Barbara winced a little, but she said, “What have you men accomplished

all these years by your everlasting compromises? If you were really in

earnest to solve the liquor problem, and the social evil, as you call

it, and all the other abuses which exist in civilized and uncivilized

society, you would certainly have been able to do more than you have.

You have had free scope; we haven’t been consulted; we have stood

aside and let you have your innings; now we merely wish to see what

we can do. We shall make mistakes I dare say; even one or two of us

may be torn to pieces or maimed for life; but the modern woman feels

that she has the courage of her convictions and that she does not

intend to let herself be thwarted or cajoled by masculine theories.

That accounts largely for our apparent sniffiness. I say ‘apparent,’

because we are not really at bottom so contemptuous as we seem--even

the worst of us. I suppose you are right in declaring that the proud,

superior, and beautiful young person of the present day is a little

disdainful. But even she is less severe than she looks. She is simply

a nineteenth-century Joan of Arc protesting against the man of the

world and his works, asking to be allowed to lead her life without

molestation from him in a shrine of her own tasteful yet simple

construction--rooms or a room where she can practise her calling,

follow her tastes, ambitions, or hobbies, pursue her charities, and

amuse herself without being accountable to him. She wishes him to

understand that, though she is attractive, she does not mean to be

seduced or to be worried into matrimony against her will, and that she

intends to use her earnings and her property to pay her own bills

and provide for her own gratification, instead of to defray the debts

of her vicious or easy-going male relations or admirers. There is

really a long back account to settle, so it is not surprising that the

pendulum should swing a little too far the other way. Of course she

is wrong; woman can no more live wholly independent of man than he of

her--and you know what a helpless being he would be without her--and

the modern woman is bound to recognize, sooner or later, that the

sympathetic companionship of women with men is the only basis of true

social progress. Sexual affinity is stronger than the constitutions

of all the women’s clubs combined, as eight out of ten young modern

women discover to their cost, or rather to their happiness, sooner or

later. Some brute of a man breaks into the shrine, and before she knows

it she is wheeling a baby carriage. Even the novelist, with his or

her fertile invention, has failed to discover any really satisfactory

ending for the independent, disdainful heroine but marriage or the

grave. Spinsterhood, even when illumined by a career, is a worthy and

respectable lot, but not alluring.”

It was something to be assured by my wife that the modern woman does

not purpose to abolish either maternity or men, and that, so to speak,

her bark is worse than her bite. Barbara belongs to a woman’s club, so

she must know. We men are in such a nervous state, as a result of what

Barbara calls the revolution, that very likely we are unduly sensitive

and suspicious, and allow our imaginations to fly off at a tangent.

Very likely, too, we are disposed to be a trifle irritable, for when

one has been accustomed for long to sit on or club a person (literally

or metaphorically, according to one’s social status) when she happens

to express sentiments or opinions contrary to ours, it must needs take

time to get used to the idea that she is really an equal, and to adjust

one’s ratiocinations to suit. But even accepting as true the assurance

that the forbidding air of the modern woman does not mean much, and

that she loves us still though she has ceased to worship us, we have

Barbara’s word for it, too, that the modern woman thinks we have made

a mess of it and that man is a failure fundamentally. Love without

respect! Sorrow rather than anger! It sobers one; it saddens one. For

we must admit that man has had free scope and a long period in which

to make the most of himself; and woman has not, which precludes us

from answering back, as it were, which is always more or less of a

consolation when one is brought to bay.

A tendency to compromise is certainly one of man’s characteristics.

Barbara has referred to it as a salient fault--a vice, and perhaps it

is, though it is writ large in the annals of civilization as conducted

by man. We must at least agree that it is not woman’s way, and that she

expects to do without it when we are no more or are less than we are

now. Probably we have been and are too easy-going, and no one will deny

that one ought at all times to have the courage of one’s convictions,

even in midsummer and on purely social occasions; nevertheless it would

have been trying to the nervous system and conducive to the continuance

and increase of standing armies, had we favored the policy of shooting

at sight those whose views on the temperance question differed from

ours, or of telling the host at whose house we had passed the evening

that we had been bored to death.

If one runs over in his mind the Madame Tussaud Gallery of masculine

types, he cannot fail to acknowledge that, in our capacity of lords

of creation and viceregents of Providence, we have produced and

perpetuated a number of sorry specimens. First in the list stands the

so-called man of the world, on account of whom in particular, according

to Barbara, the nineteenth-century Joan of Arc looks askance at our

sex. He is an old stager; he dates back very nearly, if not completely,

to the garden of Eden, and he has always been a bugbear to woman.

It is not necessary to describe him; he has ever stood for simply

carnal interests and appetites, whether as a satyr, a voluptuary, a

wine-bibber, a glutton, a miser, an idler, or a mere pleasure-seeker.

If all the human industries which have owed and still owe their

prosperity to his propensities were to be obliterated, there would be

a large array of unemployed in the morning but a healthier world. The

bully, or prevailer by brute force, the snob, the cynic, the parasite,

the trimmer, and the conceited egotist are others prominent in the

category, without regard to criminals and unvarnished offenders against

whose noxious behavior men have protected themselves by positive law.

On the other hand, our gallery of past types has many figures of which

we have a right to be proud. Unfortunately we are barred again from

comparison or answering back by the taunt that woman has never had a

chance; nevertheless we may claim for what it is worth that, in the

realm of intellect or of the spirit, there have been no women who

have soared so high; seers, poets, law-givers, unfolders of nature’s

secrets, administrators of affairs, healers and scholars have been

chiefly or solely men. If some of us have fraternized with Belial,

others have walked, or sought to walk, with God no less genuinely

and fervently than any woman who ever breathed. In the matter of

spirituality, indeed, some of us in the past having been led to

believe that women knew more about the affairs of the other world

than men, sought to cultivate the spindle-legged, thin-chested, pale,

anæmic Christian as the type of humanity most acceptable to God and

serviceable to society; but we have gone back to the bishop of sturdy

frame and a reasonably healthy appetite as a more desirable mediator

between ourselves and heaven.

From the standpoint of our present inquiry, what man in his various

types has been in the past is less pertinent than what he is at

present. To begin with, certainly the modern man is not a picturesque

figure. He no longer appeals to the feminine or any eye by virtue of

imposing apparel or accoutrements. Foreign army officers and servants

in livery are almost the only males who have not exchanged plumage for

sober woollens, tweeds, or serges, and the varied resplendent materials

and colors by means of which men used to distinguish themselves from

one another and to negative their evil-doings in the eyes of women have

been discarded. All men but one look alike to any woman, and even that

one is liable to be confounded with the rest of mankind when he is more

than half a block away.

Nor is the homogeneous tendency limited to clothes; it includes

manners, morals, and point of view. The extreme types approximate each

other much more closely than formerly, and apart from criminals and

deliberately evil-minded persons, women have some ground for their

insinuation that we are all pretty much alike. Let it be said that this

effect is in one sense a feather in our caps. The nineteenth-century

Joan of Arc to the contrary notwithstanding, the modern man of the

world is a manifest improvement on his predecessor. He is no longer to

be found under the table after dinner as a social matter of course, and

three-bottles-to-a-guest festivities have ceased to be an aristocratic

function. Though on occasions still he will fumble with the latch-key,

he mounts the stairs very little, if at all, after midnight with the

nonchalance of self-congratulatory sobriety, and all those dire scenes

of woman on the staircase with a lighted candle looking down at her

prostrate lord and master belong to an almost dim past. True it may

be that the man of the world fears God no more than formerly, but he

has learned to have a wholesome dread of Bright’s disease, the insane

asylum, and those varied forms of sudden and premature death which are

included under the reportorial head of heart-failure. Mere brutishness

in its various forms is less apparent. The coarse materialist still

swaggers in public places and impudently puffs a cigar in the face of

modesty, but he serves no longer as a model for envious contemporaries

or an object of hero-worship to the rising generation. Good taste, if

nothing better, has checked man’s tendencies to make a beast of himself

in public or in private.

Similarly, also, the type of man to whom we look up most proudly and

confidently to-day is not altogether the same. The model whom we were

urged, and whom we sought of old to imitate, was he who wrestled with

God on the mountain-top, without a thought of earth’s smoke and din and

wretchedness. Human life and its joys and interests served for him as a

homily on vanity, or was regarded as a degradation in comparison with

the revelations obtained by the priest, poet, or devotee of culture

through the vista of aspiring imagination or zeal. The conservative

man of affairs--vigorous, far-seeing, keenly alive to the joys and

interests of this life, strongly sympathetic on the humanitarian side,

a man of the world withal in a reasonable sense--has impressed his

personality on modern society more successfully than any other type.

The priest who cares not for his fellow-man, the poet whose dreams and

visions include no human interest or passion, the devotee of culture

who refines merely to refine, have been superseded, and in their stead

we have the man of the world who is interested in the world and for the

world.

