VIII.

Woman's rank in life depends entirely on what life is. Her importance

is decided when it is decided what service is important. If money is

the one thing needful, and its acquisition the chief end of man, the

wife's position is very inferior to her husband's. The greater part of

the money is earned in his, and often spent in her department. He does

the work that is paid for, and he belongs to the sex that is paid. She

does the work that is not paid for, and she belongs to the sex that is

pillaged. Men go out and gain money: wives stay at home and spend it.

The case is against them--if that is the whole case. But if money is

only means to an end; if happiness, intelligence, integrity, are more

worth than gold; if a life ruled by the law of God, if the development

of the divine in the human, if the education of every faculty, and the

enjoyment of every power, be more lovely and more desirable than bank

stock, then the woman walks not one whit behind the man, but side by

side, with no unequal steps. He furnishes and she fashions the

material from which grace and strength are wrought. Her work is in

point of fact incomparably fairer, finer, more difficult, more

important than his. It is not money-getting alone, or chiefly, but

money-spending, that influences and indicates character. A man may

work up to his knees in swamp-meadows, or breathe all day the foul air

of a court-room; but if, when released, he turns naturally to sunshine

and apple-orchards and womanly grace, swamp-mud and vile air have not

polluted him. He is a clean-souled man through it all. But if a man

find rest from his work in mere eating and drinking, if the money

which he has earned goes to gross amusements and coarse companions, he

shows at once the lowness of his character, however high may be his

occupation.

Those hands which have the ordering of house and home, have a large

share in the ordering of character. The man who provides the house

does an important part, but she who refines it into a home is the true

artist. To whom is the palm awarded, to the painter who, from ochre

and lead, lays on the rough canvas the lovely landscape, touched with

a beauty borrowed from his own soul, or the huckster who sells him

ochre, lead, and canvas, or even the successful shoddy-contractor who

pays five thousand of his Judas Iscariot dollars, that he may hang it

in a bad light in his dining-room till such day as he shall have the

grace to go and hang himself? It has been said that in the highest

departments women have never produced a masterpiece. Painting has its

old masters, but no old mistresses. Jenny Lind may entrance the world

from her "heaven-kissing hill," but on the mountain-tops Mendelssohn

and Beethoven stand uncompanioned. Sappho plumed her wings, but

plunged quickly from the Leucadian cliff, and Milton soars steadfastly

to the sun alone. We shall see about this one day, but meanwhile life

itself is higher than any of the arts of life, and in living no man

has risen to loftier heights than a woman, and the mass of men are

infinitely lower than the mass of women, and would be lower still if

it were not for female assistance. With all the help which they

receive from women, they are perpetually lapsing into brutality, and

whenever they go off into a community by themselves, they go headlong

downwards, following their natural gravitation.

It is women that make men fit to live. They often confess it

themselves without meaning anything by it. I take advantage of the

confession; as the malignant Minister in Titan "retained the habit,

when an open-hearted soul showed him its breaches, of marching in upon

it through those breaches, as if he himself had made them." In toasts

and festive speeches none can be more bland than they. With sweet and

smiling, arch and gracious humility, they dwell upon the refining and

elevating influence of "lovely woman," as if it were a pretty thing to

be growling and snappish and stroked into quiescence and acquiescence

by a soft hand,--as if a midsummer-night's dream were a

midwinter-day's truth, and man were content to be Bottom the weaver,

with his ass's head stuck full with musk-roses by fairy Titanias. But

I say it not as a man gallantly towards women, nor as a woman angrily

towards men, but as a simple statement of fact by an unconcerned

spectator, and far more in sorrow than in anger. What is proffered as

compliment I accept and reproduce as truth, and if men will not stand

convicted of false dealing, let them show their faith by their works,

and yield themselves, plastic and unresisting, to the hands that will

mould them to fairest shapes.

Over against this mistaken notion stands its opponent notion, equally

mistaken, more extensive, circulated by men, adopted by women, and

doing its mischievous work silently and surely. Public opinion,

floating about in novels and periodicals, lays upon the shoulders of

women burdens which they are not able to bear, which they were never

intended to bear, and which ought never to be laid upon them. Before

marriage, society agrees to make men grasp the laboring oar. They must

choose and woo and win; while the woman's strength is to sit still.

But after marriage the scene suddenly shifts. The wife must take the

wooing and winning into her hands. She must make home pleasant. She

must rear the children. She must manage society. She must incur the

responsibility of the welfare and happiness of the family. The husband

is on the one side a wild animal who must be managed but not

controlled; on the other, a piece of rare china, which must be

carefully handled and kept from all rough contact.

"It is the wife who makes the home, and the home makes the man," says

the country newspaper, in its domestic column.

