THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW
_The Woman of
To-morrow_
_By
Helen M. Winslow
Author of “Literary Boston of To-day,”
“Concerning Cats,” etc._
New York
_James Pott & Company_
1905
Copyright, 1905, by JAMES POTT & CO.
First Impression, September, 1905
_To My Sisters_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW 7
II. ON INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 15
III. ON OUR RELATION TO LIFE 29
IV. ON FRIENDS 38
V. ON ENEMIES 49
VI. ON MRS. GUMMIDGE 58
VII. ON MENTAL ATTITUDES 69
VIII. ON THE ESSENTIALS OF HAPPINESS 79
IX. ON WORRY 93
X. ON SOLITUDE 102
XI. ON WOMEN’S CLUBS 115
XII. ON THE ETHICS OF CLOTHES 139
XIII. ON THE AVERAGE WOMAN 149
XIV. ON PUBLIC DUTIES 160
XV. ON HOME-LOVING AND HOUSEKEEPING 169
XVI. ON GROWING OLD 179
XVII. ON THE OUTLOOK 193
THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW
I
THE WOMAN OF TO-MORROW
What will she be like, the woman of to-morrow? We know all about the
woman of to-day—her virtues, tendencies, shortcomings, her hopes,
aims and splendid promise; reams have been written about the woman
of the past, in all ages, under all conditions, her limitations, her
achievements. But what about the woman of to-morrow? Will she go on
steadily, firmly, unswervingly towards the full accomplishment of what we
women to-day long for, hope for, pray for, wait for? Will she?
When we look back fifty years and note what has been overcome, what women
have achieved in educational, business, philanthropic and sociological
lines, we are wont to preen ourselves and to glory in all “we” have
accomplished. Fifty years ago the first woman was just beginning to
wrest her diploma from the unwilling university. Fifty years ago the
first woman doctor was taking her degree. The first newspaper women were
making their first attempts at journalism. And scores, yes, hundreds, of
avenues, now so long open to women that we do not stop to count them,
were not only shut, but nobody was dreaming of pushing them ajar—nobody,
that is, but Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone
and their friends—and well ridiculed for it they were, too.
But to-day all American womanhood stands on a broad, high plateau, with
eager faces turned hopefully to the future. We look forward confidently
and with the surety of success, because everything has been made easy
for us. Are we too confident? Is there not danger of our forgetting
that we are still a long footpath from the millennium and that there
is a deal of work to be done before women, collectively speaking, get
there? Do we realize sufficiently the duty and responsibility devolving
upon us in regard to the betterment of home and humanity? Do we really
understand the opportunities which influence begets? And since woman’s
responsibility goes hand in hand with her influence, which has always
been proportionate to her own merit, while environment and education have
been important factors in determining this work, then how great must be
her responsibility to-day as compared with that of her sister in former
ages!
Mary Lyon used for the motto at Mount Holyoke in the days when our
mothers and grandmothers used to come under her care, “Freely have ye
received, freely give”—although, for that, the words originated with
a Greater than Mary Lyon. There is no doubt about our having “freely
received”; are we “freely giving”? There was never a period in the
world’s history when women’s work counted for so much, when it was so
much needed. Ancient history says very little about what women did in the
early ages; but we know they did their part. The model women of Hebrew
history were toilers. We see, as one bright woman has said, “a mother’s
ready ingenuity saving the life of her baby boy, when the father’s
strength was a broken reed. We see her commit the tiny ark to the
mercy of the waters of the Nile; we see another woman—a sister—running
fleet-footed along the reedy banks of the river, her loving eyes upon
the rocking cradle adrift on the eddying stream. We see yet another
woman—a king’s daughter—stoop to the river’s edge to lift in her arms the
child of destiny. Three women working in unconscious federation—and lo! a
race of men is freed and a kingdom builded in the wilderness!”
What the world wants of woman to-day is the utmost development of the
positive feminine moral force in her spirit and her life. Woman has been
said to be the conscience of the world, and there is profound truth
in that. It was the conscience of Blanche of Castile which melted the
noblest king France ever had—Louis the Ninth. It was the conscience
of the American woman which was the one invulnerable, irresistible,
unsilenced enemy of American slavery. That conscience of woman is the
tower which society will always need to have developed and regnant within
it, and there is no other office so great.
Sympathy in woman comes nearest to the heart of Christ—sympathy for
the erring, the sick and suffering. That is one power which she needs
to contribute to society. Her sympathy is the heat ray combined with
the light ray in the perfect sunbeam, and wherever it goes there flower
charities, asylums, and all institutions of human benevolence spring
naturally as the bloom of the flowers from the sod which the sun has
warmed.
