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diff --git a/old/55065-0.txt b/old/55065-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f429ba5..0000000 --- a/old/55065-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5595 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of American Thumb-prints, by Kate Stephens - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: American Thumb-prints - -Author: Kate Stephens - -Release Date: July 7, 2017 [EBook #55065] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN THUMB-PRINTS *** - - - - -Produced by Wayne Hammond and The Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - -AMERICAN THUMB-PRINTS - - -In shorter form “The New England Woman” appeared in _The Atlantic -Monthly_, and under other title and form “Up-to-Date Misogyny” and -“Plagiarizing Humors of Benjamin Franklin” in _The Bookman_, which -periodicals have courteously allowed republication - - - - - AMERICAN - THUMB-PRINTS - - METTLE OF OUR - MEN AND WOMEN - - BY - KATE STEPHENS - - [Illustration] - - PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON - J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY - 1905 - - COPYRIGHT, 1905 - BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY - - Published April, 1905 - - _Electrotyped and Printed by - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A._ - - IN MOST LOVING MEMORY OF - MY FATHER - - NELSON TIMOTHY STEPHENS - - WHOSE RARE KNOWLEDGE OF MEN AND OF LAW - WHOSE SENSITIVENESS TO JUSTICE - HUMAN KINDLINESS - AND FINE DISDAIN FOR SELF-ADVERTISEMENT - ARE STILL CHERISHED BY THE NOBLE FOLK - AMONG WHOM HE SPENT - THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE - AT WHOSE INSTANCE IN GREAT MEASURE - AND UPON WHOSE ADVICE - THE LAW SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY - SKETCHED IN THIS BOOK - WAS IN 1878 - FOUNDED - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - - PURITANS OF THE WEST 11 - - THE UNIVERSITY OF HESPERUS 35 - - TWO NEIGHBORS OF ST. LOUIS 87 - - THE NEW ENGLAND WOMAN 127 - - A NEW ENGLAND ABODE OF THE BLESSED 163 - - UP-TO-DATE MISOGYNY 187 - - “THE GULLET SCIENCE” 215 - - PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 287 - - - - -PURITANS OF THE WEST - - Let nouther lufe of friend nor feir of fais, - Mufe zow to mank zour Message, or hald bak - Ane iot of zour Commissioun, ony wayis - Call ay quhite, quhite, and blak, that quhilk is blak. - - First he descendit bot of linage small. - As commonly God usis for to call, - The sempill sort his summoundis til expres. - - JOHN DAVIDSON - -If it be heroism that we require, what was Troy town to this? - - ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON - - - - -PURITANS OF THE WEST - - -Of local phases of the American spirit, none has incited more -discussion than that developed in Kansas. The notion that the citizens -of the State are somewhat phrenetic in experimental meliorism; that -they more than others fall into abnormal sympathies and are led -by aberrations of the crowd--intoxications the mind receives in a -congregation of men pitched to an emotional key--this notion long ago -startled peoples more phlegmatic and less prone to social vagaries. - -Closer consideration shows the Kansas populace distinctly simple in -mental habit and independent in judgment. Yet their old-time Grangerism -and Greenbackism, and their still later Prohibitionism, Populism, -and stay law have caused that part of the world not so inclined to -rainbow-chasing to ask who they as a people really are, and what -psychopathy they suffer--to assert that they are dull, unthinking, or, -at best, doctrinaire. - -This judgment antedates our day, as we said. It was even so far back -as in the time of Abraham Lincoln, when Kansas was not near the force, -nor the promise of the force, it has since become. And it was in that -earlier and poorer age of our country when folks queried a man’s -suitability and preparedness for the senatorial office. Then when -Senatorship fell to General James Lane, and some one questioned the -Free-State fighter’s fitness for his duties, President Lincoln is said -to have hit off the new Senator and the new State with “Good enough for -Kansas!” and a shrug of his bony shoulders. Derogatory catchwords have -had a knack at persisting since men first tried to get the upper hand -of one another by ridicule, and the terse unsympathy and curl of the -lip of Lincoln’s sayings have kept their use to our day. - -One outsider, in explaining any new vagary of the Kansans, suggests, -with sophomore ease, “The foreign element.” Another tells you, -convicting himself of his own charge, “It is ignorance--away out there -in the back woods.” “Bad laws,” another conclusively sets down. Opposed -to all these surmises and guesses are the facts that in number and -efficiency of schools Kansas ranks beyond many States, and that in -illiteracy the commonwealth in the last census showed a percentage of -2.9--a figure below certain older States, say Massachusetts, with an -illiterate percentage of 5.9, or New York, with 5.5. As to its early -laws, they were framed in good measure by men and women[1] of New -England blood--of that blood although their forebears may have pushed -westward from the thin soil of New England three generations before the -present Kansans were born. Again its citizens, except an inconsiderable -and ineffective minority, are Americans in blood and tradition. - -It is in truth in the fact last named, in the American birth of the -people who gave, and still give, the State its fundamental key, that we -are to find the causes of Kansas neologism and desire for experiment in -every line that promises human betterment. It is a case of spiritual -heir-at-law--the persistence of what the great ecclesiastical -reactionist of our day has anathematized as “the American Spirit.” -For each new ism the Kansans have pursued has been but another form -and working in the popular brain of the amicus humani generis of the -eighteenth-century Revolutionists, or, as the people of their time and -since have put it, “liberty, equality, fraternity.” - -Kansas was settled by Americans, American men and American women -possessed by the one dominating idea of holding its territory and its -wealth to themselves and their opinions. They went in first in the -fifties with bayonets packed in Bible boxes. All along railways running -towards their destination they had boarded trains with the future -grasped close in hand, and sometimes they were singing Whittier’s lines: - - “We go to rear a wall of men - On Freedom’s southern line, - And plant beside the cotton-tree - The rugged Northern pine! - - * * * * * - - “Upbearing, like the Ark of old, - The Bible in our van, - We go to test the truth of God - Against the fraud of man.” - -In exalted mood they had chanted this hymn as their trains pulled into -stations farther on in their journey, and the lengthening of the day -told them they were daily westering with the sun. They had carried it -in their hearts with Puritan aggressiveness, with Anglo-Saxon tenacity -and sincerity, as their steamers paddled up the muddy current of the -Missouri and their canvas-covered wagons creaked and rumbled over the -sod, concealing then its motherhood of mighty crops of corn and wheat, -upon which they were to build their home. They were enthusiasts even -on a road beset with hostiles of the slave State to the east. Their -enthusiasm worked out in two general lines, one the self-interest of -building themselves a home--towns, schools, churches,--the other the -idealism of the anti-slavery faith. They were founding a State which -was within a few years to afford to northern forces in the struggle -centring about slavery the highest percentage of soldiers of any -commonwealth; and their spirit forecast the sequent fact that troops -from the midst of their self-immolation would also record the highest -percentage of deaths. - -They came from many quarters to that territorial settlement of theirs, -but the radical, recalcitrant stock which had nested in and peopled the -northeastern coast of our country was in the notable majorities from -Western States--from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Iowa; and from New -England, New York, and Pennsylvania also. Some came, indeed, who could -trace no descent from Puritan or Quaker or Huguenot forebear. But there -was still the potent heirship of spirit. - -To these men nature gave the gift of seeing their side of the then -universal question. She added a living sympathy with workers, and an -acute sense of the poverty and oppression which humanity at large is -always suffering from those who take because they have power. A free -discussion of slavery and their opposition to slave-holding had put -this deep down in their hearts. - -Each man of them--and each woman also--was in fixed principle and -earnestness a pioneer, in pursuit of and dwelling in a world not yet -before the eyes of flesh but sun-radiant to the eyes of the spirit--the -ideal the pioneer must ever see--and holding the present and actual as -but a mote in the beam from that central light. - -From a more humorous point of view, each man was clearly a Knight -of La Mancha stripped of the mediæval and Spanish trapping of his -prototype. His Dulcinea--an unexampled combination of idealism -and practicality--his much-enduring wife, upon whose frame and -anxious-eyed face were stamped a yearning for the graces of life. -Her fervor, with true woman strength, was ever persistent. “I always -compose my poems best,” said one of the haler of these dames whose -verses piped from a corner of the University town’s morning journal, -“on wash-day and over the tub.” - -These were the conditions of those men and women of the fifties and -early sixties to less lifted, more fleshly souls. The old enthusiasm -that lighted our race in 1620 and many sequent years in Massachusetts -Bay, and the old devotion that led the Huguenots and other oppressed -peoples to our Southern coasts and on “over the mountains,” were -kindled afresh. And the old exaltation of the descendants of these many -peoples--the uplifting that made way for and supported the act of the -Fourth of July in 1776--rose anew. The flame of an idea was in the air -heating and refining the grossest spirits--and the subtle forces of -the Kansans’ vanguard were far from the grossest. - -Once in their new home these men and women lived under circumstances -a people has almost never thriven under--circumstances which would -prey upon every fibre of calmness, repose, and sober-mindedness, and -possibly in the end deprive their folk of consideration for the past -and its judgments. “Govern the Kansas of 1855 and ’56!” exclaimed -Governor Shannon years after that time. “You might as well have -attempted to govern the devil in hell.” “Shall the Sabbath never -immigrate,” cried a Massachusetts woman in 1855 in a letter to friends -at home, “and the commandments too?” - -Among this people was little presence of what men had wrought. As in -the early settlements of our Atlantic seaboard, all was to be made, -everything to be done, even to the hewing of logs for houses and -digging of wells for water; and in Kansas pressure for energy and time -was vastly increased over those earlier years by the seaboard. The -draughting of laws for controlling a mixed population, with elements -in it confessedly there for turbulence and bloodshed, was for a time -secondary to shingle-making. - -Such primitive efforts were more than a generation ago--in fact, fifty -years. But the spirit with which those early comers inaugurated and -carried on their settlement did not perish when the daily need of -its support had passed away. It still abode as a descent of spirit, -meaning an inheritance of spirit, a contagion of spirit, and to its -characteristic features we can to-day as easily point--to its human -sympathies and willingness for experiment--as to the persistence of -a physical mark--the Bourbon nose in royal portraits, say, or the -“Austrian lips” of the Hapsburg mouth. Its evidences are all about you -when you are within the confines of the present-day Kansans, and you -are reminded of the Puritanism which still subordinates to itself much -that is alien in Massachusetts; or you think of the sturdy practicality -of the early Dutch which still modifies New York; or you may go farther -afield and recall the most persistent spirit of the Gauls of Cæsar, -novis plerumque rebus student, which to our time has been the spirit of -the Gauls of the Empire and of President Loubet. - -The Kansan has still his human-heartedness and his willingness to -experiment for better things. Exploded hypotheses in manufacture, -farming, and other interests scattered in startling frequency over the -vast acreage of his State, testify to these traits. - -He has to this day kept his receptivity of mind. Even now he scorns a -consideration for fine distinctions. He still loves a buoyant optimism. -And for all these reasons he often and readily grants faith to the -fellow who amuses him, who can talk loud and fast, who promises much, -and who gets the most notices in his local dailies. He is like the -author of Don Juan, inasmuch as he “wants a hero,” and at times he is -willing to put up with as grievous a one as was foisted upon the poet. -In the end, however, he has native bed-rock sense, and as his politics -in their finality show, he commonly measures rascals aright. But in his -active pursuit and process of finding them out he has offered himself -a spectacle to less simple-minded, more sophisticated men. - -Some years ago, in a grove of primeval oaks, elms, and black-walnuts -neighboring the yellow Kaw and their University town, those settlers of -early days held an old-time barbecue. The meeting fell in the gold and -translucence of the September that glorifies that land. Great crowds -of men and women came by rail and by wagon, and walking about in the -shade, or in the purple clouds that rose from the trampings of many -feet and stood gleaming in the sunshine, they were stretching hands to -one another and crying each to some new-discovered, old acquaintance, -“Is this you?” “How long is it now?” “Thirty-five years?” “You’ve -prospered?” and such words as old soldiers would use having fought a -great fight together--not for pelf or loot but for moral outcome--and -had then lost one another for many a year. - -Moving among them you would readily see signs of that “possession of -the god” the Greeks meant when they said ἐνθουσιαμóς. Characteristic -marks of it were at every turn. There was the mobile body--nervous, -angular, expressive--and a skin of fine grain. There was the longish -hair, matted, if very fine, in broad locks; if coarse, standing about -the head in electric stiffness and confusion--the hair shown in the -print of John Brown, in fact. There were eyes often saddened by the -sleeplessness of the idealist--eyes with an uneasy glitter and a vision -directed far away, as if not noting life, nor death, nor daily things -near by, but fixed rather upon some startling shape on the horizon. -The teeth were inclined to wedge-shape and set far apart. There was a -firmly shut and finely curved mouth. “We make our own mouths,” says Dr. -Holmes. About this people was smouldering fire which might leap into -flame at any gust of mischance or oppression. - -This describes the appearance in later decades of the corporate man of -the fifties and early sixties-- - - “to whom was given - So much of earth, so much of heaven, - And such impetuous blood.” - -A sky whose mystery and melancholy, whose solitary calm and elemental -rage stimulate and depress even his penned and grazing cattle, has -spread over him for more than a generation. With his intensity and his -predisposition to a new contrat social he and his descendants have been -subjected to Kansas heat, which at times marks more than one hundred in -the shade, and to a frost that leaves the check of the thermometer far -below zero. He and his children, cultivators of their rich soil, have -been subject to off-years in wheat and corn. They have endured a period -of agricultural depression prolonged because world-wide. They have been -subject, too, to the manipulation of boomers. - -Most lymphatic men--any Bœotian, in fact, but it is long before his fat -bottom lands will make a Bœotian out of a Kansan--most lymphatic men -ploughing, planting, and simply and honestly living would be affected -to discontent by the thunder of booms and their kaleidoscopic deceit. -Clever and sometimes unprincipled promoters representing more clever -and unprincipled bond-sellers in Eastern counting-houses sought to -incite speculation and lead the natural idealist by the glamour of -town-building, and county-forming booms, railway and irrigation booms, -and countless other projects. - -They played with his virtuous foibles and fired his imagination. -He gave himself, his time, his men, his horses, his implements for -construction; his lands for right of way. He hewed his black walnuts -and elms into sleepers, and sawed his bulky oaks for bridges. He -called special elections and voted aid in bonds. He gave perpetual -exemption from taxes. Rugged enthusiast that he was he gave whatever -he had to give,--but first he gave faith and altruistic looking-out -for the interests of the other man. Great popular works still -abiding--cathedrals in Europe are perhaps the most noted--were put up -by like kindling of the human spirit. - -His road was made ready for sleepers, and funds for purchasing iron he -formally handed the promoters,--since which day purslane and smartweed -and golden sunflowers have cloaked the serpentine grades which his own -hands had advanced at the rate of more than a mile between each dawn -and sunset. - -One direct relation and force of these inflated plans to the Kansan -have been that they often swerved and controlled the values of his -land, and the prices of those commodities from which a soil-worker -supports a family hungry, growing, and in need of his commonwealth’s -great schools. And the man himself, poor futurist and striver after the -idea, with a soul soaring heavenward and hands stained and torn with -weed-pulling and corn-husking!--his ready faith, his tendency to seek a -hero, his brushing aside of conservative intuition, his meliorism, his -optimism, his receptivity to ideas, his dear humanness--in other words, -his charm, his grace, his individuality, his Americanism--wrought him -harm. - -Our corporate man, loving, aspiring, working, waiting, started out -with a nervous excitability already given. He was a man with a bee -in his bonnet. He was seeking ideal conditions. Originally he was a -reactionist against feudal bondage, the old bondage of human to human -and of human to land. Later his soul took fire at the new bondage of -human to wage and job. He would have every man and woman about him as -free in person as he was in idea. - -What wonder then that he or his descendent spirit in the midst of -agricultural distress enacted a mortgage equity or stay law, and -determined that that law should apply to mortgages in existence at -the passage of the act! He it is of the all-embracing Populism, the -out-reaching Prohibitionism, the husband-man-defensive Grangerism. -Shall we not humanly expect him, and those suffering the contagion -of his noble singleness, to clutch at plans for a social millennium? -“Heaven is as easily reached from Kansas,” wrote an immigrant of 1855, -“as from any other point.” - -He values openly what the world in its heart knows is best, and like -all idealists foreruns his time. The legend is always about him of -how the men and women of the early fifties hitched their wagon to a -star--and the stars in his infinity above are divinely luminous and -clear. His meliorism--which would lead his fellows and then the whole -world aright--is nothing if not magnificent. - -But although he grubs up the wild rose and morning-glory, ploughing his -mellow soil deep for settings of peach and grape, and supplants the -beauty of the purple iris and prairie verbena with the practicalities -of corn and wheat, he has yet to learn the moral effect of time -and aggregation--that a moon’s cycle is not a millennium, a June -wind fragrant with the honey of his white clover not all of his fair -climate, and that a political colossus cannot stand when it has no -more substantial feet than the yellow clay which washes and swirls in -the river that waters his great State. In reality his excess of faith -hinders the way to conditions his idealism has ever been seeking. - -The Kansan is, after all, but a phase--a magnificent present-day -example and striving--of the mighty democratic spirit which has -been groping forward through centuries towards its ideal, the human -race’s ideal of ideals. In his setting forth of the genius of his -people for democracy and the tendency of his blood for experiment and -reform--according to that advice to the Thessalonians of an avaunt -courier of democracy, to prove all things and hold fast to that which -is good--he is led at times upon miry, quaggy places and by the very -largeness of his sympathies enticed upon quicksands which the social -plummet of our day has not yet sounded. - - - - -THE UNIVERSITY OF HESPERUS - - And not by eastern windows only, - When daylight comes, comes in the light, - In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, - But westward, look, the land is bright. - - ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH - -No university has anywhere ever become a great influence, or anything -but a school for children, which was not wholly or almost wholly in the -hands of the faculty or teaching body. _The faculty is the teaching -body._ If you have the right sort of faculty, you have a university -though you have only a tent to lecture in. If, on the other hand, you -try to make a university out of a board of sagacious business men -acting as trustees, and treat the professors simply as “hired men,” -bound to give the college so many hours a week, you may have a good -school for youths, but you will get no enlightening influence or force -out of it for the community at large. - - A writer in _The Nation_, 1889 - - - - -THE UNIVERSITY OF HESPERUS - - -During a great national struggle for human rights, Laurel Town was -touched by the high seriousness which rises from sincerity to the idea -of human liberty and the laying down of lives in defence of that idea. -Its baptism and its early years were thus purely of the spirit. - -A miniature burg, it snuggles upon broad, fat lands, semicircling the -height that rises to the west. From the hill-top the tiny city is -half-buried in green leaves. Looking beyond and to the middle distance -of the landscape, you find rich bottoms of orchard and of corn, and the -Tiber-yellow waters of a broad river running through their plenty. - -First immigrants to this country--those who came in back in the -fifties--discovered the hill’s likeness to the great Acropolis of -Athens, and determined that upon it, as upon the heights of the -ancient city of the golden grasshopper, the State’s most sacred temple -should be built. Thus were inspired library and museum, laboratories -and lecture-rooms, of the University of Hesperus, whose roofs are -gleaming in the vivid air to-day just as in some ancient gem a diamond -lying upon clustering gold sends shafts of light through foliations of -red metal. - -The brow of this hill beetles toward the south, but instead of the blue -waters of the Saronic Gulf which Sophocles in jocund youth saw dancing -far at sea, Hesperus students sight hills rolling to the horizon, and -thickets of elms and poplars fringing Indian Creek, and instead of the -Pentelic mountains in the northeast they catch the shimmering light -of the green ledges and limestone crests of the northern edge of the -valley the river has chiselled. - -But how, you ask--thinking of the fervor of the immigrants of 1854 -and ’55--how did this university come into being? In stirring and -tentative times. The institution was first organized by Presbyterians, -who later accepted a fate clearly foreordained, and sold to the -Episcopalians. This branch of the church universal christened the -educational infant Lawrence University, after a Boston merchant, who -sent ten thousand dollars conditioned as a gift on a like subscription. -The institution to this time was “on paper,” as these founders said -of early towns--that is, a plan, a scheme, a possibility. It finally -became the kernel of the University of Hesperus when the State accepted -from Congress a grant of seventy-two square miles of land. - -“There shall be two branches of the University,” the charter reads, “a -male and a female branch.” In clearer English, the institution was to -be open to men and women. - -Seeds of the convictions which admitted women to instruction had -long been germinating, even before the independence of women was -practically denied by the great Reformation. The idea was in the -mind of our race when we were north-of-Europe barbarians. It found -sporadic expression all through our literature. It is back of Chaucer -in annals of the people and later in such chroniclers as Holinshed. -Bishop Burnet, historian of his “Own Time,” and also Fuller, he of the -human “Worthies,” determined that “the sharpness of the wit and the -suddenness of the conceits of women needed she-schools.” Later Mary -Woolstonecraft wrote: “But I still insist that not only the virtue but -the knowledge of the two sexes should be the same in nature, if not -in degree, and that women, considered not only as moral but rational -creatures, ought to endeavor to acquire human virtues by the same means -as men, instead of being educated like a fanciful kind of half-being.” -And that moral and prudent sampler, Hannah More, declared: “I call -education not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but -that which tends to confirm a firm and regular system of character.” - -A score of the names of these fore-workers for human liberty are known -to us. But the names that are not known!--the pathos of it! that we -cannot, looking below from our rung in the ladder, tell the countless -who have striven, and fallen striving, that we are here because they -were there, and that to them, often unrecognized and unthanked, our -opportunities are due. They foreran their times, and their struggle -made ours possible. - - “’Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!” - -But the immediate thought or impulse to make our Western State -institutions co-educational, to give to the daughters the collegiate -leisure and learning of the sons--to whom or to what shall we trace -this idea! They used to explain it in Hesperus by telling you, “The -people about us are for the most part New Englanders in blood, you -know, perhaps not one, certainly not more than two generations removed -to more genial lands, and still retaining the rigor and tenacity and -devotion to principle of that stock.” But one naturally answered this -by saying, “In New England they did not in the fifties and sixties give -their daughters the educational opportunities they gave their sons. -In those decades there were attempts at women’s colleges outside New -England, but none in the neighborhood of Williams, Dartmouth, Amherst, -Harvard, or Yale.” - -The better reason is the historic--noted in every movement of our -Aryan race. In this is found what New England civilization has -done, not in Hesperus alone, but in Wisconsin, in California, in -Minnesota, and wherever else it has united with other forces, and lost -the self-consciousness and self-complacency which in our generation -are distinguishing and abiding traits upon its own granitic soil. -Prejudices which eat energy and dwarf activity colonists have commonly -left behind, whether they have entered the swift black ship of the sea -or the canvas-covered wagon of the prairie. This was said of those who -sailed westward and built up ancient Syracuse some twenty-six centuries -agone, and it is true also of the colonists of these later days. - -The drawing up of the charter of the University of Hesperus shows how -humanly, simply, and freely State building may be done. Judge Chadwick, -of Laurel Town, gives the candid narrative: - -“In the spring of 1864 the Misses Chapin and Miss Elizabeth Watson, -who had established a school here, and who were anxious that the -University should be organized, besought Governor Robinson to see that -it was done. He, or they (or perhaps but one of them), came to me and -insisted that I should go to the capital and secure the passage of an -act organizing the University. The session of the Legislature was near -its close. I went to the capital. In the State library I hunted up -the various charters of similar institutions, and taking the Michigan -University charter for my guide, drafted the act to organize the -University of the State.... Judge Emery was the member of the House.... -I do not remember who was the Senator.... I gave the draft to Judge -Emery, who introduced it into the house, and by suspension of the rules -got it through. It went through the Senate in the same way, and was -approved by the governor--Carney.” - -But the seed of fire from which this University sprang in the days -when men were fighting for unity, for an idea--this you cannot -understand without a word about the brilliant essence that enwraps you -in that land--Hesperus air and light. This ether no man can describe. -It is as clear as a diamond of finest quality, and each infinitesimal -particle has a thousand radiant facets. You think to take it in your -hand. It is as intangible as a perfume, as illusive as the hopes of -man’s ultimate perfection. The colors of liquid rose are hidden in -it and the glow of gold, and it gives flame to the dullest matter. -It glances upon a gray tree-trunk, and the trunk glitters in purple -and silver-white. It is so limpid and dry that a hill or a bush, or a -grazing sheep far away, stands out in clear relief. It vitalizes. It -whispers of the infinite life of life. Like the sea, it presses upon -you a consciousness of illimitability and immeasurable strength. It is -“most pellucid air,” like that in which the chorus of the “Medea” says -the Athenians were “ever delicately marching.” - -It is as like the atmosphere of Italy as the sturdy peach-blossoms -which redden Hesperus boughs in March are like the softer -almond-flowers. The same indescribable grace and radiance are in both -essences. But there are the Hesperus blizzards--vast rivers of icy -air which sweep from upper currents and ensphere the softness and -translucent loveliness of the earth with such frosts as are said to -fill all heaven between the stars. - -Under such dynamic skies young men and women have been gathering now -these forty years--before the September equinox has fairly quenched -the glow of summer heat. During a long æstivation a sun burning in -an almost cloudless heaven has beaten upon them day by day. The glow -has purified and expanded their skin, has loosened their joints, and -clothed them in the supple body of the south. Through the darkness of -the night ten thousand stars have shone above their slumbers, and wind -voices out of space have phu-phy-phis-pered through secretive pines and -rolled tz-tz-tz upon the leathery leaves of oaks. Such days and nights -have been over them since the wild grape tossed its fragrant blossoms -in damp ravines in the passion of May. - -These students have come from all kinds of homes, from meagre town -houses, from the plainest and most forlorn farm-houses, and from other -houses laden and bursting with plenty--and plenty in Hesperus is always -more plenty than plenty anywhere else. Many of these young people have -been nurtured delicately, but a large number have doubtless tasted the -bitterness of overwork and the struggle of life before their teens. - -Perhaps their parents came to Hesperus newly wedded, or in the early -years of married life with a brood of little children. If their coming -was not in the stridulous cars of some Pacific or Santa Fé railway, -then it was over the hard-packed soil in most picturesque of pioneer -fashions--a huge canvas-covered wagon carrying the family cook-stove, -beds, and apparel, and, under its creaking sides, kettles for boilers, -pails for fetching water from the nearest run, and axes to cut wood -for evening fires. Every article the family carried must answer some -requirement or use. The horses, too, have their appointed tasks, for, -the journey once accomplished, they will mark off the eighty acres the -family are going to pre-empt, and afterwards pull the plough through -the heavy malarious sod. - -On the seat of the wagon the wife and mother, wrapped in extremes of -cold in a patchwork quilt, at times nursed the baby, and in any case -drove with a workmanlike hand. John Goodman was sometimes back with -the collie, snapping his blacksnake at the cattle and urging them on. -But oftenest father and mother were up in the seat, and boy and girl -trooping behind in barefooted and bareheaded innocence, enjoying happy -equality and that intimate contact with the cows which milky udders -invite. - -Now this, or some way like this, was the introduction of a quota of -Hesperus men and women to their fat earth and electric atmosphere. -It is therefore not to be wondered at that these young people come -to their University with little of the glamour nourished by delicate -environment and the graces of life. Their earliest years have been -spent upon the bed-rock of nature wrestling with the hardest facts -and barest realities. They have suffered the deprivations and the -unutterable trials of patience and faith which the world over are the -lot of pioneers; and they have had the returns of their courage. -Every self-respecting man and boy has been, perhaps still is, expected -to do the work of two men. Every woman and girl to whom the god of -circumstance had not been kind must be ready to perform, alike and -equally well, the duties of man or woman--whichever the hour dictated. -“Hesperus,” says an unblushing old adage of the fifties--“Hesperus is -heaven to men and dogs and hell to women and horses.” - -But from whatever part of the State the students come to their -University, he and she commonly come--they are not sent. The -distinction is trite, but there is in it a vast difference. In many -cases they have made the choice and way for themselves. They have -earned money to pay their living while at school, and they expect, -during the three, four, or five years they are in their intellectual -Canaan, to spend vacations in work--in harvesting great wheat-fields -of Philistia, or in some other honest bread-winning. They are so close -to nature, and so radiantly strong in individuality, that no one of -them, so far as rumor goes, has ever resorted to the commonest method -of the Eastern impecunious collegian for filling his cob-webbed purse -with gold. The nearest approach I know to such zeal was the instance -of the student who slept (brave fellow) scot-free in an undertaker’s -establishment. He answered that functionary’s night-bell. Then he -earned half-dollars in rubbing up a coffin or washing the hearse; -adding to these duties the care of a church, milking of cows, tending -of furnaces, digging of flower-beds, beating of carpets, and any other -job by which a strong and independent hand could win honest money for -books and clothing and food. It was as true for him now as when Dekker, -fellow-player with Shakespeare and “a high-flier of wit even against -Ben Jonson himself”--to use Anthony à Wood’s phrase--when Dekker sang-- - - “Then he that patiently want’s burden bears, - No burden bears, but is a king, a king. - O sweet content, O sweet content! - Work apace, apace, apace, - Honest labor bears a lovely face, - Then hey nonny, nonny; hey nonny, nonny.” - -To one young man, whose course was preparing him for studies of Knox’s -theology upon Knox’s own heath, a harvest of forty acres of wheat -brought a competence, as this arithmetic will show: 40 × 50 × $0.50 -= $1000. He planted, he said, in the early days of September, before -leaving for college, and cut the grain after commencement in June. -The blue-green blades barely peeped through the glebe during winter. -When springtime came, and the hot sun shone upon the steaming earth, -and the spirit of growth crept into the roots, an invalid father--the -young planter being still in academic cassock--kept the fences up and -vagrant cows from mowing the crop under their sweet breath. Other men -often told of like ways of earning not only college bread but also -college skittles. - -Women students had commonly not so good a chance at wresting German -lyrics or Plato’s idealism from a wheat-furrow. Report of such -advantages at least never reached my ear. But this may be due to -the fact that women are reticent about the means of their success, -while men delight to dwell upon their former narrow circumstances and -triumphant exit from such conditions. - -Some Hesperus girl may have made money in hay, and indeed have made -the hay as charmingly as Madame de Sévigné reports herself to have -done--and certainly, in Hesperus conditions, without the episode of -the recalcitrant footman which Mistress de Sévigné relates. Now and -then a young woman did say that she was living during her studies -on funds she herself had earned. One doughty maiden, “a vary parfit, -gentil knight,” her face ruddy with healthy blood, her muscles firm and -active--such a girl said one day, in extenuation of her lack of Greek -composition, that “her duties had not permitted her to prepare it.” - -“But that is your duty, to prepare it,” I answered. “Are you one of -those students who never allow studies to interfere with ‘business’?” - -“No,” she said, quickly; “but let me tell you how it happened. The -boarding-house where I stay is kept by a friend of my mother. She -offers me board if I will help her. So I get up at five in the morning -and cook breakfast, and after I have cleaned up I come up here. In -the afternoon I sweep and dust, and it takes me till nearly dark. The -evening is the only time I have for preparing four studies.” - -What became of this girl, you ask? She married a professor in an -Eastern college. - -It is well to reiterate, however, in order to convey no false -impression of Hesperus sturdiness and self-reliance, that -many, probably a majority, of the students were supported by -their natural protectors. But it is clear that there is more -self-maintenance--self-reliance in money matters--at the Hesperus -University than in any college generally known in the East, and that -the methods of obtaining self-succor are at times novel and resultant -from an agricultural environment. In evidence that there are students -more fortunate--one should rather say more moneyed, for the blessings -of money are not always apparent to the inner eye--are the secret -societies which flourish among both men and women. The club or society -houses, for the furnishing of which carte blanche has been given the -individual humanely known as interior decorator, see not infrequently -courtesies from one Greek letter society to another, then and there -kindly wives of the professors matronizing.