RELIGIOUS BELIEFS--COMMENTS ON SERMONS--CONCORD SCHOOL--WHITTIER--COOKING
SCHOOLS--ANECDOTES
Partly in consequence of her Quaker training, and partly from her own
indifference towards creeds and sects, Miss Mitchell was entirely
ignorant of the peculiar phrases and customs used by rigid sectarians;
so that she was apt to open her eyes in astonishment at some of the
remarks and sectarian prejudices which she met after her settlement at
Vassar College. She was a good learner, however, and after a while knew
how to receive in silence that which she did not understand.
"Miss Mitchell," asked one good missionary, "what is your favorite
position in prayer?" "Flat upon my back!" the answer came, swift as
lightning.
In 1854 she wrote in her diary:
"There is a God, and he is good, I say to myself. I try to increase my
trust in this, my only article of creed."
Miss Mitchell never joined any church, but for years before she left
Nantucket she attended the Unitarian church, and her sympathies, as long
as she lived, were with that denomination, especially with the more
liberally inclined portion. There were always a few of the teachers and'
some of the students who sympathized with her in her views; but she
usually attended the college services on Sunday.
President Taylor, of Vassar College, in his remarks at her funeral,
stated that all her life Professor Mitchell had been seeking the
truth,--that she was not willing to accept any statement without
studying into the matter herself,--"And," he added, "I think she has
found the truth she was seeking."
Miss Mitchell never obtruded her views upon others, nor did she oppose
their views. She bore in silence what she could not believe, but always
insisted upon the right of private judgment.
Miss W., a teacher at Vassar, was fretting at being obliged to attend
chapel exercises twice a day when she needed the time for rest and
recreation, and applied to Miss Mitchell for help in getting away from
it. After some talk Miss Mitchell said: "Oh, well, do as _I_ do--sit
back folding your arms, and think of something pleasant!"
"Sunday, Dec. 18, 1866. We heard two sermons: the first in the
afternoon, by Rev. Mr. A., Baptist, the second in the evening, by Rev.
Mr. B., Congregationalist.
"Rev. Mr. A. took a text from Deuteronomy, about 'Moses;' Rev. Mr. B.
took a text from Exodus, about 'Moses;' and I am told that the sermon on
the preceding Sunday was about Moses.
"It seems to me strange that since we have the history of Christ in the
New Testament, people continue to preach about Moses.
"Rev. Mr. A. was a man of about forty years of age. He chanted rather
than read a hymn. He chanted a sermon. His description of the journey of
Moses towards Canaan had some interesting points, but his manner was
affected; he cried, or pretended to cry, at the pathetic points. I hope
he really cried, for a weakness is better than an affectation of
weakness. He said, 'The unbeliever is already condemned.' It seems to me
that if anything would make me an infidel, it would be the threats
lavished against unbelief.
"Mr. B. is a self-made man, the son of a blacksmith. He brought the
anvil, the hammer, and bellows into the pulpit, and he pounded and blew,
for he was in earnest. I felt the more respect for him because he was in
earnest. But when he snapped his fingers and said, 'I don't care that
for the religion of a man which does not begin with prayer,' I was
provoked at his forgetfulness of the character of his audience.
"1867. I am more and more disgusted with the preaching that I hear!...
Why cannot a man act himself, be himself, and think for himself? It
seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed word is
weaker than our own weakness, however small we may be. If I reach a
girl's heart or head, I know I must reach it through my own, and not
from bigger hearts and heads than mine.
"March, 1873. There was something so genuine and so sincere in George
Macdonald that he took those of us who were _emotional_ completely--not
by storm so much as by gentle breezes.... What he said wasn't profound
except as it reached the depths of the heart.... He gave us such broad
theological lessons! In his sermon he said, 'Don't trouble yourself
about what you _believe_, but _do_ the will of God.' His consciousness
of the existence of God and of his immediate supervision was felt every
minute by those who listened....
"He stayed several days at the college, and the girls will never get
over the good effects of those three days--the cheerier views of life
and death.
"... Rev. Dr. Peabody preached for us yesterday, and was lovely.
Everyone was charmed in spite of his old-fashioned ways. His voice is
very bad, but it was such a simple, common-sense discourse! Mr. Vassar
said if that was Unitarianism, it was just the right thing.
