GOING BACK TO MY PADAN-ARAM
Ernest Renan tells us of the vanished city Is, which, years ago,
disappeared below the waves. Up from those depths, fishermen say, that
on calm summer nights they can hear the bells chiming. In my heart is a
cherished Is. As the years rise and fall I love to hear the harmonies
that float to me from its past. Distance does not dissipate the gentle
sounds and they come to me like echoes from another life. At that
enchanted time I met my heart's ideal and have been wondering ever since
how it happened, that on seeing a certain face, it seems to you
distinctive, set apart from all others. Is it familiar, because you have
seen it before, or is it impressed on you, because it is an expression
of your intuitive sense of what suits you, and what you like and what
you want? The expression, love at first sight, would be intelligible
enough if it was only finished with the words, when one's dream comes
true. When it materializes it is of course all at once. A person busy
with his profession, going along happily and more or less prosperously,
meeting people, judging young folks, almost unconsciously forms an ideal
of face, figure, graciousness, type, temperament, intelligence. This is
the product of half a dozen years. The work of choosing, so far as he is
concerned, is all done. His mind is made up. His idea is clearly
defined. Jesse made Eliab pass before Samuel and the Lord said, "Look
not on his countenance nor on his stature." Then Jesse called Abinadab,
then Shammah, and seven passed in review, when David came along, who was
ruddy and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to,
"That's the one. This is he." First there is an image in the mind, and
when the counterpart appears, instantly, of course, one recognizes it.
Samuel did not shirk any real question nor did he make up his mind
before he had any mind to make up. There was a choice to be made and he
had come to a conclusion so far as he was concerned, and expressed
himself at the earliest moment, without being irresolute or vacillating,
which is an abomination when a social choice is to be made.
_First View of Intimate Friends_
There is in us a tendency to selection and preference of one human being
before all others. This action of the heart is forceful and even almost
irresistible to us and yet may not accord with other persons' ideas of
appropriateness. This strange preference, in its early stages, and in
its strength and duration, is nature's greatest sidelight upon our
individuality. It is entertaining to see what people pass right by and
then to see what they choose. It distinguishes itself most at the
further end of a long life and seems to have an unfading quality which
shows that it is nature itself. This tendency to selection affords
people the strongest argument against Dr. Johnson's position that all
marriages would be better made if they were arranged by the Lord
Chancellor. Also against that multitude of students, of the subject and
writers, who show that marriages seem best, last best, and are best for
a fact, when the parties themselves have little to do in bringing them
about, when all such matters are left to parents and others as in the
royal families who rest everything on the pure merits of the case.
In waking hours, in reveries, and in dreams, pictures had been painted
on the fancy, and now the lenses were given, through which they could be
viewed. A vague and indistinct idea had now taken a form. It was very
unromantic, but it seemed the expression of an intuition. It was like an
acquaintance, accidentally met at the way-side. There seemed to be a
susceptibility hid away, hitherto kept dormant, that the slightest cause
seemed to magnetize.
_Cupid's Marksmanship_
However this may be, there is such instinctive insight in the human
heart, that we often form our opinion, almost instantaneously, and such
impressions seldom change and they are not often wrong. To notice
anything, so casual, sounds like an imprudence and yet it is almost a
revelation. It seems as if we were but renewing the relations of a
previous existence. Some one, from this, goes on to inquire, What will
the doubters of impressions do with a fact like this? Almost everyone
has experienced something similar. In this house, we often speak of our
instant meeting, our introduction, and the destinies which were made to
swing on such a chance acquaintance. It wanted not a word, not a hint,
for within was the consciousness of what was to be. The problem was
solved. My foreshadowing was realized. If a person is looking for a
lesson in Providence, here it is. I could plainly see how I had been led
along. "Come live with me." The irrevocable yoke of life was on us. The
mysteries of Providence are felt in the coincidence of two paths over
surfaces so widely apart. We are astounded at this miracle of meeting. A
breath, a lifting of the hand, an inconceivably small intervention would
have diverted the attention of either of us. There, too, is the miracle
of hinging so much of destiny and of happiness on so small an occasion,
that might easily have been no occasion at all. It is like taking
letters out of the alphabet. The art is in placing them side by side in
such a way as to make words. Use no skill of location and the
arrangement into which they have fallen is inappropriate and
unfortunate. Standing apart the letters are meaningless. Jumbled or
jarred together the chances are very much against their having any
significance, but when brought to their final position, by what they
spell together, they are read of all men with approbation. The first
time that Mr. Paul R. George of Concord, N. H., met the young lady that
became his wife he felt a little click in the neighborhood of his heart.
