Gentle reader, did you ever steep your mind in one of those Sunday
School hooks which were in circulation previous to our Civil War? If
not, ransack your grandmother’s garret until you find a specimen of
that Arcadian literature.
The little boy in those blessed books never quarrelled, never had a
fight, never had dirty hands, and would have been inexpressibly shocked
had he made a conversational slip in grammar. He was an intolerable
angel in breeches—was this little boy of the Sunday school book.
_He_ couldn’t “talk back,” nor handle slang, nor throw rocks, nor
skin-the-cat, nor ride the billy-goat, nor tie things to a dog’s tail,
nor put a pin in a chair for somebody to sit on. If the Bad Boy hit him
in the stomach, he wept meekly, quoted a text, and went home to his
mamma.
In common conversation, the language of this Good Boy was drawn from
wells of English undefiled. Erasmus never used choicer words; and
Chesterfield was not more perfect in manners, than was this detestable
Good Boy.
Among youths of his own age, he was a miniature Socrates, washed and
otherwise purified. Wisdom oozed from him in hateful streams. The
sagacity of sages sat on him with uncanny ease.
When a grown man spoke to this Good Boy, the G. B. never replied until
he had lifted his right hand and ejaculated “Oh, Sir!” After the salute
and the “Oh, Sir,” came the response, which always did infinite credit
to the manners, mind and heart of this outrageously Good Boy.
Life was an easy-going affair to the G. B. All things came his way.
He was virtuous and he was happy. Nothing ever occurred to soil his
clothes or tangle his hair. His nose never bled, he never bit his
tongue, never struck his funny-bone, never mashed his thumb with the
hammer, never had his drink to go the wrong way. He was never drowned
while bathing in the pond, for the simple reason that he didn’t “go
in” on the Sabbath. The Bad Boy “went in washing” on Sunday and was
drowned, as a matter of course.
Daniel in the lion’s den was not safer amid the perils than was the
Good Boy among the ills which are incident to boyhood. Past vicious
bulls and snappish curs he walked serene and unharmed. Neither his gun,
nor his pony ever kicked him; neither the wasp, nor the bee, nor the
yellow-jacket ventured to sting him; nettles avoided his bare feet; no
boil came to afflict his nose, nor stye to distort his eye. No limb
of a tree ever broke under _him_, and gave him a nasty fall. He never
tumbled into the creek, nor snagged his “pants,” nor sprained his
ankle, nor cut his finger, nor bumped his head, nor walked against the
edge of the door at night.
Nothing could happen to this insufferable Good Boy—nothing bad, I
mean. _His_ shoes never blistered his heels, his hat never blew away,
he never lost his hand-kerchief, never had a stone-bruise, never missed
his lessons, never soiled his book, never played truant, and never ate
anything which caused him to clap both hands to a certain place in
front while he doubled up and howled.
Oh, a pink of perfection was this odious boy of the ante-bellum Sunday
School books.
And next to him in comprehensive unbearableness was the little girl who
was the counterpart of this little boy.
Her name was Lucy. Or, perhaps, Marielle. Or, for the sake of variety,
Lucretia.
And what a portentous proposition in pantalettes she was, to be sure!
[Illustration: “Rollo, Lucy and Mariette went Together.”]
She talked just as exquisitely as did the Good Boy. Her selection of
words was artistic, and her grammar immaculate. If William Pitt’s
natural style was that of the “State Paper,” the colloquial standard of
Lucy, Lucretia and Marielle was that of Madame de Stael.
She walked with primness; if she ran at all, it was with dignity; she
did not giggle, did not romp, never made a mud pie, never pinched the
Good Boy, and was such a formidable little thing, generally, that
even the Bad Boy never snatched her bonnet. Such a thought as that of
stealing a kiss from her never entered the head of _any_ boy, good, bad
or indifferent.
This unearthly girl always seemed an impossibility to me, after I
became a grown-up, until I chanced to read about the daughter of John
Adams, second President of these United States. Mr. Adams married a
stately woman whose name was Abigail. What else could you expect, if
not that a girl born to John Adams and his wife, Abigail, would be a
tremendous little girl from the very start? Her parents named _her_
Abigail,—as an additional guarantee against chewing gum, coca-cola,
slang, and tomboyishness.
[Illustration: ABIGAIL ADAMS]
At the age of eighteen, we find Miss Abigail Adams writing about her
father as though he were some Sphinx or Pyramid that she had been
viewing. Please go slow, as you read what this young lady says of her
own papa:
“I discover a thousand traits of softness, delicacy and sensibility
in this excellent man’s character. How amiable, how respectable,
how worthy of every token of my attention has this conduct rendered
a parent, a father, to whom we feel due even a resignation of our
opinions.”
Did you ever? Just try to put yourself at the view-point of a girl who
could calmly sit down and analyze her father, as a naturalist would
disjoint a rare beetle. Think of a daughter referring to her father as
“_this excellent man_,” and classing him “_respectable_”! Think of a
daughter dutifully conceding, in writing, that her dad is “worthy of my
attention” and “even a resignation of our opinions.”
And, after all, she jumped from the sublime to the ridiculous by
marrying a man named Smith!
