LETTERS.—A CONVERSATION.
“OAKDALE, _June 25, 18—._
“MY DEAR GIRL: I have just come from Mrs. Buzzell’s. It is about the
happiest family I ever knew. The baby flourishes like a weed, and is as
pretty a child as you would wish to see, and actually resembles your
mother so much that everybody remarks it. This is a piece of poetic
justice that makes me grin with delight. She ignores still the existence
of Susie, the child, and good Mrs. Buzzell; but she is the only one who
hears anything from Dan. He is in San Francisco, and wears a huge
diamond. That is all I know of my only son.
“Susie’s new establishment for flower culture is a perennial delight.
She has written you, so you are doubtless posted as to the money she
made last winter. Everything promises well for the next. She is bound to
succeed, and if she had capital, could build up a fine business; but
what is better than all, is the fact that she has outgrown all her
heart-aches, and is really and truly happy. See, my girl, what we have
done for her! When we remember how ignorant she was, how deficient in
any moral or other training, and therefore how certain to be guided by
her emotions, if we had ‘passed by on the other side,’ like the rest,
she might have been damned beyond salvation; yet still I doubt it after
all. She reads a great deal, and is the best patron of the new
circulating library. ‘Give me a list of books,’ she said to me, ‘that
you know are good. If I select for myself I shall waste time, and I want
to make up for what I have lost.’ Some people would call this lack of
individuality, but the fact is, it is real wisdom. Life is too short to
read all the books of unknown and new authors. Let them sift through the
ten million general readers of the country. If anything is too big to go
through the sieve, there will be a noise about it, and then it is time
for the discriminate to take it up. Susie devours history, biography,
travels, and entertains me greatly by her fresh comments upon them. She
has not yet complained of my selection being too serious for her. You
see, I keep a copy of my lists, and when I think the pabulum too
nutritious, I throw in a few lollypops in the shape of novels, though I
don’t mean to include all novels under that head. Have you read George
Eliot’s last? I ask, because I would have you not only read, but read
very carefully, everything she writes. In my opinion she is the closest
observer and the profoundest thinker among women to-day. Susie has an
appreciation of her that is delightful to me. You know, of course, that
I am teaching Susie French and natural philosophy. Upon my word, I think
I missed my calling. I should have been a teacher of girls—women I
should say, for girls are only interesting because they are women _in
posse_.
“The great event in Oakdale is the arrival of the Count Von Frauenstein.
I met him at the Kendrick’s last night, and I like him more than any man
I ever met. That is saying a good deal, but I know when a man has the
ring of the true metal. He is a Prussian by birth, but no more belongs
to that country than I do to this 10 × 12 study. In fact, he is a
genuine cosmopolitan. He graduated at Cambridge, for his family took up
their residence in England when he was a boy; then he took a degree in
Philosophy in Heidelberg (which don’t count for much in my opinion),
then lived some years in France, where he was sent on some government
business. Some years ago he came into his inheritance, when he made for
this country for the purpose of investing it. Kendrick says he is worth
two millions to his knowledge, and much more in all probability.
Kendrick is laying pipe to interest him in the new insurance company,
but so far has only succeeded in getting him to help on the new
railroad.
“It was a very stylish affair, the Kendrick reception last night; music,
_chef d’œuvres_ of confectionery, ladies in _undress_, and all that.
Your mother was furious about the display of charms, and of course I
defended it—not on principle, but because she was too savage. Leila and
Linnie were invited, and they would have rejoiced in a state of
_décollété_ extending to their boots, I think. Your mother compromised
the matter with black lace, and so they still live. Frauenstein has a
fine voice, and Linnie was in the seventh heaven when she got a chance
to play him an accompaniment to a song from _Der Freischutz_.