Then, too, there is woman’s courage. We are so accustomed to associate
courage with physical strength that we do not always think of it
as pre-eminently a womanly grace when the feminine nature has been
fully unfolded and trained, but it is. The reckless rapture of
self-forgetfulness, that which inspires persons and nations, that which
is sovereign over obstacle and defeat, and perils and resistance, has
belonged to woman’s heart from the beginning. In the early pagan time,
in the Christian development, in mission and in martyrdoms, it has
shown; in the mediæval age as well as in our own time; in the Prussian
woman after the battle of Jena, when Prussia seemed trampled into
the bloody mire under the cannon of Napoleon. Oh, the passion, the
forgetfulness, the supreme self-devotion with which woman flings herself
into the championship of a cause that is dear and sacred and trampled
under foot! It is her crown of renown; it is her staff of power! This
conscientiousness in woman, this sympathy, this courage and self-devotion
in woman, give her her place in the future civilization of the world and
glorify the society into which she is born and of which she becomes the
mistress.
We are in need of city mothers as well as city fathers; not until the
mother-care has reached out into all departments of municipal life and
the incentive to good has become as powerful as the incentive to evil;
not until the beautiful and the true are clothed in forms as attractive
as the vile and false; not until nobleness and purity of character are
requisites demanded of those who fill high public positions—not until
then will women cease to have opportunity for efficient, practical
effort; not until then will women cease to have a share of public
responsibility.
According to Dean Swift, the men of his age asked each other if it were
prudent to choose a wife who had a little knowledge of history and the
capacity to discuss the more important affairs of the time and the
obvious beauties of poetry. The general verdict, he says, was against
such attainments in women because their tendency was to make wives
pretentious and conceited, and not duly subject to their husbands. I
know of but one man to-day who would dare express such sentiments, if he
believed them—and but few who can be suspected of cherishing such ideas
in secret. For we have not many men who belong in the past ages.
Even in the early years of the last century it was supposed that woman’s
mentality could be broadened and exercised sufficiently by the receipt
book and the sampler, and it was not till the inventions of each
succeeding decade lightened woman’s labor that she had greater time for
study. It was this development which brought about the beginnings of the
club movement, in the late sixties and early seventies, which gathered
in women who desired mental improvement and longed for that life which
was more than meat and drink—women who needed an outlook upon the world
at large and an inlook upon their own intellectual condition. But mere
literary work did not satisfy women who conscientiously believed that
influence meant responsibility and were clear-sighted enough to see that
in organization was the power to combat the ills of the world and to
elevate humanity. Thus they broadened their scope, making their object
humanity-lifting. Above all is it to be seen in the mental development of
woman herself and in her awakening to the fact that she has powers and
capabilities which can be used for the good of humanity.
This rule, given in “What All the World’s a-Seeking,” ought to be daily
read over by all women: The self should never be lost sight of. It is the
one thing of supreme importance, the greatest factor even in the life
of the greatest service. Being always and necessarily precedes doing;
having always and necessarily precedes giving. But this law also holds:
That when there is being, it is all the more increased by the giving.
Keeping to one’s self dwarfs and stultifies. Hoarding brings loss; using
brings ever greater gain. In brief, the more we are, the more we can do;
the more we have, the more we can give. And thus it is that one becomes
a queen among women. Not honor for themselves, but service for others.
But notice the strange, wonderful, beautiful transformation as it returns
upon itself—honor for themselves, because of service for others.
II
ON INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY
But we must not let our sense of individual responsibility for the
general welfare become too keen. When we consider the multiplication of
societies almost daily for the amelioration of every possible wrong and
the furtherance of nearly every possible good, we seem in some danger
of such a result. Not only the average woman, but the exceptional one,
is infected by the universal desire to improve the world in general and
mankind in particular; and, figuratively, she seems to be going forth
morning, noon and night seeking for new evils to conquer. Mrs. Jellaby
and her Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Orphans
of Borrioboolah Gah was but a caricatured prototype of the passion
for organized work among women at the close of the century in which
Dickens lived and wrote. We are all in danger of overlooking the best
and sweetest in life, as well as its real meaning and essence, in our
mad rush after what? Is it the passion for humanity? or is it a sort
of contagious fever, the germs of which, having obtained an insidious
foothold in our mental and moral systems, work an unconscious change in
us from earnest, sincere and reasonably contented women to restless,
ambitious and discontented ones?
True, Saint Paul did say that woman was created for the man, and there
will always be men—and women, too—who, though they deny the inspiration
of every other part of the Scriptures, stake their faith on the
infallibility of this alleged prophecy of woman’s perpetual subjection.
But the copyright on his oracular utterances expired centuries ago. Some
of the new beliefs are not so good as some of the old ones, and these
will pass away. Some are better, and these will remain. But the whole
truth is that it is fair neither to Saint Paul nor to woman to quote
him in fragments. He adds, a very little way further on, “for as the
woman is of the man, so is the man also by the woman.” And this almost
inextricably mixes up the relations of man and woman; but there does not
seem to be any escaping the conclusion that woman’s responsibilities
began about at the beginning.
