the world. A woman should be an individual; more than that, she should
possess a distinct individuality. She should suggest to those with whom
she comes most in contact something bright and beautiful or soft and
restful. How can she, if she be uneasy, restless and strenuous? Certain
women come into a room or a house like an inspiration; they suggest an
exhilarating breath of June air, or the great calmness of a starry night.
Such women are worthy to be called God’s beneficences. They are like the
beautiful rose tree, scenting the atmosphere with fragrance and making
all the world aware of June and summer and all bright things. And unless
we do sometimes “chant in thoughts and paint in words,” even though it be
in our secret soul of souls, we can never hope to be numbered with such.
We forget that a wise prophet once said there is a time to think, as well
as a time to work and a time to sing and a time to dance. And we need to
stop and think more than we need to do any of these other things.
Ruskin’s words should be emblazoned on a card and hung before the eyes
of every restless woman. “And to get peace, if you do want it, make
for yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea,
indeed, but safe beyond all others. Do you know what fairy palaces you
may build of beautiful thoughts, proof against all adversity? Bright
fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure
houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor
pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us; houses built without
hands for our souls to live in.” Why not take this for our rule, and
devote some little time every day, say a half hour at dusk or even at
night after the house is still, to building ourselves nests of pleasant
thoughts? Surely it would pay.
It rests with the individual woman whether she will be like a rose tree
full of brightness and fragrance, a help and an inspiration; or whether
she will waste herself in a mad endeavor to keep up with the pell-mell,
hop, skip and jump of modern life. Shall we stop occasionally long enough
to plant the seed germs that will blossom later into flower and fruit?
Or shall we degenerate into mere replicas of other women who wear good
clothes, do and say the conventional, commonplace thing, and are as
uninteresting as a sunset without a flush of color?
No; let us give ourselves pause. Let us take stock of ourselves and see
if we are making the most of our talents, “building for ourselves fairy
palaces, proof against all adversity.” And let us not do it for ourselves
alone, but that we may give others that “which care may not disturb nor
pain take away.”
And let me whisper a way to keep in the attitude of serenity. Commit to
memory some helpful verse and say it over to yourselves whenever you have
time, or, more important even, whenever you get cross. If you cannot pin
it to your memory, pin it to your mirror, or on your pin-cushion, if you
are so old-fashioned as to use one.
I will tell you a secret. On my mirror is hung a ribbon banner with the
following printed thereon:
MY SYMPHONY
To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
And refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable;
And wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly,
Talk gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds,
To babes and sages
With open heart.
To bear all cheerfully,
Do all bravely, await occasions,
Hurry never;
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
Grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
—_William Ellery Channing._
VIII
ON THE ESSENTIALS OF HAPPINESS
“That’s a pleasant cemetery, isn’t it?” asked somebody of an old lady on
a railroad train one day.
“I don’t know,” was the answer, “I am not looking for cemeteries. I am
looking for flower-gardens; I find lots of beautiful ones, too.”
There was a whole sermon in the old lady’s remark. How often we go
through life watching out for cemeteries, forgetting that flower-gardens
are much more numerous as well as far saner, pleasanter and healthier. We
get into such a habit of noticing the uncomfortable conditions of life
and ignoring the other kind that are always so much more plenty, that we
forget our mercies. A teacher once told me of a school-boy who was so
optimistic in his attitude toward life that he never saw the unpleasant
side of things. If he is given ten problems, and after laboring
patiently all the morning over them, seven are incorrect, he smiles
triumphantly and says, “Well, I got three of ’em right, anyhow.” Would
that there were more of him!
It all depends on our view of life. Happiness is a condition of the mind;
we are happy if we train ourselves to think so; not to expect too much
of life or of other people, and to keep the sun shining in our heaven.