This change in the avowed aims and aspirations of man has not been

without certain apparently melancholy results and manifestations of

which society is feeling the effect at present, and which if allowed to

prevail too far will undo us. The removal of the gaze of the priest,

poet, and devotee of culture from the stars in contempt of earth, and

the substitution of earth-gazing as a method for understanding the

stars, has seemed to cast a damper on human imagination and has thereby

caused many excellent women and some men to weep. If materialism be

the science of trying to get the most out of this life, this is a

material age; but at the same time it should be remembered that man

in this age has ceased for the first time to be either a hypocrite

or a fool. Undoubtedly the process of becoming both sincere and

sensible, especially as it has substituted concern for the ignorant,

the oppressed, and the vicious of this earth about whom we know next to

nothing, in place of Pre-Raphaelite heavenly choirs, alabaster halls,

and saints in glory about whom we thought we knew everything, has been

a little trying for the rest of us as well as for the priests, poets,

and devotees of culture. But the women must not be discouraged; we

shall grow to the situation in time, and even the poets, who seem to be

most down in the mouth at present, will sooner or later find a fresh

well of inspiration by learning to study the reflection of the stars on

the earth instead of looking directly at them. Let them be patient,

though it be to death, and some day through others, if not through

themselves, the immortal verse will flow and the immortal lyre sound

again.

Undoubtedly the modern man is at present a rather trying person to

woman, for woman would have been glad, now that she is coming into her

kingdom, to have him more of a crusader and less of a philosopher. To

behold him lacking in picturesqueness and a philosopher addicted to

compromise into the bargain is almost irritating to her, and she has

certainly some ground for criticism. The man who sits opposite to her

at the breakfast-table, even after he has overcome conservative fears

of nothing to live on and dawdled into matrimony, is a lovable but not

especially exciting person. He eats, works, and sleeps, does most of

the things which he ought to do and leaves undone a commendable number

of the things which he ought not to do, and is a rather respectable

member of society of the machine-made order. He works very hard to

supply her with money; he is kind to her and the children; he gives her

her head, as he calls it; and he acquiesces pleasantly enough in the

social plans which she entertains for herself and him, and ordinarily

he is sleepy in the evening. Indeed, in moments of most serious

depression she is tempted to think of him as a superior chore-man, a

comparison which haunts her even in church. She would like, with one

fell swoop of her broom, to clear the world of the social evil, the

fruit of the grape, tobacco, and playing cards, to introduce drastic

educational reforms which would, by kindergarten methods, familiarize

every one on earth with art and culture, and to bring to pass within

five, or possibly six years, a golden age of absolute reform inspired

and established by woman. Life for her at present means one vast camp

of committee meetings, varied only by frequent cups of tea; and that

steaming beverage continues prominent in her radiant vision of the

coming millennium. No wonder it disconcerts and annoys her to find so

comparatively little enthusiastic confidence in the immediate success

of her fell swoop, and to have her pathway blocked by grave or lazy

ifs and buts and by cold contradictions of fact. No wonder she abhors

compromise; no wonder she regards the man who goes on using tobacco and

playing cards and drinking things stronger than tea as an inert and

soulless creature.

Yet smile as we may at the dull, sorry place the world would be were

the golden age of her intention to come upon us over night like a cold

wave, is she not justified in regarding the average custom-made man

of the day as a highly respectable, well-to-do chore-man who earns

fair wages and goes to sleep at night contented with a good meal and

a pipe? Is he not machine-made? Sincere and wise as he is, now that

his gaze is fixed on the needs of earth, has he not the philosophy of

hygienic comfort and easy-going conservative materialism so completely

on the brain that he is in danger of becoming ordinary instead of just

a little lower than the angels? Let us consider him from this point of

view more in detail.

The _Case of Man_.

II.

The young man of the present era on his twenty-first birthday is

apt to find himself in a very prudent and conservative atmosphere.

The difficulties of getting on are explained to him; he is properly

assured that, though there is plenty of room on the top benches, the

occupations and professions are crowded, if not overcrowded, and that

he must buckle down if he would succeed. It is obvious to him that the

field of adventure and fortune-seeking in foreign or strange places

is practically exhausted. It is open to him, to be sure, to go to

the North Pole in search of some one already there, or to study in a

cage in the jungles of Africa the linguistic value of the howls and

chatterings of wild animals; but these are manifestly poor pickings

compared with the opportunities of the past when a considerable

portion of the globe was still uninvestigated soil, and a reputation

or treasure-trove was the tolerably frequent reward of leaving the

rut of civilized life. It is plainly pointed out to him, too, that to

be florid is regarded as almost a mental weakness in intellectual or

progressive circles. He sees the lawyer who makes use of metaphor,

bombast, and the other arts of oratory, which used to captivate and

convince, distanced in the race for eminence by him who employs a

succinct, dispassionate, and almost colloquial form of statement.

He recognizes that in every department of human activity, from the

investigation of disease-germs to the management of railroads, steady,

undemonstrative marshallings of fact, and cautious, unemotional

deduction therefrom are considered the scientific and only appropriate

method. He knows that the expression of unusual or erratic ideas will

expose him to the stigma of being a crank, a reputation which, once

acquired, sticks like pitch, and that the betrayal of sentiment will

induce conservative people to put him on the suspected list.

All this is imbibed by him as it should be, in the interest of

sincerity and sense. Under the sobering restraint of it the young man

begins to make his way with enthusiasm and energy, but circumspectly

and deliberately. He mistrusts everything that he cannot pick to

pieces on the spot and analyze, and though he is willing to be amused,

beguiled, or even temporarily inspired by appeals to his imagination

or emotions, he puts his doubts or qualms aside next morning at the

behest of business. He wishes to get on. He is determined not to allow

anything to interfere with that, and he understands that that is to

be accomplished partly by hard work and partly by becoming a good

fellow and showing common-sense. This is excellent reasoning until one

examines too closely what is expected of him as a good fellow, and what

is required of him in the name of common-sense.

There have been good fellows in every age, and some of them have

been tough specimens. Our good fellow is almost highly respectable.

He wishes to live as long as he can, and to let others live as long

as they can. His patron saints are his doctor, his bank account,

prudence, and general toleration. If he were obliged to specify the

vice not covered by the statute law which he most abhors, he would

probably name slopping over. He aims to be genial, sympathetic, and

knowing, but not obtrusively so, and he is becomingly suspicious

and reticent regarding everything which cannot be demonstrated on

a chart like an international yacht-race or a medical operation.

He is quietly and moderately licentious, and justifies himself

satisfactorily but mournfully on hygienic grounds or on the plea of

masculine inevitability. He works hard, if he has to, for he wishes

to live comfortably by the time he is forty, and comfort means, as it

ought to mean, an attractive wife, an attractive establishment, and

an attractive income. An imprudent marriage seems to him one of the

most egregious forms of slopping over. If he hears that two of his

contemporaries are engaged, his first inquiry is, “What have they to

live on?” and if the answer is unsatisfactory, they fall a peg or two

in his estimation, and he is likely, the next time he feels mellow

after dinner, to descant on the impropriety of bringing children into

the world who may be left penniless orphans. If he falls in love

himself before he feels that his pecuniary position warrants it, he

tries to shake out the arrow, and, if that fails, he cuts it out

deliberately under antiseptic treatment to avoid blood-poisoning.

All our large cities are full of young men who have undergone this

operation. To lose one’s vermiform appendix is a perilous yet blessed

experience; but this trifling with the human heart, however scientific

the excision, can scarcely be regarded as beneficial unless we are to

assume that it, like the fashionable sac, has become rudimentary.

We see a great many allusions in our comic and satiric weeklies to

marrying for money, but the good fellow of the best type ordinarily

disdains such a proceeding. His self-respect is not offended but hugely

gratified if the young woman with whom he intends to ally himself

would be able immediately or prospectively to contribute a million or

so to the domestic purse; but he would regard a deliberate sale of

himself for cash as a dirty piece of business. On the other hand, he is

very business-like where his heart is engaged, and is careful not to

let his emotions or fancy get the better of him until he can see his

ship--and a well-freighted one at that--on the near horizon. And what

is to become of the young woman in the meantime? To let concealment,

like a worm in the bud, feed on a damask cheek may be more fatal than

masculine arrow extraction; for woman, less scientific in her methods

than man, is less able to avoid blood-poisoning. She doses herself,

probably, with anti-pyrine, burns her Emerson and her Tennyson, and

after a period of nervous prostration devotes herself to charity toward

the world at large with the exception of all good fellows.

The good fellow after he marries continues to be a good fellow. He

adapts himself to the humanitarian necessities of the situation; he

becomes fond and domestic, almost oppressively so, and he is eager

to indulge the slightest wish or fancy of his mate, provided it be

within the bounds of easy-going rationalism. The conjugal pliability

of the American husband is a well-recognized original feature of

our institutions, nevertheless he is apt to develop kinks unless

he be allowed to be indulgent and companionable in his own way. He

works harder than ever, and she for whose sake he is ostensibly

toiling is encouraged to make herself fetching and him comfortable as

progressively as his income will permit. When the toil of the week

is over he looks for his reward in the form of a Welsh-rarebit with

theatrical celebrities, a little game of poker within his means, or,

if he be musical, a small gathering of friends to sing or play, if

possible in a so-called Bohemian spirit. It irks him to stand very

upright or to converse for long, whether in masculine or feminine

society. He likes to sprawl and to be entertained with the latest bit

of humor, but he is willing, on a pleasant Sunday or holiday, to take

exercise in order to perspire freely, and then to lie at ease under

a tree or a bank, pleasantly refreshed with beer and tobacco, and at

peace with the world. He prefers to have her with him everywhere,

except at the little game of poker, and is conscious of an aching void

if she be not at hand to help him recuperate, philosophize, and admire

the view. But he expects her to do what he likes, and expects her to

like it too.

In no age of the world has the reasoning power of man been in better

working order than at present. With all due respect to the statistics

which show that the female is beginning to outstrip the male in

academic competitive examinations, one has only to keep his ears and

eyes open in the workaday world in order to be convinced that man’s

purely mental processes suggest a razor and woman’s a corkscrew.