Saint Paul’s opinion as to the attitude and behavior of women in public
assemblies is hardly apropos now, and if he were alive to-day he would
be the first to admit it. Thucydides antedated the apostle by four
centuries, and his remarks to the effect that “Happiest is that woman
whose name is least in the mouths of men” are, of course, equally beneath
the serious consideration of the woman of to-day, even though they are
echoed by so recent and popular a writer as the author of “The Bread
Winners.” “A woman’s name should never be in the newspapers more than
twice: when she marries and when she dies.” Yet it was but a little while
ago that I heard a prominent woman say:
“I wish you and I were living in a little country town somewhere where we
could be content to knit and crochet and wash dishes and feed the cat.
I know we would all be much happier if we were freed from this ‘divine
discontent’ which leads us to fret our souls for that which is naught
when we get it.” There might, however, be some trouble in finding the
country town where the modern longing to be a factor in the life of
to-day has not penetrated. It is not altogether confined to cities, this
passion for the general welfare. It is shared by the woman of limited
opportunities and crops out in the least suspected places.
Without it where would be the progress made by our sex in the last half
of the nineteenth century? What would be the position of woman, for
instance, had not Lucy Stone been born with the sense of individual
responsibility which made of her a saint and an apostle for the uplifting
of the modern woman, to whom all femininity, whether suffragist or
remonstrant, owes its recognition and its place to-day? She and her
immediate followers were, perhaps, the first to develop this divine
discontent which is the inspiration and source of much of the modern
sense of individuality for the general welfare. And in view of all the
good work that is being inspired and carried out by women, who shall be
so blind as to deny that it is a part of the great plan of evolution
concerned in the problems that beset the opening of a new century?
The banding together of hundreds of thousands of women for various
purposes directly dealing with the world’s advancement along the lines
of education, temperance, philanthropy, political affairs and good
government emphasizes a new phase of this old world’s history. And the
fact that the very existence of this state of affairs is owing to the
impossibility of the modern woman’s sitting quietly at home and ignoring
her part in the general scheme of humanity compels us to own that this
sense of responsibility is not to be regretted, but rather to be taken
as an awakening of the real woman to a knowledge of what the “eternal
feminine” may be made to mean to the world at large.
It is not, therefore, to be deplored, but to be controlled. There is
little danger of its becoming abnormally strong in the aggregate; but
alas! for her who lets her own sense of what she as an individual owes to
society at large, cease to be a purpose in life and become her master.
She it is who joins every club within reach and rushes madly from
section to class in search of diversion and from club to club in what
she flatters herself is the pursuance of culture. She it is who forgets
that an hour spent in the silence of her own room or by her own fireside
with some book that is really worth while is more profitable than two
afternoons listening to mosaics carefully inlaid from bits of the
encyclopædia. She it is who leaves her sick and lonely child to the care
of hired nurses while she goes gaily from club pillar to D. A. R. post
or neglects the great home truth that a smiling, restful wife across the
dinner table is the easiest way to convert the ordinary man to belief in
women’s organizations.
It cannot be denied, however, that the modern tendency to organize has
greatly stimulated this sense of responsibility for the whole human race
that is at once a bane and an inspiration to the up-to-date woman. Women
are gregarious and imitative. Let us once realize that our friends are
active factors in the arena of life and we are immediately fired with
a determination to become factors, too. We want to go with the rest of
our kind, whether it be in the manner of reforms or bonnets. We will no
more be considered behind the times in organization than in sleeves.
Therefore, if other women belong to dozens of such societies, why not we?
It is a great compliment to women that they are being so cordially
recognized by organizations of men. Their educational associations are
inviting our co-operation in the consideration of questions of how
best to work out the problems with which they are confronted. From time
immemorial men have not asked the help of women in vain. Since Eve’s day
we have been making up for her thoughtlessness in allowing temptation
to come before Adam (she not having lived long enough to realize that
men are to be guarded from, not exposed to, temptation), and in all ages
whenever women could be of use to mankind in general they have done
their work nobly and well. Our Pilgrim foremothers are not exploited in
histories as they would have been had they fought Indians and defied
kings. But nobody pretends to deny that they acted fully as important
a part as did their worthy husbands and sires. Our grandmothers of the
Revolutionary War were no small factors in the establishment of a new
republic. The religious history of the world, since the day of Mary, the
carpenter’s mother, shows that the sense of individual responsibility is
no new development of the modern woman. It has been behind the greatest
achievements of the ages.
