Part 5

The ancients buried in urns the ashes of their bodies: we deposit in urns the ashes of our souls, and pass them around at the tea-table.

Women not only injure themselves by what they neglect, but injure others by what they perform. Such stress is laid upon the commissary department, that they lose discrimination, and come to think that dainty morsels are a panacea for all the ills of the flesh, instead of being the chief cause of most of them. I knew a young wife whose husband used to come down from his study worn and weary with much brain-work, his muscles flaccid, his eyes heavy, his circulation sluggish, and she would come up from the kitchen her face all aglow with eagerness and love and cooking-stove heat, her hands full of abominable little messes which she had been plotting against him, reeking with butter and sugar, and all manner of glorified greasiness,--I am happy to say I do not know by what name she called her machinations, but I call them broiled dyspepsia, toasted indigestions, fricasseed nightmare,--and the poor husband would nibble here and nibble there, sure of grim consequences, but loath to seem a churl by indifference, and neither give nor take satisfaction. I could bear his suffering with great equanimity, for there was a poetic justice in it, though he himself was not a sinner above others, nor yet so much as many. If only those men who are continually preaching the larder could be forced, sick or well, to swallow every combination which the fertile feminine brain can devise, and the nimble feminine fingers accomplish, I should listen to their exhortations with the most lively satisfaction. But even that would not atone for the female suffering. With what disconsolate countenance would my tender, anxious young wife ring the bell and send away the scarcely-diminished dish-lings, and wonder in her fond tortured heart what next she could do to smooth the wrinkled brow and light up the dull eyes, and so revolve perpetually in her troubled mind the mysterious question that loomed up mystically before us all in our Mother Goose days, "Why didn't Jack eat his supper?"

Why? O sweet and silly little wife? Because he wanted a thorough shaking-up. Because mind and body were flabby from too long poring over his books. If you could but have performed the impossible; if you could but have parted with the feeble cant which you had learned from infancy; if you would but have driven him out alike from his study and your sitting-room, going with him, if such inducement became necessary, into the fresh air; if you would but have walked him, or worked him, or in some way kneaded him into firm, hard thew and sinew, and kept him out and active till he should have got such an appetite that cold brown bread and molasses would have seemed to him a dish fit to set before a king, you would have done him true wifely service. Then you might have come home and fed him with butter and sugar to your heart's content,--and not to the perpetual discontent and rebellion of his body.

But among all the lectures to young wives or old wives or no wives at all, I never heard or read one that counselled a woman to take her husband out walking, or rowing, or riding, or driving, or bowling, or do any other sensible thing. I have dived into oceans of nonsense, but never found the pearl.

Our New England people considers itself to have advanced much further in civilization than the aborigines, whose chief occupation, according to the histories, is hunting and fishing. But why is it barbarous to devote your life to procuring food, and civilized to devote your life to cooking it? Of the two, I think I should prefer the former. The Savage may not present an inviting bill of fare; but the excitement of the chase, the close contact with nature, the wide freedom of sea and sky, the grand play of all the powers, the mighty strengthening of all the organs, the fine culture of the senses, the health and vigor of every nerve and tissue, the leap and sparkle of all the springs of life, this, surely, would be no insignificant compensation: but a continual pottering over gridirons and frying-pans is good for neither brain nor brawn. Civilization may quick upfly and kick the beam: I would much rather be a good Sioux Indian than most New England housewives.

VI.