But she has restored my confidence in the girl of the Sunday school
book. Lucy _did_ appear on this planet in the flesh; and when she
talked and wrote her style was that of little Abigail Adams. Marielle
was not an impossibility, nor was Lucretia. Even that obnoxious Good
Boy was true to life—if John Adams’ description of his son John
Quincy is not too highly colored by paternal pride. After reading said
paternal description I can understand how it was that, while Henry
Clay made friends out of those whom he refused, John Quincy Adams made
enemies by his manner in granting favors.
* * * * *
But no matter how many Lucys and Rollos existed prior to our War
between the States, it would be mighty hard to find a Lucy or a Rollo
now. Times have changed, manners have changed, types have changed.
What is responsible for the bold-eyed girl—the girl of loose speech
and loud manners? What is responsible for the irreverent boy—the boy
of the cigarette and of _the look which undresses every handsome woman
that he meets_? These are the boys that greet girls with a “Hello!”
and a leer that should offend. These are the girls who shout “Hello!”
to the boys, and who lie prone by the side of young men during a
“straw-ride” at night. Are all such maidens the daughters of mothers
who drink and gamble? Are all such youths the sons of men who have no
morals? By no means. Our whole social and industrial situation has
changed, and the people have changed with it.
Would that I could believe that our Public System is guiltless in
this matter. Use your eyes as you pass a crowded academy and note the
conditions which make against common decency—to say nothing of that
deference and respect with which every properly trained boy should
treat members of the other sex.
But there are causes deeper, more universal than the promiscuous mix-up
in the Public Schools. The centripetal power of class legislation
is drawing capital inward to the small centre of the Privileged. To
the masses is left a constantly smaller proportion of the nation’s
annual production of wealth. In turn, this law-made and abnormal
condition of things over-crowds the cities. In fact, rural life has
become so unattractive that the trend of population is _from the farm
to the town_. Every village has its surplus—the men and boys, white
and black, who have no visible means of support and who can not be
persuaded to work. In every town is the girl who hardly knows why she’s
there,—but she’s there.
[Illustration: “‘Oh! Look,’ cried Lucy.”]
And the pace-that-kills in the Chicagos and New Yorks is faithfully
represented, on a small scale, in each of our towns. Don’t all of us
know it? We do. But what is the remedy?
The temperance people believe that whiskey is at the bottom of the
trouble. The church people believe that irreligion is the source of the
evil. The school teacher believes that education will save the day.
But can not the student of human affairs see that the demoralization
incident to four years of civil strife shook our entire social system
like an earthquake? Did not the Spanish war light up,—luridly,
vividly, horribly,—the almost universal corruption which had seized
upon the body politic?
“Eat, drink and be merry—tomorrow we die.” When a nation rings with
that cry, it is close to the whirlpool. “Let us have a good time!” The
man drinks and makes much of his food; the woman drinks and thinks a
deal about her eating; the boy drinks and knows the good dishes; the
girl drinks and daintily scans the menu. “Hello!” shouts the dashing
boy; “Hello!” answers the dashing girl, and off they hurry to some
place where talk, songs, pictures and conduct are “up-to-date,”—_and
in many and many a case the Hello couple are reeling hellward by
midnight_.
Don’t we _know_ that our statute-book is the Iliad of our woes?
The few are wickedly rich while the many are helplessly poor, because
the laws have been made _for the purpose of bringing about that very
state of affairs_. There is a fierce struggle for existence which waxes
more desperate every year. _Men fight each other for a job, with a
ferocity like that of starving dogs fighting over a bone._ Girls are
forced into positions where delicacy of feeling is trampled out and
where it requires heroic courage to resist the tempters who are ever on
her trail to pull her down.
Who does not know that the ten million dollars which one of our
religious denominations recently sent abroad for Foreign Missions would
be better employed if it were devoted to the breaking up of our hideous
marketing of white women to lewd houses? Who does not feel that the
hundreds of millions which our Government has spent in the Philippines
had better have been left in the pockets of the taxpayers here at home?
Who does not know that we ought to tremble for our future when we see
how our law-makers have been the willing tools of those who ruin the
millions of men and women, girls and boys, in order that a few hundreds
of ravenous rascals like Rockefeller and Carnegie and Havemeyer and
Ryan and Vanderbilt and Gould and Harriman shall each be richer than
any king ever was?
Most of us _do_ know it. Some of us have long been trying to arouse the
patient, victimized millions to a sense of their own wrongs. But it is
an uphill work. Some despair, some scoff, some are callous, some won’t
listen, some are timid, some are interested in keeping things as they
are, some think it is God’s will that a favored few should reach the
Paradise of unlimited riches while the unfavored multitudes sink into a
hell of eternal wretchedness.
The lotus-eater’s plaint of “_Let us alone_” is to me as fearful as
that reckless, creedless, madly selfish cry “_Let us eat, drink and be
merry: tomorrow we die._”
Jay Gould contemptuously dismissed the suggestion that, some day, the
American people might rise in arms against its swinish plutocracy. Said
Jason, the cynical,
“_I could hire one-half of the people to shoot the other half._”
The man who said that was not more contemptuous of us than are the
plutocrats who rule and rob us now. But perhaps what he said is the
truth. They manage to keep us divided, about half and half, in the
bloodless battle of ballots; perhaps, if it came to shooting they could
divide us the same way.
[Illustration: “He Certainly Was Good To Me.”