be mis- 
 tress of an establishment, or to be associated with one 
 who has the public eye, or the public consideration. It 
 
The Claims of Love and Lucre. 107 
 
 IS thus that weahh and position come to you with very 
 great temptations. A man of weahh or a man of power 
 offers you his hand, and, unless he is absolutely repul- 
 sive, he will generally get it. You will try to love him, 
 or learn to love him, or think you love him ; or perhaps 
 you will take a mercenary or a worldly view of the whole 
 matter, and marry him for what of wealth and position he 
 can bring you. Now all this marrying for money, or 
 for position, or for any other consideration, when genu- 
 ine love is absent, is essential prostitution. I know of 
 no difference between selling one's self for a lifetime, 
 and that sale of the soul and body which is made in the 
 house of her whose steps take hold on hell. If you find 
 yourself willing to give up yourself to a man in a life- 
 long connection for the house he gives you, for the silks 
 and furs with which he clothes you, for the society into 
 which he introduces you, for the position with which he 
 endows you, then, whether you know it or not, you be- 
 come the sister of the drab whom you so inconsistently 
 spurn from your side. In fact, the motives that have 
 made her what she is may be white by the side of yours. 
 Marrying for love may seem to be a very silly thing to 
 a woman of the world ; but marrying without love, for 
 a consideration, is wicked. " Love in a cottage " is 
 laughed at by very "judicious people," but it is a very 
 sweet thing by the side of indifference in a palace. I 
 know of nothing more disgusting in all the world than 
 that mercenary tie which, under the name of marriage. 
 
io8 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 binds a woman to the bosom of one who bought hei 
 with his money. 
 
 I know what the world says about this matter, and 1 
 very heartily despise the world for it. When I ask the 
 world if Jane has ''made out well" by her union, and 
 am told that she has done finely, and married a man 
 worth a hundred thousand dollars, I am tempted to be 
 profane. When I ask the world how Kate has settled, 
 and am informed, as the essential portion of the reply 
 that her husband is "an excellent provider," I am 
 tempted to spit in its face. The conventional idea of a 
 happy and proper matrimonial connection is so mean 
 and so arbitrary, that it is no wonder that unsophisti- 
 cated girls sacrifice themselves. I pity them from the 
 bottom of my heart. They cannot have even the repu- 
 tation of marrying zveit unless they allow base motives 
 to enter into their calculations. They learn early to aim 
 at wealth or position as primary and supremely desira- 
 ble things. A brilliant match, in the eyes of the world, 
 atones for low morals, uncongenial tastes, and lukewarm 
 hearts. 
 
 Now, if you must make calculations, let me help you. 
 Make genuine affection the first thing. This is abso- 
 lutely indispensable. It takes precedence of everything 
 else. You are not at liberty to consider anything before 
 this. A union based upon anything else, is, as I have 
 already told you, essential prostitution. It is against 
 nature — against God's most wise and benevolent inten' 
 
The Claims of Love and Lucre. log 
 
 tions. You can make no union with a man, not based 
 on this, that will give you happiness. Friendship alone 
 will not do. Esteem alone will not do. The idea of giv- 
 ing yourself to a man simply because you esteem him, 
 and respect him, is disgusting. The union of the current 
 of your life with that of a man is the great event of your 
 history, and if this be not through those natural affini- 
 ties, sympathies, and partialities — that passion of your 
 soul which heaven intended should be called into exer- 
 cise by manhood — then it is only a conventional union, 
 and no union in fact. Love, then, I say, is the essential 
 thing, and yet love, as I have said before, is only one 
 thing. There may be in the man who excites the holiest 
 and strongest passion of your nature many things 
 which, if you value peace — if you value your own puri- 
 ty, even — should lead you to pluck that passion from 
 your breast, and turn your back upon its object, that 
 God's light may rest upon your brow, even if sorrow 
 make darkness in your heart. 
 
 It is hard to examine character, and profit by the 
 study, after the heart has become the seat of an absorb- 
 ing passion ; but it is indispensably necessary to do it 
 sometimes. It is far better that the passion be excited 
 by the influence of character, disposition, and bearing, 
 but when study becomes necessary, it should be entered 
 upon conscientiously ; for the second requisite for a 
 happy union is sound character. A woman possessing 
 the best elements of womanhood cannot be happy with 
 
no TitconiF <; Letters. 
 
 a man who has not a sound character. He may have a 
 good dii position, he may be intelHgent, he may have 
 wealth and honor, but if his character be weak or faulty, 
 she has no reliance ; and she must ultimately lose her 
 respect for him. When respect is gone, she may love, 
 she may pity, she may forgive, but she cannot be 
 happy. Disposition comes in for consideration in the 
 third place, and worldly circumstances in the fourth, or 
 perhaps still lower in the scale. I might speak of an- 
 other thing, requisite to happiness in the highest degree, 
 but I will not, now and here. 
 
 In the consideration of worldly circumstances, be 
 wise. Remember that if your lover be intelligent, 
 healthy, the master of a business or a profession, he 
 stands many more chances to die in the possession of 
 wealth or competence than he would if rich now, and 
 without a settled business and settled purposes. I have 
 watched the results of many matches, and I have seen 
 ten which started with a fortune to be acquired, turn out 
 well in a worldly point of view, where I have seen one 
 result happily, starting with the fortune made. If a 
 young man is honorable, intelligent, industrious, and 
 manly in every respect, and you love him, marry him. 
 There is no power under heaven that has a moral right 
 to stand between you and your happiness. Many a 
 poor girl who married for money now pines in poverty, 
 and covets the position of girls whose iviser choice she 
 once contemned. 
 
TJie Claims of Love and Lticre. 1 1 1 
 
 I speak in this way for two reasons. The first is, that 
 it is not only your right but your duty to consider 
 whether a hfe of certain poverty will be compensated by 
 a life of association with the man you love. The second 
 is, that when you take this matter into consideration 
 you should make your judgment upon a sound basis. 
 Wealth in hand, without business habits, business 
 tastes, and business interests, is the most unreliable 
 thing in the world. It may even spoil a good lover and 
 in time transform him into a loafer or a sot. On the 
 contrary, good business habits, good character, enter- 
 prise, ambition — all these combined — are almost sure to 
 secure competence and success. If you would rely on 
 anything, rely on these, for they are the only reliable 
 things. Misfortune may deal harshly vv'ith these, but 
 that is the business of Providence. 
 
 I fancy one reply that may be made to all this wise 
 talk. Women practically have comparatively little 
 choice in the matter. They grow up from the cradle 
 with the idea that it is a horrible thing to live and die 
 an old maid. That, in the minds of half the girls, is the 
 most terrible thing in all the world. They can abide 
 anything better than that. So they feel a kind of obli- 
 gation to jump at the first offer, they are so much afraid 
 they shall never have another. Let them remember 
 that a mismated match is much worse than an unmated 
 life. I believe that marriage is the true condition, and 
 that no man or woman can fully enjoy life unmarried ; 
 
112 Titcoinh's Letters. 
 
 but I know they will be more unhappy if they are badlj 
 matched than if not matched at all. But women have 
 more choice than they think, and would have still moie 
 than they do, if their intercourse with young men were 
 placed upon the basis indicated in my last letter. 
 
 Most young women study the character of men but 
 little, because they have but little opportunity. They 
 see comparatively few, and, through the character of 
 their intercourse, know them very incompletely. It is 
 a sin and a sharne that young women enjoy such inferior 
 opportunities of learning the character of young men, — ■ 
 of weighing, comparing., and judging them. It is a 
 shame that they have no more opportunities for a choice. 
 My own wife very fortunately got an excellent husband, 
 but it is something for which she is to be grateful to an 
 overruling Providence, for her own knowledge had very 
 little to do with it. I could have cheated her beyond all 
 account. I tell you, men want studying for some years, 
 before you find them out, and it becomes you to run 
 fewer risks than the most of your sex run in this busi- 
 ness. It is a good deal of a step — this getting married — 
 and I am very anxious that you shall know a great many 
 men, that you shall get the one you love, that he shall 
 be worthy of you, and that you shall be happy all the 
 days of your life. 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 THE PRUDENT A iXD PROPER USE OF LANGUAGE 
 
 Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, 
 Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest. 
 
 — Samuel Johnson. 
 
 And lovelier things have mercy shown 
 To every failing but their own, 
 And every woe a tear can claim 
 Except an erring sister's shame. 
 
 — BVRON. 
 
 1HAVE met with a good many young women, first 
 and last, whose intellects were of that keen, quick 
 variety which delights in uttering sharp things — often 
 very hard things. They do it, at first, playfully ; they 
 produce a laugh which flatters them ; and they soon 
 get to doing it wantonly. They acquire an appetite for 
 praise, and they become willing to procure it at what- 
 ever expense to others. Genuine wit in a man is almost 
 always genial ; wit in a woman, however genial it may 
 be at first, almost always gets into personalities sooner 
 or later, which makes it very dangerous and very hate- 
 ful. Man is held in restraint, whatever his tendencies 
 
114 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 may be, by the consideration that, as a man, he will be 
 held responsible for his words ; women presume upon 
 the fact that they are women, in taking license to say 
 what they choose of each other, and of men in particu- 
 lar. There is not always — perhaps there is not gener- 
 ally — malice in these sharp and hard speeches, but they 
 poison, nevertheless. They poison her who utters them, 
 and they poison those who suffer from them. The ut- 
 terer becomes the student, for a purpose, of the weak 
 points of her friends, and they learn to hate her. I 
 have known not a few women whose personal witticisms 
 were enjoyed by the gossip-loving crowd around her, 
 every man of whom would as soon think of marrying a 
 tigress as the one he was flattering by the applause of 
 his laugh. 
 
 Therefore I say that to be a witty woman is a very 
 dangerous thing. To be a witty woman is to be the 
 subject of very great temptations, for personalities form 
 the very zest of gossip — an employment of which most 
 women, I think, know something by experiment. Men 
 are afraid of witty women, especially those who delight 
 in making cutting speeches. They say, very rationally, 
 that if a woman will secure praise at the expense of one 
 friend, she will also at the expense of others, and that 
 no one can be safe. There is nothing in my eyes more 
 admirable in a woman than an honest wish to hear no 
 one spoken against — than that consideration for the 
 feelings of others which leads her to treat all faults with 
 
TJlc Proper Use of Language. 115 
 
 tenderness, and all -.veaknesses and natural unpleasant 
 peculiarities with indulgence. One of the most attrac- 
 tive sights in the world, to any young man of common 
 sensibility, is that of a young woman who not only will 
 neither say nor hear ill of any one, but who takes spe- 
 cial pains to notice those whom the crowd neglect. 
 Such a woman is the admired of all whose admiration is 
 worth securing. And now, young woman, if you are one 
 of the sharp ones, and are tempted to say sharp things, 
 remember that you are in very great danger of injuring 
 yourself, not only in your own soul, but in the eyes of 
 all those whom you imagine you are pleasing. 
 
 I think, as a general thing, that women are harder in 
 their judgments of their own sex than men are of theirs, 
 or even of them. This arises partly from jealousy — a 
 wish to stand among the uppermost in the popular 
 esteem. The praise of women, poured into the ears of 
 other women, is not usually gratefully received. The 
 disposition of women to judge harshly of each other is 
 seen particularly in those instances in which a woman 
 has taken a false step. Here the fact is patent; — a 
 woman forgets, or forgives, much less promptly than a 
 man. However deep the repentance, however decided 
 the reformation, a woman never forgets that her sister 
 has sinned, notwithstanding the fact that weakness and 
 misfortune and a hundred mitigating if not exculpating 
 circumstances plead in her behalf. It is the same with 
 less important lapses of behavior, in a corresponding 
 
Ii6 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 degree. I do not know but this is one of the safeguards 
 which God intended should be around a woman's path, 
 but it seems to me a very unwomanly and a very un- 
 christian thing. It seems to me, too, to be a very un- 
 natural thing. I judge that, much more than a man a 
 woman should be interested in securing justice for her 
 own sex ; and that if a sinning or a silly woman should 
 find a charitable defender anywhere, it should be among 
 those who, like her, are exposed to the temptations, and 
 particularly to the uncharitable misconstructions of a 
 captious world. 
 
 What I would insist upon, is, that you not only do not 
 wound the feelings of your own sex by sharp criticisms, 
 but that you be heartily enlisted in maintaining its 
 honor. Do not think that you do this while putting 
 down this one and that, in order to make your own im- 
 maculateness the more conspicuous. Believe what is 
 generally true, that those who sin are those who sin 
 rather through weakness than vicious tendency ; that 
 villains who wear cravats and waistcoats — the very men 
 whom you are by no means particular enough to exclude 
 from your company — are those v/ho most deserve your 
 reproaches. 
 
 And now that I am upon this subject of talk, it will 
 be well to say all I have to say upon it. It is a very 
 common thing for young women to indulge in hyperbole. 
 A pretty dress is very apt to be " perfectly splendid ; " a 
 disagreeable person is too often '' perfectly hateful ;" a 
 
The Proper Use of Language. 117 
 
 party in which the company enjoyed themselves, some- 
 how becomes transmuted into the "most deHghtful 
 thing ever seen." A young man of respectable parts 
 and manly bearing is very often "such a magnificent 
 fellow !" The adjective " perfect," that stands so much 
 alone as never to have the privilege of help from com- 
 paratives and superlatives, is sadly overworked, in com- 
 pany v.-ith several others of the intense and extravagant 
 order. The result is that, by the use of such language 
 as this, your opinion soon becomes valueless. 
 
 A woman who deals only in superlatives demonstrates 
 at once the fact that her judgment is subordinate to her 
 feelings, and that her opinions are entirely unreliable. 
 All language thus loses its power and significance. The 
 same words arc brought into use to describe a ribbon in 
 a milliner's window, as are employed in the endeavor to 
 do justice to Thalberg's execution of Beethoven's most 
 heavenly symphony. The use of hyperbole is so com- 
 mon among women that a woman's criticism is generally 
 without value. Let me insist upon this thing. Be more 
 economical in the use of your mother tongue. Apply 
 your terms of praise with precision ; use epithets with 
 some degree of judgment and fitness. Do not waste 
 your best and highest words upon inferior objects, and 
 find that when you have met with something which 
 really is superlatively great and good, the terms by 
 which you would distinguish it have all been thrown 
 away upon inferior things — that you are bankrupt in ex' 
 
Ii8 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 pression. If a thing is simply good, say so ; if pretty; 
 say so ; if very pretty, say so ; if fine, say so ; if very 
 fine, say so; if grand, say so; if sublime, say so; if 
 magnificent, say so; if splendid, say so. These words 
 all have different meanings, and you may say them all 
 of as many different objects, and not use the word " per 
 feet " once. That is a very large word. You will prob- 
 ably be obliged to save it for application to the Deity, or 
 to his works, or to that serene rest which remains for 
 those who love him. 
 
 Young W'Omen are very apt to imbibe another bad 
 habit, namely, the use of slang. I was walking along 
 the street the other day when I met an elegantly dressed 
 lady and gentleman upon the sidewalk. My attention 
 was the more attracted to them because they were evi- 
 dently strangers. At any rate they impressed me as 
 being very thoroughly refined and genteel people. As I 
 came within hearing of their voices — they were quietly 
 chatting along the way — I heard these words from the 
 woman's lips : ''You may bet your life on that." I was 
 disgusted. I could almost have boxed her ears. I re- 
 member once being in the company of a belle — one who 
 had had a winter's reign in Washington. Some kind of 
 game was in progress, when, in a moment of surprise, 
 she exclaimed, " My Gracious !" Now you may regard 
 this as a finical notion, but I tell you that woman fell as 
 flatly in my esteem as if she had uttered an oath. A 
 lady, fresh from Paris, once informed me that it would 
 
The Proper Use of Language. 119 
 
 do the residents of a certain quiet village a great deal 
 of good to be '' stirred up with a long pole." 
 
 I would by no means insinuate that all young women 
 use slang as coarse as this, but I acknowledge to have 
 heard phrases as coarse as these from friends whom I 
 really esteem. Is not the use of these phrases, and of 
 phrases like them whose number is legion, a very vulgar 
 habit ? It seems so to me, and I can hear them from 
 the lips of no pretty woman except with pain, and a cer- 
 tain degree of diminution of my respect for her. The 
 habit certainly detracts from womanly dignity. It can 
 be dropped without the slightest danger of going into 
 that extreme of precision in the use of language, which 
 takes out all the life and freedom from social inter- 
 course. Slang is bad enough in young men, and they 
 indulge in far too much of it ; but in a young woman, it 
 is disgusting. It is not the outgrowth of fine natures ; 
 it is not accordant with refined taste. Any young 
 woman who indulges in it does it at a very sad expense 
 to her mind, and manners, and reputation. Therefore, 
 beware of it ; discard it ; guard the door of your lips, 
 and leave it to those coarse specimens of your sex of 
 whose natures and habits of thought it is the natural 
 and fitting expression. 
 
 One more bad habit of your tongues, and I conclude. 
 It is very common for young women to imagine that all 
 tradesmen have a desire to cheat them. They will talk 
 to the provision dealers and peddlers who call at their 
 
I20 TitcomFs Letter's. 
 
 doors, and to tradesmen in their shops, with a harshness 
 that would not be forgiven in a man. Men become 
 hardened to this kind of thing, and expect it ; and very 
 naturally choose those who suspect them, and accuse 
 them of cheating — who chaffer, and cheapen, and find 
 fault — for the victims of their sharpest operations. A 
 young woman who treats every man with whom she 
 trades as a gentleman, giving him her confidence, and 
 throwin|[ herself upon his honor and generosity, will 
 stand the best possible chance to be fairly dealt by. I 
 except Jews with China ware, and men of Celtic origin 
 with short pipes in their mouths. It is always safe to 
 close a bargain with such persons before entering into 
 any operations ; but even this may be done without loss 
 of self-respect. If you see that a man designs to cheat 
 you, it is not lady-like to put yourself upon a footing 
 with him, and undertake to extort a bargain from him. 
 Dismiss him without a word. You cannot afford to 
 waste any breath or self-respect upon him. 
 
 Because a man has a thing to sell — becaus- ne stands 
 behind a counter, or drives a cart, he is not necessarily 
 no gentleman. As a general thing, those men deserve 
 just as considerate politeness at your hands as if they 
 were in your parlor. You have no right to banter them. 
 You have no right to suspect them — to say harsh thing? 
 to them — to depreciate their wares, and to place them 
 practically in the position of sharpers and knaves. It is 
 not lady-like for you to put their politeness to the test 
 
The Proper Use of Language. 121 
 
 They will not insult you, and in that very fact vindicate 
 their claim to your good opinion and polite treatment, 
 V'ou may get the credit with them of being sharp, hard 
 customers, but they will dislike you, and if they speak 
 of you, will not say anything to flatter you. 
 
