fact that for every man in the world there is a woman somewhere
waiting and waiting anxiously. She may be in the same house with
you, in the same neighborhood, or the same city, or she may be in a
distant quarter of the globe. You may not meet her this year or next
year, but, nevertheless, Fitz-Herbert, there is a woman waiting for
you somewhere, who wants to be married to you, to be loved by you, to
be fed by you, to have you take her to the opera and the concerts,
and to have you pay her milliner and dressmaker. In return, she
will be your best friend, will make a man out of you, will suffer
for you, never cease to love you, and, if necessary, die for you.
Now, it is your duty to set about and find that woman, and go to
work loving and feeding her, and paying her bills without grumbling,
because all you can do for her will not be worth mention by the side
of that wonderful love she will bestow on you--the same love which
your father had for your mother. You probably won't have to look long
or far for her. You will be astonished at the ease with which you
will find her, if you commence looking for her in earnest. She must
be supported by some one. If you don't support her, then some other
man must be taxed to do it, and thus the burden falls upon those who
already have wives. This, of course, is unfair. No man should be
compelled to take care of more than one woman.
This is your plain duty, and my penalty to be imposed upon those
who won't perform it is simply levying of a tax. Granted that there
is a woman for every man, ready to be supported by that man, then I
propose to compel that man to support that woman, whether he will
marry that woman or not. I would do nothing rashly. I would give him
a lee-way for choice until he was thirty years of age. If he didn't
make a choice in thirty years, I should take it for granted that he
didn't intend to at all, and I should then commence the operation
of my tax levy. At the age of thirty, I should impose a yearly tax,
equivalent to a woman's yearly legitimate expenses; at the age of
thirty-five, an equivalent for a woman and two children; at forty,
an equivalent for a woman and four children; at forty-five, an
equivalent for a woman and six children. If the man were sickly, or
absent any considerable length of time, the number of children might
be reduced one-half. After the age of forty-five, the juvenile tax
might cease increasing. At the age of fifty, however, I would impose
a special tax upon him as a general fund for the support of aged and
decayed spinsters. At the age of sixty, he should be compelled to
contribute a special sum to maintain Old Ladies' Homes. And when he
died, he should be compelled to bequeath a portion of his property
to building orphan asylums, and the balance should go towards the
maintenance of the public schools. If, in addition to his refusal to
marry a woman, he should be a confirmed woman-hater, then I would
force him to equalize male and female wages by paying the difference
to sewing girls, factory girls and female clerks in our dry goods
stores, who do a man's work for a woman's stipend.
You see this is perfectly fair. Not only would every woman be
properly provided for, but married men would be relieved from the
onerous burden of supporting more than one woman, which is improper,
but these old bachelors who are of no account would be turned to a
good use by contributing to the support of spinsters, old women and
little children. Then, when they got to the gate of Heaven, they
could at least have their tax-receipts, to show that their punishment
might be mitigated, and that a few of the thousand years of purgatory
on the banks of the Styx might be omitted.
I trust, Fitz-Herbert, that you coincide with my views, or, at least,
that you will give them some attention. F. H. had evidently never
looked at the subject in this light, for he seemed quite bewildered,
and twirled his moustache very vigorously, especially when Mignon and
Celeste and Aurelia all chimed in with me, and said I was quite right.
August 21, 1869.
* * * * *
I am glad to notice that my letter of two Sundays ago, upon the
subject of marriage, has had such good effects. During the past week,
the number of marriages has trebled, and even quadrupled, in this
city. To be sure, the number of divorces has kept even pace, and, for
every pair which has come boldly up to the altar and joined hands
in eternal friendship, another pair has severed the bond in twain
and parted company, like two ships which meet upon the ocean, hold
converse for a little minute, and then set sail for the different
horizons. The Clown in Twelfth Night spoke more wisely than he knew,
when he said that many a good hanging prevented many a bad marriage.
From the ease with which divorces are now obtained, it seems to me
a few good hangings would have a healthy influence upon this matter
of marriage, and would make that declaration of the minister's, upon
which he dwells with such solemn unction, "What God hath joined, let
not man put asunder," savor less of the ridiculous.
