Part 10

There is nothing new under the sun, but there is always the new audience. For the majestic old poem of Spring, bound over in new covers of green, God creates fresh, eager young eyes and hearts each year. And not yet has he said to the year, "Do not attempt another spring--there have been so many before, you can but repeat their beauties." Then why should any mortal say to the poet or the author, "Do not try to write--it has all been said before."

Proceed, my young friend, and write what is in your heart. Nothing quite the same was ever in any heart before, and yet the greater part of it has been in all hearts, and will be in all hearts, so long as the world lasts.

Remember that when you write from the heart, it will go to the hearts of your readers: and when you write from your head it will go no lower than the head.

And if the critics score or ridicule you, consider yourself on the path to success.

If you have a message for the world, nothing and nobody can prevent you from delivering it.

He only fails who has nothing to say.

To Mrs. McAllister

_Concerning Her Little Girl_

How strange it seems that your daughter is ten years old.

It is such a brief hour since you wrote me you were eighteen and had entered Vassar. Having no children of my own to stand as milestones on life's highway, and keeping a very young heart in my breast all these years, it seems at times little less than impertinent in the children I have known to develop so rapidly into matrons and fathers.

I am glad for you that the doctor has reached the desirable goal where he can rest from his laborious profession for two years, and take that journey abroad you have so long contemplated. And I am glad that you feel the satisfaction you say you do, in never having left him alone for a whole season as you once thought of doing.

A satisfied conscience is a better comrade to journey along beside, than a remembered pleasure.

But now about Genevieve.

You tell me she is to be left with your sister, and that she will, for the first time, attend the public school.

You are right in thinking this will make her more American in spirit than an education gained through home teaching or private schools.

The girl who attends private schools only, is almost invariably inoculated with the serum of aristocracy.

She believes herself a little higher order of being than the children who attend public schools, and it requires continual association with people of broad common sense to counteract this influence. I know you and the doctor have exerted this influence, but your sister might not realize the necessity of making a special effort in that direction.

Then, too, since the fathers or grandfathers of our most conspicuous social leaders were self-made and self-taught, and since our American society is composed of so many varied types of humanity, it is well for a young girl to come in contact with all classes while she is yet a child, that she may understand humanity as she is sure to encounter it later. Yet, as you say, it is indeed a serious thought to know your little rosebud of a child is to be tossed into the dust of the public schoolroom.

"I do not want the delicate leaves forced into premature blossom or blight," you say, and I feel for you, as I read the words.

You remember your own experience as a school-child in the country, and you tell me you would fain guard your daughter from hearing or seeing much that came to your ears and eyes as a school-child.

But now, my dear Winifred, listen.

It is utterly and absolutely impossible for you to keep Genevieve ignorant of _life_, or of the great fundamental principles of life. It is utterly useless to undertake to ignore the set impulse in all nature. Since God did not ignore it in constructing the universe, parents cannot afford to in educating children. The one thing to do is to teach your child early to respect and revere the subject, and to regard all things pertaining to birth as sacred, never to be lightly discussed. Wherever the eyes of an observing child turn, they see something to arouse curiosity upon this subject.

All literature (the Bible particularly) contains some reference to sex and birth. Unless you stuff the ears of children with cotton, they must hear expressions, suggestions, and references, which necessitate explanations of the same vital subject. From insects to man, through all the various kingdoms, sex laws are the foundation of life.

Why parents have chosen to taboo this important subject, and why they surround it with falsehood and subterfuge, and suggest that it is unclean or vulgar, has always puzzled me.

Inconceivable harm, lifelong disaster, has befallen many a girl and many a boy through this mistaken attitude of parents to God's basic law of the universe.

Genevieve is only ten. But she is a child with a most inquiring mind, and she already indicates a tendency to coquetry. She prefers boys to dolls, and evidently finds them more interesting than girls.

The things you would guard her from knowing, she is sure to learn in some undesirable and unfortunate manner, unless you prepare her for them with loving delicacy and refinement.

My suggestion is that you take a plant, and talk to her about its growth. Tell her how it springs from a seed, and hides in the bosom of the earth, expanding until it bursts through, and becomes the baby of mother earth.

Tell her, too, of the bird life in the egg, and make her realize the mother-impulse in all nature. Then say to her that she is a part of it all and that she came into life by the same divine law, and that when she is older you will explain whatever puzzles her young mind.