"Aug. 29, 1875. Went to a Baptist church, and heard Rev. Mr. F. 'Christ
the way, the only way.' The sermon was wholly without logic, and yet he
said, near its close, that those who had followed him must be convinced
that this was true. He said a traveller whom he met on the cars admitted
that we all desired heaven, but believed that there were as many ways to
it as to Boston. Mr. F. said that God had prepared but one way, just as
the government in those countries of the Old World whose cities were
upon almost inaccessible pinnacles had prepared one way of approach. (It
occurred to me that if those governments possessed godlike powers, they
would have made a great many ways.)
"Mr. F. was very severe upon those who expect to be saved by their own
deserts. He said, 'You tender a farthing, when you owe a million.' I
could not see what they owed at all! At this point he might well have
given some attention to 'good works;' and if he must mention 'debt,' he
might well remind them that they sat in an unpaid-for church!
"It was plain that he relied upon his anecdotes for the hold upon his
audience, and the anecdotes were attached to the main discourse by a
very slender thread of connection. I felt really sad to know that not a
listener would lead a better life for that sermon--no man or woman went
out cheered, or comforted, or stimulated.
"On the whole, it is strange that people who go to church are no worse
than they are!
"Sept. 26, 1880. A clergyman said, in his sermon, 'I do not say with the
Frenchman, if there were no God it would be well to invent one, but I
say, if there were no future state of rewards and punishments, it would
be better to believe in one.' Did he mean to say, 'Better to believe a
lie'?
"March 27, 1881. Dr. Lyman Abbott preached. I was surprised to find how
liberal Congregational preaching had become, for he said he hoped and
expected to see women at the bar and in the pulpit, although he believed
they would always be exceptional cases. He preached mainly on the
motherhood of God, and his whole sermon was a tribute to womanhood.... I
rejoice at the ideal womanhood of purity which he put before the girls.
I wish some one would preach purity to young men.
"July 1, 1883. I went to hear Rev. Mr. ---- at the Universalist church.
He enumerated some of the dangers that threaten us: one was 'The
doctrines of scientists,' and he named Tyndale, Huxley, and Spencer. I
was most surprised at his fear of these men. Can the study of truth do
harm? Does not every true scientist seek only to know the truth? And in
our deep ignorance of what is truth, shall we dread the search for it?
"I hold the simple student of nature in holy reverence; and while there
live sensualists, despots, and men who are wholly self-seeking, I cannot
bear to have these sincere workers held up in the least degree to
reproach. And let us have truth, even if the truth be the awful denial
of the good God. We must face the light and not bury our heads in the
earth. I am hopeful that scientific investigation, pushed on and on,
will reveal new ways in which God works, and bring to us deeper
revelations of the wholly unknown.
"The physical and the spiritual seem to be, at present, separated by an
impassable gulf; but at any moment that gulf may be overleaped--possibly
a new revelation may come....
"April, 1878. I called on Professor Henry at the Smithsonian Institute.
He must be in his eightieth year; he has been ill and seems feeble, but
he is still the majestic old man, unbent in figure and undimmed in eye.
"I always remember, when I see him, the remark of Dorothy Dix, 'He is
the truest man that ever lived.'
"We were left alone for a little while, and he introduced the subject of
his nearness to death. He said, 'The National Academy has raised
$40,000, the interest of which is for myself and family as long as any
of us live [he has daughters only], and in view of my death it is a
great comfort to me.' I ventured to ask him if he feared death at all.
He said, 'Not in the least; I have thought of it a great deal, and have
come to feel it a friend. I _cherish_ the belief in immortality; I have
suffered much, at times, in regard to that matter.' Scientifically
considered, only, he thought the probability was on the side of
continued existence, as we must believe that spirit existed independent
of matter.
"He went to a desk and pulled out from a drawer an old copy of
'Gregory's Astronomy,' and said, 'That book changed my whole life--I
read it when I was sixteen years old; I had read, previously, works of
the imagination only, and at sixteen, being ill in bed, that book was
near me; I read it, and determined to study science.' I asked him if a
life of science was a good life, and he said that he felt that it was
so.
