saying to yourself, when you waken in the morning, "Everything is all
right," and keep on saying it. You will be surprised to find how
nearly "all right" the mere saying of it at the beginning of the day
will really make everything, after all. This is true of business as
well as of the new home. Prophets of gloom are never popular, and
ought not to be.
Then, too, a quiet cheeriness of heart makes you treat your fellow man
better; and this is important in your dealings with other human male
animals. They will make it unpleasant for you if you don't. But it is
far more important in your new home than it is out in the world of
men. That is what the new home is for--to exercise and multiply the
beauties of character and conduct.
Returning again to the view-point of business wisdom, you cannot treat
your wife too well, as a mere matter of policy--though you will never
treat her well, nor anybody else, from that low motive. I am merely
calling the attention of your commercial mind to the fact that there
are actually dollars and cents in a reputation for chivalrous bearing
in your new home.
You know yourself how you feel toward a man of whom everybody says,
"He is good to his wife." Everybody wants to help that kind of a
fellow. If he is a strong man, his community glories in his strength
and increases it by their admiration and support. If he is not a
strong man, everybody wishes that he were, and tries in a thousand
ways, which a general kindly disposition toward him suggests, to
supply his deficiencies.
And this is no jug-handled rule either. The same thing is true of the
wife. When her acquaintances declare of any woman, "She is lovely in
her home," they have placed upon her brow the crown of their ultimate
tribute and regard. It depends upon both, of course, whether these
domestic beatitudes will exist in the new home.
Undoubtedly, however, it depends upon the young man more than the
young woman. He is a _man_--and that is everything. And being a man,
he should have a large and kindly forbearance, a sort of soothing
strength and calming serenity. And to all this the rule of smile and
cheeriness is helpful, if not essential.
When I was a boy in the logging-camps, I read in some stray newspaper
an article about the influence which the pleasant countenance
exercises over groups of men. The idea was that men work willingly
under the control of a strong man who is strong enough to carry in his
daily look the suggestion of a smile. It worked splendidly. It has
never been satisfactorily explained why it is next to impossible for a
man "to be down on his luck" if he will only keep the corners of his
mouth turned up. Perhaps it is the mental effort of forcing this
mechanism of a smile which brings a really happy state of mind.
Whatever the cause, it is literally true that you cannot look blackly
on the world and your own fortunes if the lines of your face are
ascending instead of drooping. This muscular state of your countenance
is connected in some strange way with that mysterious thing called the
mind; for you will find, if you try it, that a sort of serenity of
soul comes to you, and a strong confidence that "everything will come
out right in the end." When we Americans are older we shall pay more
attention to these things.
The Japanese neglect none of these deep psychological truths in
warfare. It is said that they are taught to smile in action, and
especially when they charge. Doubtless this report is true. It has at
bottom the same reason that music in battle has. What could be more
terrifying than the approach of an enemy determined on your death, and
who looks upon your execution as so pleasant and easy a thing that he
smiles about it or who regards his own possible extinction as no
unhappy consummation?
Also it is interesting to note how a pleasant expression begets its
like. I have observed this even in Manchuria, and other parts of
China--a smile unfailingly won a return smile from children who were
watching you from the fields, whereas a frown would instantly becloud
the little face with a kindred expression of disfavor. I am spending a
good deal of time upon this item of good cheer in the new home,
because I think that as long as happiness surrounds the American
fireside all is well with the Republic.
There is no investment which yields such dividends as the society you
will find in your home. The company, the talk, the silent sympathy of
that sagacious and congenial person who is your wife yield a return in
spirit, wisdom, moral tone, and pure pleasure to be found in like
measure nowhere else on earth.
It is said that Charles James Fox, the most resourceful debater the
British Parliament has ever seen, was so fond of his home and his wife
that he would actually absent himself from Parliament for the sheer
pleasure of her presence and conversation. Lord Beaconsfield, who, we
are told, married for the mere purpose of ambition, afterward fell
deeply in love with his wife and spent every moment he could in her
society. She proved, too, to be his shrewdest counselor.
Bismarck's boundless love for his princess increased with the years;
yet she was chiefly, and perhaps only, a German "hausfrau"--an ideal
housewife. The German people particularly loved the wife of Bismarck
because of these exclusively domestic traits. Perhaps that was why he
adored her more and more as the years went by. Gladstone, who was a
very surly and irritable person, declared that his wife had made his
life "cushiony."
Of course it is taken for granted in this paper that the young
American wife is this kind of a woman--wise and gentle and
good-natured--above all things good-natured. For says the Bible, "It
is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an
angry woman." But read what is written in the Book of the right kind
of a woman--one "in whose tongue is the law of kindness," as the
Scriptures' exquisite phraseology has it.