What has stimulated it and spread it like bits of leaven among the masses
is a question for us to consider. Is it because of the facility with
which newspapers and magazines and books now reach even the remotest of
our borders? It is hardly possible in these days to live apart from a
knowledge of what is going on in the great round world. There is scarcely
a hamlet in the country unreached by a daily newspaper, and the ordinary
workingman to-day knows more of the general trend of affairs than the
most learned and far-seeing of our grandfathers possibly could do.
What is the effect of all this modern development of progress? of this
individual sense of responsibility? The common consciousness of humanity,
the sense of our individual need and our individual duty is making
itself felt. We are open to deeper and wider impulses; let us see that
they are not allowed to die away as mere impulses. One of the inevitable
effects of the modern stimulus of organization is a high degree of
personal consciousness. We feel the responsibility of the whole “woman’s
movement”; we not only have a larger and broader personality and a sense
of revolt against any form of injustice, but we feel a wider, deeper
love for each other. We are standing together in a concerted movement
seeking a common good; and that brings us into a broader charity and
a commensurate growth of social consciousness. It is impossible for
us henceforth to settle back into selfish living—that is, if we are
developing the highest privileges that come to the modern woman. We
shall possess our souls in patience and find our balance in a serenity
of spirit that will give us a clearer vision and freedom from worry. We
may still feel that we are personally responsible for a great deal in the
world around us, but we shall not worry and fret over it, and we shall
learn the secret of combining earnest, constant endeavor with a sublime
unconsciousness to the pin-pricks of existence. We shall see and feel new
forces and give way to them in loyal service.
Doubtless this modern sense of personal responsibility is one of the laws
of social evolution which has been going on with greater activity than
most people have realized during the past quarter century. The increasing
individualism of women is one of the striking developments of the present
age. For that very reason the radiating diffusion, as one writer has
called it, of the clubs seems all the more welcome. Until the individual
woman finds her special differentiation, or, in other words, finds her
balance, she is in danger of wasting her nervous force in vague gropings
after the right thing. Never before have women cared so much for other
women, and the result is greater kindliness and helpfulness toward human
nature everywhere. The heart of womanhood is alive and stirring as never
before; shall we dare say this is not kindling a streak of electric fire
that may burn out old prejudices and kindle a new era? We may still be
in the groping, vague stage where mistakes are as frequent as the right
steps, but it is an evident uplift in the scale of human advancement.
Even in our family life we are letting the old notions go and recognizing
the individuality of each member. Children are now allowed to think
their own thoughts, and if they have a special bent in any one direction
it is encouraged rather than warped to fit an old, set pattern. Young
women as well as young men are expected to cultivate outside interests.
We realize that it is the duty of every woman of intelligence to take
active interest in some social organization and recognize some duty
beyond the borders of family life. Just as in the church women have
labored together for years to raise funds for some common end—to send
forth missionaries to the heathen or pay the one at home—so we have come
to know the value of organized effort for the benefit of the school, the
home and the individual. The work of women in sanitary commissions and in
the temperance unions has shown what may come of the modern passion for
outside work. The sense of humanity is growing daily, and though this may
crumble and flatten some old ideals, it also puts a new meaning and a new
heroism into life.
It depends upon us what we will make the effect on our own lives of this
keen anxiety to do something for the world around us. There will always
be work enough. There will always be some Macedonia with worthy objects
crying earnestly, “Come over and help us.” It depends upon us whether we
will take up our work calmly and strongly, careful not to undertake more
than we can do and yet not to leave untouched that for which we are best
fitted, or whether we will let ourselves become so “cumbered with much
serving” that we shall lose the best of life’s harmonies, the inner life
of the soul. We are in danger, in our eagerness to be of service and our
dread of losing some of the frills of life, of forgetting that we can
do no better service to humanity than to develop our own selves into the
highest types of womanhood. The world will always stand in need of noble
women.
The great trouble with the average woman is that she does not readily
find her balance. Who does not recall some rare, sweet nature that
while bearing the burdens of life—heavy burdens, perhaps—is marked by a
serenity of soul that is as restful to her friends as it is helpful to
herself? But alas! who cannot count on the fingers of one hand the number
of such women? On the other hand, the women who flutter and hover and
tremble and bustle and chatter are far from isolated cases. One is almost
tempted to liken them to the sands of the seashore.
It is not that they are not eager to be of the highest service to
mankind, but simply that they do not get at the true secret of how. How
to be lifted above the personal frets, the personal sense of importance.
Perhaps it is the personal element that spoils it; eliminate that and the
true cause for fretting and worrying has in a large measure disappeared.
Sometimes the question of what needs to be done gets entirely shunted
off the track by that other one: What will be the easiest way for me to
do it?
The sense of individual responsibility for the general welfare is one of
the hopeful signs of the times. We may as well recognize it and that each
generation needs more and more some sort of association with each other.