LETTER VTI, 
 
 HOUSEWIFERY AND INDUSTRY. 
 
 She laycrh V»er hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. . . 
 She is not afraid of the snow for her household ; for all her household 
 are clothed with scarlet. . . . Strength and honor are her clothing, 
 and she shall rejoice in time to come. 
 
 —Solomon. 
 
 AMONG the more homely but most essential accom- 
 plishments of a young woman is that of house- 
 wifery. There are many things at the present day to 
 interfere with its acquisition, but the fact that it is essen- 
 tial should lead you to subordinate to it those which are 
 not. We hear a great deal about the laziness of the pre- 
 sent generation of girls. I think the accusation is un- 
 just. Girls who acquire a really good education now, 
 accomplish much more genuine hard work than those in 
 "'the good old times" who only learned to read and 
 write, and occupied the most of their time in the kitchen 
 and dairy. Nothing that can be called education and 
 accomplishment can be achieved without great labor ; 
 and, in my opinion, the principal reason why good 
 housewifery is so much neglected, as an accom.plish- 
 
Housewifery and Industry. 123 
 
 ment, is, that the time is so much occupied in study. 
 Laziness is very apt to come with wealth, and there are 
 undoubtedly a great many more lazy girls now than fifty 
 years ago. They are certainly a very undesirable arti- 
 cle to have about, and I pity the poor fellow who gets 
 one of them for a companion ; but I say candidly that 
 I do not think there are any more naturally lazy girls in 
 the world than usual. 
 
 You expect, one of these days, to be the mistress of 
 a house. Your comfort and happiness, and the comfort 
 and happiness of your husband, will depend very much 
 upon your ability to order that house well. If your 
 companion be in humble circumstances, you will very 
 likely be obliged to do the most of your work yourself 
 In this case, a thorough knowledge of, and taste for, 
 housewifery, will be very necessary to you. If you 
 marry a man of competence or wealth, a knowledge of 
 good housewifery is quite as essential to you as if you 
 were required to do your own work. The expenses of 
 your house will be large or small, as you are a bad or a 
 good housekeeper. If you do not know how to do the 
 work of the house ; if you have no practical knowledge 
 of all the offices and economies of an establishment, you 
 will be dependent. So far from being the mistress of 
 your house, you will be only its guest. Your servants 
 will circumvent you, they will cheat you, they will 
 make you miserable. If they do not perform their work 
 properly, through wilfulness or ignorance, you cannot 
 
124 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 tell them how to do better. You will scold them foi 
 things which you cannot tell them how to mend, you 
 will be unjust, and you will not keep them. Many a 
 really good servant is constantly suffering from griev- 
 ances growing directly from the ignorance of her mis- 
 tress. Unless you are willing to take up for life with a 
 boarding-house — a place for people to vegetate in — you 
 must be a good housewife. It matters not whether you 
 are rich or poor. You need a practical knowledge of 
 cookery, of the laundry, of the prices and qualities of 
 provisions, of chamber work — of everything that enters 
 into the details of home life. 
 
 Of course, if you have no motlicr who is capable of 
 teaching you these things, you are in a measure excusa- 
 ble for not learning them. I pity a family of girls 
 whose mother is a know-nothing and a do-nothing. I 
 do not blame girls for not wishing to put themselves 
 under the tuition of the cook and the maid-of-all-work. 
 But even when you find yourselves under disadvantages 
 like these, you cannot afford to become a woman with- 
 out knowing something of the homely utilities of life. 
 Your own aptness of mind — your own good sense and 
 ready ingenuity — will give you a clue to the mysteries 
 which practice will ultimately make plain. Your com- 
 fort, your independence, your reputation, your hus- 
 band's respect for you, depend so much upon your 
 ability to keep house well, that I cannot leave the sub- 
 ject without insisting upon the importance of youi 
 
Housewifery and Industry. 125 
 
 learning to do it while you have the chance. There are 
 few higher comphments that can be paid to a young 
 woman than that which accords to her the character of 
 an excellent housekeeper. There is no reputation which 
 will more thoroughly tend to confirm a young woman in 
 the esteem of young men, or more forcibly commend 
 her to their esteem than that of being acquainted, prac- 
 tically, with the details of the kitchen and the economies 
 of housekeeping. 
 
 This naturally introduces me to a discussion of the 
 benefits of physical industry, and the assumption of 
 regular household duties. There is no better relief to 
 study than the regular performance of special duties 
 in the house. To feel that one is really doing something 
 every day, that the house is the tidier for one's efforts, 
 and the comfort of the family enhanced, is the surest 
 warrant of content and cheerfulness. There is some- 
 thing about this habit of daily work — this regular per- 
 formance of duty — which tends to regulate the passions, 
 to give calmness and vigor to the mind, to impart a 
 healthy tone to the body, and to diminish the desire for 
 life in the street and for resort to gossiping companions. 
 
 Were I as rich as Croesus, my girls should have some- 
 thing to do regularly, just as soon as they should be- 
 come old enough to do anything. They should learn, 
 above all things, to help themselves, and thus to be in - 
 dependent in all circumstances. A woman, helpless 
 from any other cause than sickness, is essentially a 
 
126 Tit combos Letter's. 
 
 nuisance. There is nothing womanly and ladylike in 
 helplessness. My policy would be, as girls grow up, to 
 assign to them special duties, first in one part of the 
 house, then in another, until they should become ac- 
 quainted with all housewifely offices ; and I should have 
 an object in this beyond the simple acquisition of a 
 knowledge of housewifery. It should be for the acquisi- 
 tion of habits of physical industry — of habits that con- 
 duce to the health of body and mind — of habits that 
 give them an insight into the nature of labor, and in- 
 spire within them a genuine sympathy with those whose 
 lot it is to labor. 
 
 All young mind is uneasy if it be good for anything. 
 There is not the genuine human stuff in a girl who is 
 habitually and by nature passive, placid, and inactive. 
 The body and the mind must both be in motion. If 
 this tendency to activity be left to run loose — undirected 
 into channels of usefulness — a spoiled child is the re- 
 sult. A girl growing up to womanhood, is, when unem- 
 ployed, habitually uneasy. The mind aches and chafes 
 because it wants action, for a motive. Now a mind in 
 this condition is not benefited by the command to stay at 
 home, or the withdrawal from companions. It must be 
 set to work. This vital energy that is struggling to find 
 relief in demonstration should be so directed that habits 
 may be formed, — habits of industry that obviate the 
 wish for change and unnecessary play, and form a reg- 
 ular drain upon it. Otherwise, the mind becomes dis- 
 
Housewifery and hidustry. 127 
 
 sipated, the will irresolute, and confinement irksome. 
 Girls will never be happy, except in the company of 
 their playmates, unless home becomes to them a scene 
 of regular duty and personal usefulness. 
 
 There is another obvious advantage to be derived 
 from the habit of engaging daily upon special household 
 duties. The imagination of girls is apt to become ac- 
 tive to an unhealthy degree, when no corrective is em- 
 ployed. False views of life are engendered, and labor 
 is regarded as menial. Ease comes to be looked upon 
 as a supremely desirable thing, so that when the real, 
 inevitable cares of life come, there is no preparation for 
 them, and weak complainings or ill-natured discontent 
 are the result. 
 
 And here I am naturally introduced to another sub- 
 ject. Young women, the glory of your life is to do 
 something and to be something. You very possibly 
 may have formed the idea that ease and personal enjoy- 
 ment are the ends of your life. This is a terrible mis- 
 take. Development in the broadest sense and in the 
 highest direction is the end of your life. You may 
 possibly find ease with it, and a great deal of precious 
 personal enjoyment, or your life may be one long ex- 
 perience of self-denial. If you wish to be something 
 more than the pet and plaything of a man ; if you 
 would rise above the position of a pretty toy, or the 
 ornamental fixture of an establishment, you have a 
 work to do. You have a position to maintain in so- 
 
3 28 Titcomh's Letters. 
 
 ciety ; you have the poor and the sick to visit ; you may 
 possibly have a family to rear and train ; you must take 
 a load of care upon your shoulders and bear it through 
 life. You have a character to sustain ; and I hope that 
 you will have the heart of a husband to cheer and 
 strengthen. Ease is not for you. Selfish enjoyment is 
 not for you. The world is to be made better by you. 
 You will be obliged to suffer and to work ; and if there 
 be a spark of the true fire in you, your hearts will re- 
 spond to these words. 
 
 The time will come when you shall see that all your 
 toil, and care, and pain, and sorrow, and practical sym- 
 pathy for others has built you up into a strength of 
 womanhood which will despise ease as an end of life, 
 and pity those who are content with it. Get this idea 
 that your great business is simply to live at case out of 
 your head at once. There is nothing noble and cnnob- 
 hng in it. Your mental and physical powers can only 
 give you worthy happiness in the using. They were 
 made for use ; and a lazy woman is inevitably miserable. 
 I do not put this matter of enjoyment before you as the 
 motive for action. I simply state the fact that it is a 
 result of action — an incident of a life worthily spent. 
 
 When you have properly comprehended and received 
 this idea, the recreations of life and the pleasures of 
 social intercourse will take their appropriate positions 
 with relation to the business of life — its staple duties. 
 Recreation will become re-creation — simply the renewal 
 
Housewifery and Industry. 129 
 
 of your powers, that they may all the better perform 
 the work which you have undertaken, or which circum- 
 stances have devolved upon you. Social pleasure will 
 rise into a sympathetic communion with natures and 
 lives earnest like your own, upon the subjects nearest 
 your hearts, and it will give you strength and guidance. 
 The pleasures of life will become the wells, scattered 
 along the way, where you will lay down your burdens for 
 the moment, wipe your brows, and drink, that you may 
 go into the work before you refreshed in body and mind. 
 In these quiet hours you will feel a healthy thrill of 
 happiness which those who seek pleasure for its own 
 sake never know. 
 
 There are few objects in this world more repulsive to 
 me than a selfish woman— a woman who selfishly con- 
 sults her own enjoyments, her own ease, her own plea- 
 sure. If you have the slightest desire to be loved ; if 
 you would have your presence a welcome one in palace 
 and cottage alike ; if you would be admired, respected, 
 revered ; if you would have all sweet human sympathies 
 clustering around you while you live, and the tears of a 
 multitude of friends shed upon your grave when you die, 
 you must be a working woman — living and working for 
 others, denying yourself for others, and building up for 
 yourself a character, strong, symmetrical, beautiful. 
 If I were you, I would rather be that insensate and 
 quietly gliding shadow which the wounded soldier kissed 
 
 as the noble Florence Nightingale passed his weary pih 
 6* 
 
130 Tit CO nib' s Letters. 
 
 low, than the pampered creature of Uixury, who has n« 
 thought above her personal ease and personal adorn" 
 ment. 
 
 Do not seek out for yourselves any prominent field of 
 service where you will attract the attention of the world. 
 Remain where God places you. Some of the noblest 
 heroisms of the world have been achieved in humble 
 life. The poor ye have always with you. The miser- 
 able are always around you. You can lighten your 
 father's burdens. You can restrain your brothers from 
 vicious society. You can relieve your failing and fading 
 mother of much care. You can gather the ragged and 
 ignorant children at your knee, and teach them some- 
 thing of a better life than they have seen. You can be- 
 come angels of life and goodness to many stricken 
 hearts. You can read to the aged. You can do many 
 things which will be changed to blessings upon your own 
 soul. Florence Nightingale did her work in her place ; 
 do your work in yours, and your Father who seeth in 
 secret shall reward 3'ou openly. 
 
 I would be the last one to cast a shadow on your 
 brows, but I would undeceive you at the first, so that 
 you may begin life with right ideas. Life is real — it is 
 a real and earnest thing. It has homely details, painful 
 passages, and a crown of care for every brow. I seek to 
 inspire you with a wish and a will to meet it with a; 
 woman's spirit. I seek to point you to its nobler mean- 
 ings and its higher results. The tinsel with which your 
 
Housewifery and Industry. 131 
 
 imagination has invested it will all fall off of itself, so 
 soon as you shall fairly enter upon its experiences. 
 Then if these ideas have no place in you, you will be 
 obliged to acquire them slowly and painfully, or you 
 will sink into a poor, selfish, discontented creature — and 
 be, so far as others are concerned, either a nonentity, 
 or a disgraceful hanger-on and looker-on. So I say, 
 begin to take up life's duties now. Learn something 
 of what life is, before you take upon yourself its graver 
 responsibilities. 
 
LETTER VIII. 
 
 THE BEAUTY AND BLESSEDNESS OF FEMALE 
 PIETY. 
 
 The cross, if rightly borne, shall be 
 No burden, but support to thee. 
 
 — Whittier, 
 
 YOUNG women, this is my last letter addressed spe- 
 cially to you ; and as I take your hand, and give 
 you my adieu, I wish to say a few words which shall be 
 worth a great deal to you. It is my opinion that to a 
 certain extent, in certain directions, God meant that you 
 should be dependent upon men, and that in this de- 
 pendence should exist some of your profoundest and 
 sweetest attractions and your noblest characteristics. 
 Your bodies are smaller than those of men. You were 
 not made to wrestle with the rough forces of nature. 
 You were not made for war, or commerce, or agriculture. 
 In all these departments, the iron wills and the iron 
 muscles of man are alone at homco The bread you eat, 
 and the fabrics you wear, are to be gathered from the 
 earth by men. You are to be protected by men- 
 
The Blessedness of Female Piety. 133 
 
 They build your houses ; they guard your persons. It 
 is entirely natural for you to rely upon them for much 
 that you have. You give, or may give, great rewards 
 for all this. It is not a menial relation, nor one which 
 detracts from your dignity in the least. The circle of 
 human duties is only complete by the union of those of 
 man and woman. Man has his sphere — woman, hers. 
 We cannot talk of superiority among spheres and duties 
 that are alike essential. Suffice it that, in the degree 
 in which you are dependent upon man for support and 
 protection, does he owe support and protection to you. 
 He is bound to do for you what you, through the pecu- 
 liarities of your constitution, are unable to do for your- 
 self You are never to c^uarrel with this arrangement. 
 You will only make yourself unhappy by it, because, by 
 quarrelling with God's plans, you essentially unsex your- 
 self, and become a discord. Therefore recognize your 
 dependence gladly and gracefully. Be at home in it, 
 for in it lies your power for influence and for good. 
 
 This advances us a step towards the point to which 
 I wish to lead you. Now, if you will go with me into 
 a circle of praying Christians, or if you will take up 
 with me a list of the members of any church, I will 
 show you a fact which I wish to connect with the facts 
 stated in the preceding paragraph. You will find, I 
 suppose, that at least two-thirds of the members of the 
 prayer -meeting are women, and that the church regis- 
 ter will show a corresponding proportion of female 
 
134 TitcomU's Letters, 
 
 names. Why is this ? Is it because women are weakei 
 than men, simply ? Is it because women are subject to 
 smaller temptations than men ? Is it because theii 
 passions are less powerful than those of men ? Not at 
 all — or not in any important degree. It is because a 
 feeling of dependence is native in the female heart. It 
 is because the pride of independence has little or no 
 place there. It is because the female mind has to 
 undergo, comparatively, a small revolution to become 
 religious. Rather, perhaps, I should say, that one pow- 
 erful barrier that stands before the path of every man 
 in his approach to the valley of humiliation does not 
 oppose the passage of the true woman. I suppose it is 
 very rare that those who are denominated "strong- 
 minded women" become religious. The pride of per- 
 sonal independence is built before them by their own 
 hands. 
 
 So sweet and so natural a thing is piety among 
 women that men have come to regard a woman without 
 it as strange, if not unhealthy. The coarsest and most 
 godless men often select pious wives, because they see 
 that piety softens, and deepens, and elevates every 
 natural grace of person, and every accomplishment of 
 mind. Now my opinion is that Heaven, seeing how 
 important it is for you to be its own children, in profes- 
 sion and in spirit, has given special favors to your sex, 
 through this simple fact or principle of dependence. It 
 is your work to soften and refine men. Men living 
 
The Blessedness of Fcjualc Piety. 135 
 
 without you, by themselves, become savage and sinful. 
 The purer you are, the more are they restrained, and 
 the more are they elevated. It is your work to form 
 the young mind, — to give it direction and instruction — 
 to develop its love for the good and the true. It is 
 your work to make home happy — to nourish all the 
 virtues, and instil all the sentiments which build men 
 up into good citizens. The foundation of our national 
 character is laid by the mothers of the nation. I say 
 that Heaven, seeing the importance to the world of 
 piety in you, has so modified your relations to man that 
 it shall be comparatively easy for you to descend into 
 that valley, over which all must walk, before their feet 
 can stand upon the heights of Christian experience, 
 between which and Heaven's door the ascent is easy. 
 
 For my own part, I shrink with horror from a godless 
 woman. There seems to be no light in her — no glory 
 proceeding from her. There is something monstrous 
 about her. I can see why men do not become religious. 
 It is a hard thing — it is, at least, if experience and 
 observation are to be relied on — for a man whose will 
 has been made stern by encounters in the great battle 
 of life, who is conscious of power and accustomed to 
 have the minds around him bend to his, who possesses 
 the pride of manhood and the self-esteem that springs 
 naturally in the mind of one in his position, to become 
 *' as a little child." Woman has only to recognize her 
 dependence upon One higher than man, and, in doing 
 
136 TitcojnFs Letters. 
 
 this, is obliged to do but little violence to her habits ol 
 thought, and no violence at all to such sentiments of 
 independence as stand most in the way of man. So I 
 say that a godless woman is a monstrous woman. She 
 is an unreasonable woman. She is an offensive woman. 
 Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched 
 and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a 
 woman without excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. 
 He would not have such an one to take the care of his 
 children. He would not trust her. 
 
