Now, Mrs. Julius Cæsar would have managed more cleverly. She would have

made the lamp-dealer exchange four or five of the lamps for, say, an

ornamental brass fender, a brass coal-scuttle, or a Japanese tea-tray,

and have made the jeweller substitute some equally desirable table

ornaments for the pepper-pots. And yet, when I made my wedding call on

Mrs. Cæsar, ten years ago, I remember thinking that her drawing-room

was a sort of compromise between a curiosity shop and a menagerie. To

begin with, I stumbled over the head of a tiger skin, which confronted

me as I passed through the _portière_, so that I nearly fell into the

arms of my hostess. It seemed to me that I had stepped into a veritable

bazaar. A large bear skin lay before the fire as a hearth-rug, and

on either side of the grate squatted a large, orientally conceived

china dragon with an open mouth. Here and there, under furniture or in

corners, were gaping frogs in bronze or china. A low plush-covered

table was densely arrayed with small china dogs of every degree.

On another table was spread a number of silver ornaments--a silver

snuff-box, a silver whistle, a silver feather, a silver match-box,

and a silver shoe-buckle--all objects of virtu of apparently antique

workmanship. There were three lamps with ornamental shades--a fluted

china shade, a paper shade in semblance of a full-blown rose, and a

yellow satin shade with drooping fringe. From the low studded ceiling

depended a vast Japanese paper lantern. Sundry and divers china

vases and shepherdesses occupied the mantel-piece and the top of the

book-case, and had overflowed on to a writing-table supplied with

brass ornaments. There were numerous pictures, large and small, on the

walls, under many of which colored china plates had been hung. There

were photographs in frames everywhere. The actual space where I could

stand without knocking over anything was about the size of a hat bath,

and was shut in by a circle of low chairs and divans besprinkled with

æsthetic yellow, green, and pink soft silk cushions. On one of these

divans my hostess was reclining in a Grosvenor gallery tea-gown, so

that she seemed to wallow in cushions, and Julius Cæsar himself was

sunk in the depths of one of the chairs, so near the ground that his

knees seemed to rest on his chin, and one might fairly have taken him

for another china frog of extraordinary proportions. All this in a

comparatively small room where there were several other knick-knacks

which I have omitted to mention. Better this, perhaps, than the

drawing-room of forty years ago, when the visitor’s gaze was bounded by

cold green rep, and he was restrained only by decorum from hurling into

the fire the tidy or antimacassar which tickled his neck, or detached

itself and wriggled down between his back and the back of the chair.

But Mrs. Cæsar’s drawing-room, in her new house on Belport Avenue, has

been furnished from a very different point of view than her first one,

which shows how rapidly tastes change in a progressive society. Mrs.

Cæsar and Julius chose everything themselves this time as they did

before, but they had learned from experience, and from the new work

of the contemporary decorator. There is plenty of unoccupied space

now to show her possessions to advantage, and there are not too many

possessions visible for the size of the parlor; there is neither so

much uniformity of color and design as to weary the eye, nor so much

variety or eccentricity as to irritate it; consequently, the effect on

the visitor is not that he is in a room intended for luxurious display,

but in an exquisitely furnished room adapted for daily use. In other

words, the controlling idea at present, of those who seek to make

their houses charming, seems to be to combine comfort with elegance so

skilfully that while one may realize the latter, one is conscious only

of the former. Though decorators are still experimenting, as probably

they always will be, to attain novel effects, they are disposed to

make use of queer or attenuated hues, Moorish blazonry, stamped

leather, peacock feathers, elephant tusks, stained-glass windows, and

Japanese lacquer-work with much more discretion than a few years ago.

Virgin-white instead of dirt-brown lights up our halls and stair-cases,

and the vast chandeliers which used to dazzle the eye no longer dangle

from the ceiling. Indeed, it seems as though it would be difficult to

make the interior of the homes of our well-to-do class more comfortable

and attractive than they are at present. It may be that some of our

very rich people are disposed to waste their energies in devising and

striving for more consummate elegance, thereby exposing us all to the

charge that we are becoming too luxurious for our spiritual good. But

there can be little question that the ambition to surround one’s self

with as much beauty, consistent with comfort, as one can afford is

desirable, even from the ethical standpoint.

Undeniably our point of view has changed extraordinarily in the last

thirty years in regard to house-furnishing, as in regard to so many

other matters of our material welfare, and there certainly is some

ground for fearing that the pendulum is swinging just at present

too far in the direction opposite to that of high thinking and low

living; but, after all, though the reaction from ugliness has been and

continues to be exuberant, it is as yet by no means wide-embracing. In

fact, our cultivated well-to-do class--though it is well abreast of

the rest of the civilized world in aspiration and not far behind it in

accomplishment, with certain vivifying traits of its own which the old

world societies do not possess or have lost--is still comparatively

small; and there is still so much Stygian darkness outside it in

respect to house-furnishing and home comfort in general, that we can

afford to have the exuberance continue for the present; for there is

some reason to believe that most of the descendants of our old high

thinkers have become high livers, or at least, if low livers, have

ceased to be high thinkers. Mutton-soup for breakfast and unattractive

domestic surroundings seem to comport nowadays with ignoble aims, if

nothing worse; moreover, it must not be forgotten that the plain people

of the present is no longer the plain people of forty years ago, but is

largely the seed of the influx of foreign peasants, chiefly inferior

and often scum, which the sacredness of our institutions has obliged us

to receive.

_House-Furnishing_ and the _Commissariat_.

II.

If we have become cosmopolitan in the matter of domestic comfort and

elegance as regards our drawing-rooms, the same is certainly true of

our dining-rooms, and dinner-tables. But here it seems to me that we

are more justly open to criticism on the score of over-exuberance.

That is, the fairly well-to-do class, for the plain people of foreign

blood, and the low liver of native blood, eat almost as indigestible

food, and quite as rapidly and unceremoniously, as the pie and doughnut

nurtured yeoman of original Yankee stock, who thrived in spite of his

diet, and left to his grandchildren the heritage of dyspepsia which

has become nervous prostration in the present generation. It seems as

though our instincts of hospitality have grown in direct ratio with

our familiarity with and adoption of civilized creature comforts,

and any charge of exuberance may doubtless be fairly ascribed to the

national trait of generosity, the abuse of which is after all a noble

blemish. But, on the other hand, facts remain, even after one has given

a pleasing excuse for their existence, and it may be doubted if a

spendthrift is long consoled by the reflection that his impecuniosity

is due to his own disinclination to stint. May it not truthfully be

charged against the reasonably well-to-do American citizen that he has

a prejudice against thrift, especially where the entertainment of his

fellow man or woman is concerned? The rapid growth of wealth and the

comparative facility of becoming rich during the last half century of

our development, has operated against the practice of small economies,

so that we find ourselves now beset by extravagant traditions which we

hesitate to deviate from for fear of seeming mean. Many a man to-day

pays his quarter of a dollar ruefully and begrudgingly to the colored

Pullman car porter at the end of his journey, when he is “brushed off,”

because he cannot bring himself to break the custom which fixed the

fee. It would be interesting to estimate what the grand total of saving

to the American travelling public would have been if ten instead of

twenty-five cents a head had been paid to the tyrant in question since

he first darkened the situation. If not enough to maintain free schools

for the negro, at least sufficient to compel railroad managements to

give their employees suitable wages instead of letting the easy-going

traveller, who has already paid for the privilege of a reserved seat,

pay a premium on that. The exorbitant fees bestowed on waiters is but

another instance of a tendency to be over-generous, which, once reduced

to custom, becomes the severest kind of tax, in that it is likely to

affect the warmest-hearted people.

This tendency to be needlessly lavish in expenditure is most

conspicuous when we are offering hospitality in our own homes. Among

the viands which we have added to the bills of fare of humanity, roast

turkey and cranberry-sauce, Indian meal, and probably baked beans, are

entitled to conspicuous and honorable mention, but is it not true,

notwithstanding champagne is a foreign wine, that the most prodigious

discovery in the line of food or drink yet made by the well-to-do

people of this country, is the discovery of champagne? Does it not flow

in one golden effervescing stream, varied only by the pops caused by

the drawing of fresh corks, from the Statue of Liberty Enlightening

the World to the Golden Gate? And the circumstance that every pop

costs the entertainer between three and four dollars, seems in no

wise to interrupt the cheery explosions. There are some people who do

not drink champagne or any other wine, from principle, and there are

some with whom it does not agree, but the average individual finds

that the interest of festive occasions is heightened by its presence

in reasonable abundance, and is apt to deplore its total absence with

internal groans. But surely ninety-nine men in our large cities out

of one hundred, who are accustomed to entertain and be entertained,

must be weary of the sight of this expensive tempter at the feast,

which it is so difficult to refuse when set before one, and which is

so often quaffed against better judgment or inclination. The champagne

breakfast, the champagne luncheon, the champagne dinner, and the

champagne supper, with a champagne cocktail tossed in as a stop-gap,

hound the social favorite from January to December, until he is fain

to dream of the Old Oaken Bucket, and sooner or later to drink Lithia

water only.

