"Nonsense, Elise! She is but a child, and I beg you will not
prematurely magnify her into a woman. There are so few unaffected,
natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to
contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and ingenuous
simplicity, as to gaze upon cool green meadows on a sultry, parching
August day. Keep her a child, let her alone."
Mr. Hargrove wiped his spectacles with his handkerchief, and replaced
them on his Roman nose with the injured air of a man who, having been
interrupted in some favourite study to take cognizance of an
unexpected, unwelcome, and altogether unpleasant fact, majestically
refuses to inspect, and dogmatically waves it aside, as if to ignore
were to annihilate.
"Now, Peyton, for a sensible man (to say nothing of the astute
philosopher and the erudite theologian), you certainly do indulge in
the most remarkable spasms of wilful, obstinate, premeditated
blindness. You need not stare so desperately at that page, for I
intend to talk to you, and it is useless to try to snub either me or
my facts. Regina is young, I know, not quite fourteen, but she is
more precocious, more mature, than many girls are at sixteen; and you
seem to forget that, having always associated with grown people, she
has imbibed their ideas and caught their expressions, instead of the
more juvenile forms of thought and speech usual in children who live
among children. She has as far outgrown jumping-ropes as you have
tops and kites, and has no more relish for fairy tales than your
reverence has for base-ball, or my Bishop here for marbles. Suppose
last October I had sprinkled a paper of lettuce-seed in the open
border of the garden, and on the same day you had sown a lot of
lettuce in the hot-beds against the brick wall, where all the
sunshine falls: would you refuse your crisp, tempting, forced salad,
because it had reached perfection so rapidity?"
"Mother, do you intend us to understand that Regina is very tender,
and very verdant?" asked Mr. Lindsay, looking up from a grammar that
lay open before him.
"I intend you, sir, to study your Hindustanee, and your Tamil, while
I experiment upon the value of analogical reasoning in my discussions
with your uncle. Now, Peyton, you see that child's mind has been for
nearly four years in an intellectual hotbed,--sunned in the light of
religion, moistened with the dew of philosophy, cultivated
systematically with the prongs and hoes of regular study, of example,
and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted,
she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental
salad, and very fine! You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim,
dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet
tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women
would never fail to pick up and put aside. The soul of Thales
possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, and guide the
little tottering feet, study the ground and sweep away the
stumbling-blocks. Day after day you and Douglass discuss all kinds of
scientific theories, and quote pagan authorities and infidel systems
in the presence of Regina, who sits in her low chair over there in
the corner of the fireplace as quiet as a white mouse, listening to
every word, though 'Hans Christian Andersen' lies open on her lap,
and scarcely winking those blue eyes of hers, that are as solemn as
if they belonged to the Judges of Israel. If a child is raised in a
carpenter's shop, with all manner of sharp, dangerous often two-edged
tools scattered around in every direction, who wonders that the
little fingers are prematurely gashed and scarred? You and Douglass
imagine she is dreaming about the number of elves that dance on the
greensward on moonlight nights, or the spangles on their lace wings;
or that she is studying the latitude and longitude of the capital of
the last territory which Congress elevated to the uncertain and
tormenting dignity of nominal self-government, that once (_vide_
'obsolete civil hallucinations') inhered in an American State; or
perhaps you believe the child is longing for a pot of sugar candy?
Then rub your eyes, you ecclesiastical bats, and let me show you the
'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one
another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the
organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the
church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she
had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she
finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has
remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to
improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade of
Philadelphia lawyers could never guess. She looked at me very
steadily, and said as nearly as I can quote her words: 'I really
don't know exactly when I began, but I suppose a long time ago, when
I wore brown feathers, and went to sleep with my head under my wing,
as all nightingales do.' Said I: 'What upon earth do you mean?' She
replied: 'Why of course I mean when I was a nightingale, before I
grew to be a human being. Didn't you hear Mr. Hargrove last week
reading from that curious book, in which so many queer things were
told about transmigration, and how the soul of a musical child came
from the nightingale, the sweetest of singers? And don't you
recollect Mr. Lindsay said that Plato believed it; and that Plotinus
taught that people who lead pure lives and yet love music to excess,
go into the bodies of melodious birds when they die? Just now when I
played, I was wondering how a nightingale felt, swinging in a plum
tree all white with fragrant bloom, and watching the cattle cropping
buttercups and dandelions in the field. Mrs. Lindsay, if my soul is
not perfectly fresh and brand new, I hope it never went into a human
body before mine, because I would much lather it came straight to me
from a sweet innocent bird."
