loyalty, and all the rest of the make up of a Bayard; but all the
same, I doubt if it would be easy to find, among my somewhat extensive
acquaintance, five men who would, if marriage were proved a failure and
dismissed from the scheme, remain contentedly constant to the woman
who was at twenty so entirely to their taste, and is now at fifty or
sixty so irritating, so tiresome, so incompatible, so old a story. That
is, he does not apply to her all these disparaging adjectives, first,
because she is his wife, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and
every man shrinks from disparaging his own possessions; and, secondly,
because the knowledge that any condition is irrevocable induces
acquiescence; and although in exceptional cases the marriage tie must
be broken in form as well as in truth, the general rule is that it
endures while life does, and both husband and wife shut their eyes to
each other’s defects with a complaisance quite out of the question were
marriage pronounced a failure and done away with.
An unloved and neglected wife is doubtless a very pitiable and
lamentable object; but surely not nearly so much so as the woman who
is no longer loved and no longer sought by him to whom she has given
all, and who has not a wife’s claim to at least outward respect and an
honorable position in his house.
Of course, then, the question is not, Has marriage proved a failure,
and shall it be discarded? but, Is marriage a failure under its
present conditions, and how shall we improve them?
Well, why and how is it a failure? Several thousand gentle or shrewish,
sweet or raspy feminine voices answer in tumultuous chorus: He is not
sympathetic! He is not attentive! He is requiring! He is a brute!
He is a bear! He is a pig! He laughs at me and scoffs at what he
cannot understand! He is jealous! He is mean, and stints me almost to
pauperism! He is devoted to other women, and spends more than he has
upon his own amusements! He is always away, and leaves me alone at
home! He never wants to stir from home, and keeps me chained to his
side! etc.
From the other side rises a chorus ranging from basso profundo to
thinnest tenor:
She’s always nagging; there’s no peace for a man inside his own house!
She’s always taken up with some other fellow, and wants me to efface
myself! She thinks wrappers and crimping pins good enough for me, and
lays herself out for the street and strangers! She neglects the poor
kids, and they’re tumbling up any way! She can’t manage her house, and
it’s the most comfortless hole I know of! She won’t take the trouble to
keep a house, and makes me live in a boarding house, which I detest!
She’d ruin a Rothschild! She’s always preaching poverty and grudges me
a cigar or a glass of beer! She makes it so unpleasant if I bring a man
home to dinner that I have offended half my old friends! She’s forever
asking Tom, Dick and Harry to dinner and when I come home tired and
used up I’ve got to put on my black clothes and make talk for a parcel
of fools, instead of eating my dinner in peace!
And so it goes, and so it goes, the world over, or at least our world
over, and both men and women are sick at heart, and worn and weary with
the unending din of battle, and some wise head starts up and proposes
scuttling the ship to drown the rats, and a crowd of desperate sisters
cry Amen, and the stronger sex put their hands in their pockets and
say, Do it if you like; we can stand it if you can.
But let common sense be praised, there is yet a goodly majority who
cry, Scuttle the ship! Nonsense! Let’s get rid of the rats, and save
the ship!
How? Oh, in various ways. There is no royal road to learning, neither
is there to contentment nor to the right answer to the great conundrum
of life; but it is most fortunately true that many roads lead to the
desired goal, and many answers are the right one. Let us suggest a
few, and leave it to our readers, both men and women, to evolve others
suited to their own conditions. One great truth we would, however,
suggest as suited to all possible cases. Marriage is a full and equal
partnership, and each member is bound to rank his partner’s interest
as equal with his own. Let every business man ask himself just here
if he treats his wife as “squarely” in all respects as he treats his
partner, and expects his partner to treat him; and if he doesn’t,
let him begin to-day and try the experiment of showing her the same
respect, confidence and care for her opinion that he does his brother
man. Most women are both pleased and touched at being thus treated by
the man who claims any sort of authority over them, whether fathers,
brothers, husbands or what not; and the better sort of woman feels her
honor engaged to prove herself worthy of such confidence and respect.
To women, especially housekeepers, let me tell a _mot_ heard this
summer. Two men were speaking of the shortcomings of a youthful
landlord, whose tender mercies had been rather cruel upon them and
their families, and one said: “The trouble with that fellow is, he
hasn’t yet got it into his head that he keeps a hotel, not to please
himself, but to please his patrons, and so rake in the ducats.”