“I never met a real lion in society before, and I studied both with
interest. This fashionable society is nothing, after all, but a kind of
licensed policy-shop. They want Frauenstein’s money, and Kendrick thinks
he has the best right to it because his cousin was Frauenstein’s
mother—an American woman; so you see he has blood! The Delanos are
related to him in about the same degree; so of course you have heard of
him. I like the count for one reason, and this is, that notwithstanding
the display and cajolery of the women, and the flattery of most of the
men, he had the good taste to talk with your old doctor more than to any
one there; so the race is not wholly degenerate! In politics he is
soundly radical, and hates war like a Quaker. He sees in it the
degradation of the people. It was refreshing to hear him talk. He says
the wealth-producers of the world are not dependent upon capital so much
as capital upon them, if they only knew it; for they have everything in
their own hands, and are slowly coming to realize the fact, and to see
how they can organize and accomplish great things. He was very eloquent
when the subject of education came up, and presented the whole matter in
a clear and new light to most of those who heard him. He said it was a
disgrace to the age that we have no text-book of morals for the public
schools; and as the various systems of religion have monopolized the
teaching of codes of morals, by shutting out all religious instruction,
we have shut out moral training as well. It is right to exclude all
creeds from schools supported by the people, but it is a great and vital
error to deprive the young of constant and unremitting instruction in
the laws that should govern human beings in their mutual relations. He
would have a text-book on morals compiled from the writings of all the
great teachers, whether pagan or Christian, excluding every myth and
unverifiable hypothesis. Such a book could be made as acceptable to all
religious sects, as works on arithmetic or chemistry now are. He talked
also of woman’s coming position as that of perfect social and political
equality. It is astonishing how radical Kendrick, old priest Cooke, and
many other out-of-her-sphere noodles, have suddenly become. Kendrick
actually assented to the very propositions he has repeatedly pooh-pooed
when presented by me. I made him feel a little uncomfortable by saying,
‘Mind, Kendrick! I shall see that you stick to that.’
“I come now to the important part of your letter. The old Serpent has
got into your Eden. Two things I would say to you as a preliminary:
first, don’t go off at half-cock. This is a common weakness of women.
Second, don’t expect better bread than can be made of wheat. Your Albert
is not so fine in nature as you supposed, or the fact of your being
unhappy, even disturbed in your mind about his affection, would be the
very strongest motive to self-examination. For myself, I don’t much
believe in marriage, any way: it don’t seem to work. If it could be
prevented until the age of forty or so, it would work better. If you
were an ordinary woman, I should recommend flirting; but that would be
useless in your case. So, my girl, I cannot help you as I would. I need
not dwell on my feelings in the matter. In such cases there is only one
physician, and he is the old mower with the hour-glass. Do not forget,
that although a woman, you are really a philosopher. Love is not all
there is of life; and as you depend less on its intoxication for your
happiness, the more smoothly will work the machinery of destiny, just as
the circulation of the blood is effected more normally when we trust to
Nature, instead of trying to aid her by counting the beating of our
hearts.
“The truth is, I am at a sad loss what to write you on this matter. I
feel sure that you will act wisely, and be unjust to no one. The best I
can do is to trust to your finer instincts. Action and reaction are
equal: so the doctrine of eternal rewards and punishments is true in
principle, though we look for heaven and hell in the wrong places. Be
sure that Nature always restores the equilibrium. This is always the
thought that I comfort myself with. It answers the place that praying
does to the devotee. Nature’s laws are immutable, and cannot fail us. Be
patient, dear girl, and know that there is one old fellow on whom you
can rely, no matter what may happen.
“Yours, as you know,
“G. F.”
To the ordinary observer, there might not seem to be anything in the
doctor’s letter to his daughter that should move her deeply; yet she
read all the latter part of it through blinding tears. She received it a
few days after her reconciliation with Albert, and answered it
immediately as follows:
“DEAR, DEAR PAPA: Your letter consoles and blesses me, but I almost
regret mentioning my troubles to you. I _feel_ how they sink into your
heart, and as I read I was filled with gratitude by the thought that you
are still strong and hale and may live as long as I do, which I
fervently desire. The very thought of losing you, is terrible. No one
can ever understand me like my good, my precious, father. Your character
is my ideal of all that is noble in manhood, and it was not wise,
perhaps, for me to marry, because I must measure all men by your
standard, and then be disappointed when they fall below it. I am
unreasonable. I should never expect to find any one with your sense of
justice, or with your delicate appreciation of everything fine in human
motives. I could never deceive you: you see below the surface. I can
deceive Albert, and do constantly, and hate myself for it. I can make
him happy by wearing a smiling face when my heart is as heavy as lead.
About a week ago we had an explanation. He confessed he had been wrong,
had neglected my love, and we cried together, and _played_ that all our
clouds had passed forever. I thought it was possible; but there is
something false and forced about our re-established happiness, that
mocks our once proud state like a beggar’s rags upon a king. Still, I am
much happier. I try to dress more showily. Albert likes the
lilies-of-the-field style of Ella. Think of your Clara’s pride! She
enters the lists in a toilet display to regain the admiration of her
husband. Is it not pitiful?