"... When I was travelling with Miss S., who was near-sighted and kept
her eyes constantly half-shut, it seemed to me that every other young
lady I met had wide, staring eyes. Now, after two years sitting by a
person who never reasons, it strikes me that every other person whom I
meet has been thinking hard, and his logic stands out a prominent
characteristic.
"Aug. 27, 1879. Scientific Association met at Saratoga. ... Professor
Peirce, now over seventy years old, was much the same as ever. He went
on in the cars with us, and was reading Mallock's 'Is Life Worth
Living?' and I asked, 'Is it?' to which Professor Peirce replied, 'Yes,
I think it is.' Then I asked, 'If there is no future state, is life
worth living?' He replied, 'Indeed it is not; life is a cruel tragedy if
there is no immortality.' I asked him if he conceived of the future life
as one of embodiment, and he said 'Yes; I believe with St Paul that
there is a spiritual body....'
"Professor Peirce's paper was on the 'Heat of the Sun;' he considers the
sun fed not by impact of meteors, but by the compression of meteors. I
did not think it very sound. He said some good things: 'Where the truth
demands, accept; what the truth denies, reject.'
"Concord, Mass., 1879. To establish a school of philosophy had been the
dream of Alcott's life; and there he sat as I entered the vestry of a
church on one of the hottest days in August. He looked full as young as
he did twenty years ago, when he gave us a 'conversation' in Lynn.
Elizabeth Peabody came into the room, and walked up to the seat of the
rulers; her white hair streamed over her shoulders in wild carelessness,
and she was as careless as ever about her whole attire, but it was
beautiful to see the attention shown to her by Mr. Alcott and Mr.
Sanborn.
"Emerson entered,--pale, thin, almost ethereal in countenance,--followed
by his daughter, who sat beside him and watched every word that he
uttered. On the whole, it was the same Emerson--he stumbled at a
quotation as he always did; but his thoughts were such as only Emerson
could have thought, and the sentences had the Emersonian pithiness. He
made his frequent sentences very emphatic. It was impossible to see any
thread of connection; but it always was so--the oracular sentences made
the charm. The subject was Memory.' He said, 'We remember the
selfishness or the wrong act that we have committed for years. It is as
it should be--Memory is the police-officer of the universe.' 'Architects
say that the arch never rests, and so the past never rests.' (Was it,
never sleeps?) 'When I talk with my friend who is a genealogist, I feel
that I am talking with a ghost.'
"The little vestry, fitted perhaps for a hundred people, was packed with
two hundred,--all people of an intellectual cast of face,--and the
attention was intense. The thermometer was ninety in the shade!
"I did not speak to Mr. Emerson; I felt that I must not give him a bit
of extra fatigue.
"July 12, 1880. The school of philosophy has built a shanty for its
meetings, but it is a shanty to be proud of, for it is exactly adapted
to its needs. It is a long but not low building, entirely without
finish, but water-tight. A porch for entrance, and a recess similar at
the opposite end, which makes the place for the speakers. There was a
small table upon the platform on which were pond lilies, some shelves
around, and a few busts--one of Socrates, I think.
"I went in the evening to hear Dr. Harris on 'Philosophy.' The rain
began to come down soon after I entered, and my philosophy was not
sufficient to keep me from the knowledge that I had neither overshoes
nor umbrella; I remembered, too, that it was but a narrow foot-path
through the wet grass to the omnibus. But I listened to Dr. Harris, and
enjoyed it. He lauded Fichte as the most accurate philosopher following
Kant--he said not of the greatest _breadth_, but the most acute.
"After Dr. Harris' address, Mr. Alcott made a few remarks that were
excellent, and said that when we had studied philosophy for fifteen
years, as the lecturer had done, we might know something; but as it was,
he had pulled us to pieces and then put us together again.
"The audience numbered sixty persons.
"May, 1880. I have just finished Miss Peabody's account of Channing. I
have been more interested in Miss Peabody than in Channing, and have
felt how valuable she must have been to him. How many of Channing's
sermons were instigated by her questions! ... Miss Peabody must have
been very remarkable as a young woman to ask the questions which she
asked at twenty.
"April, 1881. The waste of flowers on Easter Sunday distressed me.
Something is due to the flowers themselves. They are massed together
like a bushel of corn, and look like red and white sugar-plums as seen
in a confectioner's window.
