every new generation, if good sense, sound principles, and a cheerful
heart do not constantly defend the right and strive to annihilate
inheritance. I am not going to discuss this matter of inheritance,
girls, for there is much in it not well for us to consider at present.
We are simply to remember to preserve and increase the good left us,
and fight to the utmost all evil that may have come from ancestry.
Every girl has peculiar forms of temptation; and what is hard for one
to resist is easy for another to repel, because to the latter it is
no temptation. If moods, grim moods, are worth any thing to us, they
are simply worth conquering,--merely valuable for the strength we get
from their defeat.
Plainly, it is our selfishness, our indulgence, our idleness, our
vanity, which make us allow such wretched company within our walls.
See what wily creatures the _blues_ are!--full of conceit! They
grow powerful while looking at us. They are like those little wood
creatures which can take the hue of the tree on which they rest, so
that for a long time we do not perceive them. They sit beside us by
hundreds when we fancy we are alone; and change their colors and their
wheedling tones to suit our inclinations, while they pour into our
ears deceitful whisperings that the world is all wrong, and we are
all right,--the vile flatterers! They paint all our surroundings with
dark colors, make all our pictures Mater Dolorosas or St. Sebastians,
turn all our music into requiems, and all our books into Stygian epics.
I cannot think there is any thing much more destructive to human
happiness than the _blues_. I wonder how they ever came by their
name? It must have arisen from the weirdness of the tempest, from the
changing hues of the snake's skin and the lizard's back, from the blue
of sharp steel, from lighted brimstone, and from driving sleet.
Now, girls, why do you, of all people in the world, allow yourselves
to be mastered by freaks? Do you not have troubles? Of course you
do,--real troubles, which are full of pain and discouragement. Your
feelings are so acute, you are so susceptible, I do not see why a sorrow
should not be deep with you. But with your vigor, your pure affection,
your generous impulses, with all the future before you in which to keep
on trying, I cannot understand why you should hug such a phantom as
a mood. Just think again how dangerous gloomy moods are,--how bold!
Why, with the least hint at an invitation, they will come in, not for
a call, nor for one meal, but to stay and stay,--the impudent creatures!
And such despoilers as they are while they remain! They eat you out
of house and home, they even take away your own appetite,--the harpies!
They make you cross,--yes, ugly. They bring frowns, tears, and age
into your faces, and they banish all loveliness to the ends of the
earth. Oh, do _not_ let them in!
When you come home tired out, your energy all gone, your patience
exhausted, why,--rest. Do not think you are desolate, that everybody
has deserted you, and that fate, destiny, grim despair, are all after
you. You are tired and need to go to bed, or to engage in some light
talk which will rest you but at the same time occupy you. Read the
newspaper, build aircastles, hope with all the combined powers of your
fancy. If the clouds of misfortune pile up, and it pours bad
luck,--mother scolds because you did not sweep your room carefully;
father threatens because of an approach to familiarity with the new
young man over the way; brother frets because his stockings are not well
darned; lessons all went wrong in the morning; your best friend said a
careless word to you; you have broken the main-spring of your watch, and
spilt coffee on your new dress,--why, these are all trifles! I know a
good many bad trifles coming together are worse than a misfortune; but
the best way to prevent them from bringing on dejection is to let in
such a flood of light and determined cheerfulness as to drown out
despair.
Mr. Emerson, in an essay on "Behavior," tells a capital story about
a man who was so bent on being cheerful he put to shame the torments
of hell itself. "It is related of the monk Basle, that, being
excommunicated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of
an angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell; but, such was the
eloquence and good humor of the monk, that wherever he went he was
received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil angels;
and, when he came to discourse with them, instead of contradicting
or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his manners, and even
good angels came from far to see him, and take up their abode with
him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him
attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success; for
such was the contented spirit of the monk, that he found something to
praise in every place and company, though in hell, and made a kind of
heaven of it. At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to
them that sent him, saying that no phlegethon could be found that would
burn him; for that, in whatever condition, Basle remained incorrigibly
Basle. The legend says his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed
to go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint."