With perpetual and unremitting champagne as the key-note of social

gatherings, no wonder that the table ornaments and the comestibles

become more splendid. A little dinner of eight or ten is no longer a

simple matter of a cordial invitation and an extra course. The hostess

who bids her contemporaries to dine with her most informally ten days

hence, uses a figure of speech which is innocuous from the fact that it

is known to be a deliberate falsehood. She begins generally by engaging

a cook from outside to prepare the dinner, which must surely wound the

sensibilities of any self-respecting couple the first time, however

hardened to the situation they may become later.

At this stage of my reflections I am interrupted by my wife,

Barbara--for I was thinking aloud--with a few words of expostulation.

“Are you not a little severe? I assume that you are referring now to

people with a comfortable income, but who are not disgustingly rich. Of

course, nowadays, the very rich people keep cooks who can cook for a

dinner-party, cooks at eight dollars or more a week and a kitchen maid;

so it is only the hostess with a cook at four and a half to six dollars

a week and no kitchen maid who is likely to engage an accommodator. But

what is the poor thing to do? Give a wretched, or plain dinner which

may make her hair grow white in a single night? Surely, when a woman

invites friends to her house she does not wish them to go away half

starved, or remembering that they have had disagreeable things to eat.

In that case she would prefer not to entertain at all.”

“The question is,” I answered, “whether it is more sensible to try to

be content with what one has, or to vie with those who are better off.

We do not attempt to dine on gold plate, nor have we a piano decorated

with a five-thousand-dollar painting by one of the great artists, like

Patterson, the banker. Why should we endeavor to compete with his

kitchen?”

“The clever thing, of course, is to find a cook for six dollars a week

who can cook for a dinner-party,” answered Barbara, pensively; “and

yet,” she added, “though our cook can, the chances are that nine out

of ten of the people who dine with us think that we hired her for the

occasion.”

“Precisely. Just because the custom has grown so. It is sheer

extravagance.”

“After all, my dear, it is a comparatively small matter--a five-dollar

bill.”

“Pardon me. Five dollars for the cook, because one’s own cook is not

good enough; three or five dollars for an accommodating maid or waiter,

because you cannot trust your chamber-maid to assist your waitress;

eight dollars for champagne, and so on.”

“Do not say ‘your’--mine can.”

“Her, then--the woman of the day. I am trying to show that a small

informal dinner is a cruelly expensive affair for the average man with

a comfortable working income.”

“I admit that a dinner for eight or ten is expensive,” said Barbara.

“It means twenty-five dollars at the lowest, even if you have your

own cook. But what is one to do? You don’t seem to appreciate that a

good plain cook cannot usually prepare dinner-party dishes, and that a

plain dinner is now almost as different from a dinner-party dinner as a

boiled egg is from caviare.”

“Precisely. There is the pity of it. The growth here of the French

restaurant and the taste for rich and elaborate cookery has doubtless

been a good thing in its way, if only that it is now possible to obtain

a tolerably well-cooked meal at most of the hotels in our large cities

and principal watering-places; but why should people of moderate means

and social instincts feel constrained to offer a banquet on every

occasion when they entertain? I for one consider it a bore to have so

much provided when I go out to dinner.”

“You must admit,” said Barbara, “that dinners are not nearly so long

as they were a few years ago. Now, by means of the extra service you

complain of, and by keeping the number of courses down, a dinner ought

not to last longer than an hour and a half, whereas it used to take

two hours and over. In England they are much worse than here. You are

given, for instance, two puddings, one after the other, and ices to

follow.”

“I agree,” said I, “that we have curtailed the length so that there

is not much to complain of on that score. I think, though, that

comparatively plain dishes well served are quite as apt to please as

the aspics, chartreuses, timbales, and other impressive gallicisms

under which the accommodating party cook is wont to cater to the

palates of informally invited guests. I sometimes think that the very

few of our great great-grandfathers who knew how to live at all must

have had more appetizing tables than we. Their family cooks, from all

accounts, knew how to roast and boil and bake and stew, culinary arts

which somehow seem to be little understood by the chefs of to-day.

Then again, the old-fashioned Delft crockery--blue ships sailing on a

blue sea--was very attractive. Our modern dinner-tables, when arrayed

for a party, have almost too much fuss and feathers. Women worry until

they get cut glass, if it is not given them as a wedding present, and

several sets of costly plates--Sèvres, Dresden, or Crown Derby--are apt

to seem indispensable to housekeepers of comparatively limited means.”

“Cut glass is lovely, and the same plates through seven courses are

rather trying,” said Barbara, parenthetically.

“Of course it is lovely, and I am very glad you have some. But

is not the modern American woman of refined sensibilities just a

little too eager to crowd her table with every article of virtu she

possesses--every ornamental spoon, dish, cup, and candlestick--until

one is unable to see at any one spot more than a square inch of

tablecloth? In the centre of the table she sets a crystal bowl of

flowers, a silver basket of ferns, or a dish of fruit. This is flanked

by apostle or gold-lined spoons, silver dishes of confectionery of

various kinds, silver candlesticks or candelabra fitted with pink or

saffron shades, one or two of which are expected to catch fire, an

array of cut glass or Venetian glass at every plate, and, like as not,

pansies strewn all over the table.”

“The modern dinner-table is very pretty,” responded Barbara. “I don’t

see how it could be improved materially.”

“I dare say, but somehow one can’t help thinking at times that the

effort for effect is too noticeable, and that the real object of

sitting down to dinner in company, agreeable social intercourse, is

consequently lost sight of. If only the very rich were guilty of wanton

display, the answer would be that the rank and file of our well-to-do,

sensible people have very simple entertainments. Unfortunately, while

the very rich are constantly vying to outstrip one another, the

dinner-table and the dinner of the well-to-do American are each growing

more and more complex and elaborate. Perhaps not more so than abroad

among the nobility or people of means; but certainly we have been

Europeanized in this respect to such an extent that, not only is there

practically nothing left for us to learn in the way of being luxurious,

but I am not sure that we are not disposed to convince the rest of the

civilized world that a free-born American, when fully developed, can be

the most luxurious individual on earth.”

Barbara looked a little grave at this. “Everything used to be so ugly

and unattractive a little while ago that I suppose our heads have been

turned,” she answered. “After this I shall make a rule, when we give a

dinner-party, to keep one-half of my table ornaments in the safe as a

rebuke to my vanity. Only if I am to show so much of the tablecloth, I

shall have to buy some with handsome patterns. Don’t you see?”

Perhaps this suggestion that our heads have been turned for the time

being by our national prosperity, and that they will become straight

again in due course of time, is the most sensible view to take of the

situation. There can be no doubt that among well-to-do people, who

would object to be classed in “the smart set,” as the reporters of

social gossip odiously characterize those prominent in fashionable

society in our large cities, the changes in the last thirty years

connected with every-day living, as well as with entertaining, have

all been in the direction of cosmopolitan usage. It is now only a

very old-fashioned or a very blatant person who objects to the use of

evening dress at the dinner-table, or the theatre, as inconsistent

with true patriotism. The dinner-hour has steadily progressed from

twelve o’clock noon until it has halted at seven _post_ meridian, as

the ordinary hour for the most formal meal of the day, with further

postponement to half-past seven or even eight among the fashionable

for the sake of company. The frying-pan and the tea-pot have

ceased to reign supreme as the patron saints of female nutrition,

and the beefsteak, the egg, both cooked and raw, milk and other

flesh-and-blood-producing food are abundantly supplied to the rising

generation of both sexes by the provident parent of to-day. The price

of beef in our large cities has steadily advanced in price until its

use as an article of diet is a serious monster to encounter in the

monthly bills, but the husband and father who is seeking to live

wisely, seems not to be deterred from providing it abundantly.

From this it is evident that if we are unduly exuberant in the pursuit

of creature comforts, it is not solely in the line of purely ornamental

luxuries. If we continue to try our nervous systems by undue exertion,

they are at least better fitted to stand the strain, by virtue of

plenty of nutritious food, even though dinner-parties tempt us now

and then to over-indulgence, or bore us by their elaborateness. Yet

it remains to be seen whether the income of the American husband

and father will be able to stand the steady drain occasioned by the

liberal table he provides, and it may be that we have some lessons in

thrift on this score still in store for us. There is this consolation,

that if our heads have been turned in this respect also, and we are

supplying more food for our human furnaces than they need, the force

of any reaction will not fall on us, but on the market-men, who are

such a privileged class that our candidates for public office commonly

provide a rally for their special edification just before election-day,

and whose white smock-frocks are commonly a cloak for fat though greasy

purses. Yet Providence seems to smile on the market-man in that it has

given him the telephone, through which the modern mistress can order

her dinner, or command chops or birds, when unexpected guests are

foreshadowed. Owing to the multiplicity of the demands upon the time of

both men and women, the custom of going to market in person has largely

fallen into decay. The butcher and grocer send assistants to the house

for orders, and the daily personal encounter with the smug man in

white, which used to be as inevitable as the dinner, has now mainly

been relegated to the blushing bride of from one week to two years’

standing, and the people who pay cash for everything. Very likely we

are assessed for the privilege of not being obliged to nose our turkeys

and see our chops weighed in advance, and it is difficult to answer the

strictures of those who sigh for what they call the good old times,

when it was every man’s duty, before he went to his office, to look

over his butcher’s entire stock and select the fattest and juiciest

edibles for the consumption of himself and family. As for paying cash

for everything, my wife Barbara says that, unless people are obliged to

be extremely economical, no woman in this age of nervous prostration

ought to run the risk of bringing on that dire malady by any such

imprudence, and that to save five dollars a month on a butcher’s

bill, and pay twenty-five to a physician for ruined nerves, is false

political economy.