"A pillow of flowers is a monstrosity. A calla lily in a vase is a
beautiful creation; so is a single rose. But when the rose is crushed by
a pink on each side of it, and daisies crush the pinks, and azaleas
surround the daisies, there is no beauty and no fitness.
"The cathedral had no flowers.
"Aug. 22, 1882. We visited Whittier; we found him at lunch, but he soon
came into the parlor. He was very chatty, and seemed glad to see us.
Mrs. L. was with me, and Whittier was very ready to write in the album
which she brought with her, belonging to her adopted son. We drifted
upon theological subjects, and I asked Mr. Whittier if he thought that
we fell from a state of innocence; he replied that he thought we were
better than Adam and Eve, and if they fell, they 'fell up.'
"His faith seems to be unbounded in the goodness of God, and his belief
in moral accountability. He said, 'I am a good deal of a Quaker in my
conviction that a light comes to me to dictate to me what is right.' We
stayed about an hour, and we were afraid it would be too much for him;
but Miss Johnson, his cousin, who lives with him, assured us that it was
good for him; and he himself said that he was sorry to have us go.
"One thing that he said, I noted: that his fancy was for farm-work, but
he was not strong enough; he had as a young man some literary ambition,
but never thought of attaining the reputation which had come to him.
"July 31, 1883. I have had two or three rich days! On Friday last I went
to Holderness, N.H., to the Asquam House; I had been asked by Mrs. T. to
join her party. There were at this house Mr. Whittier, Mr. and Mrs.
Cartland, Professor and Mrs. Johnson, of Yale, Mr. Williams, the Chinese
scholar, his brother, an Episcopal clergyman, and several others. The
house seemed full of fine, cultivated people. We stayed two days and a
half.
"And first of the scenery. The road up to the house is a steep hill, and
at the foot of the hill it winds and turns around two lakes. The
panorama is complete one hundred and eighty degrees. Beyond the lakes
lie the mountains. We do not see Mt. Washington. The house has a piazza
nearly all around it. We had a room on the first floor--large, and with
two windows opening to the floor.
"The programme of the day's work was delightfully monotonous. For an
hour or so after breakfast we sat in the ladies' parlor, we sewed, and
we told anecdotes. Whittier talked beautifully, almost always on the
future state and his confidence in it. Occasionally he touched upon
persons. He seems to have loved Lydia Maria Child greatly.
"When the cool of the morning was over, we went out upon the piazza, and
later on we went under the trees, where, it is said, Whittier spends
most of the time.
"There was little of the old-time theology in his views; his faith has
been always very firm. Mr. Cartland asked me one day if I really felt
there was any doubt of the immortality of the soul. I told him that on
the whole I believed it more than I doubted it, but I could not say that
I felt no doubt. Whittier asked me if there were no immortality if I
should be distressed by it, and I told him that I should be exceedingly
distressed; that it was the only thing that I craved. He said that
'annihilation was better for the wicked than everlasting punishment,'
and to that I assented. He said that he thought there might be persons
so depraved as not to be worth saving. I asked him if God made such.
Nobody seemed ready to reply. Besides myself there was another of the
party to whom a dying friend had promised to return, if possible, but
had not come.
"Whittier believed that they did sometimes come. He said that of all
whom he had lost, no one would be so welcome to him as Lydia Maria
Child.
"We held a little service in the parlor of the hotel, and Mrs. C. read
the fourteenth chapter of John. Rev. Mr. W. read a sermon from 'The pure
in heart shall see God," written by Parkhurst, of New York. He thought
the child should be told that in heaven he should have his hobby-horse.
After the service, when we talked it over, I objected to telling the
child this. Whittier did not object; he said that Luther told his little
boy that he should have a little dog with a golden tail in heaven.
"Aug. 26, 1886. I have been to see an exhibition of a cooking school. I
found sixteen girls in the basement of a school-house. They had long
tables, across which stretched a line of gas-stoves and jets of gas.
Some of the girls were using saucepans; they set them upon the stove,
and then sat down where they could see a clock while the boiling process
went on.
"At one table a girl was cutting out doughnuts; at another a girl was
making a pudding--a layer of bits of bread followed by a layer of fruit.
Each girl had her rolling-pin, and moulding-board or saucepan.