The manager of corporate interests, the lawyer, the historian, the

physician, the chemist, and the banker seek to-day to probe to the

bottom that which they touch, and to expose to the acid of truth

every rosy theory and seductive prospectus. This is in the line of

progress; but to be satisfied with this alone would speedily reduce

human society to the status of a highly organized racing stable. If man

is to be merely a jockey, who is to ride as light as he can, there

is nothing to be said; but even on that theory is it not possible to

train too fine? With eloquence tabooed as savoring of insincerity,

with conversation as a fine art starved to death, with melody in

music sniffed at as sensational, and fancy in literature condemned as

unscientific, with the loosening of all the bonds of conventionality

which held civilization to the mark in matters of taste and elegance,

and with a general doing away with color and emotion in all the

practical affairs of life out of regard to the gospel of common-sense

and machine-made utility, the jockey now is riding practically in his

own skin.

One has to go back but a little way in order to encounter among

the moving spirits of society a radically different attitude.

Unquestionably the temper of the present day is the result of a

vigorous reaction against false or maudlin sentiment, florid drivel,

and hypocritical posturing; but certainly a Welsh-rarebit at midnight,

with easy-going companions, is a far remove as a spiritual stimulus

from bread eaten in tears at the same hour. As has been intimated,

this exaggeration of commonplaceness will probably right itself in

time, but man’s lack of susceptibility to influences and impressions

which cannot be weighed, fingered, smelt, looked at, or tasted, seems

to justify at present the strictures of the modern woman, who, with

all her bumptiousness, would fain continue to reverence him. Some in

the van of feminine progress would be glad to see the inspiration and

direction of all matters--spiritual, artistic, and social--apportioned

to woman as her sole rightful prerogative, and consequently to see man

become veritably a superior chore-man. Fortunately the world of men

and women is likely to agree with Barbara that mutual sympathy and

co-operation in these matters between the sexes are indispensable to

the healthy development of human society.

But even assuming that women were ready to accept the responsibility

and men were willing to renounce it, I, for one, fear that civilization

would find itself in a ditch rather speedily. All of us--we men, I

mean--recognize the purifying and deterrent influence of woman as

a Mentor and sweet critic at our elbows. We have learned to depend

upon her to prod us when we lag, and to save us from ourselves when

our brains get the better of our hearts. But, after all, woman is a

clinging creature. She has been used to playing second fiddle; and it

is quite a different affair to lead an orchestra. To point the way to

spiritual or artistic progress needs, first of all, a clear intellect

and a firm purpose, even though they alone are not sufficient. Woman is

essentially yielding and impressionable. At the very moment when the

modern Joan of Arc would be doing her best to make the world a better

place, would not eleven other women out of the dozen be giving way to

the captivating plausibility of some emotional situation?

As an instance of what she is already capable of from a social point

of view, now that she has been given her head, may well be cited the

feverish eagerness with which some of the most highly cultivated

and most subtly evolved American women of our large cities vie with

each other for intimacy with artistic foreign lions of their own sex

known to be unchaste. They seem to regard it as a privilege to play

hostess to, or, at least, to be on familiar terms with, actresses,

opera-singers, and other public characters quietly but notoriously

erotic, the plea in each case being that they are ready to forgive,

to forget, and ignore for the sake of art and the artist. Yes, ignore

or forget, if you choose, so far as seeing the artist act or hearing

her sing in public is concerned, where there are no social ceremonies

or intercourse; but let us please remember at the same time that

even those effete nations who believe that the world would be a dull

place without courtesans, insist on excluding such persons from their

drawing-rooms. Indeed there is reason to believe that some of the

artists in question have become hilarious, when out of sight of our

hospitable shores, over the wonders of American social usages among

the pure and cultivated women. Before our young men will cease to

sow wild oats their female relations must cease to run after other

men’s mistresses. Decidedly, the modern Joan of Arc to the contrary

notwithstanding, man cannot afford to abdicate just yet. But he needs

to mend his hedges and to look after his preserves.

The _Case of Woman_.

I.

A great many men, who are sane and reasonable in other matters, allow

themselves, on the slightest provocation, to be worked up into a fever

over the aspirations of woman. They decline to listen to argument,

grow red in the face, and saw the air with their hands, if they do

not pound on the table, to express their views on the subject--which,

by the way, are as out of date and old-fashioned as a pine-tree

shilling. They remind one of the ostrich in that they seem to imagine,

because they have buried their heads in the sand, nothing has happened

or is happening around them. They confront the problem of woman’s

emancipation as though it were only just being broached instead of in

the throes of delivery.

For instance, my friend, Mr. Julius Cæsar, who though a conservative,

cautious man by nature, is agreeably and commendably liberal in other

matters, seems to be able to see only one side of this question. And

one side seems to be all he wishes to see. “Take my wife,” he said

to me the other day; “as women go she is a very clever and sensible

woman. She was given the best advantages in the way of school-training

open to young ladies of her day; she has accomplishments, domestic

virtues, and fine religious instincts, and I adore her. But what does

she know of politics? She couldn’t tell you the difference between a

senator and an alderman, and her mind is practically a blank on the

tariff or the silver question. I tell you, my dear fellow, that if

woman is allowed to leave the domestic hearth and play ducks and drakes

with the right of suffrage, every political caucus will become a retail

drygoods store. If there is one thing which makes a philosopher despair

of the future of the race, it is to stand in a crowded drygoods store

and watch the jam of women perk and push and sidle and grab and covet

and go well-nigh crazy over things to wear. The average woman knows

about clothes, the next world, children, and her domestic duties. Let

her stick to her sphere. A woman at a caucus? Who would see that my

dinner was properly cooked, eh?”

One would suppose from these remarks that the male American citizen

spends his days chiefly at caucuses; whereas, as we all know when we

reflect, he goes perhaps twice a year, if he be a punctilious patriot

like Julius Cæsar, and if not, probably does not go at all. If the

consciousness that his wife could vote at a caucus would act as a spur

to the masculine political conscience, the male American citizen could

well afford to dine at a restaurant on election-days, or to cook his

own food now and then.

Of course, even a man with views like Julius Cæsar would be sorry to

have his wife the slavish, dollish, or unenlightened individual which

she was apt to be before so-called women’s rights were heard of. As

he himself has proclaimed, he adores his wife, and he is, moreover,

secretly proud of her æsthetic presentability. Without being an

advanced woman, Dolly Cæsar has the interests of the day and hour at

her fingers’ ends, can talk intelligently on any subject, whether

she knows anything about it or not, and is decidedly in the van,

though she is not a leader. Julius does not take into account, when

he anathematizes the sex because of its ambitions, the difference

between her and her great-grandmother. He believes his wife to be a

very charming specimen of what a woman ought to be, and that, barring

a few differences of costume and hair arrangement, she is practically

her great-grandmother over again. Fatuous Julius! There is where he is

desperately in error. Dolly Cæsar’s great-grandmother may have been a

radiant beauty and a famous housekeeper, but her brain never harbored

one-tenth of the ideas and opinions which make her descendant so

attractive.

Those who argue on this matter like Julius Cæsar fail to take into

account the gradual, silent results of time; and this is true of the

results to come as well as those which have accrued. When the suffrage

question is mooted one often hears sober men, more dispassionate men

than Julius--Perkins, for instance, the thin, nervous lawyer and father

of four girls, and a sober man indeed--ask judicially whether it is

possible for female suffrage to be a success when not one woman in a

thousand would know what was expected of her, or how to vote. “I tell

you,” says Perkins, “they are utterly unfitted for it by training and

education. Four-fifths of them wouldn’t vote if they were allowed to,

and every one knows that ninety-nine women out of every hundred are

profoundly ignorant of the matters in regard to which they would cast

their ballots. Take my daughters; fine girls, talented, intelligent

women--one of them a student of history; but what do they know of

parties, and platforms, and political issues in general?”

Perkins is less violently prejudiced than Julius Cæsar. He neither

saws the air nor pounds on the table. Indeed, I have no doubt he

believes that he entertains liberal, unbiassed views on the subject.

I wonder, then, why it never occurs to him that everything which is

new is adopted gradually, and that the world has to get accustomed to

all novel situations. I happened to see Mr. Perkins the first time he

rode a bicycle on the road, and his performance certainly justified

the prediction that he would look like a guy to the end of his days,

and yet he glides past me now with the ease and nonchalance of a

possible “scorcher.” Similarly, if women were given universal suffrage,

there would be a deal of fluttering in the dove-cotes for the first

generation or so. Doubtless four-fifths of womankind would refuse or

neglect to vote at all, and at least a quarter of those who went to the

polls would cast their ballots as tools or blindly. But just so soon as

it was understood that it was no less a woman’s duty to vote than it

was to attend to her back hair, she would be educated from that point

of view, and her present crass ignorance of political matters would be

changed into at least a form of enlightenment. Man prides himself on

his logic, but there is nothing logical in the argument that because a

woman knows nothing about anything now, she can never be taught. If we

have been content to have her remain ignorant for so many centuries,

does it not savor both of despotism and lack of reasonableness to cast

her ignorance in her teeth and to beat her about the head with it now

that she is eager to rise? Decidedly it is high time for the man who

orates tempestuously or argues dogmatically in the name of conservatism

against the cause of woman on such flimsy pleas as these, to cease his

gesticulations and wise saws. The modern woman is a potential reality,

who is bound to develop and improve, in another generation or two, as

far beyond the present interesting type as Mrs. Julius Cæsar is an

advance on her great-grandmother.

