THE MANHOOD OF SERVICE.
At the Crawford House, White Mountains, we noticed, one summer, unusual
intelligence and courtesy on the part of those who served the tables. We
found out that many of them were students from the colleges and
seminaries--young men and women who had taken this mode of replenishing
their purses and getting the benefit of mountain air. We felt like
applauding them. We have admiration for those who can be independent of the
oppressive conventionalities of society. May not all of us practically
adopt the Christian theory that any work is honorable that is useful? The
slaves of an ignominious pride, how many kill themselves earning a living!
We have tens of thousands of women in our cities, sitting in cold rooms,
stabbing their life out with their needles, coughing their lungs into
tubercles and suffering the horrors of the social inquisition, for whom
there waits plenty of healthy, happy homes in the country, if they could
only, like these sons and daughters of Dartmouth and Northampton, consent
to serve. We wish some one would explain to us how a sewing machine is any
more respectable than a churn, or a yard stick is better than a pitchfork.
We want a new Declaration of Independence, signed by all the laboring
classes. There is plenty of work for all kinds of people, if they were not
too proud to do it. Though the country is covered with people who can find
nothing to do, we would be willing to open a bureau to-morrow, warranting
to give to all the unemployed of the land occupation, if they would only
consent to do what might be assigned them. We believe anything is more
honorable than idleness.
During very hard times two Italian artists called at our country home,
asking if we did not want some sketching done, and they unrolled some
elegant pictures, showing their fine capacity. We told them we had no
desire for sketches, but we had a cistern to clean, and would pay them well
for doing it. Off went their coats, and in a few hours the work was done
and their wages awarded. How much more honorable for them to do what they
could get to do rather than to wait for more adapted employment!
Why did not the girls of Northampton spend their summers embroidering
slippers or hemming handkerchiefs, and thus keep at work unobserved and
more popular? Because they were not fools. They said: "Let us go up and see
Mount Adams, and the Profile, and Mount Washington. We shall have to work
only five hours a day, and all the time we will be gathering health and
inspiration." Young men, those are the girls to seek when you want a wife,
rather than the wheezing victims of ruinous work chosen because it is more
popular. About the last thing we would want to marry is a medicine-chest.
Why did not the students of Dartmouth, during their vacation, teach school?
First, because teaching is a science, and they did not want to do three
months of damage to the children of the common school. Secondly, because
they wanted freedom from books as man makes them, and opportunity to open
the ponderous tome of boulder and strata as God printed them. Churches and
scientific institutions, these will be the men to call--brawny and
independent, rather than the bilious, short-breathed, nerveless graduates
who, too proud to take healthful recreation, tumble, at commencement day,
into the lap of society so many Greek roots.