CHAPTER IV.

A CRYING NEED

"Lovest thou me?" said the Fair Ladye;

And the Lover he said, "Yea!"

"Then climb this tree--for my sake," said she,

"And climb it every day!"

So from dawn till dark he abrazed the bark

And wore his clothes away;

Till, "What has this tree to do with thee?"

The Lover at last did say.

It was a poor dinner. Cold in the first place, because Isabel would

wait to thoroughly wash her long artistic hands; and put on another

dress. She hated the smell of cooking in her garments; hated it worse

on her white fingers; and now to look at the graceful erect figure, the

round throat with the silver necklace about it, the soft smooth hair,

silver-filletted, the negative beauty of the dove-colored gown,

specially designed for home evenings, one would never dream she had set

the table so well--and cooked the steak so abominably.

Isabel was never a cook. In the many servantless gaps of domestic life

in Orchardina, there was always a strained atmosphere in the Porne

household.

"Dear," said Mr. Porne, "might I petition to have the steak less cooked?

I know you don't like to do it, so why not shorten the process?"

"I'm sorry," she answered, "I always forget about the steak from one

time to the next."

"Yet we've had it three times this week, my dear."

"I thought you liked it better than anything," she with marked

gentleness. "I'll get you other things--oftener."

"It's a shame you should have this to do, Isabel. I never meant you

should cook for me. Indeed I didn't dream you cared so little about

it."

"And I never dreamed you cared so much about it," she replied, still

with repression. "I'm not complaining, am I? I'm only sorry you should

be disappointed in me."

"It's not _you,_ dear girl! You're all right! It's just this

everlasting bother. Can't you get _anybody_ that will stay?"

I can't seem to get anybody on any terms, so far. I'm going again,

to-morrow. Cheer up, dear--the baby keeps well--that's the main thing."

He sat on the rose-bowered porch and smoked while she cleared the table.

At first he had tried to help her on these occasions, but their methods

were dissimilar and she frankly told him she preferred to do it alone.

So she slipped off the silk and put on the gingham again, washed the

dishes with the labored accuracy of a trained mind doing unfamiliar

work, made the bread, redressed at last, and joined him about nine

o'clock.

"It's too late to go anywhere, I suppose?" he ventured.

"Yes--and I'm too tired. Besides--we can't leave Eddie alone."

"O yes--I forget. Of course we can't."

His hand stole out to take hers. "I _am_ sorry, dear. It's awfully

rough on you women out here. How do they all stand it?"

"Most of them stand it much better than I do, Ned. You see they don't

want to be doing anything else."

"Yes. That's the mischief of it!" he agreed; and she looked at him in

the clear moonlight, wondering exactly what he thought the mischief was.

"Shall we go in and read a bit?" he offered; but she thought not.

"I'm too tired, I'm afraid. And Eddie'll wake up as soon as we begin."

So they sat awhile enjoying the soft silence, and the rich flower scents

about them, till Eddie did wake presently, and Isabel went upstairs.

She slept little that night, lying quite still, listening to her

husband's regular breathing so near her, and the lighter sound from the

crib. "I am a very happy woman," she told herself resolutely; but there

was no outpouring sense of love and joy. She knew she was happy, but by

no means felt it. So she stared at the moon shadows and thought it

over.

She had planned the little house herself, with such love, such hope,

such tender happy care! Not her first work, which won high praise in

the school in Paris, not the prize-winning plan for the library, now

gracing Orchardina's prettiest square, was as dear to her as this most

womanly task--the making of a home.

It was the library success which brought her here, fresh from her

foreign studies, and Orchardina accepted with western cordiality the

youth and beauty of the young architect, though a bit surprised at first

that "I. H. Wright" was an Isabel. In her further work of overseeing

the construction of that library, she had met Edgar Porne, one of the

numerous eager young real estate men of that region, who showed a

liberal enthusiasm for the general capacity of women in the professions,

and a much warmer feeling for the personal attractions of this one.

Together they chose the lot on pepper-shaded Inez Avenue; together they

watched the rising of the concrete walls and planned the garden walks

and seats, and the tiny precious pool in the far corner. He was so

sympathetic! so admiring! He took as much pride in the big "drawing

room" on the third floor as she did herself. "Architecture is such fine

work to do at home!" they had both agreed. "Here you have your north

light--your big table--plenty of room for work! You will grow famouser

and famouser," he had lovingly insisted. And she had answered, "I fear

I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous."

That was only some year and a-half ago,--but Isabel, lying there by her

sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by

assertion happy. She was thinking, persistently, of dust. She loved a

delicate cleanliness. Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop

of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the

mechanical perfection of an even wash of color. And she saw, through

the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded

parlor--two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!--dust in

the dining-room gathered since yesterday--the dust in the kitchen--she

would not count time there, and the dust--here she counted it

inexorably--the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom

upstairs. Eight days since she had found time to go up there.

Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and

looked at the house--as she used to look at it with him, before they

were married. Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of

wedded joy--it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures. Now, in this

dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks,

continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by

bad fairies in the old tales. In thought she entered the

well-proportioned door--the Gate of Happiness--and a musty smell greeted

her--she had forgotten to throw out those flowers! She turned to the

parlor--no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a

day to keep that room as she liked it.

From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the

exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each

one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in--and the work

undone.

"If I were an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and

common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough--in my own

work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any

better than I do.--He don't have to!--and then such a wave of bitterness

rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch

the crib--the other to her husband.

He awakened instantly. "What is it, Dear?" he asked. "Too tired to

sleep, you poor darling? But you do love me a little, don't you?"

"O _yes_!" she answered. "I do. Of _course_ I do! I'm just tired, I

guess. Goodnight, Sweetheart."

She was late in getting to sleep and late in waking.

When he finally sat down to the hurriedly spread breakfast-table, Mr.

Porne, long coffeeless, found it a bit difficult to keep his temper.

Isabel was a little stiff, bringing in dishes and cups, and paying no

attention to the sounds of wailing from above.

"Well if you won't I will!" burst forth the father at last, and ran

upstairs, returning presently with a fine boy of some eleven months, who

ceased to bawl in these familiar arms, and contented himself, for the

moment, with a teaspoon.

"Aren't you going to feed him?" asked Mr. Porne, with forced patience.

"It isn't time yet," she announced wearily. "He has to have his bath

first."

"Well," with a patience evidently forced farther, "isn't it time to feed

me?"

"I'm very sorry," she said. "The oatmeal is burned again. You'll have

to eat cornflakes. And--the cream is sour--the ice didn't come--or at

least, perhaps I was out when it came--and then I forgot it. . . . . I

had to go to the employment agency in the morning! . . . . I'm sorry I'm

so--so incompetent."

"So am I," he commented drily. "Are there any crackers for instance?

And how about coffee?"

She brought the coffee, such as it was, and a can of condensed milk.

Also crackers, and fruit. She took the baby and sat silent.

"Shall I come home to lunch?" he asked.

"Perhaps you'd better not," she replied coldly.

"Is there to be any dinner?"

"Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself."

"If you have to get it yourself I'll allow for seven-thirty," said he,

trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it. "Now

don't take it so hard, Ellie. You are a first-class architect,

anyhow--one can't be everything. We'll get another girl in time. This

is just the common lot out here. All the women have the same trouble."

"Most women seem better able to meet it!" she burst forth. "It's not my

trade! I'm willing to work, I like to work, but I can't _bear_

housework! I can't seem to learn it at all! And the servants will not

do it properly!"

"Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them! But

cheer up, dear. It's no killing matter. Order by phone, don't forget

the ice, and I'll try to get home early and help. Don't cry, dear girl,

I love you, even if you aren't a good cook! And you love me, don't

you?"

He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving

hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once

more. She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to

the table. The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing

with flies, hot, with a week's accumulating disorder. The bread she

made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans;

perhaps sour already. She clapped it into the oven and turned on the

heat.

Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the

big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and

swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room. Turning swiftly she

shut the door on them. The dining-room was nearly as bad. She began to

put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down

suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing

the dining-room door behind her.

She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest

and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising

anger kept the tears back.

"Of course I love him!" she said to herself aloud but softly,

remembering the baby, "And no doubt he loves me! I'm glad to be his

wife! I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him!

But--_this_ is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He

hasn't had to change his business!"

She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and

laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.

"'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and

you get married--and after that it's Housework!"

"They don't say, 'Will you be my Cook?' 'Will you be my Chamber maid?'