On the other hand, why do those who have woman’s cause at heart lay

such formal stress on the right of the ballot as a factor in her

development? There can be no doubt that, if the majority of women

wish to vote on questions involving property or political interests,

they will be enabled to do so sooner or later. It is chiefly now the

conviction in the minds of legislatures that a large number of the

intelligent women of their communities do not desire to exercise the

right of suffrage which keeps the bars down. Doubtless these bodies

will yield one after another to the clamor of even a few, and the

experiment will be tried. It may not come this year or the next, but

many busy people are so certain that its coming is merely a question of

time that they do not allow themselves to be drawn into the fury of the

fray. When it comes, however, it will come as a universal privilege,

and not with a social or property qualification. I mention this

simply for the enlightenment of those amiable members of the sex to

be enfranchised who go about sighing and simpering in the interest of

drawing the line. That question was settled a century ago. The action

taken may have been an error on the part of those who framed the laws,

but it has been settled forever. There would be no more chance of the

passage by the legislature of one of the United States of a statute

giving the right of suffrage to a limited class of women than there

would be of one prescribing that only the good-looking members of that

sex should be allowed to marry.

Many people, who believe that woman should be denied no privilege

enjoyed by man which she really desires to exercise, find much

difficulty in regarding the right of suffrage as the vital end which

it assumes in the minds of its advocates. One would suppose, by the

clamor on the subject, that the ballot would enable her to change her

spots in a twinkling, and to become an absolutely different creation.

Lively imaginations do not hesitate to compare the proposed act of

emancipation with the release of the colored race from bondage. We are

appealed to by glowing rhetoric which celebrates the equity of the case

and the moral significance of the impending victory. But the orators

and triumphants stop short at the passage of the law and fail to tell

us what is to come after. We are assured, indeed, that it will be all

right, and that woman’s course after the Rubicon is crossed will be

one grand march of progress to the music of the spheres; but, barring

a pæan of this sort, we are given no light as to what she intends to

do and become. She has stretched out her hand for the rattle and is

determined to have it, but she does not appear to entertain any very

definite ideas as to what she is going to do with it after she has it.

Unquestionably, the development of the modern woman is one of the most

interesting features of civilization to-day. But is it not true that

the cause of woman is one concern, and the question of woman suffrage

another? And are they not too often confounded, even deliberately

confounded, by those who are willing to have them appear to be

identical? Supposing that to-morrow the trumpet should sound and the

walls of Jericho fall, and every woman be free to cast her individual

ballot without let or hindrance from one confine of the civilized world

to another, what would it amount to after all by way of elucidating

the question of her future evolution? For it must be remembered that,

apart from the question of her development in general, those who are

clamoring for the ballot have been superbly vague so far as to the

precise part which the gentle sex is to play in the political arena

after she gets her rattle. They put their sisters off with the general

assertion that things in the world, politically speaking, will be

better, but neither their sisters nor their brothers are able to get a

distinct notion of the platform on which woman means to stand after she

becomes a voter. Is she going to enter into competition with men for

the prizes and offices, to argue, manipulate, hustle, and do generally

the things which have to be done in the name of political zeal and

activity? Is it within the vista of her ambition to become a member of,

and seek to control, legislative bodies, to be a police commissioner or

a member of Congress? Those in the van decline to answer, or at least

they do not answer. It may be, to be sure, the wisdom of the serpent

which keeps them non-committal, for they stand, as it were, between the

devil and the deep sea in that, though they and their supporters would

perhaps like to declare boldly in favor of competition, or at least

participation, in the duties and honors, they stand in wholesome awe of

the hoarse murmur from the ranks of their sisters, “We don’t wish to be

like men, and we have no intention of competing with them on their own

lines.” Accordingly, the leaders seek refuge in the safe but indefinite

assertion that of course women will never become men, but they have

thus far neglected to tell us what they are to become.

It really seems as though it were time for woman, in general congress

of the women’s clubs assembled, to make a reasonably full and clear

statement of her aims and principles--a declaration of faith which

shall give her own sex and men the opportunity to know precisely

what she is driving at. Her progress for the last hundred years has

been gratifying to the world, with the exception of pig-headed or

narrow-minded men, and civilization has been inestimably benefitted by

the broadening of her intelligence and her interests. But she has now

reached a point where there is a parting of the ways, and the world

would very much like to know which she intends to take. The atmosphere

of the women’s clubs is mysterious but unsuggestive, and consequently

many of us feel inclined to murmur with the poet, “it is clever, but

we don’t know what it means.” Unrepressed nervous mental activity

easily becomes social affectation or tomfoolery, in the absence of a

controlling aim or purpose. To exhaust one’s vitality in papers or

literary teas, merely to express or simulate individual culture or

freedom, may not land one in an insane asylum, but it is about as

valuable to society, as an educating force, as the revolutions of

the handle of a freezer, when the crank is off, are valuable to the

production of ice-cream. For the benefit of such a congress, if haply

it should be called together later, it will not be out of place to

offer a few suggestions as to her future evolution. In this connection

it seems to me imperative to go back to the original poetic conception

of woman as the wife and mother, the domestic helpmate and loving,

self-abnegating companion of man. Unedifying as this formula of

description may seem to the active-minded modern woman, it is obvious

that under existing physiological conditions she must remain the wife

and mother, even though she declines to continue domestic, loving, and

self-abnegating. And side by side with physiological conditions stands

the intangible, ineffable force of sexual love, the poetic, entrancing

ecstasy which no scientist has yet been able to reduce to a myth or to

explode. Schopenhauer, to be sure, would have us believe that it is

merely a delusion by which nature seeks to reproduce herself, but even

on this material basis the women’s clubs find themselves face to face

with an enemy more determined than any Amazon. A maid deluded becomes

the sorriest of club members.

What vision of life is nobler and more exquisite than that of complete

and ideal marital happiness? To find it complete and ideal the modern

woman, with all her charms and abilities, must figure in it, I grant;

the mere domestic drudge; the tame, amiable house-cat; the doting doll,

are no longer pleasing parties of the second part. To admit so much as

this may seem to offer room for the argument that the modern woman of a

hundred years hence will make her of the poet’s dream of to-day appear

no less pitiable; but there we men are ready to take issue. We admit

our past tyranny, we cry “Peccavi,” yet we claim at the same time that,

having taken her to our bosoms as our veritable, loving companion and

helpmate, there is no room left, or very little room left, for more

progress in that particular direction. Her next steps, if taken, will

be on new lines, not by way of making herself an equal. And therefore

it is that we suggest the vision of perfect modern marital happiness

as the leading consideration to be taken into account in dealing with

this question. Even in the past, when woman was made a drudge and

encouraged to remain a fool, the poetry and joy and stimulus of life

for her, as well as for her despot mate, lay in the mystery of love,

its joys and responsibilities. Even then, if her life were robbed of

the opportunity to love and be loved, its savor was gone, however free

she might be from masculine tyranny and coercion. Similarly, after

making due allowance for the hyperbole as to the influence which woman

has on man when he has made up his mind to act to the contrary, there

is no power which works for righteousness upon him comparable to the

influence of woman. There is always the possibility that the woman a

man loves may not be consciously working for righteousness, but the

fact that he believes so is the essential truth, even though he be

the victim of self-delusion. This element of the case is pertinent to

the question whether woman would really try to reform the world, if

she had the chance, rather than to this particular consideration. The

point of the argument is that the dependence of each sex on the other,

and the loving sympathy between them, which is born of dissimilarity,

is the salt of human life. The eternal feminine is what we prize in

woman, and wherever she deflects from this there does her power wane

and her usefulness become impaired. And conversely, the more and the

higher she advances along the lines of her own nature, the better for

the world. Nor does the claim that she has been hampered hitherto, and

consequently been unable to show what her attributes really are, seem

relevant; for it is only when she develops in directions which threaten

to clash with the eternal feminine that she encounters opposition or

serious criticism. And here even the excitability and unreasonableness

of such men as our friend Julius Cæsar find a certain justification.

Their fumes and fury, however unintelligent, proceed from an

instinctive repugnance to the departure or deviation from nature which

they find, or fear to find, in the modern woman. Once let them realize

that there was no danger of anything of the kind, and they would become

gentle as doves, if not all smiles and approval.

There is no more beautiful and refining influence in the world than

that of an attractive and noble woman. Unselfishness, tenderness,

aspiring sentiment, long-suffering devotion, grace, tact, and

quickly divining intelligence are her prerogatives, and she stands

an ever-watchful guardian angel at the shoulder of man. The leading

poetic and elevating associations of life are linked with her name. The

lover’s passion, the husband’s worship, the son’s reverential affection

are inspired by her. The strong man stays his hand and sides with mercy

or honor when his mother speaks within him. In homelier language, she

is the keeper of the hearth and home, the protector and trainer of her

children, the adviser, consoler, and companion of her husband, father,

son, brother, or other masculine associates.