"If a wife would make the husband delighted with home, she must first

make home delightful. She must first woo him there by all the arts of

affection,--by cheerfulness, tidiness, orderliness without excess: by

a clean-swept hearth, a bright fire, flowers upon the mantel, a

well-set table and well-cooked food. She must be careful of imposing

restraints upon his tastes, inclinations, movements, and render him

free of every suspicion of domestic imprisonment. If his masculine

tastes, as they will, draw him from home at times, to the club, to the

lodge, or the political meeting, or elsewhere, let her second them

with that ready cheerfulness which will prove one of the strong cords

to draw him back to home as the centre of his earthly joys," says its

virtuous neighbor.

"I have heard women speak of their rights. If they had made the men of

the world what God intended they should make of them, there would have

been no need of this complaining," says the orthodox heroine in the

orthodox novel.

"What makes a man feel at home in the house?... Is it to leave him

absolute master of his rightful position, the large liberty to go and

come, trusting for her part religiously in the virtue and the

sovereign power of her love,--knowing, as if she had read it out of

Holy Writ, for her own heart has told her" (_her_ being the heroine

aforementioned, now become the hero's wife) "that, if she shall ever

cease to hold the love and trust which she has won, the fault, as the

loss, is hers?"

"She" (_she_ being the aforesaid orthodox heroine and orthodox

submissive wife, now become the orthodox devoted mother),--"She had

the consciousness that it was hers to make of this child what she

would!"

I have spoken before of the comparative work of the husband and wife,

considered merely as labor. I refer now to the comparative moral

weight belonging to their respective positions.

All masculine and all orthodox feminine tractates on female education,

all male lectures on female duties, all anniversary orators to female

schools, ring the changes on the importance of educating girls to be

good wives and mothers, with the persistency of the old song which

shuttled back and forth some twenty times or more to tell us that

"John Brown had a little Indian." But were the graduating class of a

college ever exhorted to be good husbands and fathers? Are fathers

ever admonished to teach their sons domestic virtues, to make them

fond and faithful and good providers for the wives they may one day

possess? But I should like to know if girls have any stronger tendency

to become wives and mothers, than the boys have to become husbands and

fathers? Are they any more likely to be bad wives and mothers, than

boys are to be bad husbands and fathers? Is the number of incompetent

wives obviously greater than the number of incompetent husbands? Is

the number of injudicious mothers obviously greater than the number of

injudicious fathers? And where the wife and mother is incompetent and

injudicious, does it generally seem to be owing to too great strength

of mind and culture of intellect, and too little domestic education,

or is it owing to weakness of character? It is not a remote, but it

seems to be an entirely unobserved truth, that for every wife there is

a husband, and for every mother there is a father; and so far as my

observation extends, domestic mismanagement and unhappiness, in an

overwhelming majority of cases, are owing to the shortcomings of the

husband, and not of the wife, or to the wife in an inferior and

resultant measure. "There is blame on both sides," say the observers,

oracularly, and this most superficial of all superficial generalizations

is supposed to be an impartial and exhaustive summary. It is just as

much a summary as the statement that two and two make four. Two and

two do make four, but it is nothing to the purpose here. To say that

there is blame on both sides, is simply saying that neither a man nor

a woman is perfect, which nobody ever maintained. So long as humanity

is humanity, it is not probable that one person will be entirely

sinless and another entirely sinful; but there are, and will continue

to be, many cases in which the blame on one side is much more heavy

and condemning than the blame on the other. The man's blame is most

often one of aggression, of the first provocation, of unprincipled and

heartless behavior, of cruel disappointing and thwarting, of a giant's

strength used giantly. The woman's is a blame of imprudence, of

weakness, of disappointment, unwisely met and impatiently or otherwise

ill-borne; of an inability to manage with sagacity, and so to master

by superior moral power the wild beast that has clutched her,--a blame

that is negative rather than positive, passive rather than active, and

not to be compared with the other in point of heinousness. Why, then,

do you bear down so hard on the woman's duty and leave the man to go

his way unadmonished? If you do not enforce on college-boys the duty

of providing for their future families, why do you enforce on

seminary-girls the duty of directing their future families? If you do

not educate young men to make good husbands, why should you educate

young women to make good wives? If you do not exhort young men so to

live and learn as to make their wives happy and train their children

aright, why should you exhort young women to study to make their

husbands happy and train their children aright? Because, you say, in

the words already quoted, "It is the wife that makes the home, and the

home makes the man." It is nothing of the sort. It is the wife and the

husband together that make the home, and the man was already made. The

most that wife and home in conjunction can do is to modify the man. If

a husband be intemperate, or given over to money-getting, or

money-saving, or money-spending,--if he be ill-tempered, indelicate,

ignorant, obstinate, arrogant,--no wife, be she ever so prudent, wise,

affectionate, can make the home what it ought to be. At best she can

only mend it. Her energies are wasted. The ingenuity, the love, the

care, that should be expended in making it happy are sacrificed in the

attempt to make it as little unhappy as possible. With the best of

husbands and the best of wives there are always evils enough lying in

wait. Danger, disease, sin, are ever ready to spring upon the happy

home, even when both the keepers stand guard at the portals; how,

then, can you expect the wife to ward off even her own part of these,

when you lay upon her the husband's part, and he himself is the

greatest evil of all?