Tell her that she was carried under your heart, as the sprout was carried in the bosom of mother earth, and that it is a very holy and beautiful thing; so holy and so beautiful that the refined and sweet people of the world do not talk freely of the subject, but keep it like a religion, for those very near to them.

Then say, You will hear other children, who have not been told this by their mothers, speak rudely and even jest on this subject. They are to be pitied, for not knowing such jests are vulgar, but you must walk away from them, and refuse to listen, after telling them your mother has explained all you need to know. Impress upon her that she is never to discuss the topic with any one else, unless you advise her to do so.

I have known only two mothers who took this method with their children, but both succeeded in rearing beautiful and remarkable daughters and sons. For the sons were included in the talk by one mother, and they were ideal boys and gentlemen--popular with, and respected by their comrades, in spite of their delicacy and reserve on subjects jested over by other boys.

I am sure that you can protect Genevieve from the soil and shock you fear for her, by making her your confidante at this early age, and by convincing her of your loving companionship in the future. Under no other conditions would I for one day allow a little girl (or a little boy for that matter) to attend a public school. Not one parent in a thousand realizes the moral dangers surrounding small children who go to and from school in country or city places.

Many remember their own precocious education on forbidden topics, yet seem to imagine their children will be immune from such experiences.

But until the Creator produces life by some new process, children will never be exempt from curiosity regarding the present method, and parents may as well realize the fact and become their children's reverent instructors, instead of leaving them to be taught God's holiest truths by vulgar chance or dreadful design.

Do not imagine that innocence necessitates ignorance.

Your child will be far more innocent minded, if you give her the instruction I suggest, than if you leave her to ungoverned imagination and unenlightened observation.

Deep in each human entity the sex impulse is planted, and will assert itself sooner or later.

Ignorance and curiosity lead often to precocious development of the impulse. By proper care on your part, your child's mind may be kept normal, innocent, and wholesome.

See to it that you give this important care before you leave.

To Mr. Ray Gilbert

_Attorney at Law, Aged Thirty_

My dear Mr. Gilbert:--Your letter followed me across the ocean, and chanced to be the first one opened and read in my weighty home mail to-day. I have lost all trace of you during the last six years, in that wonderful way people can lose sight of one another in a large city. Once or twice I heard you had just left some social function as I arrived, or was expected just as I was leaving, and once, recently, I saw you across the house at a first night, with a very pretty girl at your side. I fancy this is the "one woman in the world for you," of whom you speak in the letter before me--the letter written the evening before your marriage. How good you are to carry out my request made seven years ago, and to write me this beautiful letter, after reading over and burning your former boyish epistle, returning to me my reply.

It is every man's duty to himself, his bride, and the other woman, to destroy all evidences of past infatuations and affections, before he enters the new life. It is every woman's duty to do the same--_with a reservation_. Since men demand so much more of a wife than a wife demands of a husband, a woman is wise to retain any proof in her possession that some man has been an honourable suitor for her hand. She should make no use of such evidence, unless the unaccepted lover indulges in disrespectful comments or revengeful libels, as some men are inclined to when the fruit for which they reached is picked by another hand.

And it is when the grapes are called sour that the evidence may prove effective of their having been thought sweet and desirable.

It is a curious fact that no woman thinks less of a man for his having had his vain infatuations, and that all men think less of a woman if she has loved without response.

Therefore, it behoves her to destroy no evidence that the other man, not herself, was the discarded party.

But woe unto the man who retains old love-letters, or other tokens of dead loves and perished desires.

Few men could be guilty of showing or repeating the contents of another man's love-letters. Women who are models of virtue and goodness have been known to make public the letters written a man in earlier years by another object of his affections. I have to my personal knowledge known a woman to place before the eyes of a third person, lines written evidently in the very heart's blood of a former sweetheart of her husband--words the man believed he had destroyed with other letters, more than a score of years before. Imagine what the feelings of that early sweetheart, now a happy and beloved wife, would be, did she know the words written so long ago were spread before cold and critical eyes, and discussed by two people who could have no comprehension of the conditions and circumstances which led to their expression.

Because I know otherwise tender-hearted and good women are capable of such acts, I am glad you have obeyed my wish of seven years ago, and that all proofs of your boyish infatuation for an older woman are destroyed. You say you have told the girl you love that you once were foolishly fond of me, and that I helped you to higher ideals of womanhood and life.

