_Concerning Her Determination to Remain Single_
It is with genuine regret that I learn of your determination to send my
nephew out of your life. Wilfred is a royal fellow, as that term is
employed by us. He is what a man of royal descent in monarchies rarely
proves to be,--self-reliant, enterprising, industrious, clean, and with
high ideals of woman.
Eight years ago I declined a request of his for a loan, and told him my
reasons--that I believed loans were an injury to our friends or
relatives. My letter seemed to arouse all the strength latent in his
nature, and he has made a remarkable record for himself since that time.
I have known that he was deeply in love with you for the last two years,
and I had hoped you would listen to his plea. He tells me that you
imparted your history to him, and that you say it is your intention to
remain single, as you would not like to bring children into the world to
suffer from the stigma upon your name. He has shown me your letter
wherein you say, "I am not in fault for having to blush for the sins of
my parents; but I would be in fault if my children had to blush for the
blemish upon the name of their grandparents. I do not feel I could meet
their questioning eyes when they asked me about my parents. I can better
bear the loss of the personal happiness of a home and a husband's love."
Wilfred is just the man to protect you and to keep the world at a
distance, where it could not affect your life by its comments. He
regards your birth in the same light that I do, and would rather
transmit your lovely qualities of soul and mind to his descendants than
the traits of many proudly born girls who are ready to take him at the
first asking: for you must know how popular he is with our sex.
I can not believe you are insensible to his magnetic and lovable
qualities, but, as you say, you have been so saddened by the sudden
knowledge of your history that it has blunted your emotions in other
directions. I can only hope this will wear away and that you will
reconsider your resolve and consent to make Wilfred the happy and proud
man you could, by becoming his wife.
_Never forget that God created love and man created marriage_.
And to be born of a loveless union is a darker blight than to be born in
love without union.
But what I want to talk about now, is your determination to live a
single life and to devote yourself to reclaiming weak and erring women.
You are young to enter this field of work, yet at twenty-four you are
older than many women of thirty-five, because you have had the
prematurely ripening rain of sorrow on your life. I know you will go
into the work you mention with the sympathy and understanding which
alone can make any reformatory work successful. Yet you are going to
encounter experiences which will shock and pain you, in ways you do not
imagine now.
You are starting out with the idea of most sympathetic good women, that
all erring souls of their own sex fall through betrayed trust, and
broken promises, and misplaced love. Such cases you will encounter, and
they will most readily respond to your efforts for their reformation.
But many of those you seek to aid will have gone on the road to folly
through mercenary motives, and this will prove a vast obstacle.
When a woman sells to Mammon, under any stress of circumstance, that
which belongs to Cupid, there is something left out of her nature and
character which renders the efforts of the reformers almost useless. You
know all real, lasting reform must come from within. The woman who has
once decided that fine apparel, and comfort, and leisure, are of more
value to her than her virtue usually reaches old age or disease before
the reformer can even gain her attention. You will find many such among
your protégées, and you may as well leave them to work out their own
reformation, and turn your energies to those who long for a better life.
It is that longing which means real reformation. To paraphrase an old
couplet--
The soul reformed against its will
Clings to the same old vices still.
I do not believe in a forced morality, save as a protection to a
community. I believe in it as a legal fence, but it possesses no value
as a religious motive. It helps to save society some annoyance, but it
does not materially improve the condition of humanity. Such improvements
must come from the desire of men and women to reach higher standards.
So, after you have planted a little seed in the mind of the mercenary
Magdalene which may in time sprout and grow, pass on, and find those who
have gone wrong from other causes, and who are longing for a hand to
lead them right.
And of all things do not expect a girl who has lived in the glare of red
lights, and listened to the blare of bands, and worn the ofttimes
becoming garb of folly, and stimulated her spirits with intoxicants--do
not expect her, I say, to suddenly be contented with quiet and solitude,
and drudgery, and cheap, unlovely garments, and goodness. Give her
something to entertain her and to occupy her mind, give her something to
live for and hope for and to be pleased over, besides the mere fact of
reformation. The opium victim, you must remember, can not at once
partake of wholesome food and be well and happy in the thought that he
has given up his drug. Neither can the folly victim. The standards of
happiness and contentment which the moral woman has always found
satisfactory, she too often considers sufficient for the sister who has
wandered from the path. But they are standards which, once lost, must be
gained step by step, painfully and slowly. They are not reached by a
bound. As much as possible keep your reformed sister's mind from
dwelling on the past, or from talking of her mistakes and sins. Blot
them from her memory by new and interesting plans and occupations. The
way to live a new life is to live it.
And our thoughts and conversation are important parts of living. Instead
of praying aloud to God to forgive her sins, show the God spirit in
yourself by forgiving and forgetting and helping her to forget.
And now a word about yourself.
You are twenty-four, lovely, sympathetic, fond of children and animals,
wholesome and normal in your habits, without crankiness, and popular
with both sexes. While there are many wives and widows possessed of
these qualities, there seems to be some handicap to the spinster in the
race of life who undertakes to arrive at middle age with all the womanly
attributes. Almost invariably she drops some of them by the wayside. She
becomes overorderly and fussy--so that association with her for any
length of time is insupportable--or careless and indifferent. Or she may
grow inordinately devoted to animal pets, and bitter and critical toward
children and married people.
She may develop mannish traits, and dress and appear more like a man
than a feminine woman.
She may ride a hobby, to the discomfort of all other equestrians or
pedestrians on the earth's highway. She may grow so argumentative and
positive that she is intolerant and intolerable. And whichever of these
peculiarities are hers, she is quite sure to be wholly unconscious of
it, while she is quick to see that of another. Now watch yourself, my
dear Sybyl, as you walk alone toward middle life; do not allow yourself
to grow queer or impossible. It was God's intent that every plant should
blossom and bear fruit, and that every human being should mate and
produce offspring. The plant that fails in any of its functions is
usually blighted in some way, and the woman who fails of life's full
experiences seems to show some repellent peculiarity. But she need not,
once she sets a watch upon herself; she has a conscious soul and mind,
and can control such tendencies if she will.
It is unnatural for a woman to live without the daily companionship of
man. The superior single woman must make tenfold the effort of the
inferior wife, to maintain her balance into maturity, because of her
enforced solitude. As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touch
with youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for close
companionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty,
unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, and
sympathetic.
And this is what I want you to do. At twenty-four it is none too soon to
begin planning for a charming maturity.
If you are determined upon a life of celibacy, determine also to be the
most wholesome, and normal, and all around liberal, womanly spinster the
world has ever seen.
Peace and happiness to you in your chosen lot.