“I agree with you,” she added, “that we Americans live extravagantly

in the matter of daily food--especially meat--as compared with the

general run of people in other countries; but far more serious than

our appetites and liberal habits, in my opinion, is the horrible waste

which goes on in our kitchens, due to the fact that our cooks are

totally ignorant of the art of making the most of things. Abroad,

particularly on the Continent, they understand how to utilize every

scrap, so that many a comfortable meal is provided from what our

servants habitually cast into the swill-tub. Here there is perpetual

waste--waste--waste, and no one seems to understand how to prevent it.

There you have one never-failing reason for the size of our butchers’

and grocers’ bills.”

I assume that my wife, who is an intelligent person, must be correct

in this accusation of general wastefulness which she makes against the

American kitchen. If so, here we are confronted again with the question

of domestic service from another point of view. How long can we afford

to throw our substance into the swill-tub? If our emigrant cooks do not

understand the art of utilizing scraps and remnants, are we to continue

to enrich our butchers without let or hindrance? It would seem that

if the American housewife does not take this matter in hand promptly,

the cruel laws of political economy will soon convince her by grisly

experience that neither poetry nor philanthropy can flourish in a land

where there is perpetual waste below stairs.

_Education._

I.

On occasions of oratory in this country, nothing will arouse an

audience more quickly than an allusion to our public school system,

and any speaker who sees fit to apostrophize it is certain to be

fervidly applauded. Moreover, in private conversation, whether with our

countrymen or with foreigners, every citizen is prone to indulge in

the statement, commonly uttered with some degree of emotion, that our

public schools are the great bulwarks of progressive democracy. Why,

then, is the American parent, as soon as he becomes well-to-do, apt to

send his children elsewhere?

I was walking down town with a friend the other day, and he asked me

casually where I sent my boys to school. When I told him that they

attended a public school he said, promptly, “Good enough. I like to see

a man do it. It’s the right thing.” I acquiesced modestly; then, as I

knew that he had a boy of his own, I asked him the same question.

“My son,” he replied slowly, “goes to Mr. Bingham’s”--indicating

a private school for boys in the neighborhood. “He is a little

delicate--that is, he had measles last summer, and has never quite

recovered his strength. I had almost made up my mind to send him to a

public school, so that he might mix with all kinds of boys, but his

mother seemed to think that the chances of his catching scarlet fever

or diphtheria would be greater, and she has an idea that he would make

undesirable acquaintances and learn things which he shouldn’t. So, on

the whole, we decided to send him to Bingham’s. But I agree that you

are right.”

There are many men in the community who, like my friend, believe

thoroughly that every one would do well to send his boys to a public

school--that is, every one but themselves. When it comes to the case

of their own flesh and blood they hesitate, and in nine instances out

of ten, on some plea or other, turn their backs on the principles they

profess. This is especially true in our cities, and it has been more or

less true ever since the Declaration of Independence; and as a proof of

the flourishing condition of the tendency at present, it is necessary

merely to instance the numerous private schools all over the country.

The pupils at these private schools are the children of our people

of means and social prominence, the people who ought to be the most

patriotic citizens of the Republic.

I frankly state that I, for one, would not send my boys to a public

school unless I believed the school to be a good one. Whatever

other motives may influence parents, there is no doubt that many

are finally deterred from sending their boys to a public school by

the conviction that the education offered to their sons in return

for taxes is inferior to what can be obtained by private contract.

Though a father may be desirous to have his boys understand early the

theory of democratic equality, he may well hesitate to let them remain

comparatively ignorant in order to impress upon them this doctrine.

In this age, when so much stress is laid on the importance of giving

one’s children the best education possible, it seems too large a price

to pay. Why, after all, should a citizen send his boys to a school

provided by the State, if better schools exist in the neighborhood

which he can afford to have them attend?

This conviction on the part of parents is certainly justified in many

sections of the country, and when justifiable, disarms the critic who

is prepared to take a father to task for sending his children to a

private school. Also, it is the only argument which the well-to-do

aristocrat can successfully protect himself behind. It is a full suit

of armor in itself, but it is all he has. Every other excuse which he

can give is flimsy as tissue-paper, and exposes him utterly. Therefore,

if the State is desirous to educate the sons of its leading citizens,

it ought to make sure that the public schools are second to none in

the land. If it does not, it has only itself to blame if they are

educated apart from the sons of the masses of the population. Nor is it

an answer to quote the Fourth of July orator, that our public schools

are second to none in the world; for one has only to investigate to

be convinced that, both as regards the methods of teaching and as

regards ventilation, many of them all over the country are signally

inferior to the school as it should be, and the school, both public

and private, as it is in certain localities. So long as school boards

and committees, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are composed mainly

of political aspirants without experience in educational matters, and

who seek to serve as a first or second step toward the White House,

our public schools are likely to remain only pretty good. So long as

people with axes to grind, or, more plainly speaking, text-books to

circulate, are chosen to office, our public schools are not likely to

improve. So long--and here is the most serious factor of all--so long

as the well-to-do American father and mother continue to be sublimely

indifferent to the condition of the public schools, the public schools

will never be so good as they ought to be.

It must certainly be a source of constant discouragement to the

earnest-minded people in this country, who are interested in education,

and are at the same time believers in our professed national hostility

to class distinctions, that the well-to-do American parent so calmly

turns his back on the public schools, and regards them very much from

the lofty standpoint from which certain persons are wont to regard

religion--as an excellent thing for the masses, but superfluous for

themselves. Of course, if we are going, in this respect also, to model

ourselves on and imitate the older civilizations, there is nothing

to be said. If the public schools are to be merely a semi-charitable

institution for children whose parents cannot afford to separate them

from the common herd, the discussion ceases. But what becomes, then,

of our cherished and Fourth of July sanctified theories of equality and

common school education? And what do we mean when we prate of a common

humanity, and no upper class?

It is in the city or town, where the public school is equal or superior

to the private school, that the real test comes. Yet in these places

well-to-do parents seem almost as indifferent as when they have the

righteous defence that their children would be imperfectly educated,

or breathe foul air, were they to be sent to a public school. They

take no interest, and they fairly bristle with polite and ingenious

excuses for evading compliance with the institutions of their country.

This is true, probably, of three-fifths of those parents, who can

afford, if necessary, to pay for private instruction. And having once

made the decision that, for some reason, a public school education

is not desirable for their children, they feel absolved from further

responsibility and practically wash their hands of the matter. It is

notorious that a very large proportion of the children of the leading

bankers, merchants, professional men, and other influential citizens,

who reside in the so-called court end of our large cities, do not

attend the public schools, and it is equally notorious that the

existence of a well-conducted and satisfactory school in the district

affects the attendance comparatively little. If only this element of

the population, which is now so indifferent, would interest itself

actively, what a vast improvement could be effected in our public

school system! If the parents in the community, whose standards of life

are the highest, and whose ideas are the most enlightened, would as a

class co-operate in the advancement of common education, the charge

that our public schools produce on the whole second-rate acquirements,

and second-rate morals and manners, would soon be refuted, and the

cause of popular education would cease to be handicapped, as it is

at present, by the coolness of the well-to-do class. If the public

schools, in those sections of our cities where our most intelligent and

influential citizens have their homes, are unsatisfactory, they could

speedily be made as good as any private school, were the same interest

manifested by the tax-payers as is shown when an undesirable pavement

is laid, or a company threatens to provide rapid transit before their

doors. Unfortunately, that same spirit of aloofness, which has in the

past operated largely to exclude this element in the nation from

participation in the affairs of popular government, seems to be at the

bottom of this matter. Certainly much progress has been made in the

last twenty years in remedying the political evil, and the public good

appears to demand a change of front from the same class of people on

the subject of common education, unless we are prepared to advocate the

existence and growth of a favored, special class, out of touch with,

and at heart disdainful of, the average citizen.

The most serious enemies of the public schools among well-to-do people

appear to be women. Many a man, alive to the importance of educating

his sons in conformity with the spirit of our Constitution, would like

to send his boys to a public school, but is deterred by his wife. A

mother accustomed to the refinements of modern civilization is apt to

shrink from sending her fleckless darling to consort, and possibly

become the boon companion or bosom friend, of a street waif.