And what right have men to depend upon home and wife to "make" them?

What is a man doing all the twenty or thirty years before he is

married, that he has not made himself? And on what grounds does he

come to her for completion? How came she to be any more finished than

he? or any more capable of putting the finishing touches to another?

Are wives generally mature and experienced, while husbands are young

and inexperienced? Have wives generally more knowledge of the world,

and more opportunities to become self-possessed and firmly and evenly

balanced than husbands? Or is the masculine material naturally and

permanently more plastic than the feminine? Let us know the pretext

upon which a full-grown man charges a delicate woman, who has had

little if anything to do with him until he became a full-grown man,

with the cure of his soul? If there is anything to be done in the way

of education and reformation, one would naturally suppose that it is

the stronger sex which should educate and reform the weaker. It would

seem as if the sex that is looked up to and sets itself up as

sovereign should mould the sex which looks up and recognizes it as

sovereign. Where, in the Bible, does a man find any warrant for laying

himself to the account of his wife? When God calls every man to

judgment, will he be able to pass over his shortcomings to his wife?

The first man tried it, but with very small success. "The woman whom

thou gavest to be with me," whimpered Adam; but it was a sorry refuge

of lies, and did not avail to stay the curse from descending heavily

upon his head. The plea that did not avail the first man is not likely

to avail the last, nor any man between. "If thou art wise, thou art

wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." As

a matter of fact, neither the wife makes the husband nor the husband

the wife, but they both influence each other. She softens him and he

strengthens her; or if, as not unfrequently happens, her nature is the

stronger, she communicates to him of its strength. In a true marriage,

delicacy is imparted on the one side and vigor on the other, to

whichever side they originally belonged. Where the union is founded

upon truth, there is always a tendency to equilibrium, woman supplying

the spiritual, man the material element. She raises a mortal to the

skies; he draws an angel down.

And no more than it belongs to the wife to make the home and the

husband, does it belong to the mother to train up the children in the

way they should go. The family is a joint-stock concern, so

established both by nature and revelation. Where, in the Bible, do we

find that the mother can make of her child what she will, or that God

gave the making of the men of the world into her hand? In Holy Writ,

the father's duties loom up as largely as the mother's, and if there

is any difference it is not one that discriminates in his favor or in

favor of his release from duty. Fathers and mothers in the Bible

receive equal honor and equal deference, but the instruction and

guidance of the children are much more definitely and repeatedly

attributed to and inculcated upon and implied as belonging to the

father than the mother. He is recognized as the head. At his door lies

the responsibility. Ahaziah walked in the ways of his mother, but of

his father also when he did evil in the sight of the Lord. It is the

sins of the fathers, not of the mothers, that are visited upon the

children. It was the fathers, not the mothers, who were to make known

to the children the truth of Jehovah. It was the instruction of his

father that Solomon commanded his son to hear, and the law of his

mother which he commanded him not to forsake,--an arrangement which

modern opinions seem inclined to reverse. It is the fathers who are

pronounced to be the glory of children, not the mothers; and glory

implies action. A father may die, and his dying prayer and his

conscientious life, both commending his family to God, may descend

upon them in ever-renewing blessing. Such is the promise of the Lord.

A father may neglect his children, and the mother's care and love be

so blessed of Heaven that they shall be burning and shining lights in

the temple of the Most High. But this is God's uncovenanted mercy, and

the father has no right to expect it. Yet one not seldom hears or sees

anecdotes which imply that such neglect of children is not a crime,--a

crime against children, against mothers, against society, against God.

In times of financial disaster I have more than once heard of men's

consoling themselves for the ruin of their business by playfully

declaring that they should now go home and get acquainted with their

children. But the non-acquaintance with children, of which many

fathers are guilty, is not a theme to be lightly spoken of. Is it a

small thing to give life to a soul that can never die; that, through

unending ages, in happiness or in misery, clothed with glory or with

shame, beautiful, strong, upright, or disfigured and deformed, must

live on and on and on, forever and forever? Is it a small thing to

give life to a sentient being, that must know even the experience of

this world? That may be bowed down with guilt, remorse, wretchedness,

bringing other souls with it to the dust, or may be upborne through a

pure, happy, and beneficent career, bearing other souls with it to the

skies? How dare a man look upon these helpless, hapless souls, and

know that to him they owe their being, with all its dread

possibilities; that upon him may fall the curse of their ruined lives,

and--neglect them? How dare he leave them to another? To no other do

they belong. His duty he cannot delegate. After country, which

includes all things, his first duty is to his family. He is a father,

and at no price can he sell his fatherhood.