And all this reminds me of several letters I have received during the
past two weeks, taking issue with me upon one small remark contained
in my letter. "Ferniania," "Ada," "Kitty," and a half a dozen other
anonyma, are highly indignant that I should have said "Any woman who
has a chance will get married."
I expected to be overwhelmed with an avalanche of female indignation
when I wrote that sentence. I wrote it with a realizing sense of the
wrath to come.
The wrath has come, and I find at least a dozen female gauntlets on
the floor before me which I am expected to take up.
I confess I do not like anonymous gauntlets. I should like to know
the antecedents of some of them before I accept the wager and do
battle for my proposition.
In the first place, I would like to know how many of these pretty
Amazons have had a chance to get married, and if they had a chance,
then I want to know why they didn't get married. I have no more
sympathy for a woman who won't get married than I have for a man. She
is just as much a jug without a handle or a bow without the arrow as
the man is. The very first record we have of the very first woman
that ever lived, after she got her fig-leaf _panier_ made, is of her
marriage to Adam, and the next thing of any consequence is the birth
of the rapscallion Cain, and the good little boy Abel. It is just as
much the woman's duty to get married as the man's.
Good heavens! my dear Madame, or my dear Mademoiselle, what would
you have done, if your parents hadn't got married? Would you have
written me that indignant letter? Would you ever have gone to see
Enoch Arden? Would you have ever known the Paradise of new fall hats
and George Eliot's last new book?
I should say not.
At least it strikes me that way upon a mere glance.
Then wherein are you any better than your parents? I would like to be
assured, therefore, that you have had a chance to get married, and
why you refused the chance, before I answer you.
Of course I expect a very torrent of affirmation. A woman had better
be dead than never to have had a chance. I would rather face a
Nubian lion than tell a woman to her face that she had never had
an opportunity to get married. Do not the dear, delightful old
women, sitting in their arm-chairs, grow garrulous over their tea,
and tell their grand-daughters of the numberless chances they had
when they were young and their faces were smooth and the wrinkles
and crows-feet had not been written upon their foreheads by the
implacable Time? Do not mature married ladies, who have just gone
round the corner, and are beginning to feel just the slightest
touch in the world of neuralgia, now and then delight to give their
husbands a realizing sense of their inferiority, by recalling
the number of chances they have had and how they might have done
better here and lived easier there? Do not young ladies in _les
confidences_ with their numerous bosom friends--confidences which
are as mysterious as a sum in simple addition and as eternal as the
life of a sand-fly--divulge to each other the chances they have had,
and the prospects for chances ahead, with the stereotyped exactions
of promises never to tell, upon penalty of immediate severance of
the ties which bind, etc.? Do not the delightful little creatures
from five to ten display the first sign of womanhood in getting up
flirtations with the little boy in the next house, and writing the
most astonishing little notes to the effect that
'If you love me as I love you,
No knife shall cut our loves in two.'
etc., etc.?
This story of chances is an old, old story. It is a failing of human
nature. There isn't a young woman in the world who has been gazed
at admiringly by a young man, but has imagination strong enough
to convert that look into a chance. That story won't do. I want
something more definite.
In the second place, I would like to know if any of my correspondents
who have had so many chances improved one of them and got married?
If so, I would like again to know, what in the world you are
complaining of? Is it quite complimentary to your other half, who
buys your bonnets, provides your beefsteaks, pays your washerwoman,
and looks after the pocket-book side of your marital contract? With
that estimable man in your eye--and I should hate to deny in your
presence, Madame, that he was not estimable--how can you have the
assurance to deny that there are women who would marry, if they had
the chance? Are the grapes which grow on your vines soured? Has the
honeymoon grown bitter in its waxings and wanings? Have you put your
finger in the fire and been burned?
I hope not, but it looks so, my dear--it looks so.