She urges the danger of contamination, both physical and moral, and

is only too glad to discover an excuse for refusing to yield. “Would

you like to have your precious boy sit side by side with a little

negro?” I was asked one day, in horrified accents, by a well-to-do

American mother; and I have heard many fears expressed by others that

their offspring would learn vice, or contract disease, through daily

association with the children of the mass. It is not unjust to state

that the average well-to-do mother is gratified when the public school,

to which her sons would otherwise be sent, is so unsatisfactory that

their father’s patriotism is overborne by other considerations. All

theories of government or humanity are lost sight of in her desire to

shelter her boys, and the simplest way to her seems to be to set them

apart from the rest of creation, instead of taking pains to make sure

that they are suitably taught and protected side by side with the other

children of the community.

Excellent as many of our private schools are, it is doubtful if either

the morals are better, or the liability to disease is less, among the

children who attend them than at a public school of the best class. To

begin with, the private schools in our cities are eagerly patronized by

that not inconsiderable class of parents who hope or imagine that the

social position of their children is to be established by association

with the children of influential people. Falsehood, meanness, and

unworthy ambitions are quite as dangerous to character, when the little

man who suggests them has no patches on his breeches, as when he has,

and unfortunately there are no outward signs on the moral nature,

like holes in trousers, to serve as danger signals to our darlings.

Then again, those of us who occupy comfortable houses in desirable

localities, will generally find on investigation that the average of

the class of children which attend the public school in such a district

is much superior to what paternal or maternal fancy has painted. In

such a district the children of the ignorant emigrant class are not

to be found in large numbers. The pupils consist mainly of the rank

and file of the native American population, whose tendencies and

capacities for good have always been, and continue to be, the basis of

our strength as a people. There is no need that a mother with delicate

sensibilities should send her son into the slums in order to obtain for

him a common school education; she has merely to consent that he take

his chances with the rest of the children of the district in which he

lives, and bend her own energies to make the standards of that school

as high as possible. In that way she will best help to raise the tone

of the community as a whole, and best aid to obliterate those class

distinctions which, in spite of Fourth of July negations, are beginning

to expose us to the charge of insincerity.

When a boy has reached the age of eleven or twelve, another

consideration presents itself which is a source of serious perplexity

to parents. Shall he be educated at home--that is, attend school

in his own city or town--or be sent to one of the boarding-schools

or academies which are ready to open their doors to him and fit

him for college? Here again we are met by the suggestion that the

boarding-school of this type is not a native growth, but an exotic.

England has supplied us with a precedent. The great boarding-schools,

Rugby, Eton, and Harrow, are the resort of the gentlemen of England.

Though termed public schools, they are class schools, reserved and

intended for the education of only the highly respectable. The sons of

the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker are not formally barred,

but they are tacitly excluded. The pupils are the sons of the upper and

well-to-do middle classes. A few boarding-schools for boys have been

in existence here for many years, but in the last twenty there has

been a notable increase in their number and importance. These, too, are

essentially class schools, for though ostensibly open to everybody, the

charges for tuition and living are beyond the means of parents with a

small income. Most of them are schools of a religious denomination,

though commonly a belief in the creed for which the institution stands

is not made a formal requisite for admission. The most successful

profess the Episcopalian faith, and in other essential respects are

modelled deliberately on the English public schools.

The strongest argument for sending a boy to one of these schools

is the fresh-air plea. Undeniably, the growing boy in a large city

is at a disadvantage. He can rarely, if ever, obtain opportunities

for healthful exercise and recreation equal to those afforded by a

well-conducted boarding-school. He is likely to become a little man too

early, or else to sit in the house because there is nowhere to play.

At a boarding-school he will, under firm but gentle discipline, keep

regular hours, eat simple food, and between study times be stimulated

to cultivate athletic or other outdoor pursuits. It is not strange that

parents should be attracted by the comparison, and decide that, on

the whole, their boys will fare better away from home. Obviously the

aristocratic mother will point out to her husband that his predilection

for the public school system is answered by the fact that the State

does not supply schools away from the city, where abundant fresh air

and a famous foot-ball field are appurtenant to the institution. Tom

Brown at Rugby recurs to them both, and they conclude that what has

been good enough for generations of English boys will be best for their

own son and heir.

On the other hand, have we Americans ever quite reconciled ourselves

to, and sympathized with, the traditional attitude of English parents

toward their sons as portrayed in veracious fiction? The day of parting

comes; the mother, red-eyed from secret weeping, tries not to break

down; the blubbering sisters throw their arms around the neck of the

hero of the hour, and slip pen-wipers of their own precious making

into his pockets; the father, abnormally stern to hide his emotion,

says, bluffly, “Good-by, Tom; it’s time to be off, and we’ll see you

again at Christmas.” And out goes Tom, a tender fledgeling, into the

great world of the public school, and that is the last of home. His

holidays arrive, but there is no more weeping. He is practically out

of his parents’ lives, and the sweet influence of a good mother is

exercised only through fairly regular correspondence. And Tom is said

to be getting manly, and that the nonsense has nearly been knocked out

of him. He has been bullied and has learned to bully; he has been a

fag and is now a cock. Perhaps he is first scholar, if not a hero of

the cricket or foot-ball field. Then off he goes to college, half a

stranger to those who love him best.

This is fine and manly perhaps, in the Anglo-Saxon sense, but does it

not seem just a little brutal? Are we well-to-do Americans prepared to

give up to others, however exemplary, the conduct of our children’s

lives? Granting that the American private boarding-school is a

delightful institution, where bullying and fags and cocks are not

known, can it ever take the place of home, or supply the stimulus to

individual life which is exercised by wise parental love and precept?

Of course, it is easier, in a certain sense, to send one’s boy to a

select boarding-school, where the conditions are known to be highly

satisfactory. It shifts the responsibility on to other shoulders, and

yet leaves one who is not sensitive, in the pleasing frame of mind

that the very best thing has been done for the young idea. In our busy

American life--more feverish than that of our English kinsfolk whose

institution we have copied--many doubtless are induced to seek this

solution of a perplexing problem by the consciousness of their own lack

of efficiency, and their own lack of leisure to provide a continuous

home influence superior or equal to what can be supplied by headmasters

and their assistants, who are both churchmen and athletes. Many, too,

especially fathers, are firm believers in that other English doctrine,

that most boys need to have the nonsense knocked out of them, and that

the best means of accomplishing this result is to cut them loose from

their mothers’ apron-strings.

It is to be borne in mind in this connection that the great English

public schools are a national cult. That is, everybody above a certain

class sends his sons to one of them. On the other hand, the private

boarding-schools on this side of the water, fashioned after them,

have thus far attracted the patronage of a very small element of the

population. It is their misfortune, rather than their fault, that they

are chiefly the resort of the sons of rich or fashionable people, and

consequently are the most conspicuously class schools in the country.

Doubtless the earnest men who conduct most of them regret that this is

so, but it is one of the factors of the case which the American parent

with sons must face at present. It may be that this is to be the type

of school which is to become predominant here, and that, as in England,

the nation will recognize it as a national force, even though here,

as there, only the sons of the upper classes enjoy its advantages.

That will depend partly on the extent to which we shall decide, as a

society, to promote further class education. At present these schools

are essentially private institutions. They are small; they do not,

like our American colleges, offer scholarships, and thus invite the

attendance of ambitious students without means. Moreover, they are

almost universally conducted on a sectarian basis, or with a sectarian

leaning, which is apt to proselytize, at least indirectly.

While those in charge of them indisputably strive to inculcate every

virtue, the well-to-do American father must remember that his sons

will associate intimately there with many boys whose parents belong to

that frivolous class which is to-day chiefly absorbed in beautiful

establishments, elaborate cookery, and the wholly material vanities

of life, and are out of sympathy with, or are indifferent to, the

earnest temper and views of that already large and intelligent portion

of the community, which views with horror the development among us

of an aristocracy of wealth, which apes and is striving to outdo the

heartless inanities of the Old World. He must remember that a taste for

luxury and sensuous, material aims, even though they be held in check

by youthful devotion to the rites of the church, will prove no less

disastrous, in the long run, to manhood and patriotism, than the lack

of fresh air or a famous foot-ball field.