On the contrary, if we allow ourselves to worry and fret, to miss the
joy of little things, to lose sight of all the greatness and nobleness
that come into every-day life (if only we train our eyes to see), we can
easily lose the best happiness in the world, that of realizing the beauty
of humility, unselfishness, good temper, right living, high standards and
purity of heart that lies all around us. There are plenty of mental and
moral flower-gardens on every side, if only we are not blind, if only we
do not look for cemeteries.
Now, let us make up our minds whether we care to be happy all the time
or not. “Why, of course we do; how foolish such a question!” Then let us
see how small a matter happiness is, and then decide whether it is worth
having. If your definition of happiness is an ecstasy, a delirium of
joy, a flood of emotion that shall engulf you in an occasional paroxysm,
you might as well give up asking for a steady diet of happiness. But
after we arrive at years of discretion we generally know that waves of
delirium do not constitute pure happiness. It is not until we cease
looking for impossible sustained attitudes of mind that we come to
realize what happiness is. Not until we have lived long enough to accept
the possibilities and let go of the impractical.
The clouds are a blessed place for our heads, but the earth is the only
legitimate place in this incarnation for our feet. Antæus, you remember,
who had such victory in wrestling with Hercules, was the son of earth,
and it was not until Hercules succeeded in getting him off the earth and
into the air that he was able to throttle him. It is very important that
woman should pay a good deal of attention to her circulation to prevent
her feet going to sleep or her head getting giddy.
We talk altogether too much. Hundreds of women (to estimate it modestly)
chatter from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they
close them after everybody else is tired out for the night. They cannot
bear to be alone for a moment, facing the emptiness of their own hearts
and brains, and so they talk, talk, talk the precious hours away, without
ever saying anything. Oh, what would I give for the hours these women
waste in talk that amounts to nothing but fruitless sound?
Again, we read too much. Every new volume of history, essay, science (in
easy doses), bibliography, and especially of fiction, filters through
our minds like water through a sieve. We take in an enormous amount of
fuel, but it all goes up the intellectual chimney in smoke. Reading
does no good unless it teaches us to think and gives us something
new to think about. If we read so much that our intellectual powers
become inoperative, to what end is it? We need to think more; and to
think to any purpose we must learn to face ourselves alone. And it is
only by seeking and finding our true selves that we can come into a
full comprehension of what a full, wide every-day sort of thing true
happiness is, and how easily it may be obtained, after all. We may have
flower-gardens in our own souls, an’ we will.
Said the Rev. Dr. Burns: “To simply perpetuate low aims, frivolous
characters, mammon-worshipping beings, is to curse rather than to bless.
This is not the end nor kingdom to which woman has been called. A message
has gone forth—not to a favored one, but to every woman, whatever may be
her position. Some are faithfully and heroically striving to obey the
command; others are indifferent. They are asleep. But sleep must give
place to work, indifference to interest, selfish ease to self-sacrifice.
Littleness, worldliness, must all give way to the execution of the
command.
“Knowest thou, O woman, that thou art come for such a time and work as
this? If indifferent, thou wilt sink into insignificance and another
will take up the crown and sceptre which might have been thine.” Donald
Mitchell says: “Man without some sort of religion is at best a poor
reprobate, a football of destiny.” But a woman without religion is worse.
She is a flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower without
perfume. That sweet trustfulness, that abiding love, that endearing hope
which man needs in every scheme of life, is not then hers to give. But
let the love of Christ take full possession of a woman’s heart, and under
its inspiration let her grow in purity, in character, till at last she
come to a perfect woman, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness
of Christ”; then from all human lips, and from Him who sitteth upon the
throne, will come the benediction, “Blessed art thou among women.”
Man hunts after God with his understanding and fails, often, to find
Him; science reaches after God with its lenses, and its face seems like
a blind man trying to help his sight by using a glass eye; logic tries
to soar toward God, and waves its wooden crutches in mimicry to witness;
woman sees Him, feels Him within, discerns Him above, sees Him in Christ.