"Surely, Elise, you are as usual, jesting?" exclaimed her brother.
"On the contrary, I assure you I neither magnify nor embellish. I am
merely stating unvarnished facts, that you may thoroughly understand
into what fertile soil your scattered grains of learning fall. I
promise you, with moderate cultivation it will yield an
hundred-fold."
"Mother, what did you say to her, by way of a dose of orthodoxy to
antidote the metempsychosis poison?" asked Mr. Lindsay, who could not
forbear laughing, at the astonished expression of his uncle's
countenance.
"At first I was positively dumb, and stared at the child, very much
as I daresay Mahamaia did, when her boy Arddha-Chiddi stood upon his
feet and spoke five minutes after his entrance into this world of
woe, or when at five months of age he sat unsupported in the air.
Then I shook her, and asked if she had gone to sleep and dreamed she
was a bulbul feeding on rose leaves; whereupon she looked gravely
dignified, and when I proceeded to reason with her concerning the
absurdity of the utterly worn-out doctrine of transmigration, how do
you suppose she met me? With the information that far from being a
worn-out doctrine, learned and scientific men now living were
reviving it as the truth; and that whereas Christianity was only
eighteen hundred years old, that metempsychosis had been believed for
twenty-nine centuries, and at this day numbers more followers, by
millions, than any other religion in the world. I inquired how she
learned all this foolish fustian, and with an indescribable mixture
of pride, pity, and triumph, as if she realized that she was throwing
Mont Blanc at my head, she mentioned you two eminently evangelical
guides, from whose infallible lips she had gleaned her knowledge. As
for you, Douglass, I suggest you abandon Oriental studies, forego the
dim hope of martyrdom in India, and begin your missionary labours at
home. My dear, the Buddhist is at your own door. Now, Peyton, how do
you relish the flavour of your philosophical salad?"
"I am afraid I have been culpably thoughtless in introducing to her
mind various doctrines and theories which I never imagined she could
comprehend, or would even ponder for a moment. Since my sight has
become so impaired and feeble, I have several times called on her to
read some articles which certainly are not healthful pabulum for a
child, and my conversations with Douglass, relative to scientific
theories, have been carried on unreservedly in her presence. I am
very glad you warned me."
"And I am exceedingly sorry, if the effect of my mother's words
should be to hamper and cramp the exercise of Regina's faculties.
Free discussion should be dreaded only by hypocrites and fanatics,
and after all, it is the best crucible for eliminating the false from
the true. Does the contemplation of physical monstrosities engender a
predilection or affection for deformity? Does it not rather by
contrast with symmetry and perfect proportion heighten the power and
charm of the latter? The beauty of truth is never so invincible as
when confronted with sophistry or falsehood; just as youth and health
seem doubly fair and precious, in the presence of trembling
decrepitude and revolting disease."
"Really, Bishop! I thought you had passed the sophomoric stage, and
it is a shameful waste of dialectic ammunition to throw your
antithesis at me. According to your doctrine, America ought to buy up
and import all the deformed unfortunates who are annually exposed in
China, in order that our people should properly appreciate the
superiority of sound limbs, and the value of the five senses; and
healthy young people should throng the lazarettos and alms-houses to
learn the nature of their own disadvantages. It is equally desirable
that wise men like you and Peyton should accustom yourselves to the
society of--well--I use polite diction, of imbeciles, of 'innocents,'
in order to set a true value on learning and your own astute logic?"
"My dear little mother, you chop your logic so furiously with a broad
axe, that you darken the air with a hurricane of chips and splinters.
Like all ladies who attempt to argue, you rush into the _reductio ad
absurdum_, and find it impossible to discriminate between----"
"Wisdom and conceit? Bless you, Bishop, observation has taught me all
the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no
more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined to
turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered
a fricassee of Pelops. Now I----
"Ceres did eat of it!" exclaimed her son, adroitly avoiding a tweak
of the ear, by throwing his head back, beyond the touch of her
fingers.
"A wretched pagan fable, sir, with which orthodox bishops should hold
no communion. Tell me, you beardless Gamaliel, where you accumulated
your knowledge relative to the education of girls? Present us a chart
of your experience. You talk of hampering and cramping Regina's
faculties, as if I had put her brains in a pair of stays, and daily
tightened the lacers."