If, however, the American father chooses to keep his sons at home,

he is bound to do all he can to overcome the physical disadvantages

of city life. Fresh air and suitable exercise can be obtained in the

suburbs of most cities by a little energy and co-operation on the

part of parents. As an instance, in one or two of our leading cities,

clubs of twelve to fifteen boys are sent out three or four afternoons

a week under the charge of an older youth--usually a college or other

student--who, without interfering with their liberty, supervises

their sports, and sees that they are well occupied. On days when the

weather is unsuitable for any kind of game, he will take them to

museums, manufactories, or other places of interest in the vicinity. In

this way some of the watchfulness and discipline which are constantly

operative at a boarding-school, are exercised without injury to home

ties. There is no doubt that, unless parents are vigilant and interest

themselves unremittingly in providing necessary physical advantages,

the boys in a crowded city are likely to be less healthy and vigorous

in body, and perhaps in mind, than those educated at a first-class

boarding-school. It may be, as our cities increase in size, and suburbs

become more difficult of access, that the boarding-school will become

more generally popular; but there is reason to believe that, before it

is recognized as a national institution, sectarian religion will have

ceased to control it, and it will be less imitative of England in its

tone and social attitude. Until then, at least, many a parent will

prefer to keep his boys at home.

_Education._

II.

“Supposing you had four daughters, like Mr. Perkins, what would you do

with them, educationally speaking?” I said to my wife Barbara, by way

of turning my attention to the other sex.

“You mean what would they do with me? They would drive me into my

grave, I think,” she answered. “Woman’s horizon has become so enlarged

that no mother can tell what her next daughter may not wish to do. I

understand, though, that you are referring simply to schools. To begin

with, I take for granted you will agree that American parents, who

insist on sending their boys to a public school, very often hesitate or

decline point-blank to send their girls.”

“Precisely. And we are forthwith confronted by the question whether

they are justified in so doing.”

Barbara looked meditative for a moment, then she said: “I am quite

aware there is no logical reason why girls should not be treated in the

same way, and yet as a matter of fact I am not at all sure, patriotism

and logic to the contrary notwithstanding, I should send a daughter to

a public school unless I were convinced, from personal examination,

that she would have neither a vulgar teacher nor vulgar associates.

Manners mean so much to a woman, and by manners I refer chiefly to

those nice perceptions of everything which stamp a lady, and which you

can no more describe than you can describe the perfume of the violet.

The objection to the public schools for a girl is that the unwritten

constitution of this country declared years ago that every woman was a

born lady, and that manners and nice perceptions were in the national

blood, and required no cultivation for their production. Latterly, a

good many people interested in educational matters have discovered

the fallacy of this point of view; so that when the name of a woman

to act as the head of a college or other first-class institution for

girls is brought forward to-day, the first question asked is, ‘Is she

a lady?’ Ten years ago mental acquirements would have been regarded

as sufficient, and the questioner silenced with the severe answer

that every American woman is a lady. The public school authorities

are still harping too much on the original fallacy, or rather the

new point of view has not spread sufficiently to cause the average

American school-teacher to suspect that her manners might be improved

and her sensibilities refined. There, that sounds like treason to the

principles of democracy, yet you know I am at heart a patriot.”

“And yet to bring up boys on a common basis and separate the girls by

class education seems like a contradiction of terms,” I said.

“I am confident--at least if we as a nation really do believe in

obliterating class distinctions--that it won’t be long before those

who control the public schools recognize more universally the value

of manners, and of the other traits which distinguish the woman of

breeding from the woman who has none,” said Barbara. “When that time

comes the well-to-do American mother will have no more reason for not

sending her daughters to a public school than her sons. As it is, they

should send them oftener than they do.”

“Of course,” continued Barbara, presently, “the best private schools

are in the East, and a very much larger percentage, both of girls and

boys, attends the public schools in the West than in the East. Indeed,

I am inclined to think that comparatively few people west of Chicago

do not send their children to public schools. But, on the other hand,

there are boarding-schools for girls all over the East which are mainly

supported by girls from the West, whose mothers wish to have them

finished. They go to the public schools at home until they are thirteen

or fourteen, and then are packed off to school for three or four years

in order to teach them how to move, and wear their hair, and spell, and

control their voices--for the proper modulation of the voice has at

last been recognized as a necessary attribute of the well-bred American

woman. As for the Eastern girl who is not sent to the public school,

she usually attends a private day-school in her native city, the

resources of which are supplemented by special instruction of various

kinds, in order to produce the same finished specimen. But it isn’t

the finished specimen who is really interesting from the educational

point of view to-day; that is, the conventional, cosmopolitan, finished

specimen such as is turned out with deportment and accomplishments from

the hands of the English governess, the French Mother Superior, or the

American private school-mistress.

“After making due allowance for the national point of view, I don’t see

very much difference in principle between the means adopted to finish

the young lady of society here and elsewhere. There are thousands of

daughters of well-to-do mothers in this country who are brought up

on the old aristocratic theory that a woman should study moderately

hard until she is eighteen, then look as pretty as she can, and devote

herself until she is married to having what is called on this side of

the Atlantic a good time. To be sure, in France the good time does not

come until after marriage, and there are other differences, but the

well-bred lady of social graces is the well-bred lady, whether it be

in London, Paris, Vienna, or New York, and a ball-room in one capital

is essentially the same as in all the others, unless it be that over

here the very young people are allowed to crowd out everybody else.

There are thousands of mothers who are content that this should be the

limit of their daughter’s experience, a reasonably good education and

perfect manners, four years of whirl, and then a husband, or no husband

and a conservative afternoon tea-drinking spinsterhood--and they are

thankful on the whole when their girls put their necks meekly beneath

the yoke of convention and do as past generations of women all over the

civilized world have done. For the reign of the unconventional society

young woman is over. She shocks now her own countrywoman even more than

foreigners; and though, like the buffalo, she is still extant, she is

disappearing even more rapidly than that illustrious quadruped.”

“Are you not wandering slightly from the topic?” I ventured to inquire.

“Not at all,” said Barbara. “I was stating merely that the Old-World,

New-World young lady, with all her originality and piquancy, however

charming, and however delightfully inevitable she may be, is not

interesting from the educational point of view. Or rather I will

put it in this way: the thoughtful, well-to-do American mother is

wondering hard whether she has a right to be content with the ancient

programme for her daughters, and is watching with eager interest the

experiments which some of her neighbors are trying with theirs. We

cannot claim as an exclusive national invention collegiate education

for women, and there’s no doubt that my sex in England is no less

completely on the war-path than the female world here; but is there a

question that the peculiar qualities of American womanhood are largely

responsible for the awakening wherever it has taken place? My dear,

you asked me just now what a man like Mr. Perkins should do with his

four daughters. Probably Mrs. Perkins is trying to make up her mind

whether she ought to send them to college. Very likely she is arguing

with Mr. Perkins as to whether, all things considered, it wouldn’t

be advisable to have one or two of them study a profession, or learn

to do something bread-winning, so that in case he, poor man--for he

_does_ look overworked--should not succeed in leaving them the five

thousand dollars a year he hopes, they need not swell the category

of the decayed gentlewoman of the day. I dare say they discuss the

subject assiduously, in spite of the views Mr. Perkins has expressed

to you regarding the sacredness of unemployed feminine gentility;

for it costs so much to live that he can’t lay up a great deal, and

there are certainly strong arguments in favor of giving such girls

the opportunity to make the most of themselves, or at least to look

at life from the self-supporting point of view. At first, of course,

the students at the colleges for women were chiefly girls who hoped

to utilize, as workers in various lines, the higher knowledge they

acquired there; but every year sees more and more girls, who expect

to be married sooner or later--the daughters of lawyers, physicians,

merchants--apply for admission, on the theory that what is requisite

for a man is none too good for them; and it is the example of these

girls which is agitating the serenity of so many mothers, and

suggesting to so many daughters the idea of doing likewise. Even the

ranks of the most fashionable are being invaded, though undeniably

it is still the fashion to stay at home, and I am inclined to think

that it is only the lack of the seal of fashion that restrains many

conservative people, like the Perkinses, from educating their daughters

as though they probably would not be married, instead of as though they

were almost certain to be.”

“You may remember that Perkins assured me not long ago, that marriage

did not run in the Perkins female line,” said I.

“All the more reason, then, that his girls should be encouraged to

equip themselves thoroughly in some direction or other, instead of

waiting disconsolately to be chosen in marriage, keeping up their

courage as the years slip away, with a few cold drops of Associated

Charity. Of course the majority of us will continue to be wives and

mothers--there is nothing equal to that when it is a success--but

will not marriage become still more desirable if the choicest girls

are educated to be the intellectual companions of men, and taught

to familiarize themselves with the real conditions of life, instead

of being limited to the rose garden of a harem, over the hedges of

which they are expected only to peep at the busy world--the world of

men, the world of action and toil and struggle and sin--the world

into which their sons are graduated when cut loose from the maternal

apron-strings? We intend to learn what to teach our sons, so that we

may no longer be silenced with the plea that women do not know, and be

put off with a secretive conjugal smile. And as for the girls who do

not marry, the world is open to them--the world of art and song and

charity and healing and brave endeavor in a hundred fields. Become just

like men? Never. If there is one thing which the educated woman of the

present is seeking to preserve and foster, it is the subtle delicacy

of nature, it is the engaging charm of womanhood which distinguishes

us from men. Who are the pupils at the colleges for women to-day?