'Will you give up a good clean well-paid business that you love--that

has big hope and power and beauty in it--and come and keep house for

me?'"

"Love him? I'd be in Paris this minute if I didn't! What has 'love' to

do with dust and grease and flies!"

Then she did drop on the small sofa and cry tempestuously for a little

while; but soon arose, fiercely ashamed of her weakness, and faced the

day; thinking of the old lady who had so much to do she couldn't think

what to first--so she sat down and made a pincushion.

Then--where to begin!

"Eddie will sleep till half-past ten--if I'm lucky. It's now nearly

half-past nine," she meditated aloud. "If I do the upstairs work I

might wake him. I mustn't forget the bread, the dishes, the parlor--O

those flies! Well--I'll clear the table first!"

Stepping softly, and handling the dishes with slow care, she cleaned the

breakfast table and darkened the dining-room, flapping out some of the

flies with a towel. Then she essayed the parlor, dusting and arranging

with undecided steps. "It _ought_ to be swept," she admitted to

herself; "I can't do it--there isn't time. I'll make it dark--"

"I'd rather plan a dozen houses!" she fiercely muttered, as she fussed

about. "Yes--I'd rather build 'em--than to keep one clean!"

Then were her hopes dashed by a rising wail from above. She sat quite

still awhile, hoping against hope that he would sleep again; but he

wouldn't. So she brought him down in full cry.

In her low chair by the window she held him and produced bright and

jingling objects from the tall workbasket that stood near by, sighing

again as she glanced at its accumulated mending.

Master Eddy grew calm and happy in her arms, but showed a growing

interest in the pleasing materials produced for his amusement, and a

desire for closer acquaintance. Then a penetrating odor filled the air,

and with a sudden "O dear!" she rose, put the baby on the sofa, and

started toward the kitchen.

At this moment the doorbell rang.

Mrs. Porne stopped in her tracks and looked at the door. It remained

opaque and immovable. She looked at the baby--who jiggled his spools

and crowed. Then she flew to the oven and dragged forth the bread, not

much burned after all. Then she opened the door.

A nice looking young woman stood before her, in a plain travelling suit,

holding a cheap dress-suit case in one hand and a denim "roll-bag" in

the other, who met her with a cheerful inquiring smile.

"Are you Mrs. Edgar Porne?" she asked.

"I am," answered that lady, somewhat shortly, her hand on the doorknob,

her ear on the baby, her nose still remorsefully in the kitchen, her

eyes fixed sternly on her visitor the while; as she wondered whether it

was literature, cosmetics, or medicine.

She was about to add that she didn't want anything, when the young lady

produced a card from the Rev. Benjamin A. Miner, Mrs. Porne's

particularly revered minister, and stated that she had heard there was a

vacancy in her kitchen and she would like the place.

"Introducing Mrs. D. Bell, well known to friends of mine."

"I don't know--" said Mrs. Porne, reading the card without in the least

grasping what it said. "I--"

Just then there was a dull falling sound followed by a sharp rising one,

and she rushed into the parlor without more words.

When she could hear and be heard again, she found Mrs. Bell seated in

the shadowy little hall, serene and cool. "I called on Mr. Miner

yesterday when I arrived," said she, "with letters of introduction from

my former minister, told him what I wanted to do, and asked him if he

could suggest anyone in immediate need of help in this line. He said he

had called here recently, and believed you were looking for someone.

Here is the letter I showed him," and she handed Mrs. Porne a most

friendly and appreciative recommendation of Miss D. Bell by a minister

in Jopalez, Inca Co., stating that the bearer was fully qualified to do

all kinds of housework, experienced, honest, kind, had worked seven

years in one place, and only left it hoping to do better in Southern

California.

Backed by her own pastor's approval this seemed to Mrs. Porne fully

sufficient. The look of the girl pleased her, though suspiciously above

her station in manner; service of any sort was scarce and high in

Orchardina, and she had been an agelong week without any. "When can you

come?" she asked.

"I can stop now if you like," said the stranger. "This is my baggage.

But we must arrange terms first. If you like to try me I will come this

week from noon to-day to noon next Friday, for seven dollars, and then

if you are satisfied with my work we can make further arrangements. I

do not do laundry work, of course, and don't undertake to have any care

of the baby."

"I take care of my baby myself!" said Mrs. Porne, thinking the new girl

was presuming, though her manner was most gently respectful. But a week

was not long, she was well recommended, and the immediate pressure in

that kitchen where the harvest was so ripe and the laborers so

few--"Well--you may try the week," she said. "I'll show you your room.

And what is your name?"

"Miss Bell."

LITTLE LEAFY BROTHERS

Little, leafy brothers! You can feel

Warmth o' the sun,

Cool sap-streams run,

The slow, soft, nuzzling creep

Of roots sent deep,

And a close-anchored flowing

In winds smooth-blowing.

And in the Spring! the Spring!

When the stars sing--

The world's love in you grows

Into the rose!

Little hairy brothers! You can feel

The kind sun too;

Winds play with you,

Water is live delight;

In your swift flight

Of wings or leaping feet

Life rushes sweet--

And in the Spring! the Spring!

When the stars sing--

The world's love stirs you first

To wild, sweet thirst,

Mad combat glorious, and so

To what you know

Of love in living. Yes, to you first came

The joy past name

Of interchange--the small mouth pressed

To the warm, willing breast.

But O! the human brothers! We can feel

All, all below

These small ones know;

Earth fair and good,

The bubbling flood

Of life a-growing--in us multiplied

As man spreads wide;

Not into leaves alone,

Nor flesh and bone,

But roof and wall and wheel

Of stone and steel;

Soft foliage and gorgeous bloom

Of humming loom;

And fruit of joy o'er-burdened heart

Poured forth in Art!

We can not only leap in the sun,

Wrestle and run,

But know the music-measured beat

Of dancing feet,

The interplay of hands--we hold

Delight of doing, myriad-fold.

Joy of the rose, we know--

To bloom--to grow!--

Joy of the beast we prove--

To strive--to move!

And in the Spring! the Spring!

When the stars sing,

Wide gladness of all living men

Comes back again,

A conscious universe at rest

In one's own breast!

The world's love! Wholly ours;

Through breathing flowers,

Through all the living tumult of the wood,

In us made good;

Through centuries that rise and fall--

We hold it all!

The world's love! Given music, fit

To carry it.

The world's love! Given words at last, to speak,

Though yet so weak.

The world's love! Given hands that hold so much,

Lips that may touch!

The worlds's love! Sweet!--it lies

In your dear eyes!

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

IV.

MEN AND ART.

Among the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men in

human development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great women

artists. Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, they are

either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the trifling

exceptions which do but prove the rule.

Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating their

performances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts.

What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art? And

what, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculine

expression?

When we look for the beginnings of art, we find ourselves in a period of

crude decoration of the person and of personal belongings. Tattooing,

for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practice

among certain classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they are

in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves

therewith; some do so--to later mortification. Early personal

decoration consisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the

hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see

among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by

men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them.

In personal decoration today, women are still near the savage. The

"artists" developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the

sartorial, and all those specialized adorners of the body commonly known

as "beauty doctors."

Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men. The greatest

milliners, the greatest dressmakers and tailors, the greatest

hairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorative

toilettes and accessories, are men. Women, in this as in so many other

lines, consume rather than produce. They carry the major part of

personal decoration today; but the decorator is the man. In the

decoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive industry,

originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry,

leatherwork, needlework, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing and

embroideries of ancient peoples we see the work of the woman decorator.

Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past. The

art which is part of industry, natural, simple, spontaneous, making

beauty in every object of use, adding pleasure to labor and to life, is

not Art with a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are

so few women of note.

Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; and

by that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchate

and become slaves in varying degree. The women who were idle pets in

harems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut off

from the joy of making things. Where constructive work remained to

them, art remained, in its early decorative form. Men, in the

proprietary family, restricting the natural industry of women to

personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much

impoverished the world.

There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted development

of women than this commonplace--their lack of a civilized art sense.

Not only in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in

the pitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen the

arrest in normal growth.

After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture,

Sculpture, Painting, Music and the Drama, we find women in their

primitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted;

doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and

"tidies"--as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lower

race.

This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginning

of our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the world at large.

Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of one

line of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as they

have in other matters; but by refusing the same growth to women, they

have not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market as

it were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste.