Now, the modern woman, up to this point, has been disposed, on the

whole, to regard this as the part which she is to play in the drama of

life. At least she has not materially deviated from it. Her progress

has been simply in the way of enabling her to play that part more

intelligently and worthily, and not toward usurpation, excepting that

she claims the right to earn her daily bread. Higher education in its

various branches has been the most signal fruit of her struggle for

enlightenment and liberty, and this is certainly in entire keeping with

the eternal feminine, and to-day seems indispensable to her suitable

development. By means of education similar to that lavished upon man

she has been enabled, it is true, to obtain employment of various

kinds hitherto withheld from her, but the positions of professor,

teacher, nurse, artist, and clerk, are amplifications of her natural

aptitudes rather than encroachments. She has, however, finally reached

the stage where she will soon have to decide whether the hearth and

the home or down-town is to be the principal theatre of her activity

and influence. Is she or is she not to participate with man in the

tangible, obvious management of the affairs of the world?

The _Case of Woman_.

II.

The mystic oracles of the women’s clubs do not give a straightforward

answer to this question. Yet there are mutterings, mouthings, and

signs from them which tend to arouse masculine suspicions. To use

a colloquialism, woman fancies herself very much at present, and

she spends considerable time in studying the set of her mind in the

looking-glass. And her serenity is justified. In spite of ridicule,

baiting, and delay for several generations, she has demonstrated her

ability and fitness to do a number of things which we had adjudged her

incapable of doing. She can almost take care of herself in the street

after dark. She has become a most valuable member of committees to

ameliorate the condition of the poor, the sick, and the insane. She has

become the president and professors of colleges founded in her behalf.

The noble and numerous army of teachers, typewriters, salesladies,

nurses, and women doctors (including Christian Scientists), stands as

ample proof of her intention and capacity to strike out for herself.

No wonder, perhaps, that she is a little delirious and mounted in the

head, and that she is tempted to exclaim, “Go to, I will do more than

this. Why should I not practise law, and sell stocks, wheat, corn, and

exchange, control the money markets of the world, administer trusts,

manage corporations, sit in Congress, and be President of the United

States?”

The only things now done by man which the modern woman has not yet

begun to cast sheep’s eyes at are labor requiring much physical

strength and endurance, and military service. She is prepared to admit

that she can never expect to be so muscular and powerful in body as

man. But this has become rather a solace than a source of perplexity

to her. Indeed, the women’s clubs are beginning to whisper under their

breath, “Man is fitted to build and hew and cut and lift, and to do

everything which demands brute force. We are not. We should like to

think, plan, and execute. Let him do the heavy work. If he wishes to

fight he may. Wars are wicked, and we shall vote against them and

refuse to take part in them.”

If woman is going in for this sort of thing, of course she needs

the ballot. If she intends to manage corporations and do business

generally, she ought to have a voice in the framing of the laws

which manifest the policy of the state. But to earn one’s living as

a college professor, nurse, typewriter, saleslady, or clerk, or to

sit on boards of charity, education, or hygiene, is a far remove from

becoming bank presidents, merchants, judges, bankers, or members of

Congress. The one affords the means by which single women can earn a

decent and independent livelihood, or devote their energies to work

useful to society; the other would necessitate an absolute revolution

in the habits, tastes, interests, proclivities, and nature of woman.

The noble army of teachers, typewriters, nurses, and salesladies are in

the heels of their boots hoping to be married some day or other. They

have merely thrown an anchor to windward and taken up a calling which

will enable them to live reasonably happy if the right man does not

appear, or passes by on the other side. Those who sit on boards, and

who are more apt to be middle-aged, are but interpreting and fulfilling

the true mission of the modern woman, which is to supplement and modify

the point of view of man, and to extend the kind of influence which

she exercises at home to the conduct of public interests of a certain

class.

Now, some one must keep house. Some one must cook, wash, dust, sweep,

darn, look after the children, and in general grease the wheels of

domestic activity. If women are to become merchants, and manage

corporations, who will bring up our families and manage the home?

The majority of the noble army referred to are not able to escape

from making their own beds and cooking their own breakfasts. If they

occupied other than comparatively subordinate positions they would

have to call Chinatown to the rescue; for the men would decline with

thanks, relying on their brute force to protect them, and the other

women would toss their heads and say “Make your own beds, you nasty

things. We prefer to go to town too.” In fact the emancipation of

women, so far as it relates to usurpation of the work of man, does

not mean much in actual practice yet, in spite of the brave show and

bustle of the noble army. The salesladies get their meals somehow,

and the domestic hearth is still presided over by the mistress of

the house and her daughters. But this cannot continue to be the case

if women are going to do everything which men do except lift weights

and fight. For we all know that our mothers, wives, and sisters,

according to their own affidavits, have all they can do already to

fulfil the requirements of modern life as mothers, wives, and sisters

in the conventional yet modern sense. Many of them tell us that they

would not have time to vote, to say nothing of qualifying themselves

to vote. Indisputably they cannot become men and yet remain women in

the matter of their daily occupations, unless they discover some new

panacea against nervous prostration. The professions are open; the laws

will allow them to establish banks and control corporate interests; but

what is to become of the eternal feminine in the pow-wow, bustle, and

materializing rush and competition of active business life? Whatever

a few individuals may do, there seems to be no immediate or probably

eventual prospect of a throwing off by woman of domestic ties and

duties. Her physical and moral nature alike are formidable barriers in

the way.

Why, then, if women are not going to usurp or share to any great extent

the occupations of men, and become familiar with the practical workings

of professional, business, and public affairs, are they ever likely to

be able to judge so intelligently as men as to the needs of the state?

To hear many people discuss the subject, one would suppose that all

the laws passed by legislative bodies were limited to questions of

ethics and morality. If all political action were reduced to debates

and ballots on the use of liquor, the social evil, and other moral

or humanitarian topics, the claim that women ought to be allowed and

encouraged to vote would be much stronger--that is, assuming that she

herself preferred to use her influence directly instead of indirectly.

But the advocates of female suffrage seem to forget that three-fifths

of the laws passed relate to matters remotely if at all bearing upon

ethics, and involve considerations of public policy from the point of

view of what is best for the interests of the state and the various

classes of individuals which compose it. We do not always remember

in this age of afternoon teas and literary papers that the state is

after all an artificial body, a form of compact under which human

beings agree to live together for mutual benefit and protection.

Before culture, æstheticism, or even ethics can be maintained there

must be a readiness and ability to fight, if the necessity arises, and

a capacity to do heavy work. Moreover, there must be ploughed fields

and ship-yards and grain-elevators and engines and manufactories, and

all the divers forms and phases of industrial and commercial endeavor

and enterprise by which men earn their daily bread. If woman is going

to participate in the material activities of the community she will

be fit to deal with the questions which relate thereto, but otherwise

she must necessarily remain unable to form a satisfactory judgment as

to the merits of more than one-half the measures upon which she would

be obliged to vote. Nor is it an argument in point that a large body

of men is in the same predicament. Two evils do not make a benefit.

There is a sufficient number of men conversant with every separate

practical question which arises to insure an intelligent examination

of it. The essential consideration is, what would the state gain, if

woman suffrage were adopted, except an enlarged constituency of voters?

What would woman, by means of the ballot, add to the better or smoother

development of the social system under which we live?

Unless the eternal feminine is to be sacrificed or to suffer, it

seems to me that her sole influence would be an ethical or moral one.

There are certainly strong grounds for the assumption that she would

point the way to, or at least champion, the cause of reforms which

man has perpetually dilly-dallied with and failed to do battle for.

To be sure, many of her most virtuous endeavors would be likely to be

focussed on matters where indulgences and weaknesses chiefly masculine

were concerned--such as the liquor problem; but an alliance between

her vote and that of the minority of men would probably be a blessing

to the world, even though she showed herself somewhat a tyrant or a

fanatic. Her advocacy of measures calculated to relieve society of

abuses and curses, which have continued to afflict it because men have

been only moderately in earnest for a change, could scarcely fail to

produce valuable results. Perhaps this is enough in itself to outweigh

the ignorance which she would bring to bear on matters which did not

involve ethical or humanitarian principles; and it is indisputably

the most legitimate argument in favor of woman suffrage. The notion

that women ought to vote simply because men do is childish and born

of vanity. On the other hand, if the state is to be a gainer by her

participation in the perplexities of voting, the case takes on a very

different aspect.

I have been assuming that the influence of woman would be in behalf

of ethics, but my wife Barbara assures me that I am thereby begging

the question. She informs me that I have too exalted an idea of

woman and her aims. She has confided to me that, though there is a

number of noble and forceful women in every community, the general

average, though prolific of moral and religious advice to men by way

of fulfilling a sort of traditional feminine duty, is at heart rather

flighty and less deeply interested in social progress than my sex.

This testimony, taken in connection with the reference of Julius Cæsar

to the disillusioning effect of a crowd of women in a drygoods store,

introduces a new element into the discussion. Frankly, my estimate of

women has always been high, and possibly unduly exalted. It may be

I have been deceived by the moral and religious advice offered into

believing that women are more serious than they really are. Reflection

certainly does cause one to recollect that comparatively few women

like to dwell on or to discuss for more than a few minutes any serious

subject which requires earnest thought. They prefer to skim from one

thing to another like swallows and to avoid dry depths. Those in the

van will doubtless answer that this is due to the unfortunate training

which woman has been subjected to for so many generations. True, in a

measure; but ought she not, before she is allowed to vote, on the plea

of bringing benefit to the state as an ethical adviser, to demonstrate

by more than words her ethical superiority?