Of course, the parallel does not go upon all-fours; for the wife does
keep her house in the manner that pleases herself, and her husband is
not a patron, but a beloved and honored guest, as well as equal partner
in the property; but still it is the woman who “keeps” the domestic
hotel, and should so manage it as to combine her own pleasure with her
husband’s comfort, tastes and that peace which is to the average man
the _sine qua non_ of domestic happiness.
Another point which has impressed itself upon my mind in considering my
world, since this question has so vigorously arisen in its center, is
this: The people who marry and the people who complain are generally
young--that is to say, they marry before twenty-five and they complain
before thirty. To be sure, having begun to complain at this age, they
keep on complaining for a good many years, partly from the love of a
grievance inherent in human nature, and partly because, having made up
their minds that the path is thorny, they look out for the thorns, and
take pains to scratch themselves on each one. But the discontent begins
in youth--let us say, during the first five years of matrimony--and it
should be treated as one of the diseases incident to youth, instead of
being allowed to become chronic.
Young people of both sexes have a most exaggerated idea of their own
importance. Cæsar must have been young, even for his years, when he
so naïvely remarked: “The world was made for Cæsar;” but I have seldom
met either girl or man under twenty-five who was not obviously under
the same impression, and it is in the height of this delusion that the
two come together as man and wife--often with the same result as when
the MacGregor and the Campbell, with their following, met in the narrow
streets of Edinburgh, and, each claiming the “Crown of the Causeway”
as his undoubted right, passed the rest of the day in fighting out the
question, until each chieftain, sorely wounded, was carried to his own
quarters, resolved to fight it out again, and yet again while life
lasted.
No, my dear girl, and also my dear boy, the world was not made for
either of you--not even the little world of the new life you have just
entered upon with such flourish of trumpets. The house is not yours,
nor yours, no matter in whose name the title deeds are drawn. It is
_ours_, and must be managed in scrupulous consideration of _our_
tastes and wishes and comfort.
Just at first this will be very easy, for in the case of discrepant
tastes it is so delicious in the honeymoon to say: Have it your own
way, darling; what pleases you, pleases me; and to reply: No, no, have
it your way; for isn’t your way my way, now, love?
Very nice for the honeymoon, but the secret, is to keep it up, and not
to allow all the concessions to come from one side; but remember that,
with all the “darlings” and “loves” thrown in, this is a very practical
business partnership upon which you are entering, and that mutual
respect, mutual concessions, and mutual interests are the basis of the
concern.
Neither of you is going to be quite satisfied, neither is going to be
quite happy; both are going to meet with some severe disappointments
in each other and in the new life. But the secret of preventing the
marriage business becoming a failure is the same largely influencing
all other business partnerships; hostility to your partner means
injury to your mutual interests, and, if that partner turn out not
quite the sort of companion you expected, make the best instead of the
worst of him, and seek, by mutual concession and consideration, to work
harmoniously together for what you know to be your mutual interest and
profit in the heyday of life, and the assured comfort and repose of old
age.
VII.
THE CONSEQUENCES.
Did you ever play the game of “consequences?” If not, I will tell you
how, and you shall determine for yourself if it is not very like the
game of life which we are all playing every day, whether we will or not.
Take two slips of paper, perhaps two inches wide and as long as
ordinary note paper. Two persons and two pencils are the rest of the
simple apparatus, and sitting so that they do not overlook each other,
each writes at the head of his or her slip the name of a man known to
both, either by personal acquaintance or historical renown.
This done, the name is folded out of sight and the slips exchanged,
when each writes a woman’s name, and again folds it out of sight and
exchanges the slips. Next is, “Where they met,” and next “What he
said,” then, “What she said;” then, “What the world said,” and finally
“The consequences.” The fun comes in when the two slips are unfolded
and the queer conjunction of persons, places, speeches and consequences
are read out, as for instance: “Henry Ward Beecher and the Infanta
Eulalie met at Barnum’s show. He said, ‘Rock me to sleep, mother.’ She
said, ‘Rataplon, Rataplon!’ The world said, ‘What’s bred in the bone
will come out in the flesh.’ The consequences were:
“‘When a body meets a body
Comin’ thro’ the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?’”