That is wise and well, since you found her to be broad and sensible enough to share such a confidence. But had she seen your written words to me and my reply, it would have been less agreeable to her than to hear your own calm recital of the now dead passion.

Words written in a state of high-wrought intensity retain a sort of phosphoric luminosity, like certain decaying substances, and even after the passage of years, and when the emotions which gave them expression are dead and for-gotten, they seem to emit life and feeling.

_Burn your bridges as you walk along the highways of romance to St. Benedict's land_.

Since you compliment me by saying I have helped you to higher ideals of life, will you allow me to give you a little advice regarding your treatment of your wife?

You have every reason to know that I have been a happy and well-loved wife of the man of my choice. You know that I have neither sought nor accepted the attentions of other men when they crossed the danger-line lying between friendship and love.

Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time you temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young and talented man with so sincere a feeling.

A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult, since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtation with a married woman means. But your ingenuousness, and your romantic, boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, and made me lenient toward you.

My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment of feminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it led me to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman's weakness and folly.

As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misused wife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for the recognition of an affinity.

Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, how acceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me.

And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning that we were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions.

There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man's unruly love for her, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard a lawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, and neglected, and hungry for affection.

See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs no romance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment.

Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget to pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover.

Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures and interests when it is possible.

Not that you should always be together, for separate enjoyments and occupations sometimes lend an added zest to life for husband and wife, but do not drift apart in all your ideas and interests, as have so many married people.

You are the husband of a bright and lovely girl, and if you forget this fact after a time, remember there are other Ray Gilberts who may realize it, and seek to awaken such an interest in her heart as you sought to arouse in mine.

You found the room occupied by its rightful host.

See it that no man finds the room vacant in your wife's heart.

Study the art of keeping your wife interested and interesting.

A woman thrives on love and appreciation. I know a beautiful bride of eighty years, who has been the daily adoration of her husband for more than half a century.

She has been "infinite in her variety," and he has never failed to appreciate and admire.

Devote a portion of each day to talking to your wife about herself.

Then she will not find it a novelty when other men attempt the same method of entertainment.

Whatever other matters engross your time and attention, let your wife realize that she stands first and foremost in your thoughts and in your heart.

Do not forget the delicacies of life, manner, speech, and deportment in the intimacy of daily companionship.

Never descend to the vulgar or the commonplace.

One characteristic of men has always puzzled me. No matter how wide has been a bachelor's experience with the wives and daughters of other men, when he marries it never occurs to him that his wife or daughters could meet temptation or know human weakness.

It must be the egotism of the sex.

Each man excuses the susceptibility of the women with whom he has had romantic episodes, on the ground of his especial power or charm. And when he marries, he believes his society renders all the women of his family immune from other attractions.

Do not rely upon the fact that your wife is legally bound to you, and therefore need not be wooed by you hereafter.

There are women who are born anew with each dawn, and who must be won anew with each day, or the lover loses some precious quality than can never be regained.

It will pay you to study your wife as the years pass.

Do not take for granted that you know her to-day, because you knew her thoroughly last year.

This is a long letter, but when one writes only once in seven years, brevity is not to be expected.

My greeting to you, and may the years be weaver's hands, which shall interlace and bind two lives into one complete pattern.

To the Sister of a Great Beauty

I am far from laughing, my dear girl, at your assertion that your position is little short of tragic.

To be the ordinary sister of an extraordinary beauty, is a position which calls for the exercise of all the great virtues in order to be borne with dignity, good taste, and serenity.

I remember seeing you and Pansy when you were ten and she twelve years of age. I foresaw what lay before you then, and have often wondered how you would meet the occasion when you were both "finished," and at home under the same roof, and socially launched. It was wise for your mother to separate you so early in life, and place you under different teachers, and in different schools.

It is difficult for a girl in her late childhood and early teens to use philosophy and religion to support her, when she is made a Cinderella by unthinking associates and friends, and forgotten and neglected while a more attractive sister is lionized.

Had you always walked in the shadow of your handsome sister until to-day, I fancy your disposition would have become warped with resentment and envy.

And perhaps your feelings for Pansy would have been less affectionate than now.

I am glad to have you tell me that Pansy is so modest and unassuming and so genuinely solicitous for your happiness.

She must have been particularly fortunate in her environment while at school to possess such qualities after knowing as she has known for twenty-two years that her beauty is dazzling to the eye of even the chance beholder.