I don't like the tone of the common comment of the American medical
profession about the neurotic condition of our American women. Our
physicians are saying that there is not one American woman in a
hundred who is nervously normal. The profession declares that they are
excitable, irritable, peevish, and that this unfortunate state is
produced by the unnatural and absurd tension they are under all the
time.
Their so-called "social duties"; the minute and nerve-destroying
precision of their housekeeping; their unnecessary overloading of
themselves with tasks futile and fictitious; the determination to
"appear" a little better than their neighbors, and, above all, to have
their children (their _one_ or _two_ children) particularly spick and
span; the long catalogue of folly into which our high-geared, modern
civilization has led our women, and through no fault of theirs--"all
these," said an eminent neurologist, in talking of this absorbing
topic, "are impairing the agreeableness and curtailing the usefulness
of our women, and will in the end destroy our women themselves."
I hope it is not true. If it is true, we had better find the cause of
it and apply the remedy, or we are a lost people; for that nation is
doomed whose women have ceased to be vital, good-tempered, and
home-loving.
May not the too heavy early education of young girls have something to
do with this later desperation of their nerves? Is not the blood taken
from vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of
womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that
brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings?
While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent
brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the
delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I
venture no opinion here--I merely suggest the query. Why don't the
doctors begin a crusade about this? It is their business.
The keen, practical sense of women in purely business affairs has been
noted in other papers, and the causes of it. The young man who
neglects this helpfulness simply throws away wisdom. Not to counsel
with your wife on business matters that affect your mutual fortune is
sheer stupidity. Also, it is morally wrong. From the very nature of
her she is more interested than you in strengthening the walls of your
new home, in making your joint experiment in the living of life a
beautiful success. Her words are the counsel of instinct, and
therefore of Nature. And Nature is wise.
Of course there are some things you cannot tell her. If you are a
lawyer, or a doctor, you are dishonorable if you tell your wife or any
other human being any secret of client or patient. Not that she is not
to be trusted--for she is. She will carry to her grave any secret that
affects you. But the disclosures of client or patient are not _your_
secrets. If they were, she would be entitled to know them--ought to
know them. But no woman of sense will permit you to tell her any
professional confidences. Don't expect her to be helpful to you in
your profession or occupation except by counsel.
Of course there is the great and inestimable help that comes from the
mere fact that she is your wife. After all, that is the very greatest
help any woman can be to any man. The care of home, the upbringing of
children, the strengthening of a husband's character here and there,
the detection of those thousand little vices of manner and speech and
thought which develop in every man--in short, the living of a natural
woman's life--is the only method of real helpfulness of a woman to a
man. And it is a priceless helpfulness.
Particularly is this true of political life and career. A man who must
be lifted to distinction by his wife's apron-strings, does not deserve
distinction. In the end, he does not get it--the apron-strings usually
break, and they ought to break. It may be stated as a general truth
that a man is never helped by the active participation of the wife in
his political affairs.
There are notable exceptions, just as there are to every rule. But as
a generalization this statement is accurate. Men resent that kind of
thing in politics. They want a man who aspires to anything to be
worthy of that thing on his own account. They want their leader to be
a leader; and no leader is "managed" in politics by his wife. They are
right about it, too. But whether they are right or wrong, that is the
way they feel.
So the only help which a woman can be to a man in politics is just to
be a wife in all that that term implies. And what greater help than
that could there be? She who impresses the American millions with the
fact that she is the ideal wife and mother has made the strongest,
subtlest appeal to the nation. But she cannot do this by "mixing up in
politics," by trying to plan and manage her husband's campaigns, and
so forth. For the people's instinct is unerring. We Americans are a
home-making and a home-loving people; and as a people we adore the
American wife and mother--the maker and keeper of the American home.
So you attend to your politics or your business and let your wife
attend to hers; and she will be happy and glad to make your home the
exclusive scene of her activities if you will only be man enough to do
a man's full part in the world and leave no room for a woman of spirit
to see that you are not doing a man's full part, and, therefore, to
try to help you out.
I sometimes think that the propaganda that woman is the equal of man,
and that it is all right for her to take on man's work in business and
the professions, is due not so much to an abnormal development in her
character as it is to a decadence in our manhood. At least I have
always observed that the wife of a really masterful man finds her
greatest happiness in being merely his wife, and never attempts to
take any of his tasks upon her. And why should she assume his labor?
Her natural work in the world is as much harder than his as it is
nobler and finer.
Speaking of politics, I have always thought men, young and old, ought
to consult their wives and families about how they cast their ballot.
What right has any man to vote as he individually thinks best? He is
the head of the family, it is true, but he is only one of the family,
after all. This Republic is not made up of individuals; it is made up
of families. Its unit is not the boarding-house, but the home.