Now about this "click" to which so many persons bear witness. Men are
great imitators. They follow a crowd. But a hit duck flutters the water.
It is like the late selective draft: a man is touched; he attempts no
evasion; he knows he was selected and comes promptly forward and puts on
the uniform. The way the mind receives this impress, is noticeable in
the further fact that if Paul R. George had been abroad, and the meeting
had been so casual that he received no introduction, it would have been
permanent just the same. The heart never loses anything. Touch the right
string later and the impression is sure to be reproduced. All that is
peculiar about Mr. George's case is his confession. We know that
matrimony is either heaven-made or done in purgatory. The issue seems
too important to turn once for all on the original early choice of an
inexperienced person. An individual is not thus forced to choose once
for all in determining what college he will take. He may choose Williams
and change to Dartmouth. Nor is it an unchangeable choice on entering
business. He may begin with law and change to politics or he may incline
to manufacturing and take to banking. If, however, he enters the
matrimonial field, having put his hand to the plow, there is no turning
around nor looking back.
_Remember Lot's Wife_
There are, however, some good rules for an individual to follow. One,
for example, would be, to take a girl that was a favorite with other
girls. Another to be uninfluenced in your choice by dowry. The question
before the house is matrimony, not money making. Acquire lucre by
another process. Too much is at stake to be moved now by thirty pieces
of silver. The young man was worthy of all admiration who on his wedding
trip asked the bride how much of a dot she had left after paying for her
trousseau. She said, "Half a dollar." "Well," he said, "heave it over
into the canal and let us make an even start." I can better understand
how a girl could be induced to shy a silver coin into the canal than
how she could be reconciled to parting with such a name as she sometimes
must drop. Here is a girl just reported engaged to a soldier. Her name
was Priscilla Weymouth Alden, which tells not only her illustrious
descent but in just what locality, in the old colony, her branch of the
family made its distinguished nest. In this country the wife or maiden
invariably walks by the side of her male companion and never follows
after him in Indian file, like geese returning from pasture. It is
against nature for a man to say "my house" or my this or that. He should
be unable to pronounce the word. In this house our account at the bank
is open for either to check upon. Our exchequer, on the one hand, or our
politics on the other, are a joint affair. The family is the unit. When
Bunker Hill monument was still incomplete interest flagged. Money was
gone. Work came to a full period. An appeal was made to the women of the
land to hold a great fair to obtain the wherewithal so that the builder
should bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying Grace,
grace, unto it. Subscriptions and contributions hurried to its aid from
every section and it rose to "meet the sun in his coming," "to be the
last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore and the
first to gladden his who revisits it." It is not good for man to work
alone. The house in which a man is married seems to him odd.
_The Supply is Not Exhausted_
Bridgewater is a belle among residential communities. The best place in
this country or in any other to raise girls. The street is attractive.
The house fine, yet it seems distinct, different. I think most men feel
so about the house in which they were married. In all other shrines I
had made a home. Isaac blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan-Aram to
take a wife from thence, and God appeared unto Jacob again when he came
out of Padan-Aram and blessed him. Under similar conditions the Duke of
Buckingham dropped his purse so that the person finding it might feel
that nothing but good fortune attends the visit to a home like that. I
used to like to go there, yet I had to do, every day, the full work of
an adult at home, and so it became plain that I would get along better
if I could locate both of my interests in the same place. In speaking of
weddings much is said with truth about "the negligible groom." I could
not long live on angel cake and so I had to turn abruptly to face the
prosier plain bread and butter question; so when the bird was caught and
caged I took up the inquiries, What shall we eat and wherewithal shall
we be clothed? It is a merciful provision that this latter question
rests lightly upon the groom for the first decade, as some part of the
hat the bride wore to Washington (it being understood that a wedding
admits no variation but means either a trip to Washington or Niagara
Falls) will reappear as a feature of her headdress with much variation
of location during the next ten years.
The place of the wedding is always a conspicuous shrine. On revisiting
the earth we were strolling around the streets, quite a number of
soldiers were about and were entertaining the girls at a soda fountain,
and one of the enlisted men told a pitiful story about swallowing a pin,
and when a vivacious young lady expressed alarm and sympathy, "Oh," he
said, "no harm could come of it; it was a safety pin."