I have a letter from still another correspondent--written in a
savage, vinegary sort of chirography--who lugs in that stale crowd,
Anna Dickinson, Miss Anthony, etc., to prove that women will not
always marry when they have a chance. I do not recognize anything
womanly in these clamorous individuals bawling from stumps, and
crying themselves hoarse for rights which any of them can have if
they have sense enough to take them. If a woman will deliberately
unsex herself, she has no right to expect chances. If she ever, by
some mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence, gets a chance,
it is kindness to the dumb brute who gave her the chance, when she
refuses it. The good God, when He established the relation of the
sexes, never intended that man should ally himself to a woman with
ice-water in her veins and a head full of syllogisms. He might as
well marry a treatise on metaphysics and have done with it. I am sick
of this crowd of one-idea women who are invariably trotted out when
it is necessary to do or say anything. They are exceptions to all
rules, and prove nothing. A cow with five legs and a hen with no tail
furnish no data from which to judge of the general family of cows and
hens.
It is rather curious that nearly all my correspondents hurl my Maiden
Aunt in my face to prove that I am wrong in asserting that every
woman would marry if she had a chance. The Maiden Aunt _did_ have a
chance, and would have accepted the chance, had not Death stepped
in and taken it away from her. She could not love twice, and so she
preferred to wait until she could be united to him eternally. It
would have been the crowning glory of her life, if she could have
married him for whom she wore the forget-me-not so long, and her
life therein would have been more perfect than it was. She was ready
to marry when she had the chance, but Fate ordered it otherwise, and
she bowed her head and submitted to the decree which forbade the
chance, but could not forbid the love. And they who were divided in
life were united in death, and I know are quite happy now.
September 4, 1869.
_OLD BLOBBS REDIVIVUS._
I think you never saw a happier little family circle than gathered
about the breakfast table this morning. The dark cloud which has
hovered over us so long, casting its shadow over all the household,
has dissipated, and behind it we saw that the sun was still shining,
although we faint hearts had begun to believe that we should never
sit in the sunshine again.
Old Blobbs has past the crisis and weathered the storm. The staunch
old man has baffled _pallida mors_ by resolutely contesting every
inch with him. For a day he hovered on the brink of the chasm
between the two worlds, but there was no trace of terror, or even of
impatience, in his serene face. I think he was so near to Heaven that
gleams of its light irradiated him, for I never saw such a rapt face
before. I think that he heard the sound of the harps coming faintly
to him, as we sometimes hear music coming over the water in the
hush of night, for now and then he would close his eyes and listen
very attentively, seeming to forget us who were standing around,
fearing that at any moment he might see the gate of Paradise and pass
through, leaving us disconsolate on this side. And I know, by a quick
glow of recognition and a smile of ineffable pleasure, which once
lit up his face, that he saw the Maiden Aunt, and a little child who
once left us, somewhere in that land so far from us, but so near to
him, for he raised his thin white hand as if he would grasp the hand
of another. We could not speak to him. In that solemn time we dared
not. The doctor sat upon the bedside and watched him with anxious
face. Mignon, in the intensity of her grief, sat with her face
buried in her hands. She had placed the faded forget-me-not, which
the Maiden Aunt sent to her as her dying souvenir, in Blobbs' hand,
thinking, perhaps, that he might take it to her, as they do not grow
where she is, for memory There is eternal.
It was growing towards sunset, and through the interlacing leaves of
the ivy which covers the window, a golden shaft of sunlight shot into
the room and fell upon the bed. It caught Old Blobbs' eye. He faintly
smiled, turned his head away, and closed his eyes. The doctor lightly
felt the pulse and motioned us to be silent. In a few minutes, the
doctor beckoned us to retire to another room, and then said to us:
"Your friend is sleeping. He has passed the crisis and will be spared
to you. It is only necessary that he should be kept quiet."
On the day before the crisis, Parson Primrose called to see Old
Blobbs in the performance of official duty, and undoubtedly actuated
by a sincere desire to smooth his pathway into the Valley of the
Shadow. There was just the faintest expression of impatience
upon Blobbs' face, when he saw him enter. Primrose had assumed a
conventional, business-like look of grief, not unmixed with a slight
anxiety, as if he were not at all certain that Blobbs' pathway
needed any smoothing. And I knew that Blobbs was convinced how
utterly impotent Primrose was to afford him any consolation or shed
any light upon the future.