The dowdy, sexless, unattractive, masculine-minded beings who have

served to typify for nine men out of ten the crowning joke of the

age--the emancipation of women? No; but lovely, graceful, sympathetic,

earnest, pure-minded girls in the flower of attractive maidenhood. And

that is why the well-to-do American mother is asking herself whether

she would be doing the best thing for her daughter if she were to

encourage her to become merely a New-World, Old-World young lady of the

ancient order of things. For centuries the women of civilization have

worshipped chastity, suffering resignation and elegance as the ideals

of femininity; now we mean to be intelligent besides, or at least as

nearly so as possible.”

“In truth a philippic, Barbara,” I said. “It would seem as though Mrs.

Grundy would not be able to hold out much longer. Will you tell me, by

the way, what you women intend to do after you are fully emancipated?”

“One thing at a time,” she answered. “We have been talking of

education, and I have simply been suggesting that no conscientious

mother can afford to ignore or pass by with scorn the claims of higher

education for girls--experimental and faulty as many of the present

methods to attain it doubtless are. As to what women are going to

do when our preliminary perplexities are solved and our sails are

set before a favorable wind, I have my ideas on that score also, and

some day I will discuss them with you. But just now I should like you

to answer _me_ a question. What are the best occupations for sons to

follow when they have left school or college?”

Pertinent and interesting as was this inquiry of Barbara’s, I felt the

necessity of drawing a long breath before I answered it.

_Occupation._

I.

The American young man, in the selection of a vocation, is practically

cut off from two callings which are dear to his contemporaries in

other civilized countries--the Army and the Navy. The possibility of

war, with all its horrors and its opportunities for personal renown,

is always looming up before the English, French, German, or Russian

youth, who is well content to live a life of gilded martial inactivity

in the hope of sooner or later winning the cross for conspicuous

service, if he escapes a soldier’s grave. We have endured one war,

and we profoundly hope never to undergo another. Those of us who are

ethically opposed to the slaughter of thousands of human beings in a

single day by cannon, feel that we have geography on our side. Even the

bloodthirsty are forced to acknowledge that the prospects here for a

genuine contest of any kind are not favorable. Consequently, the ardor

of the son and heir, who would like to be a great soldier or a sea

captain, is very apt to be cooled by the representation that his days

would be spent in watching Indians or cattle thieves on the Western

plains, or in cruising uneventfully in the Mediterranean or the Gulf

of Mexico. At all events our standing, or, more accurately speaking,

sitting Army, and our Navy are so small, that the demand for generals

and captains is very limited. Therefore, though we commend to our sons

the prowess of Cæsar, Napoleon, Nelson, Von Moltke, and Grant, we are

able to demonstrate to them, even without recourse to modern ethical

arguments, that the opportunities for distinction on this side of the

water are likely to be very meagre.

Also, we Americans, unlike English parents, hesitate to hold out as

offerings to the Church a younger son in every large family. We have no

national Church; moreover, the calling of a clergyman in this country

lacks the social picturesqueness which goes far, or did go far, to

reconcile the British younger son to accept the living which fell

to his lot through family influence. Then again, would the American

mother, like the conventional mother of the older civilizations, as

represented in biography and fiction, if asked which of all vocations

she would prefer to have her son adopt, reply promptly and fervidly,

“the ministry?”

I put this question to my wife by way of obtaining an answer. She

reflected a moment, then she said, “If one of my boys really felt

called to be a clergyman, I should be a very happy woman; but I

wouldn’t on any account have one of them enter the ministry unless he

did.” This reply seems to me to express not merely the attitude of the

American mother, but also the point of view from which the American

young man of to-day is apt to look at the question. He no longer

regards the ministry as a profession which he is free to prefer, merely

because he needs to earn his daily bread; and he understands, when he

becomes a clergyman, that lukewarm or merely conventional service will

be utterly worthless in a community which is thirsty for inspirational

suggestion, but which is soul-sick of cant and the perfervid

reiteration of outworn delusions. The consciousness that he has no

closer insight into the mysteries of the universe than his fellow-men,

and the fear that he may be able to solace their doubts only by skilful

concealment of his own, is tending, here and all over the civilized

world, to deter many a young man from embracing that profession, which

once seemed to offer a safe and legitimate niche for any pious youth

who was uncertain what he wished to do for a living. Happy he who feels

so closely in touch with the infinite that he is certain of his mission

to his brother-man! But is any one more out of place than the priest

who seems to know no more than we do of what we desire to know most?

We demand that a poet should be heaven-born; why should we not require

equivalent evidence of fitness from our spiritual advisers?

And yet, on the other hand, when the conviction of fitness or mission

exists, what calling is there which offers to-day more opportunities

for usefulness than the ministry? The growing tendency of the Church is

toward wider issues and a broader scope. Clergymen are now encouraged

and expected to aid in the solution of problems of living no less than

those of dying, and to lead in the discussion of matters regarding

which they could not have ventured to express opinions fifty years

ago without exposing themselves to the charge of being meddlesome or

unclerical. The whole field of practical charity, economics, hygiene,

and the relations of human beings to each other on this earth, are

fast becoming the legitimate domain of the Church, and the general

interest in this new phase of usefulness is serving to convince many of

the clergy themselves that the existence of so many creeds, differing

but slightly and unimportantly from one another, is a waste of vital

force and machinery. In this age of trusts, a trust of all religious

denominations for the common good of humanity would be a monopoly which

could pay large dividends without fear of hostile legislation.

In this matter of the choice of a vocation, the case of the ambitious,

promising young man is the one which commends itself most to our

sympathies; and next to it stands that of the general utility man--the

youth who has no definite tastes or talents, and who selects his life

occupation from considerations other than a consciousness of fitness or

of natural inclination. There are here, as elsewhere, born merchants,

lawyers, doctors, clergymen, architects, engineers, inventors, and

poets, who promptly follow their natural bents without suggestion and

in the teeth of difficulties. But the promising young man in search of

a brilliant career, and the general utility man, are perhaps the best

exponents of a nation’s temper and inclination.

In every civilization many promising youths and the general run of

utility men are apt to turn to business, for trade seems to offer the

largest return in the way of money with the least amount of special

knowledge. In this new country of ours the number of young men who have

selected a business career during the last fifty years, from personal

inclination, has been very much greater than elsewhere, and the tone

and temper of the community has swept the general utility man into mere

money making almost as a matter of course. The reasons for this up to

this time have been obvious: The resources and industries of a vast and

comparatively sparsely settled continent have been developed in the

last fifty years, and the great prizes in the shape of large fortunes

resulting from the process have naturally captivated the imagination of

ambitious youth. We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers;

but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen

years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial

spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been

mainly absorbed in the introduction and maintenance of railroads and

factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development

of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or

securities which these various undertakings have produced.

The resources of the country are by no means exhausted; there are

doubtless more mines to open which will make their owners superbly

rich; new discoveries in the mechanical or electrical field will afford

fresh opportunities to discerning men of means; and individual or

combined capital will continue to reap the reward of both legitimate

and over-reaching commercial acumen. But it would seem as though the

day of enormous fortunes, for men of average brains and luck, in this

country were nearly over, and that the great pecuniary prizes of the

business world would henceforth be gleaned only by extraordinary or

exceptional individuals. The country is no longer sparsely settled;

fierce competition speedily cuts the abnormal profit out of new

enterprises which are not protected by a patent; and in order to be

conspicuously successful in any branch of trade, one will have more and

more need of unusual ability and untiring application.

In other words, though ours is still a new country, it will not be

very long before the opportunities and conditions of a business life

resemble closely those which confront young men elsewhere. As in every

civilized country, trade in some form will necessarily engage the

attention of a large portion of the population. From physical causes,

a vast majority of the citizens of the United States must continue to

derive their support from agriculture and the callings which large

crops of cereals, cotton, and sugar make occasion for. Consequently

business will always furnish occupation for a vast army of young men

in every generation, and few successes will seem more enviable than

those of the powerful and scrupulous banker, or the broad-minded and

capable railroad president. But, on the other hand, will the well-to-do

American father and mother, eager to see their promising sons make the

most of themselves, continue to advise them to go into business in

preference to other callings? And will the general utility man still be

encouraged to regard some form of trade as the most promising outlook,

for one who does not know what he wishes to do, to adopt? He who hopes

to become a great banker or illustrious railway man, must remember that

the streets of all our large cities teem with young men whose breasts

harbor similar ambitions.

Doubtless, it was the expectation of our forefathers that our American

civilization would add new occupations to the callings inherited from

the old world, which would be alluring both to the promising young man

and the youth without predilections, and no less valuable to society

and elevating to the individual than the best of those by which men

have earned their daily bread since civilization first was. As a

matter of fact, we Americans have added just one, that of the modern

stock-broker. To be sure, I am not including the ranchman. It did seem

at one time as though we were going to add another in him--a sort of

gentleman shepherd. But be it that the cattle have become too scarce or

too numerous, be it that the demon of competition has planted his hoofs

on the farthest prairie, one by one the brave youths who went West in

search of fortune, have returned East for the last time, and abandoned

the field to the cowboys and the native settler. The pioneers in this

form of occupation made snug fortunes, but after them came a deluge

of promising or unpromising youths who branded every animal within a

radius of hundreds of miles with a letter of the alphabet. Their only

living monument is the polo pony.