"I am inclined to think the usual forms of female education have
precisely that effect. The fact is, mother, it appears that women in
this country are expected to come the reserve magazines of piety, of
religious fervour, on the certainly powerful principle that
'ignorance is the mother of devotion.' True knowledge, which springs
from fearless investigation, is a far nobler and more reliable
conservator of pure vital Christianity."
"_Exempli gratia_, Miss Martineau and Madame Dudevant, who are
crowned heads among the _cognoscenti?_ Or perhaps you would prefer a
second 'La Pelouse,' governed by Miss Weber, who certainly agrees
with you, 'that girls are trained too delicately to allow the mind to
expand.' Illuminated and expanded by 'philosophy' and 'social
progress' she and Madame Dudevant long ago literally abjured stays,
and glory in the usurpation of vests, pantaloons, coats, and short
hair. Be pleased to fancy my Regina, my blue-eyed snowbird, shorn of
that
'Gloriole of ebon locks on calmed brows'!
I would rather see her in her coffin, shrouded in a ruffled
pinafore."
"Much as I love her, so would I; but, Elise, we will anticipate no
such dreadful destiny. She has a clear fine mind, is studious and
ambitious, but certainly not a genius, unless it be in music; and she
can be trained into a cultivated refined woman, sufficiently
conversant with the sciences to comprehend their contemporaneous
development, without threatening us with pedantry, or adopting a
style suitable to the groves of Crotona in the days of Damo, or the
abstruse mystical diction that doomed Hypatia to the mercy of the
monks. After all, why scare up a blue-stockinged ogre, which may have
no intention of depredating upon our peace; for to be really learned
is no holiday amusement in this cumulative age, and offers little
temptation to a young girl. Not long since, I found a sentence
bearing upon this subject, which impressed itself upon my mind, as
both strong and healthy: 'And by this you may recognize true
education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and
warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself; and true
education is a deadly cold thing, with a gorgon's head on her shield,
and makes you every day think worse of yourself. Worse in two ways
also, more is the pity: it is perpetually increasing the personal
sense of ignorance, and the personal sense of fault.'"
"In that event, may I venture to wonder where and how you and
Douglass stand in your own estimation? If quotations are _en règle_,
I can match your reverence, though unfortunately my feminine memory
is not like yours, a tireless beast of burden, and I must be allowed
to read. Here is the book close at hand, in my stocking basket. Now,
wise and gentle sirs, this is my ideal of proper, healthful, feminine
education, as contrasted with pur new-fangled method of making girls
either lay-figures for millinery, jewellery, and frizzled false hair,
or else--far more horrible still--social hermaphrodites, who storm
the posts that have been assigned to men ever since that venerable
and sacred time when 'Adam delved and Eve span,' and who, forsaking
holy home haunts, wage war against nature on account of the mistake
made in their sex, and clamour for the 'hallowed inalienable right'
to jostle and be jostled at the polls; to brawl in the market place,
and to rant on the rostrum, like a bevy of bedlamities. Now when I
begin to read, listen, and tell me frankly, whether when you both
make up your minds to present me, one a sister, the other a daughter,
you will select your wives from among quaint Evelyn's almost obsolete
type, or whether you will commit your name, affections, wardrobe,
larder, pantry and poultry to a strong-minded female 'scientist,' who
will neglect your socks and buttons, to ascertain exactly how many
_Vibriones_ and _Bacteria_ float in a drop of fluid, and when you
come home tired and very hungry, will comfort you, and nobly atone
for the injury of an ill-cooked and worse-served dinner, by regaling
your weary ears with her own ingenious and brilliant interpretation
and translation of _Ælia Lælia Crispis!_ Here is my old-fashioned
English damsel, meek as a violet, fresh as a dewy daisy, and sweet as
a bed of thyme and marjoram. 'The style and method of life are quite
changed, as well as the language, since the days of our ancestors,
simple and plain as they were, courting their wives for their
modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other
economical virtues then in reputation. And when the young damsels
were taught all these at home in the country at their parents'
houses; the portion they brought being more in virtue than money, she
being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and
nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that
golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle;
were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the
management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives.
Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations
in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the
comfort of their poor neighbours, and use of the family, which
wholesome diet and kitchen physic preserved in health. Then things
were natural, plain, and wholesome; nothing was superfluous, nothing
necessary wanted. The poor were relieved bountifully, and charity was
as warm as the kitchen, where the fire was perpetual.' Now, if Regina
were only my child, I should with some modifications train her after
this mellow old style."
"Then I am truly thankful she is not my sister! Fancy her pretty
pearly fingers encrusted with gingerbread-dough; or her entrance into
the library heralded by the perfume of moly, or of basil and sage,
tolerable only as the familiars of a dish of sausage meat! Don't soil
my dainty white dove with the dust and soot and rank odours that
belong to the culinary realm."
"Your white dove? Do you propose to adopt her? A month hence when you
are on your way to India, what difference can it possibly make to
you, whether she is as brown as a quail or black as a crow? Before
you come back, she will have been conscripted into the staid army of
matrons, and transmogrified into stout Mrs. Ptolemy Thomson, or lean
and careworn Mrs. Simon Smith, or worse than all, erudite Mrs.
Professor Belshazzar Brown, spelling Hercules after the learned
style, with the loss of the u, and the substitution of a k; or making
the ghost of Ulysses tear his hair, by writing the name of his
enchantress 'Kirké'!"
As Mrs. Lindsay spoke the smile vanished from her lips, and looking
keenly at her son's countenance she detected the change that crossed
it, the sudden glow that mounted to the edge of his hair.
Avoiding her eyes, he answered hastily: "Suppose those distinguished
gentlemen you mention chance to be scholars, _savans_, and disposed
to follow the advice of Joubert in making their matrimonial
selection: 'We should choose for a wife only the woman we should
choose for a friend, were she a man.' Think you mere habits of
domesticity, or skill in herbalism, would arrest and fix their
fancy?"
"But, Bishop, they might consider the Talmud more venerable authority
than Joubert, and the Talmud says, so I am told: 'Descend a step in
choosing a wife; mount a step in choosing a friend.'"
"Thank heaven! there is indeed no Salique Law in the realm of
learning. Mother, I believe one of the happiest auguries of the
future consists in the broadening views of education that are now
held by some of our ablest thinkers. If in the morning of our
religious system, St. Peter deemed it obligatory on us to be able and
'ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason
of the hope that is in you,' how doubly imperative is that duty in
this controversial age, when the popular formula has been adopted,
'to doubt, to inquire, to discover;' when the hammer of the geologist
pounds into dust the idols of tradition, and the lenses of astronomy
pierce the blue wastes of space, which in our childhood we fondly
believed were the _habitat_ of cherubim and seraphim. Now, mother, if
you will only insure my ears against those pink tweezers, of which
they bear stinging recollections, I should like to explain myself."
Mrs. Lindsay plunged her hands into the depths of her stocking
basket, and said sententiously:
"The temple of Janus is closed."
"What is the origin of the doctrine that erudition is the sole
prerogative of men, and that it proves as dangerous in a woman's
hands, as phosphorus or gunpowder in those of a baby----"
"Why Eve's experience, of course. A ton of gunpowder would not have
blown up the garden of Eden more effectually, than did her light
touch upon an outside branch of the tree of knowledge. I should say
Genesis was acceptable authority to a young minister of the Gospel."
"That is a violation of the truce, Elise. You are skirmishing with
his picket line. Go on, Douglass."
"It is evidently a remnant of despotic barbarism, a fungoid growth
from Oriental bondage----"
"Bishop, may I be allowed to ask if you are referring to Genesis?"
"Dear little mother, I refer to the popular fallacy, that in the same
ratio that you thoroughly educate women, you unfit them for the holy
duties of daughter, wife, and mother. Is there an inherent antagonism
between learning and womanliness?"
"Indeed, dear, how can I tell? I am not a 'Della-Cruscan.' I only
'strain' milk into my dairy pans."
"Elise, do be quiet. You break the thread of his argument."
"Then it is entirely too brittle to hold the ponderous propositions
he intends to string upon it. Proceed, my son."
"Are we to accept the unjust and humiliating dogma that the more
highly we cultivate feminine intellect, the more un-feminine,
unlovely, unamiable the individual certainly becomes? Is a woman
sweeter, more gentle, more useful to her family and friends, because
she is unlearned? Does knowledge exert an acidulating influence upon
female temper, or produce an ossifying effect on female hearts? Is
ignorance an inevitable concomitant of refinement and delicacy?