In a dry, formalistic way, Primrose asked: "My dear brother, are you
prepared for the great change!"
I never shall forget Blobbs' look of profound astonishment as he
replied: "Yes, sir! Certainly. I have always been prepared for this
from my boyhood up. I supposed it was a man's first duty to have his
household always in order for such changes--most of all, the common
change which may come any minute. Why, of course, sir, I am prepared,
and hope I shall meet the change like a gentleman."
Primrose added: "And have you prepared yourself for this great change
by attendance upon divine worship?"
"Yes, sir," replied Old Blobbs. "I may say to you, however, as we
had better understand each other, that I have not always deemed it
important to attend divine worship within four walls. I have been
rather oppressed, sir, by this gregarious form of worship, and have
not always received satisfaction or consolation from the gentlemen
of your cloth--and this, with all respect, sir. I imagine that I
have been rather exacting, and expected to find a guide, rather than
a companion who knew no more of the way than myself. In such cases,
I always found that I got much nearer the Great Father by going out
into Nature, the house which He built, and by loving my fellow-man
and all the forms of life which He has created, even down to the
insects. There has always, I may say, sir, been more satisfaction to
me in this warm, active love than in that affection which has been
regulated by rules and bounded by dogmas."
"Then you have never settled upon any creed or form of belief," said
Primrose.
Blobbs' face again wore an impatient look, as he replied: "Belief
with me, sir, has been instinctive. It never had any prescribed form,
and never needed defining by any ritual. I have never troubled myself
much about any creed, as I have never seen any record of creeds where
I may soon go. I do not expect, if I had a creed, that it would be
anything but an impediment to me in crossing the river. If I got
safely over with it, I am confident, sir, that St. Peter would make
me leave it outside the gate, as something for which they had no use
inside."
"Then, you have believed in no doctrine, and belonged to no church,
my dear friend?" said Primrose.
"You mistake me, sir," said Blobbs, rather impatiently. "I have
always believed in charity, which is greater than faith or hope,
and in the sublime words which Christ, and Confucius before Christ,
uttered: 'Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.'
I have always belonged to the great church of humanity, which, I
think, sir, in ages to come, will be the church of mankind----"
"When the millenium comes, and man is perfect?" interposed Primrose.
"No, sir!" replied Blobbs, emphatically. "I look for no millenium
of perfection. Man can never fully develop, if this world shall
stand for millions of ages yet. To assume that, would be to deny the
principle of infinity which is in him. The perfect development can
never be attained except in eternity. We must be freed from this
frail envelope of the body before the soul can rise, untrammelled."
"Upon what, then, if you have no doctrine, or creed, or church, do
you depend for your salvation?" said Primrose.
"Upon the love of our common Father," replied Blobbs. "He has
carried me, sir, in the hollow of His hand since childhood, and has
never done me harm. I am not afraid now, sir, to trust myself to
Him, confident that He knows better than I what is best for me, and
that He will do what is best. I think that He will solve all these
mysteries, so that what is dark to my feeble comprehension will
become quite light. I am willing, sir, to trust myself to Him, and,
sir, if you can throw any light upon the place to which I am going, I
shall be very grateful to receive it. As to the manner of going, I am
quite willing to leave that to Him who knows more than I."
Primrose, after a few generalities, took his leave, satisfied that
at least he had done his duty, but Old Blobbs turned his face to the
wall with a feeble smile and a shake of the head.
I think Blobbs was fully convinced, as well as the rest of us, that
he should not live long, for on that same day he handed me his diary,
which he desired me to keep. He has since that time expressed his
willingness to have me use what I please of it. On looking it over, I
found some thoughts which perhaps may interest you.
In one place he says:
"I think I have but one regret in leaving this world. When I look
into the past and see what is doing, I would like to live into the
future some centuries, to see what a magnificent world this will be."
Again he says:
"Every man carries in his breast an aspiration and a skeleton. The
one is a yearning for an ideal which is never realized here. He
will never find it, be his search ever so long or so faithful. It
must always end in the fate of the Prince who sought the fountain
of perpetual youth, and the alchemists who wasted their lives and
energies looking for the philosopher's stone. And yet it seems to me
this unattainable ideal is one of the surest proofs of immortality.