The Senate of the United States is the greatest forum of free debate
on earth; but the counsel of the American fireside is far more
powerful. Wife and children have a vital interest in every ballot
deposited by father and husband--an interest as definite and tangible
as his own. Every voter, therefore, ought to discuss with wife and
children, with parents, brothers, and sisters, all public questions,
and vote according to the composite family conviction.
No greater method of public safety can be imagined than for the
American family to "size up" the American public man, and then have
the voters of that family sustain or reject him at the polls,
according to the verdict of the household. If such were the rule, only
those men who are of the people when they are first placed in public
office, and who keep close to the people ever after, would be elected
to anything.
Such a method, too, would insure a steadier current of national
policy, subject to fewer variations. There would not be so many fads
to deflect sound and sane statesmanship. So by all means, young man,
begin your career as a citizen by making your wife a partner in every
vote you cast.
Nobody denies that men and women should have equality of privilege and
equality of rights; but equality of duties and similarity of work is
absurd. The contrary idea was beautifully satirized in the now famous
toast:
"Here's to our women: God bless them! Once our superiors, now our
equals."
The truth is that it is impossible to compare men and women. They are
not the same beings. They have different characteristics, different
methods, different capacities, and different view-points of life. Each
supplements the other. Doubtless the woman has the choicer lot. Surely
this is true abstractly speaking. Suppose we should all stand
disembodied souls, or rather unembodied souls, on the edge of the
forming universe; and suppose that, to these abstract intelligences,
the Creator should say:
"I am forming the universe. I am creating a wonderful place called
Earth. I am going to clothe you each in human form, marvelously and
beautifully made, the highest work of my hands. Some of you shall be
men. To these men I will give the task of labor in the fields, of
warfare with wild beasts. It shall be your duty to subdue
wildernesses, and to construct and defend a dwelling-place for this
other one whom I am going to make a woman. Therefore I shall give you
men large bones to deal strong blows, and a heavy skull to withstand
the like. I shall give you courage and physical power and audacity and
daring.
"The woman's mission shall be different. _It shall be for her to
create and preserve human happiness._ She shall do this in the
dwelling-place which the man constructs for her, and which will be
called home. There shall she bind up his wounds and give him rest and
comfort. I will give into her keeping also the making of the race, and
thus the control of the destiny of the world. And so this woman shall
be given delicate bones and a deft touch and voice of music and eye of
peace and heart of tenderness and mind of beautiful wisdom."
Does this comparison not make it clear that woman has by far a more
exalted mission than man? But the mission of both man and woman is
sufficiently grand and noble if each performs it, and within its
limitations is content.
Have plenty of friends. Cultivate them. You cultivate your business.
You cultivate vegetables. But friends are more precious than either
business or vegetables. Cultivate friends, therefore. Call on them and
let them call on you. And do it in the good old-fashioned, hearty,
American way.
But be sure you make your friends for the sake of the relation itself.
Do not misuse that sacred relation for your personal advantage. Do not
make friends for the purposes of success. Make friends for the
purposes of friendship. Be true to them, therefore. Don't neglect them
when they can no longer serve you. And serve you them. And let your
service to your friends be a glad service, a service which is its own
reward.
He who seeks another's friendship because he needs it in his politics
or business, will throw that friendship away like a worn-out glove
when his ends have been accomplished. Make friends and nourish
friendship because friends and friendships are life itself. Remember
that you do not live in order to achieve success; you achieve success
in order to live.
It is the twentieth century you are living in--don't forget that. Keep
up, therefore; keep abreast of things. Keep in the current of the
world's thought and feeling. Newspapers are literally indispensable to
you; and you should take two of them--the morning paper and the
evening paper. Get up fifteen minutes earlier in the morning, so that
you may have time to look over the morning paper carefully.
Do not read it idly. Read it with discrimination. And do not read it
without discussing it with your little family. The war in Manchuria,
the character of a public man, the policy of an administration, the
state of the Nation's business--all these are mental food which you
need as much as you need your breakfast. One thoroughly up-to-date
magazine also is helpful. Build you a library also. You do not want
the new home to be a mere physical habitation. You want it to be a
home for the mind as well as the body, do you not?
I heard of a young lawyer who put aside a little of every fee as a
sinking-fund for a library. He and his wife bought books with
that--not books for the office, but books for their home. He
succeeded--"won out"--"won out" with his cases, which was his
profession's business, and "won out" with his happiness and hers,
which was his life's business.
The theater is the highest form of combined education, amusement, and
repose which human intelligence has yet invented. It was so in Greece,
and it is so now. The theater occasionally is good for you. But let
the play you go to see be high-grade. Inferior performances on the
stage will destroy your taste as surely as will the continued
propinquity of poor pictures. The same is true of music.
