As the carriage stopped in the _portière_ the big gardener came down,
and placing one arm under and the other about me, was just going to
lift the invalid out as usual.
“Go away,” I fairly screamed. “Let me walk, will you! Carry mother in
quick,” for sure enough, she was the one who had to be carried. Her
rigid dignity had disappeared, and she had dropped back listless and
disheveled, moaning:
“Oh, John is drunk and Aspasia crazy! Look at her! she is so sick she
can’t walk, and yet see her run up those steps! What shall I do, what
shall I do! And the monument that they warranted in writing to last
for ever or no pay is tumbling down. I must have it fixed, even if it
costs ten thousand dollars; for the name of Hobbs must not grow dim.”
“Dear he” (she always spoke of her husband as simply “he” or “him”)
“has so often said, ‘You married Hobbs for better or worse’--says he
to me--‘and your name will be carved on the finest monument in Forest
Lawn.’“
Reader bold--lacking in knowledge and therefore in faith, limiting
possibility to your own tiny experience, quick to deny--you doubt that
I went away an invalid and returned in an hour cured. Let me whisper
in your ear that it was all in accordance with natural law, and not at
all strange or miraculous, excepting in the sense that all nature is
miraculous (let us not quarrel over definitions). That which cured me
was a good dose of Animating Purpose.
Men retire from business and die in a year from lack of animating
purpose. Women are protected, hedged about and propped up, cared for,
and die for the lack of this essential.
“Faith Cure,” “Christian Science” and any other strong desire filled
with hope and a determination to _be_ and to _do_, supply animating
purpose of a good kind, although sometimes, possibly, alloyed with
error: but any good idea which makes us forget self and sends the blood
coursing through our veins, is healing in its nature.
When the stays that held me were cut, and I knew I must live and work
and be useful, the old sickly self was thrust far behind by Animating
Purpose; not the finest quality of animating purpose, I will admit,
but a fairly good serviceable article, and certainly a thousand times
better than none.
You must not think that my mother was naturally weak--not so. Of a
fine delicate organization, she married when nineteen and had given
herself unreservedly to her husband in mind and body (for have not
husbands “rights?”) never doubting but what it was her wifely duty to
do so. She even gave up her own church and joined his--adopted his
opinions--quoted his sayings and repeated his jokes. “Well, _he_ says
so and that is an end to it.” In the house of Hobbs, Hobbs was the
court of last appeal.
In some marriages women say “I will” audibly, with mental reservation
of “when circumstances permit.” Such women have been instructed in
diplomacy. They have been told to meet their husbands at the door with
a smile and clean collar, to make home pleasant, to smooth down the
rough places--in short, to manage the man and never let him discover
it, which is the finest of the finest arts. They can examine his
pockets at such convenient times when he will not know it, count his
money, take what they need--which is better than harassing a man and
whining for a dollar--read his note-book, and thus in a thousand little
ways keep such close track of him that with proper skill there would be
positively no excuse for rubbing him the wrong way of the fur.
But not so with my mother. She said to Mr. Hobbs on their wedding night,
“I am yours--wholly yours. In your presence I will think aloud, there
shall be no concealment. To you I give my soul and body!”
Mr. Hobbs took the latter, and in a hoarse whisper said:
“I have an income of six thousand dollars a year, and you shall never
regret you married Hobbs, of Hobbs, Nobbs & Porcine. I will shield you
from every unpleasant thing; you shall never know care or trouble;
never a day’s work shall you do; nothing but just be happy and look
pretty the livelong day; and anything you want at Barnes & Bancroft’s,
Peter Paul’s, Dickinson’s or Fulton Market, why get it and have it
charged to Hobbs, for I am rated in ‘Dun’ ‘E. 2,’ and next year it will
be ‘2 plus.’”
Such total unselfishness touched the virgin heart of this
nineteen-year’s-old woman--that is to say, child. She lived in a
Hobbs’ atmosphere. The two lives did not grow into one, she became
Mrs. Hobbs not only in name but in fact. Now any thinking person will
admit that this was better than for her to have endeavored to retain
her individuality, for if she had done this and still was honest and
frank, there would have been strife. She would always have thought of
her girlhood as the _ante bellum_ times, for Mr. Hobbs had ideas, or
believed he had, and nothing gave him such delicious joy as to rub
these ideas into one, especially if they squirmed and protested.
I have seen precocious children that astonished or made jealous as
the case might be. How they did sing, play the banjo, or speak!
One such boy I remember--we were all sure he would grow to be an
orator who would shake the nation. I watched him, and saw him to-day
presiding at the second chair in Chadduck’s tonsorial palace, and
noted the Ciceronian wave of his hand as he shouted the legend, “Next
gentleman--shave.”
Walking across a prairie in Iowa with a friend, we suddenly found
ourselves going through a miniature grove, where the highest trees did
not reach my shoulders. I examined the leaves and found the trees to be
black-oak of the most perfect type.
“What beautiful young trees! How they will grow and grow and put out
their roots in every direction, and search the very bowels of the
earth for the food and sustenance they need! How they will toss their
branches in defiance to the storm, and be a refuge and defence for the
wearied traveler! How----”
“Stop that gush, will you please!” said my companion. “These are only
scrub-oaks and will not be any larger if they live a hundred years.”
Possibly this grove explains why the average man of sixty is no wiser
and no better than the average man of forty--it is Arrested Development.
My good mother is only a fine type of Arrested Development.