She feels Him in the deepest experiences of life, and then she sees Him
in all the providential history of the world, in all creation. It is by
the heart of woman filled with the Divine power and beauty that the world
is to have everywhere and retain immortally the vision of God. One of the
most foolish questions ever asked is: “What is going to be the sphere of
woman when she is so educated?” The sphere? If she don’t make her own
we may stop prophesying. You see the little ridge among the mountains,
a thread of water, and you see it arrested by rocks, and you see more
and more as it fills the chasm behind them till it cuts its way across
the rock, and through the rock, and at last you go into the gorges and
see the mighty chasms that have been cloven through the rocky hills, and
there is the power that has done it. That little stream has made its
sphere.
If we were all thoughtful, high-minded, serious, charitable,
broad-minded, loving, tender, patient, self-sacrificing, forgiving and
Christ-like; if we lived the best of which we are capable every day of
our lives, “you in your small corner and I in mine,” what a power for
good would we be!—not possibility, but power. Whose fault is it if we do
not accomplish all we might?
Again, we put such false estimates on life. Lady Henry Somerset once
said: “It would be interesting to analyze how much real happiness comes
to the man who has made or inherited a large fortune, and feels it
necessary to live in what is called ‘adequate style.’ He builds himself
a palace, engages a troop of servants, begins to collect pictures,
furniture and objects of art, and he little knows that he is heaping upon
himself a world of trouble. A man with a moderate income, who has no
requirements beyond those which he can well supply, who lives in a house
where his things give him no anxiety, but in refined, tasteful and simple
surroundings, who can afford to see his own friends because he cares for
them, and not a host of people who have to be asked because it is the
right thing that they should be seen at his house, is the really happy
man.” When shall we learn that it is not the things we possess, but the
thing we are that makes or unmakes our life?
It is only in the last hundred years that we have come to judge men
and women in proportion to their personal contribution to humanity.
Now we see that our aim must be to live, not to make a living; that we
must get our culture out of our work, instead of leaving it till we
grow too old or too rich to work; that we must make our work a medium
for self-expression, and finally that we must make it an opportunity
for serving others. Vocations tend to become matters of such routine
that it is often hard to see any ideal or inspiration in them, and this
holds true of much more of women’s work than of men’s. There’s so little
inspiration, so little of the outlook into the bigger world.
Again, it is so much easier to see the deadness in your own life than
in other people’s. We see their brilliant achievements; we don’t know
anything about the drudgery that has gone to produce them.
This life is no lottery. Nothing worth while comes without work. What
comes easily goes easily. That which seems to be done most easily is
bought with the hardest work. There is no royal road to anything worth
while. We have to do many things that seem like the merest drudgery; but
to do any blind, dead work loyally and faithfully without protesting is
to build character and to get culture. For what is culture but patience,
fidelity, quiet wisdom, loyalty to trust—those simple, primitive
qualities on which human life is based? And when trouble comes on us, to
whom do we go? Sometimes to our physician. Sometimes to our minister.
But often we go to some woman who has lived quietly and brought up her
children, but is able to give us the help that comes from a hand-grip
with life.
Here’s a verse for you:
“Somebody did a golden deed;
Somebody proved a friend in need;
Somebody sang a beautiful song;
Somebody smiled the whole day long.
Somebody thought, ‘’Tis sweet to live’;
Somebody said ‘I’m glad to give’;
Somebody fought a valiant fight;
Somebody lived to shield the right;
Was that somebody you?”
“There are,” says Margaret Deland, “as many opinions of happiness
as there are people in the world, but the first and most important
distinction which we must make is this: happiness is a spiritual
possession and is independent of material things. Happiness is thinking
straight and seeing clear and having a true perception of the value of
things.”
It takes us a long time to find out that happiness is a state of mind
which can be cultivated rather than the result of conditions outside
ourselves. The little child does not know that it is seeing its happiest
days, the school-girl does not understand how happy she is, the young
mother seldom realizes her own happiness; they are all looking forward
with eagerness to some happiness to come. Contentment is the truest
happiness, and yet if we were always simply content with our lot from
babyhood up, where would be the world’s progress? It is the eager
reaching forward for something better that brings progress, which, alas!
is not always synonymous with happiness.