[2] - -An early introduction into the battle of life breeds in us humans -practicality and utilitarianism. Most unfortunately it disillusions. It -takes from the imaginativeness which charms and transfigures the early -years of life. In the University of Hesperus one found the immediate -fruit of this experience in the desire of the student, expressed before -he was thoroughly within the college gates, of obtaining that which -would be of immediate practical advantage to himself. He demanded what -the Germans call brodstudien, and sometimes very little beyond the -knowledge which he could convert into Minnesota wheat or some other -iota of the material prosperity which surges from east to west and -waxes on every side of our land. How strenuously one had to fight this -great impulse! and against what overwhelming odds! It was a reacting of -King Canute’s forbiddance to the sea, and, like that famous defeat, it -had its humors. - -You could see so plainly that this demon of practicality had been -implanted by want, and privation, and a knowledge drunk with the -mother’s milk, that the struggle of life on that untested soil was a -struggle to live; you could see this so plainly that you often felt -constrained to yield to its cry and urgency. - -And the weapons at hand to fight it were so few! Materialism on -every hand. And it was plain, also, that here was but an eddy in the -wave--that the impulse toward brodstudien was undoubtedly but a groping -forward in the great movement of the half-century that has endowed -realschulen from St. Petersburg to San Francisco, and is perhaps but -the beginning of the industrial conquest of the world--in its first -endeavors necessarily crippled, over-zealous and impotent of best works. - -Yet in the face of every concession there came anew to your conscience -the conviction, haunting unceasingly, of the need of the idea in -academic life, of the need of the love of study for its own sake, of -a broader education of the sympathies, of greater activity in the -intangible world of thought and feeling--desires of souls “hydroptic -with a sacred thirst.” To these alone did it behoove us to concede, for -through the spirit alone could the “high man” sustainedly lift up his -heart-- - - “Still before living he’d learn how to live-- - No end to learning. - Earn the means first--God surely will contrive - Use for our earning. - - Others mistrust and say, ‘But time escapes,-- - Live now or never!’ - He said, ’What’s Time? leave Now for dogs and apes, - Man has Forever.’” - -The ratio of Hesperus students who chose the old form of scholastic -training, called through long centuries the Humanities, was some -little time ago not more than one-fifth of those in the department of -literature and arts. Since the number was so small--all departments -would then hardly count five hundred students--the growth was favored -of that most delightful feature of small-college life, friendship -between instructor and undergraduate. Such offices often grew to -significant proportions during a student’s four collegiate years. All -genialities aided them; and nothing sinister hindered. - -The young folks’ hearts were as warm as may be found upon any generous -soil, and they held a sentiment of personal loyalty which one needed -never to question. They went to their University, after such longing -and eagerness, so thoroughly convinced that there was to be found the -open sesame to whatever in their lives had been most unattainable, -that their first attitude was not the critical, negative, which one -notices in some universities deemed more fortunate, but the positive -and receptive. If they did not find that which to their minds seemed -best, had they not the inheritance of hope?--a devise which Hesperus -earth and air entail upon all their children, and upon which all are -most liberally nurtured. - -Then the Hesperus youth had a defect, if one may so put it, that -aided him materially to a friendly attitude with his instructors. He -was, with rare exceptions, as devoid of reverence for conventional -distinctions as a meadow-lark nesting in last year’s tumble-weed -and thinking only of soaring and singing. In this, perhaps, is the -main-spring of the reason why nearly every student, either through -some inborn affinity or by election of studies, drifted into genial -relations with some member of the faculty. - -The pleasantest part of my day’s work used to be in the retirement of -the Greek study and from eight to nine in the morning. Never a student -of mine who did not come at that hour for some occasion or need. One -man snatched the opportunity to read at sight a good part of the -Odyssey. Another took up and discussed certain dialogues of Plato. -Another who aimed at theological learning studied the Greek Testament -and the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” Others came in to block -out courses of work. Still others were preparing papers and gathering -arguments, authorities, and data for debating societies and clubs. - -In that hour, too, a sympathetic ear would hear many a personal history -told with entire frankness and naïveté. One poor fellow had that -defect of will which is mated at times with the humorous warmth which -the Germans call gemüth, and the added pain of consciousness of his -own weakness. Another clear-headed, muscular-handed, and ready youth -measured his chances of getting wood to saw,--“just the exercise he -needed, out of doors,”--horses to groom, and the city lamps to light, -to earn the simple fare which he himself cooked. Many a pathetic story -found tongue in that morning air, and times were when fate dropped -no cap of recognition and granted no final victory. In hearing the -details of hope deferred, of narrow estate and expansive ambition, you -longed for the fabled Crœsus touch which turned want to plenty, or, -more rationally, you projected a social order where the young and inapt -should not suffer for the sins of others, but be within the sheltering -arms of some sympathetic power. - -There was the mildness of the chinook to this social blizzard, however, -for groups moved even in the dewy hour of half-past eight toward the -open door of the Greek lecture-room, laughing at the last college joke -or secret society escapade, and forecasting who would be the next -penitent before the council. Also certain youths and maids, between -whom lay the engagement announced by a ring on the heart-finger--these -one might see hanging over and fingering-- - - “Vor Liebe und Liebesweh”-- - -volumes lying upon my table, and in their eagerness and absorption -of the world in two, dog-earing the golden edges of ever-living -Theocritus. And why not? Such entanglements in the web of love oftenest -differed in no way from the innocence and simplicity of the pristine -Daphnes and Coras. They were living again, the Sicilian shepherd and -shepherdess, and wandering in the eternally virid fields of youth. The -skies and trees and waters were merely not of Trinacria. But Hesperus -heavens omitted no degree of ardor. - -And had you seen her, you would never have blamed the youth for loving -the college maid. She has the charm abloom in the girlhood of every -land, and most of all in this of ours. Physically she differs little -from her sister in Eastern States. Her form is as willowy. She has, -except in the case of foreign-born parents, the same elongated head and -bright-glancing eye. Her skin sometimes lacks in fairness owing to the -desiccating winds of the interior; but there is the same fineness of -texture. - -Power of minute observation and a vivacious self-reliance are -characteristics of the girl of the University of Hesperus--and, indeed, -of the girl throughout the West. She sees everything within her -horizon. Nothing escapes her eye or disturbs her animated self-poise. -She has not the Buddhistic self-contemplation the New England girl is -apt to cultivate; nor is she given to talking about her sensations -of body and moods of mind. I never heard her say she wanted to fall -in love in order to study her sensations--as a Smith College alumna -studying at Barnard once declared. She rarely pursues fads. Neither -is she a fatalist. And she never thinks of doubting her capacity of -correct conclusions upon data which she gathers with her own experience -of eye and ear. From early years she has been a reasoner by the -inductive method, and a believer in the equality and unsimilarity of -men and women. Undeniably her mental tone is a result of the greater -friction with the world which the girl of the West experiences in -her fuller freedom. Conventionalism does not commonly overpower the -individual--social lines are not so closely defined--in those States -where people count by decades instead of by centuries. - -And what is said of this University girl’s observing faculties is -in nowise untrue of her brother’s. Nature, the most Socratic of all -instructors and the pedagogue of least apparent method, seems actually -to have taught him more than his sister, as, in fact, the physical -universe is apt to teach its laws more clearly to the man than to the -woman, even if she hath a clearer vision of the moral order. Perhaps -the man’s duties knit him more closely to physical things. - -With clear, far-seeing eyes--for plenty of oxygen has saved them from -near-sightedness--a Hesperus boy will distinguish the species of hawk -flying yonder in the sky, forming his judgment by the length of wing -and color-bars across the tail. I have heard him comment on the tarsi -of falcons which whirled over the roadway as he was driving, and from -their appearance determine genus and species. He knows the note and -flight of every bird. He will tell you what months the scarlet tanager -whistles in the woods, why leaves curl into cups during droughts, and a -thousand delicate facts which one who has never had the liberty of the -bird and squirrel in nowise dreams of. - -And why should he not? All beasts of the prairie and insects of the -air are known to him as intimately as were the rising and setting -stars to the old seafaring, star-led Greeks. During his summer the -whip-poor-will has whistled in the shadow of the distant timber, and -the hoot-owl has ghosted his sleep. He has wakened to the carol of the -brown thrush and the yearning call of the mourning dove, as the dawn -reached rosy fingers up the eastern sky. - -He has risen to look upon endless rows of corn earing its milky -kernels, and upon fields golden with nodding wheat-heads. And from the -impenetrable centre of the tillage, when the brown stubble has stood -like needles to his bare feet, he has heard the whiz of the cicada -quivering in the heated air. The steam-thresher has then come panting -and rumbling over the highway, and in the affairs of men the boy has -made his first essay. He cuts the wires that bind the sheaves, or feeds -the hopper, or catches the wheat, or forks away the yellow straw, or -ties the golden kernels in sacks, or brings water to the choked and -dusty men. He runs here and there for all industries. - -Perhaps it is because of his association with such fundamentals of life -that this boy has great grasp upon the physical world. In his very -appearance one sees a life untaught in the schools of men. In looking -at him there is nothing of which you are so often reminded as of a -young cottonwood-tree. The tree and the boy somehow seem to have a -kinship in structure, and to have been built by the same feeling upward -of matter. And this perhaps he is--a broad-limbed, white-skinned, -animalized, great-souled poplar, which in ages long past dreamed of -red blood and a beating heart and power of moving over that fair -earth--after the way that Heine’s fir-tree dreamed of the palm--and -finally through this yearning became the honest boysoul and body which -leaps from pure luxuriance of vigor, and runs and rides and breathes -the vital air of Hesperus to-day. - -But even with the strong-limbed physique which open-air life upbuilds, -the Hesperus students have their full quota of nervousness. Elements in -their lives induce it. First there is the almost infinite possibility -of accomplishment for the ambitious and energetic--so little is done, -so much needs to be. Again, temperature changes of their climate are -most sudden and extreme. A third incentive to nervous excitation is -the stimulant of their wonderful atmosphere, which is so exhilarating -that dwellers upon the Hesperus plateau suffer somnolence under the -air-pressure and equilibrium of the seaboard. - -Unfortunately the students have until lately had nothing that could -be called a gymnasium, in which they might counterpoise nerve-work -with muscular action. At one time they endeavored to equip a modest -building. In the Legislature, however, the average representative, -the man who voted supplies, looked back upon his own boyhood, and, -recalling that he never suffered indigestion while following the plough -down the brown furrow, set his head against granting one dollar of the -State’s supplies for the deed fool athletics; in fact, he lapsed for -the moment into the mental condition of, say, a Tory of Tom Jones’s -time or a hater of the oppressed races of to-day. - -This one instance will possibly give a shadow of impression of the -power base politics--reversions to conditions our race is evolving -from--have had in Hesperus University life. The power was obtained in -the beginning chiefly because of the University’s sources of financial -support--appropriations by biennial Legislatures in which every item, -the salary of each individual professor, was scanned, and talked over, -and cut down to the lowest bread-and-water figure, first by the -committee in charge of the budget and afterwards by the Legislature -in full session. One instance alone illustrates. In the early spring -of 1897, when the University estimate was before the Legislature for -discussion and the dominating Populists were endeavoring to reduce its -figure, a legislator sturdily insisted: “They’re too stingy down there -at the University. They’re getting good salaries, and could spare a sum -to some one who would undertake to put the appropriations through.” -One thousand dollars was said to be “about the size of the job.” A cut -of twenty per cent., generally speaking, upon already meagre salaries -resulted to a faculty too blear-eyed politically and unbusiness-like -to see its financial advantage. After two or three years the stipends -were restored to their former humility, the Legislature possibly having -become ashamed. - -And in the make-up of the senatus academicus, or board of regents, -thereby hangs, or there used to hang, much of doubt and many a -political trick and quibble. It was a variation of the dream of the -Texas delegate to the nominating convention--“The offices! That’s -what we’re here for.” For if a Democratic governor were elected, he -appointed from his party men to whom he was beholden in small favors. -The members of the board were Democrats, that is, and were expected to -guard the interests of their party. Or if the voters of Hesperus chose -a Republican executive, he in turn had his abettors whom he wanted -to dignify with an academic course for which there were no entrance -examinations beyond faithfulness to party lines and party whips. It -thus happened that the fitness of the man has not always been a prime -consideration in his appointment. More often because he was somebody’s -henchman, or somebody’s friend, the executive delighted to honor him. - -These political features in the board of regents materially affected -the faculty. For instance, if there were among the professors one who -illustrated his lectures or class-room work by examples of the justice -and reasonableness of free trade, he acted advisedly for his tenure -if he lapsed into silence when the Republicans were in power. But if, -on the other hand, he advocated protection instead of free trade, -while the Democrats held State offices--which happened only by unusual -fate--it was prudent for the professor to hold his tongue. - -Upon every question of the day, and even in presenting conditions of -life in ancient days, as, for instance, in Greece, the faculty were -restrained, or at least threats were rendered. The petty politics of -an agricultural democracy acted upon academic life in precisely the -same way that autocracy and clericalism in Germany have affected -its university faculties. In Hesperus professors have been dismissed -without any excuse, apparent reason, or apology, because of a change -of administration at the State capital and a hungry party’s coming -into power. In various callings, or lines of life, the individual may -be, nay, often is, wantonly sacrificed, but surely one of the saddest -results of political shystering is the cheapening of the professor’s -chair, and rendering that insecure for the permanence of which active -life and its plums have been yielded. - -Hinging immediately upon the political machine are the rights of and -recognition of women in university government and pedagogic work. The -fact that two or three women were the strenuous initiators of the -institution has been forgotten, and no longer is there faith that - - “The woman’s cause is man’s; they rise or sink Together.” - -With all its coeducation, Hesperus has not yet evolved--as have New -York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin--to women -regents or trustees. The people have not yet awakened to the justice -of demanding that, in a State institution open to young women as well -as to young men, women as well as men shall be in its government and -direction. - -And within the brown walls of the institution a woman may not carry -her learning to the supreme pedagogic end. “People ridicule learned -women,” said clear-eyed Goethe, speaking for his world, the confines of -which at times extend to and overlap our own, “and dislike even women -who are well informed, probably because it is considered impolite to -put so many ignorant men to shame.” Such a man--an ignorant man, one -of the party appointees just now spoken of--when a woman was dismissed -from the Greek chair some years ago, declared, “The place of women -is naturally subordinate; we shall have no more women professors.” It -was a pitiful aping of dead and gone academic prejudices. To this day, -however, but one act--that rather an enforced one--has gainsaid his -dictum. A woman has been appointed to the chair of French. It remains -to be seen whether her salary is the same as that of the men doing work -of equal grade and weight with her own. - - “We cross the prairie as of old - The pilgrims crossed the sea, - To make the West, as they the East, - The homestead of the free”-- - -sang the men and women of the fifties as their train pulled out of -Eastern stations and their steamboats paddled up the waters of the Big -Muddy. But how often it happens that what one generation will die for, -the next will hold of little value, or even in derision! - -Not wholly independent of politics, not without the uses and abuses -of politics, is a great corporation which one of necessity mentions -because it has played no small part in Hesperus University life. In -those portions of our country where the units of the Methodist church -are segregate few know the gigantic secular power it possesses in the -South and in the West. The perfection of its organization is like that -of the Roman Catholic Church where it is longest at home, or like the -unity of the Latter Day Saints in their centre, Utah. The Methodists in -Hesperus far outnumber in membership and money any other denomination. -They are tenacious of their power, as religious denominations have -ever been, and aggressive in upbuilding schools of their own voice and -foundation. The question, “What shall we do to keep on the good side -of the Methodists?” was, therefore, not infrequently asked in Hesperus -University politics. The answer was practical: “Make us Methodists. -Bring Methodism to us to stop the antagonism of a powerful body.” Such -a solving of the problem--for these reasons--was not high-minded; it -was not moral courage. But it was thought politic--and it was done. - -Some of the best elements of our day have been profoundly at work among -the Methodists. Many of the denomination have been in the vanguard of -the march to better things. But it is fair to the course of Hesperus -University, which has sometimes halted, to say that sagacious vigor -and a knowledge of the best--τὰ Βέλτιστα--were not in every case the -claim to distinction of its Methodist head. “Aus Nichts,” says Fichte, -“wird nimmer Etwas.” But mediocrity--or worse--did not always prevail. -Under absolutely pure and true conditions a man would be chosen for his -fitness to fill the office of Chancellor, no matter what his religious -bias, unless, indeed, that bias marred his scholarship and access to -men, and thus really became an element in his unfitness. - -In a perspective of the University of Hesperus it is necessary to -consider these various controlling forces as well as the spiritual -light of its students. And yet to those who have faith in its growth -in righteousness there is an ever-present fear. The greatness of the -institution will be in inverse proportion to the reign of politics, -materialism, and denominationalism in its councils, and the fear is -that the people may not think straight and see clear in regard to this -great fact. Upon spiritual lines alone can its spirit grow, and if an -institution of the spirit is not great in the spirit, it is great in -nothing. - -Its vigor and vitality are of truth in its young men and women. One boy -or one girl may differ from another in glory, but each comes trailing -clouds of light, and of their loyalty and stout-heartedness and courage -for taking life in hand too many pæans cannot be chanted, or too many -triumphant ἰώ raised. They have been the reason for the existence of -the institution now more than a generation. Their spiritual content is -its strength, and is to be more clearly its strength when guidance of -its affairs shall have come to their hands. - -Their spiritual content, we say--it should reflect that life of theirs -when heaven seems dropping from above to their earth underfoot--in -addition to the labors and loves of men and women, a procession of joys -from the February morning the cardinal first whistles “what cheer.” - -While dog-tooth violets swing their bells in winds of early March -bluebirds are singing. The red-bud blossoms, and robins carol from its -branches. Then the mandrake, long honored in enchantment, opens its -sour-sweet petals of wax. Crimson-capped woodpeckers test tree-trunks -and chisel their round house with skilful carpentry. The meadow-lark -whistles in mating joy. Purple violets carpet the open woods. Trees -chlorophyl their leaves in the warm sun. The wild crab bursts in -sea-shell pink, and sober orchards shake out ambrosial perfume. Soft, -slumberous airs puff clouds across the sky, and daylight lingers long -upon the western horizon. Summer is come in. - -The cuckoo cries. The hermit thrush pipes from his dusky covert. Doves, -whose aching cadences melt the human heart, house under leaves of -grapevine and hatch twin eggs. Vast fields of clover bloom in red and -white, and butterflies and bees intoxicate with honey swarm and flit -in all-day ravaging. Vapors of earth rise in soft whirls and stand to -sweeten reddening wheat and lancet leaves of growing corn. - -Arcadia could hold nothing fairer, and the god Pan himself, less satyr -and more soul than of old, may be waiting to meet you where some fallen -cottonwood bridges a ravine and the red squirrel hunts his buried -shagbarks. - -There “life is sweet, brother. There’s day and night, brother, both -sweet things; sun and moon and stars, brother, all sweet things. -There’s likewise a wind on the heath.” - -They have most brilliant suns. They breathe sparkling, lambent ether. -They look daily upon elm and osage orange, oaks and locusts in summer -so weighted with leaves that no light plays within the recess of -branches. All the night winds sough through these dusky trees, while -slender voices, countless as the little peoples of the earth, murmur in -antiphonal chorus. - -And above are the patient stars and Milky Way dropping vast fleeces of -light upon our earth awhirl in the dear God’s Arms. - - * * * * * - -The West is large. That which would be true of a university in one part -of its broad expanse might not be true of another institution of like -foundation some distance away. And what might be said of a college or -university independent of politics, would in nowise be averable of one -pretty well controlled by that perplexing monitor. - -Again, a fact which might be asserted of a college built up by some -religious denomination might be radically false if claimed for one -supported by the taxpayers of a great commonwealth, and hedged by -sentiment and statute from the predominance of any ecclesiasticism. - -You speak of the general characteristics of the University of Michigan, -but these characteristics are not true of the little college down in -Missouri, or Kentucky, or Ohio. Neither would the facts of life in -some institutions in Chicago be at one with those of a thriving school -where conditions are markedly kleinstädtisch. - -In speaking of the West we must realize its vast territory and the -varying characteristics of its people. Of what is here set down -I am positive of its entire truth only so far as one institution -is concerned, namely, the titulary--that is, the University of -Hesperus--which recalleth the city bespoken in the Gospel according to -Matthew--that it is set upon a hill and cannot be hid. - - - - -TWO NEIGHBORS OF ST. LOUIS - -There was never in any age more money stirring, nor never more stir to -get money. - - “The Great Frost of January, 1608” - -Women have seldom sufficient serious employment to silence their -feelings: a round of little cares, or vain pursuits, frittering away -all strength of mind and organs, they become naturally only objects of -sense. - - MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT - - You have too much respect upon the world: - They lose it that do buy it with much care. - - SHAKESPEARE - - - - -TWO NEIGHBORS OF ST. LOUIS - - -The Big Muddy built the fertile regions near its course. Dropping in -warm low tides mellow soil gathered from upper lands, it pushed the -flood of the sea farther and farther to the south. Non palma sine -pulvere has been the song of its waters--no green will grow here -without my mould. - -It was at its wonder-work those millions of suns ago when the tiny -three-toed horse browsed among the grasses of what is now Kansas. -Its great years can be measured only by the dial of God. All the -monstrosities of the eld of its birth it has survived, and like a -knowing, sentient thing--a thinking, feeling thing--it has been -expanding and contracting, doubling up and straightening out its tawny -body, each one of its numberless centuries pushing its uncounted mouths -farther toward the submerged mountains of the Antilles. - -In its thaumaturgy it formed vast prairies and rolling lands. Upon -its gently-packed earth forests shot up. Subterranean streams jetted -limpid springs, which joined and grew to rivers open to the light of -day. Above the heavens were broad and the horizon far away--as far as -you outlook at sea when sky and earth melt to a gray, and you stand -wondering where the bar of heaven begins and where the restless waters -below. - -Indians, autochthons, or, perchance, wanderers from Iberia, or Babylon, -were here. Then white men came to the flat brown lands, and that they -brought wives showed they meant to stay and build a commonwealth. The -two raised hearthstones for their family, and barns for herds and -flocks. They marked off fields and knotted them with fruit trees, -and blanketed them with growing wheat, and embossed them in days of -ripeness with haystacks such as the race of giants long since foregone -might have built. In their rich cornfields they set up shocks which -leaned wearily with their weight of golden kernels, or stood torn and -troubled by cattle nosing for the sugary pulp. Such works their heaven -saw and to-day sees, their air above entirely bright, beading and -sparkling in its inverted cup through every moment of sunshine. - -Over this land and its constant people icy northers, victorious in -elemental conflicts far above the Rockies, rush swirling and sweeping. -They snap tense, sapless branches and roll dried leaves and other -ghosts of dead summer before their force. They pile their snows in the -angles of the rail fence and upon the southern banks of ravines, and -whistle for warmth through the key-holes and under the shrunken doors -of farm-houses. - -But winds and snows disappear, and again life leaps into pasture-land. -A yellow light glowing between branches foreruns the green on brown -stalk and tree. The meadow-lark lifts his buoyant note in the air, and -the farmer clears his field and manures his furrow with sleepy bonfires -and the ashes of dead stalks. Earth springs to vital show in slender -grasses and rose-red verbena, and the pale canary of the bastard indigo. - -In this great folkland of the Big Muddy, which is beyond praise in -the ordinary phrase of men, there live alongside many other types, a -peculiar man and woman. They are--to repeat, for clearness’ sake--only -two of many types there indwelling, for it is true of these parts as -was said of England in 1755: “You see more people in the roads than in -all Europe, and more uneasy countenances than are to be found in the -world besides.” - -The man is seen in all our longitudes; the woman is rarely in any -other milieu. She is a product of her city and town. The women of the -country have ever before them queryings of the facts of life, the great -lessons and slow processes of nature, the depth and feeling of country -dwelling. But this city-woman suffers from shallowness and warp through -her unknowledge of nature and the unsympathy with fellow humans that -protection in bourgeois comfort engenders. She is inexperienced in the -instructive adventure of the rich and the instructive suffering of the -poor. The basis of her life is conventional. - -The dollar to her eyes is apt to measure every value. Let us not forget -that in the history of the world this is no new estimate. It was the -ancient Sabine poet who advised “make money--honestly if we can, if -not, dishonestly--only, make money.” “This is the money-got mechanic -age,” cried Ben Jonson in Elizabeth’s day. And the poet of the “Elegy -written in a Country Church-Yard” more than one hundred and fifty years -ago wrote to his friend Wharton: “It is a foolish Thing that one can’t -only not live as one pleases, but where and with whom one pleases, -without Money.... Money is Liberty, and I fear money is Friendship too -and Society, and almost every external Blessing.” - -Lacking simplicity this woman is submerged in artificiality and false -conceptions of life values. Her hair, often blondined and curled -in fluffy ringlets, is filleted with gold-mounted combs above a -countenance fine-featured and a trifle hardened. Her well-formed hands, -even in daily comings and goings, are flashing with rings. She loves to -turn the precious stones and watch them divide the light. These jewels -are her first expression of accumulating wealth--these and the pelts -of animals difficult to capture, and therefore costly. After obtaining -these insignia of opulence she begins to long for a third--the gentle, -inept riot and solitary Phorcides’s eye for seeing life which she calls -“society.” - -The voice is an unconscious index of one’s spiritual tone; hers is -metallic. At times it is