Does the knowledge of Greek and Latin cast a blight over the
flower-garden, or a mildew in the pantry and linen closet; or
do the classics possess the power of curdling all the milk of
human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's
nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an
acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady's
energies, that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of
performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so
pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers?
Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation
of so grossly absurd and monstrous a dogma! Have not you boxed my
ears, because, when stumbling through the 'Anabasis,' my Greek
pronunciation tortured your fastidious and correct taste? Did not you
tell me that you read nearly the whole of Sallust by spreading the
book open on the dairy shelf while you churned, thus saving time? And
did not that same sweet golden butter, made under the shadow of a
Latin dictionary, win you the State Fair Premium, of that very silver
cup, from which I drank my milk, as long as I wore knee-pants and
round jackets? Was it not my father's fond boast that his wife's
proficiency in music was equalled only by her wonderful skill in
making muffins, pastry, and _omelette soujflée?_"
With genuine chivalric tenderness in look and tone he inclined his
head; but though a tear certainly glistened in Mrs. Lindsay's bright
eyes, she answered gayly:
"Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of
flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am
incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your thirty pieces
of potent praise."
"I think," said Mr. Hargrove, taking a bunch of cherries from the
fruit-stand on the library table,--"I think the whole matter may be
resolved into this; the ambitious clamours and Amazonian excesses of
this epoch, are the inevitable consequence of the rigid tyranny of
former ages; which sternly banished women to the numbing darkness of
an intellectual night, denying them the legitimate and natural right
of developing their faculties by untrammelled exercise. This belief
in feminine inferiority is still expressed in Mohammedan lands, by
the custom of placing a slate or tablet of marble on a woman's grave,
while on that of men a pen or penholder is laid, to indicate that
female hearts are mere tablets, on which man writes whatever pleases
him best. In sociology, as well as physics and dynamics,--the angle
of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence,--the
psychologic rebound is ever in proportion to the mental pressure; one
extreme invariably impinges upon the opposite,--and when the pendulum
has reached one end of the arc, it must of necessity swing back to
the other. In all social revolutions the moderate and reasonable
concessions which might have appeased the discontent in its
incipiency are gladly tendered much too late in the contest, when the
insurgents stung by injustice and conscious of their grievances,
refuse all temperate compromise, and run riot. This woman's-rights
and woman's-suffrage abomination is no suddenly concocted social
bottle of yeast: it has been fermenting for ages, and, having finally
blown out the cork, is rapidly leavening the mass of female
malcontents."
"But, Uncle Peyton, you surely discriminate between a few noisy
ambitious sciolists who mistake lyceum notoriety for renown, and the
noble band of delicate, refined women whose brilliant attainments in
the republic of letters are surpassed only by their beautiful
devotion to God, family, and home? Fancy Mrs. Somerville demanding a
seat in Parliament, or Miss Herschel elbowing her way to the
hustings! Whose domestic record is more lovely in its pure
womanliness than Hannah More's, or Miss Mitford's, or Mrs.
Browning's? who wears deathless laurels more modestly than Rosa
Bonheur? It seems to me, sir, that it is not so much the amount as
the quality of the learning that just now ought to engage attention.
I see that one of the ablest and strongest thinkers of the day has
handled this matter in a masterly way, and with your permission I
should like to read a passage: 'In these times the educational tree
seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in
the ground; and I confess I should very much like to turn it upside
down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of
Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit
of literature and of art. No educational system can have a claim to
permanence, unless it recognizes the truth that education has two
great ends, to which everything else must be subordinated. One of
these is to increase knowledge; the other is to develop the love of
right and the hatred of wrong. At present, education is almost
entirely devoted to the cultivation of the power of expression, and
of the sense of literary beauty. The matter of having anything to say
beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or of possessing any
criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish between the God-like
and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I think I do not err
in saying that if science were made the foundation of education,
instead of being at most stuck on as cornice to the edifice, this
state of things could not exist.' Such is the system I should like to
see established in our own country."