Among the many sides of this great question, some so terrible, some so

pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life is

especially easy to study and understand, and has its own elements of

amusement. Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, going

on themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have found their efforts

hampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the

amazing indifference of the world at large. As the world at large

consists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seem

patent to the meanest understanding that the women must be allowed to

rise in order to lift the world. But such has not been the

method--heretofore.

We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on art

through their interference with the art of women. There are other sides

to the question. Let us consider once more the essential

characteristics of maleness, and see how they have affected art, keeping

always in mind the triune distinction between masculine, feminine and

human. Perhaps we shall best see this difference by considering what

the development of art might have been on purely human terms.

The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and

adds decoration to construction as naturally. The cook, making little

regular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human

instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition,

and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in

us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of

specialists--artists of all sorts--and an accompanying development of

appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in

primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popular

appreciation of her work--or his.

Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic

expression and appreciation far higher than we see now. Take the one

field of textile art, for instance: that wide and fluent medium of

expression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments and

the decoration of them--all this is human work and human pleasure. It

should have led us to a condition where every human being was a pleasure

to the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed.

Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; the

stiff, black ugliness of our men's attire; the irritating variegated

folly of our women's; the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame the

dignity of childhood by modes of dress.

In normal human growth, our houses would be a pleasure to the eye; our

furniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom into

beauty as naturally as they still do in those low stages of social

evolution where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit.

Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one to

some degree, either in production or appreciation, or both. "Pure art,"

as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of the true

artist to this ideal is one of the highest forms of the social

sacrifice. Of all the thousand ways by which humanity is specialized

for inter-service, none is more exquisite than this; the evolution of

the social Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of those whose work is

wholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as the

bread of life. This we should have in a properly developed community;

the pleasure of applied art in the making and using of everything we

have; and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work

thereof, spread far and wide.

What do we find?

Applied art at a very low level; small joy either for the maker or the

user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect

few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an

occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and

evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly.

Let us now see what part in this undesirable outcome is due to our

Androcentric Culture.

As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right to

perform all social functions, he necessarily brought to that performance

the advantages--and disadvantages--of maleness, of those dominant

characteristics, desire, combat, self-expression.

Desire has overweighted art in many visible forms; it is prominent in

painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully

degraded dancing.

Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on a

high plane; but the last element is the main evil, self-expression.

This impulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine. It rests on that

most basic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and

centrifugal forces of the universe. In the very nature of the

sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this difference: the one attracts,

gathers, draws in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out. That

projective impulse is seen in the male nature everywhere; the constant

urge toward expression, to all boasting and display. This spirit, like

all things masculine, is perfectly right and admirable in its place.

It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth in a

thousand changing modifications--the female, selecting, may so

incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It is his duty to thus

express himself--an essentially masculine duty; but masculinity is one

thing, and art is another. Neither the masculine nor the feminine has

any place in art--Art is Human.

It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal processes of

reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive social

process, quite above the plane of sex. The true artist transcends his

sex, or her sex. If this is not the case, the art suffers.

Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotion

through the body; beginning in subhuman type, among male birds, as the

bower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caper

before their mates. Among early peoples we find it a common form of

social expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military,

and other. Later it becomes a more explicit form of celebration, as

among the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and music

held high place.

But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we find

the broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more

and more emphasized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a

mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all

males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social

dances, so lacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression,

so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance.

As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the

degrading effect of masculine dominance:--the dancing girl. In the

frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on

her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly

about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill

scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a

bracelet dance on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on

earth, is this degradation found--the female capering and prancing

before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not

hers. That we, as a race, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art

wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one

clear cause.

Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause.

The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, that

we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It

meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social

feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an

excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity.

The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home is

essentially a place for the woman and the child; yet the needs of woman

and child are not expressed in our domestic architecture. The home is

built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; the

kitchen is its working centre rather than the nursery.

Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his little

harem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifest

his ability to maintain her in idleness. The house is the physical

expression of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the world

with a small drab ugliness. A dwelling house is rarely a beautiful

object. In order to be such, it should truly express simple and natural

relations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop.

The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our general

taste, the everlasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, is

the natural result of the proprietary family and its expression in this

form.

In sculpture we have a noble art forcing itself into some service

through many limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this line

of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the

human body, the vicious standards of sex-consciousness enforced under

the name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize,

all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture.

With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the high

standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free

womanhood; we should show a different product in this great art.

An interesting note in passing is this: when we seek to express socially

our noblest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body as

the highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity

and not biassed by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful

indeed, but never _decorated_. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills,

with rings in her ears--or nose.

Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess of the

one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general presence of

egoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression,

which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry.

Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male

for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a feature of

human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his other

feelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its base

essentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it

forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with.

As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room for

fine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradual

emergence of the human note.

Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for

this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching

on these various forms; and indicating lines of observation.

That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifying

description--painting--is also a wide field; and cannot be done full

justice to within these limits. The effect upon it of too much

masculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit.

The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observer

does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the

young and beautiful--sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis of

feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader

line of work.

But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on

self-expression. The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels,

strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now so

generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that

what is called "the art world" accepts it as established.

If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight

of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he,

personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest

importance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive,

necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, uses

the medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-cock uses his wings in

drumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowly

as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations.

The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the

more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the less

personal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

The literary output of the ancient Hebrews must have been great, since

we are told by their critical philosopher, "Of the making of many books

there is no end."

There must have been some limit, however, because their books were hand

made, and not everyone could do it. Since the printing press relieved

this mechanical restriction, and educational facilities made reading and

writing come, if not by nature, at least with general compulsion, the

making of books has increased to the present output--which would have

made the ancient philosopher blush for his premature complaint.

In this, as in all social functions, we have the normal and the abnormal

growth before us; but so far we have not learned to divide them. There

is no harm at all in having anybody and everybody write books if they

choose, any more than in having anybody and everybody talk if they

choose. Literature is only preserved speech.

Freedom of speech is dear to our hearts; it is an easy privilege, and

costs little--to the speaker. People are free to talk, privately and

publicly, and free to write, privately and publicly.

The harm comes, in this as in other processes, by the door of economic

interest. It is not the desire to write which crowds our market so

disadvantageously; it is the desire to sell.

Though a fair capacity in the art of literature were even more general

than to-day, if our social conditions were normal only a certain

proportion of us would naturally prefer that form of expression. Our

literary output is abnormally increased by two influences; the

hereditary and inculcated idea of superiority in this profession, and

the emoluments thereof. These last are greatly over-estimated, as, in

truth, is the first also.

There is nothing essentially more worthy in the art of saying things

than in the art of doing things. The basic merit in literature, as in

speech, lies in the thing said. This the makers of many books have

utterly forgotten. "She's a beautiful talker!" we might say of someone.

"It's perfectly lovely! Such language! Such expression! It's a joy

to hear her!"

Then an unenthusiastic person might rudely inquire, "Yes--but what does

she say?"

Talking is not fancy-work. It is not an exhibition of skill in the use

of the vocal chords, in knowledge of grammar and rhetoric. Speech is

developed in our race as a medium of transmission of thought and

feelings. The greater or less ease and proficiency with which we

elaborate the function should always be held subordinate to the real

use. Literature is to be similarly judged by its initial purpose, the

preservation and transmission of ideas and feelings. Even the

picture-work of fiction must carry a certain content of ideas, else it

cannot be read; it does not, as the children say, "make sense."

Now take up your current magazine--the largest medium of literary

expression to-day--and consider it from this point of view.

The modern magazine is a distinctly new product. When the slow, thick

stream of book-making first began to spread and filter out through the

new channels of periodic publication, a magazine was a serious literary

production. The word "magazine" implies an armory, a storehouse, a

collection of valuable pieces of literature. Now we need a new word for

the thing. It has become a more and more fluent and varied mouthpiece

of popular expression. It is a halfway-house between the newspaper and

the book. The older, higher-priced, more impressive of them, keep up,

or try to keep up, the standards of the past; but the world of to-day is

by no means so much interested in "beautiful letters" as in the fresh

current of knowledge and feeling belonging to our times.

Articles about flying machines may or may not be "literature" but they

are small doses of information highly desirable to persons who have not

time enough, nor money enough, to read books.

If you have time, you can go to the libraries. If you have money, you

can order from your dealer.

If you have only ten cents--no, fifteen, it takes in these days of

prosperity--you can with that purchase a deal of valuable and

interesting matter, coming on fresh every month--or week.

Sweeping aside all the "instructive" articles as hopelessly without the

lofty pale of literature, we have left an overwhelming mass of fiction.