deep, with a masculine note and force. The -gift of flexible English speech, belonging to her by the right of -inheritance of every American--she is at times of the old American -stock, but more often of foreign-born parents,--she is apt to wrap -in stereotyped phrases or newspaper slang. In her bustling life, -formed, stamped, and endowed in spirit by an iron-grooved, commercial -world, she gives little consideration to use of the greatest of all -instruments and the mightiest of all arts. She has not the instinct of -attention to her mother tongue which marks women of fine breeding. - -The best thing made by man--good books--she has little love for. The -newspaper and to-day’s flimsy novel of adventure stand in their stead. -There were times when her reading had the illuminating calm of Milton’s -“Penseroso” and the buoyant freshness of Shakespeare’s comedies. But -that was when the rosy morning of her life stood on the mountain-top -of school-girl idealism and looked not at things near by, but afar--a -period not long when compared to the jaded vacuity of later years. - -To this shapely woman a writer is presented as “the highest paid -lady-writer in the world.” The highest paid! Where, then, is -literature, O Milton, with thy ten pounds for “Paradise Lost,” and -eight more from Printer Simmons to thy widow! Where, O immortal -writer of the simplicities of Wakefield, apprenticed in thy poverty -to Publisher Newberry! Where, then, singer and gauger Robert Burns! -“Learning,” says Thomas Fuller, in his “Holy States,” “learning hath -gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.” - -This woman is fair and seemly. When you look upon her you think how -full of strength and well-knit is her body. You foresee her the mother -of strong and supple children. She is graceful as she moves--a result -of her freedom and a sign of her strength--and she is mistress of the -occasion always. In this domination (the right of the domina) she -has, even when unmarried and as early as in her teens, the poise and -solidity of the matron. She scorns your supposition that she is not -informed in every worldly line, and that the wavering hesitancy of -the one who does not know could be hers. She rarely blushes, and is -therefore a negative witness to Swift’s hard-cut apophthegm-- - - “A virtue but at second-hand; - They blush because they understand.” - -Although conventional, she is often uninstructed in petty distinctions -and laws which of late more and more growingly have manacled the -hands, fettered the feet, and dwarfed the folk of our democracy; and -which threaten that plasticity which, it is claimed, is the great -characteristic of life. “It is quite possible,” says Clifford in his -“Conditions of Mental Development,” “for conventional rules of action -and conventional habits of thought to get such power that progress -is impossible.... In the face of such danger _it is not right to be -proper_.” - -Secretly our St. Louis neighbor, like most women, subjects herself to - - “the chill dread sneer - Conventional, the abject fear - Of form-transgressing freedom.” - -Openly she often passes it by and remarks, rocking her chair a trifle -uneasily, that she is as good as anybody else. For some unspoken reason -you never ask her if every one else is as good as she. You recall what -de Tocqueville wrote eighty years ago: “If I were asked to what the -singular prosperity and growing strength of that [American] people -ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply--to the superiority of -their women.” - -Of all so-called civilized women, she makes the greatest variation -in her treatment of those of her own and those of the other sex. -Toward women she is apt to be dull, splenetic, outspoken about what -she esteems the faults of others. Even the weaknesses of her husband -she analyzes to their friends--herein is a fertile source of divorce. -Toward women, you observe, she is apt to be metallic, rattling, and -uncharitable, or possibly over-social, relieving the peccant humors of -her mind and attitudinizing upon what she esteems a man’s estimate of -women--to please the sex she is not of. To men she is pert, flippant, -witty, caustic, rapid, graceful, and gay. At times she amuses them -and herself by slurring upon other women. She seems to leave it to -the man to establish the spirit upon which the two shall meet; and -by deft hand and turn and movement she is constantly suggesting her -eternal variation from him. The woman is always chaste. It follows that -marriages are many. - -A not uncommon fruit of marriage vows is an application for divorce, -which she estimates with such levity and mental smack that you would -hesitate to bring a young girl to her presence. - -“Has she applied, do you know?” - -“Oh! they’ve separated.” - -“On what grounds is she going to get it?” - -“If she isn’t careful she’ll lose her case by seeing him too often.” - -These are a few of many such sentences heard from her lips in public -places. - -Nothing higher than what an ordinary civil contract seeks seems to -be sought in her marital affairs. She undoes the decree of old Pope -Innocent III., to whom is ascribed the ordination of marriage as a -function of his church and the claim of its sanctified indissolubility. -In the light of her action marriage is truly and purely a civil -contract, and devoid of that grace, resignation, forbearance, patience, -tenderness, sweetness, and calm which make it truly religious. - -She is strong, she is hopeful, she is ardent. She knows herself and her -power--that it is of the flesh which aims at prettiness. The divine -beauty of spirit in the countenance she does not know. In her midst -Fra Angelico would find few sitters. Her religion, commonly that -which in other ages passed from a propulsive, burning spirit to frozen -formalism, is the crystallized precept of theologue and priest, the -fundamental ecstasy and informing soul having long since departed. If -she had a real religion she could not be what she is. - -Those questions of our day that shove their gaunt visages into -sympathetic minds she has little knowledge of, and little of that -curiosity which leads to knowledge. The fashion of her gown and the -weekly relays at the theatre are nearer to her heart, and to her -thinking touch her more personally, than the moral miasmata and -physical typhoids of her neighboring Poverty Flat. Both pests the -adjustment of her household relations brings within her door. For -her dwelling is commonly domesticked by dusky shapes upon whom also -the real things of life sit lightly, to whom permanence and serious -thought and work are rare. Their engagement is by the week, like that -of pitiful vaudeville associates, and their performance as surpassingly -shallow. They come upon their stage of work, veneer their little task -with clever sleight of hand, and roll off to the supine inertness and -inanity of their cabin. - -This woman has therefore in her hands no feeling of the real relation -and friendship that grow between mistress and maid who live the joys -and sorrows of years together. By the less fortunate themselves, as -well as by her own shallow skimming, her sympathies with the less -fortunate are dwarfed. She looks upon her domestic as a serving -sub-human animal, infinitely below herself, tolerated because of -its menial performance, and barely possessed of the soul which -her ecclesiastical tradition says is in every human form. In this -deflection of her moral sense, can the hand of secular justice be -punishing the wrong-doing of past centuries--the bringing in putrid -slave-ships the captured, dazed, Eden-minded, animal-man--“the -blameless Ethiopian”--to our shores? - -She is born of fine material. When her nature is awry it is because of -lack of right incentive. Old measures and life estimates are absurd -to her quick senses, and none of the best of our modern values are -put in their place. Her creed is wholly at variance with the facts -of life to-day. If substantial instruction had entered the formative -period of her life, there would have been no substance to project the -darker parts of her shadow. Her nature is now ill-formed because of -the misdirection of its elemental forces. She knows the tenor of her -empire, and in truth and secretly she wonders how long her reign will -endure. - -“And therefore,” says Aristotle, in his Politics, “women and children -must be trained by education with an eye to the state, if the virtues -of either of them are supposed to make any difference in the virtue of -the state. And they must make a difference, for children grow up to be -citizens, and half the persons in a state are women.” - - * * * * * - -Abiding beside this overdressed woman is an underdressed man. His first -striking quality is a certain sweet-natured patience--a result of his -optimistic dwelling in the future. Not content with the present, and -having forgotten the values of present-day simple life, he lives in a -future of fictitious money values. “All human power,” he thinks, with -Balzac, “is a compound of time and patience. Powerful beings will and -wait.” He knows his power and he waits. - -“It’s going to be worth a good deal.” - -“In a few years, that’ll be a good thing.” - -“Fifteen years from now it’ll sell for ten times its present value.” - -People have called him deficient in imagination. Not since the old -Greeks have there been such ideal seekers upon this golden nugget of -our solar system which we call the earth; nor since the old Hellenes -has there been such an idealistic people as that of which he is a -part. In Elizabeth’s time, indeed, there was imaginative vigor similar -to his. Then as now they were holding the earth in their hands and -standing on the stars to view it as it whirled. - -Instead of turning his fertile thought toward art or literature, he -bends it first of all to material things. Schemes for developing -land, for dredging rivers, for turning forests into lumber or railway -ties, for putting up sky-scrapers facing four avenues; schemes for -building and controlling transcontinental railways and interoceanic -fleets; schemes for raising wheat by the million bushels and fattening -cattle by hundreds of thousands; schemes for compressing air, gas, -cotton, beef; for domestic and foreign mining; for irrigation; for -oil borings--he brings his dynamic energy and resourcefulness to the -evolution of all things but the human who is to be yoked to work out -his plan. - -In theory he is democratic and humane--for the future, after his -interests in dividends shall have ceased. But his reckless exploiting -of human life for the present, now growing more and more common by -means of impersonal agents, is distinctly at war with our foundation, -democratic ideas which hold one man’s life as good as another’s and -which made his existence possible. - -An essentially material basis of life turns his natural idealism into -practical values and activities. He is an ideal practician, or rather -a practical idealist. - -His unnatural attitude toward to-day--that is, his futurity--and -his inconsiderateness for to-day’s sunshine, put him in a false -position, which bears the fruit of self-consciousness. Nature -is not self-conscious. The primal man was not self-conscious. -Self-consciousness implies pain; it means that a fellow-being is not at -one with his surroundings; that extraneous, false, or hostile things -are pushing him from his native status. If his pain, whether physical -or spiritual, is eased, morbidness disappears. - -In this man’s self-conscious habit he jumps at once to the conclusion -that if you do not like his town you do not like him. Your taste is a -personal affront. There is no logical connection, but he has a certain -“defect of heat” which Dean Swift avers lies in men of the Anglo-Saxon -type. The cordiality and open-handedness with which he first met you -wanes. That he has one of the best of hearts, and one of the strongest -of heads, you are sure. He inwardly has the same faith. He knows it as -Achilles knew his own strength, and the knowledge gives him sometimes -the leonine front which the son of silver-footed Thetis boasted. But -your not recognizing the superiority of his physical and spiritual -environment over all the world causes an irritation deeper than the -epidermis--to the nerve-centres, in fact. - -“What do you think!” he laughed, shaking burlily and plunging hands -in pockets. “What do you think! The other day in Washington I met an -Englishman, and when I told him the United States was the best country -in the world, and the State I lived in the best State in the best -country, and the town I lived in the best town in the best State, and -the block my office was in the best block in the best town, and my -office the best office in the best block----” - -“And you the best man in the best office,” I interjected, to which he -laughed a hearty affirmative. - -“What do you think he said? Why, ‘Comfohtaable, awh! comfohtaable!’ I -told him it _was_ comfortable,--damned comfortable.” - -This very Englishman, with that condescension of manner which at times -we see foreigners assume, declared such mental individualization to be -purely American. Vanity, audacity, and self-appreciation exist among -all peoples, and even from the banks of the Isis we hear how the late -Dr. Jowett averred, “I am the Master of Baliol College; Baliol is the -first college in Oxford; Oxford is the first city in England; England -is the first country in the world.” - -United with the feeling of personal worth and independence -in this citizen by the Big Muddy is, paradoxically, another -characteristic--namely, a great tolerance. He could hardly expect -tolerance himself if he did not extend it to another who may have -opinions diametrically opposed to his own, is probably his attitude -of mind. He is in his way a sort of embodiment of the spirit of our -national constitution. - -But this largess of broad tolerance leaves him lacking a gift of -the discriminating or critical judgment. The sense or feeling of -quality--that which measures accurately spiritual and artistic -values--his very breadth and practical largeness, his democracy, allow -no growth to. A sensitive discrimination, the power of differentiation, -is no natural endowment, but a result of training, mental elimination, -comparison, association, and a dwelling in inherent spiritual values. - -Through his worth and capacity in other directions he would have this -quality if he “had time” and seclusion for thought. But his life -makes it possible for an explosive and heated talker, a mouther of -platitudinous phrase, to stand cheek by jowl in his esteem with a seer -of elevation and limpid thoughtfulness. His estimate of even lighter -publicities is tinctured by this defect--the theatrical, for instance, -where a verdant girl, lavishing upon her ambition for the stage the -money she inherited from a father’s patent syrup or pills, and an -actress of genius and experience fall in his mind in the same category -because a theatrical syndicate has equally advertised each. - -What the result to politics of this indiscriminating and non-sagacious -judgment, this lack of feeling for finer lines in character--mark, -peculiar nature, as Plato means when he uses the word in the -Phædrus--would be hard to estimate. - -Although for the most part a private citizen absorbed in his own -affairs, the holder of an office has to him a peculiar glamour. He is -apt to fall into the thinking lines of writers of nameless editorials, -who, forgetful of their own hidden effulgence, fillip at quiet folk -as “parochial celebrities” and “small deer.” And yet he knows that -he lives in an age of réclame, and that by the expenditure of a few -dollars in direct or indirect advertisement a name may be set before -more people than our forefathers numbered on the first Independence Day. - -In his midst is a certain publicity of spirit, and in his estimation -work undertaken in the sight of men is of a higher order than that done -in the privacy of one’s closet. The active life is everything; the -contemplative, nothing. Talking is better than writing--it so easily -gives opportunity for the aggressive personality. For a young woman -looking to support herself he advocated type-writing in a public office -in preference to the retirement of nursery governess. When the girl -drew back with the dread of publicity which results from the retired -life of women, he exclaimed, “It’s all a question of whether you’ve got -the courage to take the higher thing.” - -If he is a fruit of self-cultivation, he enjoys talking of the viridity -of his growth as well as these now purpler days. During early struggles -he may have undergone suffering and privation. In that event, if his -nature is narrow and hard, he has become narrower and harder, and his -presence, like Quilp’s, shrivels and deadens every accretion save -his interest. But when he is of the better sort of soil, adversity -discovers the true metal, and misfortune gives him a sympathy, depth, -and tenderness that charm you to all defects. You would migrate to his -neighborhood to live in the light of his genial warmth. You think of -the beautiful encomium Menelaus pronounced upon Patroclus--“He knew how -to be kind to all men.” - -Beyond all, he is open-eyed and open-eared. And above all he is -affirmative; never negative. His intuition tells him it is affirmation -that builds, and that Bacon says right--“it is the peculiar trait of -the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than -by negatives.” - -“Why do people buy and read such fool stuff as ‘Treasure Island’? I -can’t see.” - -“They read it for its story of adventure, and for its rare way of -telling the story,” I ventured, in answer. “They read it for its style.” - -“Style! Gemini! Style! I should smile! I can write a better book than -that myself!” - -“Then it might pay you as a business venture to set yourself about it.” - -“It’s by a man named Stevenson, and he’s written other stories. Are -they all as bad?” - -Strange he should make such a criticism of Louis Stevenson, in -literature pronouncedly the successful man. For success in the -abstract, and successful men and women in the concrete--the word -success is here used in its vulgar, popular sense, in reference to -material advancement, not to ethical or spiritual development--he -worships. Success is a chief god in his pantheon,--to have returns -greater than one’s effort or worth deserve. Yet he believes with the -author of Lorna Doone, “the excess of price over value is the true -test of success in life.” None of us would think of saying Shakespeare -was a success; or Milton; or John Brown; or Martin Luther. But Pope, -with his clever money-making, we might call a success, as did Swift in -1728: “God bless you, whose great genius has not so transported you as -to leave you to the constancy of mankind, for wealth is liberty, and -liberty is a blessing fittest for a philosopher.” - -The means to end, the processes by which the successful issue of a -matter is gained, our neighbor of St. Louis tells you with a smile not -to be finikin about. Many who have had success have not been. Look at -all history, from Abraham to Joe Smith and Cecil Rhodes and many of -our millionaires. He himself is not, he declares, but his acts often -contradict his assertion. So long as a man, or a woman, “gets there,” -it does not matter much how. “Work through a corporation or trust,” he -tells you, and smiling at you with honest eyes, adds, “A corporation -can do things the individual man would not.” The one who succeeds is -the model; he is to be envied; he is the ideal the ancients sought--the -happy man. Pass by noblesse oblige, human heartedness, elevation -that would not stoop to exploit human labor, human need, and human -sacrifice--that is, as corporations pass these qualities by. - -In short, let us, in fact, and not by legend alone, have the character -formerly ascribed by average English folk to the Yankee. - -Assumption of excellence, he knows, goes far toward persuading people -that you have it. There is not so great difference in people after all, -this democrat believes. When one has every material privilege that will -allow him to assume, that will hedge and fence his assumption about, -he is pretty apt to succeed, he thinks, and be cried up as a man of -extraordinary virtue, of taste, of attainment. In any success, commonly -so-called, he asks little of the great marks by which a man should be -judged. “He has done this.” “He has got that.” “He is clever,” he says. -He rarely cries, “He is honest.” “He is true.” - -Marriage he is not so apt as the brilliant woman beside him to consider -impermanent. This is wholly a result of convention, for women, by -their very nature and the conditions of married life, cling more -closely to the permanence of the union. - -In marital relations he has more liberty. When she asks him if she may, -or in her phrase “can,” do so and so, and in rehearsing the matter -says he “let her,” he accepts her homage and the servile status she -voluntarily assumes. You exclaim that men for many centuries have been -apt to do this. Entirely, if offered him by such an enchantress. - - “If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, - How shall men grow?” - -Toward women, with all his subtlety, he is possessed of a certain -naïveté, which renders him a most agreeable companion, and much at the -mercy of such associates. - -On an express leaving St. Louis at nine of the morning and headed -toward the East, two of these men were one day riding. A stretch of -level land, encrusted in snow and flooded with sunshine glowing warm -and yellow three weeks after the winter solstice, lengthened the way. -By three in the afternoon the sight of the passengers was strained from -the pulsation of the train, and reading gave place to lassitude. - -“Say,” yawned one of the men, “do you think marriage is a failure?” - -“Failure! failure!” answered the other. “The biggest kind of a success! -Failure! Holy smoke! Why I’ve just married my third wife. Failure! It -beats electric lights all hollow.” - -“I don’ know,” answered the questioner, dyspeptically. “I don’ know. I -go home every week or ten days. My wife isn’t glad to see me. I’m going -home now. She won’t be glad. They think more of you when you’re not -home so much.” - -“Whee-u-u-u,” whistled number two. - -With a holiday on his hands no man is more awkward. The secret of -giving himself to enjoyment he does not know. His relaxation takes -crudest form. Holiday enjoyment means in many cases sowing money in -barbaric fashion, in every thinkable triviality that entails expense. -That which he has bent every nerve toward getting, for which he has -grown prematurely careworn, the possession of which vulgar philosophy -counts the summa summarium of life, this he must scatter broadcast, not -in the real things of art and literature and bettering the condition of -the less fortunate, but in sordid pleasure and vacuous rushing hither -and yon. It is his way of showing superiority to the cub who has not -the money-making faculty, or who holds different ideas of the value of -living. Upon such merrymaking he has been known to indulge in Homeric -laughter over his own excess, and in tones heralds used in the days of -Agamemnon. Physically he breathes deeper and is broader chested than -many men; he has more voice, and he puts it out the top of the throat. - -To watch the purple dog-tooth violet push up through dead leaves in -March; to listen in his fragrant, sunlit spring to the song of the -thrush or the delectable yearning of the mourning-dove; to know the -quivering windflowers that freshen soil under oak and hickory--all this -is to him as the yellow primrose to Peter Bell. There is no pleasure -without an end--that end being money. - -The blooded mare in his stable needs exercise and he likes not -another to drive her lest she lose response to his voice and hand. -But it is really a bore to drive; what interest is there in sitting -in a wagon and going round and round? He must be doing something. He -forgets the retaliation nature takes upon grooves in human life and -that discountenancing of innocent pleasures is the first step toward -dementia paralytica and the end of interest in his fair and buoyant -world. He will probably die suddenly in middle age, for he is too -extreme in expenditure of himself, and too small an eater of the honey -of life. Honey-eaters have terrene permanence. - - * * * * * - -This man and woman are not disproportionate neighbors. What will be -their record to the reading of Prince Posterity? - -The lands that border the Big Muddy have more of the old American -spirit than the extreme East. The proportions of the old American -blood are there greater than upon the sea-coast, where Europeans of a -tradition far different from the ideals and enthusiasms of our early -comers have dropped and settled, and in such numbers that they can and -do knit their old mental and social habits into a garment which is -impervious to true American influences. - -Our old American teachings!--for instance, the estimate of the -greatness of work, the dignity of labor of any sort whatever--that, -it was once claimed, was a great reason our republic existed to -demonstrate to the world the dignity of work, of bodily exertion -directed to some economic purpose, to produce use, adapt material -things to living. “That citizen who lives without labor, verily how -evil a man!”--’Αργὸος πολίτης χεῖνος ὡς χαχός γ’ ἀνήρ, and such -sentiments as this of Euripides dominated our democracy. - -But in our eastern sea-coast cities, what with the development of an -idle, moneyed class, and the settling down of millions of immigrants, -the European conception of work’s inherent ignobleness has grown to -strong hold. - -“Work is not a disgrace, but lack of work is a disgrace,” “Ἔργον δ -ουδὲν ὄνειδος, αεργίη δέ τ’ ὄνειδος. And Hesiod’s words hold to the -present day among genuine Americans. - -Possibly with the great Middle West and its infinite “go,” optimism, -and constructive breadth, and with such men and women as these types by -the Big Muddy, the preservation of Americanism really lies--but it must -be with their greater spiritualization and greater moral elevation for -the future. - - - - -THE NEW ENGLAND WOMAN - - - - -In order to give her praises a lustre and beauty peculiar and -appropriate, I should have to run into the history of her life--a task -requiring both more leisure and a richer vein. Thus much I have said in -few words, according to my ability. But the truth is that the only true -commender of this lady is time, which, so long a course as it has run, -has produced nothing in this sex like her. - - BACON, OF QUEEN ELIZABETH - - -Die Ehelosigkeit eines Theils des weiblichen Geschlechts ist in -dem monogamischen Gesellschaftszustande eine nicht zu beseitigende -statistische Nothwendigkeit. - - GUSTAVE SCHÖNBERG - - - - -THE NEW ENGLAND WOMAN - - -Throughout our fair country there has long been familiar, in actual -life and in tradition, a corporate woman known as the New England woman. - -When this woman landed upon American shores, some two hundred and fifty -years ago, she was doubtless a hearty, even-minded, rosy-cheeked, -full-fleshed English lass. Once here, however, in her physical and -mental make-up, under pioneer conditions and influenced by our electric -climate, a differentiation began, an unconscious individualizing of -herself: this was far, far back in the time of the Pilgrim Mothers. - -In this adaptation she developed certain characteristics which are -weakly human, intensely feminine, and again passing the fables of -saints in heroism and self-devotion. Just what these qualities were, -and why they grew, is worth considering before--in the bustle of the -twentieth century and its elements entirely foreign to her primitive -and elevated spirit--she has passed from view and is quite forgotten. - -In the cities of to-day she is an exotic. In the small towns she is -hardly indigenous. Of her many homes, from the close-knit forests -of Maine to the hot sands of Monterey, that community of villages -which was formerly New England is her habitat. She has always been -most at home in the narrow village of her forebears, where the church -and school were in simpler days, and still at times are--even to our -generation measuring only with Pactolian sands in its hour-glasses--the -powers oftenest quoted and most revered. From these sources the larger -part of herself, the part that does not live by bread alone, has been -nourished. - -It was in the quiet seclusion of the white homes of these villages -that in past generations she gained her ideals of life. Such a home -imposed what to women of the world at large might be inanity. But, -with a self-limitation almost Greek, she saw within those clapboard -walls things dearest to a woman’s soul,--a pure and sober family life, -a husband’s protective spirit, the birth and growth of children, -neighborly service--keenly dear to her--for all whose lives should -come within touch of her active hands, and an old age guarded by the -devotion of those to whom she had given her activities. - -To this should be added another gift of the gods which this woman ever -bore in mind with calmness--a secluded ground, shaded by hemlocks or -willows, where should stand the headstone marking her dust, over which -violets should blossom to freshening winds, and robin call to mate -in the resurrection time of spring, and in the dim corners of which -ghostly Indian pipes should rise from velvet mould to meet the summer’s -fervency. - -Under such conditions and in such homes she had her growth. The -tasks that engaged her hands were many, for at all times she was -indefatigable in what Plato calls women’s work, τὰ ἔνδον. She rose -while it was yet night; she looked well to the ways of her household, -and eat not the bread of idleness. In housekeeping--which in her -conservative neighborhood and among her primary values meant, almost -up to this hour, not directing nor helping hired people in heaviest -labors, but rather all that the phrase implied in pioneer days--her -energies were spent--herself cooking; herself spinning the thread and -weaving, cutting out and sewing all family garments and household -linen; herself preserving flesh, fish, and fruits. To this she added -the making of yeast, candles, and soap for her household, their butter -and cheese--perhaps also these foods for market sale--at times their -cider, and even elderberry wine for their company, of as fine a color -and distinguished a flavor as the gooseberry which the wife of immortal -Dr. Primrose offered her guests. Abigail Adams herself testifies that -she made her own soap, in her early days at Braintree, and chopped -the wood with which she kindled her fires. In such accomplishments -she was one of a great sisterhood, thousands of whom served before -and thousands after her. These women rarely told such activities in -their letters, and rarely, too, I think, to their diaries; for their -fingers fitted a quill but awkwardly after a day with distaff or -butter-moulding. - -These duties were of the external world, mainly mechanical and -routine, and they would have permitted her--an untiring materialist -in all things workable by hands--to go many ways in the wanderings -of thought, if grace, flexibility, and warmth had consorted with the -Puritan idea of beauty. She had come to be an idealist in all things -having to do with the spirit. Nevertheless, as things stood, she had -but one mental path. - -The powers about her were theocratic. They held in their hands her -life and death in all physical things, and her life and death per -omnia sæcula sæculorum. They held the right to whisper approval or -to publish condemnation. Her eager, active spirit was fed by sermons -and exhortations to self-examination. Nothing else was offered. On -Sundays and at the prayer-meetings of mid-week she was warned by these -teachers, to whom everybody yielded, to whom in her childhood she -had been taught to drop a wayside courtesy, that she should ever be -examining head and heart to escape everlasting hell-fire, and that she -should endure so as to conduct her devoted life as to appease the -anger of a God as vindictive as the very ecclesiasts themselves. No -escape or reaction was possible. - -The effect of all this upon a spirit so active, pliant, and -sensitive is evident. The sole way open to her was the road to -introspection--that narrow lane hedged with the trees of contemplative -life to all suffering human kind. - -Even those of the community whose life duties took them out in their -world, and who were consequently more objective than women, even the -men, under such conditions, grew self-examining to the degree of a -proverb, “The bother with the Yankee is that he rubs badly at the -juncture of the soul and body.” - -In such a life as this first arose the subjective characteristics of -the New England woman at which so many gibes have been written, so -many flings spoken; at which so many burly sides have shaken with -laughter ἄσβεστος. Like almost every dwarfed or distorted thing in the -active practical world, “New England subjectivity” is a result of the -shortsightedness of men, the assumption of authority of the strong over -the weak, and the wrongs they have to advance self done one another. - -Nowadays, in our more objective life, this accent of the ego is -pronounced irritating. But God’s sequence is apt to be irritating. - -The New England woman’s subjectivity is a result of what has been--the -enslaving by environment, the control by circumstance, of a thing -flexible, pliant, ductile--in this case a hypersensitive soul--and its -endeavor to shape itself to lines and forms men in authority dictated. - -Cut off from the larger world, this woman was forced into the smaller. -Her mind must have field and exercise for its natural activity and -constructiveness. Its native expression was in the great objective -world of action and thought about action, the macrocosm; stunted and -deprived of its birthright, it turned about and fed upon its subjective -self, the microcosm. - -Scattered far and wide over the granitic soil of New England there -have been the women unmarried. Through the seafaring life of the men, -through the adventures of the pioneer enchanting the hot-blooded and -daring; through the coaxing away of sturdy youthful muscle by the call -of the limitless fat lands to the west; through the siren voice of -the cities; and also through the loss of men in war--that untellable -misery--these less fortunate women--the unmarried--have in all New -England life been many. All the rounding and relaxing grace and charm -which lie between maid and man they knew only in brooding fancy. Love -might spring, but its growth was rudimentary. Their life was not -fulfilled. There were many such spinners. - -These women, pertinacious at their tasks, dreamed dreams of what could -never come to be. Lacking real things, they talked much of moods and -sensations. Naturally they would have moods. Human nature will have -its confidant, and naturally they talked to one another more freely -than to their married sisters. Introspection plus introspection again. -A life vacuous in external events and interrupted by no masculine -practicality--where fluttering nerves were never counterpoised by -steady muscle--afforded every development to subjective morbidity. - -And expression of their religious life granted no outlet to these -natures--no goodly work direct upon humankind. The Reformation, -whatever magnificence it accomplished for the freedom of the -intellect, denied liberty and individual choice to women. Puritanism -was the child of the Reformation. Like all religions reacting -from the degradations and abuses of the Middle Ages, for women it -discountenanced community life. Not for active ends, nor of a certainty -for contemplative, were women to hive together and live independent -lives. - -In her simple home, and by making the best of spare moments, the -undirected impulse of the spinster produced penwipers for the heathen -and slippers for the dominie. But there was, through all the long years -of her life, no dignified, constructive, human expression for the -childless and husbandless woman. Because of this lack a dynamo force -for good was wasted for centuries, and tens of thousands of lives were -blighted. - -In New England her theology ruled, as we have said, with an iron and -tyrannous hand. It published the axiom, and soon put it in men’s -mouths, that the only outlet for women’s activities was marriage. -No matter if truth to the loftiest ideals kept her single, a woman -unmarried, from a Garden of Eden point of view and the pronunciamento -of the average citizen, was not fulfilling the sole and only end for -which he dogmatized women were made--she was not child-bearing. - -In this great spinster class, dominated by such a voice, we may -physiologically expect to find an excess of the neurotic altruistic -type, women sickened and extremists, because their nature was -unexpressed, unbalanced, and astray. They found a positive joy in -self-negation and self-sacrifice, and evidenced in the perturbations -and struggles of family life a patience, a dumb endurance, which -the humanity about them, and even that of our later day, could not -comprehend, and commonly translated into apathy or unsensitiveness. The -legendary fervor and devotion of the saints of other days pale before -their self-denying discipline. - -But instead of gaining, as in the mediæval faith, the applause of -contemporaries, and, as in those earlier days, inciting veneration -and enthusiasm as a “holy person,” the modern sister lived in her -small world very generally an upper servant in a married brother’s -or sister’s family. Ibsen’s Pillar of Society, Karsten Bernick, in -speaking of the self-effacing Martha, voices in our time the then -prevailing sentiment, “You don’t suppose I let her want for anything. -Oh, no; I think I may say I am a good brother. Of course, she lives -with us and eats at our table; her salary is quite enough for her -dress, and--what can a single woman want more?... You know, in a large -house like ours, it is always well to have some steady-going person -like her whom one can put to anything that may turn up.” - -Not such estimates alone, but this woman heard reference to herself in -many phrases turning upon her chastity. Her very classification in the -current vernacular was based upon her condition of sex. And at last -she witnessed for her class an economic designation, the essence of -vulgarity and the consummation of insolence--“superfluous women;” that -is, “unnecessary from being in excess of what is needed,” women who had -not taken husbands, or had lived apart from men. The phrase recalls the -use of the word “female”--meaning, “for thy more sweet understanding,” -a woman--which grew in use with the Squire Westerns of the eighteenth -century, and persisted even in decent mouths until Charles Lamb wrapped -it in the cloth of gold of his essay on Modern Gallantry, and buried it -forever from polite usage. - -In another respect, also, this New England spinster grew into a being -such as the world had not seen. It is difficult of explanation. -Perhaps most easily said, it is this: she never by any motion or phrase -suggested to a man her variation from him. All over the world women do -this; unconsciously nearly always; in New England never. The expression -of the woman has there been condemned as immodest, unwomanly, and -with fierce invective; the expression of the man been lauded. Das -Ewig-Weibliche must persist without confession of its existence. In -the common conception, when among masculine comrades she should bear -herself as a sexless sort of half-being, an hermaphroditic comrade, a -weaker, unsexed creature, not markedly masculine, like her brother or -the present golfing woman, and far from positively feminine. - -All her ideals were masculine; that is, all concrete and human -expression of an ideal life set before her was masculine. Her religion -was wholly masculine, and God was always “He.” Her art in its later -phases was at its height in the “Spectator” and “Tatler,” where the -smirking belles who matched the bewigged beaux of Anne’s London are -jeered at, and conviction is carried the woman reader that all her sex -expressions are if not foul, fool, and sometimes both fool and foul. - -In this non-recognition of a woman’s sex, its needs and expression in -home and family life, and in the domination of masculine ideals, has -been a loss of grace, facile touch in manner, vivacity, légèreté; in -short, a want of clarity, delicacy, and feminine strength. To put the -woman’s sex aside and suppress it was to emphasize spinster life--and -increase it. It is this nullification of her sex traits that has led -the world to say the New England woman is masculine, when the truth is -she is most femininely feminine in everything but sex--where she is -most femininely and self-effacingly _it_. - -It is in this narrowness, this purity, simplicity, and sanctity, in -this circumspection and misdirection, that we have the origin of the -New England woman’s subjectivity, her unconscious self-consciousness, -and that seeming hermaphroditic attitude that has attracted the -attention of the world, caused its wonder, and led to its false -judgment of her merit. - -Social changes--a result of the Zeitgeist--within the last two -generations have brought a broadening of the conception of the “sphere” -of women. Puritan instincts have been dying. Rationalism has to a -degree been taking their place. While, on the other hand,--one may -say this quite apart from construing the galvanic twitchings of a -revived mediævalism in ecclesiastic and other social affairs as real -life--there have also come conceptions of the liberty and dignity of -womanhood, independent or self-dependent, beyond those which prevailed -in the nunnery world. - -A popular feeling has been growing that a woman’s sphere is whatever -she can do excellently. What effect this will have on social relations -at large we cannot foresee. From such conditions another chivalry -may spring! What irony of history if on New England soil!! Possibly, -the custom that now pertains of paying women less than men for the -same work, the habit in all businesses of giving women the drudging -details,--necessary work, indeed, but that to which no reputation is -affixed,--and giving to men the broader tasks in which there is contact -with the world and the result of contact, growth, may ultimately -react, just as out of injustice and brutalities centuries ago arose a -chivalrous ideal and a knightly redresser. - -The sparseness of wealth, the meagreness of material ideals, and the -frugality, simplicity, and rusticity of New England life have never -allowed a development of popular manners. Grace among the people has -been interpreted theologically; never socially. Their geniality, like -their sunshine, has always had a trace of the northeast wind--chilled -by the Labrador current of their theology. Native wit has been put -out by narrow duties. The conscience of their theology has been -instinctively for segregation, never for social amalgamation. They are -more solitary than gregarious. - -We should expect, then, an abruptness of manner among those left to -develop social genius--the women--even among those travelled and -most generously educated. We should expect a degree of baldness and -uncoveredness in their social processes, which possibly might be -expressed by the polysyllable which her instructor wrote at the end -of a Harvard Annex girl’s theme to express its literary quality, -“unbuttoned”--unconsciously. - -When you meet the New England woman, you see her placing you in her -social scale. That in tailor-making you God may have used a yardstick -different from the New England measure has not yet reached her -consciousness; nor that the system of weights and measures of what Sir -Leslie Stephen calls “the half-baked civilization of New England” may -not prevail in all towns and countries. Should you chance not to fit -any notch she has cut in her scale, she is apt to tell you this in a -raucous, strident voice, with a schoolma’am air in delivery of her -opinion. If she is untravelled and purely of New England surroundings, -these qualities may be accented. She is undeniably frank and -unquestionably truthful. At all times, in centuries past and to-day, -she would scorn such lies as many women amazingly tell for amusement -or petty self-defence. - -It is evident that she is a good deal of a fatalist. This digression -will illustrate: If you protest your belief that so far as this world’s -estimate goes some great abilities have no fair expression, that in our -streets we jostle mute inglorious Miltons; if you say you have known -most profound and learned natures housed on a Kansas farm or in a New -Mexico cañon; nay, if you aver your faith that here in New England men -and women of genius are unnoticed because Messrs. Hue and Cry, voicing -the windier, have not appreciated larger capacities, she will pityingly -tell you that this larger talent is supposititious. If it were real, -she continues, it must have risen to sight and attracted the eye of -men. Her human knowledge is not usually deep nor her insight subtle, -and she does not know that in saying this she is contradicting the law -of literary history, that the producers of permanent intellectual -wares are often not recognized by their contemporaries, nor run -after by mammonish publishers. And at last, when you answer that the -commonest question with our humankind is nourishment for the body, -that ease and freedom from exhausting labor must forerun education, -literature, art, she retorts that here is proof she is right: if these -unrecognized worthies you instance had the gifts you name, they would -be superior to mere physical wants. - -If you have longanimity, you do not drive the generality closer; you -drown your reflections in Sir Thomas Browne: “The iniquity of oblivion -blindly scattereth her poppy and deals with the memory of men without -distinction to merit of perpetuity.... Who knows whether the best of -men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot -than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?” - -Her narrow fatalism, united with the conservatism and aristocratic -instincts common to all women from their retired life and ignorance -of their kind, gives the New England woman a hedged sympathy with -the proletarian struggle for freer existence. It may be lack of -comprehension rather than lack of sympathy. She would cure by -palliations, a leprosy by healing divers sores. At times you find her -extolling the changes wrought in the condition of women during the -last seventy years. She argues for the extension of education; her -conservatism admits that. She may not draw the line of her radicalism -even before enfranchisement. But the vaster field of the education of -the human race by easier social conditions, by lifting out of money -worship and egoism,--this has never been, she argues, and therefore -strenuously insists it never will be. - -Her civic spirit is Bostonesque. A town’s spirit is a moral and -spiritual attitude impressed upon members of a community where events -have engendered unity of sentiment, and it commonly subordinates -individual idiosyncrasies. - -The spirit Boston presents includes a habit of mind apparently -ratiocinative, but once safely housed in its ism incredulously -conservative and persistently self-righteous--lacking flexibility. -Within its limits it is as fixed as the outline of the Common. It has -externally a concession and docility. It is polite and kind--but when -its selfishness is pressing its greediness is of the usurious lender. -In our generation it is marked by lack of imagination, originality, -initiative. Having had its origin in Non-conformity, it has the habit -of seeing what it is right for others to do to keep their house -clean--pulling down its mouth when the rest of the world laughs, -square-toeing when the rest trip lightly, straight-lacing when the -other human is erring, but all the time carrying a heart under its -east-wind stays, and eyes which have had a phenomenal vision for right -and wrong doing--for others’ wrongdoing especially; yet withal holding -under its sour gravity moral impulses of such import that they have -leavened the life of our country to-day and rebuked and held in check -easier, lighter, less profound, less illuminated, less star-striking -ideals. - -It is a spirit featured not unsimilarly to the Lenox landscape--safe, -serene, inviting, unable in our day to produce great crop without the -introduction of fresh material--and from like cause. A great glacier -has pressed on both human spirit and patch of earth. But the sturdy, -English bedrock of the immaterial foundation was not by the glacier of -Puritanism so smoothed, triturated, and fertilized as was Berkshire -soil by the pulverizing weight of its titanic ice flow. - -This spirit is also idealistic outside its civic impulses,--referring -constantly to the remote past or future,--and in its eyes the abstract -is apt to be as real as the concrete. To this characteristic is due -not only Emersonism and Alcottism--really old Platonism interpreted -for the transcendental Yankee--but also that faith lately revivified, -infinitely vulgarized, as logically distorted as the pneuma doctrine -of the first century, and called “Christian Science.” The idealism of -Emerson foreran the dollar-gathering idealism of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy -as the lark of spring foreruns the maple worm. - -This idealism oftenest takes religious phases--as in its Puritan -origin--and in many instances in our day is content with crude -expression. Of foregone days evidence is in an incomplete list--only -twenty-five--of Brigham Young’s wives, some of whom bore such old New -England patronymics as Angell, Adams, Ross, Lawrence, Bigelow, Snow, -Folsom. May a fleeing of these women to Mormonism be explained by -their impatience and heart-sickness at their unsexing social condition -and religious spirit?--with the admitting to the great scheme of life -and action but one sex and that the one to which their theocratic -theologians belonged? - -Speculations of pure philosophy this New England woman is inclined -to fear as vicious. In dialectics she rests upon the glories of -the innocuous transcendentalism of the nineteenth century forties. -Exceptions to this rule are perhaps those veraciously called “occult;” -for she will run to listen to the juggling logic and boasting rhetoric -of Swamis Alphadananda and Betadananda and Gammadananda, and cluster -about the audience-room of those dusky fakirs much as a swarm of bees -flits in May. And like the bees, she deserts cells filled with honey -for combs machine-made and wholly empty. - -Illuminated by some factitious light, she will again go to unheard-of -lengths in extenuating Shelley’s relations to his wives, and in -explaining George Eliot’s marriage to her first husband. Here, and -for at least once in her life, she combats convention and reasons -upon natural grounds. “I don’t see the wickedness of Rudolph,” said -one spinster, referring to the tragedy connecting a prince of Austria -and a lady of the Vetchera family. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t have -followed his heart. But I shouldn’t dare say that to any one else in -Boston. Most of them think as I do, but they would all be shocked to -have it said.” - -“Consider the broad meaning of what you say. Let this instance become -a universal law.” - -“Still I believe every sensible man and woman applauds Rudolph’s -independence.” - -With whatsoever or whomsoever she is in sympathy this woman is apt -to be a partisan. To husband, parents, and children there could be -no more devoted adherent. Her conscience, developed by introspective -and subjective pondering, has for her own actions abnormal size and -activity. It is always alert, always busy, always prodding, and not -infrequently sickened by its congested activity. Duty to those about -her, and industry for the same beneficiaries, are watchwords of its -strength; and to fail in a mote’s weight is to gain condemnation of -two severest sorts--her own and the community’s. The opinion of the -community in which she lives is her second almighty power. - -In marriage she often exemplifies that saying of Euripides which -Stobæus has preserved among the lavender-scented leaves of his -Florilegium--“A sympathetic wife is a man’s best possession.” She -has mental sympathy--a result of her tense nervous organization, her -altruism in domestic life, her strong love, and her sense of duty, -justice, and right. - -In body she belongs to a people which has spent its physical force and -depleted its vitality. She is slight. There is lack of adipose tissue, -reserve force, throughout her frame. Her lungs are apt to be weak, -waist normal, and hips undersized. - -She is awkward in movement. Her climate has not allowed her relaxation, -and the ease and curve of motion that more enervating air imparts. -This is seen even in public. In walking she holds her elbows set in an -angle, and sometimes she steps out in the tilt of the Cantabrigian man. -In this is perhaps an unconscious imitation, a sympathetic copying, of -an admirable norm; but it is graceless in petticoats. As she steps she -knocks her skirt with her knees, and gives you the impression that her -leg is crooked, that she does not lock her knee-joint. More often she -toes in than out. - -She has a marvellously delicate, brilliant, fine-grained skin. It is -innocent of powder and purely natural. No beer in past generations has -entered its making, and no port; also, little flesh. In New England it -could not be said, as a London writer has coarsely put it, that a woman -may be looked upon as an aggregate of so many beefsteaks. - -Her eyes have a liquid purity and preternatural brightness; she is the -child of γλαυχῶπις Athena, rather than of βοῶπις Hera, Pronuba, and -ministress to women of more luxuriant flesh. The brown of her hair -inclines to the ash shades. - -Her features would in passport wording be called “regular.” The -expression of her face when she lives in more prosperous communities, -where salaries are and an assured future, is a stereotyped smile. In -more uncertain life and less fortunate surroundings, her countenance -shows a weariness of spirit and a homesickness for heaven that make -your soul ache. - -Her mind is too self-conscious on the one hand, and too set on lofty -duties on the other, to allow much of coquetterie, or flirting, or a -femininely accented camaraderie with men--such as the more elemental -women of Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and New York enjoy. -She is farthest possible from the luxuriant beauty of St. Louis who -declared, “You bet! black-jack-diamond kind of a time!” when asked if -she had enjoyed her social dash in Newport. This New England woman -would, forsooth, take no dash in Aurovulgus. But falling by chance -among vulgarities and iniquities, she guards against the defilement of -her lips, for she loves a pure and clean usage of our facile English -speech. - -The old phase of the New England woman is passing. It is the hour for -some poet to voice her threnody. Social conditions under which she -developed are almost obliterated. She is already outnumbered in her own -home by women of foreign blood, an ampler physique, a totally different -religious conception, a far different conduct; and a less exalted -ideal of life. Intermixtures will follow and racial lines gradually -fade. In the end she will not be. Her passing is due to the unnumbered -husbandless and the physical attenuation of the married--attenuation -resulting from their spare and meagre diet, and, it is also claimed, -from the excessive household labor of their mothers. More profoundly -causative--in fact, inciting the above conditions--was the distorted -morality and debilitating religion impressed upon her sensitive spirit. -Mayhap in this present decay some Mœra is punishing that awful crime -of self-sufficing ecclesiasticism. Her unproductivity--no matter from -what reason, whether from physical necessity or a spirit-searching -flight from the wrath of God--has been her death. - - - - -A NEW ENGLAND ABODE OF THE BLESSED - - ... ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρη - Ζεὺς Κρονίδης ποίησε δικαιότερον καὶ ἄρειον, - ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, ... - τοῖς δὲ δίχ’ ἀνθρώπων βίοτον καὶ ἤθε’ ὀπάσσας - Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κατένασσε πατὴρ ἐς πείρατα γαίης· - --χαὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες - --ἐν μαχάρων νήσοισι παῤ Ὠχεανὸν βαθυδίνην, - --ὄλβιοι ἡρωες· τοῖσιν μελιηδέα καρπὸν - --τρςὶ ἔτεος θάλλοντα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα. - - HESIOD - -Under bloudie Diocletian ... a great number of Christians which were -assembled togither to heare the word of life ... were slaine by the -wicked pagans at Lichfield, whereof ... as you would say, The field of -dead corpses. - - HOLINSHED - - - - -A NEW ENGLAND ABODE OF THE BLESSED - - -Upon the broad level of one of our Litchfield hills is--if we accept -ancient legend--a veritable Island of the Blessed. There heroes fallen -after strong fight enjoy rest forever. - -The domination of unyielding law in the puny affairs of men--the -unfathomableness of Mœra, the lot no man can escape--comes upon one -afresh upon this hill-top. What clay we are in the hands of fate! -“ἅπαντα τíχτει χθὼν πάλιν τε λαμβáνει,” cried Euripides--“all things -the earth puts forth and takes again.” - -But why should the efforts of men to build a human hive have here been -wiped away--here where all nature is wholesome and in seeming unison -with regulated human life? The air sparkles buoyantly up to your very -eyes--and almost intoxicates you with its life and joy. Through its -day-translucence crows cut their measured flight and brisker birds -flitter, and when the young moon shines out of a warm west elegiac -whippoorwills cry to the patient night. - -Neither volcanic ashes nor flood, whirlwind nor earthquake--mere decay -has here nullified men’s efforts for congregated life and work. The -soil of the hill, porous and sandy, is of moderate fertility. Native -oaks and chestnuts, slender birches and fragrant hemlocks, with -undergrowths of coral-flowering laurel, clothe its slopes. Over its -sandstone ledges brooks of soft water treble minor airs--before they -go loitering among succulent grasses and spearmint and other thirsty -brothers of the distant meadows. - -Nearly two hundred years ago pioneers of a Roundhead, independent -type--the type which led William of Orange across the Channel for -preservation of that liberty which Englishmen for hundreds of years -had spoken of as “antient”--such men broke this sod, till then -untouched by axe or plough. They made clearings, and grouped their -hand-hewn houses just where in cool mornings of summer they could see -the mists roll up from their hill-locked pond to meet the rosy day; -just where, when the sun sank behind the distant New York mountains, -they could catch within their windows his last shaft of gold. - -Here they laid their hearths and dwelt in primitive comfort. Their -summers were unspeakably beautiful--and hard-working. Their autumns -indescribably brilliant, hill-side and valley uniting to form a -radiance God’s hand alone could hold. Their winters were of deep snows -and cold winds and much cutting and burning of wood. The first voice -of their virid spring came in the bird-calls of early March, when snow -melted and sap mounted, and sugar maples ran syrup; when ploughs were -sharpened, and steaming and patient oxen rested their sinews through -the long, pious Sabbath. - -Wandering over this village site, now of fenced-in fields, you -find here and there a hearth and a few cobbles piled above it. The -chimney-shaft has long since disappeared. You happen upon stone curbs, -and look down to the dark waters of wells. You come upon bushes of -old-fashioned, curled-petal, pink-sweet roses and snowy phlox, and upon -tiger lilies flaunting odalisque faces before simple sweetbrier, and -upon many another garden plant which “a handsome woman that had a fine -hand”--as Izaak Walton said of her who made the trout fly--once set as -border to her path. Possibly the very hand that planted these pinks -held a bunch of their sweetness after it had grown waxen and cold. The -pinks themselves are now choked by the pushing grass. - -And along this line of gooseberry-bushes we trace a path from house to -barn. Here was the fireplace. The square of small boulders yonder marks -the barn foundation. Along this path the house-father bore at sunrise -and sunset his pails of foaming milk. Under that elm spreading between -living-room and barn little children of the family built pebble huts, -in these rude confines cradling dolls which the mother had made from -linen of her own weave, or the father whittled when snow had crusted -the earth and made vain all his hauling and digging. - -Those winters held genial hours. Nuts from the woods and cider from -the orchard stood on the board near by. Home-grown wood blazed in the -chimney; home-grown chestnuts, hidden in the ashes by busy children, -popped to expectant hands; house-mothers sat with knitting and -spinning, and the father and farm-men mended fittings and burnished -tools for the spring work. Outside the stars glittered through a clear -sky and the soundless earth below lay muffled in sleep. - -Over yonder across the road was the village post-office, and not far -away were stores of merchant supplies. But of these houses no vestige -now remains. Where the post-house stood the earth is matted with -ground-pine and gleaming with scarlet berries of the wintergreen. The -wiping-out is as complete as that of the thousand trading-booths, -long since turned to clay, of old Greek Mycenæ, or of the stalls of -the ancient trading-folk dwelling between Jaffa and Jerusalem where -Tell-ej-Jezari now lies. - -The church of white clap-boards which these villagers used for praise -and prayer--not a small temple--still abides. Many of the snowy houses -of old New England worship pierce their luminous ether with graceful -spires. But this meeting-house lifts a square, central bell-tower -which now leans on one side as if weary with long standing. The old -bell which summoned its people to their pews still hangs behind green -blinds--a not unmusical town-crier. But use, life, good works have -departed with those whom it exhorted to church duty, and in sympathy -with all the human endeavor it once knew, but now fordone, in these -days it never rings blithely, it can only be made to toll. Possibly -it can only be made to toll because of the settling of its supporting -tower. But the fact remains; and who knows if some wounded spirit -may not be dwelling within its brazen curves, sick at heart with its -passing and ineffective years? - -Not far from the church, up a swell of the land, lies the -burying-ground--a sunny spot. Pines here and there, also hemlocks and -trees which stand bare after the fall of leaves. But all is bright and -open, not a hideous stone-quarry such as in our day vanity or untaught -taste makes of resting-places of our dead. Gay-colored mushrooms waste -their luxurious gaudiness between the trees, and steadfast myrtle, with -an added depth to its green from the air’s clarity, binds the narrow -mounds with ever-lengthening cords. - -But whether they are purple with the violets of May or with Michaelmas -daisies, there is rest over all these mounds--“über allen Gipfeln ist -Ruh’.” Daily gossip and sympathy these neighbors had. The man of this -grave was he who passed many times a day up and down the path by the -gooseberry-bushes and bore the foaming milk. He is as voiceless now as -the flies that buzzed about his shining pail. And the widow who dwelt -across the road--she of the sad eyes who sat always at her loom, for -her youthful husband was of those who never came back from the massacre -of Fort William Henry--she to whom this man hauled a sled of wood -for every two he brought to his own door, to whom his family carried -elderberry wine, cider, and home mince-meat on Thanksgiving--she, -too, is voiceless even of thanks, her body lying over yonder, now -in complete rest--no loom, no treadle, no thumping, no whirring of -spinning-wheel, no narrow pinching and poverty, her soul of heroic -endurance joined with her long separate soldier soul of action. - -The pathos of their lives and the warmth of their humanity!--however -coated with New England austerity. Many touching stories these little -headstones tell--as this: - - “To the memory of Mrs. Abigail, Consort of Mr. Joseph Merrill, - who died May 3rd, 1767, in the 52 year of her age.” - -A consort in royal dignity and poetry is a sharer of one’s lot. Mr. -Joseph Merrill had no acquaintance with the swagger and pretension -of courts, and he knew no poetry save his hill-side, his villagers, -and the mighty songs of the Bible. He was a plain, simple, Yankee -husbandman, round-shouldered from carrying heavy burdens, coarse-handed -from much tilling of the earth and use of horse and cattle. While he -listened to sermons in the white church down the slope, his eyes were -often heavy for need of morning sleep; and many a Sunday his back and -knees ached from lack of rest as he stood beside the sharer of his -fortunes in prayer. Yet his simple memorial warms the human heart one -hundred and thirty-eight years after his “consort” had for the last -time folded her housewifely hands. - - “Of sa great faith and charitie, - With mutuall love and amitie: - That I wat an mair heavenly life, - Was never betweene man and wife.” - -It was doubtless with Master Merrill as with the subject of an encomium -of Charles Lamb’s. “Though bred a Presbyterian,” says Lamb of Joseph -Paice, “and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his -time.” - -In May, 1767, when this sharer of humble fortune lay down to rest, the -Stamp Act had been repealed but fourteen months. The eyes of the world -were upon Pitt and Burke and Townshend--and Franklin whose memorable -examination before the House of Commons was then circulating as a news -pamphlet. The social gossip of the day--as Lady Sarah Lennox’s wit -recounts--had no more recognition of the villagers than George the -Fourth. - -But American sinews and muscles such as these hidden on the Litchfield -Hills were growing in daily strength by helpful, human exercise, and -their “well-lined braine” was reasoning upon the Declaratory Act that -“Parliament had power to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” - -Another stone a few paces away has quite another story: - - “Here lies the body of Mr. Stephen Kelsey, who - died April 2, 1745, in y^e 71 year of his age - as you are so was we - as we are you must be” - -The peculiarities of this inscription were doubtless the -stone-cutter’s; and peradventure it was in the following way that the -rhymes--already centuries old in 1745 when Stephen Kelsey died--came to -be upon his headstone. - -The carver of the memorial was undeniably a neighbor and -fellow-husbandman to the children of Mr. Stephen Kelsey. Money-earning -opportunities were narrow and silver hard to come by in the pioneering -of the Litchfield Hills, and only after scrupulous saving had the -Kelsey family the cost of the headstone at last in hand. It was then -that they met to consider an epitaph. - -Their neighbor bespoken to work the stone was at the meeting, and to -open the way and clear his memory he scratched the date of death upon -a tablet or shingle his own hand had riven. - -“Friend Stephen’s death,” he began, “calleth to mind a verse often -sculptured in the old church-yard in Leicestershire, a verse satisfying -the soul with the vanity of this life, and turning our eyes to the -call from God which is to come. It toucheth not the vexations of the -world which it were vain to deny are ever present. You carry it in your -memory mayhap, Mistress Remembrance?” the stone-master interrupting -himself asked, suddenly appealing to a sister of Master Kelsey. - -Mistress Remembrance, an elderly spinster whose lover having in their -youth taken the great journey to New York, and crossed the Devil’s -Stepping-Stones--which before the memory of man some netherworld force -laid an entry of Manhattan Island--had never again returned to the -Litchfield Hills--Mistress Remembrance recalled the verses, and also -her brother, Master Stephen’s, sonorous repetition of them. - -In this way it came about that the mourning family determined they -should be engraven. And there the lines stand to-day in the hills’ -beautiful air--far more than a century since the hour when Mistress -Remembrance and the stone-cutter joined the celestial choir in which -Master Stephen was that very evening singing. - -But another headstone-- - - “With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked”-- - -quite outdoes Master Kelsey’s in strange English phrase. It reads: - - “Michel son of John Spencer - died Jan ye 24^{th} 1756 in y^e 10^{th} year of his age. - Death Conquers All - Both young and Old - Tho’ ne’er so wise - Discreet and Bold - In helth and Strength - this youth did Die - in a moment without one Cry.” - -And still another perpetuates the record of the same family: - - In Memory of - Mr John Spencer Who - Died June y^{e} 24^{th} - 1780 in the 70^{th} - Year of his Age - In Memory of Submit - Spencer Daughter of Mr - John and Mrs Mary - Spencer Who Died - Nov^{br} y^{e} 21^{th} 1755 in y^{e} - 1^{st} Year of her Age - Oh Cruel Death to fill this - Narrow space In yonder - House Made a vast emty place - -Was the child called “Submit” because born a woman! Or did the parents -embody in the name their own spiritual history of resignation to the -eternal powers?