"Provided you could reply upon the moderation of the teachers; for
unless wisely and temperately inculcated, this system would soon make
utter shipwreck of the noblest interests of humanity. For many years
I have watched attentively the doublings of this fox, and while I
yield to no man in solemn fidelity to truth, I want to be sure that
what I accept as such, is not merely old error under new garbs, only
a change of disguising terms. Science has its fetich, as well has
superstition, and abstruse terminology does not always conceal its
stolid gross proportions. The complete overthrow and annihilation of
the belief in a personal, governing, prayer-answering God, is the end
and aim of the gathering cohorts of science, and the sooner masking
technicalities are thrown aside the better for all parties.
Scientific research and analysis, nobly brave, patient, tireless, and
worthy of all honour and gratitude, have manipulated, decomposed, and
then integrated the universal clay, but despite microscope and
telescope, chemical analysis, and vivisection, they can go no further
than the whirring of the Potter's wheel, and the Potter is nowhere
revealed. The moulding Creative hand and the plastic clay are still
as distinct, as when the gauntlet was first flung down by proud
ambitious constructive science. Animal and vegetable organisms have
been analyzed, and 'the idea of adaptation developed into the
conception that life itself, "is the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive in
correspondence with external co-existence and sequences."' Now to the
masses who are pardonably curious concerning this problem of
existence, is this result perfectly satisfactory? The 'Physical basis
of life' has been driven into a corner, hunted down, seized at last,
and over the heads of an eager, panting, chasing generation, is
triumphantly dangled this 'Scientific Fox' brush, 'Nucleated
Protoplasm, the structural unit!' But how or whence sprang the laws
of 'Protein'? Hatred of certain phrases is more bitter than of the
principles they express, and because theologians cling to the words
God,' Creative Acts, Divine Wisdom, Providential Adaptation,
scientists declare them the _dicta_ of ignorance, superstition, and
tradition, and demand that we shall bow before their superior wisdom,
and substitute such terms as 'Biogenesis,' 'Abiogenesis,' and
'Xenogenesis.' But where is the economy of credulity? The problems
are only crowded by a subtle veil of learned or scientific verbiage,
and their solution does not induce the expenditure of faith. The
change of names is not worth the strife, for the Clay and the Potter
are still distinct, and He who created cosmic laws cannot reasonably
or satisfactorily be confounded with, or merged in His own statutes.
Creeds, theories, systems are not valuable because they are religious
and traditional, or because they are scientific or philosophical, but
solely on account of their truth. So, Douglass, I am not sure that
your essentially scientific method will teach Regina any more real
wisdom in ethics, or in Ætiolgy, than her great-grandmother
possessed."
"You forget, Uncle Peyton, that in this rapidly advancing age only
improved educational systems will enable men and women to appreciate
the importance of its discoveries."
"My dear boy, are sudden and violent changes always synonymous with
advancement? Is transition inevitably improvement? Was the social
status of Paris after the revolution of 1790 an appreciable progress
from the morals, religious or political, that existed in the days of
Fenelon? In mechanical, agricultural, and chemical departments the
march is indeed nobly on and upward, the discoveries and improvements
are vast and wonderful, and for these physical material blessings we
are entirely indebted to Science, toiling, heroic, and truly
beneficent Science. In morals, public or private--religion, national
or individual--or in civil polity, have we advanced? Has liberty of
action kept pace with liberty of opinion? Are Americans as truly free
to-day as they certainly were fifty years ago? In æsthetics do we
surpass Phidias and Praxiteles, Raphael and Michael Angelo? Is our
music more perfect than Pergolesi's or Mozart's? Can we exhibit any
marvels of architecture that excel the glory of Philæ, Athens,
Pæstum, and Agra? Are wars less bloody, or is crime less rampant? Our
arrogant assumption of superiority is sometimes mournfully rebuked.
For instance, one of the most eminent and popular scientists of
England emphasised his views on the necessity of 'improving natural
knowledge,' by ascribing the great plague of 1664, and the great fire
of 1666--which in point of population and of houses, nearly swept
London from the face of the globe--to ignorance and neglect of
sanitary laws, and to the failure to provide suitable organizations
for the suppression of conflagrations. He proudly asserted that the
recurrence of such catastrophes is now prohibited by scientific
arrangements 'that never allow even a street to burn down,' and that
'it is the improvement of our own natural knowledge which keeps back
the plague.' I think I am warranted in the assumption that our
American Fire Departments, Insurance Companies, and Boards of Health
are quite as advanced, progressive, and scientific as similar
associations in Great Britain; yet the week after I read his
argument, an immense city lay almost in ruins; and ere many months
passed, several towns and districts of our land were scourged,
desolated by pestilence so fatal, so unconquerable, that the horrors
of the plague were revived, and the living were scarcely able to
sepulchre the dead. Now and then we have solemn admonitions of the
Sisyphian tendency of the attempt so oft defeated, so persistently
renewed to banish a Personal and Ruling God, and substitute the
scientific fetich, 'Force and Matter,' 'Natural Law,' 'Evolution,' or
'Development.' While I desire that the basis of Regina's education
shall be sufficiently broad, liberal, and comprehensive, I intend to
be careful what doctrines are propounded; for unfortunately all who
sympathize with the atheism of Comte, have not his noble frankness,
and fail to print as he did on his title-page:
'_Réorganiser sans Dieu ni roi,
Par le culte systematique
de l'Humanité_.'"