There is no greater obstacle to the development of the best qualities in a young woman than the possession of such unusual beauty. From her cradle she is made to realize its power, and men and women teach her in a thousand unconscious ways to be selfish and self-centred. She receives attentions, and her acquaintance is sought, with no effort on her part, while more gifted and deserving companions are unnoticed. She is made to realize that she is one to be served, where less attractive girls are taught to "stand and wait."

The love nature of each human being is either developed or stunted by neglect during the early years of life, and, as a rule, the beautiful woman is incapable of a deep, absorbing, and unselfish love, because she has grown up the receiver instead of the giver.

Were you, my dear Sallie, to know the number of great beauties who have failed to find happiness in marriage, you would be amazed. But the explanation is simple; for man is a being who, however he may worship beauty before marriage, worships his own comfort more deeply afterward. And it is rare indeed when a famous beauty troubles herself to plan for the comfort or happiness of the man she marries. It is the natural result of her education to think man made to adore and serve her.

I hope Pansy may keep her loving and lovable qualities, and that she may marry before the adoration and admiration of many men become necessary to her life. For the beauties' matrimonial barque most often founders on the reef of plural lovers.

As for yourself, I can only suggest that you acquire many accomplishments, and perfect yourself in music and languages, and that you seek for the attainment of all the subtle graces, which are, in the long run, more lasting as sources of happiness for a woman than mere beauty. It is a peculiarly significant fact that the great passions of history have not been inspired by very young or startlingly beautiful women, but by those of maturity and mental charms.

Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Aspasia, Petrarch's Laura, had all crossed the line between youth and middle life, and there are no authentic proofs that any one of the number was a dazzling beauty. Some of the world's most alluring women have been absolutely plain.

You are not plain. It is only by comparison that you so regard yourself.

There is much you can do to make yourself more attractive personally. You know what Rochefoucauld said: "No woman is in fault for not being beautiful at sixteen; any woman is in fault if she is not beautiful at forty."

However much it may sound like a platitude, it is a great and eternal truth that your mental activities are chiselling your features. By keeping yourself concerned with good, gracious, and great thoughts, you are shaping your face into a noble beauty minute by minute, and hour by hour.

Avoid as much as possible looking at repulsive and ugly objects.

Look at whatever is beautiful and seek for it.

Search for whatever is admirable in nature and human nature, and muse upon those things in your moments of solitude.

Cultivate love-thoughts for humanity at large.

Avoid severe criticisms, and develop sympathy and pity in your soul. Study the comfort and pleasure of strangers in public places, and friends and associates in nearer relations.

Remember always how brief a thing, and ofttimes sad, life is to many, and seek to brighten and better it as you pass along.

Meanwhile, take care of your person, study your lines and your features, and learn how to dress and how to carry yourself; how to obtain "presence," that indescribable charm in woman.

Take daily care of your complexion, which to a woman is of prime importance.

Call in the skill of the specialist to help you preserve and beautify your skin and hair, just as the dentist and the oculist are to be consulted to help you preserve teeth and eyes. Think beauty for mind, soul, and body; live it, and believe it is your right.

And just as surely as you pursue this line of conduct for ten years, just so surely will you find yourself at thirty far more attractive than at twenty, and at forty more lovely than at thirty. Learn to be a linguist, and acquire skill upon some one instrument, that you may entertain those who care to converse, and give pleasure to those who wish to be silent.

You are young, and life with its splendid possibilities is before you. There is nothing a woman with youth, will-power, and _love_ may not accomplish--even to the convincing of the world that she is beautiful, when her mirror may say otherwise.

For enduring and all-encompassing beauty is a composite thing, and unless a woman possesses the spiritual and mental portions, the physical phase soon loses its attractions for the cultivated eye; while with the development of the first two, the third is certain to come.

Begin to-day, my dear girl, to _grow beauty_ which shall make you a power and an influence in the world where you move, and which shall invite, rather than fear, the approach of time.

To Mrs. White Peak

_One of the Pillars of Respectable Society_

Ever since your call and our conversation regarding Sybyl Marchmont, I have felt a rising tide of indignation. It has reached the perigee mark and must overflow. If it reaches you and gives you a thorough soaking, I shall feel satisfied.

I have always known you were only half-developed. There are many such people in the world. They serve their purpose and often do much good. They miss a great deal of life, but as they rarely know that they miss anything, it is a waste of sentiment to pity them.