at being deceived in a man’s character. It is but natural that she
should expect some youthfulness of feeling for the honest affections
she offers upon the altar of marriage; but I thoroughly believe there
is not a true woman living but what, if the man she loved came to her
frankly and said, ‘I am not worthy of your devotion; I have passed
through the whole gamut of evil, but bear with me and be my friend,’
would extend her arms to him and say, ‘I will help you back to health,
strength and purity.’ Do you know any man of your acquaintance who
would be as charitable toward a woman? No; not one of them would
forgive the deceit practiced upon what they are pleased to term their
pride, manhood and superiority.”
If the day ever comes when there shall be a clear and perfect
understanding between men and women, when they shall judge each other
not only by their own weaknesses, but by what they give of the present,
irrespective of the past, then we may see true relations between
husband and wife. “Sympathy is force,” should be each one’s motto. It
should be hung over the fireside and in every room of the home.
An excellent thing to remember is that if you give any amount of force
from yourself to another you are losing just so much vitality, unless
you receive the same amount of force in return.
In other words, if a woman sympathizes in her husband’s work, enters
into his hopes and fears, and helps him along in life, as she should
do, and if he accepts that sympathy and unselfishness from her, he must
give back, by his interest in the details of her private life, the
vital force he is absorbing, if he desires to keep her with him and
hold the sunshine of her love.
Have I solved any of the problems of happy relations between husband
and wife?
XXIII.
TWO ENDS OF A STICK.
Every stick has two ends. So has every fact and every truth. So has
every trait and every action, and it is one of the most amusing of
any diversions to find out what the other end looks like--better than
conundrums or prize puzzles any time, equal to a first-rate detective
story, even one of Sherlock Holmes’ miraculous performances as
portrayed by Conan Doyle, for you can find it right inside of yourself,
and probably everybody has found out by the time they can keenly enjoy
a detective story--a first-class one, I mean--that nothing in the world
is so interesting to a man as his own self. I know a very handsome man
who has an album filled with pictures of himself at different ages,
and in different costumes, and who declares with a somewhat brutal
frankness that it is to him by far the most interesting collection of
pictures the world could produce.
Another man, far from handsome, but very bright, cynically proclaims
that he lives to the glory and for the advancement of Mephistopheles or
Iago, or by whatever name you choose to supply his real cognomen.
Well, then, granted that the most captivating study of mankind is
himself, I will suggest to my friends pining for amusement the little
game of hunting up “the other end” of their own pet virtues, and if
they have any faults or can get some friend to point out one or two,
they may solace themselves by discovering that every fault has its
alternative virtue.
For instance, our friend M. I., who lives for his own glory and
advantage, is only the other end of the man who lives to spread
abroad some great discovery and advantage to the world, which becomes
incidentally glory and advantage to him himself. Jenner, Fulton,
Ericsson, Christopher Columbus and several other worldwide benefactors
were men who, if their natures had taken another turn, would have
spent life in admiring their own talents and despising other people who
couldn’t see so much.
The “lovely woman who stoops to folly” for love’s sake is one who is
holding the scepter of womanhood by the wrong end, and misusing the
noble virtue of love and self-sacrifice. The lawyer who sells his gifts
of eloquence and defends the criminal who pays him, is only holding
by the wrong end that weapon which is mightier than sword or pen--the
tongue of the ready speaker. Now bring it right home and see what fun
it is.
When you ran and helped grandmamma up the steps and seated her so
prettily in the best chair and brought her some tea and waited upon
her, as she said, “like an angel,” it was very filial and sweet and
affectionate and dear, wasn’t it? At any rate, you felt yourself
very good while you did it, and were not surprised at her praise and
petting; but didn’t you know in the depths of your deceitful little
heart that Robert Brownlow was looking on, and that he declares
sweetness, docility, and domesticity a woman’s chiefest of charms?
Now comes the little game. That action had two ends--one of them all
abloom with the fair lilies of womanly virtue, and the other carved
into the similitude of a grinning imp of falsehood and pretense. Which
end really was uppermost? See?