 I do not propose to offer you any incentives to piety 
 drawn from a future condition of rewards and punish- 
 ments. I leave it to the pulpits whose ministrations you 
 attend to talk of this matter in their own way. My 
 whole augument shall relate to the proprieties and 
 necessities of the present life* It is proper that you 
 serve the Being who made you, and that you love the 
 One who redeemed you. It is proper that to all your 
 graces you add that of unselfishness. It is proper that 
 all the elements of your character be harmonized and 
 sublimated by the tenderest devotion to the *' One 
 altogether lovely." It is proper that your heart be 
 purified, so that all the influence which goes out of it, 
 through the varied relationships of life, be good, and 
 only good, I mean by the word " proper'' all that the 
 word proper can mean. It is eternally and immutably 
 fit. I mean that it is ifnproper and laifii that you should 
 fail of piety. I mean that by carrying with you a rebel- 
 
TJie Blessedness of Female Piety. 137 
 
 lious and cold and careless heart, you introduce among 
 the sweetest harmonies of the world, a harsh discord, 
 which it is not fit and proper that you should introduce. 
 You are a wandering star. You are a voiceless bird. 
 You are a motionless brook. . The strings of your soul 
 are not in tune with those chords which the Infinite 
 hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the universe. 
 Your being does not respond to the touch of Provi- 
 dence ; and if Beauty, and Truth, and Goodness, and 
 Love, come down to you, like angels out of heaven, and 
 sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their 
 wings, or recognize their home and parentage. I 
 say that it is not proper — it is inexpressibly unfit that 
 you — a woman — with delicate sensibilities, and pure 
 instincts and a dependent nature, should ignore the 
 relations which exist between your soul and God, and 
 put a veil of blackness between the light which he 
 has lighted within you, and that Infinite fountain of 
 light still open and ready to fill all your being with its 
 divine radiance. 
 
 Then, as to your necessities : First, remember what 
 you are. You are really the consolers of the world. 
 You attend the world in sickness ; you give all its 
 medicines ; your society soothes the world after its toil, 
 and rewards it for its perplexities ; you receive the in- 
 fant when it enters upon existence ; you drape the cold 
 form of the aged when life is past ; you settle the little 
 difficulties, and assuage the sorrows of childhood ; you 
 
138 TitcomF s Letters. 
 
 minister to the poor and the distressed. Do you sup' 
 pose that out of the resources of your poor heart, you 
 can supply all the draughts that will be made upon your 
 sympathies and their varied ministry ? Do you believe 
 that you carry within your own bosom light for the 
 dying, hope for the despairing, consolation for the bereft, 
 patience for the sick ? Nay, do you believe that you 
 have light and hope and consolation and patience suffi- 
 cient for your own soul's wants, while performing the 
 ministries to which, in Heaven's economy, you are ap- 
 pointed ? Piety is, then, an absolute necessity to you. 
 You can no more perform these offices to which you are 
 called, properly and efficiently, without piety, than a 
 bird can fly without wings. You would be trying to 
 make bricks without straw. Think of a woman by the 
 side of a dying sister, or a sick child, or a sorrowing 
 friend, or a broken-hearted and broken-spirited man, 
 without a word of heaven in her mouth — without so 
 much as the ability to whisper " Our Father," or even 
 to point her finger hopefully towards the stars ! 
 
 Again, your life and duties are peculiar, as your 
 sphere is distinct. If you lead a worthy, womanly life, 
 it will be a home life — free from great excitements. 
 The current of your thoughts will flow in retired chan- 
 nels. You will hear, outside, the braying of trumpets, 
 and the roll of drums, and the din of wheels, and the 
 rush and roar of the world's great business. Oftentimes: 
 when you are busy with your modest affairs, and going 
 
The Blessedness of Female Piety, 139 
 
 through the wearying routine of your hfe, you will be 
 tempted to repine at their quietness and insipidness. 
 Many a woman does the work of her life without being 
 seen or noticed by the world. The world sees a familv 
 reared to virtue — one child after another growing into 
 Christian manhood and womanhood, and at last it sees 
 them all gathered around a grave where the mother that 
 bore them rests from her labors. But the world has 
 never seen that quiet woman laboring for her children, 
 making their clothes, providing their food, teaching 
 them their prayers, and making their homes comfort- 
 able and happy. 
 
 The world knows nothing, or does not think, of the 
 fears, the pains, and the anxieties inseparable from the 
 mother's office. She bears them alone, and discharges 
 her peculiar responsibilities without assistance. No in- 
 dividual in the world can do a mother's work for her. 
 A family of young immortals is committed to her hands. 
 The rearing and training of these form a business to 
 which she has served no apprenticeship. If divine 
 guidance and support be necessary to any one in the 
 world, they are necessary to the wife and mother^ It is 
 a sad, sad thought to any son or daughter that his or 
 her mother was not a woman of piety. The boy that 
 feels that his name is mentioned in a good mother's 
 prayers, is comparatively safe frorn vice, and the ruin to 
 which it leads. The sweetest thought that N. P. Willis 
 ever penned grew out of a reference to his pious mother's 
 
140 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 prayers for him. Tossed by the waves, in a vessel which 
 was bearing him homeward, he wrote : 
 
 "' Sleep safe, O wave-worn mariner, 
 
 Nor fear to-night nor storm nor sea 1 
 The ear of keaven bends low to her ; 
 He cotnes to shore ivho sails -with me/ " 
 
 Will not piety be necessary to you ? Will not youl 
 piety be necessary to your children ? 
 
 And now, young women, a few closing words. I have 
 no doubt many of you have read these letters with care, 
 and with an earnest wish to profit by them. They have 
 been written in all honesty and sincerity, and I leave 
 them with you. The opinions I have given you have 
 not been hastily formed, nor has the counsel I have 
 urged upon you arisen from anything but a conscien- 
 tious conviction of your wants, and a desire to help you 
 to a womanhood, the noblest to be achieved in this 
 world. Your happiness is very much in your own 
 hands ; so are your usefulness and your good name. I 
 do not ask you to be anything but a glad, sunny woman. 
 I would have no counsels of mine recommended by long 
 faces and formal behavior. I would have you so at 
 peace with Heaven, with the world and with yourself, 
 that tears shall flow only at the call of sympathy. I 
 would have you imrnaculate as light, devoted to all good 
 deeds, industrious, intelligent, patient, heroic. And 
 crowning every grace of person and mind, every ac 
 
The Blessedness of Fe^nale Piety. 141 
 
 compiishment, every noble sentiment, every womanly 
 faculty, every delicate instinct, every true impulse, I 
 would see religion upon your brow — the coronet by 
 token of which God makes you a princess in his family, 
 and an heir to the brightest glories, the sweetest plea- 
 sures, the noblest privileges, and the highest honors of 
 his kingdom. 
 
LETTERS TO 
 YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
LETTERS TO YOUNG MARRIED 
 PEOPLE. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 THE FIRST ESSENTIAL DUTIES OF THE CONNUBIAL 
 RELA TION. 
 
 O let us walk the world, so that our love 
 Burn like a blessed beacon, beautiful, 
 Upon the walls of life's surrounding dark. 
 
 — Gerald Massey. 
 
 YOU are married, and it is for better or for worse. 
 You are bound to one another as companions for 
 life. Did it ever occur to you that this is a momentous 
 fact ? Did you ever think that since you came into the 
 world, a precious lump of helpless life, there is no fact 
 of your history which will so much affect your destiny as 
 this ? I do not propose to inquire into the motives 
 which led you to this union. You may have come to- 
 gether like two streams, flowing naturally towards one 
 point, and then mingling their waters with scarcely a 
 7 
 
146 TitcomFs Letters. 
 
 ripple, to pass on together to the great ocean. You 
 may have come together under the wild stress of pas- 
 sion, or the feeble attractions of fancy, or the sordid im= 
 pulsions of interest, or by force of the purest love. But 
 the time for considering the motives which have united 
 you is past. You are married, for better or for worse. 
 The word is spoken. The bond is sealed ; and the 
 only question now is — " how shall this union be made 
 to contribute the most to your happiness and your best 
 development ? " It is to answer this question as well 
 as I can, that I write this series of letters. 
 
 You have but one life to live, and no amount of 
 money, or influence, or fame, can pay you for a life of 
 unhappiness. You cannot afford to be unhappy. You 
 cannot afford to quarrel with one another. You cannot 
 afford to cherish a single thought, to harbor a single de- 
 sire, to gratify a single passion, or indulge a single self- 
 ish feeling that will tend to make this union anything 
 but a source of happiness to you. So it becomes you, 
 at starting, to have a perfect understanding with one 
 another. It becomes you to resolve that you will be 
 happy together, at any rate ; or that if you suffer, it shall 
 be from the same cause, and in perfect sympathy. You 
 are not to let any human being step between you, under 
 any circumstances. Neither father nor mother, neither 
 brother nor sister, neither friend nor neighbor, has any 
 right to interfere with your relations, so long, at least, 
 as you are agreed. You twain are to be one flesh-^ 
 
Duties of the Connubial Relation. 147 
 
 identified in objects, desires, sympathies, fortunes, posi- 
 tions — everything. You are to know no closer friend 
 Now I care not how pure and genuine may be the love 
 which has brought you together, if you have any charac- 
 ter at all, you will find that this perfect union cannot 
 be effected without compromises. Human character, 
 by a wise provision of Providence, is infinitely varied, 
 and there are not two individuals in existence so entirely 
 alike in their tastes, habits of thought, and natural apti- 
 tudes, that they can keep step with one another over all 
 the rough places in the path of life. So there must be 
 a bending to one another. I suppose the brides are few 
 who have not wept once over the hasty words of a hus- 
 band not six months married ; and I suppose there are 
 few husbands who, in the early part of their married 
 life, have not felt that perhaps their choice was not a 
 wise one. 
 
 Breaches of harmony will occur between imperfect 
 men and women ; but all bad results may be avoided 
 by a resolution, well kept on both sides, to ask the 
 other's pardon for every offence — for the hasty word, 
 the peevish complaint, the unshared pleasure — every- 
 thing that awakens an unpleasant thought, or wounds a 
 sensibility. This reparation must be made at once ; 
 and if you have a frank and worthy nature, a quarrel is 
 impossible. My opinion is that ninety-nine one-hun- 
 dredths of the unhappiness in the connubial relation, is 
 the absolute fault, and not primarily the misfortune, of 
 
148 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 the parties.' You can be happy together if you will; 
 but the agreement to be happy must be mutual. The 
 compromise cannot be all on one side. It is a mulish 
 pride in men, and a sensitive will in women, that make 
 the principal difficulty in all unhappy cases. I say to 
 every man and woman, if you have done anything 
 which has displeased your companion, beg her or his 
 pardon, whether you were intentionally guilty or not. 
 It is the cheapest and quickest way to settle the busi- 
 ness. One confession makes way for another, and the 
 matter is closed — closed, most probably, with the very 
 sweetest kiss of the season. 
 
 Be frank with one another. Many a husband and 
 wife go on from year to year with thoughts in their 
 hearts, that they hesitate to reveal to one another. If 
 you have anything in your mind concerning your com- 
 panion that troubles you, out with it. Do not brood 
 over it. Perhaps it can be explained on the spot, and 
 the matter for ever put to rest. Draw your souls closer 
 and closer together, from year to year. Get all obsta- 
 cles out of the way. Just as soon as one arises, attend 
 to it, and get rid of it. At last, they will all disappear. 
 You will become wonted to one another's habits and 
 frames of mind and peculiarities of disposition ; and 
 love, respect, and charity will take care of the rest. 
 
 I insist on this, because it is the very first essential 
 thing. I insist on it, because I believe that if there be 
 sufficient affinity between two persons to bring them 
 
Duties of the Connubial Relation. 149 
 
 together, and to lead them to unite their lives, it is their 
 fault if they fail to live happily, and still more and more 
 happily as the years advance. I will go so far as to sa5 
 that I believe that there are few women with whom a 
 kind, sensible man may not live happily, if he be so 
 disposed ; and I know that woman is more plastic in 
 her nature, and more susceptible to love than man. 
 So, when I hear of unhappy matches, I know that some- 
 body is to blame. 
 
 This intimate association of husband and wife — nay, 
 this identity — can never be preserved while either is 
 blabbing of the other. A man who tells his neighbors 
 that his wife is extravagant, that she is wasteful, that he 
 never finds her home, that she will never go out with 
 him, or that she is or does anything which he desires 
 her not to be or do, does a shameful thing, and a cruel 
 thing, besides making a fool of himself. A woman who 
 bruits her husband's faults, who tells the neighbors how 
 much he seeks the society of other women, how much 
 he spends for cigars, how late he is out at night, how 
 lazy he is, how little he cares for what interests her, how 
 stingy he is with his money, and all that sort of thing, 
 sins against herself, and consents, or voluntarily enlists, 
 to publish that which is essentially her own shame. A 
 husband and wife have no business to tell one another's 
 faults to anybody but to one another. They cannot do 
 it without shame. Their grievances are to be settled in 
 private, between themselves ; and in all public places, 
 
150 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 and among friends, they are to preserve towards one 
 another that nice consideration and entire respectful- 
 ness which their relation enjoins. For they are one in 
 the law ; and for a man or woman to publish the truth, 
 that they are not one in fact, is to acknowledge that 
 they are living in the relation of an unwilling lover and a 
 compulsory mistress. 
 
 A great deal of evil might be prevented between you 
 if you would allow your affection to give itself natural 
 expression. I know of husbands so proud and stiff and 
 surly that they never have a kiss or a caress, or a fond 
 word for their wives whom they really love. I know 
 such husbands who have most lovable wives — wives to 
 whom a single tender demonstration, that shall tell to 
 their hearts how inexpressibly pleasant their faces and 
 their society are, and how fondly they are loved, would 
 be better than untold gold — wives, to whom caresses 
 are sweeter than manna, and fond words more musical 
 than robin-songs in the rain. They go through life 
 starving for them — bearing buds of happiness upon their 
 bosoms that must be kissed into bloom, or wither and 
 fall. Yet the cast-iron husband goes about his business 
 without even a courteous "good morning," eats his 
 meals with immense regularity, provides for his family 
 exemplarily, imagines that he is an excellent husband, 
 and entertains a profound contempt for silly people who 
 are fond of one another. 
 
 Heaven be thanked that there are some in the world 
 
Duties of the Connubial Relation. 151 
 
 to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling ! Heaven 
 be thanked for the young old boys and the young old 
 girls — boys and girls for ever — who, until the evening 
 of life falls upon them, interchange the sweet caresses 
 that call back the days of courtship and early marriage ! 
 Thank Heaven that my wife can never grow old ; that 
 so long as a lock adorns her temples, brown or gray, 
 my finger shall toy with it ; that so long as I can sit 
 there shall be a place for her on my knee ; and that so 
 long as I can whisper and she can hear, she shall know 
 by fond confession that her soul is next to mine — linked 
 to mine — mine ! 
 
 I wish in this letter to impress upon you the idea 
 which few married people apparently thoroughly com- 
 prehend, that you — husband and wife — are one, — that 
 you have no separate interests, that you can have no 
 separate positions in society, that you should desire 
 none, and that it is within your ability, and is most im- 
 peratively your duty, to be happy together. In order 
 to be what you should be to each other, and in order to 
 be happy yourselves — in your ov.n hearts — you should 
 begin right. You should be willing at all times to bear 
 one another's burdens ; and in fact, I know of no better 
 rule for accomplishing the end I seek for you than by 
 your constantly studying and ministering to the happi- 
 ness of each other. Selfishness is the bane of all life, 
 and especially of married life ; and if a husband and 
 wife devote themselves to one another's happiness, re- 
 
1 52 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 linquishing their own selfish gratification for that end^ 
 the task is accomphshed — the secret solved. The path 
 of such a pair is paved with gold. Their life is a song 
 of praise. All good angels are about them, bearing 
 consolations for every sorrow, antidotes for every bane, 
 rewards for every labor, and strength for every trial. 
 That is essential marriage ; and, as Paul Dombey said 
 when Mrs. Pipchin told him there was nobody else like 
 her, ''that is a very good thing." 
 
 I suppose there is a modicum of romance in most 
 natures, and that if it gather about any event, it is that 
 of marriage. Most people marry ideals. There is 
 more or less of fictitious and fallacious glory resting 
 upon the head of every bride, which the young husband 
 sees and believes in. Both men and women manufac- 
 ture perfections in their mates by a happy process of 
 their imaginations, and then marry them. This, of 
 course, wears away. By the time the husband has seen 
 his wife eat heartily of pork and beans, and, with her 
 hair frizzled, and her oldest dress on, full of the enter- 
 prise of overhauling things, he sees that she belongs to 
 the same race with himself. And she, when her hus- 
 band gets up cross in the morning, and undertakes to 
 shave himself with cold water and a dull razor, while 
 his suspenders dangle at his heels, begins to see that 
 man is a very prosaic animal. In other words, there is 
 such a thing as a honeymoon, of longer or shorter du- 
 ration ; and while the moonshine lasts, the radiance of 
 
Ditties of the Connubial Relation. 153 
 
 the seventh heaven cannot compare with it. It is a 
 aeUcious little delirium — a febrile mental disease — 
 which, like measles, never comes again. 
 
 When the honeymoon passes away, setting behind 
 dull mountains, or dipping silently into the stormy sea 
 of life, the trying hour of married life has come. Be-, 
 tween the parties, there are no more illusions. The 
 feverish desire of possession has gone — vanished into 
 gratification — and all excitement has receded. Then 
 begins, or should begin, seriously, the business of adap- 
 tation. If they find that they do not love one another 
 as they thought they did, they should conscientiously 
 and earnestly foster and strengthen every bond of at- 
 tachment which exists. They should double their assid- 
 uous attentions to one another, and be jealous of every- 
 thing which tends in the slightest degree to separate 
 them. Life is too precious to be thrown away in secret 
 regrets or open differences. 
 
 I say to any married pair, from whom the romance of 
 life has fled, and who are discontented in the slightest 
 degree with their condition and relations, begin this 
 work of reconciliation before you are a day older. Re- 
 new the attentions of earlier days. Draw your hearts 
 closer together. Talk the thing all over. Acknowledge 
 your faults to one another, and determine that hence- 
 forth you will be all in all to each other ; and, my word 
 for it, you shall find in your relation the sweetest joy 
 earth has for you. There is no other way for you to do, 
 
 r 
 
154 Titcoinb's Letters. 
 
 If you are unhappy at home, you must be unhappy 
 abroad. The man or woman who has settled down 
 upon the conviction that he or she is attached for hfe 
 to an uncongenial yoke -fellow, and that there is no v/ay 
 of escape, has lost life. There is no effort too costly to 
 be made which can restore to its setting upon theii 
 bosoms the missing pearl. 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE HUSBAND. 
 
 He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his 
 own flesh ; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. 
 
 — St. Paul. 
 