The much talk of fitness for marriage leads one to reflect on the advantages of living in the nineteenth century. With all the sewing-machines, washing-machines, wringing-machines, carpet-sweepers, cooking-ranges, and the innumerable devices by which labor is sought and is supposed to be saved, I do not see that there is any great gain. The requirements of civilized society rather more than keep abreast with the inventions of civilized ingenuity. Fifty years ago a bonnet cost twenty dollars. Now a comely bonnet can be bought for one dollar. But the twenty-dollar bonnet lasted ten years, and the one-dollar bonnet three months, so that, notwithstanding the superior cheapness of the material, the item bonnet costs more money than it used, and vastly more time and thought. A calico dress was not deemed unreasonable at seventy cents a yard. Lately it could be had for twelve and a half: but at seventy-five cents it was an heirloom, while at twelve and a half it stands over the wash-tub by the second year, and by the third goes into the rag-bag. The lively sewing-machine runs up a seam twenty times as swiftly as the most lively fingers: but there are twenty times as many seams to run up. Just as fast as skill "turns off" work, just so fast fashion turns it on. Nay, fashion in heaping up entirely outstrips ingenuity in lowering the pile of work; so that we do not get the benefit of our skill. The day now is no longer than the day of fifty years ago. The mother of five children seems to have no more time for educating her five children, for enjoying and training their opening lives, for studying their characters, for associating with them and acquiring their confidence, for planting unexpected roses in the little flower-plats of their years, for sitting a whole summer day with them among the beauties and wonders and delights of the woods, for spending a whole winter evening with them in games and reading, for informing her own mind and disciplining her own heart and strengthening and beautifying her own body, for cultivating the possible beneficences of society, for genial and growing acquaintance and sympathy with the poets, the philosophers, the historians, and the sages, than the mother of five children had fifty years ago. I suppose more women now-a-days know how to read and write; but do they read and write? Of the people in your village, your street, your sewing-society: how many do you find who spend as much as an hour a day in reading Milton, or Chaucer, or Spenser, or Tennyson, or Mrs. Browning? How many are there who are familiar with Hume, or Robertson, or Macaulay, or Motley, or Palfrey? How many have lingered with delight over the pages of Lord Bacon, or Jeremy Taylor, or John Stuart Mill? How many know the relation between a cat and a tiger, or what are the ingredients of buttermilk, or why yeast makes bread rise, or how the heat of the oven works, or whether a cloverhead has anything to do with a marrowfat pea? How many are interested to peer into the mysteries of the heavens above or the earth beneath or the waters under the earth? How many ever heard of the Areopigitica or the Witena-gemot, or discern any connection between Runnymede and Fort Sumter, or have the faintest opinion as to whether Runnymede is a man or a mouse? How many can tell you whether the Reformation was a revelation confronting a superstition or a fruitful branch grafted upon a barren olive-tree, or an old religion throwing off the layers of acquired corruption? How many understand the origin and bearings of Calvinism or the Nicene Creed or the Pauline Epistles? I speak, you see, not of things which have passed away leaving only a slender and hidden thread of connection, but of those which still touch life at many points. The great boast of the present day is the dissemination of knowledge: but knowledge is trash if it is not assimilated into wisdom. Knowledge which is simply plastered on to the outside of the soul and does not chemically combine to become part and parcel of the soul's substance, produces an effect little better than grotesque. Names and dates may store the memory; but why have the memory stored if you do not use its treasures? What better off am I for having a heap of isolated facts in my lumber-room if I have nothing for those facts to do? I may know in what year the battle of Hastings was fought, but unless I can locate that battle otherwhere than in geography and chronology, I might as well have committed to the charge of my memory the youthful facts of

"Onery Twoery ickery see, Halibut crackibut pendalee. Pin pon musket John, Triddle traddlecome Twenty-one."

Bricks and boards are neither shelter from wind nor shade from sun. It is only when all are fitly framed together into the strength and sweetness of spirit that they become the temple of the living God, whereinto Shekinah shall come. We talk about the universal circulation of newspapers, but sometimes it seems to me that newspapers are only an enormous expansion of village gossip. Now if a murder is committed in New York we hear of it, whereas formerly we did not know it unless it were committed in the next town. But such knowledge we could very readily dispense with. Is anything added to the worth of life by learning that Bridget McArthy has been fined five dollars and costs for breaking Ellen Maloney's windows. In the old wars, it was three weeks after a victory was gained before you heard of it; now you hear of it six months before the battle is fought, and after all it turns out to be no victory, but a masterpiece of strategy.[2] What I wish to know is this: does the constant interflow of currents really deepen and broaden the channel of life? Are women any stronger of will, firmer of purpose, broader of view, sounder of judgment, than they used to be? Can they front fortune with serener brow, unawed by her malice, unflattered by her promise, unmoved by her caprice? Are they any more independent of the circumstances of life, any more concentrated in its essence? Do they think more deeply, love more nobly, live more spiritually? Are they any more divorced from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; any more wedded to whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report?

