nobility in silently bearing your own. One need not be unfriendly nor
unsocial, but one should cultivate the power of silence and the habit of
silence. If you do not read another book get into the habit of reading
daily bits from Miss Call’s “The Power of Silence,” and her “As a Matter
of Course,” and Lida Churchill’s “The Magic Seven.” These preach the
gospel of relaxation which, translated, means the habit of not caring.
That man succeeds best who flings his soul into his life-work and does
his level best, and then does not sit up nights worrying over the result.
Throw off your cares and anxieties. Drop everything and go out-of-doors.
You remember what the immortal Samantha Allen said about worrying at
nights? “Why, how often have I laid for hours worrying about things and
made ’em out like mountains, only to see ’em drop off and fade away by
the morning light, dwindlin’ down to mere nothin’s.” We have all been
there. If we could live over again, now, all the time we have spent in
fruitless worrying, in sleepless nights, we should have several years
added to our three score and ten. Worry means always and invariably
inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. The sovereign
cure for worry is faith—religious faith, or, if you prefer to call it so,
optimism; perhaps it all amounts to the same thing. The turbulent billows
of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and
to her who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly
vicissitudes of personal destiny seem relatively insignificant. Whether
one is really a “professor of religion” or not, the really religious
person is that one who is unshakable and full of equanimity and calmly
ready for anything that may come.
As the psychologist would tell us, if we wish our trains of ideation and
volition to be copious and effective, we must form the habit of freeing
them from the inhibitive influence of egoistic preoccupation about
results; and such a habit can be formed if we will set ourselves to doing
it. Prudence and duty and ambition and self-regard have their places in
our lives and we need not banish them, but do not let them interfere
with our real selves. In other words, when we have decided on a plan of
action, stick to it and do not worry about the outcome. Unclamp your
mental machinery and let it go without fret or worry. It is the people
who fling worry to the winds and keep up their nervous tone that succeed.
All of which is applicable to growing old, even if you do think I have
wandered from my subject.
Women have been too long trained to the need of feeling responsible about
something. Some women cannot buy a paper of pins without a long argument
with themselves as to whether they shall be sharp-pointed or blunt. Most
of us fritter away our strength in useless fussing over nothing at some
time in our day. What we need is the toning down of our moral and mental
tensions.
Some women, a few, are born with the gift of self-poise; others acquire
it, and many never know the meaning of the word; but self-poise is
never thrust upon any of us. What a comfortable sister she is who has
it. How safe and happy we are in her presence. For she looks upon life
calmly and with such a large vision that we forget how great the petty
affairs of every-day living had loomed on our horizon before we came to
know her. She has learned to close her eyes to such unpleasant things as
cannot be helped and to smooth away those that can; she closes her ears
to words that insidiously steal away one’s peace of mind and to utter the
soft words that turn away wrath. Outside influences are never allowed
to canker or to disturb the serenity of her soul; and, if she is a
housekeeper, her family are allowed to dwell in comfort. In other words,
she is not the kind of woman who chases through life with a dust-cloth
in one hand and a fly-killer in the other, and a poorly swept room or a
spot on the tablecloth at breakfast table are not the excuse for making
the whole family miserable for the day. So many women seem to think that
anything that causes them uneasiness to them is sufficient cause for
making everybody else around them unhappy.
She has the secret of “how to grow old gracefully,” and there is no
better nor surer way to avoid wrinkles than to keep out of one’s life and
heart the demon of worry. If you choose, you may call this power an oil
that makes the machinery of life run smoothly and noiselessly. I call it
living on a plane where the mire of petty smallness, the hurt of wrong
living and the danger of wrong thinking cannot reach us.
But, after all, why should we dread growing old? It seems to me that life
should be brightest, like the sunset, just before the night—if it is
night. I prefer to think of it as the real morning. When we have learned
to drop worry and undue haste, and fretfulness and all disagreeableness,
we are only just fitted to enjoy the serenity of age. Let’s stop right
here with Hamilton Aide’s comforting verses on “Old Age.”
“There comes a time when nothing more can hurt us.
The winds have done their worst to strew the shore
With stranded hulks; no power can convert us
Into the buoyant barks of youth once more.
“But we can sit and patch the sails for others,
And weave the nets for younger hands to trawl;
And spin long yarns to listening boys and mothers,
While sea and winds do one another call;
“And point to perils, when our bark lay tossing
In that dread passage which we here call Life,
And betwixt shoals and rocks we steered our crossing
Unto the shore, where we have done with strife.