--“to fill this narrow space, in yonder house made a -vast empty place.” - -Farther up the slope of this God’s Acre a shaft standing high in the -soft light mourns the hazards of our passage through the world. - - In Memory of Mr. - Jeduthun Goodwin who - Died Feb 13^{th} 1809 Aged - 40 Years - Also Mrs. Eunice his - Wife who died August 6^{th} - 1802 Aged 33 Years - Dangers stand thick - through all the Ground - To Push us to the Tomb - And fierce diseases - Wait around - To hurry Mortals home - -Every village has its tragedy, alas! and that recounted in this -following inscription is at least one faithful record of terrifying -disaster. Again it seems at variance with the moral order of the world -that these quiet fields should witness the terror this tiny memorial -hints at. The stone is quite out of plumb and moss-covered, but -underneath the lichen it reads: - - “Phebe, wife of Ezekiel Markham Died Jyly 14, - 1806 Ae 49 - Also their 3 Sons Bela, Ciba, and Brainad was - burnt to Death in Oct 1793” - “In the midst of life we are dead” - -The mother lived nearly thirteen years after. There is no neighboring -record of the father. Perhaps the two migrated after the fearful -holocaust, and he only returned to place his wife’s body beside the -disfigured remains of her little ungrown men. Bela, Ciba, and Brainard -rested lonesomely doubtless those thirteen waiting years, and many -a night must their little ghosts have sat among the windflowers and -hepaticas of spring, or wandered midst the drifted needles of the pines -in the clear moonlight of summer, athirst for the mother’s soul of -comfort and courage. - -Again in this intaglio “spelt by th’ unlettered Muse” rises the -question of the stone-cutter’s knowledge of his mother tongue. The -church of the dead villagers still abides. But nowhere are seen the -remains of a school-house. Descendants of the cutter of Master Kelsey’s -headstone haply had many orders. - -The sun of Indian summer upon the fallen leaves brings out their -pungent sweetness. Except the blossoms of the subtle witch-hazel all -the flowers are gone. The last fringed gentian fed by the oozing -spring down the hill-side closed its blue cup a score of days ago. -Every living thing rests. The scene is filled with a strange sense of -waiting. And above is the silence of the sky. - -With such influences supervening upon their lives, these people of -the early village--undisturbed as they were by any world call, and -gifted with a fervid and patient faith--must daily have grown in -consciousness of a homely Presence ever reaching under their mortality -the Everlasting Arm. - -This potency abides, its very feeling is in the air above these -graves--that some good, some divine is impendent--that the soul of the -world is outstretching a kindred hand. - -In the calm and other-worldliness of their hill-top the eternal -moralities of the Deuteronomy and of Sophocles stand clearer to human -vision--the good that is mighty and never grows gray,--μέγας ἐν τούτοις -θεὸς, οὐδὲ γηράσχει. - -The comings and goings, the daily labors, the hopes and interests of -these early dwellers make an unspeakable appeal--their graves in the -church-yard, the ruined foundations of their domestic life beyond--that -their output of lives and years of struggle bore no more lasting local -fruit, however their seed may now be scattered to the upbuilding of -our South and West, the conversion of China, and our ordering of the -Philippines. - -And yet, although their habitations are fallen, they--such men and -women as they--still live. Their hearts, hands, and heads are in all -institutions of ours that are free. A great immortality, surely! If -such men and women had been less severe, less honest, less gifted for -conditions barren of luxuries, less elevated with an enthusiasm for -justice, less clear in their vision of the eternal moralities, less -simple and direct, less worthy inheritors of the great idea of liberty -which inflamed generations of their ancestors, it is not possible that -we should be here to-day doing our work to keep what they won and -carry their winnings further. Their unswerving independence in thought -and action and their conviction that the finger of God pointed their -way--their theocratic faith, their lifted sense of God-leading--made -possible the abiding of their spirit long after their material body lay -spent. - -So it is that upon the level top of the Litchfield Hills--what with the -decay of the material things of life and the divine permanence of the -spiritual--there is a resting-place of the Blessed--an Island of the -Blessed as the old Greeks used to say--an abode of heroes fallen after -strong fighting and enjoying rest forever. - - - - -UP-TO-DATE MISOGYNY - - He is the half part of a blessed man - Left to be finished by such a she; - And she a fair divided excellence, - Whose fulness of perfection lies in him. - - SHAKESPEARE - -If a man recognise in woman any quality which transcends the qualities -demanded in a plaything or handmaid--if he recognise in her the -existence of an intellectual life not essentially dissimilar to his -own, he must, by plainest logic, admit that life to express itself in -all its spontaneous forms of activity. - - GEORGE ELIOT - - Hard the task: your prison-chamber - Widens not for lifted latch - Till the giant thews and sinews - Meet their Godlike overmatch. - - GEORGE MEREDITH - - - - -UP-TO-DATE MISOGYNY - - -“I hate every woman!” cries Euripides, in keen iambics in a citation -of the Florilegium of Stobæus. The sentiment was not new with -Euripides--unfortunately. Before him there was bucolic Hesiod with -his precepts on wife-choosing. There was Simonides of Amorgos, who in -outcrying the degradation of the Ionian women told the degradation of -the Ionian men. There was Hipponax, who fiercely sang “two days on -which a woman gives a man most pleasure--the day he marries her and the -day he buries her.” - -And along with Euripides was Aristophanes, the radiant laughter-lover, -the titanic juggler with the heavens above and earth and men -below--Aristophanes who flouted the women of Athens in his -“Ecclesiazusæ,” and in the “Clouds” and his “Thesmophoriazusæ.” -Thucydides before them had named but one woman in his whole great -narrative, and had avoided the mention of women and their part in the -history he relates. - -“Woman is a curse!” cried Susarion. The Jews had said it before, when -they told the story of Eve-- - - “Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit - Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste - Brought death into the world, and all our woe.” - -Down through many centuries our forebears cast to and fro the same -sentiment--in spite of the introduction into life and literature of -the love of men for women and women for men; in spite of the growth -of romantic love. You find misogynous expression among the Latins. In -early “Church Fathers,” such as St. John Chrysostom, you come upon -it in grossest form. Woman is “a necessary ill,” cried the Golden -Mouthed, “a natural temptation, a wished-for calamity, a household -danger, a deadly fascination, a bepainted evil.” - -You see the sentiment in the laws of church and of kingdom. You sight -its miasm in the gloaming and murk of the Middle Ages, amid the -excesses which in shame for it chivalry affected and exalted. You read -it by the light of the awful fires that burnt women accessory to the -husband’s crime--for which their husbands were merely hanged. You see -it in Martin Luther’s injunction to Catherine von Bora that it ill -became his wife to fasten her waist in front--because independence -in women is unseemly, their dress should need an assistant for its -donning. You chance upon it in old prayers written by men, and once -publicly said by men for English queens to a God “which for the offence -of the first woman hast threatened unto all women a common, sharp, and -inevitable malediction.” - -You find the sentiment in Boileau’s satire and in Pope’s “Characters.” -You open the pages of the Wizard of the North, who did for his own -generations what Heliodorus and his chaste Chariclea accomplished for -the fourth century, and you come upon Walter Scott singing in one of -his exquisite songs-- - - “Woman’s faith, and woman’s trust, - Write the characters in dust.” - -All such sad evidences, it should be borne in mind, are but the reverse -of the fair picture with which men have regarded women. But because -there is a reverse side, and its view has entered and still enters -largely into human life, human estimates, and human fate, it should be -spoken about openly. Women and men inexperienced in the outer world of -affairs do not realize its still potent force. - -As for the subject of these gibes, for ages they were silent. During -many generations, in the privacy of their apartments, the women must -have made mute protests to one another. “These things are false,” their -souls cried. But they took the readiest defence of physical weakness, -and they loved harmony. It was better to be silent than to rise in bold -proof of an untruth and meet rude force. - -Iteration and dogmatic statement of women’s moral inferiority, coupled -as it often was with quoted text and priestly authority, had their -inevitable effect upon more sensitive and introspective characters; it -humiliated and unquestionably deprived many a woman of self-respect. -Still, all along there must have been a less sensitive, sturdier, -womanhood possessed of the perversive faith of Mrs. Poyser, that -“heaven made ’em to match the men,” that-- - - “Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free,”-- - -men and women rise or sink; that, in fact, the interests of the two are -inseparable and wholly identical. To broad vision misogynous expression -seems to set in antagonism forces united by all the mighty powers of -human evolution throughout millions of years, and the whole plan of God -back of that soul-unfolding. - -The misogynous song and story of our forebears with momentous fall -descended and became the coarse newspaper quip which a generation -ago whetted its sting upon women--“Susan B. Anthonys”--outspoken and -seeking more freedom than social prejudices of their day allowed. -An annoying gnat, it has in these days been almost exterminated by -diffusion of the oil of fairness and better knowledge. - -But even yet periodicals at times give mouth to the old misogyny. -Such an expression, nay, two, are published in otherwise admirable -pages, and with these we have to do. They are from the pen of a man -of temperament, energy, vigorous learning, and an “esurient Genie” -for books--professor of Latin in one of our great universities, where -misogynous sentiment has found expression in lectures in course and -also in more public delivery. - -The first reverse phrase is of “the neurotic caterwauling of an -hysterical woman.” Cicero’s invective and pathos are said to be -perilously near that perturbance. - -Now specialists in nervous difficulties have not yet determined there -is marked variation between neurotic caterwauling of hysterical women -and neurotic caterwauling of hysterical men. Cicero’s shrieks--for -Cicero was what is to-day called “virile,” “manly,” “strenuous,” -“vital”--Cicero’s would naturally approximate the men’s. - -To normally tuned ears caterwaulings are as unagreeable as misogynous -whoops--waulings of men as cacophonous as waulings of women. Take -an instance in times foregone. In what is the megalomaniac whine of -Marie Bashkirtseff’s “Journal” more unagreeable than the egotistical -vanity of Lord Byron’s wails? Each of these pen people may be viewed -from another point. More generously any record--even an academic -misogyny--is of interest and value because expressing the idiosyncratic -development or human feeling of the world. - -But, exactly and scientifically speaking, neurotic and hysteric -are contradictory terms. Neurotic men and women are described by -physicians as self-forgetting sensitives--zealous, executive; while the -hysterics of both sexes are supreme egotists, selfish, vain, and vague, -uncomfortable both in personal and literary contact--just like wit -at their expense. “If we knew all,” said George Eliot, who was never -hysterical, “we would not judge.” And Paul of Tarsus wrote wisely to -those of Rome, “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou -art, that judgest.” - -Science nowadays declares that the man who wears a shirt-collar cannot -be well, and equally the same analytic spirit may some day make evident -that neurosis and hysteria are legacies of a foredone generation, who -found the world out of joint and preyed upon its strength and calmness -of nerve to set things right. Humaneness and fair estimate are remedies -to-day’s dwellers upon the earth can offer, whether the neurosis and -hysteria be Latin or Saxon, men’s or indeed women’s. - -The second of the phrases to which we adverted tells of “the -unauthoritative young women who make dictionaries at so much a mile.” -It has the smack of the wit of the eighteenth century--of Pope’s -studied and never-ceasing gibes at Lady Mary Wortley Montagu after -she had given him the mitten; of Dr. Johnson’s “female day” and his -rumbling thunder over “the freaks and humors and spleen and vanity of -women”--he of all men who indulge in freaks and humors and spleen and -vanity!--whose devotion to his bepainted and bedizened old wife was the -talk of their literary London. - -We are apt to believe the slurs that Pope, Johnson, and their -self-applauding colaborers cast upon what they commonly termed -“females” as deterrent to their fairness, favor, and fame. The -high-noted laugh which sounded from Euphelia’s morning toilet and -helped the self-gratulation of those old beaux not infrequently grates -upon our twentieth century altruistic, neurotic sensibilities. - -But to return to our lamb. An unauthoritative young woman, we suppose, -is one who is not authoritative, who has not authority. But what -confers authority? Assumption of it? Very rarely anything else--even in -the case of a college professor. We have in our blessed democracy no -Academy, no Sanhedrim, no keeper of the seal of authority--and while -we have not we keep life, strength, freedom in our veins. The young -woman “who makes dictionaries at so much a mile” may be--sometimes -is--as fitted for authority and the exercise of it as her brother. -Academic as well as popular prejudices, both springing mainly from the -masculine mind, make him a college professor, and her a nameless drudge -exercising the qualities women have gained from centuries of women’s -life--sympathetic service with belittling recognition of their work, -self-sacrifice, and infinite care and patience for detail. - -Too many of our day, both of men and women, still believe with old John -Knox--to glance back even beyond Johnson and Pope--and his sixteenth -century “First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of -Women”--a fine example of hysterical shrieking in men, by the way. -With the loving estimate of Knox’s contemporary, Mr. John Davidson, we -heartily agree when he sings-- - - “For weill I wait that Scotland never bure, - In Scottis leid ane man mair Eloquent, - Into perswading also I am sure, - Was nane in Europe that was mair potent. - In Greik and Hebrew he was excellent, - And als in Latine toung his propernes, - Was tryit trym quhen scollers wer present. - Bot thir wer nathing till his uprichtnes.” - -We admire Knox’s magnificent moral courage and the fruits of that -courage which the Scots have long enjoyed, and yet anent the “cursed -Jesabel of England,” the “cruell monstre Marie,” Knox cries: “To -promote a Woman to beare rule, superiorite, dominion, or empire ... -is repugnant to Nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to -his revealed will and approved ordinance”--just as if he, John Knox, -knew all about God’s will and Nature’s designs. What pretence, John! -But John took it upon himself to say he did. He _assumed_; and time -and events have proved that it was sheer assumption on John’s part. I -doubt, were he now here, if he would let a modest, bread-earning woman -even make dictionaries at so much a mile--nothing beyond type-writing, -surely. He would probably assume authority and shriek hysterically that -anything beyond the finger-play of type-writing is repugnant to Nature -and contrarious to God. - -There was a Mrs. John Knox; there were two in fact--ribs. - -“That servent faithfull servand of the Lord” took the first slip of a -girl when near his fiftieth year, long after he had left the celibate -priesthood; and the second, a lass of sixteen, when he was fifty-nine. -They took care of John, a mother-in-law helping, and with service and -money gave him leisure to write. The opinions of the dames do not -appear in their husband’s hysteria. “I use the help of my left hand,” -dictated Knox when one of these girl-wives was writing for him a letter. - -With the young women we are considering there is this eternal variation -from John Knox and his hysterical kin, Celt, Saxon, or Latin--she does -not assume authority. Consequently she makes dictionaries at so much -a mile. Such word-spinning was at one time done by drudge men--men -who had failed mayhap in the church, or in law, or had distaste for -material developments or shame for manual work. Now, with women -fortified by the learning their colleges afford, it is oftenest done -by drudge women. The law of commerce prevails--women gain the task -because they will take much less a mile than men. Men offer them less -than they would dare offer a man similarly equipped. - -But why should our brothers who teach sophomores at so much a year -fleer? even if the woman has got the job! Does not this arrangement -afford opportunity for a man to affix his name to her work? In -unnumbered--and concealed--instances. We all remember how in the making -of the ---- dictionary the unauthoritative woman did the work, and the -unauthoritative man wrote the introduction, and the authoritative man -affixed his name to it. We all remember that, surely. Then there is the --- -- --; and the -- --. We do not fear to mention names, we merely -pity and do not--and we nurse pity because with Aristotle we believe -that it purifies the heart. With small knowledge of the publishing -world, I can count five such make-ups as I here indicate. In one case -an authoritative woman did her part of the work under the explicit -agreement that her name should be upon the title-page. In the end, by a -trick, in order to advertise the man’s, it appeared only in the first -edition. Yet this injustice in nowise deprived her of a heart of oak. - -The commercial book-building world, as it at present stands--the place -where they write dictionaries and world’s literatures at so much a -mile--is apt to think a woman is out in its turmoil for her health, or -for sheer amusement; not for the practical reasons men are. An eminent -opinion declared the other day that they were there “to get a trousseau -or get somebody to get it for ’em.” Another exalted judgment asserted, -“The first thing they look round the office and see who there is to -marry.” - -This same world exploits her labor; it pays her a small fraction -of what it pays a man engaged in the identical work; it seizes, -appropriates, and sometimes grows rich upon her ideas. It never thinks -of advancing her to large duties because of her efficiency in small. -She is “only a woman,” and with Ibsen’s great Pillar of Society the -business world thinks she should be “content to occupy a modest and -becoming position.” The capacities of women being varied, would not -large positions rightly appear modest and becoming to large capacities? - -For so many centuries men have estimated a woman’s service of no money -value that it is hard, at the opening of the twentieth, to believe -it equal to even a small part of a man’s who is doing the same work. -In one late instance a woman at the identical task of editing was -paid less than one-fortieth the sum given her colaborer, a man, whose -products were at times submitted to her for revision and correction. -In such cases the men are virtually devouring the women--not quite so -openly, yet as truly, as the Tierra del Fuegians of whom Darwin tells: -when pressed in winter by hunger they choke their women with smoke and -eat them. In our instance just cited the feeding upon was less patent, -but the choking with smoke equally unconcealed. - -The very work of these so-called unauthoritative women passes in -the eyes of the world uninstructed in the present artfulness of -book-making as the work of so-called authoritative men. It is therefore -authoritative. - -Not in this way did the king-critic get together his dictionary. -Johnson’s work evidences his hand on every page and almost in every -paragraph. But things are changed from the good old times of individual -action. We now have literary trusts and literary monopolies. Nowadays -the duties of an editor-in-chief may be to oversee each day’s labor, to -keep a sharp eye upon the “authoritative” men and “unauthoritative” -women whose work he bargained for at so much a mile, and, when they -finish the task, to indite his name as chief worker. - -Would it be reasonable to suppose that--suffering such school-child -discipline and effacement--those twentieth century writers -nourished the estimate of “booksellers” with which Michael Drayton -in the seventeenth century enlivened a letter to Drummond of -Hawthornden?--“They are a company of base knives whom I both scorn and -kick at.” - -It is under such conditions as that just cited that we hear a book -spoken of as if it were a piece of iron, not a product of thought and -feeling carefully proportioned and measured; as if it were the fruit of -a day and not of prolonged thought and application; as if it could be -easily reproduced by the application of a mechanical screw; as if it -were a bar of lead instead of far-reaching wings to minister good; as -if it were a thing to step upon rather than a thing to reach to; as -if it could be cut, slashed, twisted, distorted, instead of its really -forming an organic whole with the Aristotelian breath of unity, and the -cutting or hampering of it would be performing a surgical operation -which might entirely let out its breath of life. - -Until honor is stronger among human beings--that is, until the business -world is something other than a maelstrom of hell--it is unmanly and -unwomanly to gibe at the “unauthoritative” young woman writing at so -much a mile. She may be bearing heavy burdens of debt incurred by -another. She may be supporting a decrepit father or an idle brother. -She is bread-earning. Oftenest she is gentle, and, like the strapped -dog which licks the hand that lays bare his brain, she does not strike -back. But she has an inherent sense of honesty and dishonesty, and she -knows what justice is. Her knowledge of life, the residuum of her -unauthoritative literary experience, shows her the rare insight and -truth of Mr. Howells when he wrote, “There is _no_ happy life for a -woman--except as she is happy in suffering for those she loves, and in -sacrificing herself to their pleasure, their pride, and ambition. The -advantage that the world offers her--and it does not always offer her -that--is her choice in self-sacrifice.” - -Ten to one--a hundred to one--the young woman is “unauthoritative” -because she is not peremptory, is not dictatorial, assumes no airs -of authority such as swelling chest and overbearing manners, is -sympathetic with another’s egotism, is altruistic, is not egotistical -with the egotism that is unwilling to cast forth its work for the -instructing and furthering of human kind unless it is accompanied by -the writer’s name--a “signed article.” She is not selfish and guarding -the ego. Individual fame seems to her view an ephemeral thing, but the -aggregate good of mankind for which she works, eternal. - -The beaux of that century of Dr. Johnson’s were great in spite of -their sneers and taunts at the Clarindas and Euphelias and Fidelias, -not on account of them. We have no publication which is to our time -as the “Rambler” was to London in 1753, or the “Spectator,” “Tatler,” -and “Englishman” to Queen Anne’s earlier day. But in what we have let -us not deface any page with misogynous phrase and sentence--jeers or -expression of evil against one-half of humanity. Unsympathetic words -about women who by some individual fortune have become literary drudges -fit ill American lips--which should sing the nobility of any work that -truly helps our kind. These women go about in wind and rain; they sit -in the foul air of offices; they overcome repugnance to coarse and -familiar address; they sometimes stint their food; they are at all -times practising a close economy; with aching flesh and nerves they -often draw their Saturday evening stipend. They are of the sanest and -most human of our kind--laborers daily for their meed of wage, knowing -the sweetness of bread well earned, of work well done, and rest well -won. - -Even from the diseased view of a veritable hater of their sex they have -a vast educational influence in the world at large, whether their work -is “authoritative” or “unauthoritative,” according to pronunciamento of -some one who assumes authority to call them “unauthoritative.” It must -not be forgotten--to repeat for clearness’ sake--that men laboring in -these very duties met and disputed every step the women took even in -“unauthoritative” work, using ridicule, caste distinction, and all the -means of intimidation which a power long dominant naturally possesses. -To work for lower wages alone allowed the women to gain employment. - -“You harshly blame my strengthlessness and the woman-delicacy of -my body,” exclaims the Antigone of Euripides, according to another -citation of the “Florilegium,” of Stobæus named at the beginning, “but -if I am of understanding mind--that is better than a strong arm.” - -Defendants whose case would otherwise go by default need this brief -plea, which their own modesty forbids their uttering, their modesty, -their busy hands and heads, and their Antigone-like love and ἀσθένεια. -They know sympathy is really as large as the world, and that room is -here for other women than those who make dictionaries at so much a mile -as well as for themselves; and for other men than neurotic caterwaulers -and hysterical shriekers like our ancient friend Knox, assuming that -the masculine is the only form of expression, that women have no -right to utter the human voice, and that certain men have up wire -connections with omniscient knowledge and Nature’s designs and God’s -will, and, standing on this pretence, are the dispensers of authority. - -“If the greatest poems have not been written by women,” said our Edgar -Poe, with a clearer accent of the American spirit toward women, “it is -because, as yet, the greatest poems have not been written at all.” The -measure is large between the purple-faced zeal of John Knox and the -vivid atavism of our brilliant professor and that luminous vision of -Poe. - - - - -“THE GULLET SCIENCE” - -A LOOK BACK AND AN ECONOMIC FORECAST - -Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen. - - ROBERT BURTON - -_Sir Anthony Absolute._--It is not to be wondered at, ma’am--all this -is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read. Had I a thousand -daughters, by Heaven! I’d as soon have them taught the black art as -their alphabet! - - RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN - - - - -“THE GULLET SCIENCE” - -A LOOK BACK AND AN ECONOMIC FORECAST - - -The cook-book is not a modern product. The Iliad is the hungriest book -on earth, and it is the first of our cook-books aside from half-sacred, -half-sanitary directions to the early Aryans and Jews. It is that acme -of poetry, that most picturesque of pictures, that most historical of -histories, that most musical and delicious verse, the Iliad, which -was the first popularly to teach the cooking art--the art in its -simplicity, and not a mere handmaid to sanitation, jurisprudence, or -theology. Through the pages of that great poem blow not only the salt -winds of the Ægean Sea, but also the savor of tender kid and succulent -pig, not to mention whole hectacombs, which delighted the blessed -gods above and strengthened hungry heroes below. To this very day--its -realism is so perfect--we catch the scent of the cooking and see the -appetiteful people eat. The book is half-human, half-divine; and in its -human part the pleasures and the economic values of wholesome fare are -not left out. - -No, cook-books are not modern products. They were in Greece later than -Homer. When the Greek states came to the fore in their wonderful art -and literature and the distinction of a free democracy, plain living -characterized nearly all the peoples. The Athenians were noted for -their simple diet. The Spartans were temperate to a proverb, and their -συσσίτια (public meals), later called φειδίτια (spare meals), guarded -against indulgence in eating. To be a good cook was to be banished from -Sparta. - -But with the Western Greeks, the Greeks of Sicily and Southern Italy, -it was different--those people who left behind them little record -of the spirit. In Sybaris the cook who distinguished himself in -preparing a public feast--such festivals being not uncommon--received -a crown of gold and the freedom of the games. It was a citizen of that -luxury-loving town who averred, when he tasted the famous black soup, -that it was no longer a wonder the Spartans were fearless in battle, -for any one would readily die rather than live on such a diet. Among -the later Greeks the best cooks, and the best-paid cooks, came from -Sicily; and that little island grew in fame for its gluttons. - -There is a Greek book--the Deipnosophistæ--Supper of the “Wise -Men--written by Athenæus--which holds for us much information about -the food and feasting of those old Hellenes. The wise men at their -supposed banquet quote, touching food and cooking, from countless -Greek authors whose works are now lost, but were still preserved in the -time of Athenæus. This, for instance, is from a poem by Philoxenus of -Cythera, who wittily and gluttonously lived at the court of Dionysius -of Syracuse, and wished for a throat three cubits long that the delight -of tasting might be drawn out.[3] - - “And then two slaves brought in a well-rubb’d table. - .... Then came a platter - .... with dainty sword-fish fraught, - And then fat cuttle-fish, and the savoury tribes - Of the long hairy polypus. After this - Another orb appear’d upon the table, - Rival of that just brought from off the fire, - Fragrant with spicy odour. And on that - Again were famous cuttle-fish, and those - Fair maids the honey’d squills, and dainty cakes, - Sweet to the palate, and large buns of wheat, - Large as a partridge, sweet and round, which you - Do know the taste of well. And if you ask - What more was there, I’d speak of luscious chine, - And loin of pork, and head of boar, all hot; - Cutlets of kid, and well-boil’d pettitoes, - And ribs of beef, and heads, and snouts and tails, - Then kid again, and lamb, and hares, and poultry, - Partridges and the bird from Phasis’ stream. - And golden honey, and clotted cream was there, - And cheese which I did join with all in calling - Most tender fare.” - -The Greeks used many of the meats and vegetables we enjoy; and others -we disclaim; for instance, cranes. Even mushrooms were known to their -cooks, and Athenæus suggests how the wholesome may be distinguished -from the poisonous, and what antidotes serve best in case the bad -are eaten. But with further directions of his our tastes would not -agree. He recommends seasoning the mushrooms with vinegar, or honey -and vinegar, or honey, or salt--for by these means their choking -properties are taken away. - -The writings of Athenæus have, however, a certain literary and, for his -time as well as our own, an historic and archæologic flavor. The only -ancient cook-book pure and simple--bent on instruction in the excellent -art--which has come down to us is that of Apicius, in ten short books, -or chapters. And which Apicius? Probably the second of the name, the -one who lectured on cooking in Rome during the reign of Augustus. He -gave some very simple directions which hold good to the present day; -for instance-- - - -“UT CARNEM SALSAM DULCEM FACIAS - -“Carnem salsam dulcem facies, si prius in lacte coquas, et postea in -aqua.” - -But again his compounds are nauseating even in print. He was famous for -many dishes, and Pliny, in his Natural History, says he discovered the -way of increasing the size of the liver of the pig--just as the liver -of the Strasbourg geese is enlarged for pâté de foie gras, and as our -own Southern people used to induce pathological conditions in their -turkeys. - -The method of Apicius was to cram the pig with dried figs, and, when -it was fat enough, drench it with wine mixed with honey. “There is,” -continues Pliny, “no other animal that affords so great a variety to -the palate; all others have their taste, but the pig fifty different -flavors. From this tastiness of the meat it came about that the censors -made whole pages of regulations about serving at banquets the belly -and the jowls and other dainty parts. But in spite of their rules the -poet Publius, author of the Mimes, when he ceased to be a slave, is -said never to have given an entertainment without a dish of pig’s belly -which he called ‘sumen.’” - -“Cook Apicius showed a remarkable ingenuity in developing luxury,” -the old Roman says at another time, “and thought it a most excellent -plan to let a mullet die in the pickle known as ‘garum.’” It was -ingenuity of cruelty as well as of luxury. “They killed the fish in -sauces and pickled them alive at the banquet,” says Seneca, “feeding -the eye before the gullet, for they took pleasure in seeing their -mullets change several colors while dying.” The unthinkable garum -was made, according to Pliny, from the intestines of fish macerated -with salt, and other ingredients were added before the mixture was -set in the sun to putrefy and came to the right point for serving. It -also had popularity as a household remedy for dog-bites, etc.; and in -burns, when care was necessary in its application not to mention it by -name--so delicately timid was its healing spirit. Its use as a dish -was widespread, and perhaps we see in the well-known hankerings of the -royal George of England a reversion to the palate of Italian ancestors. - -But garum was only one of strange dishes. The Romans seasoned much with -rue and asafetida!