[2] Heaven be praised that the course of events has blunted the point of this sentence.

I think we are in a transition-state. The increased facilities of labor are improvements, and we shall by and by reap the fruits of them; but we have hardly yet done so. We have lassoed our wild horse, but we have not harnessed him. He shows us wonderful freaks of strength, but he drags us quite as often as we drive him. "Sweet Puck" has been caught, and made to put his girdle round about the earth in forty minutes; in

"one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn, That ten day-laborers could not end."

But he is not yet tamed down into a trustworthy domestic drudge. If he does not actually transmute himself into a Robin Goodfellow, that bootless makes the breathless housewife churn, and the drink to bear no barm, and mislead night-wanderers, he yet annuls his work, shutting the eyes of the ten day-laborers so that they do not gain rest for his interference; his earth-girdle binds no bundle of myrrh for the well-beloved. Our great diffusion of knowledge has not given us corresponding mastery. Our knives are sharper, but we only whittle. Knowledge is poured abroad, but it is not absorbed. Yet the hour approaches. By and by, out of this wishy-washy chaos, slowly shall arise the coast-line of a new continent whereon the redeemed shall walk: meanwhile, do not let us deceive ourselves. The millennium is not yet come. We are scarcely beyond the multiplication-table of our mathematics. We are blind and blundering, and for all our skill and science, we stumble through life but little wiser than our fathers. We have the swift, clean stove-oven for the cumbrous old bake-kettle, but meanwhile we have lost the fireside, and have found no substitute; and a man's life lies not in ovens or bake-kettles, but in firesides.

This truth needs to be engraven on our brains and hearts with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond. The soul is the king and not the servant of the body. Every device, every invention, every measure, that does not subserve the interests of the soul, is worthless. Every invention that may subserve those interests, but stops short of such subserviency, stops so far short of its goal. If the cooking-range only makes that mince-pie be eaten once a day instead of once a year; if steam-power only causes that fine wheat-bread shall take the place of coarse corn-bread; if sewing-machines are going to give women more tucks to their skirts, more flounces to their gowns, more dresses to their wardrobes, and not more hours to their day, we might just as well be without the sewing-machines and the cooking-ranges and the steam-power. Is a woman any better, or any better off, for having six gowns where her mother had three? Is she not worse off? She can wear but one at a time, and she is expending brain-power and heart-power, and lifting the incidents of life into the sphere of its essentials. There are women who buy dresses, and make them, and hang them up in their closets, there to remain till the fashion changes, and the dress has to be re-made without having been once worn. O terrible emptiness of life which this signalizes! O wanton and wicked waste of priceless treasures! What shall be said in the day when God maketh inquisition? I wage no war against the aesthetics of life; but I do protest that they shall be means and not ends. Let richness drape the form, and variety crown the board, and luxury fill the house, if so be you do not wrong the king, the Master. There need be no other limitation. Wrong to one's self involves and implies all other wrong. Nothing human is foreign to any man. Nothing personal is foreign to humanity. You cannot defraud yourself of your birthright without defrauding all those to whom your birthright might bring blessings. The keenest barb of your injustice to another pierces your own breast.