Of course if the subjects are among one’s own acquaintance the whole
thing is funnier, and sometimes rather embarrassing if the persons
happen to be present--as, for instance, if your maiden aunt is said to
have met “the wickedest man in New York” at a “masquerade,” and the
consequences were “a sweet, sweet kiss.” The maiden aunt is apt to
afford “very pretty sport” on such occasions, to use an angler’s phrase.
But, as I said before, how strangely fond the fates are of playing at
this game among themselves and to our cost. Just fancy Clotho writing
your name at the head of one slip of parchment and Lachesis yours on
another, while Atropos grimly adds that of some other human being, and
each, folding down what she has written, handing it to her sister, the
two regarding each other with that calm, ironical glance of conscious
power and half-malicious purpose which one must ascribe to the fates.
The papers filled and read out, a destiny is declared for him and her
who have thus been coupled together, and the wild absurdities which
complicate this destiny are the puzzle of a lifetime to the hapless
victims.
This theory may be held fanciful by some persons, but really it seems
to me a very satisfactory explanation of a state of things in the world
not to be accounted for in any other way. The next time you notice
or perhaps experience a most absurd conjunction of persons leading to
a disastrous or perhaps highly ridiculous state of affairs, when next
you hear some virulent gossip tell how Mrs. So-and-so and Mr. Whatever
were seen together at such and such a place, and the world, with a very
big W, expresses her opinion and foretells the direst results, just say
to yourself, “Ah, the fates have been playing at consequences!” And in
our own lives how very often we wonder what under the sun possessed
us to take a certain course, almost certain, as our calm common sense
now tells us, to lead to the annoying consequences under which we now
smart! Why, we ask ourselves, should my name ever have been so coupled
with that name? When I went to that place, why did that person blindly
select that very time to go also? Why, when he said what he did, should
I have replied as I did? Surely I was not a free agent in all this, but
was blindly impelled forward by some unknown force. Truly
“There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Roughhew them as how we will.”
And then some so-called friend kindly points out to us “what the world
says” anent our affairs, and our hearts sink at the injustice and
unfairness of its verdict and the treachery of those in whom we trusted
for loyalty, and we feel angry at the stupid levity of those who cannot
know the real meaning of the tragedy they insist upon treating as a
farce, got up for their amusement, and altogether we retreat sick and
tired from the contest and ask ourselves: Why am I thus placed? Why
has the world a right to pass its judgment thus upon what it does not
understand? Why am I set upon its pillory before the gaze of every fool
or knave or idler or enemy who chooses to point at me and make a mock
of my distress?
Did you ever have the occasion to ask yourself these questions? If
not, give the gods thanks that they as yet have let you alone, and
at the same time strengthen yourself for the future by remembering
that when next the fates feel like amusing themselves with a game
of consequences, your name may head one of the lists, and the fates
alone know whose will be penciled under it. Only be sure that if
the collocation admits of ridicule, or of obliquy of annoyance and
disturbance to yourself, the thing will come to pass, the game will
become a reality, the passing amusement of Clotho and her sisters will
be a destiny. And then as the game goes on, do not we often feel that
we are but blind agents, carrying out, in our own despite, a plan of
which we in our inmost hearts feel the evil promise?
A woman, let us say, although these catastrophes are as common to one
sex as the other, but we will say a woman, alone and lonely, oppressed
with the weight of worldly affairs and even more oppressed with that
“need of loving” which the French rightly place at the root of a
woman’s nature--such a one as this meets a man of plausible exterior
and ready tongue, who, perceiving her lonely and brooding condition of
mind, sets himself to convince her that he is the very person out of
all the world capable of filling the aching void of heart and life, and
turning the gray rainclouds that environ her into the roseate dawn of
a brighter and better day than she ever yet has known. Such a promise
as this is enough to bewilder the judgment and blind the eyes of the
wisest woman that ever lived--that is, supposing her to be loving by
nature and lonely by circumstance. It is like the song of the sirens to
wave-worn Ulysses and his comrades--they well knew, those hard-headed
mariners, that the Circean shore was not that for which they had
embarked. They knew or should have known that to linger here was to
risk the loss of all besides and to defeat the high hopes with which
they had been sent forth by trusting friends, but Circe and her nymphs
sang of love and shelter and rest, and a loving barrier between them
and the hard, cold world; and to a man they abandoned all else and fell
into the snare. You see, the fates had been playing at consequences,
and one slip bore the names “Ulysses, Circe, met at,” and all the rest
of it.