Our single and signal contribution to the callings of the world has

been the apotheosis of the stock-broker. For the last twenty-five

years, the well-to-do father and mother and their sons, in our large

cities, have been under the spell of a craze for the brokerage

business. The consciousness that the refinements of modern living

cannot adequately be supplied in a large city to a family whose income

does not approximate ten thousand dollars a year, is a cogent argument

in favor of trying to grow rich rapidly, and both the promising young

man and the general utility man welcomed the new calling with open

arms. Impelled by the notion that here was a vocation which required

no special knowledge or attainments, and very little capital, which

was pleasant, gentlemanly, and not unduly confining, and which

promised large returns almost in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds and

thousands of young men became brokers--chiefly stock-brokers, but also

cotton-brokers, note-brokers, real-estate-brokers, insurance-brokers,

and brokers in nearly everything. The field was undoubtedly a rich one

for those who first entered it. There was a need for the broker, and

he was speedily recognized as a valuable addition to the machinery of

trade. Many huge fortunes were made, and we have learned to associate

the word broker with the possession of large means, an imposing house

on a fashionable street, and diverse docked and stylish horses.

Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for

to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his

own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a

poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man,

just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many

thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five

years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same

Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out

of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages,

with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations,

settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did

not know what he wished to do.

It is scarcely an extreme statement that the so-called aristocracy of

our principal cities to-day is largely made up of men who are, or

once were, stock-brokers, or who have made their millions by some of

the forms of gambling which our easy-going euphemism styles modern

commercial aggressiveness. Certainly, a very considerable number

of our most splendid private residences have been built out of the

proceeds of successful ventures in the stock market, or the wheat pit,

or by some other purely speculative operations. Many stars have shone

brilliantly for a season, and then plunged precipitately from the

zenith to the horizon; and much has been wisely said as to the dangers

of speculation; but the fact remains that a great many vast fortunes

owe their existence to the broker’s office; fortunes which have been

salted down, as the phrase is, and now furnish support and titillation

for a leisurely, green old age, or enable the sons and daughters of the

original maker to live in luxury.

Whatever the American mother may feel as to her son becoming a

clergyman, there is no doubt that many a mother to-day would say

“God grant that no son of mine become a stock-broker.” I know

stock-brokers--many indeed--who are whole-souled, noble-natured men,

free from undue worldliness, and with refined instincts. But the

stock-broker, as he exists in the every-day life of our community,

typifies signally the gambler’s yearning to gain wealth by short cuts,

and the monomania which regards as pitiable those who do not possess

and display the gewgaws of feverish, fashionable materialism. There are

stock-brokers in all the great capitals of the world, but nowhere has

the vocation swallowed up the sons of the best people to the extent

that it has done here during the last thirty years. And yet, apart from

the opportunity it affords to grow rich rapidly, what one good reason

is there why a promising young man should decide to buy and sell stocks

for a living? Indeed, not merely decide, but select, that occupation as

the most desirable calling open to him? Does it tend either to ennoble

the nature or enrich the mental faculties? It is one of the formal

occupations made necessary by the exigencies of the business world,

and as such is legitimate and may be highly respectable; but surely it

does not, from the nature of the services required, deserve to rank

high; and really there would seem to be almost as much occasion for

conferring the accolade of social distinction on a dealer in excellent

fish as on a successful stock-broker.

However, alas! it is easy enough to assign the reason why the

business has been so popular. It appears that, even under the flag

of our aspiring nationality, human nature is still so weak that

the opportunity to grow rich quickly, when presented, is apt to

over-ride all noble considerations. Foreign censors have ventured not

infrequently to declare that there was never yet a race so hungry for

money as we free-born Americans; and not even the pious ejaculation of

one of our United States Senators, “What have we to do with abroad?”

is conclusive proof that the accusation is not well founded. In fact:

there seems to be ample proof that we, who sneered so austerely at the

Faubourg St. Germain and the aristocracies of the Old World, and made

Fourth of July protestations of poverty and chastity, have fallen down

and worshipped the golden calf merely because it was made of gold.

Because it seemed to be easier to make money as stock-brokers than in

any other way, men have hastened to become stock-brokers. To be sure

it may be answered that this is only human nature and the way of the

world. True, perhaps; except that we started on the assumption that we

were going to improve on the rest of the world, and that its human

nature was not to be our human nature. Would not the Faubourg St.

Germain be preferable to an aristocracy of stock-brokers?

At all events, the law of supply and demand is beginning to redeem

the situation, and, if not to restore our moral credit, at least

to save the rising generation from falling into the same slough.

The stock-broker industry has been overstocked, and the late young

capitalists in fur overcoats, with benedictory manners, wear anxious

countenances under the stress of that Old World demon, excessive

competition. Youth can no longer wake up in the morning and find

itself the proprietor of a rattling business justifying a steam-yacht

and a four-in-hand. The good old days have gone forever, and there is

weeping and gnashing of teeth where of late there was joy and much

accumulation. There is not business enough for all the promising young

men who are stock-brokers already, and the youth of promise must turn

elsewhere.

_Occupation._

II.

But though the occupation of broker has become less tempting, the

promising youth has not ceased to look askance at any calling which

does not seem to foreshadow a fortune in a short time. He is only

just beginning to appreciate that we are getting down to hard pan,

so to speak, and are nearly on a level, as regards the hardships of

individual progress, with our old friends the effete civilizations.

He finds it difficult to rid himself of the “Arabian Nights’” notion

that he has merely to clap his hands to change ten dollars into a

thousand in a single year, and to transform his bachelor apartments

into a palace beautiful, with a wife, yacht, and horses, before he

is thirty-five. He shrinks from the idea of being obliged to take

seriously into account anything less than a hundred-dollar bill, and

of earning a livelihood by slow yet persistent acceptance of tens and

fives. His present ruling ambition is to be a promoter; that is, to be

an organizer of schemes, and to let others do the real work and attend

to the disgusting details. There are a great many gentry of this kind

in the field just at present. Among them is, or rather was, Lewis Pell,

as I will call him for the occasion. I don’t know exactly what he is

doing now. But he was, until lately, a promoter.

A handsome fellow was Lewis Pell. Tall, gentlemanly, and

athletic-looking, with a gracious, imposing presence and manner, which

made his rather commonplace conversation seem almost wisdom. He went

into a broker’s office after leaving college, like many other promising

young men of his time, but he was clever enough either to realize

that he was a little late, or that the promoter business offered a

more promising scope for his genius, for he soon disappeared from the

purlieus of the Stock Exchange, and the next thing we heard of him

was as the tenant of an exceedingly elaborate set of offices on the

third floor of a most expensive modern monster building. Shortly after

I read in the financial columns of the daily press that Mr. Lewis

Pell had sold to a syndicate of bankers the first mortgage and the

debenture bonds of the Light and Power Traction Company, an electrical

corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey. Thirty

days later I saw again that he had sailed for Europe in order to

interest London capital in a large enterprise, the nature of which was

still withheld from the public.

During the next two or three years I ran across Pell on several

occasions. He seemed always to be living at the highest pressure,

but the brilliancy of his career had not impaired his good manners

or attractiveness. I refer to his career as brilliant at this time

because both his operations and the consequent style of living which

he pursued, as described by him on two different evenings when I

dined with him, seemed to me in my capacity of ordinary citizen to

savor of the marvellous, if not the supernatural. He frankly gave me

to understand that it seemed to him a waste of time for an ambitious

man to pay attention to details, and that his business was to

originate vast undertakings, made possible only by large combinations

of corporate or private capital. The word combination, which was

frequently on his lips, seemed to be the corner-stone of his system. I

gathered that the part which he sought to play in the battle of life

was to breathe the breath, or the apparent breath, of existence into

huge schemes, and after having given them a quick but comprehensive

squeeze or two for his own pecuniary benefit, to hand them over to

syndicates, or other aggregations of capitalists, for the benefit of

whom they might concern. He confided to me that he employed eleven

typewriters; that he had visited London seven, and Paris three times,

in the last three years, on flying trips to accomplish brilliant deals;

that though his headquarters were in New York, scarcely a week passed

in which he was not obliged to run over to Chicago, Boston, Washington,

Denver, Duluth, or Cincinnati, as the case might be. Without being

boastful as to his profits, he did not hesitate to acknowledge to me

that if he should do as well in the next three years as in the last, he

would be able to retire from business with a million or so.