"The chief peculiarity of these processes was the cleanliness. The
rolling-pins were clean, the knives were clean, the aprons were clean,
the hands were clean. Not a drop was spilled, not a crumb was dropped.
"If into the kitchen of the crowded mother there could come the
utensils, the commodities, the clean towels, the ample _time_, there
would come, without the lessons, a touch of the millennium.
"I am always afraid of manual-labor schools. I am not afraid that these
girls could not read, for every American girl reads, and to read is much
more important than to cook; but I _am_ afraid that not all can
_write_--some of them were not more than twelve years old.
"And what of the boys? Must a common cook always be a girl? and must a
boy not cook unless on the top of the ladder, with the pay of the
president of Harvard College?
"I am jealous for the schools; I have heard a gentleman who stands high
in science declare that the cooking schools would eventually kill out
every literary college in the land--for women. But why not for men? If
the food for the body is more important than the food for the mind, let
us destroy the latter and accept the former, but let us not continue to
do what has been tried for fifteen hundred years,--to keep one half of
the world to the starvation of the mind, in order to feed better the
physical condition of the other half.
"Let us have cooks; but let us leave it a matter of choice, as we leave
the dressmaking and the shoe-making, the millinery and the
carpentry,--free to be chosen!
"There are cultivated and educated women who enjoy cooking; so there are
cultivated men who enjoy Kensington embroidery. Who objects? But take
care that some rousing of the intellect comes first,--that it may be an
enlightened choice,--and do not so fill the day with bread and butter
and stitches that no time is left for the appreciation of Whittier,
letting at least the simple songs of daily life and the influence of
rhythm beautify the dreary round of the three meals a day."
Miss Mitchell had a stock of conundrums on hand, and was a good guesser.
She told her stories at all times when they happened to come into her
mind. She would arrive at her sister's house, just from Poughkeepsie on
a vacation, and after the threshold was crossed and she had said "Good
morning," in a clear voice to be heard by all within her sight, she
would, perhaps, say, "Well, I have a capital story which I must tell
before I take my bonnet off, or I shall forget it!" And there went with
her telling an action, voice, and manner which added greater point to
the story, but which cannot be described. One of her associates at
Vassar, in recalling some of her anecdotes, writes: "Professor Mitchell
was quite likely to stand and deliver herself of a bright little speech
before taking her seat at breakfast. It was as though the short walk
from the observatory had been an inspiration to thought."
She was quick at repartee. On one occasion Charlotte Cushman and her
friend Miss Stebbins were visiting Miss Mitchell at Vassar. Miss
Mitchell took them out for a drive, and pointed out the different
objects of interest as they drove along the banks of the Hudson. "What
is that fine building on the hill?" asked Miss Cushman.--"That," said
Miss Mitchell, "was a boys' school, originally, but it is now used as a
hotel, where they charge five dollars a day!"--"Five dollars a day?"
exclaimed Miss Cushman; "Jupiter Ammon!"--"No," said Miss Stebbins,
"Jupiter Mammon!"--"Not at all," said Miss Mitchell, "Jupiter _gammon!_"
"Farewell, Maria," said an old Friend, "I hope the Lord will be with
thee."
"Good-by," she replied, "I _know_ he will be with you."
A characteristic trait in Miss Mitchell was her aversion to receiving
unsolicited advice in regard to her private affairs. "A suggestion is an
impertinence," she would often say. The following anecdote shows how she
received such counsel:
A literary man of more than national reputation said to one of her
admirers, "I, for one, cannot endure your Maria Mitchell." At her
solicitation he explained why; and his reason was, as she had
anticipated, founded on personal pique. It seems he had gone up from New
York to Poughkeepsie especially to call upon Professor Mitchell. During
the course of conversation, with that patronizing condescension which
some self-important men extend to all women indiscriminately, he
proceeded to inform her that her manner of living was not in accordance
with his ideas of expediency. "Now," he said, "instead of going for each
one of your meals all the way from your living-rooms in the observatory
over to the dining-hall in the college building, I should think it would
be far more convenient and sensible for you to get your breakfast, at
least, right in your own apartments. In the morning you could make a cup
of coffee and boil an egg with almost no trouble." At which Professor
Mitchell drew herself up with the air of a tragic queen, saying, "And is
my time worth no more than to boil eggs?"