But to return to our supposititious case--the wave-worn and weary “she”
listens to this siren chant and yields to its tempting, “he says,” “I
love you beyond all else in the world; will you be my wife, and let me
love you forever and a day?” “She says,” “It is all that I have been
longing for.” They marry, and in a few years or months or weeks, or
even hours, “he says,” “You’re a fool and cry for the moon,” and “she
says,” “Oh, how could I have mistaken you for my ideal man! Yes, I was
a fool, but you are worse; you are a brute!” Of course the remarks vary
with the persons and the circumstances, and in a good many cases they
do not occur at all, but when the fates take to playing with our lives
all this and more is on the cards, and it is well to be prepared for it.
Naturally, if such a state of things does come to pass, an
“unpleasantness” arises in the family which cannot long be concealed
from the public eye, and presently we hear what “the world says.”
And, oh, what cruel and venomous and foolish things the world does say
when once it finds the chance! Why is it that the world is so lukewarm
and languid when praise is demanded, and so phenomenally active where
there is an opening for censure? Let a man or a woman perform an act
of heroism or of saintly self-sacrifice, let him or her spend life and
fortune in doing good to the poor, or the unfortunate, or the wicked,
and the world yawns and says, “Very good of him, I’m sure, but isn’t he
just a little bit of a crank?” Or, if it is a woman, Mme. World smiles
pityingly and says: “Ah, yes, poor thing! A woman who doesn’t marry
must do something to make herself of importance. Did you ever hear that
she was disappointed when young Crœsus married her cousin instead of
her?” Or perhaps it says: “Oh, gone into a convent, has she? What a
blessed asylum for unattractive girls a convent must be! It is so much
prettier to be called a sister of charity than an old maid!”
Whatever the form of virtue may be, Mme. World is sure to find some
flaw or pit in the fair fruit she cannot choose but praise, and
cleverly detracts even in her approval.
But if it is not a question of right and shining virtues, but of
mistakes and follies and wrongdoings upon the one side or the other
of a matrimonial difference--ah, then Mme. World sits up straight in
her chair and adjusts her lorgnette to her peering eyes, and finds so
many flaws and pits in the apple of discord that she hardly leaves
flesh enough to hold it together. What industry and energy the old lady
suddenly develops! When virtue and noble deeds were under discussion,
she seemed almost to fall asleep over her slurring comments and bits
of half-praise, but now, now no girl in her teens dancing at her first
ball or playing her first grown-up game of tennis displays more ardent
zeal and activity. She calls her carriage, or she dons her walking
gear, for Mme. World is of all stations and conditions of life, and she
sallies forth, her eyes sparkling, her lips quivering with eagerness
to be at work, and the number of visits that old lady can achieve in
one afternoon is something to marvel at. And, when the preliminaries of
weather and health have been hastily disposed of, how she plunges at
her real business, dragging it in by the head and shoulders, perhaps
in the midst of her hostess’ plaintive lamentations over the ugly
new styles of gowns and hats upon which Mme. Elise insists. “Yes, my
dear, perfectly hideous, as you say. I saw it on that poor, dear Mrs.
Erlymarter yesterday. Have you heard what a cat-and-dog life she and
her husband are leading? Oh, I assure you it is quite so, quite so!
They say he,” etc., and dear Mme. World draws near enough to murmur and
whisper all the shocking things she can think of into the eat of the
listener, who presently remarks: “That is all very well, but my opinion
is that there is always fault on both sides, and I dare say she drives
him to it. For all her sweet looks, I fancy she has a temper of her
own,” and so on and so on.
No doubt you have heard it all a hundred times, and perhaps--God
forgive you--have joined in it, more’s the pity. If you have, all I
will say is, please don’t any more, for it is only playing into the
bands of malicious fates, who are greedily listening for “what the
world says,” to make out their little game.