But it is our duty to cultivate happiness, just the same. We can form the
habit of cheerfulness and hopefulness and a courageous spirit which shall
become, in time, the very essence of happiness, or at least a very good
substitute for it. The woman who goes whining through life, the woman who
is envious or self-conscious or unloving may fasten herself into a steel
armor of endurance of this life, but she cannot hope to be happy; but the
woman who accepts gladly the work close at her hand, and thanks God for
it, plants sunshine in her own soul and radiates happiness from the heart.
More than ever women are learning to find and give out their happiness
in the home. I once heard some excellent advice given by a speaker on
domestic science: “I hold that it is the duty of every woman to make of
her own body the strongest, best machine possible; and I believe that
one of the great lessons to be taught to the women of America to-day is
care of themselves. I wish I could reach out, not only to all the girls
in the land, but to all the mothers as well, and could say to them, ‘It
is your duty to your family, to your neighbors, to your Maker, to give
yourself the strongest body possible.’
“I wish the mothers would hear this, and could understand that the work
which gives them too little sleep, or allows them no time for quiet
eating of their food, which crowds them daily with nervous anxiety as
to whether or not the work will all be accomplished, is the work which
fills our insane asylums with broken-down women, that makes our mothers
unable to give to their daughters the love, the care and attention that
girls need in their growing years. A great good might be accomplished
if it could be proved to women that kitchen utensils cost less than
coffins, and that money paid for necessary help in the household is more
profitable than money paid to doctors and nurses.”
No mother has a right to wear herself out physically so that she cannot
be the central sun of the little system known as the family. My mother’s
cheerfulness and courage and faith in God are my richest inheritances,
and if I have any faculty for happiness it is owing to her wonderful
example. The average woman worries too much and fails to hold herself in
the atmosphere of peace which is her rightful sphere if she chooses to
enter in and possess it. “The art of growing old gracefully” is mastered
when a woman realizes what true happiness is, and growing old has no
further terrors for her.
There are plenty of shadows to be seen if we fix our vision on them
instead of on the sunlight beyond and around them; but why not fasten
our gaze on the glowing, life-giving sunshine instead? There is sorrow
and grief in the world and some of it has come first or last to you and
me; but why let it darken all our days, when Infinite love surrounds us
and will give us everlasting peace if we but claim it? Adversity may
come, but it cannot take away the serenity of the soul. Let us see to it
that we fortify ourselves with that inner sense which constitutes true
happiness.
“The duty of happiness” is something we owe to our own souls as much as
to those around us. Let us find that centre of the whirlpool of life
where perfect calm ever prevails.
“Let nothing make thee sad or fretful,
Or too regretful,
Be still;
What God hath ordered must be right,
Then find in it thine own delight,
My will.
“Why shouldst thou fill to-day with sorrow
About to-morrow,
My heart?
One watches all with care most true,
Doubt not that He will give thee, too,
Thy part.
“Only be steadfast; never waver;
Nor seek earth’s favor,
But rest.
Thou knowest what God’s will must be
For all His creatures, so for thee
The best.”
IX
ON WORRY
“In my life,” said a woman, “I have worried much, but never have I
worried about the right thing or the right situation. The thing to worry
about always turned out something different from what I spent my energy
upon. One day this view of the worry question occurred forcibly to my
mind, and the ridiculous waste of time and strength appalled me. I have
never had a worry since.”
Another woman whom I know came to a realization of the same truth a
few years ago in much the same way. She worried all the time about
something—and there is always a Something to be worried about if we
give way to it. She found one day that this habit of crossing a bridge
before she came to it—and perhaps it would never be come up to—was making
her old before her time. She realized suddenly that she was living
at a tremendously high tension—that she was in a perpetual hurry—that
she could no longer enjoy a good play or a good book or a good concert
without a guilty look every now and then at her watch—that she could not
even ride in a horse-car without bracing herself, as if by that she could
propel the thing and reach her destination sooner.