I see notices of Female Prayer-Meetings. The mothers of a regiment

assemble to pray for their sons who have gone to the war. There are

Mothers' Guides and Mothers' Assistants and Mothers' Hymn-Books. But

where are the Fathers' Hymn-Books? Where are the Paternal

Prayer-Meetings? When do the Fathers of Regiments assemble to pray for

their soldier-sons? If boys need their mothers' prayers, they need

also their fathers' prayers. Does the fervent, effectual prayer of

righteous women avail so much that righteous men can feel they have

nothing to do but give themselves up to their farms and their

merchandise, to buy and to sell and to get gain? Can men wait upon the

Lord by proxy? Shall we bring political economy into religion, and

arrange a wise division of labor by which the wife shall serve God,

and the husband shall serve Mammon,--the wife do the praying and the

husband see to the marketing,--he make sure of this world and she look

out for the next? It is a nice little arrangement, but--He that

sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have it in

derision.

But fathers must attend to their business. They must earn money to

support the family. They must provide wherewith to keep the pot

boiling. Certainly they must; but it requires no more time, or

attention, or ingenuity, or vitality, or strength, or spirits, or

endurance, no more expenditure of any of the forces of life, to go out

and earn something to put into the pot, than it does to stay at home

and boil it. If the mother, with her harassing cares, the never-ending

details of her never-ending work, can find time for studying her

maternal relations and responsibilities, and comparing her experience

with that of others for purposes of improvement and the highest

efficiency, and for joining in social prayer for the blessing of God

on her efforts, the father can find time for similar study, effort,

and prayer. If she can leave her baby, he can leave his books. If she

can leave her kitchen, he can leave his counting-room. His bench, his

desk, his fields, his office, are no more exacting than her nursery,

her laundry, her work-basket. Women will go to the mothers' meeting

who have to sit up till one o'clock in the morning to darn the little

frock, and patch the old coat that must be worn that day; and

sometimes they do it from stern necessity, without having the

consolation of any mothers' meeting to go to. Let men but be as

earnest in their purpose, as sincere in their belief, let them feel

that the souls of their children are in their hands as keenly as

mothers feel their responsibility, and business would straightway

relax its claims and withdraw into the background, where it belongs.

If a great general is come to town, if a famous regiment is to have a

reception, if a long-looked-for statue has safely crossed the sea and

is to be set up, if a foreign fleet lies in the harbor and is to send

its officers on shore, if a young Prince is to pass through the city

on his way home, men rush together in masses so dense as to endanger

limb and life. Business is the last thing that interposes any obstacle

to seeing and hearing that which a man determines to see and hear.

Business? What is man's business? Is it to take care of that which is

temporary or that which is permanent; that which belongs to matter, or

that which belongs to mind; that which he shares in common with the

beasts, or that which allies him to the angels,--nay, more, which

constitutes in him the image and likeness of God? A man's business is

to support his family. Certainly. He that provideth not for his own

household hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. I agree

to that with all my heart. But what is he to provide? Food, raiment,

shelter? These first, for without these is nothing; but these not

last, for he who stops here and turns his powers into another channel

is guilty of high crime. If his children were calves, lambs, chickens,

he would do so much for them; because they are human beings, he must

do somewhat more. But how many of the fathers who make business their

plea for not watching over their children, who are away from home from

seven in the morning till seven at night, who from year's end to

year's end, except on Sunday and perhaps two or three festive days,

see their children only at hurried meals, and snatch a kiss, perhaps,

after they are in bed and asleep, who know no more about the inward

and hourly life of their own than of their neighbor's children,--how

many of these fathers are spending their time and talents in the sole

business of getting food, clothes, and shelter, or even books and

educational opportunities for their families? How many of these men

earn just that and no more? It is not the support of families, it is

not business, it is not necessity alone, on which they lavish

themselves. It is their own pride or luxury or inclination. They wish

to extend their business, to acquire wealth, or a competence, to be

known as enterprising, public-spirited men, to be chosen on committees

and sent to the legislature, all right, if rightly come by, but

terribly wrong, worthless, perishable with the using, and of no

important use, if children are to be given in barter for them.

"This is all very well to talk about," you say; "but a man cannot do

anything in this world without money, and he cannot make money unless

he sticks to his business." Ah, my friend! so far as the best things

of this world are concerned, you cannot do anything with money, and

you cannot make good men and women unless you stick to your children.

Will money give you back the little baby-soul whose tender unfolding

had such sweetness and healing for you, but which you lost because you

would not stop long enough to look at it in your mad world-ways? Will

money give you the saving influence over your boy which might have

kept him from vicious companions and vicious habits,--an influence

which your constant interest, intercourse, and example in his boyish

days might have established, but which seemed to you too trivial a

thing to win you from your darling pursuit of gains? Will money make

you the friend and confidant of your daughter, the joy of her heart,

and the standard of her judgment, so that her ripening youth shall

give you intimacy, interchange of thought and sentiment, and you shall

give to her a measure to estimate the men around her, and a steady

light that shall keep her from being beguiled by the lights that only

lead astray? Will it give you back the children who have rushed out

wildly or strayed indifferently from the house which you have never

taken pains to make a home, but have been content to turn into a

hotel, with only less of liberty? Will money make you the heart as

well as the head of your family,--honored, revered, beloved?