This, too, is ruthlessly condemned by the austere upholder of high

standards. This, too, is not literature.

What is literature?

Literature, in the esoteric sense of lofty criticism, is a form of

writing which, like the higher mathematics, must be free from any taint

of utility. Pure literature must perforce be a form of expression, but

must not condescend to express anything.

To write with the narrow and vulgar purpose of saying something, is to

be cut off hopelessly from the elect few who produce literature. This

attitude of sublime superiority as an art is responsible for our general

scorn of what we call,

"The Novel With a Purpose."

Have any of us fairly faced the alternative? Are we content to accept

delightedly the "Novel Without a Purpose"?

Do you remember the Peterkin Papers? How Solomon John, the second son,

thought he would like to write a book? How Agammemnon, the oldest son,

and Elizabeth Eliza, the sister, and the Little Boys, in their beloved

rubber boots, as also the parents, were all mightily impressed with the

ambition of Solomon John? How a table was secured, and placed in the

proper light? How a chair was brought, paper was procured, and pens and

ink? How finally all was ready, and the entire family stood about in

rapt admiration to see Solomon John begin?

He drew the paper before him; he selected a pen; he dipped it in the ink

and poised it before him.

Then he looked from one to another, and an expression of pained surprise

spread over his features.

"Why," said Solomon John, "I have nothing to say!"

(I quote from memory, not having the classics at hand.)

There was great disappointment in the Peterkin family, and the project

was given up. But why so? Solomon John need not have been so easily

discouraged. He was in the exact position to produce literature--pure,

high, legitimate literature--the Novel Without a Purpose.

In the effort to preserve the purity of the Pierian Springs, those

guardians of this noble art, who arbitrate in the "standard magazines,"

condemn and exclude what they define as "controversial literature."

Suppose someone comes along with a story advocating euthanasia, showing

with all the force of the art of fiction the slow, hideous suffering of

some helpless cancer patient or the like, the blessed release that might

be humanly given; showing it so as to make an indelible impression--this

story is refused as "controversial," as being written with a purpose.

Yet the same magazine will print a story no better written, showing the

magnificent heroism of the man who slowly dies in year-long torment,

helpless himself and steady drain on everyone about him, virtuously

refusing to shorten his torments--and theirs.

What is a controversy? A discussion, surely. It has two sides.

Why isn't a story upholding one side of a controversy as controversial

as a story upholding the other side?

Is it only a coincidence that magazines of large circulation and

established reputation so consistently maintain that side of the

controversy already popularly held as right?

Time passes. Minds develop. New knowledge comes. People's ideas and

feelings change--some people's. These new ideas and feelings seek

expression ion the natural forms--speech and literature, as is

legitimate and right.

But the canons of taste and judgement say No.

The ideas and feelings of the peoples of past times found expression in

this way, and are preserved in literature. But our ideas and feelings,

so seeking expression, do not make literature.

It is not the first time that the canons were wrong. Straight down the

road of historic progress, from the dim old days we can hardly see, into

the increasing glare of the calcium-lighted present, there have always

stood the Priesthood of the Past, making human progress into an obstacle

race.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

QUERY: "I am a woman of about forty; my children are pretty well grown

up; my home does not take all my time. I could do some work in the

world, but I do not know what to do. Can you advise me?"

QUERY: "I appreciate the need of women's working, and am free to do so,

but cannot make up my mind what work to undertake. It is very easy for

you people with 'a mission' and talents, but what is an ordinary woman

to do?"

ANSWER: These two questions belong together, and may be answered

together. Neither of the questioners seem to be driven by necessity,

which simplifies matters a good deal.

Work has to be done for two real reasons. One is the service of

humanity, of society, which cannot exist without our functional

activity. Work is social service.

The other is personal development. One cannot be fully human without

this functional social activity.

In choosing work, there are two governing factors always, and generally

the third one of pressing necessity. Of the two, one is personal

fitness--the instinctive choice of those who are highly specialized in

some one line. This makes decision easy, but does not always make it

easy to get the work. You may be divinely ordained to fiddle--but if no

one wants to hear you, you are badly off. The other is far more

general; it is the social demand--the call of the work that _needs

doing._

If you are able to work, free to work, and not hampered by a rigid

personal bent, just look about and see what other people need. Study

your country, town, village, your environment, near or distant; and take

hold of some social need, whether it is a better school board or the

preservation of our forests. So long as the earth or the people on it

need service, there is work for all of us.

PLAY-TIME

A WALK WALK WALK

I.

I once went out for a walk, walk, walk,

For a walk beside the sea;

And all I carried for to eat, eat, eat,

Was a jar of ginger snaps so sweet,

And a jug of ginger tea.

For I am fond of cinnamon pie,

And peppermint pudding, too;

And I dearly love to bake, bake, bake,

A mighty mass of mustard cake,

And nutmeg beer to brew.

II.

And all I carried for drink, drink, drink,

That long and weary way,

Was a dozen little glasses

Of boiled molasses

On a Cochin China tray.

For I am fond of the sugar of the grape,

And the sugar of the maple tree;

But I always eat

The sugar of the beet

When I'm in company.

III.

And all I carried for to read, read, read,

For a half an hour or so,

Was Milman's Rome, and Grote on Greece,

And the works of Dumas, pere et fils,

And the poems of Longfellow.

For I am fond of the Hunting of the Snark,

And the Romaunt of the Rose;

And I never go to bed

Without Webster at my head

And Worcester at my toes.

ODE TO A FOOL

"Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his

folly."--Prov. 17th, 12th.

Singular insect! Here I watch thee spin

Upon my pin;

And know that thou hast not the least idea

I have thee here.

Strange is thy nature! For thou mayst be slain

Once and again;

Dismembered, tortured, torn with tortures hot--

Yet know it not!

As well pour hate and scorn upon the dead

As on thy head.

While I discuss thee here I plainly see

Thee sneer at me.

Marvellous creature! What mysterious power

In idle hour

Arranged the mighty elements whence came

Thy iron frame!

In every item of thy outward plan

So like a man!

But men are mortal, dying every day,

And thou dost stay.

The nations rise and die with passing rule,

But thou, O Fool!

Livedst when drunken Noah asleeping lay,

Livest to-day.

Invulnerable Fool! Thy mind

Is deaf and blind;

Impervious to sense of taste and smell

And touch as well.

Thought from without may vainly seek to press

Thy consciousness;

Man's hard-won knowledge which the ages pile

But makes thee smile;

Thy vast sagacity and blatant din

Come from within;

Thy voice doth fill the world from year to year,

Helpless we hear.

Wisdom and wit 'gainst thee have no avail;

O Fool--All Hail!

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR

.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 5

MARCH, 1910

Copyright for 1910

C. P. Gilman

How many a useless stone we find

Swallowed in that capacious, blind,

Faith-swollen gullet, our ancestral mind!

THE SANDS

It runs--it runs--the hourglass turning;

Dark sands glooming, bright sands burning;

I turn--and turn--with heavy or hopeful hands;

So must I turn as long as the Voice commands;

But I lose all count of the hours for watching the sliding sands.

Or fast--or slow--it ceases turning;

Ceases the flow, or bright or burning--

"What have you done with the hours?" the Voice demands.

What can I say of eager or careless hands?--

I had forgotten the hours in watching the sliding sands.

A MIDDLE-SIZED ARTIST

When Rosamond's brown eyes seemed almost too big for her brilliant

little face, and her brown curls danced on her shoulders, she had a

passionate enthusiasm for picture books. She loved "the reading," but

when the picture made what her young mind was trying to grasp suddenly

real before her, the stimulus reaching the brain from two directions at

once, she used to laugh with delight and hug the book.

The vague new words describing things she never saw suggested "castle,"

a thing of gloom and beauty; and then upon the page came The Castle

itself, looming dim and huge before her, with drooping heavy banners

against the sunset calm.

How she had regretted it, scarce knowing why, when the pictures were

less real than the description; when the princess, whose beauty made her

the Rose of the World (her name was Rosamond, too!), appeared in visible

form no prettier, no, not as pretty, as The Fair One with The Golden

Locks in the other book! And what an outcry she made to her indifferent

family when first confronted by the unbelievable blasphemy of an

illustration that differed from the text!

"But, Mother--see!" she cried. "It says, 'Her beauty was crowned by

rich braids of golden hair, wound thrice around her shapely head,' and

this girl has black hair--in curls! Did the man forget what he just

said?"