But the larger number of New England families earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, and must sacrifice the one or the other,--the soul or the body. They cannot command both luxury and life; and they choose--which? Look around and answer. How many houses do you know that have no carpets on the floors, no cushions in the chairs, no paper on the walls, no silks in the wardrobes, no china in the closets, but plenty of books in the library; a harp, a piano, a violin, in one corner, an easel, a box of crayons in another; an aquarium by the window, a camp-stool in the cupboard, a fishing-rod on the shelf, a portfolio on the table; where pies and fries and cakes and preserves and pickles and puddings seldom come; where flounces and velvets and feathers and embroideries are unseen, but where the walls are adorned with drawings from the mother's own hands, with bouquets, finely selected, pressed and arranged by the daughters; with cabinets of minerals gathered, classified, and labelled by the sons; and fresh flowers from the garden, cultivated and culled by the father; where the homely fare is seasoned with Attic salt; where wit and wisdom and sprightliness and fun and heart's-ease make the simple, wholesome, and plentiful meal a fit banquet for gods; where work is work, and not simply labor; where rest is change, and not simply torpidity; where the heart is rich in love, and the head rich in lore, and intellect and affection go hand in hand; where the inmates are not the creatures of the house, but the house is the dear handiwork of the inmates; where they derive no lustre from their dwelling, but shine all through it with such sweet, soft lights, that elegance waits upon their footsteps, beauty lingers upon their brows, every spot which they tread is enchanted ground, every room which they enter is the audience-chamber of a king. On the other hand, how many houses do you know where everything is in abundance except that which alone gives abundance its value? Where moss-soft carpets and heavy curtains and gilded cornices and silver and china and sumptuous fare make a glittering pageant, but work and worry and weariness, or frivolous pleasures and frivolous interests, empty life of all its priceless possessions. How many do you know where neither wealth nor worth reigns? Where hard, grinding, pinching toil is all that the evening and the morning have to give, and everything lovely to the eye and pleasant to the soul is crushed between the upper and the nether millstones? How many young couples think they could begin housekeeping without a carpet for the parlor floor? How many think of providing that parlor with a score of the rich, ripe, mellow English classics? But to the end of the days, the authors will be a joy and strength and consolation, and the carpet will be only a dusty woollen rag. No, no; we cannot give up our trappings. Such is the poverty of our life, and we may not uncover its nakedness. We must have jewels and gold to hide our squalor and our leanness. It is tinsel or nothing. Take away our fine clothes, our fine furniture, our much eating and drinking, and what is left? True,--what is left? Vacancy and desolation. Suppose the work and worry to be suddenly abrogated to the degree that the thousands of harassed women who toil with broom or needle or dish-cloth or kneading-trough from morning till night should suddenly find on their hands four hours every day of leisure,--leisure that absolutely need be filled up by no family knitting, mending, or oversight,--would it be a boon? In many cases I greatly fear not. After the first luxury of utter rest from strenuous work, I greatly fear that that four hours would be the dullest and dreariest part of the day, and its close more gladly welcomed than its commencement. But this only shows the need, not the impossibility, of reformation. If it has come to this, that we know not what to do with ourselves, shall we go on providing toys, or shall we turn about and straightway learn self-direction? Is it so that we must fill our lives with husks, because we have fed on them so long that we have no relish for nourishing food? Have we so held in abeyance our spiritual forces that they have lost their life? Have we so given ourselves to our grosser uses, that they have usurped the throne, and shall we now make no effort to depose them and restore the rightful lord? Shall we go on forming and frocking our wax dolls, and give no heed to the marble which it is our life-work to fashion into the image and likeness of God? Better Romulus and Remus, suckled by a wolf, than our puny nurslings of conventionality! O for men and women with blood in their veins, and muscles in their bodies, and brains in their skulls,--men and women who believe in their manhood and their womanhood! who will be as valiant, as aggressive, as enduring in peace as they are showing themselves in war, who dare stand erect, who will walk their own paths, who brave solitudes, who see things and not the traditions of things, who will blow away, with one honest breath, our shabby gew-gaw finery! America was founded on the rights of man: why do we set our affections on silks and satins? Why entangle our young limbs with the fetters of an old civilization, golden though they be? Never had any nation such opportunity as ours. Here is the race-course ready, the battle-ground prepared. It needs only that we be swift and strong. There are no morasses of old prejudice to beguile our feet, no tangle of old growths to retard our progress. We have no institutions to fight against: all our institutions fight with us. No garter, no ribbon, no courtly presentation, is demanded as our stamp of rank; the badge of each man's order is set on his brow and breast. Worth needs not to have flowed down through musty ages if it would receive its meed; every man bears his seal direct from God. Humanity is more accounted of than a coat of arms. We have only to be noble, and we belong at once to the nobility. It is ourselves alone that will fail if there be failure; not opportunity. It is for us to rise to the height of the great argument. It is only that we reverence ourselves, that we esteem man as of greater mark than his meat or his raiment. Give us full and free development. Tear away these gilded fetters, and let the children of God have free course to run and be glorified. Throw off allegiance to trifles, and with the heart believe, and with the mouth make confession, and with the upright life attest: There is no God but God.