We all know that women drink less intoxicating liquor than men, and

are less addicted to fleshly excesses. Yet the whole mental temper

and make-up of each sex ought to be taken into account in comparing

them together; and with all the predisposition of a gallant and

susceptible man to say the complimentary thing, I find myself asking

the question whether the average woman does not prefer to jog along

on a worsted-work-domestic-trusting-religious-advice-giving basis,

rather than to grapple in a serious way with the formidable problems

of living. At any rate I, for one, before the right of suffrage is

bestowed upon her, would like to be convinced that she as a sex is

really earnest-minded. If one stops to think, it is not easy to show

that, excepting where liquor, other women, and rigid attendance at

church are concerned, she has been wont to show any very decided bent

for, or interest in, the great reforms of civilization--that is,

nothing to distinguish her from a well-equipped and thoughtful man. It

is significant, too, that where women in this country have been given

the power to vote in local affairs, they have in several instances

shown themselves to be more solicitous for the triumph of a religious

creed or faction than to promote the public welfare.

It is extremely probable, if not certain, that the laws of all

civilized states will eventually be amended so as to give women the

same voice in the affairs of government as men. But taking all the

factors of the case into consideration, there seems to be no pressing

haste for action. Even admitting for the sake of argument that woman’s

apparent lack of seriousness is due to her past training, and that

she is really the admirably earnest spirit which one is lured into

believing her until he reflects, there can assuredly be no question

that the temper and proclivities of the very large mass of women are

not calculated at present to convict man of a lack of purpose by virtue

of shining superiority in persevering mental and moral aggressiveness.

Not merely the drygoods counter and the milliner’s store with their

engaging seductions, but the ball-room, the fancy-work pattern, the

sensational novel, nervous prostration, the school-girl’s giggle, the

tea-pot without food, and a host of other tell-tale symptoms, suggest

that there is a good deal of the old Eve left in the woman of to-day.

And bless her sweet heart, Adam is in no haste to have it otherwise.

Indeed, the eternal feminine seems to have staying qualities which bid

fair to outlast the ages.

The _Conduct of Life_.

I.

Now that more than a century has elapsed since our independence as

a nation was accomplished, and we are sixty million strong, what do

we stand for in the world? What is meant by the word American, and

what are our salient qualities as a people? What is the contribution

which we have made or are making to the progress of society and the

advancement of civilization?

There certainly used to be, and probably there is, no such egregiously

patriotic individual in the world as an indiscriminately patriotic

American, and there is no more familiar bit of rhetoric extant than

that this is the greatest nation on earth. The type of citizen who

gave obtrusive vent to this sentiment, both at home and abroad, is

less common than formerly; nevertheless his clarion tones are still

invariably to be heard in legislative assemblies when any opportunity

is afforded to draw a comparison between ourselves and other nations.

His extravagant and highfalutin boastings have undoubtedly been the

occasion of a certain amount of seemingly lukewarm patriotism on the

part of the educated and more intelligent portion of the American

public, an attitude which has given foreigners the opportunity to

declare that the best Americans are ashamed of their own institutions.

But that apparent disposition to apologize already belongs to a past

time. No American, unless a fool, denies to-day the force of the

national character, whatever he or she may think of the behavior of

individuals; and on the other hand, is it not true that every State

in the Union has a rising population of young and middle-aged people

who have discovered, Congress and the public schools to the contrary

notwithstanding, that we do not know everything, and that the pathway

of national progress is more full of perplexities than our forests

were of trees when Daniel Boone built his log cabin in the wilds of

Kentucky? In short, the period of unintelligent jubilation on one

side, and carping cynicism on the other, have given place to a soberer

self-satisfaction. We cannot--why should we?--forget that our territory

is enormous, and that we soon shall be, if we are not already, the

richest nation on earth; that the United States is the professed asylum

and Mecca of hope for the despondent and oppressed of other countries;

and that we are the cynosure of the universe, as being the most

important exemplification of popular government which the world has

ever seen. At the same time, the claims put forth by our progenitors,

that American society is vastly superior to any other, and that the

effete world of Europe is put to the blush by the civic virtues of

the land of the free and the home of the brave, are no longer urged

except for the purposes of rodomontade. The average American of fifty

years ago--especially the frontiersman and pioneer, who swung his

axe to clear a homestead, and squirted tobacco-juice while he tilled

the prairie--really believed that our customs, opinions, and manner

of living, whether viewed from the moral, artistic, or intellectual

standpoint, were a vast improvement on those of any other nation.

But though most of us to-day recognize the absurdity of such a view,

we are most of us at the same time conscious of the belief that there

is a difference between us and the European which is not imaginary,

and which is the secret of our national force and originality.

International intercourse has served to open our eyes until they

have become as wide as saucers, with the consequence that, in

hundreds of branches of industry and art, we are studying Old World

methods; moreover, the pioneer strain of blood has been diluted by

hordes of immigrants of the scum of the earth. In spite of both these

circumstances, our faith in our originality and in the value of it

remains unshaken, and we are no less sure at heart that our salient

traits are noble ones, than the American of fifty years ago was sure

that we had the monopoly of all the virtues and all the arts. He really

meant only what we mean, but he had an unfortunate way of expressing

himself. We have learned better taste, and we do not hesitate nowadays

to devote our native humor to hitting hard the head of bunkum, which

used to be as sacred as a Hindoo god, and as rife as apple-blossoms in

this our beloved country.

What is the recipe for Americanism--that condition of the system

and blood, as it were, which even the immigrant without an ideal to

his own soul, seems often to acquire to some extent as soon as he

breathes the air of Castle Garden? It is difficult to define it in

set speech, for it seems almost an illusive and intangible quality

of being when fingered and held up to the light. It seems to me to

be, first of all, a consciousness of unfettered individuality coupled

with a determination to make the most of self. One great force of

the American character is its naturalness, which proceeds from a

total lack of traditional or inherited disposition to crook the knee

to any one. It never occurs to a good American to be obsequious. In

vulgar or ignorant personalities this point of view has sometimes

manifested itself, and continues to manifest itself, in swagger or

insolence, but in the finer form of nature appears as simplicity

of an unassertive yet dignified type. Gracious politeness, without

condescension on the one hand, or fawning on the other, is noticeably

a trait of the best element of American society, both among men and

women. Indeed, so valuable to character and ennobling is this native

freedom from servility, that it has in many cases in the past made odd

and unconventional manner and behavior seem attractive rather than a

blemish. Unconventionality is getting to be a thing of the past in this

country, and the representative American is at a disadvantage now, both

at home and abroad, if he lacks the ways of the best social world; he

can no longer afford to ignore cosmopolitan usages, and to rely solely

on a forceful or imposing personality; the world of London and Paris,

of New York and Washington and Chicago, has ceased to thrill, and is

scarcely amused, if he shows himself merely in the guise of a splendid

intellectual buffalo. But the best Americanism of to-day reveals itself

no less distinctly and unequivocally in simplicity bred of a lack of

self-consciousness and a lack of servility of mind. It seems to carry

with it a birthright of self-respect, which, if fitly worn, ennobles

the humblest citizen.

This national quality of self-respect is apt to be associated with

the desire for self-improvement or success. Indeed, it must engender

it, for it provides hope, and hope is the touchstone of energy. The

great energy of Americans is ascribed by some to the climate, and

it is probably true that the nervous temperaments of our people are

stimulated by the atmospheric conditions which surround us; but is it

not much more true that, just as it never occurs to the good American

to be servile, so he feels that his outlook upon the possibilities

of life is not limited or qualified, and that the world is really

his oyster? To be sure, this faith has been fostered by the almost

Aladdin-like opportunities which this great and rich new country of

ours has afforded. But whatever the reason for our native energy and

self-reliance, it indisputably exists, and is signally typical of the

American character. We are distinctly an ambitious, earnest people,

eager to make the most of ourselves individually, and we have attracted

the attention of the world by force of our independent activity of

thought and action. The extraordinary personality of Abraham Lincoln

is undoubtedly the best apotheosis yet presented of unadulterated

Americanism. In him the native stock was free from the foreign

influences and suggestions which affected, more or less, the people of

the East. His origin was of the humblest sort, and yet he presented

most saliently in his character the naturalness, nobility, and aspiring

energy of the nation. He made the most of himself by virtue of unusual

abilities, yet the key-note of their influence and force was a noble

simplicity and farsighted independence. In him the quintessence of the

Americanism of thirty years ago was summed up and expressed. In many

ways he was a riddle at first to the people of the cities of the East

in that, though their soul was his soul, his ways had almost ceased to

be their ways; but he stands before the world to-day as the foremost

interpreter of American ideas and American temper of thought as they

then existed.

In the thirty years since the death of Abraham Lincoln the country has

been inundated with foreign blood. Irish, Germans, English, Poles, and

Scandinavians, mainly of the pauper or peasant class, have landed in

large numbers, settled in one State or another, and become a part of

the population. The West, at the time of the Civil War, was chiefly

occupied by settlers of New England or Eastern stock--pioneers from the

older cities and towns who had sought fortune and a freer life in the

new territory of prairies and unappropriated domain. The population

of the whole country to-day bears many different strains of blood in

its veins. The original settlers have chiefly prospered. The sons of

those who split rails or followed kindred occupations in the fifties,

and listened to the debates between Lincoln and Douglas, are the

proprietors of Chicago, Denver, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Topeka.

Johann Heintz now follows the plough and in turn squirts tobacco-juice

while he tills the prairie; and Louis Levinsky, Paul Petrinoff, and

Michael O’Neil forge the plough-shares, dig in the mine, or work in

the factory side by side with John Smith and any descendant of Paul

Revere who has failed to prosper in life’s battle. But this is not

all. Not merely are the plain people in the dilemma of being unable

to pronounce the names of their neighbors, but the same is getting to

be true of the well-to-do merchants and tradespeople of many of our

cities. The argus-eyed commercial foreigner has marked us for his own,

and his kith and kin are to-day coming into possession of our drygoods

establishments, our restaurants, our cigar stores, our hotels, our

old furniture haunts, our theatres, our jewelry shops, and what not.