Her mother didn't seem to care at all. "They often get them wrong," she

said. "Perhaps it was an old plate. Run away, dear, Mama is very

busy."

But Rosamond cared.

She asked her father more particularly about this mysterious "old

plate," and he, being a publisher, was able to give her much information

thereanent. She learned that these wonderful reinforcements of her

adored stories did not emanate direct from the brain of the beneficent

author, but were a supplementary product by some draughtsman, who cared

far less for what was in the author's mind than for what was in his own;

who was sometimes lazy, sometimes arrogant, sometimes incompetent;

sometimes all three. That to find a real artist, who could make

pictures and was willing to make them like the picture the author saw,

was very unusual.

"You see, little girl," said Papa, "the big artists are too big to do

it--they'd rather make their own pictures; and the little artists are

too little--they can't make real ones of their own ideas, nor yet of

another's."

"Aren't there any middle-sized artists?" asked the child.

"Sometimes," said her father; and then he showed her some of the perfect

illustrations which leave nothing to be desired, as the familiar ones by

Teniel and Henry Holiday, which make Alice's Adventures and the Hunting

of the Snark so doubly dear, Dore and Retsch and Tony Johannot and

others.

"When I grow up," said Rosamond decidedly, "I'm going to be a

middle-sized artist!"

Fortunately for her aspirations the line of study required was in no way

different at first from that of general education. Her parents

explained that a good illustrator ought to know pretty much everything.

So she obediently went through school and college, and when the time

came for real work at her drawing there was no objection to that.

"It is pretty work," said her mother, "a beautiful accomplishment. It

will always be a resource for her."

"A girl is better off to have an interest," said her father, "and not

marry the first fool that asks her. When she does fall in love this

won't stand in the way; it never does; with a woman. Besides--she may

need it sometime."

So her father helped and her mother did not hinder, and when the brown

eyes were less disproportionate and the brown curls wreathed high upon

her small fine head, she found herself at twenty-one more determined to

be a middle-sized artist than she was at ten.

Then love came; in the person of one of her father's readers; a

strenuous new-fledged college graduate; big, handsome, domineering,

opinionative; who was accepting a salary of four dollars a week for the

privilege of working in a publishing house, because he loved books and

meant to write them some day.

They saw a good deal of each other, and were pleasantly congenial. She

sympathized with his criticisms of modem fiction; he sympathized with

her criticisms of modern illustration; and her young imagination began

to stir with sweet memories of poetry and romance; and sweet hopes of

beautiful reality.

There are cases where the longest way round is the shortest way home;

but Mr. Allen G. Goddard chose differently. He had read much about

women and about love, beginning with a full foundation from the

ancients; but lacked an understanding of the modern woman, such as he

had to deal with.

Therefore, finding her evidently favorable, his theories and

inclinations suiting, he made hot love to her, breathing, "My Wife!"

into her ear before she had scarce dared to think "my darling!" and

suddenly wrapping her in his arms with hot kisses, while she was still

musing on "The Hugenot Lovers" and the kisses she dared dream of came in

slow gradation as in the Sonnets From the Portuguese.

He was in desperate earnest. "O you are so beautiful!" he cried. "So

unbelievably beautiful! Come to me, my Sweet!" for she had sprung away

and stood panting and looking at him, half reproachful, half angry.

"You love me, Dearest! You cannot deny it!" he cried. "And I love

you--Ah! You shall know!"

He was single-hearted, sincere; stirred by a very genuine overwhelming

emotion. She on the contrary was moved by many emotions at once;--a

pleasure she was half ashamed of; a disappointment she could not clearly

define; as if some one had told her the whole plot of a promising new

novel; a sense of fear of the new hopes she had been holding, and of

startled loyalty to her long-held purposes.

"Stop!" she said--for he evidently mistook her agitation, and thought

her silence was consent. "I suppose I do--love you--a little; but

you've no right to kiss me like that!"

His eyes shone. "You Darling! _My_ Darling!" he said. "You will give

me the right, won't you? Now, Dearest--see! I am waiting!" And he held

out his arms to her.

But Rosamond was more and more displeased. "You will have to wait. I'm

sorry; but I'm not ready to be engaged, yet! You know my plans. Why

I'm going to Paris this year! I'm going to work! It will be ever so

long before I'm ready to--to settle down."

"As to that," he said more calmly, "I cannot of course offer immediate

marriage, but we can wait for that--together! You surely will not leave

me--if you love me!"

"I think I love you," she said conscientiously, "at least I did think

so. You've upset it all, somehow--you hurry me so!--no--I can't bind

myself yet."

"Do you tell me to wait for you?" he asked; his deep voice still strong

to touch her heart. "How long, Dearest?"

"I'm not asking you to wait for me--I don't want to promise

anything--nor to have you. But when I have made a place--am really

doing something--perhaps then--"

He laughed harshly. "Do not deceive yourself, child, nor me! If you

loved me there would be none of this poor wish for freedom--for a

career. You don't love me--that's all!"

He waited for her to deny this. She said nothing. He did not know how

hard it was for her to keep from crying--and from running to his arms.

"Very well," said he. "Goodby!"--And he was gone.

All that happened three years ago.

Allen Goddard took it very hard; and added to his earlier ideas about

women another, that "the new woman" was a selfish heartless creature,

indifferent to her own true nature.

He had to stay where he was and work, owing to the pressure of

circumstances, which made it harder; so he became something of a

mysogynyst; which is not a bad thing when a young man has to live on

very little and build a place for himself.

In spite of this cynicism he could not remove from his mind those softly

brilliant dark eyes; the earnest thoughtful lines of the pure young

face; and the changing lights and shadows in that silky hair. Also, in

the course of his work, he was continually reminded of her; for her

characteristic drawings appeared more and frequently in the magazines,

and grew better, stronger, more convincing from year to year.

Stories of adventure she illustrated admirably; children's stories to

perfection; fairy stories--she was the delight of thousands of children,

who never once thought that the tiny quaint rose in a circle that was to

be found in all those charming pictures meant a name. But he noticed

that she never illustrated love stories; and smiled bitterly, to

himself.

And Rosamond?

There were moments when she was inclined to forfeit her passage money

and throw herself unreservedly into those strong arms which had held her

so tightly for a little while. But a bud picked open does not bloom

naturally; and her tumultuous feelings were thoroughly dissipated by a

long strong attack of _mal de mer._ She derived two advantages from her

experience: one a period of safe indifference to all advances from eager

fellow students and more cautious older admirers; the other a facility

she had not before aspired to in the making of pictures of love and

lovers.

She made pictures of him from memory--so good, so moving, that she put

them religiously away in a portfolio by themselves; and only took them

out--sometimes. She illustrated, solely for her own enjoyment some of

her girlhood's best loved poems and stories. "The Rhyme of the Duchess

May," "The Letter L," "In a Balcony," "In a Gondola." And hid them from

herself even--they rather frightened her.

After three years of work abroad she came home with an established

reputation, plenty of orders, and an interest that would not be stifled

in the present state of mind of Mr. Allen Goddard.

She found him still at work, promoted to fifteen dollars a week by this

time, and adding to his income by writing political and statistical

articles for the magazines. He talked, when they met, of this work,

with little enthusiasm, and asked her politely about hers.

"Anybody can see mine!" she told him lightly. "And judge it easily."

"Mine too," he answered. "It to-day is--and to-morrow is cast into the

waste-basket. He who runs may read--if he runs fast enough."

He told himself he was glad he was not bound to this hard, bright

creature, so unnaturally self-sufficient, and successful.

She told herself that he had never cared for her, really, that was

evident.

Then an English publisher who liked her work sent her a new novel by a

new writer, "A. Gage." "I know this is out of your usual line," he

said, "but I want a woman to do it, and I want you to be the woman, if

possible. Read it and see what you think. Any terms you like."

The novel was called "Two and One;" and she began it with languid

interest, because she liked that publisher and wished to give full

reasons for refusing. It opened with two young people who were much in

love with one another; the girl a talented young sculptor with a vivid

desire for fame; and another girl, a cousin of the man, ordinary enough,

but pretty and sweet, and with no desires save those of romance and

domesticity. The first couple broke off a happy engagement because she

insisted on studying in Paris, and her lover, who could neither go with

her, nor immediately marry her, naturally objected.

Rosamond sat up in bed; pulled a shawl round her, swung the electric

light nearer, and went on.