“From seas tumultuous the sands have barred it;
From there we watch the white sails fleeting by.
Old age is never drear, if we regard it
As the safe harbor where the old boats lie.”
[1] Died since this was put in type.
XVII
ON THE OUTLOOK
What, then, of the woman of to-morrow? What part will she play in affairs
of public interest? What will she do with the home? What will she do and
be as an individual?
As I write, the robins and orioles and bobolinks are singing around the
house, out in the orchard. Mingled with their notes comes the strain
of a catbird, the “northern mocking-bird.” They are all beautiful, and
combine to make a perfect harmony of music in the May sunshine; but it
is the catbird’s song that the ear strains to follow, with its sweet and
sudden changes, its low guttural notes and its pure, uplifted tones as
it tries to catch and mimic the strain of the bluebird, the thrush, the
oriole. And I willingly forget the others in trying to keep count of her
bewitching changes. And I wonder if it does not typify the modern woman.
The others, lovely, melodious little creatures, are woman as she has been
for years, woman of whom we know what to expect. But the catbird! Here we
have the woman of to-day outdoing all the others, catching their song,
putting forth all their captivating graces, and making herself heard
and felt wherever she goes. It is the unexpectedness of her song, the
spontaneous uncertainty of it combined with the knowledge that it will be
well worth listening to, that holds us captive, as with strained ear we
watch for what she will do next. And if she puts forth guttural or harsh
notes now and again we can forgive and forget them for the sake of the
sweet, entrancing ones that we know are sure to follow.
It is so with the work woman is doing outside of the home. She is
doing everything and doing it in her own way, imitative, perhaps,
but still so different from men’s way or from her sisters of the day
before yesterday as to render her and her methods always an object of
interest. She is establishing libraries, improving streets and villages
and municipalities, raising the standard of education, fighting against
oppression in the form of sweatshops and child labor, and getting bills
introduced to legislative bodies—and still she is the same captivating,
lovable and loving woman as of yore. We flatter ourselves that women have
done a great deal for the public good, but fifty years hence shall we
not look back at our achievements of to-day as the merest beginnings—a
thing of shreds and patches? For so long as the world stands its women
are going to do their best to uplift humanity. They have found out that
the mere stayer at home, content with the _Laissez faire_ of other days,
helps only those in her immediate circle (let us hope she always does
that!). To-day the woman who helps reaches across the State with her
libraries and her child-labor bills; even clear across the continent
is modern associated womanhood stretching her influence. The women of
Massachusetts send books and money to establish schools in Georgia; the
women of Minnesota and Michigan scatter literature and manual training
across the plains of Arizona. If the woman of to-day cannot go over
into Mesopotamia in person, she can send the cheering word, the helpful
dollar, the influence of thousands of good women across the intervening
spaces. It is the sisterhood of women awakening to a sense of what
humanity requires of them. And when this is fully awakened the way is
made clear for the woman of to-morrow; a way she is sure to follow and
will, and make to blossom as the rose while she is about it.
But while she extends her work out and beyond she will not forget the
home. Let extremists advise as they will, they can never make the
ordinary, home-loving woman, born with all the primal instincts of
womanhood, believe that in fulfilling her natural duties as wife and
mother and daughter and teacher she is wasting her life in drudgery. The
woman of to-morrow will fall in love and marry and have children just as
the woman of yesterday did; only let us hope she will be more careful
about whom she falls in love with, at what age she marries and how she
brings up her children. In this time of steam-driven spindles, cutting
and sewing machines and the general lightening of labor, more leisure
comes to the average woman which she will not be content to fill with
mere selfish or social pleasures. She will wake to the knowledge of how
to use her time most wisely. With greater leisure and greater wealth and
comfort we may expect more and not less of the sharing with others of
the best we have. Great economic changes are taking place in the home
life. The family, at one time almost a self-sufficient economic unit, now
satisfies fewer and fewer direct economic wants. It is not so many years
since there were well-to-do New England families in rural districts which
did not spend fifty dollars a year for the satisfaction of family wants.
They produced everything themselves, raised and prepared for use all
their food supply, even the materials for clothing, the tools for their
work, the furniture for their homes, and they provided within themselves
all the essential services for the social and educational life of the
home. All is different now, even in the most primitive rural districts.