 YOUNG husband, this letter is for you. Have you 
 an idea that you have anything like a just compre- 
 hension of the nature of the being whom God has given 
 you for a companion ? If you have, you labor under a 
 very serious mistake. You may live with her until, 
 amid gray hairs and grandchildren, you celebrate your 
 golden wedding, and then know but a tithe of her 
 strength and tenderness. I believe in such a thing as 
 sex of soul. A woman's happiness flows to her from 
 sources and through channels, different from those which 
 give origin and conduct to the happiness of man, and, 
 in a measure, will continue to do so for ever. Her 
 faculties bend their exercise towards different issues ; 
 her social and spiritual natures demand a different ali= 
 ment. What will satisfy you will not satisfy her. That 
 which most interests you is not that in which her soul 
 
156 Titcomb's Letters, 
 
 finds its inost grateful exercise. Her love for you ma^ 
 bring her intimately inta sympathy with your pursuits, 
 through all their wide range, from a hotly driven politi- 
 cal contest to breaking up a piece of wild land, or even 
 to the cultivation of an unthrifty whisker ; but it will 
 'only be because they interest the man she loves above 
 all others. She is actuated by motives that do not affect 
 you at all, or noi to the extent that they do her. If she 
 be led into sin, you renounce and denounce her as a 
 thing unclean ; yet, through all your debauchery, your 
 untruth to her, your beastly drunkenness, your dis- 
 honor, your misfortune, she will cling to you. There is 
 in her heart a depth of tenderness of which neither vou 
 nor she herself has any conception. Only the circum- 
 stances and exigencies of life will reveal it ; and this is 
 why a healthy female soul is always fresh and new. 
 Longfellow, in his " Spanish Student," gives a hint of 
 this— and a pretty deep one— in the language he puts 
 into the mouth of Preciosa's lover : — 
 
 " What most I prize in woman 
 Is her affections, not her intellect. 
 The intellect is finite ; but the affections 
 Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted." 
 
 •' The world of the affections is thy world ; — 
 Not that of man's ambition. In that stillness, 
 Which most becomes a woman, calm and holy, 
 Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart, 
 Feedincr its flames." 
 
special Duties of the Husband. 157 
 
 ^'The affections are infinite, and cannot be ex- 
 hausted ; " and it is through her affections, and through 
 the deepest of all affections, that happiness comes to the 
 bosom of your wife. The world may pile its honors 
 upon you until your brain goes wild with delirious ex- 
 citement ; wealth may pour into your coffers through 
 long years of prosperity ; you may enjoy the fairest re- 
 wards of enterprise and excellence ; but if all these 
 things are won by depriving your wife of your society — 
 by driving her out of your thoughts, and by interfering 
 with the constant sympathetic communion of your heart 
 with hers, she cannot but feel that what enriches you im- 
 poverishes her, and that your gain, whatever it may be, 
 is at her expense. She may enjoy your reputation and 
 your wealth, your successes and good fortunes, but you 
 and your society are things that are infinitely more 
 precious to her. She depends upon you, naturally and 
 by force of circumstances. Friends may crowd around 
 her ; but if you come not, she is not satisfied. She 
 may have spread before her a thousand delicacies ; but 
 if they arc unshared with you, she would exchange them 
 all for an orange which you bring home to her as an evi- 
 dence that you have thought of her. The dress you se- 
 lected when in the city is the dearest, though she may ac- 
 knowledge to herself that she would have chosen different 
 colors and material. In short, it is from your heart, and 
 the world coming through your heart, that she draws that 
 sustenance and s jpport which her deepest nature craves. 
 
158 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 Now, how are you dealing by this wife of yours ? 
 Do you say that you have all you can attend to in 
 your business, and that she must look out for herself? 
 Do you forget that she lives in the house, away from 
 the excitements of the world which so much interest 
 you, and that the very sweetest excitement of the day 
 is that which throws the warm blood in her heart into 
 eddies as she hears your step at the door ? Do you for- 
 get that she has no pleasure in public places unless you 
 are at her side ? Are you unmindful that she has no 
 such pleasant walks as those which she takes with her 
 hand upon your arm ? Do you ignore the fact that she 
 has a claim upon your time ? Do you fail to remember 
 that you took her out of a pleasant family circle, away 
 from the associations of her childhood, and that she has 
 no society in all the wide world which she prizes so 
 highly as yours ? Do you forget that you owe your first 
 duty to her, and that you have no right to give to so- 
 ciety, or to your own pleasure, the time which neces- 
 sarily involves neglect of her ? To come to a practical 
 point — is it one of the aims of your life to give to your 
 wife a portion of your time and society, so that she shall 
 not always be obliged to sit alone, and go out alone ? 
 
 There are some poor specimens of your sex in the 
 world who not only do not feel that their wives have 
 any special claim on their consideration and their time, 
 but who take the occasion, when in the presence of their 
 wives, to make themselves generally despicable. I 
 
Special Duties of the Husband. 159 
 
 know a man whose appearance when in society, ox 
 mingling in the common affairs of business, has all the 
 blandness and fragrance of newly mown hay. He 
 touches his hat to the ladies whom he meets in the 
 street with a grace which a D'Orsay would honor with 
 admiration, and gives them a smile as genial and radiant 
 as a harvest moon. He bears with him all the polish 
 and grace of a gentleman. The concentrated virtues of 
 all the lubricating oils could not add to the ease of his 
 manners. People cannot imagine how such a man 
 could be anything but the best of husbands ; but he is 
 not any such thing. If I were a Jew, and not particu- 
 larly fond of bacon, I should say that he was a hog in 
 his own house. He is, there, domineering, peevish, ex- 
 acting, and hateful. I have never known him to speak 
 an affectionate or pleasant word to the best of wives. 
 Nothing is out of place in the house for which she is not 
 reproached in fretful and insulting language. Nothing 
 goes wrong out of doors for which he does not take re- 
 venge, or show his spite, by finding fault with the com- 
 panion of his life. He criticises her cooking and her 
 personal appearance, and, in short, lets off upon her 
 wounded but patient ear all the foul accumulations of 
 his miserable nature and most contemptible disposition. 
 Although some powerful impressions received in earh 
 life have induced me to oppose corporeal punishment 
 on principle, I have sometimes wondered whether I 
 should be entirely inconsolable if he should, some time^ 
 
l6o TitcomFs Letters. 
 
 be cowhided, kicked, cuffed, maimed, and otherwise 
 shamefully entreated. 
 
 But this is an extreme case, you say. Well, it ough/ 
 lo be ; but will you just stop for a moment, and ask 
 yourself where it is that you show the worst side of 
 your nature ? Where is it that you feel at the greatest 
 liberty to exhibit your spleen, to give way to your 
 fretfulness, to speak harsh words, to make hateful little 
 speeches that are contemptible from their unprovoked 
 bitterness ? Is it among your fellows, and in the society 
 of other ladies that you take occasion to say your 
 meanest things ? No, sir ! You go home to your wife ; 
 you go home from those who care no more for you than 
 they do for a thousand others, to the w^oman whom in 
 the presence of God and men you have promised to 
 love and cherish above all others ; to the woman who 
 loves you, and who regards you as better than all else 
 earthly ; to a woman who is unprotected save by you, 
 and wholly unprotected from you, and spit your spleen 
 into her ear, and say things to her which, if any one 
 else were to say, would secure him a well deserved 
 caning. Are you not ashamed of this ? You say things 
 to her which you would not dare to say to any other 
 lady, however much you might be provoked. You say 
 them — O courageous friend ! because nobody has the 
 right to cowhide you for it. Isn't that brave and manly ? 
 As the good mothers of us all have told us a thousand 
 times, '' don't you never let me hear of your doing that 
 
special Duties of the Husband. i6i 
 
 again.' It isn't pretty. It is ineffably wicked and das- 
 tardly. 
 
 That husbands and wives may entertain perfect sym- 
 pathy, there should be the closest confidence between 
 them. I need not tell the wife to give her husband the 
 most perfect confidence in all affairs. She does this 
 naturally, if her husband do not repulse her. But you, 
 young husband, do not give your wife your confidence^ 
 you do not make her your confidante — you have an idea 
 that your business is not your wife's business. So you 
 keep your troubles, your successes — everything — to 
 yourself. Numberless disturbances of married life be- 
 gin exactly at this point Your wife receives the money 
 for her personal expenses, and for the expenses of the 
 house, at your hands. You do not tell her how hardly 
 it has been won, with how much difficulty you have con- 
 trived to get it into your purse, and how necessary it is 
 for her to be economical. You often deceive her, out 
 of genuine love for her, into the belief that you are 
 really doing very well ; and yet you wonder the woman 
 can give twenty dollars for a hat and fifty dollars for a 
 cloak. Perhaps you chide her for her extravagance, * 
 and so, in course of time, she comes to think you have 
 got a niggardly streak in you, and very naturally rebels 
 against it. She will not be curtailed in her expendi- 
 tures. She dresses no better than her neighbors. So 
 you run your fingers through your hair, and sigh over 
 the fact that you have got an extravagant wife, while 
 
1 62 Tit comb's Letters, 
 
 she, in turn, wonders how it is possible for a loving 
 husband to be so selfish and stingy. 
 
 7 hus for life, perhaps, a hostility of feeling and in- 
 terest is established, which might all have been pre- 
 vented by a free and full statement of your circum- 
 stances. This would interest her in, and identify hei 
 with, all your trials. It is entirely rational and right 
 that your wife should understand the basis of all your 
 requirements of her ; and, when she does this, the 
 chances are that she will not only be economical her- 
 self, but will point out leakages in your prosperity for 
 ivhich you are responsible rather than herself. It is 
 possible that you have a companion as much troubled 
 by figures as the child-wife, Dora, was. If so, I am 
 sorry for you ; but, if so, very luckily she will do what 
 you require of her without a reason. 
 
 I understand perfectly the desire of a young and 
 sensitive husband to give his wife all the money she 
 wants. You would fulfil her wishes in all things ; 
 especially would you allow her those means that will 
 enable her to gratify her tastes in dress and household 
 equipage. You dislike to appear unthrifty, inefficient, 
 or mean, and you are willing to sacrifice much, that no 
 care, no small economies, no apprehension of coming 
 evil, should cloud the brow of the one you love. Well, 
 I honor this feeling, for it has its birth in a sensitive, 
 manly pride ; but it may go too far — very much too 
 far. It has carried many a man straight into the open 
 
special Duties of the Husband. 163 
 
 throat of bankruptcy, and ruined both husband and 
 wife for h'fe. No, you must tell her all about it. She 
 must know what your objects and projects are. She 
 must know what your income is, and the amount of 
 your annual expenses. Then, if she be a good wife, 
 and worthy of a good husband, she will become more 
 thoroughly your partner, and " cut her garment accord- 
 ing to the cloth." The interest which you thus secure 
 from her in your business affairs, will be the greatest 
 possible comfort to you. She will enjoy all your suc- 
 cesses, for they become her own. She will sympathize 
 in all your trials, and you will find great consolation in 
 feeling that there is one heart in the world that under- 
 stands you. 
 
 And this matter of confidence between you and your 
 wife must be carried into everything, for she is your life- 
 partner — your next soul. There is no way by which 
 she can understand fully her relations to the commu- 
 nity and its various interests, save by understanding your 
 own. So I say in closing, that to your wife you owe a 
 reasonable portion of your time and society, the very 
 choicest side of your nature and character when in her 
 society, and your fullest confidence in all the affairs con- 
 nected with your business, your ambitions, your hopes, 
 and your fears. In the fierce conflicts of life you will 
 find abundant recompense for all this. Your wife will 
 soften your resentments, assuage your disappointments, 
 pour balm upon your wounded spirit, and harmonize 
 
1 64 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 and soften you. At the same time, the exercise of heaii 
 and soul which this will give her, will make her a nobler, 
 freer, better woman. It will give her greater breadth 
 and strength of mind, and deepen her sensibilities. To 
 a pair thus living and acting, may well be applied a 
 couplet which occurs in that charming picture painted 
 by Pinckney, of the Indian husband and his pale-faced 
 wife :— 
 
 *' She humanizes him, and he 
 Educates her to hberty, " 
 
LETTER Iir. 
 
 SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE WIFE. 
 
 And when the King's decree which he shall make shall be published 
 throughout all his empire (for it is great), all the wives shall give to iheii 
 husbands honor, both to great and small. 
 
 — Book of Esther. 
 
 Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love 
 
 their children, to be discreet, keepers at home, good, obedient to their 
 
 own husbands. 
 
 — St. Paul. 
 
 YOUNG wife, I talked to your husband in my last 
 letter, and now I address you. I told him that 
 you had a claim on his time and society. There are 
 qualifications of this claim which concern you particu- 
 larly, and so I speak to you about them. Your husband 
 labors all day — every day — and during the waking hours, 
 between the conclusion of his labor at night and its com- 
 mencement in the morning, he must have recreation of 
 some kind ; and here comes in your duty. If you do 
 not make his home pleasant, so that the fulfilment of 
 his duty to you shall be a sweet pleasure to him, you 
 cannot hope for much of his company. What his na- 
 ture craves it will have — must have. He cannot be a 
 
i66 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 slave all the time — a slave to his work by day and a 
 slave to you by night. He must have hours of free- 
 dom ; and happy are you if, of his own choice, he take 
 the enjoyment you offer in the place of anything which 
 the outside world has to give. I suppose there are few 
 men who, when their work is over, and their supper 
 eaten, do not have a desire to go down town '' to meet 
 a man," or visit "the post-office." There is a natural 
 desire in every heart to have, every day, an hour of 
 social freedom — a few minutes, at least, of walk in the 
 open air and contact with the minds of other men. 
 This is entirely a natural and necessary thing ; and you 
 should encourage rather than seek to prevent it, unless 
 your husband is inclined to visit bad places, and asso- 
 ciate with bad companions. 
 
 Precisely here is a dangerous point for both husband 
 and wife. The wife has been alone during the day, and 
 thinks that her husband ought to spend the whole even- 
 ing with her. The husband has been confined to his 
 labor, and longs for an hour of freedom, in whatever 
 direction his feet may choose to wander. Perhaps the 
 wife thinks he has no business to wander at all, and that 
 his custom is to wander too widely and too long. She 
 complains, and becomes exacting. She cannot bear to 
 have her husband out of her sight for a moment, after 
 he quits his work. Now, if there be anything in all this 
 world that will make a husband hate his wife, it is a 
 constant attempt on her part to monopolize all his lei' 
 
special Duties of the Wife. 167 
 
 sure time and all his society, to curtail his freedom, and 
 a tendency to be for ever fretting his ears with the state- 
 ment that " she is nothing, of course," that he '■'■ does 
 not care anything about her," and that he dislikes his 
 home. Treatment like this will just as certainly rouse 
 all the perverseness in a man's nature as a spark will 
 ignite gunpowder. Injustice and inconsiderateness will 
 not go down, especially when administered by a man's 
 companion. He knows that he loves his home, and 
 that he needs and has a right to a certain amount of his 
 time, away from home ; and if he be treated as if he 
 possessed no such necessity and right, he will soon learn 
 to be all that his wife represents him to be. I tell you 
 that a man wants very careful handling. You must re- 
 member that he can owe no duty to you which does not 
 involve a duty from you. You have the charge of the 
 home, and if you expect him to spend a portion, or all 
 of his evening in it, you must make it attractive. If you 
 expect a man, as a matter of duty, to give any consider- 
 able amount of time to your society, daily, through a 
 long series of years, you are to see that that society is 
 worth something to him. Where are your accomplish- 
 ments ? Where are your books ? Where are your sub- 
 jects of conversation ? 
 
 But let us take up this question separately : how shall 
 a wife make her home pleasant and her society attrac- 
 tive ? This is a short question, but a full answer would 
 make a book. I can only touch a few points. In the 
 
1 68 TitcomU's Letters. 
 
 first place, she should never indulge in fault-finding. Il 
 a man has learned to expect that he will invariably be 
 found fault with by his wife, on his return home, and 
 that the burden of her words will be complaint, he has 
 absolutely no pleasure to anticipate and none to enjoy. 
 There is but one alternative for a husband in such a 
 case : either to steel himself against complaints, or be 
 harrowed up by them and made snappish and waspish. 
 They never produce a good effect under any circum- 
 stances whatever. There should always be a pleasant 
 word and look ready for him who returns from the toils 
 of the day, wearied with earning the necessaries of the 
 family. If a pretty pair of slippers lie before the fire, 
 ready for his feet, so much the better. 
 
 Then, again, the desire to be pleasing in person should 
 never leave a wife for a day. The husband who comes 
 home at night, and finds his wife dressed to receive him, 
 — dressed neatly and tastefully, because she wishes to 
 be pleasant to his eye, cannot, unless he be a brute, 
 neglect her, or slight her graceful pains-taking. It is a 
 compliment to him. It displays a desire to maintain 
 the charms which first attracted him, and to keep intact 
 the silken bonds which her tasteful girlhood had fastened 
 to his fancy. 
 
 I have seen things managed very differently from this 
 I have known an undressed head of " horrid hair " worn 
 all day long, because nobody but the husband would see 
 it. I have seen breakfast dresses with sugar plantations 
 
special Duties of the Wife, 169 
 
 on them of very respectable size, and most disagreeable 
 stickiness. In short, I have seen slatterns, whose kiss 
 would not tempt the hungriest hermit that ever forswore 
 women, and was sorry for it. I have seen them with 
 neither collar nor zone, — with a person which did not 
 possess a single charm to a husband with his eyes open, 
 and in his right mind. This is all wrong, young wife, 
 for there is no being in this world for whom it is so 
 much for your interest to dress, as for your husband. 
 Your happiness depends much on your retaining not only 
 the esteem of your husband, but his admiration. He 
 should see no greater neatness and no more taste in 
 material and fitness, in any woman's dress, than in 
 yours ; and there is no individual in the world before 
 whom you should always appear with more thorough 
 tidiness of person than your husband. If you are care- 
 less in this particular, you absolutely throw away some 
 of the strongest and most charming influences which 
 you possess. What is true of your person is also true 
 of your house. If your house be disorderly ; if dust 
 cover the table, and invite the critical finger to write 
 your proper title ; if the furniture look as if it were 
 tossed into a room from a cart ; if your table-cloth have 
 a more intimate acquaintance with gravy than with soap, 
 and from cellar to garret there be no order, do you 
 blame a husband for not wanting to sit down and spend 
 his evening with you ? I should blame him, of course, 
 
 on general principles, but, as all men are not so sensible 
 8 
 
I/O Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 as I am, I should charitably entertain all proper ex- 
 cuses. 
 
 Still again, have you anything to talk about — any- 
 thing better than scandal — with which to interest and 
 refresh his weary mind ? I believe in the interchange 
 of caresses, as I have told you before, but kisses are 
 only the spice of life. You cannot always sit on your 
 husband's knee, for, in the first place, it would tire him, 
 and in the second place, he would get sick of it. You 
 should be one with your husband, but never in the 
 shape of a parasite. He should be able to see growth in 
 your soul, independent of him ; and whenever he truly 
 feels that he has received from you a stimulus to prog- 
 ress and to goodness, you have refreshed him, and 
 made a great advance into his heart. 
 