The man was broken-hearted; he suffered tortures of loneliness,

disappointment, doubt, self-depreciation. He waited, held at his work

by a dependent widowed mother; hoping against hope that his lost one

would come back. The girl meanwhile made good in her art work; she was

not a great sculptor but a popular portraitist and maker of little genre

groups. She had other offers, but refused them, being hardened in her

ambitions, and, possibly, still withheld by her early love.

The man after two or three years of empty misery and hard grinding work,

falls desperately ill; the pretty cousin helps the mother nurse him, and

shows her own affection. He offers the broken remnants of his heart,

which she eagerly undertakes to patch up; and they become tolerably

happy, at least she is.

But the young sculptor in Paris! Rosamond hurried through the pages to

the last chapter. There was the haughty and triumphant heroine in her

studio. She had been given a medal--she had plenty of orders--she had

just refused a Count. Everyone had gone, and she sat alone in her fine

studio, self-satisfied and triumphant.

Then she picks up an old American paper which was lying about; reads it

idly as she smokes her cigarette--and then both paper and cigarette drop

to the floor, and she sits staring.

Then she starts up--her arms out--vainly. "Wait! O Wait!" she

cries--"I was coining back,"--and drops into her chair again. The fire

is out. She is alone.

Rosamond shut the book and leaned back upon her pillow. Her eyes were

shut tight; but a little gleaming line showed on either cheek under the

near light. She put the light out and lay quite still.

*

Allen G. Goddard, in his capacity as "reader" was looking over some

popular English novels which his firm wished to arrange about publishing

in America. He left "Two and One" to the last. It was the second

edition, the illustrated one which he had not seen yet; the first he had

read before. He regarded it from time to time with a peculiar

expression.

"Well," he said to himself, "I suppose I can stand it if the others do."

And he opened the book.

The drawing was strong work certainly, in a style he did not know. They

were striking pictures, vivid, real, carrying out in last detail the

descriptions given, and the very spirit of the book, showing it more

perfectly than the words. There was the tender happiness of the lovers,

the courage, the firmness, the fixed purpose in the young sculptor

insisting on her freedom, and the gay pride of the successful artist in

her work.

There was beauty and charm in this character, yet the face was always

turned away, and there was a haunting suggestion of familiarity in the

figure. The other girl was beautiful, and docile in expression;

well-dressed and graceful; yet somehow unattractive, even at her best,

as nurse; and the man was extremely well drawn, both in his happy ardor

as a lover, and his grinding misery when rejected. He was very

good-looking; and here too was this strong sense of resemblance.

"Why he looks like _me_!" suddenly cried the reader--springing to his

feet. "Confound his impudence!" he cried. "How in thunder!" Then he

looked at the picture again, more carefully, a growing suspicion in his

face; and turned hurriedly to the title page,--seeing a name unknown to

him.

This subtle, powerful convincing work; this man who undeniably suggested

him; this girl whose eyes he could not see; he turned from one to

another and hurried to the back of the book.

"The fire was out--she was alone." And there, in the remorseless light

of a big lamp before her fireless hearth, the crumpled newspaper beside

her, and all hope gone from a limp, crouching little figure, sat--why,

he would know her among a thousand--even if her face was buried in her

hands, and sunk on the arm of the chair--it was Rosamond!

*

She was in her little downtown room and hard at work when he entered;

but she had time to conceal a new book quickly.

He came straight to her; he had a book in his hand, open--he held it

out.

"Did you do this?" he demanded. "Tell me--tell me!" His voice was very

unreliable.

She lifted her eyes slowly to his; large, soft, full of dancing lights,

and the rich color swept to the gold-lighted borders of her hair.

"Did you?" she asked.

He was taken aback. "I!" said he. "Why it's by--" he showed her the

title-page. "By A. Gage," he read.

"Yes," said she, "Go on," and he went on, 'Illustrated by A. N. Other.'"

"It's a splendid novel," she said seriously. "Real work--great work. I

always knew you'd do it, Allen. I'm so proud of you!" And she held out

her hand in the sincere intelligent appreciation of a fellow craftsman.

He took it, still bewildered.

"Thank you," he said. "I value your opinion--honestly I do! And--with

a sudden sweep of recognition. "And yours is great work! Superb! Why

you've put more into that story than I knew was there! You make the

thing live and breathe! You've put a shadow of remorse in that lonely

ruffian there that I was too proud to admit! And you've shown

the--unconvincingness of that Other Girl; marvellously. But see

here--no more fooling!"

He took her face between his hands, hands that quivered strongly, and

forced her to look at him. "Tell me about that last picture! Is

it--true?"

Her eyes met his, with the look he longed for. "It is true," she said.

*

After some time, really it was a long time, but they had not noticed it,

he suddenly burst forth. "But how did you _know_?"

She lifted a flushed and smiling face: and pointed to the title page

again.

"'A. Gage.'--You threw it down."

"And you--" He threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "You threw

down A-N-Other! O you witch! You immeasurably clever darling! How

well our work fits. By Jove! What good times we'll have!"

And they did.

THE MINOR BIRDS

Shall no bird sing except the nightingale?

Must all the lesser voices cease?

Lark, thrush and blackbird hold their peace?

The woods wait dumb

Until he come?

Must we forego the voices of the field?

The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing,

All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing,

Where each reveals

What joy he feels?

Should we know how to praise the nightingale,

Master of music, ecstacy and pain,

If he alone sang in the springtime rain?

If no one heard

A minor bird?

PARLOR-MINDEDNESS

"Won't you step in?"

You step in.

"She will be down in a moment. Won't you sit down?"

You sit down. You wait. You are in the parlor.

What is this room? What is it for?

It is not to sleep in, the first need of the home. Not to eat in, the

second. Not to shelter young in, the third. Not to cook and wash in,

to sew and mend in, to nurse and tend in; not for any of the trades

which we still practice in the home.

It is a place for social intercourse. If the family is sufficiently

intelligent they use it for this purpose, gathering there in peace and

decorum, for rest and pleasure. Whether the family is of that order or

not, they use the parlor, if they have one, for the entertainment of

visitors. Our ancient Webster gives first: "The apartment in monastery

or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with

each other, or with visitors and friends from without," and second, "A

room in a house which the family usually occupy for society and

conversation; the reception room for visitors." It is, as the

derivation declares, "a talking room."

While you wait in the parlor you study it.

It is the best room. It has the best carpet, the best furniture, the

pictures and decorations considered most worthy. It is adorned as a

shrine for the service of what we feel rather than think to be a noble

purpose--to promote social intercourse.

In the interchange of thought and feeling that form so large and

essential a part of human life, these parlors are the vehicles provided.

Are they all the vehicles provided? Is it in parlors that the sea of

human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas

are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in

parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new

lights in science? the moving thoughts of the world?

If you could hide in a thousand parlors and listen to the talk therein

what would you hear? When "she" has come down, greeted her friend with

effusion or her caller with ample cordiality, and the talk begins, the

interchange of thought, what does the parlor bring forth?

Alas and alas! It brings forth the kitchen, the nursery, and the

dressmaker's shop. It furnishes shop-talk mostly, gossip of the daily

concerns of the speakers.

Are there no men then in the parlors? Yes, frequently. The man of the

house is there with his family in the evening; other men call with their

wives; young men call on young women to court them; but in all these

cases the men, talking to the women, must needs confine the conversation

to their lines of work and thought. When men talk with men it is not in

parlors. The women may be ignorant, knowing only household affairs; or

they may be "cultivated," more highly educated than the men, talking

glibly of books they have read, lectures they have heard, plays they

have seen; while the men can talk well only of the work they have done.

When men wish to talk with men of world-business of any sort, they do

not seek the parlor. The street, the barroom, the postoffice, some

public place they want where they may meet freely on broader ground.

For the parlor is the women's meeting ground--has been for long their

only meeting ground except the church steps.

Its limits are sharp and clear. Only suitable persons may enter the

parlor; only one's acquaintances and friends. Thus the social

intercourse of women, for long years has been rigidly confined to parlor

limits; they have conversed only with their own class and kind, forever

rediscussing the same topics, the threadbare theme of their common

trade; and the men who come to their parlor, talk politely to them there

within prescribed lines.

It is interesting and pathetic to see the woman, when means allow,

enlarge the size of her parlor, the number of her guests, seeking

continually for that social intercourse for which the soul hungers, and

which the parlor so meagerly provides. As we see the fakir;

"Eating with famished patience grain by grain,

A thousand grains of millet-seed a day,"--

So the woman talks incessantly with as many as she can--neither giving

nor getting what is needed.