_Heart Histories_
We go there often and sit on the stone steps of the old Unitarian church
just as we did when we were young and foolish. Times have changed
incredibly since the visit to Padan Aram or else a favorite and very
accomplished writer just at this writing is all dead wrong in throwing
the weight of his great influence against what he calls being "married
without capital." This would cut out the wedding of Dr. Joseph Parker of
the City Temple, London, the greatest expositor of scripture known to
us. "Improvident" is the word his biographer uses "certainly when tested
by the maxims of the world. He was twenty-two without having secured a
definite position." But marriages are to be judged by their history. Let
us hear the eloquent orator himself. He speaks of "Annie, the soul I
loved, the girl who saved me and made me a man." His estimate of her
varied from the opinion the editor we have quoted would have put upon
her. She was gentle, domesticated, cultivated, with a poetic turn of
mind, and like Mary of Bethany, religiously meditative. She read widely,
being now more assiduous than ever in her Bible studies. Her appetite in
this was twofold for her husband and herself. She asked God to bless him
and He blessed them both. He was strong, constituted for public life,
full of fire, and prepared to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. We
feel like questioning Cupid's sanity when he brings together persons of
such diverse natures, training, antecedents, and tendencies, but among
opposites, in disposition, Cupid displays his best achievements. They
took life together as they found it. To have "saved" one of the world's
greatest forces, to have "made him a man" was more than an equivalent
for living on short commons for some few weeks while they were getting
under way. Working out good fortune together is great happiness to many
young people who know each other well and without reservation believe in
each other and in their future. A young man graduating or entering a
business life must make his capital before he can share it. There is
much to be said in favor of what many healthy spirited girls achieve
when their affections are satisfied. Adam was asleep when he chose his
wife and this is one reason why things proved so out of joint. The
strong dissuasive to become "married without capital" would have borne
heavily upon Peter H. Burnett when a clerk in a country store on two
hundred dollars a year, less than four dollars a week beside his board.
_Women Not Gone to the Dogs_
He had met a beautiful girl and one day having dined with her family and
talked with the young lady herself after dinner he came out of the house
and was amazed to discover that the sun was gone from the sky. In a
confused manner I enquired of her father what had become of the sun. He
politely replied, "It has gone down." A new heaven and a new earth
surrounded him. They were married and lived happily ever after. It was
not Mrs. Burnett "and her lesser fraction." An humble home was paradise
to him with the right girl. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
than a stalled ox without it. Sometimes I think that the rich face
greater problems in the matter of marriage than even the poor. Such a
wedding based on affection goes far toward nullifying the phrase
"lottery of marriage." An American girl can marry an English Duke if her
father has money enough. In this country the prevalent sanctity of
marriage can be attributed chiefly to the fact that among the rank and
file, husbands and wives have generally married each other for love.
Perhaps this statement would not apply to the smart set in some
commercial cities. This young man did his best. He became the president
of the Pacific Bank of San Francisco and the first Governor of
California. And as for a young woman she will become quite a heroine, in
hard outward conditions, if her affections are entirely satisfied.
Having spirit and courage and health she often becomes quite a prop to
the prosperity of the household. She does not need to be supported in
idleness by her husband. As between the two, it is often the case that
she can earn about as much as he can. A young lady has just become a
bride who had been receiving a larger salary than her own father ever
earned. In new countries, under pioneer conditions, that is true today,
which was distinctly a fact in early New England, that a marriage was a
partnership, which made for thrift. Of course affection works out her
sums by different rules.
_Shall the Union Survive_
Chinese wives are valued by their weight. French marriages have been
generally happier than the English owing to the comparative ascendency
which the French wives possess over their husbands, or better, the
equality we find that exists between them.
There is a proverbial prejudice in an English establishment against the
interference of a woman in the husband's conduct of his private affairs.
This is that one matter in which any theorist can prove his position,
for in solving the problem it is natural to him to count the hits and
not the misses. He arrays unquestioned facts and depends on those who
follow his recital to jump at the conclusion he desires. It was
suggestive to notice that Governor Burnett, when presenting such a fine
specimen of feminine attractiveness, that while showing us that he was
overwhelmed by it, did not directly describe the girl, but made us infer
what the facts were by the situation and by the results she brought
about. To make you appreciate the Lady of the Lake, Scott alludes to her
in attitude and grace and lets the reader's mind supply the picture.
_Lights in Their Dwellings_
It is astonishing to notice what heroic young women have been doing in
meeting rather hard conditions occasioned in part by the high cost of
living. Give the girl all round confidence, imagine her susceptibilities
and energies to be happily employed, and she will undertake a temporary
encounter with poverty with bravery. The one she has chosen among men
has to meet it whether he will or no. In addressing themselves to that
problem, by united enterprise, some young people have passed their most
joyous years. We find here the magic spell which transforms a house into
a home. Musicians rarely give their best exhibition when singing or
performing in a hostile atmosphere. It is so with women. Happiness is
never an accident. There is no such thing as an accident. Everything has
a cause if we can find it.