Do not give away one day to despair: better lose it in idleness. When
friends seem careless of you, when poverty encroaches, when suffering
ensues from wrongs others have done, when sickness or any kind of
calamity besets you, and when you are hunted to the verge of gloom,
cling to the ropes which hope suspends about you, and they will surely
pull you back from the abyss. These trials all have their uses.
And, pray, be mindful of the way you look at things. Do not try to
see evil: have on your kind eyes, magnify every dot of goodness. "In
all things throughout the world, the men who, look for the crooked
will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight will see
the straight." [Footnote: Ruskin.] Try especially to see what is good
in your own lot. If you have not fine carpets, luxurious chairs, fresh
bouquets every morning, remember you can better appreciate a cane-
seated rocker when you are tired, a well-swept floor which has a rug
or two, and a single flower purchased with well-earned money.
As I suggested in the beginning, work is as sure a cure for dejection
as cheerfulness is. Why, I have seen one hour's solid labor eat up
all the blue tribe which had been hatching and hatching by millions.
Sometime will you read from Carlyle's "Past and Present" his chapters
on work, particularly that on "Labor and Reward"? Mr. Carlyle has
written much that is unintelligible to most readers. He has a very
grotesque, volcanic style not good to imitate. He is often sad and
hopeless about the human race, but he knew from hard experience what
work could do against despair. So, in spite of his ravings,
notwithstanding his eruptive style, and his sorrow for what is, he has
given us, in a masterly piece of prose, this noble "Gospel of Work."
His sentences, alive with enthusiasm, and terrible in their seriousness,
contain great reaches of thought, poetry, prophecy, like that of the
ancients; and all are full of the praises and rewards of labor.
"Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of
a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets
himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair
itself, all these like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor
day-worker, as of every man; but he bends himself with free valor
against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring
far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of labor
in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and
of sour smoke itself there is made bright, blessed flame!" "Doubt of any
kind can be ended by action alone."
What makes us blame the weather so much for our moods, girls? The
day is gray everywhere,--in the skies, on the trees, in the air, on
the ground,--and gray in us therefore. Ah! but these gray colors are
beautiful, even in November and December. In their variety they are
soft and shimmering on the tree branches, a slightly ruddy gray on
the branchlets, and a serener gray on the tree trunks. Overhead, even
when a storm is gathering in the sky, there are the colors of the
moonstone tinting into silver, and shading into pearl and blue. On the
ground are delicate wood-colors,--umbers, siennas, greens toned down to
gray. The atmosphere, from its lack of sunlight, only sets off the more
visibly beautiful forms of trees and branches.
No, the day is not moody: we are. We are not in harmony with her, but
have arrayed our-selves against her. "When we are at one with Nature
we have great peace; when fretted and unmindful of her presence, we
are irritated, and out of our true element." In our megrims we have
found something whose defenceless condition we think ought to bear
the burden of our misery.
Well for you the weather affords a chance for an excuse; for a moody
girl on a bright June morning, when all Nature is radiant with beauty,
is the veriest parody on life,--worse than that, a sad mockery.
If you are very sensitive, do not censure yourselves too severely,
nor foster distrust; for the latter is worse for you than self-conceit.
Be sure to make the _blues_ as dangerous as possible; be always mindful
of their direful attacks.
Some one asks me, just here, if she is never to feel serious? Of course
she is to have very thoughtful hours! The merely gay, happy-go-lucky
kind of a girl is not the most helpful, nor the most valuable. There
is very deep happiness sometimes in thoughtfulness,--do you not know
it? What makes you quiet when you row in and out of the shadow-filled
coves along the river-border, or when you drift among the islands purple
with sunset light? What makes you want to shut your eyes, and to throw
away the mask of seeming, when some one sings the song you love? and
what makes you feel a kind of dead, low, dreadful pause, when the
reader's voice ceases, and the story conies to an end? Are you moody?
No; only resting. Your being is suspended in thought,--thought so
serious yet so delicate, so subtle, you cannot weave it into words.
Sometimes, to be sure, a girl who is determined to be morbid will
distort such serene feelings into moodiness; but, then, these sudden
spells of dejection are only distantly related to the real blue urchins.