"Oh, Peyton! what fearfully, selfishly long sentences you and
Douglass inflict upon each other, and upon me! The colons and
semicolons gather along the lines of conversation like an army of
martyrs, and to my stupidly weary ears that last, that final period,
was a most 'sweet boon'--a crowning blessing. If Regina's nightingale
soul is to be vexed by such disquisitions as those from which you
have been quoting, I must say it made a sorry bargain in exchanging
brown feathers for pink flesh, and would have had a better time
trilling madrigals in some hawthorn thicket or myrtle grove. I see
plainly I might as well carry my dear old Evelyn--fragrant with
mint and marjoram--back upstairs, and wrap it up in ancient
camphor-scented linen, and put it away tenderly to sleep its last
sleep in the venerable cedar chest, where my grandfather's huge
knee-buckles, and my great-grandmother's yellow brocaded silk-dress,
with its waist the length of my little finger, and the sleeves as
wide as a balloon. Gentlemen, permit me one parting paragraph,
before I write 'finis' on this matter of education, and 'hereafter
for ever hold my peace.' Be it distinctly understood, 'by these
presents,' that if that child Regina grows up a blue-stocking, or a
metempsychosist, a scientist or a freedom-shrieker, a professor of
physics or a practitioner of physic, judge of a court or mayor of a
city, biologist, sociologist, heathen or heretic, it will be no work
or wish of mine; for to each and all of these threatened, progressive
abominations, I, Elise Lindsay, do hold up clean hands, and cry,
Avaunt!"
"I thought my sister had long since learned that borrowing trouble
necessitated the payment of usurious interest? Just now our little
girl carries no gorgon's head; let her alone. The most imperatively
demanded change in our system of female training, is the addition of
a few years in which to work. American girls are turned out upon
society when they should be beginning their apprenticeship under
their mothers' eyes in all household arts and sciences; and they are
wives and mothers before they are able physically, mentally, or
morally to appreciate the sacred, solemn responsibilities that inhere
in such positions. If our girls pursued methodically all the branches
of a liberal and classical education, including domestic economy,
until they were at least twenty, how much misery would be averted!
how many more really elegant interesting women would be added to the
charm of society, usefulness to country, happiness and sanctity of
home! Had I means to bestow in such enterprises, I should
like to endow some institution, and stipulate for a chair of
household-arts-and-sciences-and-home-duties; and Regina should not go
into general society until she had graduated therein."
"Not another word of conspiracy against my little maid's peace! Lean
forward a little, Peyton, and look at her yonder, coming along the
rose-walk. See how the pigeons follow her. She has been gathering
raspberries, and I promised she should make all she could pick into
jelly for poor old Tobitha Meggs. How pure and fair she looks in her
white dress! Dear little thing! Sometimes I am wicked enough to wish
she had no mother, for then she would be wholly ours, and we could
keep her always. Listen, she is singing Schubert's '_Ave Maria_'."
After a moment's silence Mrs. Lindsay rose, and, passing her arm
around her son's neck, leaned her cheek against his head, as he sat
near his uncle, and looking through the open door at the slowly
approaching figure.
"Bishop, if I were an artist, I would paint her as a priestess at
Ephesus, chanting a hymn to Diana; and instead of Hero and the
pigeons, place brown deer and spotted fawns on mossy banks in the
background."
"Pooh! What a hopeless pagan you are, Elise? If I were a sculptor I
would chisel a statue of purity, and give it her countenance."
And Mr. Lindsay smiled in his mother's face, and said only for her
ear:
"Do not her eyes entitle her to be called Glaukopis?"