The other is the reverse of the ideal--a fearful secret--a chained
tiger--a terrible power. Sometimes it assumes only the form of a
melancholy. Sometimes of a despair which kills."
Again:
"The keen, earnest love of Nature always involves the warmer love of
man as the noblest type of Nature, and yet the love of Nature is the
compensation for the loss of man. When all men forget you--when the
bright hues with which you have invested the ideal of the soul fade
like a morning mist--when the heart in its lowest depths of despair
finds only artificial instead of real men, when you even despair of
humanity--vivifying Nature remains a faithful friend, and brings
compensation in her flowers and birds, her mountains and cataracts."
Again:
"Sympathy with anything that is beautiful can never be completely
exercised when you are alone. It must find expression, and there
must be the presence of another who shall be the recipient of that
expression. Worship demands isolation, which begets reverence.
Sympathy demands the presence of another, and begets friendship or
love, according to the nature of the object and the companion. Either
in the presence of nature, which inspires friendship, or of music and
some forms of art, which inspire love, the presence of the second
person is essential to complete sympathy; and he who has sought
either love or friendship, and lost both, is richer than he who has
never sought either."
Blobbs' diary contains also some pretty severe strictures, which I
might be tempted to give you were it not for the fact that he will
now soon be with us again and speak for himself. I saw him this
morning, and he is quite like himself again. He took me by the hand
and said: "Well, my dear boy, they say the old ship is going to
weather the storm."
I congratulated him upon his improvement, and he added:
"I thought we were getting into the haven and coming to anchor. But
the voyage isn't quite over yet, so we must clear away the decks,
crowd on all sail and out again into the blue waters, with the rest
of our little fleet, and trust all to the good Pilot at the helm, Who
knows what is best, after all."
August 28, 1869.
_A TRIP TO HELL._
If you should ask me why I went to Hell, I do not know that I could
answer you. I only know that I have often wanted to go there. I
have more than once envied Swedenborg, who could go in a jiffy
where he pleased, and the rat who lived in a well, and when he died
went----you know where. If you do not know, I can tell you that the
place rhymes with well.
I only know that I went there and came back safe and unsinged, and
with no smell of fire in my garments, although I saw and talked
with him who is never mentioned in polite company, strange to say,
considering that he is the politest person that I ever met.
It may have been owing to the fact that, just before I went to sleep,
I was thinking of these coming fall days; of the maple boughs which
will soon be blazing with the red and scarlet flames of the frost; of
the smoky haze which will soon hide the hill-sides; of the sumachs
and vines which will soon sheet the road-sides with flame. It may
have been this smoke and fire which sent me there, for the most of us
form no other idea of that place, under the heavens, except in the
light of brimstone, sulphur, anthracite coal, lava, molten iron, and
other pleasant compounds, into which we are to be immersed forever
and a day, to roast, boil, and bake, and yet never get cooked.
But, as I said before, I have been to Hell and got back safely, and I
should be unfaithful to my post as a public benefactor, and my duties
as a journalistic chronicler, did I not tell you what I saw.
You may remember that some months ago I told you of my trip to
Heaven. My route to the other place was partially the same. I passed
through our system of stars and planets, dodged the comets as before,
found that the Man in the Moon was ill from the effects of the
recent eclipse, saw the Archer-road milkmen still running from the
stump-tail cows in the Milky Way, passed from planet to planet, and
from galaxy to galaxy into other systems, and at last reached the sea
of golden light, of which I told you before--the sea of Immortality.
Between this and the crystal sea above it, however, I diverged, and
my way led through rifts of dark leaden clouds, across blank moors,
which were illumined by a lurid light which seemed to come from no
source. There were strange whisperings in the air. Dark-winged birds
now and then flitted by me, and ever and anon I could hear a sullen
roar in the distance, which seemed to come from the flow of a river.
Thus, on over the blank moors, until my way led to a hill-side, at
the foot of which I was stopped by one of Lucifer's officials, who
briefly examined me, and then said I was qualified to proceed.