When we find an institution so common as the parlor, exerting a constant

influence upon us from childhood up, carrying with it a code of manners,

a system of conduct, a scheme of decoration, a steady prohibitive

pressure upon progressive thought, we shall be wise to study that

institution and in especial its effect upon the mind.

First, we may observe as in the kitchen the dominant note of

personality.

In the parlor more than elsewhere are to be found the "traces of a

woman's hand." It is her room, the Lady of the House and other Ladies

of other Houses, having each their own to exhibit, all politely praise

one another's display.

When a knowledge of art, a sense of beauty, grows in the world, and

slowly affects the decorators and furnishers, then does it through the

blandishments of the merchants filter slowly into a thousand parlors.

But as easily when there is neither art nor beauty in such furnishings,

are they foisted upon the purchasing housewife. Such as it is, provided

through the limitations of the housewife's mind and the husband's purse,

this "best room" becomes a canon of taste to the growing child.

"The parlor set" he must needs see held up as beautiful; the "reception

chairs," the carefully shadowed carpet,--these and the "best dress" to

go with them and the "company manners" added, are unescapable aesthetic

influences.

Few children like the parlor, few children are wanted or allowed in the

parlor, yet it has a steady influence as a sort of social shrine.

Most rigidly it teaches the child exclusiveness, the narrow limits of

one's "social acquaintances." As rigidly and most evilly it teaches him

falsehood. Scarcely a child but hears the mother's fretful protest

against the visitor, followed by the lightning change to cordial

greeting. The white lie, the smiling fib, the steady concealment of the

undesirable topic, the mutual steering off from all but a set allowance

of themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable

repetition--all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed

to stay if quiet, hears and remembers. See the little girl's "playing

house." See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after

health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and

servants,--these they have well learned are proper subjects for parlor

talk.

The foolish and false ideas of beauty held up to them as "best," they

seek to perpetuate. The arbitrary "best dress" system, develops into a

vast convention, a wearing of apparel not for beauty, and not for use,

not for warmth, protection nor modesty (often quite the opposite of all

these), but as a conventional symbol of respectability.

So interwoven with our inner consciousness are these purely arbitrary

codes of propriety in costume, that we have such extremes as Kipling

shows us in his remote Himalayan forests,--a white man thousands of

miles from his kind, who "dressed for dinner every night to preserve his

self-respect." No doubt a perfectly sincere conviction, and one sunk

deep in the highbred British breast, but even so of a most shallow and

ephemeral nature, based on nothing whatever but a temporary caprice of

our parlor-mindedness.

Being reared in that state of mind, and half of us confined to it

professionally, we are inevitably affected thereby, and react upon

life--the real moving world-life, under its pitiful limitations.

If one's sense of beauty must be first, last and always personal, and

confined to one's parlor,--for of course we cannot dictate as to other

women's parlors,--then how is it to be expected that we should in any

way notice, feel or see the ugliness of our town or city, schoolhouse or

street-car?

See the woman who has had "an education," who has even "studied art,"

perhaps, and whose husband can pay for what she wants. Her parlor may

become a drawing-room, or two, or more, but she does not grow to care

that a public school-room is decorated in white plaster trimmed with a

broad strip of blackboard.

The bald, cruel, wearing ugliness of the most of our schools, is worthy

of penal institutions, yet we with cheerful unconcern submit growing

children to such influences without ever giving it a thought.

"My parlor" must be beautiful, but "our school" is no business of mine.

Is there any real reason, by the way, why blackboards must be black? A

deep dull red or somber green would be restful and pleasant to the eye,

and show chalk just as well. As is being now slowly discovered. There

are no blackboards in our parlors. Our children leave home to go to

school, and their mother's thoughts do not. In the small measure of

parlor decoration grows no sense of public art.

Great art must be largely conceived, largely executed. For the temple

and palace and forum rose the columns and statues of the past; for the

church and castle the "frozen music" of mediaeval architecture; for

church and palace again, the blazing outburst of pictorial art in the

great re-birth. Now the struggling artist must cater to the tastes of

parlor-bred patrons; must paint what suits the uses of that carpeted

sanctuary, portraits of young ladies most successful! Or he must do for

public buildings, if by chance he gets the opportunity, what meets the

tastes of our universal parlor-mindedness.

With this parlor-mindedness, we repudiate and condemn in painting,

literature, music, drama and the dance, whatever does not conform to the

decorum of this shrine, whatsoever is not suitable to ladylike

conversation. Be the book bad, it is unsuited to the parlor table. Be

the book good--too good, or be it great, then it is equally unsuited.

Controversy has no place in parlors, hence no controversial literature.

Pleasant if possible, or sweetly sad, and not provocative of

argument--this is the demeanor of the parlor table, and to this the

editor conforms. To the editorial dictum the "reader" must submit; to

the "readers" decisions the writer must submit; to the _menu_ furnished

by the magazines, the public must submit, and so grows up among us a

canon of literary judgment, best described as "parlor-minded." This is

by no means so damaging as kitchen-mindedness, for those who escape the

influence of the parlor are many, and those who escape the influence of

the kitchen are few; but it is quite damaging enough.

One of the main elements of beauty in our lives is the human body. Some

keep swans, some peacocks, and some deer, that they may delight their

eyes with the beauty thereof. We ourselves are more beautiful than any

beast or bird, we are the inspiration of poet, painter, and sculptor;

yet we have deliberately foregone all this constant world of beauty and

substituted for it a fluctuating nightmare.

In what sordid or discordant colors do we move about! What desolate

blurring of outline and action, by our dragging masses of cloth,

stiffened and padded like Chinese armor! What strange figures,

conventionalized as a lotus pattern, instead of the moving glory of the

human form!

Why do we do it? Having done it why do we bear it longer? Why not fill

our streets with beauty, gladden our eyes and uplift our souls with the

loveliness that is ours by nature, plus the added loveliness of the

textile art? We have pictures of our beauty, we have statues of our

beauty--why go without the real thing? Suppose our swans could show us

in paint and marble the slow white grace of their plumed sailing, but in

person paddled about in a costume of stovepipes. Suppose deer and

hound,--but wait!--this we have seen, this extreme of human folly forced

upon the helpless beast,--dogs dressed to suit the taste of their

parlor-minded owners! Not men's dogs,--women's dogs.

To cover--at any cost, with anything, that is a major ideal of the

parlor. There is an exception made, when, at any cost of health, beauty

and decency, we uncover--but this too, is to meet one of the parlor

purposes. In it and its larger spread of drawing and assembly rooms, we

provide not only for "social intercourse"--but for that necessary

meeting of men and women that shall lead to marriage.

A right and wholesome purpose, but not a right and wholesome place. Men

and women should meet and meet freely in the places where they live, but

they should not live in parlors. They should meet and know one another

in their working clothes, in the actual character and habit of their

daily lives.

Marriages may be "made in heaven," but they are mainly--shall we say

"retailed"? in parlors. What can the parlor-loved young woman know of

the parlor-bound young man? Parlor manners only are produced, parlor

topics, parlor ideas. He had better court her in the kitchen, if she is

one of the "fifteen sixteenths" of our families who keep no servants, to

know what he is going to live with. She never knows what she is going

to live with; for the nature of man is not truly exhibited either in

kitchen or parlor. A co-educational college does much, a studio or

business office or work-shop does more, to show men and women to each

other as they are. Neither does enough, for the blurring shadow of our

parlor-mindedness still lies between. It has so habituated us to the

soft wavelets and glassy shallows of polite conversation, that we refuse

to face and discuss the realities of life. With gifts of roses and

bonbons, suppers and theatres that cost more than the cows of the Kaffir

lover, and ought to make the girl feel like a Kaffir bride, the man woos

the woman. With elaborate toilettes and all the delicate trickery of

her unnatural craft, the woman woos the man. And the trail of the

parlor is over it all.

Gaily to the gate of marriage they go, and through it--and never have

they asked or answered the questions on which the whole truth of their

union depends. Our standards of decorum forbid,--parlor standards all.

We have woven and embroidered a veil over the facts of life; an

incense-clouded atmosphere blinds us; low music and murmured litanies

dull the mind, but not the senses. We drift and dream. In the girl's

mind floats a cloud of literary ideals. He is like a "Greek god," a

"Galahad," a "Knight of old." He is in some mystic way a Hero, a

Master, a Protector. She pictures herself as fulfilling exquisite

ideals of wifely devotion, "all in all" to him, and he to her.