But for your comfort let me suggest that I myself often cannot be sure
which end was uppermost, for like most other people I generally carry
the pole so evenly balanced that just a little tilt will incline it one
way or the other.
Another queer thing about this balancing is that very often we see
one end of the staff while the world cries out at the other. Did you
never find yourself blushing and ashamed at praise and laudation and
popularity bestowed most lavishly upon some action which the world
considers very self-denying and generous, when your own conscience told
you the motive was to gain this very laudation, or perhaps money or
position or some other price?
And were you never astonished and grieved at finding yourself accused
of just these same base motives when really you had for once lost sight
of tiresome self, and been working purely and simply for other people?
Well, it was in both cases because the world had got hold of the wrong
end of the stick, while you knew more accurately which end you really
held.
Perhaps the virtue most often used by its wrong handle and so converted
into a vice is the quality of sincerity. Most of us declare with a warm
glow of conscious virtue about the heart that whatever faults we may
possess that of falsehood is far from us. It is very odd, but I have
never known an exception to this rule. Everybody claims to be truthful,
and in point of fact hardly anybody is absolutely truthful.
Why is this?
Probably because truth is a thing so lovely in itself that we all wish
to think it one of our own characteristics, and so perjure ourselves by
claiming it.
But truth, like love, reaches at its one extremity to the very zenith
and at the other sinks to the darkest depths. Love is the chief
attribute of the Deity, and debased possession is the delight of
devils. So truth divine and godlike in its highest examples is made a
very instrument of demons in its distorted form.
But yet those who use it in this form invariably boast, “I am so
sincere I feel that I really must speak the truth at all risks.”
You know and I know that sort of truth-teller, the malicious gleam of
the eye, the fiendish glee of the smile, the false ring of the voice,
the stereotyped phrases and the inevitable result. Perhaps it is only a
petty little sting after all, such as:
“Yes, dear, I thought you ought to know, and of course it is my duty
to tell the truth, but she did say that your conduct on that occasion
was very remarkable--yes, very remarkable indeed--and everybody was
commenting on it.”
Or perhaps:
“They were admiring that gown of yours, and I felt obliged to tell
them that it was made over from two others, and not a Worth at all. I
had to tell the truth, you know.”
Or:
“Too bad your sister has married into an insane family. Oh, didn’t you
know it? Yes, indeed. His aunt on the father’s side is in an asylum at
this minute. I don’t believe in suppressing the truth. Do you?”
And perhaps it is something far more deadly than these--a stab instead
of a pin-prick--as:
“Yes, a very pleasant man, as you say; but did you never hear that he
is a convicted criminal?”
Then when you demand the full details of this unpleasant “truth” you
find that long years ago, when this middle-aged man was a lad, he had
been tempted and in a moment of weakness appropriated moneys not his
own; had been convicted of the offense and suffered the penalty. Shame,
penitence and a life of undeviating probity have followed, and the
sometime culprit has lived down his error and become a worthy citizen,
but the truth-teller will not let him escape, and perhaps succeeds in
ruining his social prospects and the peace of all who have learned to
love him by this diabolical form of frankness.
“A nice woman--pity she drinks,” is perfectly true, and when the
explanation comes: “Yes, she drinks tea. Don’t you?” the false
impression is not quite removed, and at the best one feels that such
jests are like playing with fire.
Just a step or two further in this form of diabolical sincerity is
the mysterious assertion, “Yes, very pretty and very lively, as you
say--almost too lively, if all accounts are true.”
“What do you mean by too lively?” is indignantly demanded, and the
truth-teller bridles and virtuously replies:
“Oh, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, I’m sure, but everybody knows
that she was a very gay sort of girl, and her mother found it hard
enough to keep her within bounds.”
And a careless listener carries away the impression that the lively
and irrepressible girl has become a woman of questionable character.