Perhaps, girls, it will be better for you if you make up your minds
early in life that your lot will probably be about like that of the
average girl,--that trouble must come, and even a skeleton must hang
and gibber behind your door; but that, be the skeleton what it may,
you will nail the door back on the unsightly thing, clothe it in some
decent garments, and make it as respectable as possible in its niche,
since it must stay with you. Events, decrees, circumstances, will not
change for just you and me; but we can change ourselves, and so defeat
them. Do not mind untoward circumstances. "Seize hold of God's hand,
and look full in the face of His creation, and there is nothing He
will not enable you to achieve." A crust with contentment is better
than a pudding with the bitter sauce of discontent.
Oh, I know, girls, it sounds very much like dull preaching. But, really,
do we enjoy moods? Do we have any respect for ourselves while in them?
Aren't we always trying to blame some one else? Shocking business,
hunting up scape-goats!
Just see how you look when you have given place to these evils. You
respect beauty: you would resent any criticism on your personal
appearance at a party; but if one should truly describe how careless,
how unmindful of beauty in looks or beauty in disposition, how ugly
you are, when in this deplorably moody state, you would shun your very
self, and want to get out of your body somehow. You watch a girl who
has an attack of the megrims. She seems to hang from her shoulders,
or thereabouts; her nimbleness is gone; her muscles seem flabby; she
reels more than she walks; she picks up a book to let it fall down;
she will not look her neighbor in the face; the meaning has all gone
out of her eyes; her mouth is the only expressive feature; her lips
are either tightly pressed or curled in scorn; there is a don't-care
look all over her, and it lurks in the folds of her dress, in her
slouching hat, her unbuttoned coat, and in her shambling gait.
Sometimes the picture is quite the reverse. The muscles seem tense
and powerful. The eye is set and firm, ferocious in fullness. The step
is quick and heavy. The strength is doubled, and every object has to
yield to the ugliness which attacks it. The form appears to gather
passion more and more with each hour, till, at last, full of violence,
the human frame sways, heaves, and the girl breaks her mood into a
flood of scalding tears. The contest is fierce while it lasts. It is
dreadful to see beauty put on such deformity, but let us be thankful
it is soon over. If the lightning does not strike anywhere, perhaps
all will be clearer after the storm.
These violent squalls are not to be compared with those periods of
long, low mutterings, nor with those seasons of painful silence, hours
of uncertainty, which at times cloud so many girls. Why, the moods
of some persons are like yellow days, dark days, and judgment days.
A girl shuts herself up for an afternoon, for a day, for two days A
stone sepulchre is all about her, and she only reaches out of it when
she wants bread and water. She, herself, does not seem to be in her
body: she is a ghost. When we pass by her tomb-like body, perhaps a
head will nod to us, or lips will mutter monosyllables. If our dress
touches her garments we feel like begging pardon, A kind of horror
and at the same time a sort of pity invade us, yet we are paralyzed
and cannot help her. I hardly think the word is employed by
lexicographers with this meaning, and I apologize for using the
expression; but this kind of an odd spell is what I call _smudging_.
It seems so strange that a girl can use her will so powerfully about
controlling others, and yet remain herself the dupe of an unkind mood.
To be sure, there are causes for ill-humor arising nearly every day,--
ill-health, poverty, sorrow, cares that haunt and harrow, unaccomplished
desires, ungratified longings; but the indulgence of dejection, the
lack of resistance to a mood, only increase hardship. How is the doctor
to help your body, if you do not help your spirits? How are your
surroundings to be improved, if you do not go to work? How are you
to get work, if you do not seek it, and try with all your might to
find it? How is trouble to be lessened or endured, if from it we do
not reach to higher, nobler living? The way out of trouble is not
through despair. Hope unlocks the temple doors, Despair rusts the keys.
Each must know her own anxieties best; but the trials of all, we shall
sometime see, are but bitter on the outside, sweet and nourishing
within. Believe in the _sometime_.
IX.
WOMANLINESS.