 He should see that you really have a strong desire to 
 make him happy, and to retain for ever the warmest 
 place in his respect, his admiration, and his affection. 
 Enter into all his plans with interest. Sweeten all his 
 troubles with your sympathy. Make him feel that there 
 is one ear always open to the revelation of his experien- 
 ces, that there is one heart that never misconstrues him, 
 that there is one refuge for him in all circumstances ; 
 and that in all weariness of body and soul, there is one 
 warm pillow for his head, beneath which a heart is beat- 
 ing with the same unvarying truth and affection, through 
 all gladness and sadness, as the faithful chronometer 
 suffers no perturbation of its rhythm by shine or shower. 
 
special Duties of the Wife. 171 
 
 A husband who has such a wife as this, has httle temp- 
 tation to spend much time away from home. He can- 
 not stay away long at a time. He may *' meet a man," 
 but the man will not long detain him from his wife. He 
 may go to the " post-office," but he will not call upon 
 the friend's wife on the way. He can do better. The 
 great danger is that he will love his home too well— that 
 he will neither be willing to have you visit your aunts 
 and cousins, nor, without a groan, accept an invitation 
 to tea at your neighbor's. 
 
 But 1 leave this special point, to which I have devoted 
 my space somewhat improvidently. There is one rela- 
 tion which you bear to your husband, or one aspect of 
 your relation to him, to which I have not alluded suffi- 
 ciently. You are not only the wife of his bosom — the 
 object of his affections, but you have a business relation 
 with him — you are his helpmate. To a very great ex- 
 tent you are dependent upon him, but you are also his 
 assistant, — bound to use his money economically, and 
 to aid, so far as you can, in saving and accumulating it. 
 The woman who feels that she has a right to spend 
 every cent that '' the old man" allowi her, and that all 
 she gets out of him is hers to lavish vipon her vanities, 
 takes a very low view of her relations to him. It is 
 simply the view of a mistress, and is utterly dishonora- 
 ble — utterly mercenary. The money which he puts into 
 your hand endows you simply with a stewardship. You 
 have no right to waste it, or to part with it, for anything 
 
1/2 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 but such values as are consistent with his means. You 
 have consented to be the partner of his life, and you 
 have no more right to squander his money than his busi- 
 ness partner has. It is your duty to husband it ; and 
 happy are you if your companion has such confidence in 
 your faithfulness to him and his interest, that he puts 
 money into your hand always willingly, believing that it 
 will be parted with judiciously, and with discreet and 
 conscientious regard to his means and abilities. If your 
 husband has no confidence in your economy and dis- 
 cretion, and consequently stints you, and absolutely 
 feels obliged to place you in the position of a favorite 
 dependent and pensioner — a plaything or a housekeeper 
 for whom he has got to pay — you are not happy by any 
 means. 
 
 You can do very much in your character of helpmate 
 to lighten your husband's cares, and relieve him from 
 anxieties. If he finds you looking closely after his in- 
 terests, buying economically the food for his table, and 
 never wastefully sacrificing your old dresses in conse- 
 quence of your thirst for new, always counting the cost 
 of every object which you may desire, you relieve his 
 mind from a load of care which no man can carry with- 
 out embarrassment. A man who feels that there is in 
 his own house a leak which will absorb all he may earn, 
 be that little or much, and that he has got to suffer it, 
 and suffer from it, or institute restrictions that will prob- 
 ably make him appear mean in the eyes of his wife 
 
special Duties of the Wife. 173 
 
 (wasteful wives are very apt to have mean husbands), 
 the great stimulus and encouragement of his industry 
 are taken away from him. 
 
 The full appreciation of your character, as your hus- 
 band's helpmate, depends upon the thorough identifica- 
 tion of yourself with him. Of this I have talked before, 
 and call it up again for the purpose of showing you that 
 there is absolutely no aspect of your relation to him 
 which can be considered legitimate and complete that 
 does not involve his identification. It is an equal thing. 
 You are interested in your husband's expenditures ; and 
 he is interested in yours. You have cast in your lot 
 together — your whole lot ; and he has no more right 
 to expend his money in such a way as to embarrass you, 
 and deprive you of what you need, than you have to 
 squander the means which he places .at your disposal. 
 It is a partnership concern, and if you succeed in man- 
 aging your department of it in such a way as to secure 
 your husband's confidence, fairly considering the cost of 
 every cent to him, he will feel that he is appreciated, 
 honored, and loved. Very likely he will understand 
 this better than tasteful comforts and tender demonstra- 
 tions of a lighter nature — demonstrations that involve 
 no self-denial. 
 
LETTER IV. 
 
 THE REARING OF CHILDREN 
 
 Once thou wert hidden in her painful side, 
 
 A boon unknown, a mystery and a fear ; 
 
 Strange pangs she bore for thee ; but He whose name 
 
 Is everlasting Love hath healed her pain ; 
 
 And paid her suffering hours with living joy. 
 
 — Henry Alford. 
 
 Hall, wedded Love ! mysterious law ; true source 
 Of human offspring ! 
 
 —Milton. 
 
 Y theory of life is that it is a school of mental 
 and moral development — that God intended that 
 each soul should pass under a series of influences, whose 
 office it should be to evolve all its faculties, and soften 
 and harmonize them. To this end, he has laid upon 
 each a sweet necessity to adopt the ordinances he has 
 contrived. When I speak of necessity, I do not mean 
 compulsion, save in a limited sense — compulsion entire- 
 ly consistent with individual election. Thus I believe 
 that there is a very material portion of mental and 
 tnoral development which cannot be achieved out of 
 
 M 
 
TJie Rearing of Children. 175 
 
 the marriage relation ; and, to bring men and women 
 into this relation, he has given them the sentiment of 
 love, and the desire of mutual personal possession. 
 This sentiment and desire are made so strong that they 
 may hardly be resisted, so that all shall choose to be 
 foined in conjugal relations. Thus the strong are soft- 
 ened by the weak, and the weak are invigorated by the 
 strong ; and the influences of men and women upon 
 each other become the most powerful agencies for their 
 mutual harmonious growth. But this is not all. When 
 a pair have become united in wedlock, there rises in 
 each healthy heart a desire for offspring. Nothing is 
 more natural than this desire, and nothing more im- 
 perative. Its germ is seen far back in childhood. The 
 boy's love of pets is but a manifestation of the primary 
 outreachings of this desire, which fasten at first upon 
 the only possible objects ; and there probably never 
 lived a little girl that did not love her doll beyond all 
 other playthings. She takes it first and retains it the 
 longest of any. 
 
 This brings me to the subject of children, as legiti- 
 mately something to be talked about in these letters. 
 The having and the rearing of children form one of 
 God's ordinances for making you what you should be — • 
 what he wishes you to be. They are as necessary to 
 you as you are to them. You can no more reach the 
 highest and most harmonious development of which 
 you are capable without children, than you can develop 
 
1/6 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 a muscle without exercise. Without them, one of the 
 most beautiful regions of your nature must for ever 
 remain without appropriate and direct culture. The 
 offices of children in the culture of their parents arc 
 manifold. In the first place, they arc a conservative 
 and regulating force. A pair living together without 
 children naturally become selfish. A pair unwatched 
 by innocent eyes are often thrown off their guard in 
 their language towards, and treatment of, each other. 
 They lose one great stimulus to industry, and do not 
 possess that which is, perhaps, the strongest bond, under 
 all the circumstances of life, which can bind husband 
 and wife together. There can be no true development 
 of heart and mind where pure selfishness is the pre- 
 dominant principle ; so God ordains that in each house 
 there shall be little ones, more precious than all else, 
 who shall engage the sympathy, tax the efforts, and 
 absorb the love of those who sustain to them the rela* 
 tion of parents. The law is irreversible that our best 
 individual progress in mental and moral good shall be 
 attained by efforts devoted to others ; and in children, 
 each parent finds the nearest objects of such devotion. 
 And there is, perhaps, nothing which so tends to soften 
 the heart, to develop the kindlier affections, and to un- 
 lock and chasten the sympathies of men and women, as 
 the children which sit around their table, and frolic 
 upon their knees. 
 
 When I sec a man stop in the streets to comfort 
 
The Rearing of Children. 177 
 
 some weeping child, or to get a kiss from a pair of 
 juvenile lips, I know that he has passed through a 
 blessed experience with children. A helpless little head 
 has been laid upon his shoulder, in some hushed and 
 liallowed room where the great mystery of birth has 
 been enacted. Some feeble, wailing boy, pressed to his 
 breast, has been borne, night after night, with weary 
 arms, back and forth in the dimly lighted chamber 
 while the mother caught her short half hours of rest. 
 More likely still, some precious warbler, her eyes closed, 
 her lips for ever stilled, her golden curls parted away 
 from a marble forehead, a white rose in her hand, has 
 been laid in the grave, and the sod that covers her has 
 been fertilized by his tears. Oh ! there is something in 
 loving dependent children, in tender care for them, and 
 in losing them, even, which bestows upon the soul the 
 most enriching of its experien:<;es. They make us ten- 
 der and sympathetic, and a thousand times reward us 
 for all we do for them. We cannot get along without 
 them ; you cannot get along without them. You can- 
 not afford to do it. They are cheap at the price of 
 pain and sickness, and care and toil. 
 
 What do I mean by talk like this ? What do I mean 
 by the utterance of common-place like this ? I mean 
 simply to reveal some of the considerations upon which 
 I condemn a great and growing \ice among the young 
 married people of this country — a vice which ijivolves 
 
 essential murder in many instances, and swells the 
 8* 
 
lyS Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 profits of a thousand nostrum venders. And what do I 
 mean by this ? I mean that in thousands of American 
 homes children have come to be regarded either as 
 nuisances or luxuries. I mean that, in these homes, to 
 have children is deemed a great misfortune. They are 
 the bugbear that threatens people away from the mar- 
 riage relation, and frightens them when in it. I mean 
 that men and women, more and more in this country, 
 hug to themselves their selfish delights, cherish their 
 selfish ease, and consult their selfish convenience, with- 
 out a consideration of their duties as men and women, 
 and without a comprehension of the fact that they can 
 only find their highest enjoyment by obedience to the 
 laws of God, natural and revealed. I mean that there 
 are multitudes who envy those unblest with children, 
 and congratulate them upon their poverty. I mean that 
 there are husbands who grudge every charm lost by 
 their wives in the duties and sacrifices of maternity, 
 and that there are wives who are made spiteful and 
 angry by the interference of children with their indolent 
 habits, their love of freedom and self-indulgence and 
 their vain pursuits. I mean that the number is increas- 
 ing of those who receive the choicest earthly blessings 
 God can confer with ingratitude and wilful complain- 
 ings. That is precisely what I mean ; and I do not hesi- 
 tate to say that it is all a very shabby and sinful thing, 
 and that it is high time that those who are guilty were 
 ashamed of it. 
 
TJic Rearing of Children. 179 
 
 A woman who, by cool and calculating choice, is no 
 mother, and who congratulates herself that she has no 
 '* young ones " tied to her apron strings, is either very 
 unfortunately organized, or she is essentially immoral. 
 A man who can tip up his feet, over against his lonely 
 wife, and thank his stars that he has no '' squalling 
 brats" around to bother him, is a brute. It is time 
 that some one protest, and I hereby do protest, against 
 one of the great sins and shames of the age, — a sin 
 which deadens the conscie.ice, bestializes the affections, 
 and ruins the health of the mistaken creatures who 
 practise it, — which cuts the channel from one end of the 
 land to the other of a broader Ganges than that which 
 bubbles along its heathenish bank with the expiring 
 breath of infancy. 
 
 There is growing up a cowardly disposition to shirk 
 trouble and responsibility in this matter. '' I don't feel 
 competent to bring up a family of children." Who 
 does ? It is a part of your education to acquire compe- 
 tence for this work. " But I don't feel like assuming 
 such a responsibility." That responsibility is precisely 
 what you need to keep you in the path you ought to 
 walk in. "But I can't afford it." Are there two pairs 
 of hands between you, and not sufficient patience, cour- 
 age, and enterprise to do the duties of life ? " But I 
 am afraid that I should lose my children. They are 
 liable to so many accidents that it would be very 
 strange if I should be able to raise a familv without 
 
i8o Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 losing one or two." The sweetest and truest couplet 
 that the Queen's laureate ever wrote tells the story upon 
 this point : — 
 
 ♦' 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all." 
 
 Ask the father and the mother, weeping over tne 
 coffin of their first-born and only child, whether they 
 regret that the child was born. Ask them the sam.e 
 question in after years, when that little life has come to 
 be a thread of gold running through all their expe- 
 riences. If they give an affirmative answer, I will be 
 silent. No, my married friends — you who shrink from 
 accepting the choicest privilege bestowed upon you — 
 you are all wrong ; and if you live, you will arrive at a 
 period where you will see that there are rewards and 
 punishments attached to this thing. What is to sustain 
 you when, in old age — the charms of youth all past, 
 desire extinguished, and the grasshopper a burden — you 
 sit at your lonely board, and think of the strangers who 
 are to enjoy the fruit of your most fruitless life ? Who 
 are to feed the deadening affections of your heart and 
 keep life bright and desirable to its close, but the little 
 ones whom you rear to manhood and womanhood ? 
 What is to reward you for the toils of life if you do not 
 feel that you— your thoughts, your blood, your influence 
 —are to be continued into the future ? Do you like the 
 idea of having hirelings, or those who are anxious to ge? 
 
The Rearing of Children. i8i 
 
 rid of you, about your dying bed ? Is it not worth 
 something to have a family of children whom you have 
 reared, lingering about your grave, with tears on their 
 cheeks and blessings on their lips — tears for a great 
 loss, and blessings on the hallowed influence which has 
 trained them in the path of duty, and directed them 
 to life's noblest ends ? 
 
 This is a subject which has not been talked about 
 much publicly, but it is a very serious thing with me, 
 and it ought to be with you. I love the family life. I 
 esteem a Christian family — the more numerous the bet- 
 ter — one of the most beautiful subjects of contemplation 
 the earth affords. A father, thoroughly chastened and 
 warmed in all his affections, and a mother overflowing 
 with love for the dear children God has given her, 
 devoted to their welfare, and guiding them by her ten- 
 der counsels, sitting at their board with the sprightly 
 forms and bright eyes of childhood around the table, or 
 all kneeling at the family altar, form a sight more 
 nearly allied to heaven than any other which the world 
 presents. Do you suppose such a father would be what 
 he is but for his children ? Do you believe such a 
 mother would be the blessed being she is but for the 
 development which she receives in her maternal office ? 
 No, you know that both have been chastened, elevated, 
 purified, made strong, and essentially glorified, by a 
 relation as sanctifying as it is sacred. 
 
 So I say, in closing, that you can never realize the 
 
1 82 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 very choicest and richest blessings that Heaven intends 
 for you, in your relations as husband and wife, without 
 children. Whom God deprives of these, he has other 
 thought for, and I have nothing to say to them ; but to 
 the multitude, I say, give welcome to each new comer 
 whom God has lighted with a spark of his own divinity 
 to grow in glory till it shall outshine the star beneath 
 which it entered existence, such greeting as you would 
 give an angel. Clothe him in white, bear him to the 
 baptismal font, rejoice over him as a testimonial that 
 God remembers you, and celebrate the day when he was 
 given to your arms in such a manner that he shall know 
 that it is a blessed thing to be born. Sing to him pleas- 
 ant songs, and scatter roses upon his cradle. " Of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven," and in such the Saviour has 
 given to you those to whose pure, simple, and innocent 
 likeness he would have you conform your heart. You 
 are to rear your boy to manhood, and educate him to 
 be a man ; and he, in turn, is to educate you to be a 
 child, and protect your helpless years. It is an even 
 thing, and a beautiful exhibition of that wonderful 
 machinery by which all are made to bear equal burden 
 ?'n evolving the noblest life of the race. 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 SEPARA TION—FAMIL Y RELA TIVES— SERVANTS^ 
 
 Whate'er the uplooking soul admires, 
 Whate'er the senses' banquet be, 
 Fatigues, at last, with vain desires. 
 Or sickens by satiety. 
 
 But, truly, my delight was more 
 In her to whom I'm bound for aye 
 Yesterday than the day before. 
 And more to-day than yesterday ! 
 
 — The Angel in the House. 
 
 THERE are so many subjects which call for notice 
 in my letters to you that one letter, at least, must 
 be a piece of patchwork. I propose that this one shall 
 bear such a character. 
 
 It is doubtless a general experience that a husband 
 and wife, after living together for a time, become in a 
 measure tired of one another's company. Before mar- 
 riage, they were essential to each other ; after long 
 months of intimacy, a sense of monotony creeps upon 
 them, and a separation for a few weeks is regarded as 
 desirable, or not to be regretted. The husband would 
 
1 84 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 like a little more freedom ; the wife, perhaps, pines fof 
 the associations of her free and careless girlhood. 
 When this feeling comes upon a married pair, the time 
 for a temporary separation has arrived, and the quicker 
 it is instituted the better. The object and end of it is 
 to prove to both that they cannot be happy M^hen 
 separated. The first week will pass off very pleasantly ; 
 the second will find them rather longing for one an- 
 other's society again ; the third will burden the mails 
 with tender epistles in which the romance and ardor of 
 courtship will be revived ; the fourth will convince the 
 wife that she has the very dearest husband in the world, 
 and the husband will carry his package of letters in his 
 breast pocket and sigh ; the fifth will find a day set for 
 the greatly longed-for re-union, about which both will 
 be thinking all the time ; and the sixth will bring the 
 wife home, with all her precious beauty and band-boxes ; 
 and such a meeting will take place as well might make 
 an observing old bachelor commit suicide. Well, they 
 have learned a lesson which they will remember as long 
 as they shall live. It is proved to them that they can 
 not be happy apart, and that separation will always be 
 a calamity. 
 
 Various circumstances spring up in the course of life 
 which seem to dictate a temporary separation, on the 
 score of economy or profit. A man will desire to go 
 into a distant city, for a sojourn of months and perhaps 
 years, that he may buy and sell and get gain. The wife 
 
Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 185 
 
 may not go, as it would interfere with the profits. This 
 is one case ; and there may be a thousand others in 
 which pohcy dictates a hke temporary separation. My 
 counsel is to regard all such inducements for separation 
 as temptations of the devil. It is morally degrading 
 for a husband and wife to live apart from each other. 
 It is the rupture of a sacred tie — the denial of a sacred 
 pledge — the breaking up of a relation into which reli- 
 gion, affection, and habits of thought and life have all 
 become intimately interwoven, leaving both man and 
 v/oman loosely floating among new influences, and freed 
 from the restraints to which their lives had become 
 conformed. 
 