If your firm transacts business on a capital of a hundred thousand

instead of half a million dollars, what is it but a little less paper,

fewer clerks, and narrower rooms? Though your farm have but fifty

instead of two hundred acres, there is just as much land on the earth.

Suppose you argue before a jury only two cases to-day instead of

three, there are a dozen young advocates who will be glad of the

crumbs that fall from your table, and Fate will mete out her sure,

rough-handed justice. With half the business you are doing now, could

not you and your family be comfortably and decently fed, clothed, and

sheltered? House, dress, and furniture might not be so fine, but

something of more worth than they would be finer. A family's support

does not necessarily involve sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen,

damask and rosewood. If the choice lies between Turkey carpets, or

even three-ply, under a child's feet, and a father's hand clasping his

to guide his steps, what man who believes--I will not say in

immortality, but in virtue,--what father who is not utterly unworthy

to bear the sacred name, can for one moment waver?

Every man, and especially every father, should aim to have a character

that shall alone have weight both with his fellow-citizens and his

children. His integrity should be so unimpeachable that his motives

shall be unquestioned. So far as his reputation is truthful, it should

be firmly grounded on moral virtues and moral graces, so that his word

shall have a force quite independent of his surroundings. He should be

strong enough to be able to live in a plain house, and wear plain

clothes, and deny himself, not only luxuries, but comforts and

beauties, for the sake of his children's society and improvement,

without forfeiting the respect and esteem of his neighbors or

inflicting any pain of mortification upon his children. You cannot do

anything in this world without money, if money is your sole or your

chief claim to consideration; but, in the face of ten thousand

denials, I would still maintain that it is possible to attain a

character and a standing that shall set money at defiance. He who

refuses to believe this, and acts upon a contrary belief, shows not

only a want of real inward dignity, but of a knowledge of history and

of life. A picture of Raphael, fitly framed and hung, is a treasure to

be prized beyond words; but with no frame at all, and hung in the

dreary parlor of a village inn, it is worth more, and would be more

widely sought and more highly prized than a palaceful of commonplace

paintings. Let all the accessories be as beautiful as you can command;

but at all events make sure of the picture. He is not a wise man who

expends all his energies on the frame, and trusts to luck for the

painting.

Nor is it any excuse to say that you must lay up provision against the

future. No one has any right to sacrifice the present to the future.

You do not know that you will have any future. "The present, the

present, is all thou hast for thy sure possessing." You may forego

present luxuries for future needs or for future luxuries, but you may

not forego present needs for future possibilities. If besides

performing the duty of today you can also lay up money for to-morrow,

it is well; but to slight a certain to-day for an uncertain to-morrow,

is all ill. Provide, if you can, means to send your boy to college, to

educate your daughter, to shelter your old age; yet, remember, before

those means can be used, the boy, the girl, the man, may lie each in

his silent grave; but though there may never be a college student, a

ripening maiden, a gray-haired man, there is now a little boy, a

little girl, who stand in need of their father; and a father is of

more worth to his son than a college, of more worth to his daughter

than many tutors. Train them in the way they should go, going yourself

before them with a steady step, and trust God for that future against

which you are unable to provide.

And this remember: the very best provision against the future is

investments in heart and muscle and brain. Money without them is

worthless. They without money are still inestimable riches. If your

son at twenty-one is alienated from his father, dissipated,

headstrong, weak, a source of anxiety and trouble to his family, he

will pierce your heart through with many sorrows, though you have

hundreds of thousands of dollars laid up for him in the bank. If your

daughter is a frivolous, woman, the silks with which your wealth

enables you to adorn her, the society with which it may perhaps enable

you to surround her, will only set her folly in a stronger light. But

if your children stand on the threshold of their manhood and their

womanhood, strong, self-poised, mailed for defence and armed for

warfare, glad and grateful for the love that has forged each weapon

and taught its skilful handling, no king on his throne is so blessed

as you. They have all that they need to conquer the world. Your money

may be a snare to your child, your wisdom never. If you lose your

money, it is gone forever. The child whom your love is enriching with

youthful health and promise may go before you suddenly out of the

world, but your labor and your love are not lost. Somewhere, under a

warmer sun than this, his earthly promise bursts into the full blossom

and the mellow fruit of performance more beautiful than eye can see or

heart conceive.