--a taste kept to this day in India, where “Kim” eats -“good curry cakes all warm and well-scented with hing (asafetida).” -Cabbages they highly estimated; “of all garden vegetables they thought -them best,” says Pliny. The same author notes that Apicius rejected -Brussels sprouts, and in this was followed by Drusus Cæsar, who was -censured for over-nicety by his father, the Emperor Tiberius of Capreæ -villas fame. - -Upon cooks and the Roman estimate of their value in his day Pliny -also casts light. “Asinius Celer, a man of consular rank and noted -for his expenditure on mullet, bought one at Rome during the reign -of Gaius Caligula for eight thousand sesterces. Reflection on this -fact,” continues Pliny, “will recall the complaints uttered against -luxury and the lament that a single cook costs more than a horse. At -the present day a cook is only to be had for the price of a triumph, -and a mullet only to be had for what was once the price of a cook! Of -a fact there is now hardly any living being held in higher esteem than -the man who knows how to get rid of his master’s belongings in the most -scientific fashion!” - -Much has been written of the luxury and enervation of Romans after -the republic, how they feasted scented with perfumes, reclining and -listening to music, “nudis puellis ministrantibus.” The story is old -of how Vedius Pollio “hung with ecstasy over lampreys fattened on -human flesh;” how Tiberius spent two days and two nights in one bout; -how Claudius dissolved pearls for his food; how Vitellius delighted -in the brains of pheasants and tongues of nightingales and the roe of -fish difficult to take; how the favorite supper of Heliogabalus was -the brains of six hundred thrushes. At the time these gluttonies went -on in the houses of government officials, the mass of the people, the -great workers who supported the great idlers, fed healthfully on a mess -of pottage. The many to support the super-abundant luxury of a few is -still one of the mysteries of the people. - -But in the old Rome the law of right and honest strength at last -prevailed, and monsters gave way to the cleaner and hardier chiefs of -the north. The mastery of the world necessarily passed to others;--it -has never lain with slaves of the stomach. - -The early folk of Britain--those Cæesar found in the land from which -we sprang--ate the milk and flesh of their flocks. They made bread -by picking the grains from the ear and pounding them to paste in a -mortar. Their Roman conquerors doubtless brought to their midst a more -elaborated table order. Barbarous Saxons, fighters and freebooters, -next settling on the rich island and restraining themselves little for -sowing and reaping, must in their incursions have been flesh-eaters, -expeditiously roasting and broiling directly over coals like our early -pioneers. - -This mode of living also would seem true of the later-coming Danes, -who after their settlement introduced, says Holinshed, another habit. -“The Danes,” says that delightful chronicler, “had their dwelling -... among the Englishmen, whereby came great harme; for whereas the -Danes by nature were great drinkers, the Englishmen by continuall -conversation with them learned the same vice. King Edgar, to reforme in -part such excessive quaffing as then began to grow in use, caused by -the procurement of Dunstane [the then Archbishop of Canterbury] nailes -to be set in cups of a certeine measure, marked for the purpose, -that none should drinke more than was assigned by such measured cups. -Englishmen also learned of the Saxons, Flemings, and other strangers, -their peculiar kinds of vices, as of the Saxons a disordered fierceness -of mind, of the Flemings a feeble tendernesse of bodie; where before -they rejoiced in their owne simplicitie and esteemed not the lewd and -unprofitable manners of strangers.” - -But refinement was growing in the mixture of races which was to make -modern Englishmen, and in the time of Hardicanute, much given to the -pleasures of the table and at last dying from too copious a draught of -wine,--“he fell downe suddenlie,” says Holinshed, “with the pot in his -hand”--there was aim at niceness and variety and hospitable cheer. - -The Black Book of a royal household which Warner quotes in his -“Antiquitates Culinariæ”[4] is evidence of this: - -“Domus Eegis Hardeknoute may be called a fader noreshoure of -familiaritie, which used for his own table, never to be served with ony -like metes of one meale in another, and that chaunge and diversitie -was dayly in greate habundance, and that same after to be ministred -to his alms-dishe, he caused cunyng cooks in curiositie; also, he was -the furst that began four meales stablyshed in oon day, opynly to be -holden for worshuppfull and honest peopull resorting to his courte; -and no more melis, nor brekefast, nor chambyr, but for his children -in householde; for which four melys he ordeyned four marshalls, to -kepe the honor of his halle in recevyng and dyrecting strangers, as -well as of his householdemen in theyre fitting, and for services and -ther precepts to be obeyd in. And for the halle, with all diligence of -officers thereto assigned from his furst inception, tyll the day of his -dethe, his house stode after one unyformitie.” - -Of Hardicanute, “it hath,” says Holinshed, “beene commonlie told, -that Englishmen learned of him their excessive gourmandizing and -unmeasurable filling of their panches with meates and drinkes, whereby -they forgat the vertuous use of sobrietie, so much necessarie to all -estates and degrees, so profitable for all commonwealthes, and so -commendable both in the sight of God, and all good men.” - -Not only to the Danes, but also to the later conquerors, the Normans, -the old chronicler attributes corruption of early English frugality and -simplicity. “The Normans, misliking the gormandise of Canutus, ordeined -after their arrivall that no table should be covered above once in the -day.... But in the end, either waxing wearie of their owne frugalitie -or suffering the cockle of old custome to overgrow the good corne -of their new constitution, they fell to such libertie that in often -feeding they surmounted Canutus surnamed the hardie.... They brought in -also the custome of long and statelie sitting at meat.” - -A fellow-Londoner with Holinshed, John Stow, says of the reign of -William Rufus, the second Norman king of England, “The courtiers -devoured the substance of the husbandmen, their tenants.” - -And Stow’s “Annales” still further tell of a banquet served in far-off -Italy to the duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., when, some three -hundred years after the Norman settlement, the lad Leonell went to -marry Violentis, daughter of the duke of Milan. It should not be -forgotten that in the reign of Edward II. of England, grandfather of -the duke, proclamation had been issued against the “outrageous and -excessive multitude of meats and dishes” served by the nobles in their -castles, as well by “persons of inferior rank imitating their example, -beyond what their station required and their circumstances could -afford.” - -“At the comming of Leonell”, says Stow, “such aboundance of treasure -was in most bounteous maner spent, in making most sumptuous feasts, -setting forth stately fightes, and honouring with rare gifts above -two hundred Englishmen, which accompanied his [the duke of Milan’s] -son-in-law, as it seemed to surpasse the greatnesse of most wealthy -Princes; for in the banquet whereat Francis Petrarch was present, -amongst the chiefest guestes, there were above thirtie courses of -service at the table, and betwixt every course, as many presents of -wonderous price intermixed, all which John Galeasius, chiefe of the -choice youth, bringing to the table, did offer to Leonell ... And such -was the sumptuousnesse of that banquet, that the meats which were -brought from the table, would sufficiently have served ten thousand -men.” - -The first cook-book we have in our ample English tongue is of date -about 1390. Its forme, says the preface to the table of contents, this -“forme of cury [cookery] was compiled of the chef maistes cokes of kyng -Richard the Secunde kyng of nglond aftir the conquest; the which was -accounted the best and ryallest vyand [nice eater] of alle csten ynges -[Christian kings]; and it was compiled by assent and avysement of -maisters and [of] phisik and of philosophie that dwellid in his court. -First it techith a man for to make commune pottages and commune meetis -for howshold, as they shold be made, craftly and holsomly. Aftirward -it techith for to make curious potages, and meetes, and sotiltees, for -alle maner of states, bothe hye and lowe. And the techyng of the forme -of making of potages, and of meetes, bothe of flesh, and of fissh, buth -[are] y sette here by noumbre and by ordre. Sso this little table here -fewyng [following] wole teche a man with oute taryyng, to fynde what -meete that hym lust for to have.” - -The “potages” and “meetis” and “sotiltees” it techith a man for to make -would be hardly more endurable to the modern stomach than some old -Greek and Roman seasonings we have referred to. There is no essential -difference between these and the directions of a rival cook-book -written some forty or fifty years later and divided into three -parts--Kalendare de Potages dyvers, Kalendare de Leche Metys, Dyverse -bake metis. Or of another compiled about 1450. Let us see how they -would make a meat. - -“Stwed Beeff. Take faire Ribbes of ffresh beef, And (if thou wilt) -roste hit til hit be nygh ynowe; then put hit in a faire possenet; -caste therto parcely and oynons mynced, reysons of corauns, powder -peper, canel, clowes, saundres, safferon, and salt; then caste thereto -wyn and a litull vynegre; sette a lyd on the potte, and lete hit boile -sokingly on a faire charcole til hit be ynogh; then lay the fflessh, in -disshes, and the sirippe thereuppon, And serve it forth.” - -And for sweet apple fritters: - -“Freetours. Take yolkes of egges, drawe hem thorgh a streynour, caste -thereto faire floure, berme and ale; stere it togidre till hit be -thik. Take pared appelles, cut hem thyn like obleies [wafers of the -eucharist], ley hem in the batur; then put hem into a ffrying pan, and -fry hem in faire grece or buttur til thei ben browne yelowe; then put -hem in disshes; and strawe Sugur on hem ynogh, And serve hem forthe.” - -Still other cook-books followed--the men of that day served hem -forthe--among which we notice “A noble Boke off Cookry ffor a prynce -houssolde or eny other estately houssolde,” ascribed to about the year -1465. - -To the monasteries the art of cooking is doubtless much indebted, -just as even at the present day is the art of making liqueurs. Their -vast wealth, the leisure of the in-dwellers, and the gross sensualism -and materialism of the time they were at their height would naturally -lead to care for the table and its viands. Within their thick stone -walls, which the religious devotion of the populace had reared, the -master of the kitchen, magister coquinæ or magnus coquus, was not the -man of least importance. Some old author whose name and book do not -come promptly to memory refers to the disinclination of plump capons, -or round-breasted duck, to meet ecclesiastical eyes--a facetiousness -repeated in our day when the Uncle Remuses of Dixie say they see -yellow-legged chickens run and hide if a preacher drives up to supper. - -Moreover, the monasteries were the inns of that day where travellers -put up, and in many instances were served free--no price, that is, -was put upon their entertainment, the abbot, or the establishment, -receiving whatever gift the one sheltered and fed felt able or moved to -pay. - -Contemporary accounts of, or references to, the cooking and feasting in -religious houses are many--those of the Vision of Long Will concerning -Piers the Plowman, those of “Dan Chaucer, the first warbler,” of -Alexander Barclay, and Skelton, great satirist of times of Henry -VIII., and of other authors not so well remembered. Now and then a -racy anecdote has come down like that which Thomas Fuller saves from -lip tradition in his “History of Abbeys in England.” It happened, says -Worthy Fuller, that Harry VIII., “hunting in Windsor Forest, either -casually lost, or (more probable) wilfully losing himself, struck down -about dinner-time to the abbey of Reading; where, disguising himself -(much for delight, more for discovery, to see unseen), he was invited -to the abbot’s table, and passed for one of the king’s guard, a place -to which the proportion of his person might properly entitle him. A -sirloin of beef was set before him (so knighted saith tradition, by -this King Henry), on which the king laid on lustily, not disgracing one -of that place for whom he was mistaken. - -“‘Well fare thy heart!’ quoth the abbot; ‘and here in a cup of sack I -remember the health of his grace your master. I would give an hundred -pounds on the condition I could feed so heartily on beef as you do. -Alas! my weak and squeazy stomach will badly digest the wing of a small -rabbit or chicken.’ - -“The king pleasantly pledged him, and, heartily thanking him for his -good cheer, after dinner departed as undiscovered as he came thither. - -“Some weeks after, the abbot was sent for by a pursuivant, brought up -to London, clapped in the Tower, kept close prisoner, fed for a short -time with bread and water; yet not so empty his body of food, as his -mind was filled with fears, creating many suspicions to himself when -and how he had incurred the king’s displeasure. At last a sirloin of -beef was set before him, on which the abbot fed as the farmer of his -grange, and verified the proverb, that ‘Two hungry meals make the third -a glutton.’ - -“In springs King Henry out of a private lobby, where he had placed -himself, the invisible spectator of the abbot’s behavior. ‘My lord,’ -quoth the king, ‘presently deposit your hundred pounds in gold, or else -no going hence all the days of your life. I have been your physician to -cure you of your squeazy stomach; and here, as I deserve, I demand my -fee for the same!’ - -“The abbot down with his dust; and, glad he had escaped so, returned to -Reading, as somewhat lighter in purse, so much more merrier in heart -than when he came thence.” - -The “squeazy” abbot stood alone in proclamation of his disorder. -Archbishop Cranmer, according to John Leland, king’s antiquary to Henry -VIII., found it necessary in 1541 to regulate the expenses of the -tables of bishops and clergy by a constitution--an instrument which -throws much light on the then conditions, and which ran as follows: - -“In the yeare of our Lord MDXLI it was agreed and condescended upon, as -wel by the common consent of both tharchbishops and most part of the -bishops within this realme of Englande, as also of divers grave men at -that tyme, both deanes and archdeacons, the fare at their tables to be -thus moderated. - -“First, that tharchbishop should never exceede six divers kindes of -fleshe, or six of fishe, on the fishe days; the bishop not to exceede -five, the deane and archdeacon not above four, and al other under that -degree not above three; provided also that tharchbishop myght have of -second dishes four, the bishop three, and al others under the degree of -a bishop but two. As custard, tart, fritter, cheese or apples, peares, -or two of other kindes of fruites. Provided also, that if any of the -inferior degree dyd receave at their table, any archbishop, bishop, -deane, or archdeacon, or any of the laitie of lyke degree, viz. duke, -marques, earle, viscount, baron, lorde, knyght, they myght have such -provision as were mete and requisite for their degrees. Provided alway -that no rate was limited in the receavying of any ambassadour. It was -also provided that of the greater fyshes or fowles, there should be but -one in a dishe, as crane, swan, turkey cocke, hadocke, pyke, tench; and -of lesse sortes but two, viz. capons two, pheasantes two, conies two, -and woodcockes two. Of lesse sortes, as of patriches, the archbishop -three, the bishop and other degrees under hym two. Of blackburdes, the -archbishop six, the bishop four, the other degrees three. Of larkes -and snytes (snipes) and of that sort but twelve. It was also provided, -that whatsoever is spared by the cutting of, of the olde superfluitie, -shoulde yet be provided and spent in playne meates for the relievyng -of the poore. _Memorandum_, that this order was kept for two or three -monethes, tyll by the disusyng of certaine wylful persons it came to -the olde excesse.” - -Still one more tale bearing upon a member of the clergy who would set -out more “blackburdes” than “tharchbishop” is told by Holinshed. It -has within it somewhat of the flavor of the odium theologicum, but an -added interest also, since it turns upon a dish esteemed in Italy since -the time of the imperial Romans--peacock, often served even nowadays -encased in its most wonderful plumage. The Pope Julius III., whose -luxurious entertainment and comport shocked the proprieties even of -that day, and who died in Rome while the chronicler was busy in London, -is the chief actor. - -“At an other time,” writes Holinshed, “he sitting at dinner, pointing -to a peacocke upon his table, which he had not touched; Keepe (said he) -this cold peacocke for me against supper, and let me sup in the garden, -for I shall have ghests. So when supper came, and amongst other hot -peacockes, he saw not his cold peacocke brought to his table; the pope -after his wonted manner, most horriblie blaspheming God, fell into an -extreame rage, &c. Whereupon one of his cardinals sitting by, desired -him saieng: Let not your holinesse, I praie you, be so mooved with a -matter of so small weight. Then this Julius the pope answeringe againe: -What (saith he) if God was so angrie for one apple, that he cast our -first parents out of paradise for the same, whie maie not I being his -vicar, be angrie then for a peacocke, sithens a peacocke is a greater -matter than an apple.” - -In England at this time controlling the laity were sumptuary laws, -habits of living resulting from those laws, and great inequalities in -the distribution of wealth. On these points Holinshed again brings us -light: - -“In number of dishes and change of meat,” he writes, “the nobilitie of -England (whose cookes are for the most part musicall-headed Frenchmen -and strangers) do most exceed, sith there is no daie in maner that -passeth over their heads, wherein they have not onelie beefe, mutton, -veale, lambe, kid, porke, conie, capon, pig, or so manie of these as -the season yeeldeth; but also some portion of the red or fallow deere, -beside great varietie of fish and wild foule, and thereto sundrie -other delicates wherein the sweet hand of the seasoning Portingale is -not wanting; so that for a man to dine with one of them, and to taste -of everie dish that standeth before him ... is rather to yeeld unto -a conspiracie with a great deale of meat for the speedie suppression -of naturall health, then the use of a necessarie meane to satisfie -himselfe with a competent repast, to susteine his bodie withall. But as -this large feeding is not seene in their gests, no more is it in their -owne persons, for sith they have dailie much resort unto their tables -... and thereto reteine great numbers of servants, it is verie requisit -and expedient for them to be somewhat plentifull in this behalfe. - -“The chiefe part likewise of their dailie provision is brought before -them ... and placed on their tables, whereof when they have taken -what it pleaseth them, the rest is reserved and afterwards sent downe -to their serving men and waiters, who feed thereon in like sort with -convenient moderation, their reversion also being bestowed upon the -poore, which lie readie at their gates in great numbers to receive the -same. - -“The gentlemen and merchants keepe much about one rate, and each of -them contenteth himselfe with foure, five or six dishes, when they have -but small resort, or peradventure with one, or two, or three at the -most, when they have no strangers to accompanie them at their tables. -And yet their servants have their ordinarie diet assigned, beside such -as is left at their masters’ boordes, and not appointed to be brought -thither the second time, which neverthelesse is often seene generallie -in venison, lambe, or some especiall dish, whereon the merchant man -himselfe liketh to feed when it is cold.” - -“At such times as the merchants doo make their ordinarie or voluntarie -feasts, it is a world to see what great provision is made of all maner -of delicat meats, from everie quarter of the countrie.... They will -seldome regard anie thing that the butcher usuallie killeth, but reject -the same as not worthie to come in place. In such cases all gelisses -of all coleurs mixed with a varitie in the representation of sundrie -floures, herbs, trees, formes of beasts, fish, foules and fruits, -and there unto marchpaine wrought with no small curiositie, tarts of -diverse hewes and sundrie denominations, conserves of old fruits foren -and homebred, suckets, codinacs, marmilats, marchpaine, sugerbread, -gingerbread, florentines, wild foule, venison of all sorts, and sundrie -outlandish confections altogither seasoned with sugar ... doo generalie -beare the swaie, beside infinit devises of our owne not possible for me -to remember. Of the potato and such venerous roots as are brought out -of Spaine, Portingale, and the Indies to furnish our bankets, I speake -not.” - -“The artificer and husbandman make greatest accompt of such meat as -they may soonest come by, and have it quickliest readie.... Their food -also consisteth principallie in beefe and such meat as the butcher -selleth, that is to saie, mutton, veale, lambe, porke, etc., ... -beside souse, brawne, bacon, fruit, pies of fruit, foules of sundrie -sorts, cheese, butter, eggs, etc.... To conclude, both the artificer -and the husbandman are sufficientlie liberall and verie friendlie at -their tables, and when they meet they are so merie without malice and -plaine, without inward Italian or French craft and subtiltie, that it -would doo a man good to be in companie among them. - -“With us the nobilitie, gentrie and students doo ordinarilie go to -dinner at eleven before noone, and to supper at five, or betweene -five and six at after-noone. The merchants dine and sup seldome -before twelve at noone, and six at night, especiallie in London. The -husbandmen dine also at high noone as they call it, and sup at seven -or eight.... As for the poorest sort they generallie dine and sup when -they may, so that to talke of their order of repast it were but a -needlesse matter.” - -“The bread through out the land,” continues Holinshed, “is made of such -graine as the soil yeeldeth, neverthelesse the gentilitie commonlie -provide themselves sufficientlie of wheat for their owne tables, -whilst their houshold and poore neighbours in some shires are inforced -to content themselves with rie, or baricie, yea and in time of dearth -manie with bread made either of beans, or peason, or otes, or of -altogether and some acornes among.... There be much more ground eared -now almost in everie place than hath beene of late yeares, yet such -a price of come continueth in each towne and market without any just -cause (except it be that landlords doo get licenses to carie come out -of the land onelie to keepe up the prices for their owne private games -and ruine of the commonwealth), that the artificer and poore laboring -man is not able to reach unto it, but is driven to content himselfe -with horsse corne--I mean beanes, peason, otes, tarres, and lintels.” - - * * * * * - -Books had been written for women and their tasks within--the “Babees -Booke,” Tusser’s[5] “Hundrethe Good Pointes of Huswifry,” “The Good -Husive’s Handmaid”--the last two in the sixteenth century; these and -others of their kidney. A woman who thought, spoke, and wrote in -several tongues was greatly filling the throne of England in those -later times. - -Cook- and receipt-books in the following century, that is in the -seventeenth, continued to discover women, and to realize moreover -that to them division of labor had delegated the household and its -businesses. There were “Jewels” and “Closets of Delights” before we -find an odd little volume putting out in 1655 a second edition. It -shows upon its title-page the survival from earlier conditions of the -confusion of duties of physician and cook--a fact made apparent in the -preface copied in the foregoing “forme of cury” of King Richard--and -perhaps intimates the housewife should perform the services of both. -It makes, as well, a distinct appeal to women as readers and users -of books. Again it evidences the growth of the Commons. In full it -introduces itself in this wise: - -“The Ladies Cabinet enlarged and opened: containing Many Rare Secrets -and Rich Ornaments, of several kindes, and different uses. Comprized -under three general Heads, viz. of 1 Preserving, Conserving, Candying, -etc. 2 Physick and Chirurgery. 3 Cooking and Housewifery. Whereunto -is added Sundry Experiments and choice Extractions of Waters, Oyls, -etc. Collected and practised by the late Right Honorable and Learned -Chymist, the Lord Ruthuen.” - -The preface, after an inscription “To the Industrious improvers of -Nature by Art; especially the vertuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of the -Land,” begins: - -“Courteous Ladies, etc. The first Edition of this--(cal it what you -please) having received a kind entertainment from your Ladiships hands, -for reasons best known to yourselves, notwithstanding the disorderly -and confused jumbling together of things of different kinds, hath made -me (who am not a little concerned therein) to bethink myself of some -way, how to encourage and requite your Ladiships Pains and Patience -(vertues, indeed, of absolute necessity in such brave employments; -there being nothing excellent that is not withal difficult) in -the profitable spending of your vacant minutes.” This labored and -high-flying mode of address continues to the preface’s end.... “I shall -thus leave you at liberty as Lovers in Gardens, to follow your own -fancies. Take what you like, and delight in your choice, and leave what -you list to him, whose labour is not lost if anything please.” - -In turning the leaves of the book one comes upon such naïve discourse -as this: - -“To make the face white and fair. - -“Wash thy face with Rosemary boiled in white wine, and thou shalt be -fair; then take Erigan and stamp it, and take the juyce thereof, and -put it all together and wash thy face therewith. Proved.” - -It was undoubtedly the success of “The Ladies Cabinet” and its cousins -german that led to the publication of a fourth edition in 1658 of -another compilation, which, according to the preface, was to go “like -the good Samaritane giving comfort to all it met.” The title was “The -Queens Closet opened: Incomparable Secrets in Physick, Chyrurgery, -Preserving, Candying, and Cookery, As they were presented unto the -Queen By the most Experienced Persons of our times.... Transcribed -from the true Copies of her Majesties own Receipt Books, by W. M. one -of her late Servants.” It is curious to recall that this book was -published during the Cromwell Protectorate--1658 is the year of the -death of Oliver--and that the queen alluded to in the title--whose -portrait, engraved by the elder William Faithorne, forms the -frontispiece--was Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I., and at that -time an exile in France. - -During this century, which saw such publications as Rose’s “School for -the Officers of the Mouth,” and “Nature Unembowelled,” a woman, Hannah -Wolley, appears as author of “The Cook’s Guide.” All such compilations -have enduring human value, but we actually gain quite as much of this -oldest of arts from such records as those the indefatigable Pepys left -in his Diary. At that time men of our race did not disdain a knowledge -of cookery. Izaak Walton, “an excellent angler, and now with God,” -dresses chub and trout in his meadow-sweet pages. Even Thomas Fuller, -amid his solacing and delightful “Worthies,” thinks of the housewife, -and gives a receipt for metheglin. - -And a hundred years later Dr. Johnson’s friend, the Rev. Richard -Warner, in his “Personal Recollections,” did not hesitate to expand -upon what he thought the origin of mince pies. Warner’s Johnsonian -weight in telling his fantasy recalls Goldsmith’s quip about the -Doctor’s little fish talking like whales, and also Johnson’s criticism -upon his own “too big words and too many of them.” - -Warner wrote, “In the early ages of our country, when its present -widely spread internal trade and retail business were yet in their -infancy, and none of the modern facilities were afforded to the cook -to supply herself ‘on the spur of the moment,’ ... it was the practice -of all prudent housewives, to lay in, at the conclusion of every year -(from some contiguous periodical fair), a stock sufficient for the -ensuing annual consumption, of ... every sweet composition for the -table--such as raisins, currants, citrons, and ‘spices of the best.’ - -“The ample cupboard ... within the wainscot of the dining parlour -itself ... formed the safe depository of these precious stores. - -“‘When merry Christmas-tide came round’ ... the goodly litter of the -cupboard, thus various in kind and aspect, was carefully swept into one -common receptacle; the mingled mass enveloped in pastry and enclosed -within the duly heated oven, from whence ... perfect in form, colour, -odour, flavour and temperament, it smoked, the glory of the hospitable -Christmas board, hailed from every quarter by the honourable and -imperishable denomination of the Mince-Pye.” - -In the eighteenth century women themselves, following Hannah Wolley, -began cook-book compiling. So great was their success that we find Mrs. -Elizabeth Moxon’s “English Housewifry” going into its ninth edition -in the London market of 1764. All through history there have been -surprises coming to prejudiced minds out of the despised and Nazarene. -It was so about this matter of cook-books--small in itself, great in -its far-reaching results to the health and development of the human -race. - -Women had been taught the alphabet. But the dogmatism of Dr. Johnson -voiced the judgment of many of our forebears: a dominant power is -always hard in its estimate of the capacities it controls. “Women can -spin very well,” said the great Cham, “but they can not make a good -book of cookery.” He was talking to “the swan of Lichfield,” little -Anna Seward, when he said this, and also to a London publisher. The -book they were speaking of had been put forth by the now famous Mrs. -Hannah Glasse, said to be the wife of a London attorney. - -The doctor--possibly with an eye to business, a publisher being -present--was describing a volume he had in mind to make, “a book upon -philosophical principles,” “a better book of cookery than has ever yet -been written.” “Then,” wisely said the dogmatic doctor, “as you can -not make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher’s meat, -the best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper -seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast and boil and -compound.” This was the plan of a poet, essayist, lexicographer, and -the leading man of letters of his day. His cook-book was never written. - -But good Mrs. Glasse had also with large spirit aimed at teaching -the ignorant, possibly those of a kind least often thought of by -instructors in her art. She had, forsooth, caught her hare outside -her book, even if she never found him in its page. “If I have not -wrote in the high polite style,” she says, with a heart helpful toward -the misunderstood and oppressed, and possibly with the pages of some -pretentious chef in mind, “I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention -is to instruct the lower sort, and therefore must treat them in their -own way. For example, when I bid them lard a fowl, if I should bid them -lard with large lardoons, they would not know what I meant; but when I -say they must lard with little pieces of bacon, they know what I mean. -So in many other things in Cookery the great cooks have such a high way -of expressing themselves, that the poor girls are at a loss to know -what they mean.” - -Mrs. Glasse’s book was published in 1747--while Dr. Johnson had still -thirty-seven years in which to “boast of the niceness of his palate,” -and spill his food upon his waistcoat. “Whenever,” says Macaulay, “he -was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too -long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with -such violence that his veins swelled and the moisture broke out on his -forehead.” But within forty-eight years of the December his poor body -was borne from the house behind Fleet Street to its resting-place in -Westminster Abbey, a thin volume, “The Frugal Housewife,” written by -our American Lydia Maria Child, had passed to its ninth London edition, -in that day sales being more often than in our own a testimony of -merit. This prevailing of justice over prejudice is “too good for any -but very honest people,” as Izaak Walton said of roast pike. Dogmatism -is always eating its own words. - -Since the master in literature, Dr. Johnson, planned his cook-book -many cooking men have dipped ink in behalf of instruction in their -art. Such names as Farley, Carême, and Soyer have been written, -if not in marble or bronze, at least in sugar of the last caramel -degree--unappreciated excellencies mainly because of the inattention of -the public to what nourishes it, and lack of the knowledge that the one -who introduces an inexpensive, palatable, and digestible dish benefits -his fellow-men. - -The names of these club cooks and royal cooks are not so often referred -to as that of the large and human-hearted Mrs. Glasse. A key to their -impulse toward book-making must, however, have been that offered by -Master Farley, chief cook at the London Tavern, who wrote in 1791, a -hundred and fourteen years ago: “Cookery, like every other Art, has -been moving forward to perfection by slow Degrees.... And although -there are so many Books of this Kind already published, that one -would hardly think there could be Occasion for another, yet we flatter -ourselves, that the Readers of this Work will find, from a candid -Perusal, and an impartial Comparison, that our Pretensions to the -Favour of the Public are not ill-founded.” - -Such considerations as those of Master Farley seem to lead to the -present great output. But nowadays our social conditions and our -intricate and involved household arrangements demand a specialization -of duties. The average old cook-book has become insufficient. It has -evolved into household-directing as well as cook-directing books, -comprehending the whole subject of esoteric economies. This is a -curious enlargement; and one cause, and result, of it is that the men -and women of our domestic corps are better trained, better equipped -with a logical, systematized, scientific knowledge, that they are in a -degree specialists--in a measure as the engineer of an ocean greyhound -is a specialist, or the professor of mathematics, or the writer of -novels is a specialist. And specialists should have the dignity of -special treatment. In this movement, it is to be hoped, is the wiping -out of the social stigma under which domestic service has so long lain -in our country, and a beginning of the independence of the domestic -laborer--that he or she shall possess himself or herself equally with -others--as other free-born people possess themselves, that is. - -And closely allied with this specialization another notable thing -has come about. Science with its microscope has finally taught what -religion with its manifold precepts of humility and humanity has failed -for centuries to accomplish, thus evidencing that true science and -true religion reach one and the same end. There are no menial duties, -science clearly enunciates: the so-called drudgery is often the most -important of work, especially when the worker brings to his task a -large knowledge of its worth in preserving and sweetening human life, -and perfectness as the sole and satisfactory aim. Only the careless, -thriftless workers, the inefficient and possessed with no zeal for -perfection of execution, only these are the menials according to the -genuine teachings of our day--and the ignorant, unlifted worker’s work -is menial (using the word again in its modern English and not its old -Norman-French usage) whatever his employment. - -In verse this was said long ago, as the imagination is always -forestalling practical knowledge, and George Herbert, of the -seventeenth century, foreran our science in his “Elixir:” - - “All may of thee partake: - Nothing can be so mean, - Which with this tincture _for thy sake_ - Will not grow bright and clean. - - “A servant with this clause - Makes drudgery divine; - Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, - Makes that and th’ action fine. - - “This is the famous stone - That turneth all to gold: - For that which God doth touch and own - Cannot for less be told.” - -Present-day, up-to-date books on housekeeping stand for the fact