The lecturer wearily says to his truthful friend: “I’m afraid that
subject did not exactly suit the audience to-night. How was it? Did
they act bored?” And the friend replies: “Well, yes, I thought they
were. I noticed a good deal of yawning and fidgeting, and several went
away before it was over.”
So the lecturer, mortified and discouraged, feels himself a failure,
and the next time goes upon the platform with the shadow of defeat
already wrapping him like a mantle, and feeling that he can’t succeed,
does not succeed, and perhaps gives the whole thing up and takes
to--well, to be a book peddler and a misanthrope.
“Do I look well to-night, dear?” asks the somewhat faded beauty of her
jealous cousin, who never was a beauty, and the latter replies:
“Well, yes, dear, just a little tired and dragged perhaps. And let me
wipe that powder off your chin! There, now, you look quite nice, I’m
sure.”
So poor Beauty goes into the assembly feeling worn and tired, and
nervously conscious of every little accessory she has fondly hoped
unseen, and her looks are injured, and her pleasure is spoiled.
“What a pity your John did not remember his part better!” says one
mother to another, as they come from the school exhibition, and John’s
mother replies, with red cheeks:
“I’m afraid he was too much taken up with watching your Mary. You must
have sat up nights for a month getting that costume ready; but it’s
such a pity it was so tight in the sleeves. The child’s hands were red
as beets.”
Both ladies have told the truth, and both would loudly proclaim
sincerity to be the underlying impulse of their speeches; but they
part with a bitterness of heart each against the other that does not
disappear for months--perhaps for years.
It is quite true that John is slow and stupid, and that Mary is
coquettish and overdressed; also that the boy forgot his part, and the
girl’s hands were red as she spread them over the piano keys, but if
those two mothers had not told the truth to each other how much better
friends they would have been and how much happier!
I don’t mean they should have told lies. No, indeed! I, too, am a
great stickler for truth, and I, too, have a Washingtonian objection
to telling a lie, but there is all the difference in the world between
telling a lie and not telling the truth, or, if you will allow me to
return to my first metaphor, it makes all the difference in the world
which end of the staff we present.
Your friend asks you how she is looking. You may fix your eyes upon
the defects or upon the good points of her appearance, and answer
accordingly. Instead of the reply quoted above, the cousin of the
society woman might have said: “A little languid perhaps, but that will
go off as soon as your friends gather about you. How charming your hair
is to-night!”
The orator’s _fidus Achates_ could have said perfectly truthfully:
“Oh, in a mixed audience there are always some who can’t appreciate
anything but ‘bones and the end men.’ Your lecture isn’t meant for that
class of persons, and you needn’t care whether they are pleased or not,
or, if you do care, it would be easy enough to leave out so and so and
put in a few of those capital stories you tell so well.”
Perhaps we are apt to lose sight of the three divisions of truth, as
set forth in the legal exhortation to tell “the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.” After all, however, the only part of this
that applies to secular life is the last clause of the three. If you
tell “nothing but the truth,” you must use your own judgment as to “the
whole truth.” In no relation of life is this poor truth of ours so
mangled and shattered and twisted about and disguised and travestied
as in love-making. Perhaps lovers become color blind and can’t see the
cold pure blue of truth because of the rosy mists that surround them.
Cupid is blind, we know, but that was that lovers might not see faults
in each other; but is the little god also blind to truth in all her
varying forms? If not, why are lovers’ lies condoned and laughed at by
so many persons? Why are all stratagems fair in love as well as in war?
For myself, I do not think they are, and I should be as angry at being
lied to by a man who was in love with me as by one who was not--perhaps
more, for he would have disturbed the idea beneath which every woman
hides the man she loves, and that is a real misfortune.
As soon as you recognize a man for a liar, you discount every virtue he
appears to possess, and almost doubt your own eyesight with regard to
him.
The lover must tell “nothing but the truth” if he would preserve the
good opinion of his beloved, but even he need not tell all the truth.
Women, with that instinct for self-torture so thoroughly developed in
the sex, always hasten in the beginning of a courtship to inquire:
“Did you ever love any one before you saw me?” and then, “Did you ever
kiss a girl before you kissed me?”