The adequate care and guidance of the family which he has founded is a

man's business in life. Farming, preaching, and shopkeeping are

secondary matters, to be regulated according to the needs of the

family. The family is not to be regulated by their requirements. And a

family's needs are not gay clothing and rich food, but a husband and

father. It is the great duty of his life to be acquainted with his

children, to know their character, their tastes, their tendencies, to

know who are their associates, and what are their associations, what

books they read, and what books they like to read, to gratify their

innocent desires, to lop off their excrescences and bring out their

excellences, to know them as a good farmer knows his soil, draining

the bogs into fertile meadows and turning the watercourses into

channels of beauty and life. He may furnish his children opportunities

without number, but the one thing beyond all others which he owes them

is himself. He may provide tutors and schools; but to no tutor and no

school can he pass over his relationship and its responsibilities. If

he is a stranger to his children, if they are strangers to him, he

shall be found wanting when he is weighed in the balance.

Niebuhr, we are told by his biographer, "considered the training of

his children, especially of his son, as the most imperative duty of

his life, to which all other considerations, except that of very

evident and important service to his country, ought to be

subordinated. In ordinary times he placed private duties above public

ones." Before the child was born his fatherly fondness was planning

schemes for the future. "In case it should be a boy, I am already

preparing myself to educate him. I should try to familiarize him very

early with the ancient languages, by making him repeat sentences after

me, and relating stories to him in them, in order that he might not

have too much to learn afterwards, nor yet read too much at too early

an age; but receive his education after the fashion of the ancients. I

think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl; I should be

in danger of making her too learned.... I would relate innumerable

stories to the boy, as my father did to me; but by degrees mix up more

and more of Greek and Latin in them, so that he would be forced to

learn those languages in order to understand the stories." By and by,

when the child is eight months old, we find him curtailing his

literary investigations because he is "moreover, just now, too much

occupied with Marcuccio." When "Marcuccio" is five years old his

father writes: "We have daily proofs of Marcus's noble nature; still I

am well aware that this affords us no guaranty, unless it be guided

with the most watchful care.... I succeed with teaching as well as I

could have ventured to hope.... I am reading with him Hygin's

Mythologicum,--a book which, perhaps, it is not easy to use for this

purpose, and which, yet, is more suited to it than any other, from the

absence of formal periods, and the interest of the narrative. For

German, I write fragments of the Greek mythology for him.... I give

everything in a very free and picturesque style, so that it is as

exciting as poetry to him; and, in fact, he reads it with such delight

that we are often interrupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite

devoted to me; but this educating costs me a great deal of time.

However, I have had my share of life, and I shall consider it as a

reward for my labors if this young life be as fully and richly

developed as lies within my power."

If Niebuhr, one of the most learned men of his time, ambassador of

Prussia to Rome, with all the business to transact, not only of

Prussia, but of all the petty German powers that had no minister of

their own, engaged in minute and abstruse historical investigation

bearing upon a work with which he was occupied and which may be said

to have revolutionized Roman history,--if his time was not too

valuable to bestow upon the amusement, the affection, and the

education of a baby, where shall we find, in America, a man whose

valuable time shall be a sufficient reason for the neglect of his

children? It may not be necessary or desirable to copy Niebuhr's

course with exactness. His residence in Rome devolved upon him a

larger part of the mental education of the boy than would have been

necessary at home. I am also inclined to think that he was too careful

and troubled, and did not have faith enough in Nature and God. But the

point which I wish to show is, that, in the midst of his numerous and

important duties, he found time for his child; and if he could do so

much, surely those who have not one tenth part of his duties and

responsibilities, either in number or weight, can find time to do the

far less service which devolves upon them. If they cannot, there is

but one resource. If a man is not able to be both statesman and

father, both merchant and father, or lawyer and father, or farmer and

father, he ought to elect which he will be, and confine himself to his

choice. If he is too much absorbed in scientific pursuits, or if he is

not a sufficiently dextrous workman to be able to secure from his

bench time enough to attend to other interests, he ought not to create

other interests. No man has any right to assume the charge of two

positions when he has the ability to perform the duties of but one. If

he alone bore the evil consequences of his shortcomings, he would be

less blameworthy, but the chief burden falls upon his children and

upon the state. Reckless of moral obligation, mindful only of his own

selfish impulses, the fruits of his recklessness and selfishness

are,--not houses that tumble down upon their builders, machinery that

cannot bear its own strain, garments that perish with the first

using,--these are bad enough, but these are harmlessness itself

compared with the evils which he causes. The harvest of his headlong

wickedness is living beings who must bear their life forever. He bids

into the world, tender little innocent souls, knowing that he cannot

or will not stand guard over them to ward off the fierce, wild devils

that lie in wait to rend them. Plastic to his touch, they may be

moulded to vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor, for the promise of

God is absolute, yea, and amen. Yet he turns aside to fritter away his

time over newspapers, to talk politics, to buy and sell and get

unnecessary gain, and leaves them to other hands, to chance comers, to

all manner of warping and hardening influences, so that their

after-lives must be one long and bitter struggle against early

acquired deformity, or a fatal yielding and a fatal torpor whose end

is deadly dismay.