We are individuals, but the force which draws us together and keeps us
eager to work for a common cause is a need that belongs to the later
development of the human race. We need each other and to come together
and work together just as much as we need a home where we can sometimes
be alone. And this social dependence on one another is, as one writer
says, the highest faculty of the highest race on earth.
That is one of the chief reasons why we come together to discuss methods
of thought and of work. The women who join clubs because it is the
fashion or because of restlessness and emptiness of mind are few; the
women who join because of their need of belonging to a throng that can
stir and throb and work in unison are legion. We are seeking more or less
consciously the higher forms of relation which are the strength of modern
life. And this is the result of a prolonged thirst among women for a
fuller and truer social life than that provided by the ordinary functions
of society.
It scarcely seems necessary to sum up by saying that this sense of
personal responsibility for the general welfare is back of all organized
work, nor to repeat that it is to us, like life, what we make of it. It
is for us each and severally to settle that question. If we take the
attitude of master and make of this feeling a servant to do our bidding,
well and good; if, on the other hand, we let it master us and become a
slave to a vague and general desire to do something for somebody without
the slightest idea of how or what, then woe be to us!
III
ON OUR RELATION TO LIFE
How are we seeking to get the most out of life? By selfishly striving
to grasp all the good things therein for ourselves? By trying to stamp
our own individuality upon everything, by making ourselves a personal
power? Or are we realizing that only in serving others can we best help
ourselves? “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.” And
what is a servant? One who works for others. Look over the women of your
acquaintance. Is it the self-seeking woman, who sacrifices her dignity
in a scramble for prominence and who pushes herself, regardless of the
rights of others, into prominent positions, whose name stands for real
service and real value in the world? Or is it she who forgets herself and
the paltry honors that come with self-sought place in honest, unselfish
work and far-seeing, wise and charitable thought for the best good of
the whole whose name is written high on “Rolls of Honor”?
She who is great enough to lose sight of small, unworthy aims and makes
it her chief purpose to help and serve others will always be the one who
is instinctively trusted. True greatness and true happiness do not come
when we set ourselves deliberately to call them to serve our purpose.
It is only by putting our lives in harmony with the great principle
of service to our fellow-men that we shall find them. It is of little
use to strive to attain popularity, greatness, power over others; it
is of infinite use to find out how we can be of service to those with
whom we are associated, and then to forget ourselves in such service.
Kindliness, helpfulness, service: these three were never more needed
than now. The great-hearted, sympathetic, charitable-minded, brave woman
is needed everywhere. She it is who is beloved, who makes for peace and
righteousness; yes, and for power. And it is easy to see why she is the
woman of power.
Let us learn the secret of “putting ourselves on the side of the
universal.” Let us work from the heart, giving ourselves with no thought
of personal gain. The more we do this the broader will become our
vision, the grander our lives; and thus while we are giving ourselves
to others the fuller and richer and truer will life be for us; and we
shall cease to think whether we are getting our money’s worth, satisfied
with the joy of living and the unconscious growth within. Can there
be anything more beautiful in life than to become one of those rare
souls whose personality is a help to their fellow-creatures; whose very
presence is like a benediction, and from whom goes out a silent influence
that cannot be defined, yet which every one within its radius feels,
even though not a word be spoken? And is there not a way by which this
serenity of soul, this illumination, may become a characteristic of every
good woman?
The more we are in ourselves the more we can do, the more we shall desire
to do for others. There is nothing greater in life, nothing greater in
Christianity than this great principle of helpfulness and service and
love for others. It is the kingdom of heaven to which we all aspire some
time or other, only we do not always realize that it is here and now if
we will have it so. And in proportion as we stand for higher conditions
and better influences we are an uplifting power to those around us. We
cannot do this, however, if we allow ourselves to take narrow and petty
views of the lives and motives of others. Only by merging the personal
side of things into the larger, universal one; by rising above prejudices
and becoming indifferent to the criticisms and opinions of others—so
long as we are sure of being actuated by right motives ourselves—do we
reach the higher life. Service to others is the great solution to the
actual problem of life. Realizing and building our lives upon this great,
eternal principle, minor things will not matter.
Think how much more charitable we then shall be toward the faults and
failings of others. We may even so accustom ourselves to the larger
view of life and service that we shall not readily see shortcomings in
those around us; or, if called to our notice, they will not rasp or fret
us, because our souls are lifted above the plane where such trials are
possible. And, above all, we shall be possessed of that larger charity
that sees beneath the surface and knows that we have no right to judge
our sister. Have we innate knowledge and infallible wisdom ourselves
that we shall decide for another? Can we know of the struggles another
woman makes for a better life, or condemn her when she fails? “You may
think I am cynical in my speech and impatient in my words at times,”
exclaimed one woman to another who had rebuked her, “but you do not know
how many times I have overcome that tendency, nor that I am striving
daily to outgrow it.”