There is something in woman fascinating to woman herself, and something
in a girl irresistibly attractive to a girl herself. Mere words being
unsufficient to express the emotion caused by this charm, a girl makes
use of a large force of ejaculations, utters her indescribable "Oh's!"
and "Ah's!" in every variety of crescendo and diminuendo, and emphasizes
her pitch with gestures that point her meaning, till not the slightest
doubt exists that she has been impressed by something wonderful. She
does not know, indeed, just what it is that makes Sallie Henderson
so delightful; but "Oh, she is per-fect-ly lovely!--too sweet for any
thing!" Now I think the quality which so attracts is womanliness, the
most desirable of all the gifts a girl is permitted to cultivate. All
the littlenesses in the social customs of girls; all their raw,
untrained, ungenerous acts, their indulgences, their prejudices, are
the weak and despised signs of unwomanliness.
Womanliness is not primness, let me be understood. The straight, smooth
hair, the folded hands, the demure face and exact deportment from ten
years of age to eighty, do not always indicate womanliness; nor does
the attempt to turn young girls into elderly women produce it. So many
patchwork quilts, so many hand-stitched shirt-bosoms, so many worsted
stockings, made before a girl is fourteen, are so many quilts, bosoms,
and stockings more than she will make when she is forty. Hours for
sewing, for helping in the home, for studying, are necessary to even
children, because industry, patience, application, and system must
be encouraged in earliest years; but the hours girls spend in the house
doing things neatly and in order, as their grandmothers did before
them, ought to be balanced by hearty exercise in the fresh air, by
seasons of mirth, and by freedom from restraint. The out-of-door
exercise, the gayety, the deliverance from tasks, are quite as necessary
for older girls as for younger ones.
There is a value to be placed on the very trappings of girlhood which
do not in the least interfere with womanliness. At sixteen or eighteen,
perhaps at twenty, a girl can toss a jaunty little felt hat upon her
head, pin it in a twinkling above her wayward hair, tie on a bit of
blue or red somewhere about her blouse, tuck in her handkerchief in
a pardonable way, brush her short walking-skirt into becoming folds,
tie up her tennis shoes, and there she is in five minutes, prettier,
fresher, more becomingly dressed than all the older women of the
household, who have been standing before the mirror trying this effect
and that for the last hour. Ask a girl how she does it, how she manages
to make her hat bend down and up, and in and out, in all kinds of
alluring ways, and she does not know,--it belongs to girls to do such
things. Of course it does! Whatever they do must be bewilderingly
charming sometimes, because they are girls. You know, when we buy
choice roses from the gardener, we are always particular to select
those just approaching blossom. A delicacy, and yet a richness of color
and fragrance are upon them; a brightness and yet a tenderness in
tone,--the bloom is there more soft and beautiful than in the fully
opened rose. That bloom and color, that tenderness and dreamy softness,
that richness and freshness, are yours, dear girls.
Yes, indeed! there is something charming in a girl simply because she
is a girl. It is in the ring of her laugh, in her irony, in her
frankness or her coyness, in the way she does the commonest things,--
puts on her scarf, or catches hold of your arm,--things that only too
soon disappear in conventionalities, ceremonies, and proprieties. But
there is no need of this change as concerns much that is now called only
girlish. The womanly element is the main quality to be nourished into
greater perfection, but only the weakness of girlishness is to be
excluded from character. Girls are to grow wiser, and to avoid what must
bring harm, but still to keep the attractive freshness of maidenhood.
Some of the most delightful women we meet are those who can be girls
with girls, and women with women. The young do not lose their respect
for them because they appreciate them, nor do elders lessen their regard
for these women because they have kept the loveliness of girlhood.
Girls, I am not trying to defend you: your girlhood needs no such
effort; but I do want to make you all feel that the very sweetness
of your natures, the loveliness of your lives and conduct, your
attractive grace, which ought to strengthen with years and become
something more than beautiful,--become divine,--is womanliness.