The farmer buys all his clothing, no longer makes his shoes or clothes,
buys a large part of his food supply, even many of the most common farm
products, such as milk, butter and eggs. The farmer’s wife buys her
dresses and children’s clothes ready-made, and too often does not bake
her own bread or pastry. Laundry work is given out, and in many cases all
the washing as well, and the good Hausfrau has no longer an excuse for
irritability on two days of the week. Ladies’ tailoring promises fair to
eliminate the necessity for periodical family disturbances caused by the
visits of the dressmaker and seamstress. Is not the increase of family
goods and services not long since provided within the family itself,
and constituting the bulk of the time-consuming burden of the wife and
mother and daughters in each individual home, but now provided for by
organized effort outside the home, really remarkable? All these economic
changes more directly affect the life of women than that of men. And we
can but remark that in the resultant increase in leisure, women as a
class have been relatively greater gainers than men, partly because in
the shifting of their activities somewhat of their economic productive
functions have been undertaken by men. It is a matter of congratulation,
however, that all the economic changes in the position and work of women
have been accompanied by the most remarkable expansion this country has
ever witnessed, an expansion alongside of which our political expansion
is a mere bagatelle, an expansion in woman’s educational interests and
aspirations. The higher education and a more diversified education has
brought woman inevitably into the arena of public duties and large
social responsibilities, and must needs lead her to demand a specific
training and equipment for social service.
The day has passed when Martin Luther could say: “No gown or garment
worse becomes a woman than when she would be wise.” Women must educate
themselves to-day, not merely for their own sakes, but for the sakes of
others, for whether they will or not they must educate others. Let them
keep high ideals and live up to them, for as wife and mother, sister and
daughter, an influence indirect and perhaps unconscious is shaping some
character and building for the weal or woe of our country. Benjamin Rush
once said: “A philosopher decided, ‘Let me make the ballads of a country
and I care not who makes its laws.’” He might with more propriety have
said: “Let the ladies of a country be educated properly and they will not
only make and administer its laws, but form its manners and character.”
We have not yet taken kindly to the earnest suggestion of the greatest
philosopher of the ancient Greek world to farm out our children (more
recently adapted by Mrs. Stetson-Gilman), nor is there any monopolistic
combination for the propagation and perpetuation of the race. Barring
the increasing activities of the home in its care for the welfare of
its children, activities increasing in importance and in their demands
proportionately with the advance of civilization, find women with more
time for the larger life and more inclination to learn how to use it
wisely and effectively. As to the character and kind of this outside
work, it seems to me that it will be best directed along these lines:
The promotion of public health and sanitation.
The protection of the highest attainable standard or plane of living for
the various classes in society.
The attainment of a progressively better type of education for all,
guaranteeing a better adjustment to both our economic and social
environment.
The enlargement of our sympathies and of our general moral and spiritual
outlook as expressed in our ideals of conduct and life.
The housekeeper of the future, too, will know how to make the best
use of her time and understand how to save her strength. She will
discriminate between what is necessary work and what unnecessary. It is
inevitable that our twentieth century women will make good wives. They
will understand their husbands’ business and regulate their expenditures
accordingly. At the table the talk will not be limited to complaints
about servants and gossip about friends and neighbors, but topics of the
day will be intelligently discussed, and the husband will receive the
intelligent coöperation of his wife in all his affairs.
We are all interested in public health and sanitation, in the prevention
of the spread of disease, in the lowering of the death rate, in immunity
from exposure to disease, in the protection of the sources of our water
supply, of our milk supply and of the meat diet offered in our markets.
In all of these things women are by nature and experience better
qualified to lead than men, and not until women do undertake their full
share of such social work will our community standards of health and
cleanliness compare with those that woman has evolved in the home, and
will those of the home be still further improved. Still, the average
workingman’s cottage to-day is in a better sanitary condition than the
palace of the rich was fifty years ago, and the ordinary artisan’s
family lives with more consideration for the rules of hygiene. This is,
of course, due to the development of science, but it is also due to the
awakening of womankind. But in no other way is woman heir of all the
ages in the foremost files of time than in her motherhood. With all that
child study has discovered, with all the experience of her mother and
grandmother to draw from, with all the discoveries of science at her
womanhood, and with a fuller sense of her moral responsibility than ever
before, good mothers are inevitable.
God designed women primarily to be mothers of the race, and all the talk
of the ultra reformer, all the cryings of pessimists, will not change
this unalterable fact. In this connection I wish to second most heartily
the wish uttered recently by a prominent Western woman of wide experience:
“I wish every childless home might be filled with homeless little
children who lack a father’s loving care and a mother’s fond
devotion—that immortal souls that are perishing in helplessness, want and
vice might be rescued and loved and trained to virtue. On this beautiful
earth there should never be a homeless child, there should not be so many
foundlings’ homes and orphan asylums, as beautiful as those charities
are! The most precious gift of God, a fresh and innocent soul to love, to
rear and train for usefulness, is not given to every woman, but there is
none among us so busy, so burdened by care or lack of means, who would
not be the better for such an angel ministrant in her home, for such a
check upon the self-absorption or selfishness that men and women grow
into without the loving pranks and clinging caresses of innocent little
children.