If the poor fellow says “Yes,” he finds himself the subject of more
reproaches, more distrust, more innuendoes and suspicions than he can
live down in the course of a long life. His offense is neither forgiven
nor forgotten until that dreary time arrives when the wife cares no
longer whom he has kissed or when.
But what is the poor fellow to do? Of course, he has kissed a dozen or
so of girls before he ever saw her, and if he denies it point blank he
entails upon himself the revenges of conscience and honor, which are as
bad in their way as the reproaches of his sweetheart; also there is a
certain unwillingness to falsely accuse himself of being a “Miss Nancy”
who has never dared to kiss a pretty girl. So what is he to do?
I don’t know, I am sure. Far be it from me to suggest that a lie is
ever justifiable. So let us settle it by advising the girls to remember
the old adage:
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
XXIV.
THE HELPLESSNESS OF WOMEN.
It is the fashion in these days to talk very grandly and much about the
equal rights of women with men, their equal capacity for nearly all
occupations, offices and honors, and above all their right to regulate
and control their own affairs, whether political, financial, social or
domestic. I, as a woman, stand up stoutly for my own sex; I do most
firmly believe them to be in all but brute strength the equal of man,
and in spiritual and moral strength very frequently his superior. I
admire women, I love women, I long and work for the advancement of
women; but, as a woman not without powers of observation and a wide
experience of the world, I cannot but see a certain side of the truth
not often brought forward by women, and not at all understood by men,
and this is the inherent helplessness of woman in a struggle with man.
Possibly this helplessness is largely due to hereditary prejudice on
the part of man, hereditary self-distrust on the part of woman, but it
is also largely due to the inherent natures of the two sexes. Every
virile man has a vein of brutality in his composition, more or less
deftly buried beneath the surface of his civilization, and every woman
is at heart timid of encountering this brutality--that is to say, every
womanly woman is.
Almost any man brought into business relations with a woman not his
employee meets her propositions or arguments with either an air of
good-natured tolerance, or disquieted contempt, or skeptical scrutiny,
or of magnanimous acceptance, perhaps harder to bear than any other of
the demonstrations of his superiority.
Let a woman try to argue a political point, or point of statecraft, or
political economy with a man, and she usually receives some such answer
as the famous insult offered by Gladstone, I think, to some titled
woman who earnestly implored him to advocate some measure. Listening
with an amused smile to all she had to say, he simply ejaculated at
the end, “Oh, you darling!” and passed on, as carelessly good-humored
as if he had been listening to the prattle of a pretty child. Or, if
the man is not as benevolent as Gladstone, he may reply in the spirit
of Napoleon, who assured Mme. de Staël that the most valuable woman in
his empire was the one who has borne most sons for France; or again,
after the manner of Henry VIII. of England, who bade the nuns who tried
to argue for their right to live their own lives in their own way: “Go
spin, you jades; go spin!”
To epitomize the three utterances, women in general are to men in
general either “darlings,” or mothers of children, or household and
domestic machines. Within these limits woman receives admiration,
protection and a certain amount of appreciation from every grade of
men, but let her step outside these limits, let her try to meet
man upon his own intellectual or authoritative platform, and her
disadvantage is at once made apparent, and her helplessness to overcome
it stares her in the face.
No man ever meets her and converses upon momentous subjects precisely
as he does with another man, and until this is the case there are no
true equal rights for the woman. The woman seeks an interview with
her business man or lawyer; she wishes certain things done and done
at once; the business man or the lawyer assures her with an air of
indulgent patience that what she suggests cannot be done, at least not
in her way and at her time; that to sell, or to buy, or to invest, or
to do whatever it is she wishes to do is not possible, or if possible
not desirable, and she had better leave it all in his hands and rest
secure that he will do what is for the best. Now just here comes in the
helplessness of which I speak. The woman feels confident that the thing
she wishes _could_ be done, and that it would be well that it should
be done, but she lacks the habit of command, the self-confidence, the
weight of will, that would enable her to hold her own without agitation
or struggle.