But in popular opinion and by common usage all is thrown upon the

mother. By all tradition she is the centre, the heart, the mainspring,

of the household. From what newspaper, what book, what lecture, would

you learn that fathers have anything to do at home but to go into

their slippers and dressing-gowns, and be luxuriously fed and softly

soothed into repose? The care and management of the children fall upon

the mother. Who does all the fine things in the pretty nursery rhymes?

"My mother." It is her sphere, divinely circled. All the fitnesses of

her life point in that one direction. All men's hands are so many

finger-posts saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it."

It is the mother's sphere to take motherly care of her children. It is

the father's sphere to take fatherly care. Neither can leave his

duties to the other without danger. The family system is a combination

of the solar and the binary systems. All the little bodies whirl

around a common centre, but that centre is no solitary orb. It is two

suns, self-luminous, revolving around each other, and neither able to

throw upon its mate the burden of its shining.

Many fathers seem to think that they have nothing to do with their

children except to caress them and frolic with them an hour or two in

the evening, until they are old enough to be assistants in work. But

just as soon as there is the fatherly relation, there is the fatherly

duty. A baby in a house is a well-spring of pleasure; but it is also a

well-spring of care and anxiety immeasurable, of whose waters there is

no reason why the father should not drink as deeply as the mother. The

glory, the honor, the immortality, will shed a full light upon him,

and he also

"With heart of thankfulness should bear

Of the great common burden his full share."

I have seen a great deal of pleasantry played off against the

doctrines of woman's rights in newspapers, pictorial and otherwise;

the wife is represented as being immersed in public employments, while

the meek, sad husband stays at home and minds the baby. I do not know

that any important ends would be answered by an indiscriminate

female-haranguing in the market-place; but I do know that it would be

a great deal better for all concerned if fathers would pay more

attention to the little ones. Womanly gentleness and tenderness, and

long-suffering to-baby-ward reads sweetly in books, rounds graceful

periods from melodious lips, and is the loveliest of all modes of

levying black mail. But when you come down to matters of fact, a

fractious child is just as likely to be quieted by its father's

lullaby as by its mother's, if you pin the father down to lullabies.

Men who are inclined to take care of their children never find any

hinderance in their manhood. Male nurses for children are no less

efficient than female nurses. It is not his sex, but his selfishness,

that makes man's unfitness. He will not endure the tedium of soothing

and tending his child. He knows the mother will, and he lets her do

it. Her fitness is a good excuse for his self-indulgence. But if he is

disposed to take the trouble, he can do it often as well as she; often

better, for the mother's weaker and wearier nerves and greater

sensitiveness act on the little one and increase its irritability,

while the father's strength and calmness are a sort of soporific.

Somebody says that a mother's arm is the strongest thing in the world.

It upbears the child as she walks back and forth through the long

night-hours soothing its restlessness and pain, and never tires.

Vastly well spoken. Suppose, O smooth-tongued Seignior, you take a

turn with the baby yourself, and see whether your arm tires. If it

does, do not for one moment indulge in the pleasing illusion that hers

does not. It is made of flesh and blood and bones just like yours, and

like causes produce like effects. But what _is_ true is, that her

unselfish mother-love is so strong that she keeps on, notwithstanding

the ache. Go and do thou likewise. I do not say that fathers will not.

Many do, and what man has done man may do. Leave female endurance to

poetry, and remember that in actual life the laws of bone and muscle

are as fixed as any other laws of natural philosophy, and that action

is surely followed by fatigue. Walk you the floor with the baby in

your arms, if he must be carried, at least two hours to her one,

because your arms were stronger to begin with, and because hers have

an added weakness from the advent of this little round-limbed Prince.

Do not, above all things, betake yourself to a remote and silent part

of the house and dream your pleasant dreams, while the mother loses

her sleep and her rest by the ailing and fretful baby. But a man's

rest must not be broken. Why not as well as a woman's? He must have a

clear head and a firm hand to transact the next day's business. But

what is she going to do? The cases are so innumerous as to form a very

insignificant proportion wherein the American mother is not also cook,

laundress, seamstress, housekeeper, and chambermaid, with sometimes

one awkward, ignorant, inefficient Irish servant, rarely two, and not

rarely none at all. As a matter of moral economy the care of a baby is

enough to occupy any woman's time, and is all the care she ought to

have. As I have before said, even under the curse, this is the

arrangement that was made for her. Her motherhood frees her from toil;

but man's care is heavier than God's curse, and she too often bears on

her own head both her punishment and his. If he makes such provision

for her that she has absolutely no other than her maternal duties, she

can afford, perhaps, to lose her rest at night, since she can make it

up in the daytime; and unquestionably nature has fitted babies to

mothers more closely than to fathers; but to lay upon her, besides the

care of her children, all manner of other cares, and then leave her

with aching nerves and weakened frame and failing heart to worry it

out as she may, is a culpable cruelty for which no amount of pretty

sentiment is the smallest atonement.[4]

[4] I like sometimes to take my views out on an airing,

before making a final disposition of them, just to see how

they are received. On one such occasion, an excellent man,

in comfortable circumstances, expressed his very hearty

dissent from my opinions about woman's work. He thought

women had a pretty easy time of it, and appealed to his

wife, just then entering the room, to say what had been her

own experience. I wish type could convey the clear, ringing

decisiveness and incisiveness of the tone with which she

instantaneously responded "HARASSED TO DEATH!"