Apart from this confession, his personal extravagance left no room for

doubt that he must be very rich. Champagne flowed for him as Croton

or Cochituate for most of us, and it was evident from his language

that the hiring of special trains from time to time was a rather less

serious matter than it would be for the ordinary citizen to take a

cab. The account that he gave of three separate entertainments he

had tendered to syndicates--of ten, twelve, and seventeen covers

respectively, at twenty dollars a cover--fairly made my mouth water and

my eyes stick out, so that I felt constrained to murmur, “Your profits

must certainly be very large, if you can afford that sort of thing.”

Pell smiled complacently and a little condescendingly. “I could

tell you of things which I have done which would make that seem a

bagatelle,” he answered, with engaging mystery. Then after a moment’s

pause he said, “Do you know, my dear fellow, that when I was graduated

I came very near going into the office of a pious old uncle of mine who

has been a commission merchant all his life, and is as poor as Job’s

turkey in spite of it all--that is, poor as men are rated nowadays. He

offered to take me as a clerk at one thousand dollars a year, with the

promise of a partnership before I was bald-headed in case I did well.

Supposing I had accepted his offer, where should I be to-day? Grubbing

at an office-desk and earning barely enough for board and lodging. I

remember my dear mother took it terribly to heart because I went into a

broker’s office instead. By the way, between ourselves, I’m building a

steam-yacht--nothing very wonderful, but a neat, comfortable craft--and

I’m looking forward next summer to inviting my pious old uncle to

cruise on her just to see him open his eyes.”

That was three years ago, and to-day I have every reason to believe

that Lewis Pell is without a dollar in the world, or rather, that every

dollar which he has belongs to his creditors. I had heard before his

failure was announced that he was short of money, for the reason that

several enterprises with which his name was connected had been left on

his hands--neither the syndicates nor the public would touch them--so

his suspension was scarcely a surprise. He at present, poor fellow,

is only one of an army of young men wandering dejectedly through the

streets of New York or Chicago in these days of financial depression,

vainly seeking for something to promote.

When the promising youth and the general utility man do get rid of the

“Arabian Nights’” notion, and recognize that signal success here, in

any form, is likely to become more and more difficult to attain, and

will be the legitimate reward only of men of real might, of unusual

abilities, originality, or dauntless industry, some of the callings

which have fallen, as it were, into disrepute through their lack of

gambling facilities, are likely to loom up again socially. It may be,

however, that modern business methods and devices have had the effect

of killing for all time that highly respectable pillar of society of

fifty years ago, the old-fashioned merchant, who bought and sold on

his own behalf, or on commission, real cargoes of merchandise, and

real consignments of cotton, wheat, and corn. The telegraph and the

warehouse certificate have worked such havoc that almost everything

now is bought and sold over and over again before it is grown or

manufactured, and by the time it is on the market there is not a shred

of profit in it for anybody but the retail dealer. It remains to be

seen whether, as the speculative spirit subsides, the merchant is going

to reinstate himself and regain his former prestige. It may already be

said that the promising youth does not regard him with quite so much

contempt as he did.

We have always professed in this country great theoretical respect

for the schoolmaster, but we have been careful, as the nation waxed

in material prosperity, to keep his pay down and to shove him into

the social background more and more. The promising youth could not

afford to spend his manhood in this wise, and we have all really been

too busy making money to think very much about those who are doing

the teaching. Have we not always heard it stated that our schools

and colleges are second to none in the world? And if our schools, of

course our schoolmasters. Therefore why bother our heads about them?

It is indeed wonderful, considering the little popular interest in the

subject until lately, that our schoolmasters and our college professors

are so competent as they are, and that the profession has flourished on

the whole in spite of indifference and superiority. How can men of the

highest class be expected to devote their lives to a profession which

yields little more than a pittance when one is thoroughly successful?

And yet the education of our children ought to be one of our dearest

concerns, and it is difficult to see why the State is satisfied to pay

the average instructor or instructress of youth about as much as the

city laborer or a horse-car conductor receives.

There are signs that those in charge of our large educational

institutions all over the country are beginning to recognize that ripe

scholarship and rare abilities as a teacher are entitled to be well

recompensed pecuniarily, and that the breed of such men is likely to

increase somewhat in proportion to the size and number of the prizes

offered. Our college presidents and professors, those at the head of

our large schools and seminaries, should receive such salaries as will

enable them to live adequately. By this policy not only would our

promising young men be encouraged to pursue learning, but those in the

highest places would not be forced by poverty to live in comparative

retirement, but could become active social figures and leaders. In any

profession or calling under present social conditions only those in the

foremost rank can hope to earn more than a living, varying in quality

according to the degree of success and the rank of the occupation; but

it is to be hoped--and there seems some reason to believe--that the

great rewards which come to those more able and industrious than their

fellows will henceforth, in the process of our national evolution,

be more evenly distributed, and not confined so conspicuously to

gambling, speculative, or commercial successes. The leaders in the

great professions of law and medicine have for some time past declined

to serve the free-born community without liberal compensation, and the

same community, which for half a century secretly believed that only a

business man has the right to grow rich, has begun to recognize that

there are even other things besides litigation and health which ought

to come high. For instance, although the trained architect still meets

serious and depressing competition from those ready-made experimenters

in design who pronounce the first _c_ in the word architect as though

it were an _s_, the public is rapidly discovering that a man cannot

build an attractive house without special knowledge.

In the same class with the law, medicine, and architecture, and

seemingly offering at present a greater scope for an ambitious

young man, is engineering in all its branches. The furnaces, mines,

manufactories, and the hydraulic, electrical, or other plants connected

with the numerous vast mechanical business enterprises of the country

are furnishing immediate occupation for hundreds of graduates of the

scientific or polytechnic schools at highly respectable salaries.

This field of usefulness is certain for a long time to come to offer

employment and a fair livelihood to many, and large returns to those

who outstrip their contemporaries. More and more is the business man,

the manufacturer, and the capitalist likely to be dependent for the

economical or successful development and management of undertakings on

the judgment of scientific experts in his own employment or called in

to advise, and it is only meet that the counsel given should be paid

for handsomely.

Those who pursue literature or art in their various branches in this

country, and have talents in some degree commensurate with their

ambition, are now generally able to make a comfortable livelihood.

Indeed the men and women in the very front rank are beginning to

receive incomes which would be highly satisfactory to a leading lawyer

or physician. Of course original work in literature or art demands

special ability and fitness, but the general utility man is beginning

to have many opportunities presented to him in connection with what

may be called the clerical work of these professions. The great

magazines and publishing houses have an increasing need for trained,

scholarly men, for capable critics, and discerning advisers in the

field both of letter-press and illustration. Another calling which

seems to promise great possibilities both of usefulness and income to

those who devote themselves to it earnestly is the comparatively new

profession of journalism. The reporter, with all his present horrors,

is in the process of evolution; but the journalist is sure to remain

the high-priest of democracy. His influence is almost certain to

increase materially, but it will not increase unless he seeks to lead

public thought instead of bowing to it. The newspaper, in order to

flourish, must be a moulder of opinion, and to accomplish this those

who control its columns must more and more be men of education, force,

and high ideals. Competition will winnow here as elsewhere, but those

who by ability and industry win the chief places will stand high in the

community and command large pay for their services.

An aristocracy of brains--that is to say, an aristocracy composed of

individuals successful and prominent in their several callings--seems

to be the logical sequence of our institutions under present social

and industrial conditions. The only aristocracy which can exist in a

democracy is one of honorable success evidenced by wealth or a handsome

income, but the character of such an aristocracy will depend on the

ambitions and tastes of the nation. The inevitable economic law of

supply and demand governs here as elsewhere, and will govern until such

a time as society may be reconstructed on an entirely new basis. Only

the leaders in any vocation can hope to grow rich, but in proportion as

the demands of the nation for what is best increase will the type and

characteristics of these leaders improve. The doing away with inherited

orders of nobility and deliberate, patented class distinctions, gives

the entire field to wealth. We boast proudly that no artificial

barriers confine individual social promotion; but we must remember at

the same time that those old barriers meant more than the perpetuation

of perfumed ladies and idle gentlemen from century to century. We are

too apt to forget that the aristocracies of the old world signified

in the first place a process of selection. The kings and the nobles,

the lords and the barons, the knights who fought and the ladies for

whom they died, were the master-spirits of their days and generations,

the strong arms and the strong brains of civilized communities. They

stood for force, the force of the individual who was more intelligent,

more capable, and mightier in soul and body than his neighbors, and

who claimed the prerogatives of superiority on that account. These

master-spirits, it is true, used these prerogatives in such a manner as

to crystallize society into the classes and the masses, so hopelessly

for the latter that the gulf between them still is wide as an ocean,

notwithstanding that present nobilities have been shorn of their power

so that they may be said to exist chiefly by sufferance. And yet the

world is still the same in that there are men more intelligent, more

capable, and mightier in soul and body than their fellows. The leaders

of the past won their spurs by prowess with the battle-axe and spear,

by wise counsel in affairs of state, by the sheer force of their

superior manhood. The gentleman and lady stood for the best blood of

the world, though they so often belied it by their actions.