 Separation for the time being destroys the comfort 
 and withholds the rewards of married life. It is a long, 
 dreary, monotonous, or anxious episode, for which neither 
 fame nor money can compensate. It is this, or worse ; 
 for, certainly, nothing can compensate for the acquisition 
 of that indifference on either side which proves that 
 separation is not a calamity. A broken bone, too long 
 left without setting, can never again make a firm junc- 
 tion. Separation which shows that a pair cannot live 
 apart is well ; separation which proves that they can, is 
 one of the worst things that can happen. Therefore I 
 say to every man, that the circumstances should be most 
 extraordinary which will leave him at liberty to break up 
 his home, or justify him in separating from his wife. 
 If you cannot take the wife of your bosom with you, 
 
1 86 Titcomb^ s Letters. 
 
 you are to believe, generally, that your plans have not 
 the favor of Providence. 
 
 It is the habit of some husbands and wives to have 
 intimate friends whom they cherish and correspond with, 
 independently. I have known very good husbands to 
 carry on limited flirtations with girls, to be the reposi- 
 tories of secrets belonging to such, and to act as their 
 very agreeable next friends. Very pleasant connections 
 are these, to a young husband, who has time to attend 
 to them, but very dangerous in the long run. Similar 
 connexions on the other side of the house have made a 
 great deal of difficulty since the world began. They 
 are very harmless things at first ; but there is nothing 
 but danger in the intimacy of a married heart with an 
 unmarried one, unless there be other relationships which 
 justify it. A man or a woman who, from the most in- 
 nocent motives originally, plays with such an intimacy 
 as this, is toying with a very dangerous instrument. It 
 leads to the establishment of secrets between husband 
 and wife — itself a bad thing — and too frequently leads 
 to their estrangement, more or less pronounced. You 
 should never write a letter, or give occasion for the re- 
 ceipt of one, which you are unwilling to show to your 
 companion. Under none but extraordinary circum'" 
 stances should you consent to receive a secret from a 
 friend which he or she may be unwilHng your companion 
 should know. 
 
 If you have friends, they should be the friends of your 
 
Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 187 
 
 companion ; and this should be carried outside of the 
 circle of your intimacies. You have no business with a 
 friend who refuses to be your companion's friend ; and 
 again you have no business with a friend whom, for a 
 valid reason, your companion refuses to know. You may 
 have come together from different classes of society. 
 The wife or the husband may be proscribed by a class, 
 while her or his companion may be a favorite of the 
 same class. A husband or a wife, who is willing to ig- 
 nore this proscription and distinction, demonstrates a 
 lack of spirit and self-respect that is utterly contempti- 
 ble. A husband or a wife acting thus dishonors his or 
 her own flesh and blood. You go together ; you are to 
 be received together or not at all ; and an insult to one 
 is an insult to both, always, and under all circumstances. 
 And now that I have spoken of your mutual relations 
 to intimates and friends, it is proper that I speak of 
 your relations to your respective blood connections. 
 Very fruitful causes of disturbance between husbands 
 and wives are the relatives of the married pair. Not un- 
 frequently the parents of the husband are brought into 
 his family, and not unfrequently those of the wife. 
 Doubtless there are instances in which it is impossible 
 to get along without difficulty with these, but if you 
 have fully apprehended my course of reasoning with 
 you, and admitted its validity, there is but one course 
 for you to pursue. You are one. The husband's 
 parents are the wife's parents, and the wife's parents are 
 
1 88 Tit CO nib's Letters. 
 
 the parents of the husband. You are to receive and 
 treat them as your own — not with constraint and as a 
 matter of duty, but willingly and affectionately. You 
 are to learn to love and respect them, — to bear with 
 their frailties, to comfort them in their passage to the 
 tomb, to treat them in no sense as dependents, and to 
 make them feel that they are not only welcome to your 
 kindly offices, but that they have a right to the home 
 which they have with you. You are young, and they 
 are old. It is for the honor of your companion that his 
 or her parents have support at his or her hands, and 
 what is your companion's honor is yours. Besides, this 
 world is a world of compensations, more nicely adapted 
 and more certain than you know. The time will pass 
 away, and the children now on your knee will have 
 grown to manhood and womanhood, and will have 
 chosen their companions, as their fathers and mothers 
 chose theirs before them. The home which you now 
 enjoy may be broken up. Your companion will be 
 taken from you, and your only resort may be the home 
 of your child. The treatment which you would wish 
 to receive from your son's wife, or your daughter's hus- 
 band, is precisely the treatment which you nov/ owe to 
 those who hold to you the relation which )'OU will then 
 sustain to them. 
 
 The same rules which govern you in regard to the 
 parents should extend to the circle of your other rela- 
 tives. Of course, your ability to maintain dependents 
 
Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 189 
 
 is a consideration ; but I regard personal and family 
 honor as most inseparably involved in this thing. A 
 son or a daughter who, with the power of maintaining 
 without impossible self-sacrifice a father and mother, 
 allows them to finish their life in an alms-house, or to 
 live on the charity of those upon whom they have no 
 special claims, is a brute. There are a few such mis- 
 erable creatures in the world, who ought to be hooted at 
 and cut by all decent people. In a measure the same 
 thing is true of all family relatives. It is a matter of 
 personal and family pride, as I have said. It is some- 
 thing more than this The poor we have always with 
 us, and we owe a duty to them, unless we ourselves are 
 equally poor ; but when a man has poor relatives who 
 must be dependent, more or less, upon some one, it is 
 as if God's finger had kindly pointed out to him the very 
 objects upon which his benefactions should be bestowed. 
 I am aware that this is rather serious doctrine for 
 some minds. I am aware that relatives are often proud 
 as well as poor ; that they will be dependent rather than 
 labor ; that they become insufferable drones and bores, 
 and haunt your homes with a most offensive and vexa- 
 tious presence. There ought to be some short method 
 of treating such, but I do not possess it. If you cannot 
 make them useful, there are several ways of making 
 them uncomfortable which may be safely left to the in- 
 vention and discretion of the suffering parties. My plea 
 is for a thorough identification of family feeling and 
 
190 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 family pride between husband and wife. If it entail dis* 
 agreeable and unjust burdens, through the laziness 01 
 extravagance of dependent relatives, it is a misfortune ; 
 but misfortunes are incident to all relations. Bettel 
 bear them than leave your motives open to suspicion, 
 or bring disgrace upon your family name. 
 
 I cannot close this letter better than by saying a word 
 or two upon the subject of servants. The general pro- 
 position that the quality of the servant is dependent 
 upon the quality of the mistress is a sound one. If a 
 woman who frets at and scolds her servants ever has a 
 good servant, it is in spite of the treatment she receives. 
 In order to be a good mistress, it is necessary to believe 
 in a few fundamental truths, which may be briefly 
 stated as follows : First ^ servants are human beings, 
 and consequently have souls ; second, servants, having 
 souls, are consequently controlled by the motives which 
 address themselves to a common humanity ; third, being 
 human, servants have rights which no amount of service 
 money can buy ; and fourth, transcendent intellectual 
 endowments, a physical development of fifty-horse 
 power, the broad circle of the Christian graces and vir- 
 tues, a faultless disposition, a knowledge of French 
 cookery, and elegant habits, cannot be obtained for nine 
 Yankee shillings a week. A mistress admitting gener- 
 ally the truth of these propositions possesses a basis for 
 securing service that shall be reasonably satisfactory to 
 her. 
 
Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 191 
 
 There is quite too much of the feeling among miS' 
 tresses that they have a right to use servants as a fast 
 boy uses a hired horse. They are to get the most out 
 of them that they can for the money they pay. They 
 take no personal interest in them, — extend to them no 
 matronly care and kindness. They forget that a servant 
 is a social being. They forget that she has humble 
 loves and hopes, has desires for freedom and recreation 
 as important to her as the higher love and hopes and 
 desires of the more favored girls who occupy the parlor. 
 They forget that the labors of the kitchen are tedious ; 
 that the confinement of the kitchen is irksome. They 
 become exacting, — strict in rules, rigid in discipline, and 
 peremptory in their commands. It is not in human na- 
 ture to stand this kind of thing, so the servant gets har- 
 dened at last, or wilfully careless. She receives nc 
 praise, any way, and therefore tries to get none. A 
 serv^ant, generally speaking, whose feelings as a humble 
 woman are appreciated by her mistress, who is praised 
 for what she does that is well, and kindly and patiently 
 instructed to correct that which is not well ; who is 
 treated to sympathetic and considerate words, and in- 
 dulged in that liberty which is absolutely essential to 
 her bodily and mental health, will love her mistress, 
 and have a desire to please. This, in all good and toler- 
 ably sensible natures, will settle the matter. A girl 
 exercised by this love and this desire will be a good 
 servant ninety-nine times in a hundred. It is undei 
 
192 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 relations like these that attachments arc formed which 
 are as tender as humanity and as lasting as life. 
 
 There is a broad view in which this and all kindred 
 matters arc to be regarded. The mistress is quite as 
 dependent upon the servant as the servant upon the 
 mistress. She renders an equivalent for what you give 
 her, and her service is as essential to you as your money 
 is to her. You cannot get along without her, nor can 
 she get along without you. Your position, to be sure, 
 is superior to hers, but she owes you nothing, save faith- 
 ful service and respect. The obligations are not all 
 upon one side. It is just as much your duty to be a 
 kind mistress and friend to her, as it is her duty to give 
 faithful service and respectful treatment to you. If, 
 therefore, you fail in your duty, you must not blame 
 her for failing in hers. I have never yet seen a good 
 servant who had not either a good mistress, or one who 
 was actually inferior to herself. Human nature is very 
 prevalent among women, and especially among maids 
 of all -work. 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 THE INSTITUTION OF HOME. 
 
 Home of our childhood ! How aflection clings, 
 And hovers round thee with her seraph wings ! 
 
 — O. W. Holmes. 
 
 For there are two heavens, sweet, 
 Both made of love — one inconceivable 
 Even by the other, so divine it is ; 
 The other far on this side of the stars 
 By men called Home, when some blest pair have met. 
 As we are now. 
 
 — Leigh Hunt, 
 
 THE French have no word into which the English 
 word home may be legitimately translated ; yet 
 it is sufficiently evident that many of the French people 
 have the thing without the name, while a large portion 
 of the American people have the name without the 
 thing. There are comparatively few who have an ade- 
 quate idea of what home is, as an institution. It is 
 recognised as a house, containing a convenient number 
 of chairs and tables, with a sufficiency of chamber fur- 
 niture and eatables, a place to eat and sleep in, simply, 
 9 
 
194 Tit comb' s Letters. 
 
 It is not unjust to say that half of the young married 
 people of America have no higher conception of home 
 than this. What they call their homes are simply 
 boarding houses, where, for purposes of economy and 
 convenience, they board themselves. 
 ' In my idea, home rises to the dignity of an institution 
 of life, and, like everything legitimately to be called an 
 institution of life, is both an outgrowth of life, and a 
 contributor to its development. Like all institutions, it 
 has its external form and internal power and signifi- 
 cance. Like the church, it has its edifice and appoint- 
 ments not only, but its membership, its bonds of spirit- 
 ual fellowship, and its germinal ideas, developing them- 
 selves into influences that bear flowers and fruits to 
 charm and feed the soul. It is into the meaning of the 
 word Home that I would introduce you first, my friends, 
 and then into the home itself. Marriage is the legiti- 
 mate basis of a genuine home, A husband is its priest 
 and a wife its priestess ; and it is for you, young hus- 
 band and young wife, to establish this institution, main- 
 tain it, beautify it in its outward form, fill it with all 
 good influences, develop its capacities, make it the ex- 
 pression of your best ideas of intimate social life, and to 
 use it as an instrument of genial power in moulding 
 such outside life as may come into contact with it. Its 
 outward form and its internal arrangements should, so 
 far as your means will permit, be the outgrowth of your 
 finest ideas and the expression of your best tastes, com- 
 
TJie Institution of Home. 195 
 
 bined with the practical ingenuities which may be ren- 
 dered necessary by a wholesome economy. 
 
 It is not the elm before the door of home that the 
 sailor pines for when tossing on the distant sea. It is 
 not the house that sheltered his childhood, the well 
 that gave him drink, nor the humble bed where he used 
 to lie and dream. These may be the objects that come 
 to his vision as he pacts the lonely deck, but the heart 
 within him longs for the sweet influences that came 
 through all these things, or were associated with them ; 
 for the heart clings to the institution which developed 
 it — to that beautiful tree of which it is the fruit. 
 Wherever, therefore, the heart wanders, it carries the 
 thought of home with it. Wherever, by the rivers of 
 Babylon, the heart feels its loss and loneliness, it hangs 
 its harp upon the willows and weeps. It prefers home 
 to its chief joy. It will never forget it. For there 
 swelled its first throb. There were developed its first 
 affections. There a mother's eyes looked into it ; there 
 a mother's voice spoke to it ; there a mother's prayers 
 blessed it. There the love of parents and brothers and 
 sisters gave it precious entertainment. There bubbled 
 up from unseen fountains life's first effervescing hopes. 
 There life took form, and color, and consistence. From 
 that centre went out all its young ambitions. Towards 
 that focus return its concentering memories. There it 
 took form, and fitted itself to loving natures and pleas- 
 ant natural scenes ; and it will carrv that impress 
 
196 Tit comb' s Letters. 
 
 wherever it may go, unless it become perverted by sin 
 or make to itself another home, sanctified by a new and 
 more precious afifection. 
 
 It is in the little communities which we call Ameri- 
 can homes that the hope of America rests. It is here 
 that subordination to wholesome restraint and respect 
 for law are inculcated. It is here, if anywhere, that 
 the affections receive their culture, that amiable dispo- 
 sitions are developed, that the amenities of life are 
 learned, that the mind and the body are established in 
 healthful habits, that mutual respect for mutual rights is 
 engendered, and here that all those faculties and quali- 
 ties are nurtured which enter into the structure of wor- 
 thy character. In the homes of America are born the 
 children of America, and from them go out into Amer- 
 ican life American men and women. They go out with 
 the stamp of these homes upon them, and only as these 
 homes are what they should be, will they be what they 
 should be. It is with this in view that I offer a few sug- 
 gestions touching the establishment of this institution 
 by you. 
 
 Just as soon as it is possible for you to do so, buy a 
 house, the ground it stands on, and as much land 
 around it as your business, convenience, or taste may 
 require. A home can never be all that it should be to 
 you and yours, unless you OAvn it. This is doubtless 
 impossible to a great multitude who will read this let' 
 ter, but let not such be discouraged. A beautiful home 
 
The Institution of Home. 197 
 
 life may be developed, even by a tenant at will ; though 
 the security and fixedness of proprietorship are greatly 
 tributary to home's permanent influences. If the home 
 is owned, see that its exterior represents you faithfully. 
 What you cannot afford in architecture, you can sup- 
 ply in vines and flowers. The interior should receive 
 the impress of all the order, neatness, taste, and inge- 
 nuity that are in you. Your home is the temple of your 
 sweetest human love. It is in this temple that young 
 immortals are born. It is here that characters are 
 shaped into manhood and womanhood — the highest 
 earthly estate. It is here that you are to work out the 
 problem of your lives. It is a place of dignity. There- 
 fore give it honor ; make it beautiful ; make it worthy ! 
 
 All this, however, only relates to the location — the 
 shell of your home. The ordering of its internal life is 
 of still greater importance. The greatest danger of 
 home life springs from its familiarity. Kindred hearts, 
 gathered at a common fireside, are far too apt to relax 
 from the proprieties of social life. Careless language 
 and careless attire are too apt to be indulged in when 
 the eye of the world is shut off, and the ear of the 
 world cannot hear. I counsel no stiffness of family eti- 
 quette — no sternness of family discipline — like that 
 which prevailed in the olden time. The day is past for 
 that, but the day for thorough respectfulness among the 
 members of a home — the day for careful propriety of 
 dress and address — will never pass. For it is here thaf 
 
198 Titcoifib's Letters. - 
 
 the truest and most faultless social life is to be lived ', 
 it is here that such a life is to be learned. A home in 
 which politeness reigns is a home from which polite 
 men and women go out ; and they go out directly from 
 no other. 
 
 The ordering of a home life is so intimately connected 
 with the treatment of children, that this subject should 
 be treated definitely. First, every child born to you 
 should learn among the first things it is capable of learn- 
 ing, that in your home your will is supreme. The 
 earlier a child learns this, the better ; and he should 
 learn, at the same time, from all your words and all 
 your conduct, that such authority is the companion of 
 the tenderest love and the most genial kindness. Play 
 with your children as much as you please ; make your- 
 selves their companions and sympathizers and confi- 
 dants ; but keep all the time the reins of your authority 
 steadily drawn, and never allow yourselves to be trifled 
 with. It is only in this way that you can keep the man- 
 agement of your home in your own hands, and retain 
 the affectionate respect of those whom you love as you 
 do yourselves. 
 
 Again, make your home a happy place — a pleasant 
 place. Much can be done towards this end by beautify- 
 ing it in the manner I have already pointed out. Much 
 more can be done by providing food and amusement for 
 the minds of your children. These minds you will find 
 to be active, restless, and greedy for new impressions. 
 
The Institution of Home. 199 
 
 This restlessness is a heaven-implanted impulse. You 
 have neither the power nor the right to repress it ; but it 
 is your duty to give it direction, so far as possible, and 
 to guide it to legitimate ends. You will find one of three 
 things to be true of your children. They will be happy 
 at home, or discontented at home, or they will seek for 
 happiness away from home. In the ignorance of the 
 nature of childhood on the part of parents has origin- 
 ated the ruin of millions of men and women. Bursting 
 from an unnatural and irrational restraint, they have 
 rushed from the release of parental authority to perdi- 
 tion ; or, allowed to seek for happiness away from home 
 and away from restraint, they have contracted habits 
 which curse them and their parents while they live. So 
 I tell you that the only way for you to save your chil- 
 dren is to make a home so pleasant to them— to pro- 
 vide such grateful changes for their uneasy natures — as 
 shall make their hom2 the most delightful spot on earth, 
 a spot to be loved while they live in it, and a spot to 
 be recalled with grateful memories when they leave it. 
 Profoundly to be commiserated is that child who looks 
 back upon his home as upon a prison-house ; upon his 
 youth as a season of hardship ; upon his parents as 
 tyrants. If such a child ever become a good and genial 
 man or woman, it will be in spite of a bad home. 
 