God did not make all the girls beautiful, strong, or intellectual;
but He did make them all capable of becoming womanly. You may well
doubt this ability the next time you see an intelligent and pretty
girl avoid the glance of a former friend who is now miserable and weak;
and you may question its very existence in the wretched and outcast
one. Ah! but who can judge, or even know, the inner life of one's past
acquaintances? It is not for you, nor for me, to slight, to scorn,
to condemn the fallen. Of this we are sure,--that no beauty, no
intelligence, can compare with womanliness; and that no girl, weak
and wicked as she may be, is utterly lost to a return to womanliness.
May I here appeal to you, dear girls, to hasten this return? May I
urge you not to slight even the sinful? As you are girls with most
precious endowments, remember to encourage the growth of these gifts
in other girls. Then will womanhood seem even more blessed than now,--
when girls defend it and purify it. A girl may have all the privileges
that a boy has; a woman, all the rights that a man now has in
excess,--pray, do not let us stand in the way of such favors!--but
the fact remains that "woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse";
and the one thing she owes to the world, to herself, to her Maker,
is a reverence for her own sex. Girls, I repeat, you cannot sufficiently
realize your obligations to your own kind. Because you are girls and
not boys, women and not men, oh, try to be loyal to girls and women!
Pay homage to womanhood; adorn it, place sacrifices upon its altars,
rejoice in unceasing service to it, exalt it by every worthy endeavor!
This reverence for woman is the first and truest step towards
womanliness. When this has not been taken, and a girl is therefore
unkind to her social inferiors out of fear of what rumor will say,--"the
fume of little hearts,"--I blush for an indecent girlhood, and I grieve
for an unpromising, unchristian womanhood. We know that encouragement,
not intimacy, the gentle rebuke of a bow or a greeting, are more helpful
to arouse the sparks of womanliness than the cold stare or averted
head. Next to the respect of woman for woman, comes the regard of woman
for man,--a deference (when physical, mental, or spiritual strength
in man demand) that is due from her who, constituted differently, has
greater power to pay respect and gratitude, to honor and love.
Gentlemanly boys and men have a right to expect you to be refined,
courteous, agreeable towards them in all the ways of ladyhood,--not that
they are your superiors, but your helpers: made after a different
pattern, but still your sincere friends.
The womanly in girls implies the lady, no doubt, more than the manly
in man indicates the gentleman. We ought always to find in girls that
gentleness and delicacy of manner, that minute attention to the comforts
of others, that visible respect towards others, so agreeable and so
refining in all circles. Marguerite de Valois wrote, "Gentleness,
cheerfulness, and urbanity are the Three Graces of manners." I believe
they bear a close relation to ladylike deportment.
All can acquire these habits of politeness and attention to others,
though they come not with ease to those of us whom unfavorable
surroundings continually influence. A woman in an almshouse, a girl
serving a ship's crew, can be a lady and not cost her masters more,
though her efforts cost her much.
But, valuing all that constitutes a lady, believing that these gentle
graces are necessary to every girl, I believe the ladylike is but a
part of true womanliness,--that infinitely precious, indescribable
something in woman that makes her royal by birth, queen of herself,
and fit to occupy the throne that is placed beside the king's throne,--
not higher, not lower, but beside it; not his, but like his; her own,
from which, with equal though with differing eye, she looks in blessing
on the world.
Oh, how, girls, shall we get this womanliness into our characters,
or, rather, how shall we make it shine out of them? If we stop to think
once in a while what it is, if we remember that it is unassuming as
it is beautiful, and only waits for our acquaintance, we shall the
sooner embrace it. And then, if we are reminded that it does not despise
common things, lowly homes, simple pleasures, any more than it does
benevolent acts, patient lives, and ordinary toils, we shall oftener
be found cherishing it. Let us remember that womanliness is in our
elders,--women like Susan Winstanley, of whom "Elia" tells in "Modern
Gallantry." You know she was cold toward her lover, and when asked
why, she replied she was perfectly willing to receive his compliments
and devotion, as was her right; but that, just before he came to pay
his regards, she had overheard him roughly rating a young woman who
had not been quite prompt with his cravats, and she thought what a
simple change of place might have caused, and said, "I was determined
not to accept any fine speeches to the compromise of that sex the
belonging to which was, after all, my strongest claim and title to
them."