And then come the consequences--those sad consequences which not
infrequently involve a life in their toils. But perhaps we all know
better than any one can tell us the consequences of our own faults and
follies, and, worst of all, our own delusions. I suppose every woman
who has character enough to enable her to suffer has committed blunders
and has allowed herself to be deluded, and she has heard what the
world has to say about them, and she has experienced the consequences.
She knows what sleepless nights and weary days, what aching heart and
bewildered brain may achieve toward a misery she never dreamed before;
she knows how hard is the struggle to “keep up” before the eyes of that
merciless world, and how complete her abandonment to passionate grief
and rebellion the lonely hours of night may cover; she knows what it is
to see friends turn into foes or strangers, to find that those she most
thoroughly trusted have used her confidence as the weapon wherewith to
wound her most sorely; she knows what it is to feel her own heart grow
cold and hard, to lose her faith in man and woman both, and all but to
lose faith in the God who permits such things.
But once again I say don’t do so any more, for in doing so you are only
carrying out the plan of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, those malign old
women who so love to amuse themselves with us poor mortals. If they
have begun to play their game with you as one of the counters, break
it off just where you are; don’t indulge them; don’t play into their
hands; don’t be their victim.
For, after all, the human will is stronger than the fates, and if we
use it vigorously can break down all their combinations. No matter
if they have successfully brought you to “what the world says,” the
consequences are still in your own hand, and you can control them as
you will.
VIII.
THE RIGHTS OF AMERICAN GIRLS.
A friend whose business compels him to travel a good deal, although he
is not that species of commercial agent vulgarly called a “drummer,”
came to see me the other day, and in speaking of his travels I asked
him what seemed to him the distinctive features of some of our
principal cities.
His answer was peculiar.
“The thing that has struck me most forcibly of late,” said he, “is the
different aspects after dark of the cities I have last visited. In New
York under the gaslight certain forms of vice and danger stalk abroad
almost as boldly as in London or in San Francisco. In the upper part of
the town the streets are quiet enough, but what few prowling figures
you see suggest garroters or highwaymen of one sort or another, while
down town the pickpockets, watch snatchers and similar gentry jostle
each other on every curbstone. Not a month ago a gentleman from the
Provinces, inspecting our ‘Yankee towns,’ as he chose to class New
York, told me that, strolling across Madison Square one evening, he was
accosted by a well-dressed man, with a very conspicuous watch chain,
who quietly said, ‘Give me your pocketbook and watch, or I’ll call that
policeman over there and swear you were trying to snatch my watch!’
“My friend was, to be sure, a little verdant, but he was brave, and
drawing back, he gave the fellow a blow in the jaw that certainly
silenced him for a while, and spitting out a tooth or two he made off
just as the policeman strolled that way, and, hearing the story, told
my friend such attempts at blackmailing were not uncommon, and very
generally succeeded with a quiet or timid sort of man.
“Now, that,” pursued my friend, “is New York. In St. Louis, where I
was last week, the streets after dark seem deserted. A few men loaf
around the corners, and some tipsy boatmen frolic and sing around the
riverside, but you never see a lady unattended. In fact, you seldom see
a lady on foot, with or without an escort. But in two other cities,
some distance apart--Detroit and Boston--quite a different set of
conditions obtains. In both these places the streets are thronged
quite as much after dark as before, and with much the same class of
persons--quiet, respectable citizens, going about their business or
pleasure and taking very little notice of each other.
“In Boston especially I noticed ladies, or at any rate very ladylike
and quiet women, both young and middle-aged, walking the streets quite
unattended, and apparently quite unmolested--in fact, I saw several
both come in and go out of the theaters, sometimes two or three
together, but sometimes quite alone. Speaking of this to a Boston
woman, she said she should not be afraid to traverse any part of the
city where she should be likely to go at any hour of the evening.”
“Which proves Boston to be very much of a country village,” remarked I,
with a little sneer, for I much prefer New York to Boston myself; but
my traveled friend replied:
“Oh, not at all! Country villages are apt to be very wicked little
places, or at least whatever wickedness there is comes to the knowledge
of every inhabitant, and village ladies are always very particular
about having an escort if they go beyond their next neighbor’s. They
say they’re afraid ‘somebody will speak to them,’ a phrase which always
moves one to inquire, ‘What are you afraid they will say?’