A woman can no more hold her own against the well-trained masculine
mind in matters of business, the law or politics, than she can against
the well-trained masculine muscle in a pugilistic encounter, and this
is what I mean by the inherent helplessness of woman. She may be better
informed than the man, she may have a deep-rooted conviction that she
is right, but she does not dare to take the thing into her own hands
and manage it in a manner contrary to that advised by the man, who
claims to know that she is wrong.
Another point of a woman’s inherent helplessness is her sensitiveness.
The man’s sneer, or his half-veiled contempt for her opinion, or his
exaggerated politeness and deference, all tell upon her courage and
beat it down as if with blows of a fist or the stinging cuts of a whip.
She feels wounded, hurt, ashamed even, while remaining sure that she
is in the right. She withdraws from the contest, apparently defeated;
but, like Galileo, secretly murmuring, “But nevertheless it does move.”
In fact, Galileo is a conspicuous illustration of my theory. He had
quicker perceptions and a keener insight, more courageous theories and
more faith in his own intuitions than the whole college of cardinals
with the pontiff included; but when he propounded these theories he
found himself opposed to the solid phalanx of the ages in the form of a
governing class, who intended to remain governors. He was defeated by
frowns and sneers and smiles and jeers, behind which lay the power of
life and death. Beaten down and overwhelmed, he signed the recantation
of his profession of truth, made an humble apology for having been
brighter than his masters, and went away muttering the recantation
which we have quoted. I wonder how many women have walked out of the
office, the study, the back parlor, the vestry, when they have held
an interview with some male arbiters of their destinies, their heads
upright, their cheeks glowing, their eyes bright with anger and unshed
tears, their hearts hot with defeat and humiliation, muttering to
themselves in one form or another, “But for all that it does move!”
Another element is woman’s helplessness in her relations with man in
her love of being loved, and this desire in its various developments
is perhaps _the_ root of a woman’s nature. Every woman has it, even
the coarsest termagant, the hardest and boldest wrangler for her
rights--every one of them in the core of her heart longs to be loved by
somebody, to be the first object in somebody’s life, to have some one
to whom she may turn and be sure of welcome and of sympathy. It is one
of the very best and most precious factors of womanhood, but, alas! it
is one of its most terrible dangers.
A woman with no one to love her is the most miserable of creatures. She
loses half her value in her own eyes. She is unable to do justice to
the best of her nature. She either hardens and becomes cold, defiant,
bitter and narrow, or she withers and languishes like spring flowers
in an east wind. Perhaps she does not know her own need. Perhaps she
scoffs at love and declares herself strong enough to live without it,
and says, as did a famous literary woman:
“I am of the oak oaky, and do not understand women who are of the vine
viney, and must have something to cling to.”
And yet this very woman clung to her kindred, and her adopted child
with a really noble devotion. Sometimes a loveless woman cherishes a
dog, a bird, a cat, and bestows upon the little brute a wealth of love
enough to enrich a monarch; sometimes she buys the love of a companion
or of a servant; sometimes she becomes a philanthropist and distributes
her unused affection over whole armies of orphans and phalanxes of
widows; sometimes if she is of a certain temperament she becomes “a
religious” and joins a sisterhood, devoting their lives to good works
and their hearts to God. In that case she tells herself that she needs
no earthly outlet for her affections; that her entire nature is turned
into the channel of adoring love for the Divine Being, and she probably
feels that she thus secures a higher place in his affections than her
more mundane sisters can hope to hold.
It is a heroic choice, a noble life, but who can doubt that it must
hold moments of chill disappointment, of withering insufficiency, of
terrible despair? In this world human creatures live in bodies. They
are surrounded by earthly needs and cares and sympathies, and to deny
or to starve all these is to defeat the very purpose of our being. A
mortal woman needs mortal love, and she will seek it in one form or
another, if she is at liberty, as surely as a housing pigeon seeks her
dovecote or a perishing deer seeks the water.