The limitations of other women are no personal concern of ours. It is
ours to do for others, to lose our own pettiness and enlarge our own
horizon by giving loyal, loving service, and this includes a broad,
universal love to all women, to the world around us—a world, whoever and
whatever we are, that always needs us. It may be the world of home, it
may be the public schoolroom, it may be the ranks of fashionable society,
or it may be the small circle of the small country town, but our love and
our service are needed. We are individually responsible for so much.
“From each as she has power to give, to each as she has need.” What a
motto! It is so easy to forget that each one has something to give to
some one. And what is this giving to “each as she has need”? It is being
gracious, broad-minded, tolerant of others, “not easily puffed-up”—nor
put out, either; it is by keeping ourselves in a serene, well-balanced
frame of mind that will act on others as a bit of bright sunshine falling
across a dark corner. We cannot give to others anything better than is
in our own natures, and only by keeping them bright and sunny can we
shed sweet temper and serenity of soul wherever we go. “How shall we
keep ourselves so if we are not born that way?” asks somebody. Cultivate
the habit. We have habits of mind as well as of body. Cultivate sunshine
and sweetness in ourselves at home, every day and every hour in the day,
and we shall have no difficulty in keeping sweet and pleasant everywhere
else. Let us each be the woman for whose presence her friends wait as for
a benediction of peace.
Do you not know women whose very presence is uplifting, whose very
atmosphere is peace? We might all be so if we would set ourselves
steadily and calmly to work to find our balance and lift ourselves
to a mental plane where outside worries and flurries and tempers and
jealousies could not reach us. It would be a work of time, perhaps, but
it would pay. And having once arrived at that condition we should help
others just as naturally as the sun sheds its life-giving beams on the
dependent earth. Let us learn the highest secret of life, self-giving.
Not for what it will bring us in peace or honor or happiness, but because
we realize how much the world needs disinterested help, and how much more
we need to give it. “If you would have all the world love you, you must
first love all the world.”
“We buy ashes for bread;
We buy diluted wine;
Give me the tree—
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of heaven,
Draw everlasting dew.”
A few years ago Mr. Trine took occasion to send out to his friends a
little card with the following printed thereon. It helped us all, and
therefore I pass it on like so much “sunshine”:
“A SORT OF CREED.
“To live up to our highest in all things that pertain to us.
“To lend a hand as best we can to all others for this same end.
“To remain in nature always sweet and simple and humble, and
therefore strong.
“To open ourselves fully and to keep ourselves pure and clean
as fit channels for the Divine Power to work through us.
“To turn toward and keep our faces always to the light.
“To do our own thinking, listening quietly to the opinions of
others, and to be sufficiently men and women to act always upon
our own convictions.
“To do our duty as we see it, regardless of the opinions of
others, seeming gain or loss, temporary blame or praise.
“To play the part of neither knave nor fool by attempting
to judge another, but to give that same time to living more
worthily ourselves.
“To get up immediately when we stumble, face again to the
light, and travel on without wasting even a moment in regret.
“To love all things and to stand in awe or fear of nothing save
our own wrongdoing.
“To recognize the good lying at the heart of all people, of
all things, waiting for expression, all in its own good way and
time.
“To love the fields and the wild flowers, the stars, the
far-open sea, the soft, warm earth, and to live much with them
alone, but to love struggling and weary men and women and every
pulsing living creature better.
“To strive always to do unto others as we would have them do
unto us.
“In brief—to be honest, to be fearless, to be just, to be kind.
This will make our part in life’s great and as yet not fully
understood play truly glorious, and we need then stand in fear
of nothing—life nor death; for death is life.
“Or, rather, it is the quick transition to life in another
form; the putting off of the old coat and the putting on of a
new; a passing not from light to darkness, but from light to
light, according as we have lived here; a taking up of life in
another form just where we leave it off here; a part in life
not to be shunned or dreaded or feared, but to be welcomed with
a glad and ready smile when it comes in its own good way and
time.”
IV
ON FRIENDS
Who shall estimate the value of a cheery, breezy, hopeful friend? Nobody
can get along without her. She keeps us in good humor, she switches off
the bores, she lights us up and keeps things in motion; in her company
our spirits rise, our wits grow bright and our tongues loosen, so that
we really believe after half an hour’s contact with her that we are in
ourselves as brilliant and as happy as she makes us. A friend that can
raise everybody around her from a state of practical imbecility to that
of a brilliant and beautiful song bird is a being we may all envy. If
we would be such a friend ourselves, there is but one way: we must be
agreeable at all times, kindly serviceable to every outward call, never
see a slight or notice a snub, and never allow ourselves to get into the
dumps. “To be warped unconsciously under the magnetic influence of all
around is the destiny to a certain extent of even the greatest souls.” We
cannot be too careful of our friendships, nor value too highly the love
of the good women whom we meet in life.