One has merely to open a directory in order to find the names in any

leading branch of trade plentifully larded with Adolph Stein, Simon

Levi, Gustave Cohen, or something ending in berger. They sell our

wool; they float our loans; they manufacture our sugar, our whiskey,

and our beer; they influence Congress. They are here for what they can

make, and they do not waste their time in sentiment. They did not come

in time to reap the original harvest, but they have blown across the

ocean to help the free-born American spend his money in the process of

trying to out-civilize Paris and London. As a consequence, the leading

wholesale and retail ornamental industries of New York and of some

of our Western cities are in the grip of individuals whose surnames

have a foreign twang. Of course, they have a right to be here; it is

a free country, and no one can say them nay. But we must take them

and their wives and daughters, their customs and their opinions, into

consideration in making an estimate of who are the Americans of the

present. They have not come here for their health, as the phrase is,

but they have come to stay. We at present, in our social hunger and

thirst, supply the grandest and dearest market of the world for the

disposal of everything beautiful and costly and artistic which the Old

World possesses, and all the shopkeepers of Europe, with the knowledge

of generations on the tips of their tongues and in the corners of their

brains, have come over to coin dowries for their daughters in the land

of the free and the home of the brave. Many of them have already made

large fortunes in the process, and are beginning to con the pages of

the late Ward McAllister’s book on etiquette with a view to social

aggressiveness.

Despite this infusion of foreign blood, the native stock and the

Anglo-Saxon nomenclature are still, of course, predominant in numbers.

There are some portions of the country where the late immigrant is

scarcely to be found. True also is it that these late-comers, like

the immigrants of fifty years ago, have generally been prompt in

appropriating the independent and energetic spirit typical of our

people. But there is a significant distinction to be borne in mind

in this connexion: The independent energy of the Americans of fifty

years ago, whether in the East or among the pioneers of the Western

frontier, was not, however crude its manifestations, mere bombastic

assertiveness, but the expression of a faith and the expression of

strong character. They were often ignorant, conceited, narrow, hard,

and signally inartistic; but they stood for principle and right as they

saw and believed it; they cherished ideals; they were firm as adamant

in their convictions; and God talked with them whether in the store or

workshop, or at the plough. This was essentially true of the rank and

file of the people, no less true and perhaps more true of the humblest

citizens than of the well-to-do and prominent.

There can be little doubt that the foreign element which is now a part

of the American people represents neither a faith nor the expression

of ideals or convictions. The one, and the largest portion of it, is

the overflow and riff-raff of the so-called proletariat of Europe;

the other is the evidence of a hyena-like excursion for the purposes

of plunder. In order to be a good American it is not enough to become

independent and energetic. The desire to make the most of one’s self

is a relative term; it must proceed from principle and be nourished

by worthy, ethical aims; otherwise it satisfies itself with paltry

conditions, or with easy-going florid materialism. The thieving and

venality in municipal political affairs of the Irish-American, the dull

squalor and brutish contentment of the Russian-Pole, and the commercial

obliquity of vision and earthy ambitions of the German Jew, are factors

in our national life which are totally foreign to the Americanism for

which Abraham Lincoln stood. We have opened our gates to a horde of

economic ruffians and malcontents, ethical bankrupts and social thugs,

and we must needs be on our guard lest their aims and point of view be

so engrafted on the public conscience as to sap the vital principles

which are the foundation of our strength as a people. The danger from

this source is all the greater from the fact that the point of view

of the American people has been changed so radically during the last

thirty years as a secondary result of our material prosperity. We have

ceased to be the austere nation we once were, and we have sensibly

let down the bars in the manner of our living; we have recognized the

value of, and we enjoy, many things which our fathers put from them

as inimical to republican virtue and demoralizing to society. Contact

with older civilizations has made us wiser and more appreciative, and

with this growth of perspective and the acquirement of an eye for

color has come a liberality of sentiment which threatens to debauch us

unless we are careful. There are many, especially among the wealthy and

fashionable, who in their ecstasy over our emancipation are disposed

to throw overboard everything which suggests the old _régime_, and to

introduce any custom which will tend to make life more easy-going and

spectacular. And in this they are supported by the immigrant foreigner,

who would be only too glad to see the land of his adoption made to

conform in all its usages to the land of his birth.

The conduct of life here has necessarily and beneficially been affected

by the almost general recognition that we have not a monopoly of all

the virtues, and by the adoption of many customs and points of view

recommended by cosmopolitan experience. The American people still

believe, however, that our civilization is not merely a repetition

of the older ones, and a duplication on new soil of the old social

tread-mill. That it must be so in a measure every one will admit, but

we still insist, and most of us believe, that we are to point the way

to a new dispensation. We believe, but at the same time when we stop to

think we find some difficulty in specifying exactly what we are doing

to justify the faith. It is easy enough to get tangled up in the stars

and stripes and cry “hurrah!” and to thrust the American eagle down the

throats of a weary universe, but it is quite another to command the

admiration of the world by behavior commensurate with our ambition and

self-confidence. Our forefathers could point to their own nakedness

as a proof of their greatness, but there seems to be some danger that

we, now that we have clothed ourselves--and clothed ourselves as

expensively as possible and not always in the best taste--will forget

the ideas and ideals for which those fathers stood, and let ourselves

be seduced by the specious doctrine that human nature is always human

nature, and that all civilizations are alike. To be sure, an American

now is apt to look and act like any other rational mortal, and there is

no denying that the Atlantic cable and ocean greyhound have brought the

nations of the world much closer together than they ever were before;

but this merely proves that we can become just like the others, only

worse, in case we choose to. But we intend to improve upon them.

To those who believe that we are going to improve upon them it must be

rather an edifying spectacle to observe the doings and sayings of that

body of people in the city of New York who figure in the newspapers of

the day as “the four hundred,” “the smart set,” or “the fashionable

world.” After taking into full account the claims of the sensitive

city of Chicago, it may be truthfully stated that the city of New

York is the Paris of America. There are other municipalities which

are doing their best in their several ways to rival her, but it is

toward New York that all the eyes in the country are turned, and from

which they take suggestion as a cat laps milk. The rest of us are in a

measure provincial. Many of us profess not to approve of New York, but,

though we cross ourselves piously, we take or read a New York daily

paper. New York gives the cue alike to the Secretary of the Treasury

and (by way of London) to the social swell. The ablest men in the

country seek New York as a market for their brains, and the wealthiest

people of the country move to New York to spend the patrimony which

their rail-splitting fathers or grandfathers accumulated. Therefore

it is perfectly just to refer to the social life of New York as

representative of that element of the American people which has been

most blessed with brains or fortune, and as representative of our most

highly evolved civilization. It ought to be our best. The men and

women who contribute to its movement and influence ought to be the

pick of the country. But what do we find? We find as the ostensible

leaders of New York society a set of shallow worldlings whose whole

existence is given up to emulating one another in elaborate and

splendid inane social fripperies. They dine and wine and dance and

entertain from January to December. Their houses, whether in town or

at the fashionable watering-places to which they move in summer, are

as sumptuous, if not more so, than those of the French nobility in its

palmiest days, and their energies are devoted to the discovery of new

expensive luxuries and fresh titillating creature comforts. That such

a body of people should exist in this country after little more than

a century of democratic institutions is extraordinary, but much more

extraordinary is the absorbing interest which a large portion of the

American public takes in the doings and sayings of this fashionable

rump. There is the disturbing feature of the case. Whatever these

worldlings do is flashed over the entire country, and is copied into a

thousand newspapers as being of vital concern to the health and home of

the nation. The editors print it because it is demanded; because they

have found that the free-born American citizen is keenly solicitous to

know “what is going on in society,” and that he or she follows with

almost feverish interest and with open-mouthed absorption the spangled

and jewelled annual social circus parade which goes on in the Paris of

America. The public is indifferently conscious that underneath this

frothy upper-crust in New York there is a large number of the ablest

men and women of the country by whose activities the great educational,

philanthropic, and artistic enterprises of the day have been fostered,

promoted, and made successful; but this consciousness pales into

secondary importance in the democratic mind as compared with realistic

details concerning this ball and that dinner-party where thousands

of dollars are poured out in vulgar extravagance, or concerning the

cost of the wedding-presents, the names and toilettes of the guests,

and the number of bottles of champagne opened at the marriage of some

millionaire’s daughter.

No wonder that this aristocracy of ours plumes itself on its

importance, and takes itself seriously when it finds its slightest

doings telegraphed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It feels itself

called to new efforts, for it understands with native shrewdness that

the American people requires novelty and fresh entertainment, or it

looks elsewhere. Accordingly it is beginning to be unfaithful to its

marriage vows. Until within a recent period the husbands and wives

of this vapid society have, much to the bewilderment of warm-blooded

students of manners and morals, been satisfied to flirt and produce the

appearance of infidelity, and yet only pretend. Now the divorce court

and the whispered or public scandal bear frequent testimony to the fact

that it is not so fashionable or “smart” as it used to be merely to

make believe.