She does not once prefigure to herself the plain common facts of the

experience that lies before her. She does not known them. In parlors

such things are not discussed,--no naked truths can be admitted there.

We live a marvellous life at home. Visibly we have the care and labor

of housekeeping, the strain and anxiety of childbearing as it is

practised, the elaborate convention of "receiving" and "entertaining."

Under these goes on life. Our bodies are tired, overtaxed, ill-fed,

grossly ill-treated. Our minds are hungry, unsatisfied, or drugged and

calm. We live, we suffer and we die,--and never once do we face the

facts. Birth and death are salient enough, one would think, but birth

and death we particularly cover and hide, concealing from our friends

with conventional phrases, lying about to our children. Over the strong

ever-lasting life-processes, we spin veil on veil; drape and smother

them till they become sufficiently remote and symbolic for the parlor to

recognize.

In older nations than ours, we can see this web of convention thickened

and hardened till life runs low within. Think what can be the state of

mind in India which allows child-marriage--the mother concurrent! Think

of the slow torture of little girls in foot-bound China, the mother

concurrent! Then turning quickly, think of our own state of mind, which

allows young girls to marry old reprobates,--the mother concurrent!

That mental attitude which maintains ancient conventions, which prefers

symbol to fact, which prescribes limits to our conversation, and draws

them narrowly down to what can be understood by anybody, and can

instruct, interest and inspire nobody, is parlor-mindedness. It does

harm enough both in its low ideals of beauty and art, manners and

morals, to its placid inmates and its complaisant visitors; it does more

harm in its fallacious shallows as a promoter of marriage; it does most

in its failure to promote the one thing it is for--social intercourse.

To meet freely; to talk, discuss, exchange and compare ideas, is a

general human need. Those who do not know they need it, need it most.

Each of us alone, taps the reservoir of world-force, in some degree, and

pours it forth in some expression. Often the intake seems to fail, the

output is unsatisfying. Then we need one another, now this one and now

that one, now several, now a crowd. In combination we receive new

power. The human soul calls for contact and exchange with its kind.

This contact should be fluent and free, spontaneous, natural; that we

may go as we are drawn to those who feed us best.

Men need men and women women; men and women need one another; it is a

general human condition. From such natural meeting arises personal

relief, rest, pleasure, stimulus, and social gain beyond counting, in

the growth of thought. The social battery is continually replenished by

contact and exchange. Some friends draw out the best that is in us,

some, though perhaps near and dear to us, do not.

No matter how "happily married," or how unhappily unmarried, we need

social interchange. To quench this thirst, to meet this need, wide as

the world and deep as life, we provide--the parlor.

Is it any wonder that our talk is mainly personality? That we love

gossip, even when it bites and sours to scandal? Is it any wonder that

women talk so much of their kitchen and nurseries, of their diseases,

and their clothes, yet learn so little about better feeding, better

dressing, better health and better child-culture? Is it any wonder that

to our parlor-mindedness the daily press descends, gives us the pap we

are used to, and then artfully peppers our pap, insinuating some sparkle

of alcohol, some solace of insidious drug, that we may "get the habit"

more firmly? Is it any wonder that we, parlor-bred and newspaper-fed,

continue to cry out fiercely against personal, primitive, parlor sins,

and remain calm and unshocked by world-sins that should rouse us to

horror, shame and action?

In these small shrines, adorned with what, in our doll-house taste, we

fondly imagine to be beautiful, we seek to keep ourselves, "unspotted

from the world," but by no saving grace of a thousand parlors, do we

succeed in keeping the world unspotted from ourselves! We make the

world. We are the world. It might be a place of noble freedom, of

ever-growing beauty, of a fluent, truthful radiant art, of broadening

education, wide peace and culture, universal wealth and progress. And

we miss even seeing this, living sedately, curtained, carpeted, well

content, in our ancestral parlor-mindedness.

NAUGHTY

The young brain was awake and hungry. It was a vigorous young brain,

well-organized; eager, receiving impressions with keen joy and storing

them rapidly away in due relation.

Such a wonder world!

Sweetness and light were the first impressions--light which made his

eyes laugh; and Sweetness Incarnate--that great soft Presence which was

Food and Warmth and Rest and Comfort and something better still; for all

of which he had no name as yet except "Ma-ma!"

He was growing, growing fast. He was satisfied with food. He was

satisfied with sleep. But his brain was not satisfied. So the brain's

first servant went forth to minister to it; small, soft, uncertain,

searching for all knowledge--the little hand.

Something to hold! Ancestral reflexes awoke as the fingers closed upon

it. Something to pull! The soft arm flexors tightened with a sense of

pleasure. Sensations came flowing to the hungry brain--welcomed

eagerly.

Then suddenly, a new sensation--Pain! He drew back his hand as a

touched anemone draws in its tentacles, scarce softer than those pink

fingers; but he did not know quite where the pain was--much less where

it came from, or what it meant.

"More!" said the hungry brain. "More!" and the little hand went out

again.

It was sharply spatted. "No, No!" said a strange voice--he had never

heard that kind of tone before. "No! No! Naughty! Don't touch!" He

lifted his face unbelievingly. Yes--it was Food and Warmth and Comfort

who was doing this to him.

The small moist mouth quivered grievingly--a cry rose in him.

"Here!" said the Presence, and gave him a rattle.

He had had that before. He knew all that it could do. He dropped it.

Over and over again, day after day, the little servant of the brain ran

forth to minister, and met sharp pain; while the dim new concept

"'Naughty'--something you want to do and mustn't"--was registered

within.

The child grew and his brain grew faster. He learned new words, an

behind the words, in the fresh untouched spaces, the swift brain placed

ideas--according to its lights. He had learned that the Presence

varied. It was not always Sweetness and Rest and Joy--sometimes it was

Discomfort--Hindrance--even Pain. He had learned to look at it with

doubt--when about to do something--to see which way it would react upon

him.

"Isn't that baby cute?" said the Presence. "He knows just as well!"

But his brain grew stronger, and his hand grew stronger, and about him

was a world of objects, rousing all manner of sensations which he fain

would learn.

"I have to watch that child every minute to keep him out of mischief!"

said the Presence.

She caught him sharply by the arm and drew him back.

"Don't touch that again! If you do I'll whip you!"

He stared at her, large-eyed, revolving the language. Language was so

interesting. "Don't" he knew well, and "touch" and "that" and "again."

"If you do" was harder. He was not at all sure about "if." And

"whip"--that was quite new. He puckered his soft mouth and made a

little whispering sound, trying to say it.

"Yes, Whip!" said the Presence. "Now you be good!" He knew "be good,"

too. It meant not doing anything. He couldn't be good very long--any

more than the Proverbial Indian.

In the course of his growing he soon learned "Whip." It was very

unpleasant. The busy brain, receiving, sorting, arranging,

re-arranging, stored up this fierce experience without delay.

"Whipping--Pain and Insult. It happens when you break anything. It is

a Consequence."

The brain was kept very busy re-arranging this Consequence. "It happens

when you spill the milk--when you soil your dress--when you tear it

(dresses must be sacred!)--when you 'meddle'--when you run away--when

you get wet--when you take sugar--when"--(this was a great discovery),

"when Mama is Angry." He was older now, and found that the Presence

varied a good deal. So the brain built up its group of ethical

impressions.

And then--one memorable day--this neat arrangement of ethics, true,

received a great shock.

There was the sugar--in easy reach--and sugar is All Good to the young

body. Remembered pleasure, strong immediate desire, the eye's guidance,

the hand's impulse--all urged to perform the natural act of eating.

Against it,--what? The blurred remembrance of promiscuous pain, only by

main force to be associated with that coveted, visible pleasure; and the

dawning power of inhibition. To check strong natural desire by no

better force than the memory of oral threat, or even of felt pain, is

not easy always for adults.

He ate the sugar, fearing yet joyous. No one else was present. No one

saw the act, nor learned it later.

He was not whipped.

Then rose the strong young brain to new occasion. It observed, deduced,

even experimented, flushed with the pleasure of normal exercise. It

established, before he was five years old, these conclusions:

"'Naughty' is a thing you're punished for doing--if you're not punished

it isn't naughty.

"Punishment is a thing that happens if you're found out--if you're not

found out you're not punished.

"Ergo--if you're not found out you're not naughty!"

And the child grew up to be a man.

WHAT DIANTHA DID