“Alas! for the starved heart of a woman who expends all her mother love
and tenderness upon a pampered pug or an elongated dachshund.
“Alas! for the stifled soul who, for love of ease, can pass by unheeding
the need of Christ’s little ones who are denied by circumstances the
right to be well born and well bred. How many luxurious mansions never
hear the music of childhood’s voices! How many homes of comparative
comfort in the middle classes never resound with the tread of childish
feet, or know the gladness of the trusting love of a little child,
sweetest of earthly joy! Is it a risk to take an alien child or
introduce strange blood into the family which may produce ingratitude
or disobedience? One may meet the same faults in their own children
who develop strange traits of character from long-forgotten ancestors,
or wring a parent’s heart with unkindness, indifference or neglect. I
would say, take the risk, leaving the issues to God, and do your duty
faithfully for some other mother’s darling, as faithfully and even more
so than if your own, and your later years will be brightened and blessed
by grateful affection and devoted filial care.”
And if this were done the problems of the poor and the degeneracy of the
race would be far on toward solution.
Then let us be brave women and true, with no taint of unfairness or
dishonor in our methods or ambitions, but the resolve that we who have
been privileged to be alive to-day, and privileged to march with the
great army of those who serve, will strive to share what we possess,
whether of wealth, intellect or affection, with those who are our sisters
in God’s family.
Let us be charitable, believing in the sisterhood of women. Thoughts are
things according to the New Thought, and the law of attraction will bring
just what we desire, whether we think charitable, loving thoughts or the
reverse.
Let us insist on doing our share of work, and only our share. When we do
less we are shirking our duty; when we do more we are letting somebody
else shirk. Let us adopt the “I can and I will” motto; but let us use it
with discretion and “will” only what is right.
Let us keep a steel-rod vertebra instead of an india-rubber one in
our back-bone, especially when we have disagreeable things to do. For
back-bone is what too many women—and men, too—lack.
Let us believe there is much more of good than of evil in every human
being; and let us help every one with whom we come in contact to bring
forth the good.
Let us remember that Evil is but Ignorance, and that to “know all is to
forgive all”; and let us think of this every time we are inclined to
condemn another woman.
I came across a little poem in a newspaper one day, unsigned and
uncredited. I am going to adapt it for every-day use:
“If I should see a sister languishing in distress,
And I should turn and leave her comfortless,
When I might be a messenger of hope and happiness;
If I might share a sister’s load along the dusty way
And I should turn and walk the other way;
If I could sing a little song to cheer a fainting heart
And I should sit and seal my lips apart—
“How could I kneel at eventide to pray
For light along my own heart-weary way?
How could I hope to have my time of grief relieved
If I kept silent when my sister grieved?
How could I ask for what I wanted most
If all these opportunities were lost?
“So, Lord, help me to know
That day is lost wherein I fail to lend
A helping hand to some good friend,
Or bring a bit of sunshine to some suffering heart
That walks apart.”
There is no “new woman.” We are all identically the same as Eve and Sarah
and Ruth and—I say it with all reverence—Mary, the carpenter’s mother. We
have the same natures, the same intuitions, the same love of family and
home, the same desire to be of use to others that women have always had;
only in these wonderful modern times we have kept pace with the age, and
are developing, both as individuals and as a whole. And now that we have
stepped forth and won places as physicians and lawyers and ministers,
now that we are widening the ranks of every profession as we go forth on
the road to higher achievement, it behooves every woman-soul of us to
ask ourselves—What have _I_ to do about it? Am I doing my duty to the
rest of mankind? Am I bearing my share of the burden of the world? Or, if
this last is denied me, am I possessing my soul in patience and living up
to the splendid present? Am I sweet and gentle and strong and helpful?
Am I critical of no one but myself? Am I loving towards my family? my
neighbor? my friend? my enemy? Am I helping the cause of the woman of
to-morrow by working out my own life problem with the child-heart and
the Christ-love to sweeten existence for all around me?
“Life is too short to waste
In critic peep or cynic bark,
Quarrel or reprimand;
’Twill soon be dark.
Let us up and mind our aim,
And God speed the mark!”
THE END