The late “Jennie June,” Mrs. Croly, said at one of the celebrations in
honor of her seventieth birthday: “I am glad to have lived so many years
because I have come to know that most beautiful thing on earth, the
love of one woman for another—the love of good women for one another.”
And truly, if any woman on earth has reason to know it, this “mother of
clubs,” who did more than any other one woman to introduce women to one
another, ought to from long and intimate experience. Through her pen,
that of the first regular, trained woman-journalist in the world, and
through her long, active experience as president of the foremost woman’s
club in the country, Mrs. Croly did more, perhaps, for the emancipation
of women in a social way than almost any other woman of her age, and we
may well pause to consider her words for a moment.
It has long been the custom, even among women, to sneer at the love of
woman for woman; to say that women cannot be true, cannot overlook
peculiarities in other women, have not charity for one another’s
shortcomings. But the women who say this to-day are not trained thinkers
and observers. The more we associate with other women along any definite
line, the broader grows the individual outlook, the more charitable the
mental attitude. It is the beginner who believes women are not true
to each other, mainly because she hasn’t it in her own heart to be
true to others. It is a case where the verdict of the immortal bard is
illustrated:
“To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
The modern “passion for organization” has done more for the friendships
of women than anything else has ever done. It has lifted the ordinary
woman from the plane of petty gossip and trivial interest in each other’s
every-day affairs, and it has, in part at least, killed out that love
of gossip which in times past men have delighted to ascribe to women as
their especial prerogative; although for that matter some of the worst
gossips I have ever known are men. Long ago, when clubs and societies
were first started, the club may have been a promoter of gossip just the
same as the sewing bee and the church social were in earlier days. Women
were not trained then to think great thoughts, to live on a plane where
the comings and goings of their neighbors are beneath them, to take so
broad and lofty an outlook upon affairs in general as to be incapable of
scrutiny of the insignificant motives of their friends.
After working together for others, women begin to recognize in one
another the loftier ideals and higher ambitions. When we are lifted upon
the peak of high living ourselves, we are not so isolated as perhaps
we once thought we should be; on the contrary, we are able to see many
others who are striving to reach the summit of high thinking and worthy
endeavor. Women have needed this outlook in ages past, while they are
but just coming to their own, and although we may have reached the state
where we are able to endure our own company, and to find comfort in the
inner life, we need the friendship of others; we need the sunshine of
good company to bring out the best that is in ourselves.
We may think we can do without other people, or that we do not care what
other women think of us, but we all know that we do and that we depend
on one another for help and for comfort. If we are inclined to too much
introspection or to looking upon the dark side of things it is well to
take pattern after Dr. Johnson and “live in a crowd of jollity,” at least
so far as to get out of our own solitary chambers and fling ourselves
into something which is their polar opposite. The ordinary woman needs
contact with her intellectual mates in order that she may get out of the
small round of her daily sympathies and interests. Dr. Johnson was the
greatest hypochondriac in the world, but when once aroused by stimulating
contact with the wise and the erudite, the change was like that in the
forlorn, drooping eagle in a cage to the same bird when free to soar into
the limitless space above.
It is this need that is bringing the rich woman into closer association
with her poorer sister. This mutual contact is helpful. The one learns
that riches do not buy brains and refinement; the other finds out that
poverty does not preclude the possibility of richness of intellect
and gentle manners. If one wears Paris gowns and another is severely
plain in her costumes, there need not be any difference in the attire
of their ideas. The one sees that an unfashionable garment may clothe a
body containing a mind that is above rubies, that “the rank is but the
guinea’s stamp—the man’s a man for a’ that.” The other discovers that her
next neighbor, whom she considered a toy of fashion, has a soul and some
lofty aspirations. Companionship with other women renders a woman more
lenient, more sincere and more sympathetic. The pettiness of personal
aims is dying out in the presence of humanity’s needs.
We should not forget that a barbed wire fence shuts out more than
it shuts in. Social barriers cannot set aside mental and spiritual
harmonies, for the force of personality is becoming the supreme force,
before which custom and conservatism must yield. The standard by which
all must judge each other is high, unselfish womanhood. The result of
woman’s individual growth is nowhere more apparent than in the home, the
corner-stone of civilization, and in her friendships.
Mrs. Croly declared that the passion for associated effort was far
greater than any one woman, and that no woman who sought only her own
personal aggrandizement could possibly have more than a transitory,
fleeting fame. How true her words have proved can easily be computed by
any of us. We all know women who, through personal machination or what is
even more contemptible, the unscrupulous use of their friends, have risen
to high positions; but who let ambition get the better of their judgment,
and consequently, though clinging tenaciously to place and grasping
violently at position, were finally engulfed in the sea of oblivion.