“O papa, what am I saying? I meant to write you such a happy letter, but
I fear the iron has entered my soul; yet I would not try, even for your
sake, to deceive you, and believe me, I am suffering very little now,
and I really think I shall recover my lost state. It is this hope that
sustains me; but if I am disappointed, I shall rise above it and live. I
am papa’s own girl, and more proud of being the daughter of such a man
than I should be in being the queen of the grandest monarch that ever
lived. If for no other reason than for your sake, I would bear up
philosophically.
“‘What matters it if I be loved or not?
And what if he who works shall be forgot?
The work of Love is no less surely wrought,
And the great world shall answer me.’
“Are not those grand words? They have just come to the surface of my
memory, like the artist’s negative under the developing solution. I mean
to keep them before me henceforth, like the _mene tekel_ on Belshazzar’s
wall.
“Good-bye, dearest father, mine. I have written myself into a horrid
mood. I have written to Susie, mamma, and others. Trust me, and believe
in the good sense of
“PAPA’S OWN GIRL.
“P. S.—I _can_ write a letter without a _post scriptum_. You will bear
me witness; but I must say just this: _do not be worried about me so
long as I am silent_.
“C. F. D.”
The next day the White Mountains party set out on their journey, where
we will leave them for the present and go back to Oakdale.
The time is sunset, and it is summer. A little child, whose flesh seems
moulded from its mother’s milk, is playing on the little green lawn
before Mrs. Buzzell’s porch. It is a creature of exuberant life, of
movement incessant, of inexhaustible joy. She has pure blue eyes, and
her hair is long, straight, and fine like spun gold. It dances and
streams out in the sunlight with the movements of her little frame, as
she dances, and laughs, and sings. At first, being carefully and very
coquettishly dressed by “Auntie,” and let loose upon the lawn, it was
joy enough to simply dance and carol in the sunlight, but soon this
ceased to suffice her. Her active brain and fingers must have more
positive occupation; and a few minutes later “Auntie,” coming out on the
porch, discovered the sprite pirouetting around her beautiful caladium,
a huge leaf-tip in each dimpled hand.
“Min! Min! what _are_ you doing?” The electric current of joy was cut
off instantly, and the child pouted:—
“I’m only dancing with auntie’s _cladium_.”
“Will you let my _cladium_, as you call it, alone? I won’t have its
leaves twisted to rags.” But further admonition was unnecessary, for
Minnie descried a well-known horse and “sulky,” and she ran toward the
gate, crowing at the top of her voice. The doctor jumped out of the
vehicle and took the child in his arms, saying, “Well, how is my little
Min to-day?”
“Auntie’s cwoss,” was the somewhat irrelevant response.
“Cross, is she?” he repeated, taking Mrs. Buzzell’s hand; “then Minnie
must have been a naughty girl.”
“No, se wasn’t naughty; an auntie nee’n’t be so _wough_” (rough).
She was one of those elfin creatures whose accents and gestures, and
charming self-asserting confidence that the machinery of the universe is
run for their special amusement, make it difficult to resist indulging
them in every way. Minnie made you laugh at her, and then she felt sure
of her victory over you. The only dispute Mrs. Buzzell and Susie had
ever had, was on Min’s account; the former declaring that Susie was not
quite tender enough to the child. Susie replied, “I think I love her as
much as any mother should. I shall devote my life principally to her
care and education; but I cannot spend so much time in amusing her as
you do, unless I neglect what is of far more consequence.”
Susie was reading when the doctor entered. She rose, and greeting him,
as she always did, with frank cordiality, held out her book. It was a
copy of _Roderick Random_.
“Doctor, you choose my serious reading, I believe with exemplary
discretion; but shall I waste my precious time and peril my immortal
soul over such trash as this? Trash is too flattering a name for it. I
must borrow yours. I call it, unqualifiedly, _rot_.” The doctor laughed,
and said:
“Why, you must have some light reading.”
“Thank you; but the levity of this is too great altogether.”
“You see, I don’t know much about modern novels; so after George Sand,
George Eliot, Thackeray, Balzac, and Dickens, I’ve reached the end of my
tether, and fall back upon the old standard stock.”
“Standard!” repeated Susie. “If this is a standard, I pity the dwarf
varieties.”
“You borrow your rhetorical figure from your business. It smells of the
shop,” said the doctor smiling.
“Listen! ‘O Jesus! the very features of Mr. Random! So saying, Narcissus
kissed it with surprising ardor, sheds a flood of tears, and then
deposited the lifeless image in her lovely bosom.’ Then,” said Susie,
explaining, “Mr. Random broke from his concealment, when Narcissus
‘uttered a fearful shriek, and fainted in the arms of her companion.’