 I am well aware that the homes of America will not 
 become what they should be until a true idea of life 
 shall become more widely implanted. The worship o^ 
 
200 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 the dollar does more to degrade American homes and 
 the life of those homes than anything — than all things 
 — else. Utility is the God of almost universal worship. 
 The chief end of life is to gather gold, and that gold is 
 counted lost which hangs a picture upon the wall, which 
 purchases flowers for the yard, which buys a toy or a 
 book for the eager hand of childhood. Is this the whole 
 of human life ? Then it is a mean, meagre, and a most 
 undesirable thing! A child v/ill go forth from such a 
 home as a horse will go from a stall — glad to find free 
 air and a wider pasture. The influence of such a home 
 upon him in after life will be just none at all, or nothing 
 good. Thousands are rushing from homes like these 
 every year. They crowd into cities. They crowd into 
 villages. They swarm into all places where life is 
 clothed with a higher significance ; and the old shell of 
 home is deserted by every bird as soon as it can fly. 
 Ancestral homesteads and patrimonial acres have no 
 sacredness ; and when the father and mother die, the 
 stranger's money and the stranger's presence obliterate 
 associations that should be among the most sacred of all 
 things. 
 
 I would have you build up for yourselves and for your 
 children a home which will never be lightly parted with 
 — a home which shall be to all whose lives have been 
 associated with it the most interesting and precious spot 
 upon earth. I would have that home the abode of dig- 
 nity, propriety, beauty, grace, love, genial fellowships 
 
TJie Institution of Home, 201 
 
 and happy associations. Out from such a home I would 
 have good influences flow into neighborhoods and com- 
 munities. In such a home I would see noble ambitions 
 taking root, and receiving all generous culture. And 
 there I would see you, young husband and young wife, 
 happy. Do not deprive yourself of such influences as 
 will come to you through an institution like this. No 
 money can pay you for such a cTbprivation. No circum- 
 stances but those of utter poverty can justify you in de- 
 nying these influences to your children. 
 
 It is to the institution of home, as developed in its 
 best form and power, under the letter and spirit of 
 Christianity, that I point when the socialist approaches 
 me with his sophisms, the New Lights with their loose 
 theories of marriage, and the infidel with his howl over 
 the basis of American civilization. It is the history of 
 this home, since Christ lived, that is one of the strongest 
 testimonials to his divine authority. In whatever land, 
 under whatever system, by whatever men and women, 
 the Christian home has been set aside for fanciful inven- 
 tions, society has degenerated towards or into beastliness. 
 As I have said before, the hope of America is the homes 
 of Araerica. If you to whom I write will each for him- 
 self and herself make these homes the noble institu- 
 tions Heaven designs they shall be, this generation 
 shall not pass away before the world shall look upon a 
 people the like and the equal of which it has never 
 seen. A generation shall take possession of the land 
 9* 
 
202 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 full of dignity, love, grace, and goodness, glowing with 
 a patriotism as true as their regard for home is sacred, 
 and showing that the strength of the nation is forged 
 under the smoke that rises from its happy household 
 
 fires. 
 
LETTER VII. 
 
 SOCIAL HOMES, AXD BLESSINGS FOR DAILY USE. 
 
 How sweet, how passing sweet, is Solitude ! 
 But grant me still a friend in my retreat 
 Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet ! 
 
 — Cow PER. 
 
 The good he scorned, 
 
 Stalked off reluctant, like an ill used ghost. 
 
 Not to return. 
 
 — Robert Blair. 
 
 1HAVE talked to you of your duties to each other, to 
 your relatives, and to your servants. It remains to 
 me to speak of your duties to society, as heads of fami- 
 lies and rulers of homes. 
 
 I have insisted on the thorough identification of hus- 
 band and wife in feeling, pride of character and family, 
 pursuit, and interest ; yet I am aware that this identifica- 
 tion may be perverted into a most senseless and selfish 
 devotion to one another, and an exclusiveness of com- 
 munication, which are destructive of social life. I am 
 acquainted with too many husbands and wives who, 
 
204 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 though all the world to each other, are nothing to the 
 world. Their whole life is within their home. They 
 gather comforts about them, they bear dainties to each 
 other's lips ; they live and move and have their whole 
 being in each other's love ; and, shutting out all the 
 world, live only for themselves. I say I know too many 
 such pairs as these. They are far too plenty. They 
 cannot bear to be torn from their homes even for An 
 afternoon. They take no interest in others. They never 
 call friends and neighbors around their board, and they 
 consider it a hardship to fulfil the common offices of 
 social politeness — to say nothing of hospitality. It is 
 not unjust to say that this is one of the most dangerous 
 and most repulsive forms of married life. It is selfish- 
 ness doubled, associated, instituted ; and it deserves 
 serious treatment. 
 
 Homes, like individuals, have their relations to each 
 other ; and, as no man liveth to himself alone, no home 
 should live to itself alone. It is through the medium 
 of homes that the social life-blood of America is kept 
 ill circulation — through this medium almost exclusively. 
 Every home should be as a city set upon a hill, that 
 cannot be hid. Into it should floc'c friends and friend- 
 ships, bringing the life of the woild, the stimulus and 
 the modifying power of contact with various natures, 
 the fresh flowers of feeling gathered from wide fields. 
 Out of it should flow benign charities, pleasant ameni- 
 ties, and all those influences which are the natural 
 
Social Homes. 205 
 
 offspring of a high and harmonious home life. Inter- 
 communication of minds and homes is the condition of 
 individual and social development, and failing of this 
 no married pair can be what they should be to each 
 other. Exclusive devotion to business by day, and 
 exclusive devotion to selfish home enjoyments at night, 
 will dry up, harden, and depreciate the richest natures 
 in the course of a few years ; and, so soon as the man 
 withdraws from the business of the world, the world 
 has seen the last of him and his family for life. They 
 have no outside associations. It is as if they did not 
 live at all. When they die, nobody misses them, for 
 they have been nothing to society. As many doors 
 are open as before, and social life feels no ripple upon 
 its surface when the sand is thrown upon their coffins. 
 
 There should glow in every house, throughout the 
 land, the light of a pleasant welcome for friends. On 
 every hearth should leap the flame that irradiates the 
 forms and faces of associates. Neighborhood should 
 mean something more than a collection of dark and 
 selfishly-closed hearts and houses. A community should 
 be something better than an aggregation of individuals 
 and homes governed by the same laws, and sustaining 
 equal civil burdens. Neighborhood should be the name 
 of a vital relationship. A community should be a com- 
 munity in fact — informed with a genial, social life, in 
 which the influence of each nature, the power of each 
 intellect, the wealth of every individual acquisition, the 
 
2o6 Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 force of every well-directed will, and the inspiration of 
 every high and pure character, should be felt by all, A 
 neighborhood of homes like this, would be a neighbor- 
 hood indeed ; and none other deserves the name. 
 
 The fact is, that selfishness is the bane of all life. It 
 t 
 cannot enter into life — individual, family, or social — • 
 
 without cursing it. Therefore, if any married pair find 
 themselves inclined to confine themselves to one ano- 
 ther's society, indisposed to go abroad and mingle with 
 the life around them, disturbed and irritated by the col- 
 lection of friends in their own dwelling, or in any way 
 moved to regard their social duties as disagreeable, let 
 them be alarmed at once. It is a bad symptom — an 
 essentially morbid symptom. They should institute 
 means at once for removing this feeling ; and they can 
 only remove it by persistently going into society, persist- 
 ently gathering it into their own dwelling, and persist- 
 ently endeavoring to learn to love, and feel an interest 
 in all with whom they meet. The process of regenera- 
 tion will not be a tedious one, for the rewards of social 
 life are immediate. The heart enlarges quickly with 
 the practice of hospitality. The sympathies run and 
 take root, from point to point, each root throwing up 
 leaves and bearing flowers and fruit like strawberry 
 vines, if they are only allowed to do so. It is only 
 sympathies and strawberries that are cultivated in sep- 
 arate hills, which do otherwise. The human face is a 
 thing which should be able to brine; the heart into bios- 
 
Social Homes. 207 
 
 som with a moment's shining, and it will be such with 
 you, if you will meet it properly. 
 
 The penalties of family isolation will not, unhappily, 
 fall entirely upon yourselves. They will be visited with 
 double force upon your children. Children, reared in a 
 home with few or no associations, will grow up either 
 boorish or sensiti\'ely timid. It is a cruel wrong to chil- 
 dren to rear them without bringing them into continued 
 contact with polite social life. The ordeal through 
 which children thus reared are obliged to pass, in gain- 
 ing the ease and assurance which will make them at 
 home elsewhere than under the paternal roof, is one of 
 the severest, while those who are constantly accustomed 
 to a social life from their youth, are educated in all its 
 forms and graces without knowing it. 
 
 Great multitudes of men and women, all over the 
 country, are now living secluded from social contact, 
 simply from their sensitive consciousness of ignorance 
 of the forms of graceful intercourse. They feel that 
 they cannot break through their reserve. There is, 
 doubtless, much that is morbid in this feeling, and yet 
 it is mainly natural. From all this mortification and 
 this deprivation, every soul might have been saved by 
 education in a home where social life was properly lived. 
 It is cruel to deny to children the opportunity, not only 
 to become accustomed from their first consciousness 
 to the forms of society, but to enjoy its influence upon 
 their developing life. Society is food to children. Con- 
 
2o8 TitconiFs Letters, 
 
 tact with other minds is the means by which they are 
 educated ; and the difference in famihes of children will 
 show at once to the accustomed eye, the different social 
 character of their parents. But I have no space to fol- 
 low this subject further; and I leave it with you, with 
 the earnest wish that you will consider it, and profit by 
 the suggestions I have given you. 
 
 I must talk to you in this letter (for I have but one 
 more to write) in regard to your way of living, and your 
 main objects of life. Are you stretching every nerve 
 and straining every muscle to get gold ? Have you as- 
 sociated respectability with wealth ? Are you denying 
 to yourself a free and generous life now in your youth, 
 in order to enjoy such a life when youth shall have 
 passed away ? Are you scrimping yourselves and your 
 families by mean economies which grudge every six- 
 pence that escapes you, and make of your life a hard 
 and homely thing? I know of many young married 
 people who are living a life like this, and I pity them 
 more than I blame them, because they are victims of 
 false ideas, very probably inculcated by thrifty parents 
 or by most thriftless philosophers. If you are an un- 
 social pair, the probabilities are that you are engaged in 
 precisely this business. 
 
 Now I wish to tell you of something very much better 
 than this. I am not going to advise you to adopt a 
 luxurious style of living. I am not going to tell you to 
 spend all you get, and to run in debt for that which you 
 
Social Homes. 209 
 
 are unable to pay for. But I say that for every capable 
 and healthy man, and every clever and sensible woman, 
 both of whom are industrious, there is enough to be won 
 in the work of life to afford a generous living and leave 
 a sufficient margin for independent competence. The 
 years of your life will be few, at the most ; and for you 
 to throw away the enjoyment of their passing days for a 
 good which may never come, to be enjoyed in a life 
 that is uncertain, is to throw away for ever the blessings 
 which God intends for your present food. God's bless- 
 ings are not cumulative. The manna that fell in the 
 wilderness came every day, and spoiled with the keep- 
 ing. You may lay up wealth for age, but age, with its 
 teeth gone, its sensibilities killed, and without employ- 
 ment, cannot enjoy it. So, I tell you to enjoy your 
 wealth while you are earning it. I do not mean by this 
 that you are to lay up nothing. I do not mean that you 
 shall be imprudent, or improvident. I only counsel that 
 use of your money,, from day to day, which, will give you 
 generous food, tasteful dress, and pleasant surro-und- 
 ings, and which will tend to make life comfortable and 
 beautiful. 
 
 But some will read this who are in poverty, who do 
 not hope to obtain even independence. I am not writ- 
 ing to you, my friends, but to your neighbors, less 
 happy than you, who; have taken it into their heads to 
 get rich. Perhaps tliey may be your employers. At 
 ?ny rate, they are very unenviable people. I write to 
 
2IO Tit comb's Letters. 
 
 those who have the power to make money, and who ig 
 nore the present blessings of their lot — who enjoy no 
 present blessings. I write to those who wait for wealth 
 to make their first contributions to public charities, to 
 aid in the support of social and religious institutions, to 
 mingle in that neighborhood life which involves a genial 
 hospitality, to fill their library with books and their halls 
 with pictures, to resort to the concert and exhibitien 
 rooms for refining amusement, to give employment to 
 the poor, to make their homes the embodiment of good 
 taste and substantial comfort, and to provide for health 
 and pleasant recreation. 
 
 I believe that twice as much may be enjoyed in this 
 life, as is now enjoyed, if people would only take and 
 use the blessings which Heaven confers on them for 
 present use. We strive to accumulate beyond our 
 wants, and beyond the wants of our families. In doing 
 this, we deny to ourselves leisure, recreation, culture, 
 and social relaxation. When wealth has been won, our 
 power to enjoy it is past, and it goes into the hands of 
 children whose industry and enterprise it kills and whose 
 best life it spoils. It is not often that great accumula- 
 tions of wealth do anybody good. They usually spoil 
 the happiness of two generations — one in the getting, 
 and one in the spending. 
 
 I like the man who earns his money with the special 
 design of spending it— the man who regards money onlji 
 as a means of procuring that which shall supply the 
 
Social Homes. 2ii 
 
 passing wants of his nature — of his whole nature — and 
 for securing education to his children, and comfort to 
 his old age. It is to such that men go for subscriptions 
 to worthy objects. It is by the fireside and at the board 
 of such that I am happy. It is with the free and gener- , 
 ous souls of such that I delight to come in contact. It 
 is for such souls that life is made. Such men as these 
 go on from year to year, building up their homes, mak- 
 ing them abodes of beauty and plenty, and places of 
 refreshment for five hundred cordial hearts. Wherever 
 they go hands of warm good fellows are held out to them. 
 They have the blessing of the helpless, and the envy of 
 no man. Sometimes, perhaps, their wives are envied 
 by the wives of other men, but it is probably out of the 
 power of cither party to help that. 
 
LETTER VIII. 
 
 -=< VISION OF LIFE AND ITS MEANING 
 
 Here manhood struggles for the sake 
 
 Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, 
 
 The graces and the loves which make 
 
 The music of the march of life ; 
 
 And woman, in her daily round 
 
 Of duty, walks on holy ground ! 
 
 — WhittieRi 
 
 And so, 'twixt joy. 
 And love, and tears, and whatsoever pain 
 Man fitly shares with man, these two grow old ; 
 And, if indeed blest thoroughly, they die 
 In the same spot, and nigh the same good hour 
 And setting suns look heavenly on their grave ! 
 
 — Leigh Hitnt. 
 
 THIS is my twenty-fourth and last letter to the 
 young. As a preliminary to its composition, I 
 have re-read every previous letter, and the subject of 
 this has been suggested by the perusal. I have asked 
 myself "what kind of men and women will these letters 
 make, if there happen to be any who adopt their coun- 
 sels ? " The reply comes to me in the form of a vision 
 which I will unfold to you. 
 
A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 213 
 
 I see a young man standing at the opening gates of 
 life, and with earnest eyes scanning the landscape that 
 stretches before him. Flowers are springing at his feet 
 among the velvet grass ; brooks are dragging their 
 fhains of silver over the rocks, and passing in careless 
 frolic towards the sea ; birds are fluttering like blossoms 
 amid the overhanging foliage, and breathing their fra- 
 grant melody upon the air ; breezes full of love are fan- 
 ning his cheek, and filling him with a sense of intoxica- 
 ting pleasure, and the sky is bending over him with no 
 break of blue save where, in the exalted perspective, 
 golden clouds sit like crowns upon golden mountains. 
 His heart is bold, his limbs are strong, his blood is 
 healthful, and his whole susceptible and sensuous nature 
 throbs with responses to the appeals of the beauty and 
 music and sweetness around and before him. 
 
 He takes a step, and Pleasure comes from her secret 
 bower, and invites him to her banquet of delights. He 
 pauses for a moment, shivers with the stress of the 
 temptation, puts her resolutely aside, and passes on. 
 Idleness, lolling beneath a shade, points to a vacant 
 seat and closes her languid eyes ; but with disgust he 
 leaves her and presses forward. Ambition beckons 
 from some sudden summit, but he heeds her not. Then 
 Duty comes, and standing before him — a firm and" ear' 
 nest figure — points to a burden and bids him take it up, 
 and bear it as he journeys onward. He pauses, looks 
 around, ahead, above, then lifts it to his shoulder, and 
 
214 Titcomb^s Letters. 
 
 with muscles firmly strained presses forward with neN< 
 vigor. Soon he becomes accustomed to the load, and 
 then Duty comes again, and bids him to add to it He 
 willingly takes on the new burden, and as he does so, 
 finds his heart warming with cheerfulness, and his voice 
 bursting into song. Revellers, steeped with wine and 
 wild with hilarity, look up from their vine-covered table 
 at the sound of the healthy lay, and laugh and scoff, but 
 thejf do not approach him. Temptations that throng 
 the path of the weak and faithless slink away from him 
 Avithout attack ; or, if one scatter its charms upon him, 
 they slide off like dew from bronze. 
 
 So Duty becomes to him a guiding angel. Wherever 
 she leads he follows. In her steps he drops into deep 
 ravines, hidden from the light of the sun ; he plunges 
 into streams whose billows affright and chill him, and 
 crosses them by a might which grows with every strug- 
 gle ; he scales mountains that lie in his path, piled with 
 huge discouragements, and sees from the summit of 
 achievement, shimmering in the distance, the streams 
 of great reward, winding among meadows of heavenly 
 recompense. At last he comes to a point in his way 
 where he pauses, and looks around him. In the pause, 
 he listens to the beating of his own heart. It is the 
 thriir and rhythm of manhood which that heart is 
 strongly telling. He sees that he has made progress 
 towards the golden mountains, with their crowns of 
 golden clouds. The noise of the revellers has died upon 
 
A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 215 
 
 his ear. Pleasure and Indolence are far back, and the 
 temptations of youth are past, and he is, so far, safe. 
 He sees now the burdens he has borne and the struggles 
 he has put forth have knit his muscles, and strengthened 
 his will, and developed his power. He sees how each 
 constituent of the manhood that has now become his 
 choicest possession was won by toil and fatigue, and 
 self-denial and patience and resistance of temptation. 
 He sees that it could have been won in no other way, 
 and gives honest thanks to the Providence which has 
 thus transmuted the evil of life into good. 
 