And then she realized that she was wasting Life—that she was missing
half of all the daily beauty that lay around her, and that existence
had become for her merely tension. Just then Annie Payson Call’s “Power
Through Repose” fell into her hands, and she decided to adopt a new
motto, “Relax.” She stopped worrying, teaching herself to remember that
worrying helps no cause and no event, until she actually comes up to it,
and then it is too late. She began to look for enjoyment and beauty in
the little things of life. She began to relax, even on horse-cars. To-day
she is the embodiment not only of calmness, but of courage. She has
forgotten that she ever had nerves. She is happy. She relaxed.
In that way we can keep our youth and defy wrinkles. Doctors can tell
you—if complexion beautifiers won’t—that ninety-nine hundredths of the
wrinkles and the unwelcome crow’s-feet on women’s faces are caused by
Worry. So are one-half the illnesses—wherein lies the power of mental and
“Christian” science. We can imagine ourselves into heaven if we will,
or we can worry ourselves into that other place—unmentionable in polite
circles—but we cannot reverse that process. The spirit with which we
accept life makes all the difference. We can take up burdens groaning,
“Oh, how shall I ever bear you?” or laughing, “Don’t think you can get
the better of me.”
Most women live in a state of mental turmoil the greater part of their
lives. Self-poise seems to be the rarest of virtues among women. We allow
ourselves to be continually stirred up over trifles, to be annoyed by
things not worth minding. We allow petty criticisms to burn into our very
souls. A disparaging word, a thoughtless remark, the slightest opposition
to our pet scheme, are allowed to disturb the unruffled peace that is our
birthright, and we either suffer agonies in silence or we let ourselves
down to undignified wrangling.
Or, if we have no immediate cause for trouble outside ourselves, we
worry. As Helen Watterson Moody neatly puts it: “Women are disposed to
take things too seriously and to dissipate vital force in that nervous
debauch known as worrying.” And she very wisely goes on to say that
every woman ought to be obliged by some law to spend an hour or two a
day absolutely alone and unrelaxed, that the whirling mind and quivering
nerves might hush themselves with the blessedness of silence.
Self-poise would be the natural result, however impractical the
proposition may appear. Some women are born with the gift of self-poise;
but most of us have to acquire it or, worse, get along the best or the
worst way we can without. It is never thrust upon us.
Once in a while we come across a woman who is blessed with it; and oh,
what a comfortable creature she is—comfortable and comforting. Trying
situations and trying people are as nothing to her. Some one has likened
this power to keep one’s poise to an oil which makes the machinery of
life run smoothly. Better than that, it is an elevated plane that holds
those who walk thereon far above the mire of petty smallnesses of wrong
living and thinking.
There is a man in Boston who has, naturally, a quick, irritable temper,
but who is noted for his uniform gentleness and patience in dealing with
the hundreds of people with whom he comes in contact every day. In his
office hangs a placard with the following inscription, which I recommend
to housekeepers, mothers, business women and everybody else. It runs thus:
“An American poet has said:
“‘It’s easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows along like a song;
But the man worth while
Is the man who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.’
“P.S.—This applies to women also.”
After all, it is a question of mind-discipline. Let us once realize that
we lack this power over ourselves and determine to acquire it, and we are
in a fair way to be sweeter and better.
There might be classes established for the teaching of self-poise to all
the wrangling women, all the sensitive women, all the over-ambitious
women, all the selfish women. But, dear me! how many of us could say
we are beyond the need of joining? And, besides, there are no Marcus
Aureliuses in the teachers’ bureaus, just now, either.
We are placed in the scheme of life just where we were meant to be. Now,
then, let us live it out. What is meant for us to do, let us do; but let
us not worry over what is not meant for us. It depends on us whether we
take this for a world of honest, cheerful work, or a world of hard labor.
It is all character-building. Ever think of that? All character-building.