Then Roderick, telling his story, says: ‘Oh that I were endowed with the
expression of a Raphael, the graces of a Guido, the magic touches of a
Titian, that I might represent the fond concern, the chastened rapture
and ingenuous blush, that mingled on her beauteous face when she opened
her eyes upon me, and pronounced, _O heavens! is it you?_’”
The doctor laughed like a boy. “Why,” said he, “I know any quantity of
young women who would read that with rapture.”
“And would they this?” asked Susie, reading the last sentence of the
book.
“Ah? I confess that is utter nastiness. Smollet! rot!”
“We have just finished Richardson’s _Pamela_, taking turns reading it to
each other while sewing,” said Mrs. Buzzell. “I can scarcely believe
that it is the same story that, in my mother’s time, was read aloud in
the best family circles. Why, I consider it positively indecent.”
“You musn’t think, doctor, that I am not glad to have read these books,”
said Susie; “they are very interesting, as showing the taste of a
century ago. It must be that we are now much more refined than people
were then.”
“Certainly we are,” said the doctor. “With the invention of the
steam-engine and the telegraph, our means of communication with each
other all over the world are immeasurably greater, and this is the
proximate cause of modern culture. Isolation of the community, the
family or the individual favors the savage state, while aggregation
tends to stimulate urbanity, generosity, and all our higher faculties.
See, therefore, how false the religious teaching that exalted hermits
and ascetics of all kinds. Self-torture the church considered
praiseworthy, and even to-day we hear of the ‘mortification of the
flesh,’ for God is still a being to be propitiated by the agonies of his
creatures. Wherever that conception of Nature or God prevails, we may
recognize the traces of the savage, and the absence of any real
vitalizing faith. The only living faith to-day you will find among those
called unbelievers or infidels—men devoted to the discovery of
scientific methods. To them Nature is never inimical to man.”
“_Is_ Nature never inimical to man?” queried Susie. “Does not the cold
freeze him, the sun scorch him, the water drown him, wild beasts devour
him, the earthquake and the lightning destroy him, as well as disease
and accident?”
“Ah!” said the doctor. “What do we mean by man? Do we mean the savage
who has command of a few of his forces, or the integrally-developed
human being, commanding all his forces, and through this command,
setting himself in harmony with Nature,
“‘Like perfect music unto noble words?’
Man has not accomplished this, hence the use of faith. The best thinkers
to-day have the strongest faith that we are to obtain further and more
complete control over the elements; that we are to control the weather,
the climate, and make the planet a stately Eden, fit for the emancipated
human race. Is not that a sublime faith?”
“A much more difficult faith,” said Mrs. Buzzell, “than any I know of.”
“To me it is very simple; simpler far than all others,” said the doctor.
“No one can deny that the whole history of human beings on this planet
is a history of extending and harmonizing their mutual relations and
interests. See the savage. He is at war with all his kind, like the
beast, except, perhaps, a chosen female of his species; then, when he
has risen a little higher, he establishes a harmony of interest in the
family, the tribe, then throughout the race constituting the different
tribes, and so a nation is developed—at war, of course, with all other
nations, and calling all foreigners barbarians. Then nations recognize
each other, and evolve codes of international law, and cease preying
upon each other. Have we reached the acme of human progress? So
doubtless the savage thought when he had invented a stone knife to scalp
his neighbor. When the steam-engine was utilized, who was not satisfied
when news could fly over the country at the rate of thirty miles an
hour? Who then, except the scientist, would have believed that we should
literally ‘put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes?’ To me, and
many others, this increase of harmony among different peoples, points
unerringly to the time when the higher nature of man will rule, when his
intelligence will come to comprehend the harmony of all human interests,
and his affections embrace all mankind as brothers. This is our
millennium, Mrs. Buzzell—the reign of peace, harmony, and love.”
“Amen!” said Mrs. Buzzell, who was holding the sleeping Minnie in her
arms.
“We cannot really disagree,” said Susie, “whatever our different creeds,
if we only love God in the right way, and that is through faith in
humanity. It is because we have not sufficient faith in humanity, that
we are so selfish and dishonest.”
“That is very true, Susie; but we have not yet the conditions for
showing our faith. We shall finally, in the general, concerted action of
the world toward great ends. Our forces now are ‘like sweet bells
jangled.’ Melodies are first created, then harmonies, and lastly, grand
symphonies.”