Music has a mysterious quality which exalts. It has been noted that
soldiers gladly go to their death under its influence, who otherwise
would fight unwillingly. It is a great producer of thought also. Some
men can write well only under its inspiration. Educate yourself _up_
in it, therefore. Do not be content with the simple melodies and old
songs. They will never lose their charm, and ought not; but they are
not the best which music has for you.
What I am now insisting upon is a constant and careful nourishment of
the mind and soul within you, so that the new home may each day be
more and more the dwelling-place of beauty and the abode of real
happiness. You cannot think of the old home without thinking of your
mother; and you cannot think of your mother without thinking of the
Bible.
A young man and a young woman who are making a new home make an
irreparable mistake if they leave out the religious influence. Both
ought to belong to church, and to the same church. This is a matter of
prudence as well as of righteousness; for get it into your
consciousness that you must be in harmony with the people of whom you
two are one. Your new home must be in accord with the millions of
other homes which make up this Nation; and the American people at
bottom are a religious people.
Also, you will find that nothing will please your wife so much as to
resolve upon regular church attendance, and then to reduce that
resolve to a habit. It is good for you, too; you feel as though you
had taken a moral bath after you get home from service every Sunday.
Of course, being an American and a gentleman, you will have the
American gentleman's conception of all womanhood, and his adoring
reverence for the one woman who has blessed him with her life's
companionship. You will cherish her, therefore, in that way which none
but the American gentleman quite understands. You will be gentle with
her, and watchful of her health and happiness.
You will be ever brave and kind, wise and strong, deserving that
respect which she is so anxious to accord you; earning that devotion
which by the very nature of her being she must bestow on you; winning
that admiration which it is the crowning pride of her life to yield
to you; and, finally, receiving that care which only her hands can
give, and a life-long joy which, increasing with the years, is fullest
and most perfect when both your heads are white and your mutual steps
no longer wander from the threshold of that "new home" which you built
in the beginning of your lives, and which is now the "old home" to
your children, who beneath its roof "rise up and call you blessed."
V
THE YOUNG LAWYER AND HIS BEGINNINGS
It used to be a part of the creed of a certain denomination that a man
should not be admitted to the ministry who had not received his
"call." It was necessary that he should hear the Voice speaking with
his tongue, and saying, "Woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel."
This is true of the profession of law. So, at the beginning of your
beginnings, do not begin at all unless you see a certainty of misery
if you do not. Unless you are convinced that you would rather work,
toil, nay, slave for years to secure recognition in the law, than to
be honored and enriched in some other occupation, do not enter this
profession of supreme ardor.
And above all things, do not enter it if you expect to practise law
principally for the purpose of making money. It is not a money-making
profession. The same effort, acumen, and enthusiasm expended in almost
any other occupation will bring you financial returns tremendously
out of proportion to your most successful compensation in the law,
measured by mere money. The money-making conception of our profession
is not only erroneous, but ruinous; for you must remember, to begin
with, that you are practising the science of justice.
If possible, get a thorough college education before you touch a law
book. If you can get a college education, do not "read law" while you
are at college. If you go to college, do not take what is known as the
"scientific" course, or "physical" course. Take the classical course.
Next to geometry and logarithms and the Bible, the best discipline
preparatory to making you a lawyer is the translation of Latin. Latin
is the most logical language the world has ever seen, or is likely
ever to see.
After you get your college course, then go to a thoroughly first-class
law school. After this, spend two or three years in active work in the
office of some successful lawyer who has lots of practise, and who
will load off on your shoulders as much work as possible.
If you cannot go to a law school, your training in the law office will
do you nearly as well. You can get along without your law school, but
you can never get along without your training in the law office. The
way to learn to swim is to swim.
But if you cannot get a college education, do not get discouraged. It
is possible that you are an Abraham Lincoln, or a John Marshall, or
some person like that; and if you are you will succeed anyhow. Even if
you are not so highly gifted you can win in the law without a college
education if you are naturally a lawyer _and will work hard enough_.
If you have to choose between a law school and a college education,
take the latter. But the training afforded by a clerkship in an active
lawyer's office is more helpful than either.
If you can be so fortunate as to get the firm or attorney with whom
you are studying to let you draft pleadings, take depositions, examine
witnesses, make arguments to court and jury, get out transcripts for
appeal, write briefs, petitions, motions, and all the rest of that
careful and painstaking work which makes the daily life of the lawyer,
you will equip yourself for actual practise better than in any other
way I know of.
The firm will gladly let you do this work if you show yourself
competent. But this does not mean that you are merely to sit around
the office and say "bright things." There is nothing in "bright
things"--there is everything in good judgment and downright hard work.