that -in our households, whatever the estimates of the past and of other -social conditions, all work is dignified--none is menial. For besides -intelligent knowledge and execution, what in reality, they ask, gives -dignity to labor? Weight and importance of that particular task to -our fellow-beings? What then shall we say of the duties of cook? of -housemaid? of chambermaid? of the handy man, or of the modest maid -of all work? For upon the efficient performance of the supposedly -humblest domestic servitor depends each life of the family. Such -interdependence brings the employed very close to the employer, and no -bond could knit the varied elements of a household more closely, none -should knit it more humanly. - -The human, then, are the first of the relations that exist between -employer and employee, that “God hath made of one blood all nations -of the earth.” It is a truth not often enough in the minds of the -parties to a domestic-service compact. And besides this gospel of Paul -are two catch-phrases, not so illuminated but equally humane, which -sprang from the ameliorating spirit of the last century--“Put yourself -in his place,” and “Everybody is as good as I.” These form the best -bed-rock for all relations between master and servant. There is need -of emphasizing this point in our books on affairs of the house, for a -majority of our notably rich are new to riches and new to knowledge, -and as employers have not learned the limitation of every child of -indulgence and also polite manners in early life. - -It is after all a difference of environment that makes the difference -between mistress and maid, between master and man. The human being -is as plastic as clay--is clay in the hands of circumstance. If his -support of wife and children depended upon obsequiousness of bearing, -the master might, like the butler, approximate Uriah Heep. If the -mistress’s love of delicacy and color had not been cultivated by -association with taste from childhood, her finery might be as vulgar -as the maid’s which provokes her satire. It is after all a question of -surroundings and education. And in this country, where Aladdin-fortunes -spring into being by the rubbing of a lamp--where families of, for -example, many centuries of the downtrodden life of European peasant -jump from direst poverty to untold wealth--environment has often no -opportunity to form the folk of gentle breeding. Many instances are not -lacking where those who wait are more gently bred than those who are -waited upon. - -In their larger discourse, then, up-to-date household books stand for -the very essence of democracy and human-heartedness--which is also the -very essence of aristocracy. After the old manner which Master Farley -described, our women seem to have given their books to the public with -the faith that they contain much other books have not touched--to stand -for an absolutely equable humanity, for kindness and enduring courtesy -between those who employ and those who are employed, the poor rich and -the rich poor, the householders and the houseworkers--to state the -relations between master and man and mistress and maid more explicitly -than they have before been stated, and thus to help toward a more -perfect organization of the forces that carry on our households--to -direct with scientific and economic prevision the food of the house -members; to emphasize in all departments of the house thoroughgoing -sanitation and scientific cleanliness. - -Of questions of the household--of housekeeping and home-making--our -American women have been supposed somewhat careless. Possibly this -judgment over the sea has been builded upon our women’s vivacity, -and a subtle intellectual force they possess, and also from their -interest in affairs at large, and again from their careful and cleanly -attention to their person--“they keep their teeth too clean,” says a -much-read French author. Noting such characteristics, foreigners have -jumped to the conclusion that American women are not skilled in works -within doors. In almost every European country this is common report. -“We German women are such devoted housekeepers,” said the wife of an -eminent Deutscher, “and you American women know so little about such -things!” “Bless your heart!” I exclaimed--or if not just that then its -German equivalent--thinking of the perfectly kept homes from the rocks -and pines of Maine to the California surf; “you German women with your -little haushaltungen, heating your rooms with porcelain stoves, and -your frequent reversion in meals to the simplicity of wurst and beer, -have no conception of the size and complexity of American households -and the executive capabilities necessary to keep them in orderly work. -Yours is mere doll’s housekeeping--no furnaces, no hot water, no -electricity, no elevators, no telephone, and no elaborate menus.” - -Our American women are model housekeepers and home-makers, as thousands -of homes testify, but the interests of the mistresses of these houses -are broader, their lives are commonly more projected into the outer -world of organized philanthropy and art than women’s lives abroad, -and the apparent non-intrusion of domestic affairs leads foreigners -to misinterpret their interest and their zeal. It is the consummate -executive who can set aside most personal cares and take on others -efficiently. Moreover, it is not here as where a learned professor -declared: “Die erste Tugend eines Weibes ist die Sparsamkeit.” - -To have a home in which daily duties move without noise and as like -a clock as its human machinery will permit, and to have a table of -simplicity and excellence, is worth a pleasure-giving ambition and -a womanly ambition. It is to bring, in current critical phrase, -three-fourths of the comfort of life to those whose lives are joined to -the mistress of such a household--the loaf-giver who spends her brains -for each ordered day and meal. Moreover, and greatest of all, to plan -and carry on so excellent an establishment is far-reaching upon all -men. It is the very essence of morality--is duty--_i.e._, service--and -law. - -The French aver that men of the larger capacity have for food -a particularly keen enjoyment. Possibly this holds good for -Frenchmen--for the author of Monte Cristo, or for a Brillat-Savarin, -of whose taste the following story is told: “Halting one day at Sens, -when on his way to Lyons, Savarin sent, according to his invariable -custom, for the cook, and asked what he could have for dinner. ‘Little -enough,’ was the reply. ‘But let us see,’ retorted Savarin; ‘let us go -into the kitchen and talk the matter over.’ There he found four turkeys -roasting. ‘Why!’ exclaimed he, ‘you told me you had nothing in the -house! let me have one of those turkeys.’ ‘Impossible!’ said the cook; -‘they are all bespoken by a gentleman up-stairs.’ ‘He must have a large -party to dine with him, then?’ ‘No; he dines by himself.’ ‘Indeed!’ -said the gastronome; ‘I should like much to be acquainted with the man -who orders four turkeys for his own eating.’ The cook was sure the -gentleman would be glad of his acquaintance, and Savarin, on going to -pay his respects to the stranger, found him to be no other than his -own son. ‘What! you rascal! four turkeys all to yourself!’ ‘Yes, sir,’ -said Savarin, junior; ‘you know that when we have a turkey at home you -always reserve for yourself the pope’s nose; I was resolved to regale -myself for once in my life; and here I am, ready to begin, although I -did not expect the honour of your company.’” - -The French may say truly of the famous “high-priest of gastronomy.” -And a story which has lately appeared in Germany tells of a sensitive -palate in Goethe: “At a small party at the court of Weimar, the Marshal -asked permission to submit a nameless sample of wine. Accordingly, a -red wine was circulated, tasted, and much commended. Several of the -company pronounced it Burgundy, but could not agree as to the special -vintage or the year. Goethe alone tasted and tasted again, shook his -head, and, with a meditative air, set his glass on the table. ‘Your -Excellency appears to be of a different opinion,’ said the court -marshal. ‘May I ask what name you give to the wine?’ ‘The wine,’ said -the poet, ‘is quite unknown to me; but I do not think it is a Burgundy. -I should rather consider it a good Jena wine that has been kept for -some while in a Madeira cask.’ ‘And so, in fact, it is,’ said the court -marshal. For a more discriminating palate, one must go to the story -of the rival wine-tasters in ‘Don Quixote,’ who from a single glass -detected the key and leather thong in a cask of wine.” - -But that great capacity means also discriminating palate could -hardly be true for Americans of the old stock and simple life. Judge -Usher, Secretary of Interior in Lincoln’s Cabinet at the time of the -President’s death, said that he had never heard Abraham Lincoln refer -to his food in any way whatever. - - * * * * * - -From a consideration of women’s cook-books springs another suggestion. -Heaped upon one’s table, the open pages and appetiteful illustrations -put one to thinking that if women of intelligence, and of leisure -except for burdens they assume under so-called charity or a faddish -impulse, were to take each some department of the household, and give -time and effort to gaining a complete knowledge of that department--a -knowledge of its evolution and history, of its scientific and hygienic -bearings, of its gastronomic values if it touched upon the table--there -would be great gain to the world at large and to their friends. For -instance, if a woman skilled in domestic science and the domestic -arts were to take some fruit, or some vegetable, or cereal, or meat, -and develop to the utmost what an old author-cook calls, after those -cook-oracles of ancient Rome, the “Apician mysteries” of the dish, -her name would deserve to go down to posterity with something of the -odor--or flavor--of sanctity. Hundreds of saints in the calendar never -did anything half so meritorious and worthy of felicitous recognition -from their fellow-men. - -Take, for example, the democratic cabbage and its cousins german, -and their treatment in the average cuisine. What might not such an -investigation show this Monsieur Chou or Herr Kohl and his relations -capable of!--the cabbage itself, the Scotch kale, the Jersey cabbage, -and Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, and broccoli, and kohl-rabi, and -cabbage palms, and still other species! Looked at in their evolution, -and the part they have played in human history as far back as in old -Persia and the Anabasis of the Greeks, and so late as the famine times -of Ireland, these succulent and nutritious vegetables would be most -interesting. And, even if chemically their elements vary, the fact -that all the family are blessed with a large percentage of nitrogen -might be shown to have increased their usefulness long before chemists -analyzed their tissues and told us why men who could not buy meat so -carefully cultivated the foody leaves. Under such sane and beneficent -impulses every well-directed household would become an experiment -station for the study of human food--not the extravagant and rare after -the test and search of imperial Heliogabalus, but in the best modern, -scientific, economic, gastronomic, and democratic manner. - -Since making this foregoing suggestion I find this point similarly -touched by the man who dissertated on roast pig. “It is a -desideratum,” says Lamb, “in works that treat de re culinaria, that we -have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours: as to show -why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why -the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder -civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself -unctious, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter--and why -the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the -French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points -to parsnips.... We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. -We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish -that is in us.” - -In speaking of modern household books one cannot have done without -adding still one word more about the use of the word “servant” as -these books seem to speak of it. Owing to an attempted Europeanizing -of our ideas, and also to the fact that many of our domestics are of -foreign birth and habits of thought--or of the lowly, velvet-voiced, -unassertive suavity of the most loyal negro--the term has gradually -crept to a quasi acceptance in this country. It is a word not -infrequently obnoxious to Americans--employers--of the old stock, and -trained in the spirit which wrote the Declaration of Independence and -fought its sequent War. “From the time of the Revolution,” says Miss -Salmon in her “Domestic Service,” “until about 1850 the word ‘servant’ -does not seem to have been generally applied in either section [north -or south] to white persons of American birth.” - -The term indicates social conditions which no longer exist and -represents ideas which no longer have real life--we have but to -consider how the radical Defoe published, in 1724, “The Great Law of -Subordination consider’d; or, the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour -of Servants in England duly enquir’d into,” to be convinced of our -vast advance in human sympathy--and a revival of our American spirit -toward the word would be a wholesome course. In the mouths of many -who use it to excess--those mainly at fault are innocently imitative, -unthinking, or pretentious women--it sounds ungracious, if not vulgar, -and distinctly untrue to those who made the country for us and -desirable for us to live in; and untrue also to the best social feeling -of to-day. It is still for a genuine American rather hard to imagine -a person such as the word “servant” connotes--a lackey, a receiver -of tips of any sort--with an election ballot in hand and voting -thinkingly, knowingly, intelligently for the guidance of our great -government. It would not have been so difficult for the old δοῦλοι of -Athens to vote upon the Pnyx as for such a man to vote aright for -us. And not infrequently, in the ups and downs of speculation and the -mushroom growth and life of fortunes among us, the “servant,” to use -the old biblical phrase, is sometimes greater in moral, intellectual, -and social graces than his “lord.” The term belongs to times, and the -temperamental condition of times when traces of slavery were common, -and when employers believed, and acted upon the faith, that they hired -not a person’s labor but the person himself--or herself--who was -subject to a sort of ownership and control. - -Let us remand the word to the days of Dean Swift and such conditions -as the tremendous satire of his “Directions to Servants” exhibited, in -which--except perhaps in Swift’s great heart--there was neither the -humanity of our times, nor the courtesy of our times, nor the sure -knowledge of our times--which endeavor to create, and, in truth, are -gradually making trained and skilful workers in every department, and -demand in return for service with perfectness as its aim, independence -of the person, dignified treatment and genuine respect from the -employer. - -All these things the women’s household and cook-books will be, nay, -are, gradually teaching, and that which Charles Carter, “lately cook -to his Grace the Duke of Argyle,” wrote in 1730 may still hold good: -“’Twill be very easy,” said Master Carter, “for an ordinary Cook when -he is well-instructed in the most Elegant Parts of his Profession to -lower his Hand at any time; and he that can excellently perform in a -Courtly and Grand Manner, will never be at a Loss in any other.” When -this future knowledge and adjustment come we shall be free from the -tendencies which Mistress Glasse, after her outspoken manner, describes -of her own generation: “So much is the blind folly of this age,” cries -the good woman, “that they would rather be imposed upon by a French -booby than give encouragement to a good English cook.” - -Economic changes such as we have indicated must in measurable -time ensue. The science and the art of conducting a house are now -obtaining recognition in our schools. Not long, and the knowledge -will be widespread. Its very existence, and the possibility of its -diffusion, is a result of the nineteenth century movement for the -broadening of women’s knowledge and the expansion of their interests -and independence--this wedded with the humane conviction that the -wisest and fruitfullest use of scientific deduction and skill is in the -bettering of human life. Behind and giving potence to these impulses is -the fellowship, liberty, and equality of human kind--the great idea of -democracy. - -Already we have gone back to the wholesomeness of our English -forebears’ estimate that the physician and cook are inseparable. -Further still, we may ultimately retrace our ideas, and from the point -of view of economics and sociology declare that with us, as with the -old Jews and Greeks, the priest and the cook are one. - - - - -PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - - And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell, - I am no pick-purse of another’s wit. - - SIR PHILIP SIDNEY - - Yet these mine owne, I wrong not other men, - Nor traffique farther then this happy clime, - Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen, - A fault too common in this latter time. - Divine Sir Philip, I avouch thy writ, - I am no pick-purse of anothers wit. - - MICHAEL DRAYTON - -A thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it -his own. - - JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL - - - - -PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - - -Among the jocularities of literature none is greater than Squire -Bickerstaff’s; and none has had greater results--with perhaps one -exception. The practicality of the Squire’s jest and the flavor of -it suited the century of Squire Western rather than our own. But its -excuse was in the end it served of breaking the old astrologer’s hold -upon the people. - -Jonathan Swift is the writer to whom the original Bickerstaff squibs -are in the main to be ascribed. It is due to Swift’s clarity and -strength that they are among the best of literary fooling. - -But Swift was not alone. He had the help of Addison, Steele, Prior, -Congreve, and other wits of Will’s Coffee-House and St. James’s. -Together they set all London laughing. Upon Swift’s shoulders, -however, falls the onus of the joke which must have been his recreation -amid pamphleteering and the smudging of his ecclesiastical hand with -political ink. It happened in 1708. - -The English almanac was not in Swift’s day as in later times a simple -calendar of guesses about the weather. It was rather a “prognosticator” -in ambiguous phrase of war, pestilence, murder, and such horrors as -our yellow press nowadays serves up to readers, like in development to -the conning public of the old almanacs. It was at all times solemn and -dogmatic. What the almanac prognosticated was its philomath’s duty to -furnish. His science and pre-science builded a supposed influence of -the stars and their movements upon the moral life of man. - -Squire Bicker staff’s jest had to do with almanac-makers, and was -directed against a chief pretender, Dr. Partridge, the astrologer and -philomath Pope refers to when he speaks of the translation of the raped -“Lock” to the skies: - - “This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies, - When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes; - And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoom - The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.” - -In the seventeenth century the ascendency of these charlatans had -become alarming. One of the most adroit and unscrupulous of their -number--William Lilly--had large following. They not only had the -popular ear, but now and then a man like Dryden inclined to them. Nor -did Sir Thomas Browne “reject a sober and regulated astrology.” - -At the beginning of the eighteenth century the scandal of their -excesses was growing, and it was then that Swift came forward--just as -Swift was constantly coming forward with his great humanity, in one -instance to save Ireland the infliction of Wood’s halfpence, and again -in protest against English restriction of Irish trade; poor Swift’s -heart was always with the poor, the duped and undefended--it was then -that Swift came forward with “Predictions for the year 1708. Wherein -the Month, and the Day of the Month, are set down, the Person named, -and the great Actions and Events of next Year particularly related, as -They will come to Pass. Written to Prevent the People of England from -being farther imposed on by the vulgar Almanack-Makers.” - -The surname of the signature, “Isaac Bickerstaff,” Swift took from a -locksmith’s sign. The Isaac he added as not commonly in use. - -“I have considered,” he begins, “the gross abuse of astrology in this -kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly -lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors, who set -up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that -the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine the -stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or -inclinations; and whoever has not bent his studies that way may be -excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that -noble art is treated by a few mean, illiterate traders between us -and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, -and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the -planets, though they descend from no greater a height than their own -brains.... - -“As for the few following predictions, I now offer the world, I -forebore to publish them till I had perused the several Almanacks for -the year we are now entered upon. I found them all in the usual strain, -and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine: and here I -make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit of my art upon -the truth of these predictions; and I will be content that Partridge -and the rest of his clan may hoot me for a cheat and impostor, if I -fail in any single particular of moment.... - -“My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it to show -how ignorant these sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own -concerns: it relates to Partridge, the Almanack-maker. I have consulted -the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly -die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging -fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs -in time....” - -An “Answer to Bickerstaff by a Person of Quality,” evidently from the -hand of Swift and his friends, followed these “Predictions.” - -“I have not observed for some years past,” it begins, “any -insignificant paper to have made more noise, or be more greedily -bought, than that of these Predictions.... I shall not enter upon the -examination of them; but think it very incumbent upon the learned Mr. -Partridge to take them into his consideration, and lay as many errors -in astrology as possible to Mr. Bickerstaff’s account. He may justly, -I think, challenge the ’squire to publish the calculation he has made -of Partridge’s nativity, by the credit of which he so determinately -pronounces the time and manner of his death; and Mr. Bickerstaff can -do no less in honour, than give Mr. Partridge the same advantage of -calculating his, by sending him an account of the time and place of his -birth, with other particulars necessary for such a work. By which, no -doubt, the learned world will be engaged in the dispute, and take part -on each side according as they are inclined....” - -“The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions, -being an Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge, the Almanack-Maker, -upon the 29th instant in a Letter to a Person of Honour, written in the -year 1708,” continues the jocularity. - -“My Lord: In obedience to your Lordship’s commands, as well as to -satisfy my own curiosity, I have some days past inquired constantly -after Partridge the Almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. -Bickerstaff’s Predictions, published about a month ago, that he should -die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.... I -saw him accidentally once or twice, about ten days before he died, and -observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his -friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three -days ago he grew ill, ... but when I saw him he had his understanding -as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any -seeming uneasiness or constraint [saying].... ‘I am a poor -ignorant fellow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know -that all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits for this -manifest reason: because the wise and the learned, who can only judge -whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to -laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor, ignorant vulgar give it -any credit, and that only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and -my fellows, who can hardly write or read.’... - -“After half an hour’s conversation I took my leave, being almost -stifled with the closeness of the room. I imagined he could not hold -out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by, -leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately and tell -me, as near as he could, the minute when Partridge should expire, which -was not above two hours after.” - -The burlesque next before the public, “Squire Bickerstaff detected; or, -the Astrological Impostor convicted, by John Partridge, student of -physic and astrology, a True and Impartial account of the Proceedings -of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against me,” was doubtless drawn up by -Addison’s friend Yalden, whom Scott speaks of as “Partridge’s near -neighbor.” - -“The 28th of March, Anno Dom. 1708,” it begins, “being the night this -sham prophet had so impudently fixed for my last, which made little -impression on myself: but I cannot answer for my whole family; for my -wife, with concern more than usual, prevailed on me to take somewhat to -sweat for a cold; and between the hours of eight and nine to go to bed; -the maid, as she was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young -wenches, runs to the window, and asks of one passing the street who the -bell tolled for? Dr. Partridge, says he, the famous almanack-maker, -who died suddenly this evening: the poor girl, provoked, told him he -lied like a rascal; the other very sedately replied, the sexton had -so informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a -stranger. She asked a second, and a third, as they passed, and every -one was in the same tone. Now, I do not say these are accomplices to -a certain astrological ’squire, and that one Bickerstaff might be -sauntering thereabout, because I will assert nothing here, but what -I dare attest for plain matter of fact. My wife at this fell into a -violent disorder, and I must own I was a little discomposed at the -oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks at my door; Betty -runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly -inquires if this was Dr. Partridge’s? She, taking him for some cautious -city patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews him into the -dining-room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to him, and was -surprised to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule -in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions of the room. -Pray, sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any business with -me?--Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring me a better light, -for this is a very dim one.--Sir, says I, my name is Partridge.--O! -the doctor’s brother, belike, cries he; the staircase, I believe, and -these two apartments hung in close mourning will be sufficient, and -only a strip of bays round the other rooms. The doctor must needs die -rich, he had great dealings in his way for many years; if he had no -family coat, you had as good use the escutcheons of the company, they -are as showish, and will look as magnificent, as if he was descended -from the blood royal.--With that I assumed a greater air of authority, -and demanded who employed him, or how he came there?--Why, I was sent, -sir, by the company of undertakers, says he, and they were employed -by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good doctor departed; -and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the -black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been -tacking up by this time.--Sir, says I, pray be advised by a friend, -and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife’s -voice (which, by the by, is pretty distinguishable), and in that corner -of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt before now; -if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, -without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very -much to the detriment of your person.--Sir, cries he, -bowing with great civility, I perceive extreme grief for the loss of -the doctor disorders you a little at present, but early in the morning -I will wait on you with all the necessary materials.... - -“Well, once more I got my door closed, and prepared for bed, in hopes -of a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just as I was -putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he -can knock; I open the window and ask who is there and what he wants? -I am Ned, the sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the doctor -left any orders for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and -whether his grave is to be plain or bricked?--Why, sirrah, say I, you -know me well enough; you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront -me after this manner?--Alackaday, sir, replies the fellow, why it is in -print, and the whole town knows you are dead; why, there is Mr. White, -the joiner, is fitting screws to your coffin; he will be here with -it in an instant: he was afraid you would have wanted it before this -time.... In short, what with undertakers, embalmers, joiners, sextons, -and your damned elegy hawkers upon a late practitioner in physic and -astrology, I got not one wink of sleep the whole night, nor scarce a -moment’s rest ever since.... - -“I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after -this, but presently one comes up to me in the street, Mr. Partridge, -that coffin you was last buried in, I have not yet been paid for: -Doctor, cries another dog, how do you think people can live by -making of graves for nothing? next time you die, you may even toll -out the bell yourself for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow, -and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying -my funeral expenses.--Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was -honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend, but, poor man, he is gone.--I -beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance -that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he is -gone the way of all flesh.--Look, look, look, cries a third, after a -competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour, -the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave, to take the other -peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improved in -fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?... - -“My poor wife is run almost distracted with being called widow -Partridge, when she knows it is false; and once a term she is cited -into the court to take out letters of administration. But the greatest -grievance is a paltry quack that takes up my calling just under my -nose, and in his printed directions, with N. B.--says he lives in the -house of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner -in leather, physic, and astrology....” - -The astrologer, forgetting to refer to the stars for evidence, -indignantly declared himself to be alive, and Swift’s returning -“Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against what is objected to -by Mr. Partridge in his Almanack for the present year, 1709, by the -said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,” complains: - -“Mr. Partridge has been lately pleased to treat me after a very -rough manner in that which is called his almanack for the present -year ... [regarding] my predictions, which foretold the death of Mr. -Partridge to happen on March 29, 1708. This he is pleased to contradict -absolutely in the almanack he has published for the present year.... - -“Without entering into criticisms of chronology about the hour of -his death, I shall only prove that Mr. Partridge is not alive. And -my first argument is this: about a thousand gentlemen having bought -his almanacks for this year, merely to find what he said against me, -at every line they read, they would lift up their eyes, and cry out -betwixt rage and laughter, ‘they were sure no man alive ever writ -such damned stuff as this.’ Neither did I ever hear that opinion -disputed: ... Therefore, if an uninformed carcase walks still about and -is pleased to call himself Partridge, Mr. Bickerstaff does not think -himself any way answerable for that. Neither had the said carcase any -right to beat the poor boy who happened to pass by it in the street, -crying, ‘A full and true account of Dr. Partridge’s death,’ etc. - -“... I will plainly prove him to be dead, out of his own almanack for -this year, and from the very passage which he produces to make us -think him alive. He there says ‘he is not only now alive, but was also -alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on’: -by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was -not alive a twelvemonth ago. And indeed there lies the sophistry of -his argument. He dares not assert he was alive ever since that 29th -of March, but that he ‘is now alive and was so on that day’: I grant -the latter; for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed -account of his death, in a letter to a lord; and whether he be since -revived, I leave the world to judge....” - -The joke had gained its end; the astrologer and philomath had been -ridiculed out of existence. But the name of the “astrological ’squire” -was in everybody’s mouth; and when in April, 1709, Steele began “The -Tatler,” Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, spoke in the dedication of a -gentleman who “had written Predictions, and Two or Three other Pieces -in my Name, which had render’d it famous through all Parts of Europe; -and by an inimitable Spirit and Humour, raised it to as high a Pitch of -Reputation as it could possibly arrive at.” - -The Inquisition in Portugal had, with utmost gravity, condemned -Bickerstaff’s predictions and the readers of them, and had burnt his -predictions. The Company of Stationers in London obtained in 1709 an -injunction against the issuing of any almanac by John Partridge, as if -in fact he were dead. - - * * * * * - -If the fame of this foolery was through all parts of Europe, it must -also have crossed to the English colonies of America, and by reference -to this fact we may explain the curious literary parallel Poor -Richard’s Almanac affords. Twenty-five years later Benjamin Franklin -played the selfsame joke in Philadelphia. - -Franklin was but two years old when Swift and his Bickerstaff -coadjutors were jesting. But by the time he had grown and wandered to -Philadelphia and become a journeyman printer--by 1733--Addison, Steele, -Prior, and Congreve had died, and Swift’s wonderful mind was turned -upon and eating itself in the silent deanery of St. Patrick’s. - -Conditions about him gave Franklin every opportunity for the jest. The -almanac in the America of 1733 had even greater acceptance than the -like publication of England in Isaac Bickerstaff’s day. No output of -the colonial press, not even the publication of theological tracts, was -so frequent or so remunerative. It was the sole annual which commonly -penetrated the farmhouse of the colonists, where it hung in neighborly -importance near the Bible, Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” and Jonathan -Edwards’s tractate on “The Freedom of the Human Will.” And it had -uses. Besides furnishing a calendar, weather prophecies, and jokes, it -added receipts for cooking, pickling, dyeing, and in many ways was the -“Useful Companion” its title-page proclaimed. - -So keen, practical, and energetic a nature as Franklin’s could not -let the opportunity pass for turning a penny, and with the inimitable -adaptability that marked him all his life he begins his Poor Richard -of 1733: - -“Courteous Reader, I might in this place attempt to gain thy favour -by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other view than that of -the publick good, but in this I should not be sincere; and men are -now-a-days too wise to be deceiv’d by pretences, how specious soever. -The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, -good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she can not bear, she -says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow, while I do nothing but gaze -at the stars; and has threatened more than once to burn all my books -and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments), if I do not make -some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has -offer’d me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus -began to comply with my dame’s desire. - -“Indeed, this motive would have had force enough to have made me -publish an Almanack many years since, had it not been overpowered by my -regard for my good friend and fellow-student, Mr. Titan Leeds, whose -interest I was extreamly unwilling to hurt. But this obstacle (I am far -from speaking it with pleasure) is soon to be removed, since inexorable -death, who was never known to respect merit, has already prepared the -mortal dart, the fatal sister has already extended her destroying -shears, and that ingenious man must soon be taken from us. He dies, by -my calculation, made at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho. 29 m., -P.M., at the very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation -he will survive till the 26th of the same month. This small difference -between us we have disputed whenever we have met these nine years past; -but at length he is inclinable to agree with my judgment. Which of us -is most exact, a little time will now determine. As, therefore, these -Provinces may not longer expect to see any of his performances after -this year, I think myself free to take up my task, and request a share -of publick encouragement, which I am the more apt to hope for on this -account, that the buyer of my Almanack may consider himself not only as -purchasing an useful utensil, but as performing an act of charity to -his poor - - “Friend and servant, - “R. SAUNDERS.” - -Franklin had a more eager biter than Partridge proved to Bickerstaff’s -bait, and Titan Leeds, in his American Almanack for 1734, showed how -uneasy was the hook: - -“Kind Reader, Perhaps it may be expected that I should say something -concerning an Almanack printed for the Year 1733, said to be writ by -Poor Richard or Richard Saunders, who for want of other matter was -pleased to tell his Readers, that he had calculated my Nativity, and -from thence predicts my Death to be the 17th of October, 1733. At 29 -min. past 3 a-clock in the Afternoon, and that these Provinces may not -expect to see any more of his (Titan Leeds) Performances, and this -precise Predicter, who predicts to a Minute, proposes to succeed me -in Writing of Almanacks; but notwithstanding his false Prediction, I -have by the Mercy of God lived to write a diary for the Year 1734, -and to publish the Folly and Ignorance of this presumptuous Author. -Nay, he adds another gross Falsehood in his Almanack, viz.--That by -my own Calculation, I shall survive until the 26th of the said Month -(October), which is as untrue as the former, for I do not pretend to -that Knowledge, altho’ he has usurpt the Knowledge of the Almighty -herein, and manifested himself a Fool and a Lyar. And by the mercy of -God I have lived to survive this conceited Scriblers Day and Minute -whereon he has predicted my Death; and as I have supplyed my Country -with Almanacks for three seven Years by past, to general Satisfaction, -so perhaps I may live to write when his Performances are Dead. Thus -much from your annual Friend, Titan Leeds, October 18, 1733, 3 ho. 33 -min. P.M.” - -“... In the preface to my last Almanack,” wrote Franklin, in genuine -humor, in Poor Richard for 1734, “I foretold the death of my dear old -friend and fellow-student, the learned and ingenious Mr. Titan Leeds, -which was to be the 17th of October, 1733, 3 h., 29 m., P.M., at the -very instant of the ☌ of ☉ and ☿. By his own calculation, he was to -survive till the 26th of the same month, and expire in the time of -the eclipse, near 11 o’clock A.M. At which of these times he died, -or whether he be really yet dead, I cannot at this present writing -positively assure my readers; forasmuch as a disorder in my own family -demanded my presence, and would not permit me, as I had intended, to -be with him in his last moments, to receive his last embrace, to close -his eyes, and do the duty of a friend in performing the last offices -to the departed. Therefore it is that I cannot positively affirm -whether he be dead or not; for the stars only show to the skilful what -will happen in the natural and universal chain of causes and effects; -but ’tis well known, that the events which would otherwise certainly -happen, at certain times, in the course of nature, are sometimes -set aside or postpon’d, for wise and good reasons, by the immediate -particular disposition of Providence; which particular disposition the -stars can by no means discover or foreshow. There is, however (and I -can not speak it without sorrow), there is the strongest probability -that my dear friend is no more; for there appears in his name, as I am -assured, an Almanack for the year 1734, in which I am treated in a very -gross and unhandsome manner, in which I am called a false predicter, -an ignorant, a conceited scribbler, a fool and a lyar. Mr. Leeds was -too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously, and -moreover his esteem and affection for me was extraordinary; so that it -is to be feared that pamphlet may be only a contrivance of somebody or -other, who hopes, perhaps, to sell two or three years’ Almanacks still, -by the sole force and virtue of Mr. Leeds’ name. But, certainly, to put -words into the mouth of a gentleman and a man of letters against his -friend, which the meanest and most scandalous of the people might be -ashamed to utter even in a drunken quarrel, is an unpardonable injury -to his memory, and an imposition upon the publick. - -“Mr. Leeds was not only profoundly skilful in the useful science -he profess’d, but he was a man of exemplary sobriety, a most -sincere friend, and an exact performer of his word. These valuable -qualifications, with many others, so much endeared him to me, that -although it should be so, that, contrary to all probability, contrary -to my prediction and his own, he might possibly be yet alive, yet -my loss of honour, as a prognosticate, cannot afford me so much -mortification as his life, health, and safety would give me joy and -satisfaction....” - -Again, Leeds, in The American Almanack for 1735, returns Franklin’s -jest: - -“Courteous and Kind Reader: My Almanack being in its usual Method, -needs no Explanation; but perhaps it may be expected by some that I -shall say something concerning Poor Richard, or otherwise Richard -Saunders’s Almanack, which I suppose was printed in the Year 1733 for -the ensuing Year 1734, wherein he useth me with such good Manners, I -can hardly find what to say to him, without it is to advise him not to -be too proud because by his Prædicting my Death, and his writing an -Almanack.... - -“But if Falsehood and Inginuity be so rewarded, What may he expect -if ever he be in a capacity to publish that that is either Just or -according to Art? Therefore I shall say little more about it than, as -a Friend, to advise he will never take upon him to prædict or ascribe -any Person’s Death, till he has learned to do it better than he did -before....” - -To this exhortation Franklin makes the following gay sally in Poor -Richard for 1735. - -“... Whatever may be the musick of the spheres, how great soever the -harmony of the stars, ’tis certain there is no harmony among the -star-gazers: but they are perpetually growling and snarling at one -another like strange curs, or like some men at their wives. I had -resolved to keep the peace on my own part, and offend none of them; and -I shall persist in that resolution. But having receiv’d much abuse from -Titan Leeds deceas’d (Titan Leeds when living would not have used me -so): I say, having receiv’d much abuse from the ghost of Titan Leeds, -who pretends to be still living, and to write Almanacks in spight of -me and my predictions, I can not help saying, that tho’ I take it -patiently, I take it very unkindly. And whatever he may pretend, ’tis -undoubtedly true that he is really defunct and dead. First, because -the stars are seldom disappointed, never but in the case of wise men, -sapiens dominabitur asties, and they foreshadowed his death at the time -I predicted it. Secondly, ’twas requisite and necessary he should die -punctually at that time for the honor of astrology, the art professed -both by him and his father before him. Thirdly, ’tis plain to every -one that reads his two last Almanacks (for 1734 and ’35), that they -are not written with that life his performances used to be written -with; the wit is low and flat; the little hints dull and spiritless; -nothing smart in them but Hudibras’s verses against astrology at the -heads of the months in the last, which no astrologer but a dead one -would have inserted, and no man living would or could write such stuff -as the rest. But lastly, I shall convince him from his own words that -he is dead (ex ore suo condemnatus est); for in his preface to his -Almanack for 1734, he says: ‘Saunders adds another gross falsehood in -his Almanack, viz., that by my own calculation, I shall survive until -the 26th of the said month, October, 1733, which is as untrue as the -former.’ Now if it be as Leeds says, untrue and a gross falsehood, -that he survived till the 26th of October, 1733, then it is certainly -true that he died before that time; and if he died before that time he -is dead now to all intents and purposes, anything he may say to the -contrary notwithstanding. And at what time before the 26th is it so -likely he should die, as at the time by me predicted, viz., the 17th -of October aforesaid? But if some people will walk and be troublesome -after death, it may perhaps be borne with a little, because it cannot -well be avoided, unless one would be at the pains and expense of laying -them in the Red Sea; however, they should not presume too much upon the -liberty allowed them. I know confinement must needs be mighty irksome -to the free spirit of an astronomer, and I am too compassionate to -proceed suddenly to extremities with it; nevertheless, tho’ I resolve -with reluctance, I shall not long defer, if it does not speedily learn -to treat its living friends with better manners. - - “I am, - - “Courteous reader, - - “Your obliged friend and servant, - - “R. SAUNDERS.” - -Here for the nonce the jeu d’esprit ended. In carrying the matter -further Franklin hardly showed the taste of Bickerstaff. The active, -bristling, self-assertive ὕβρις which characterized his early manhood -led him further on to stand over the very grave of Leeds. Before he -made his Almanac for 1740 his competitor had died. But even Leeds dead -he seemed to deem fair play. - - “October 7, 1739. - -“COURTEOUS READER: You may remember that in my first Almanack, -published for the year 1733, I predicted the death of my dear friend, -Titan Leeds, Philomat, to happen that year on the 17th day of October, -3 h. 29 m. P.M. The good man, it seems, died accordingly. But W. B. and -A. B.[6] have continued to publish Almanacks in his name ever since; -asserting for some years that he was still living. At length when -the truth could no longer be concealed from the world, they confessed -his death in their Almanack for 1739, but pretended that he died not -till last year, and that before his departure he had furnished them -with calculations for 7 years to come.--Ah, my friends, these are poor -shifts and thin disguises; of which indeed I should have taken little -or no notice, if you had not at the same time accused me as a false -predictor; an aspersion that the more affects me as my whole livelyhood -depends on a contrary character. - -“But to put this matter beyond dispute, I shall acquaint the world with -a fact, as strange and surprising as it is true; being as follows, viz.: - -“On the 4th instant, toward midnight, as I sat in my little study -writing this Preface, I fell fast asleep; and continued in that -condition for some time, without dreaming any thing, to my knowledge. -On awaking I found lying before me the following, viz.: - -“‘DEAR FRIEND SAUNDERS: My respect for you continues even in this -separate state; and I am griev’d to see the aspersions thrown on you by -the malevolence of avaricious publishers of Almanacks, who envy your -success. They say your prediction of my death in 1733 was false, and -they pretend that I remained alive many years after. But I do hereby -certify that I did actually die at that time, precisely at the hour -you mention’d, with a variation only of 5 min. 53 sec, which must be -allow’d to be no great matter in such cases. And I do further declare -that I furnish’d them with no calculations of the planets’ motions, -etc., seven years after my death, as they are pleased to give out: so -that the stuff they publish as an Almanack in my name is no more mine -than ’tis yours. - -“‘You will wonder, perhaps, how this paper comes written on your -table. You must know that no separate spirits are under any confinement -till after the final settlement of all accounts. In the meantime we -wander where we please, visit our old friends, observe their actions, -enter sometimes into their imaginations, and give them hints waking -or sleeping that may be of advantage to them. Finding you asleep, I -enter’d your left nostril, ascended into your brain, found out where -the ends of those nerves were fastened that move your right hand and -fingers, by the help of which I am now writing unknown to you; but when -you open your eyes you will see that the hand written is mine, tho’ -wrote with yours. - -“‘The people of this infidel age, perhaps, will hardly believe this -story. But you may give them these three signs by which they shall -be convinced of the truth of it.--About the middle of June next, J. -J----n,[7] Philomat, shall be openly reconciled to the Church of Rome, -and give all his goods and chattels to the chappel, being perverted by -a certain country schoolmaster. On the 7th of September following my -old Friend W. B----t shall be sober 9 hours, to the astonishment of all -his neighbours:--And about the same time W. B. and A. B. will publish -another Almanack in my name, in spight of truth and common sense. - -“‘As I can see much clearer into futurity, since I got free from the -dark prison of flesh, in which I was continually molested and almost -blinded with fogs arising from tiff, and the smoke of burnt drams; I -shall in kindness to you, frequently give you information of things -to come, for the improvement of your Almanack: being, Dear Dick, Your -Affectionate Friend, - - “‘T. LEEDS.’ - -“For my own part, I am convinced that the above letter is genuine. If -the reader doubts of it, let him carefully observe the three signs; and -if they do not actually come to pass, believe as he pleases. I am his -humble Friend, - - “R. SAUNDERS.” - -In this wise ended Poor Richard’s jest. Franklin’s style throughout -is so simple and direct that one is at first inclined to scout the -suggestion that the joke is not entirely original. It is impossible, -however, to suppose that Franklin, with his broad reading, did not know -Squire Bickerstaff’s. The development of the humor is wholly imitated. -But Franklin made the method his own so thoroughly that his wit has -those keener, subtler, more agile qualities which have distinguished -American from the slower and sedater humor of the English. In the -Bickerstaff jocularity evidences of the death of Partridge are -enumerated in material surroundings of a not too prosperous London -quack. Franklin, on the other hand, ironically and graphically reasons -upon supposititious traits and qualities of character and breeding. - -In England, Swift’s squib having given the death-blow to astrology, -“Merlinus Liberatus, by John Partridge,” was published years after, but -shorn of its specious and misleading pretences. Franklin’s jesting was -more self-seeking. - -Not one of Franklin’s biographers or editors has referred to the -Bickerstaff joke. Upon the contrary, in an “Introduction to Fac-simile -of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1733,” published by The Duodecimos in -1894, it is asserted that Franklin “in a strain of delightful satire -upon the already venerable pretensions of almanac-makers to foretell -the future, ... disposes of this difficulty by a method so novel, so -ingenious, and withal of an illuminating power so far-reaching as to -set the whole colony talking about it.” - -It need hardly be added that none of Swift’s biographers--all being -English--have hinted at Franklin’s pleasantry. - -The inextinguishable laughter--the true Homeric ἄσβεστος γέλως--which -is the atmosphere of both incidents, fits them to rank with the -imaginary durance of Sancho Panza upon his island, or with Tartarin in -Tarascon, or, to go to the first humor of literature, with the advance -and retreat of Thersites in the council of Zeus-nourished kings. And in -Britain and America all our heroes were real. - - * * * * * - -Upon other occasions than the Saunders-Leeds jesting Franklin loved -playful feint; he had “Bagatelles” for his delight. It was a quizzical -side of the character which made him the first of our notable American -humorists. To amuse himself with an oriental apologue which he called -“The Parable of Persecution,” he had the story bound with a Bible. From -this book he would read the legend aloud, amazing his auditors that so -beautiful a scriptural passage had escaped their knowledge. - -The form in which Franklin cast the tale is this: - -“And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door -of his tent, about the going down of the sun. - -“And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness, -leaning on a staff. - -“And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, ‘Turn in, I pray -thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise -early on the morrow, and go thy way,’ - -“But the man said, ‘Nay, for I will abide under this tree.’ - -“And Abraham pressed him greatly: so he turned and they went into the -tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat. - -“And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, -‘Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, Creator of heaven -and earth?’ - -“And the man answered and said, ‘I do not worship the God thou speakest -of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, -which abideth alway in mine house, and provideth me with all things.’ - -“And Abraham’s zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and fell -upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness. - -“And at midnight God called unto Abraham, saying, ‘Abraham, where is -the stranger?’ - -“And Abraham answered and said, ‘Lord, he would not worship thee, -neither would he call upon thy name; therefore have I driven him out -from before my face into the wilderness.’ - -“And God said, ‘Have I borne with him these hundred and ninety and -eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding his -rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner, -bear with him one night?’ - -“And Abraham said, ‘Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his -servant; lo, I have sinned; lo, I have sinned; forgive me, I pray thee.’ - -“And Abraham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought -diligently for the man, and found him, and returned with him to the -tent; and when he had treated him kindly, he sent him away on the -morrow with gifts. - -“And God spake again unto Abraham, saying, ‘For this thy sin shall thy -seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land. - -“‘But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come -forth with power, and with gladness of heart, and with much substance.’” - -Franklin’s fine literary sense and feeling would doubtless have -told him that the tale was oriental, even if Jeremy Taylor, whose -“Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying” it brings to a finish, had -not introduced it with the words, “I end with a story which I find in -the Jews’ book.[8] - -“When Abraham sat at his tent-door, according to his custom, waiting -to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on -his staff, weary with age and travail, coming toward him, who was a -hundred years of age; he received him kindly, washed his feet, provided -supper, caused him to sit down; but, observing that the old man eat -and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him -why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that -he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other god. At which -answer Abraham grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man out -of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an -unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, -and asked him where the stranger was. He replied, ‘I thrust him away -because he did not worship thee.’ God answered him, ‘I have suffered -him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst -not thou endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?’ Upon -this saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him -hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, -and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.” - -Franklin’s pleasantries with this parable led Lord Kames to ask it of -him. The fertile Scotchman at once incorporated it in his “Sketches -of the History of Man,” and published it in 1774, accrediting it to -Franklin. “The charge of plagiarism has, on this account,” says Bishop -Heber, in his life of Jeremy Taylor, “been raised against Franklin; -though he cannot be proved to have given it to Lord Kames as his own -composition. With all Franklin’s abilities and amiable qualities,” -continues the clear-eyed bishop, “there was a degree of quackery in -his character which ... has made the imputation of such a theft more -readily received against him than it would have been against most -other men of equal eminence.” - - * * * * * - -In more finely sensitive writers who have treated Franklin there is a -feeling that he “borrowed.” The words of the missionary bishop show the -sentiment was common in England a century and a quarter ago. In our -country the conviction was expressed with more spirit in a colloquy[9] -between a New England man and a Virginian, preserved in John Davis’s -manuscript, “Travels in America during 1798-99, 1800, 1801, 1802.” - -“I obtained,” wrote Davis of his visit to Washington, “accommodations -at the Washington Tavern, which stands opposite the Treasury. At this -tavern I took my meals at the public table, where there was every day -to be found a number of clerks, employed at the different offices -under government, together with about half-a-dozen Virginians and a few -New England men. There was a perpetual conflict between these Southern -and Northern men, and one night I was present at a vehement dispute, -which terminated in the loss of a horse, a saddle, and bridle. The -dispute was about Dr. Franklin; the man from New England, enthusiastic -in what related to Franklin, asserted that the Doctor, being -self-taught, was original in everything that he had ever published. - -“The Virginian maintained that he was a downright plagiarist. - -“_New England Man._--Have you a horse here, my friend? - -“_Virginian._--Sir, I hope you do not suppose that I came hither on -foot from Virginia. I have him in Mr. White’s stable, the prettiest -Chickasaw that ever trod upon four pasterns. - -“_New England Man._--And I have a bay mare that I bought for ninety -dollars in hard cash. Now I, my friend, will lay my bay mare against -your Chickasaw that Dr. Franklin is not a plagiarist. - -“_Virginian._--Done! Go it! Waiter! You, waiter! - -“The waiter obeyed the summons, and, at the order of the Virginian, -brought down a portmanteau containing both Franklin’s ‘Miscellanies’ -and Taylor’s ‘Discourses.’ - -“The New England man then read from the former the celebrated parable -against persecution.... And after he had finished he exclaimed that the -‘writer appeared inspired.’ - -“But the Virginian maintained that it all came to Franklin from Bishop -Taylor’s book, printed more than a century ago. And the New England -man read from Taylor.... When he had done reading, a laugh ensued; and -the Virginian, leaping from his seat, called to Atticus, the waiter, -to put the bay mare in the next stall to the Chickasaw and to give -her half a gallon of oats more, upon the strength of her having a new -master! - -“The New England man exhibited strong symptoms of chagrin, but wagered -‘a brand-new saddle’ that this celebrated epitaph of Franklin’s -undergoing a new edition was original. The epitaph was then read: - - ‘The Body - of - Benjamin Franklin, Printer - (Like the cover of an old book, - Its contents torn out, - And stript of its lettering and gilding), - Lies here, food for worms. - Yet the work itself shall not be lost, - For it will (as he believ’d) appear once more, - In a new - And more beautiful Edition, - Corrected and Amended - By - The Author.’ - -“The Virginian then said that Franklin robbed a little boy of it. -‘The very words, sir, are taken from a Latin epitaph written on a -bookseller, by an Eton scholar. - - ‘Vitæ _volumine_ peracto - Hic FINIS JACOBI TONSON[10] - Perpoliti Sociorum Principis: - Qui velut Obstretrix Musarum - _In Lucem Edidit_ - Felices Ingenii Partus. - Lugete Scriptorum Chorus, - Et Frangite Calamos! - Ille vester _Margine Erasus deletur_, - Sed hæc postrema Inscriptio - Huic _Primæ_ Mortis _Paginæ_ - Imprimatur, - Ne _Prælo Sepulchri_ commissus - Ipse _Editor careat Titulo_: - Hic Jacet _Bibliopola_ - _Folio_ vitæ delapso - Expectans _novam Editionem_ - Auctoriem et Emendatiorem.’ - -“And then, says Mr. Davis, the bet was awarded the Virginian. He -referred to the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for February, 1736, where the -Latin inscription accredited to the Eton scholar, with a translation by -a Mr. P----, was to be found. - -“After this second decision the Virginian declared that he would -lay his boots against the New Englander’s that Franklin’s pretended -discovery of calming troubled waters by pouring upon them oil might -be found in the third book of Bede’s ‘History of the Church;’ or that -his facetious essay on the air-bath is produced, word for word, from -Aubrey’s ‘Miscellanies.’ But the New Englander, who had lost horse, -saddle, and bridle, declined to run the risk on Dr. Franklin of going -home without his boots.” - - * * * * * - -There are other instances of the philosopher’s palpable taking. -To one, Franklin’s editor, Mr. Bigelow, adverts when he notes in -Franklin’s letter of November 5, 1789, to Alexander Smith: “I find -by your letter that every man has patience enough to hear calmly and -coolly the injuries done to other people.” The marvellous precision -and terseness of Swift--that keen, incisive melancholy wit of his from -which great writers have taken ideas and phrases as gold-seekers have -picked nuggets from California earth--Swift had more finely said what -Franklin stumbled after when he wrote that he “never knew a man who -could not bear the misfortunes of another like a Christian.” - -Franklin had originality. His many devices are evidence. But careful -study of that which brought him much public attention--bagatelles -by which he attached himself to popular affection--show all-round -appropriation. He loved to stand in public light--to hear applause of -himself. He loved to quiz his listeners, to bamboozle his readers. -If his buying and applauding public believed Poor Richard’s proverbs -sprang from his active mind instead of having been industriously -gathered from old English and other folk proverbs and dyed with his -practical humor--“the wisdom of many ages and nations,” as Franklin -afterwards put it--that was their blunder by which he would gain -gold as well as glory. Even “Richard Saunders” was not original with -Franklin. It was the pen-name of a compiler of English almanacs. The -young printer busily working his press doubtless chuckled at his -deceptions--in spite of his filched maxim about honesty being the best -policy. - -And it went with him all through life. His love of public applause, -his desire to accumulate and his gleaming, quizzical humor led him on. -His wonderful ease at adopting others’ products and making them his -own one may admire if he turn his eyes from the moral significance, -the downright turpitude of not acknowledging the source. Franklin’s -practice would certainly not stand the test of universal application -which his great contemporary, Kant, demanded of all acts. - -There has been of late endeavor to rehabilitate Franklin’s industrious -common sense and praise its circumstance. So late as last year our -American ambassador to St. James addressed students of the Workingmen’s -College in London upon the energy, self-help, and sense of reality of -this early American, and found the leading features of his character to -be honesty (!) and respect for facts. - -It is, after all, a certain grace inherent in Franklin, a human -feeling, a genial simplicity and candor, a directness of utterance and -natural unfolding of his matter which are his perennial value in a -literary way, and which warrant the estimate of an English critic who -calls him the most readable writer yet known on the western side of the -Atlantic. - - -THE END - - - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] I include “women” because Lucy Stone once told me she draughted -some of the Kansas laws for married women while sitting in the nursery -with her baby on her knee. Other women worked with her, she said. Their -labor was in the fifties of the nineteenth century--at the height of -the movement to ameliorate the legal condition of married women. - -[2] Other societies also have vitality. The sortie of a handful of -students one November night following election, a dinner each year -celebrates. Grangers supposedly inimical to the interests of the -University had won at the polls. The moon shone through a white, frosty -air; the earth was hard and resonant. What the skulkers accomplished -and the merry and hortative sequent to their furtive feast were told at -the time by the beloved professor of Latin, the “professoris alicujus.” - -“T. C.’S” HORRIBILES. - - Jam noctis media hora. In cœlo nubila spissa - Stellas abstulerant. Umbrarum tempus erat quo - Horrenda ignavis monstra apparent. Pueri tum - Parvi matribus intus adhærent. Non gratiorem - Noctem fur unquam invenit. Sed qui veniunt post - Hanc ædem veterem? Celebrantne aliqua horrida sacra - Mercurio furum patrono? Discipuline? - Non possunt! Tuti in lectis omnes requiescunt! - Estne sodalicium studiosorum relevans se - Magnis a curis? Sed cur huc conveniunt tam - Furtivi? In manibus quidnam est vel sub tegumentis? - O pudor! Et pullos et turkey non bene raptos! - Vina etiam subrepta professoris alicujus - (Horresco referens) e cella! Dedecus! Est nil - Tutum a furibus? En pullos nunc faucibus illis - Sorbent! Nunc sunt in terra, tum in ictu oculi non - Apparebunt omne in æternum! Miseros pullos, - Infelices O pueros! Illi male capti - A pueris, sed hi capientur mox male (O! O!!) - A Plutone atro! - Forsan lapsis quinque diebus, cum sapiens vir - Omnes hos juvenes ad cenam magnificenter - Invitavit. Tempore sane adsunt. Bene laeti - Judex accipiunt et filia pulchra sodales - Hos furtivos. Ad mensam veniunt. Juvenes cur - Tam agitantur? Quid portentum conspiciunt nunc? - Protrudunt oculi quasi ranarum! Nihil est in - Mensa præter turkeys! Unus quoque catino! - Solum hoc, præterea nil! - - -[3] The translation is that of C. D. Yonge. - -[4] The ancient classic and early English writers afforded many -instances of their people’s culinaria, and only when their content -became familiar did I find that the Rev. Richard Warner had, in the -last part of the eighteenth century, gone over the ground and chosen -like examples--perhaps because they were the best. This quotation, and -another one or two following, are solely found in our libraries in -his admirable book here cited. Master Warner, writing nearer the old -sources, had the advantage of original manuscripts and collections. - -[5] - - “Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive, - Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe could’st never thrive.” - - -[6] The printers, William and Andrew Bradford. - -[7] John Jerman. - -[8] “The Jews’ book” is, according to various researches, believed to -be “The Rod of Judah,” a rabbinical work presented to the Senate of -Hamburg in the seventeenth century, and carrying the legend in its -Latin dedication. But the tale really dates back to the “Bostan,” or -“Tree Garden,” of the Persian poet Saadi, who says, in another work, -that he was a prisoner to the Crusaders, and labored in company with -fellow-captives who were Jews in the trenches before Tripoli. - -[9] Used through the courtesy of the editor of “The William and Mary -College Quarterly.” - -[10] This Jacob Tonson will be recalled as the chief bookseller -(publisher) in London for some years prior to his death, 2 April, 1736. - - -[Transcriber’s Note: - -Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.] - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of American Thumb-prints, by Kate Stephens - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN THUMB-PRINTS *** - -***** This file should be named 55065-0.txt or 55065-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/0/6/55065/ - -Produced by Wayne Hammond and The Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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