But, happily, these women are fewer and fewer as the years roll by, and
consequently the limitations of self are giving way to the largeness of a
universal idea.
To enter upon any labor worthy the honest effort of any earnest
woman with the selfish spirit dominant within, is not only to fail
ultimately by the personal measure, but to degrade the work itself to
the level of the spirit in which it was undertaken; to enter upon the
most unpretending labor simply because of duty, nobly because of the
possibility for others, is not only to beautify the worker, but to
glorify the work.
A soul so narrow as to know no broader horizon than is measured by its
own puny pleasure or purpose, ideal or method, can never be long in the
ascendant, and ultimately receives as it deserves the condemnation of
the larger, better world; the life that has no definitely fixed ideal
toward which it is stirring, no divinely conceived mission which it is
struggling to fulfil, can expect no less than the hearty contempt of
an honest humanity. Shall we not endeavor, each of us, to become the
radiating centre of kindliness and good will and helpfulness? It is
hard to do one’s best and then to be troubled with a haunting fear or a
real consciousness that some one else would have done that particular
thing better. It is harder yet to do one’s best, to work from the
purest motives even, and then to feel that one’s friends are looking
on with critical eye, or, at best, with cold approval. Why not say the
appreciative word and give the sympathetic hand clasp wherever we can?
Harder even than death is it to find some dearly loved friend grown cold
and indifferent; to find instead of the loving sympathy that has seemed
a strong fortress in the past, only a distant formality, a chilling
frost; or to find, worse than all, disloyalty in place of truth. Nothing
is more heart-breaking than to find a love grown cold, especially if
that love is one in which we have trusted and believed for years. Such
things happen. We find in place of the sympathy and affection on which we
have relied without question some sudden failure in time of stress. The
sympathy we have accustomed ourselves to lean upon disappoints us. The
hollowness of insincerity rings through the formal attempt to simulate
affection that is no longer a vital thing. And when this experience
befalls us—God help us.
No; death is not the worst thing that can happen to us or to our friends.
I sometimes wonder if it is not the best; if we do not do wrong in
wishing back those who have gone a little before us to the silent shore.
Death is a mystery, but it may be the best part of life, after all. We
cannot tell.
We say we believe in immortality; that we believe the future life will
take us far in advance of this; that we are to be infinitely happier,
infinitely better and infinitely more useful there. Why, then, are
we afraid to go forward into it? Why do we grudge our friends that
experience? And why—since we believe in infinite love and the life of the
soul hereafter do we mourn the death of any human love when we are sure
of God’s love and that of the friends who have gone before?
There is a poem of Edward Rowland Sill’s that has long been a favorite
with me. Perhaps it may bring a comforting thought to some other who
reads it here:
What if, some morning when the stars were paling
And the dawn whitened and the east was clear,
Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence
Of a benignant spirit standing near,
And I should tell him, as he stood beside me,
“This is our earth, most friendly earth and fair;
Daily its sea and shore, this sun and shadow,
Faithful it turns, robed in its azure air?
“There is best living here, loving and serving,
And quest of truth and serene friendship dear;
But stay not, spirit. Earth has one destroyer,
His name is Death. Flee, lest he find thee here.”
And what if then, while the still morning brightened
And freshened in the elm the summer’s breath,
Should gravely smile on me the gentle angel,
And take my hand and say, “My name is Death”?
V
ON ENEMIES
Marcus Aurelius says: “No man can do me an injury unless he can make me
misbehave myself.” An older authority than he said: “Love your enemies.”
And a good way to love them is not to recognize them as enemies. The
old Roman was right—as usual. The greatest harm any one can do us is to
disturb the harmony of our souls. There is a serenity which is like an
armor. It protects us from the stings of petty jealousy and the stabs
of secret foes. Reports, false or true, of these things may come to our
ears, but we shall possess our souls in large patience and refuse to be
ruffled in spirit or worried by small fears. We shall not “misbehave
ourselves.”
My mother—the best and wisest woman I ever knew, God bless her!—used to
tell me that the person of whom it could be said, “He or she has not
an enemy in the world,” never amounted to anything. Few who accomplish
any real good in life escape the attacks of the envious. No matter how
disinterested our purpose or how high our ideal, somebody is going to
misunderstand; somebody is going to impute a selfish motive. Experience
with the world will teach us to expect and make allowances for these
things; but we need not be soured by them, nor lose sight of our own
standard, provided it be a right one. Only by lowering our own ideals,
by giving way to jealousy, envy, fear or discouragement can we really be
touched by these outside things. Let us keep single to the purpose of
pressing straight forward to the goal of right living and right thinking,
not expecting every one to understand or even appreciate our motives, and
our enemies can do us no real harm.