 There we leave him standing, and change the scene. 
 At another gate a maiden enters. The rose sits upon 
 her cheek, and the lily upon her bosom. Good angels 
 are hovering all about her ; and seeking some secret re- 
 cess, she kneels and dedicates herself to Heaven. As 
 she comes into the path, the Tempter looks at her, and 
 slinks away from her sweet and unsuspicious eyes, as if 
 they were windows through which he had caught a 
 glimpse of God. She is conscious from the first that 
 life has meaning in it, and that the soul which informs 
 her has a duty aud a destiny. She knows that that soul 
 is to be strengthened and enriched, — that it is to be kept 
 pure, and beautified with all precious graces. Fashion 
 and Frivolity flaunt their gewgaws before her eyes, but 
 she puts them aside. They seek to divert her into vain 
 pursuits, but she has a steady purpose and keeps a steady 
 path. Flocks of seductive thoughts hover about her 
 
2i6 Tit combos Letters. 
 
 head, and tease her bewildered eyes ; but she repels 
 them until they leave her. She gathers the flowers of 
 life that bloom by the way, and places them in her hair. 
 Kind words and smiles go out from her, and come back 
 winged blessings to nestle on her breast. Little deeds 
 of charity and mercy, dropped by the way, change into 
 pearls, and seek her hand again. The mother leans upon 
 her shoulder, and the sister clings to her arm. Up 
 weary slopes she toils to gather fruits from the tree of 
 knowledge. Down into valleys of suffering she walks, 
 bearing balsams for the sick. She thinks of ease but to 
 scorn it, and finds in the exercise of her faculties and 
 the play of her sympathies and the development of her 
 powers such healthful joy as only the worthy know. 
 And thus she passes on — a creature of beauty, a bearer 
 of purity, a being of modest graces and noble aptitudes, 
 of fine instincts and self-denying heroism, until her 
 nature brims — a golden goblet — with the wine of woman- 
 hood, and she meets the companion for whom God 
 designed her — whom God designed for her. 
 
 Thus our third scene is prepared for us. Manhood 
 and womanhood meet, and lives that were separate 
 melodies become a harmony. How it may seem to 
 others I know not, but true love between man and 
 woman — the love that gives its all for life, for the sim- 
 ple rewards of congenial companionship, seems to me 
 the most lovely outgrowth of human nature. God and 
 all good things breathe benisons upon it. It is the ad' 
 
A Vision of Life and its Meaning, 217 
 
 vent of a heart into another heart, — the entrance of one 
 spiritual nature into the spiritual nature of another, 
 giving, I doubt not, a foretaste of the exquisite bhss 
 which thrills the soul as it passes into the gate of Para- 
 dise. And there stand our young man and young 
 woman, her head upon his shoulder, and her ear drink- 
 ing in the tender confessions of an affection to which 
 her happy heart responds in gentlest numbers. '• What 
 God hath joined together let no man put asunder," 
 falls from the sky where the evening star is glowing. 
 They look up, and a pledge, heard in heaven and on 
 earth, falls from their lips. Friends flock around them, 
 and kisses fall upon the young wife's cheek amid the 
 baptism of tears. Golden fruits are borne to their lips, 
 and the twilight air is full of the pleasant jargon of 
 happy human voices. Oh ! brightly gleam the golden 
 mountains in the last rays of the sunken sun ; and the 
 golden clouds that crown them blaze with more than a 
 solar glory ! 
 
 And now begins the united life. Hand in hand and 
 heart to heart they resume their passage up the long 
 incline. In the early morning, I see them kneeling 
 side by side, worshipping the God of their life, confess- 
 ing their weakness and their sin, and praying for that 
 spiritual nourishment which shall build them up into a 
 saintly estate. At evening, before they lie down by the 
 wayside for repose, I sec them kneel again, and commune 
 
 with the Good Father whose spirit dwells within them. 
 10 
 
2i8 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 M one takes up a cross, it is lightened by the other's 
 hand. If one gathers a joy from the boughs of Heaven's 
 munificence, the other is called to share it. With no 
 heart-wanderings, no untruth, no repinings, no selfish 
 monopoly of delight, they pass on for months till now I 
 see that th? wife has become a mother, and bears a 
 little babe upon her bosom. It is a gift of God, pre- 
 cious beyond all price ; and when they kneel again they 
 thank God for it, — for all the joy it brings them, for 
 all the care it imposes upon them, for all the hallowed 
 sympathies it calls into play, for the new springs of 
 pleasure and life which it uncovers to them. Soon the 
 little one is on its feet, and dances along the way, while 
 another takes its place in the maternal arms. And as 
 the years pass away, another and another are added to 
 the pilgrim group, till they look like a band of attendant 
 cherubim. 
 
 Meanwhile, I see that the limbs of the pair are 
 growing weary. The way is hard and rough, and both 
 are laden with a burden of care, accumulating as they 
 go ; and now they pass into a cloud. Dimly through 
 the vapor gathering before my own eyes, or enveloping 
 them, I see them bowing by the way. One of the little 
 ones— its fingers full of life's roses — lies stretched upon 
 the sand. They kiss his marble cheek, and the little 
 group bend over him and weep trickling tears, like 
 statues at a fountain. I hear the mother say — '' Oh, 
 but for these, would I had died for thee, my son \ ^ 
 
A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 219 
 
 From the far height I hear the tone of a bell : — is it on 
 earth or in heaven ? Is it a sad bell or a glad bell ? 
 I know not ; but I see that after they have hollowed a 
 little grave, and deposited their treasure, and knelt upon 
 it and said, '' Thy will, not mine," the cloud is drunk 
 up by the unseen spirits of the air, and away, on the 
 pinnacle of the golden mountains, stands a little form 
 with its fingers full of roses, beckoning ! There i:> a 
 stir in the golden clouds above him, and he is received 
 up out of their sight. 
 
 Years come and go till the little ones have become 
 men and women. The father's beard and the father's 
 hair, so black and heavy at first, have become thin and 
 white. He leans upon his staff, and totters manfully 
 on. Son and daughter press around the mother and 
 sustain her feeble form. An atmosphere of love en- 
 velops them all. And so they rise higher and still 
 higher, until, in other than earthly light, they stand 
 glorified upon one of the golden summits. They stand 
 upon the mount of vision, earth below and heaven above 
 them. They gaze down upon the long and weary patH 
 they have trodden, and see that their life has been oni 
 long process of education and purification. That whicl\ 
 was but a path of thorns in the passage is changed to a 
 pavement of gold in the retrospect. Flying over th& 
 shining track, they see the Angel of God's Providence;, 
 and now they know, what once they could not wholly 
 see, that the darkness which had so often passed over 
 
220 Titcomb's Letters. 
 
 them as they journeyed was but the shadow of his 
 blessed wings. But there comes a sound of chariots 
 and horses ; the children press up to bid them adieu, 
 the mountains grow radiant with a descending hght ; a 
 Uttle voice, never forgotten, breaks through the purphng 
 (silence Hke an arrow of silver ; and at the sweet word 
 *' come," they are withdrawn into the opening glory. 
 
 That, my friends, is my vision. Is it all fancy ? Is 
 it all imagination ? Is it all poetry ? Have you an 
 idea that fancy, or imagination, or poetry can do justice 
 to the grandeur, beauty, and essential glory of a true 
 life ? I have only felt, in painting it, how utterly poor 
 I am in the endeavor to express my conception of the 
 highest life of man and woman, by the use of language. 
 That little creed of Mrs. Browning, uttered impulsively, 
 in a flash of inspired conviction, has a world of meaning 
 in it that the slow soul does not perceive. " I do believe 
 in God and love," said the sweet songstress ; and so do 
 I. With God and love in human life, it becomes essen- 
 tially a noble and beautiful thing. To live a life thus 
 informed is a peerless privilege — no matter at what 
 cost of transient pain or unremitting toil. It is a thing 
 above professions and callings and creeds. It is a thing 
 which brings to its nourishment all good, and appropri- 
 ates to its development of power all evil. It is the 
 greatest and best thing under the whole heaven. Place 
 cannot enhance its honor ; wealth cannot add to its 
 value. It is the highest thing. Its course lies through 
 
A Vision of Life and its Meani^ig. 221 
 
 true manhood and womanhood, through true father- 
 hood and motherhood, through true friendship and 
 relationships of all legitimate and natural sorts whatso- 
 ever. It lies through sorrow and pain and poverty, and 
 ail earthly discipline. It lies through unswerving truth 
 to God and man. It lies through patient, self-denying 
 heroism. It lies through all heaven-prescribed and 
 conscientious duty, and it leads as straight to heaven's 
 brightest gate, as the track of a sunbeam to the bosom 
 Of' a flower. 
 
 As I look around me, and see how poor, how frivo- 
 lous, how weak and drivelling a thing life is, as it is 
 lived by the mass of those who are married, I confess 
 that I am filled with wonder and with pity. Marriage is 
 too much a convention, — its habits and duties are too 
 much conventional. That it is only to be made some- 
 thing better by a change in the general estimate and 
 idea of life, I have said in previous letters. That a man 
 and woman who live to eat, and dress, and make 
 mon'iy ; whose ends of life are answered in the satisfac- 
 tion of appetite and ambition, and a thirst for gold and 
 equipage and position, should marry for a higher motive 
 than fancy and convenience, is not to be expected. The 
 structure, therefore, of a true married life, must be laid 
 upon the basis of a true individual life. When men and 
 women have conceived and accepted the idea that all 
 good in earth and heaven is intended to minister directly 
 and indirectly to individual growth, and that that which 
 
222 Titcomb' s Letters. 
 
 we call evil — toil, poverty, sorrow, pain, and temptation 
 to sin— is intended for the development of power and 
 the discipline of passion ; when they see that life tends 
 upwards, and is only a preparation for another sphere 
 and a better, and that all that surrounds them is perish- 
 able — food and shelter and ministry by the way — then 
 they can have a conception of what true marriage is. 
 The relation is illuminated with its full significance only 
 by this true idea of individual life. The masculine and 
 feminine nature come together for mutual stimulus and 
 mutual feeding. All that is good in each becomes the 
 property of the other, and all that is bad in each is 
 neutralized by the other. Like the acid and the alkali, 
 when brought together, their united life becomes a 
 beaded draught, bland as the juice of nectarines, and fit 
 to sparkle on the lips of an angel. 
 
 And now, my friends, farewell ! Life is before you, — 
 not earthly life alone, but life — a thread running inter- 
 minably through the warp of eternity ; and while I 
 wish YOU all manly and womanly joy, and all healthful 
 delight, I do not wish that no pain come on you, no 
 care oppress you, no toil w^eary you, no sorrow swim in 
 your eyes, no temptations beset you ; but I wish that 
 you may bear what God puts upon your shoulders, and 
 bear it well. I wish that it may not be necessary to 
 chasten you overmuch ; but you can hardly grow strong 
 without trouble, or sympathetic without sorrow. It was 
 necessary that the only true human life ever li^cd 
 
A Vision of Life and its Meaning. 223 
 
 should be made "perfect through suffering; and it is 
 strange presumption for you to think that you can be 
 made perfect without it. I wish you many years upon 
 the earth — as miauy as will minister to your growth and 
 happiness — for life is a sweet as well as a great and 
 wonderful thing. I wish you a family of precious 
 children to fill your homes with music, and enrich your 
 hearts with love. And when, in the evening of life, the 
 golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the 
 golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams 
 down through the gathering mists of death, I wish you 
 a peaceful and abundant entrance into that world of 
 blessedness, where the great riddle of life, whose mean- 
 ing I can only hint at, will be unfolded to you in the 
 quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Dr. J. G. Hollands Works 
 
 Thf extraordinary popularity of Dr. HoUa'ruV s ivorks shozi'S 
 no falling off from year to year. Already the sale of 
 his books has reached the enormous total of abotit three- 
 quarters of a million copies^ and his audience is con- 
 stantly widening. His appeal is to the universal popular 
 heart. 
 
 COMPLETE WORKS. i6 vols., small i2mo, in a 
 box, cloth, $20.00 ; half calf, $44.00 ; half morocco, 
 gilt top, $46,00. See next page for single volumes. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 14 vols, (omitting 
 " Every-Day Topics"), i2mo, cloth, $20.00. Sold 
 only in sets. 
 
 COMPLETE POETICAL WRITINGS. In one vol., 
 with Illustrations by C. S. Reinhart, C. C, Gris- 
 woLD, and Mary Halleck Foote, and Portrait by 
 Wyatt Eaton. 8vo, cloth, $3.50; half calf, extra, 
 $7.50; full Turkey morocco, $9.00. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY OF FAVORITE 
 SONG. Edited by Dr. Holland A collection of 
 the most popular and best-known poems. With 
 125 Illustrations. 8vo, cloth, $5.00; half calf S7.50, 
 
DR. IIOLLAXD'S WORKS. 
 
 ''Dr. IIplla)id will ahcays find a congenial audience in the 
 homes of culture and refinement. He does not affect the play 
 of the darker and fiercer passions, but delights in the siveet 
 images that cluster around the domestic hearth. He cherishes 
 a strong fellow-feeling with the pure and tranquil life in the 
 modest social circles of the American people., and has thus won 
 his ivay to the companionship of many friendly hearts." 
 
 — X. Y. Tribune. 
 
 POEMS. 
 
 Macb, Small izzno, $1.25. 
 
 BITTER-SWEET. 
 
 " It is a suggestive and original poem. Vigor and force and imagi- 
 native beauty are to be found in it.'" — Athenceum. 
 
 " A dramatic poem which is characteristically American, .showing a 
 great command of versification and purity of style. This poem shows 
 that Dr. Holland is a man of genius." — Boston Pusl. 
 
 KATHRINA. 
 "It is a genuine outgrowth of the authors poetic instincts and 
 moral convictions. It is sweet with purity and noble with aspiration. 
 It is thoughtful and earnest and most sincere. Its reverence for 
 woman is religious. Dr. Holland will be numbered with Hav.thornc 
 as one who saw the soul of beauty under the sordid guise of New 
 England life and character." — Independent. 
 
 MISTRESS OF THE MANSE, 
 " Dr. Holland's writings touch a responsive chord in the heart of the 
 reader. There is a great deal of human nature in what he says. 
 Hence the popularity of Dr. Holland's productions. The ' Mistress of 
 the Manse ' is a charming story, admirably told in verse." 
 
 — Albany Ar^^us. 
 
 THE PURITAN'S GUEST, AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 " If we mistake not, our readers will recognize with us the genius of 
 a true poet, with a rare wealth of poetic sympathies, profound obser- 
 vation of the workings of human passion, and the creative power to 
 clothe his conception m expressive forms. " — New York Tribune. 
 
DR. HOLLAND'S WORK:^. 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 Macb, Sniall iziuo, $1.25. 
 
 TITCOMB'S LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 " We have never read a work which better inculcates the several 
 duties and responsibilities of young men and women, married or 
 single. The strong common sense which pervades them, the frank 
 and manly utterance of wholesome truths in pointed and beautiful 
 language, and the genial sympathy which the author has for those 
 whom he addresses, cannot fail to commend the work to general 
 favor."— London Literary Gazette. 
 
 GOLD FOIL HAMMERED FROM POPULAR PROVERBS. 
 
 "Sensible and instructive, and deser\-es to be read and pondered by 
 old and young." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " Full of good sense and written in good, sound English. They are 
 belter than the hannnered foil — they are the \irgin metal, pure, 
 precious, and solid." — Providence y<;«;;ar/. 
 
 LESSONS IN LIFE. 
 "Wisdom admirably put. We lind in the pages of this new venture 
 so many healthy ma.xims and so much excellent advice, that we hope 
 the volume will spread itself farther and wider than any of its prede- 
 cessors." — Atlantic MonfJily. 
 
 CONCERNING THE JONES FAMILY. 
 "Dr. Holland's Jones family includes in its members many diverse 
 characters, and his remarks upon them are a continuation of his home- 
 like and natural philosophy which has been so highly appreciated." 
 
 — San Francisco A/ta-Cali/'ornia. 
 
 PLAIN TALKS ON FAMILIAR SUBJECTS. 
 
 " His views are so true, so indisputable, so often disregardeil in the 
 practices of this vain world, that we can commend them as a consum- 
 mate mi.\ture of the useful with the agreeable." — Boston Recorder. 
 
 EVERY-DAY TOPICS— First Series, Second Series. 
 " The volumes include short essays on politics, religion, temperance, 
 education, literature, woman's sufiVage, health, dress, amusements, 
 and, indeed, nearly every subject that could engage a magazine editor's 
 attention, all treated in an entertaining style and from a high moral 
 standpoint." — Detroit yervs. 
 
DR. HOLLAND'S WORKS. 
 
 NOVELS. 
 
 Macb, Small ismo, $1.25, 
 
 SEVENOAKS. 
 
 " One of the best of Dr. Holland's novels. It tells in a graphic and 
 highly moral manner of the apparent success and final downfall of the 
 sleek and wily villain, Belcher, the owner of Sevenoaks. It is written 
 with spirit, and has bits of description and character painting, which, 
 with a plausible plot, holds the reader's attention." 
 
 — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 ARTHUR BONNICASTLE. 
 
 " In ' Arthur Bonnicastle,' as all know, there is an autobiographical 
 element, for which, if for nothing else, it will always be especially 
 cherished by Dr. Holland's admirers."— Buffalo Courier. 
 
 " The pleasant ingenuity of tone and faultlessness of moral which 
 characterize the ' Bay-Path ' equally distinguish 'Arthur Bonnicastle.' 
 The story is of American college life." 
 
 — Milwaukee Evening IViscottsin. 
 
 NICHOLAS MINTURN. 
 
 " No more wholesome and helpful reading for most minds can be 
 found in the literature of this generation than Dr. Holland's books. 
 The young man or woman who does not rise from ' Arthur Bonni- 
 castle ' or ' Nicholas Minturn ' stimulated to hopeful effort is cither 
 inconceivably stupid or irreclaimably bad." — New London Telegram. 
 
 BAY-PATH. 
 
 "Beyond doubt one of the most characteristic, deeply interesting, 
 and powerfully-written American novels which we ha-^e ever read." 
 
 — Philadelphia Bulletin. 
 
 " It portrays, in vividly, truthfully painted colors, the struggles of a 
 heroic spirit against the environments of the earliest colonial days of 
 Massach«setts."— St. Paul Dispatch. 
 
 MISS GILBERT'S CAREER. 
 
 " ' Miss Gilbert's Career ' contains the amusing but instructive 
 account of the search of a young authoress for a publisher and how, 
 when one was found, he advertised her book — amusing, we mean, to 
 all but publishers." — Worcester Gazette. 
 
 *-:(^ Sevenoaks and Arthur Bonnicastle arc also issued in the Yellow 
 Paper Scries, paper covers, 50 cents each. 
 
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