Was there ever a foreign court, when foreign courts were in their

glory, where men and women were content merely to whisper and giggle

behind a rubber-tree in order to appear vicious? It may be said at

least that some of our fashionables have learned to be men and women

instead of mere simpering marionettes. Still there was originality in

being simpering marionettes: Marital infidelity has been the favorite

excitement of every rotten aristocracy which the world has ever seen.

The _Conduct of Life_.

II.

A manner of life of this description can scarcely be the ideal of

the American people. Certainly neither George Washington, when he

delivered his farewell address, nor Abraham Lincoln, on the occasion

of his second inaugural, looked forward to the evolution of any such

aristocracy as the fulfilment of the nation’s hopes. And yet this

coterie of people has its representatives in all the large cities of

the country, and there is no reason to doubt that in a short time the

example set will be imitated to some extent, at least, and that one

portion of the country will vie with another in extravagant social

vanities and prodigal display on the part of a pleasure-seeking leisure

class.

Most of these people go to church, and, indeed, some of them are

ostensibly regardful of church functions and ceremonies, and, as they

do not openly violate any laws so as to subject themselves to terms of

imprisonment, the patriotic American citizen finds himself able merely

to frown by way of showing his dissatisfaction at this form of high

treason against the morals and aims of democracy. To frown and to be

grateful that one is not like certain pleasure-seeking millionaires

is not much of a comfort, especially when it is obvious that the

ignorant and semi-ignorant mass is fascinated by the extravagances and

worldly manifestations of the individuals in question, and has made

them its heroes on account of their unadulterated millions. Indeed,

the self-respecting, patriotic American citizen finds himself to-day

veritably between Scylla and Charybdis in the matter of the conduct

of life. We are no longer the almost homogeneous nation we were fifty

years ago. There are far greater extremes of wealth and poverty. Our

economic conditions, or at least the conditions which exist in our

principal cities, are closely approximating those which exist in the

cities of the Old World. Outside of our cities the people for the most

part live in respectable comfort by the practice of what passes in

America for economy, which may be defined as a high but ignorant moral

purpose negatived by waste and domestic incompetence. It has always

been true of our beloved country that, though the ship of state has

seemed on the point of floundering from time to time, disaster has

invariably been averted at critical junctures by the saving grace of

the common-sense and right-mindedness of the American people. This is

not so complimentary as it sounds. It really means that the average

sense and intelligence of the public is apt to be in the wrong at the

outset, and to be converted to the right only after many days and much

tribulation. In other words, our safety and our progress have been the

result of a slow and often reluctant yielding of opinion by the mass

to the superior judgment of a minority. This is merely another way of

stating that, where every one has a right to individual opinion, and

there are no arbitrary standards of conduct or of anything else outside

the statute law, the mean is likely to fall far short of what is

best. Our salvation in every instance of national perplexity has been

the effectual working on the public conscience of the leaven of the

best Americanism. A comparatively small proportion of the population

have been the pioneers in thought and suggestion of subsequent ardent

espousals by the entire public. This leaven, in the days when we were

more homogeneous, was made up from all the elements of society; or, in

other words, the best Americanism drew its representatives from every

condition of life; the farmer of the Western prairie was just as likely

to tower above his fellows and become a torch-bearer as the merchant or

mechanic of the city.

If we as a nation have needed a leaven in the past, we certainly have

no less need of one to-day, now that we are in the flush of material

prosperity and consciousness of power. Fortunately we have one. The

public-spirited, nobly independent, earnest, conscientious, ambitious

American exists to-day as indisputably and unmistakably as ever, and

he is a finer specimen of humanity than he used to be, for he knows

more and he poses much less. It is safe to assert, too, that he is

still to be found in every walk of our national life. The existence

of an aggravating and frivolous aristocracy on the surface, and an

ignorant, unæsthetic mass underneath should not blind us to the fact

that there is a sound core to our social system. The hope of the United

States to-day lies in that large minority of the people who are really

trying to solve the problems of life from more than a merely selfish

standpoint. One has merely to think a moment in order to realize

what a really numerous and significant body among us is endeavoring

to promote the cause of American civilization by aspiring or decent

behavior. Our clergymen, our lawyers, our doctors, our architects,

our merchants, our teachers, some of our editors, our bankers, our

scientists, our scholars, and our philanthropists, at once stand out as

a generally sane and earnest force of citizens. The great educational,

charitable, artistic, and other undertakings which have been begun and

splendidly completed by individual energy and liberality since the

death of Abraham Lincoln, bespeak eloquently the temper of a certain

portion of the community. If it be true that the so-called aristocracy

of New York City threatens the repute and sincerity of democracy

by its heartlessness and unworthy attempts to ape the vices of a

fifteenth-century European nobility, New York can fairly retort that

it offers in its working force of well-to-do people the most vital,

interesting, sympathetic, and effective force of men and women in the

nation. If the Paris of America contains the most dangerous element

of society, it also contains an element which is equal to the best

elsewhere, and is more attractive than any. The New York man or woman

who is in earnest is sure to accomplish something, for he or she is

not likely to be handicapped by ignorant provincialism of ethics or art

which plays havoc with many of the good intentions of the rest of the

country.

This versatile and interesting leaven of American society finds its

counterpart, to a greater or less extent, in every section of the

United States, but it is nowhere quite so attractive as in the Paris

of America, for the reason that nowhere does the pulse of life move so

keenly as there, and nowhere is the science of living absorbingly so

well understood. The art of living has there reached a more interesting

phase than in any part of America, if zest in life and the facilities

to make the most of it are regarded as the test.

This may sound worldly. The people of the United States used to

consider it worldly to admire pictures or to listen to beautiful music.

Some think so still. Many a citizen of what was lately the prairie

sits down to his dinner in his shirt-sleeves to-day and pretends to

be thankful that he is neither an aristocrat nor a gold-bug. The next

week, perhaps, this same citizen will vote against a national bankrupt

law because he does not wish to pay his debts, or vote for a bill

which will enable him to pay them in depreciated currency. Many a

clergyman who knows better gives his flock consolingly to understand

that to be absorbed in the best human interests of life is unworthy

of the Christian, and that to be ordinary and unattractive is a

legitimate condition of mind and body. Surely the best Americanism is

the Americanism of the man or woman who makes the most of what this

life affords, and throws himself or herself keenly into the thick of

it. The art of living is the science of living nobly and well, and

how can one live either nobly or well by regarding life on the earth

as a mere log-cabin existence? If we in this country who seek to live

wisely are in danger from the extravagant vanities of the very rich,

we are scarcely less menaced by that narrow spirit of ethical teaching

which tries to inculcate that it does not much matter what our material

surroundings are, and that any progress made by society, except in the

direction of sheer morality, is a delusion and a snare.

Character is the basis and the indispensable requisite of the finest

humanity; without it refinement, appreciation, manners, fancy, and

power of expression are like so many boughs on a tree which is dead.

But, on the other hand, what is more uninspiring than an unadorned

soul? That kind of virtue and morality which finds no interest in the

affairs of this life is but a fresh contribution to the sum of human

incompetence, and but serves to retard the progress of civilization.

The true and the chief reason why there is less misery in the world

than formerly is that men understand better how to live. That

straight-laced type of American, who is content to be moral in his own

narrow way, and to exclude from his scheme of life all those interests

which serve to refine and to inspire, bears the same relation to the

ideal man or woman that a chromo bears to a masterpiece of painting.

We have no standards in this country. The individual is free to express

himself here within the law in any way he sees fit, and the conduct

of life comes always at last to an equation of the individual. Each

one of us when we awake in the morning finds the problem of existence

staring him anew in the face, and cannot always spare the time to

remember that he is an American. And yet Americanism is the sum total

of what all of us are. It will be very easy for us simply to imitate

the civilizations of the past, but if our civilization is to stand for

anything vital, and to be a step forward in the progress of humanity,

we must do more than use the old combinations and devices of society in

a new kaleidoscopic form. Our heritage as Americans is independence,

originality, self-reliance, and sympathetic energy animated by a strong

ethical instinct, and these are forces which can produce a higher and

a broader civilization than the world has yet seen if we choose to

have it so. But it is no longer a matter of cutting down forests and

opening mines, of boasting beside the plough and building cities in

a single year, of fabulous fortunes won in a trice, and of favorite

sons in black broadcloth all the year round. It is a matter of a vast,

populous country and a powerful, seething civilization where the same

problems confront us which have taxed the minds and souls of the Old

World for generations of men. It is for our originality to throw new

light upon them, and it is for our independence to face them in the

spirit of a deeper sympathy with humanity, and free from the canker of

that utter selfishness which has made the prosperity and glory of other

great nations culminate so often in a decadence of degrading luxury and

fruitless culture.

No civilization which regards the blessings and comforts of refined

living as unworthy to be striven for and appropriated can hope to

promote the cause of humanity. On the other hand, we Americans must

remember that purely selfish appropriation and appreciation of

these blessings and comforts has worked the ruin of the most famous

civilizations of the past. Marie Antoinette was more elegant than the

most fashionable woman in New York, and yet that did not save her

from the tumbrel and the axe. The best Americanism of to-day and for

the future is that which shall seek to use the fruits of the earth

and the fulness thereof, and to develop all the manifestations of art

and gentle living in the interest of humanity as a whole. But even

heartless elegance is preferable to that self-righteous commonness

of spirit which sits at home in its shirt-sleeves and is graceless,

ascetic, and unimaginative in the name of God.

_THE END_

[Illustration]

_D. B. Updike

The Merrymount Press

104 Chestnut Street

Boston_