There are so many ways where there is a will! There are so many

opportunities for usefulness, if a man would only improve them. How

many times does the merchant, the lawyer, the busy business man, stop

at the street-corners, or in his own haunts, to chat with friends? How

many hours there are in the twenty-four when a man might run down from

his study, come in earlier from his shop, take a recess from his

fields, and rest himself and his wife by giving the little one a ride

in the basket-wagon, or the elegant carriage, or amusing it on the

carpet, while tired mamma lies down for a much-needed nap, or turns

off a greater amount of belated mending or cooking than she could do

in four hours with baby. And what benefit would not the man himself

receive, what gradual diminution of his selfishness in thus waiting

upon the helplessness of this little creature. Under what bonds for

the future and for virtue does it not lay him? Let him look down upon

his baby with earnest eyes, and inwardly resolve to be himself a man

pure and honorable as he wishes this boy to be; let him remember to

bear himself toward all women as he would have all men bear themselves

to the tiny woman in his arms.

There are men who assume and act on the assumption that their days

must be kept free from childish interlopers. They are aggrieved, their

personal rights are infringed upon, they have a most heavy and

undeserved yoke to bear if the children are not hustled out of their

way,--as if children were a kind of luxury and plaything of women in

which they may be indulged, if they will be careful to confine them to

their own department, nor ever let them encroach on the peculiar

domains of the lord of the manor. There are women weak enough to give

in to this assumption, and make it a rule that the children are not to

disturb their father. Before he comes into the house the crying baby

must be hushed at any cost, or removed beyond his hearing. The little

ones are not allowed to enter his study, they must not play in the

hall near it, nor in the garden under his window, because the noise

disturbs him. When the mood takes him, he takes them. He goes into the

nursery and has a merry romp with them, and when he is tired of it or

they begin to take too many liberties, he goes out again and thinks

his children are very charming. Or possibly he never goes into the

nursery at all,--a lack of interest which would be very unwomanly in a

woman, but is not the the least unmanly nor absolutely unknown in a

man. It is a great affliction to the mother, if, in consequence of a

temporary neglect of picket-duty, he puts his head into the kitchen or

sewing-room, to say with heroic self-control, "Carrie, the children

are so in and out that it is impossible for me to do anything." An

impatient upward look from his newspaper causes her a shiver of dread.

Small table-skirmishes are put to an untimely end by mamma's hurrying

the unlucky belligerents out of sight and sound of their outraged

sire, and the one Medo-Persic law of the family is at all risks to

rescue the father from every inconvenience and annoyance from the

children. The kind, devoted woman shuts them carefully up within her

own precincts. They may overrun her without stint. They may climb her

chair, pull her work about, upset her basket, scratch the bureau, cut

the sofa, run to her for healing in every little heart-ache; but no

matter. They are kept from disturbing papa. I am amazed at the folly

of women! Kept from disturbing papa? Rather hound them on, if there

must be any intervention! Put the crying baby in his arms the moment

he enters the house, and be sure to run away at once beyond his reach,

or with true masculine ingenuity he will be sure at the end of five

minutes to find some pretext for delivering the young orator back into

your care. So far from carefully withholding the children from the

paternal vicinage, at the first symptoms of exclusiveness, put a paper

of candy and a set of drums at his door to toll the children thither.

But this only in extreme cases. If he is ordinarily reasonable, the

right course is to do neither, but let things take their own way.

Except in case of illness or some unusual and pressing emergency, the

little ones ought not to be kept from either of their lawful owners.

The serenity of one is no more sacred than the serenity of the other.

The father must simply take the natural consequences of his children.

If they drift into his current, he must bear them on. He ought to

experience their obviousness, their inconvenience, their distraction.

It is no worse for a chubby hand to upset the inkstand on his papers,

than for it to upset the molasses-pitcher upon the table-cloth. It is

no worse for his experiments, his study, his reading, to be

interrupted, than it is for his wife's sewing. He can write his

letters, or stand behind the counter, or make shoes, with a baby in

his arms, just as well as she can make bread and set the table with a

baby in her arms. Let him come into actual close contact with his

children and see what they are and what they do, and he will have far

more just ideas of the whole subject than if he stands far off and,

from old theories on the one side and ten minutes of clean apron and

bright faces on the other, pronounces his euphonious generalizations.

His children will elicit as much love and admiration and interest as

now, together with a great deal more knowledge and a great deal less

silly, mannish sentimentalism.