Part 5

It is useless for any man or woman to assert that such reportorial work is done from necessity. The blackmailer and the pickpocket have as much right to the plea, as the newspaper masked-assassin, with the concealed weapon of a pen.

If you are ever asked by any editor to do this reportorial stiletto work, let me urge you to take to professional burglary, rather than consent to write what such an employer demands.

It is far less despicable to rob houses of things of mercantile value, than to rob characters and reputations and personalities. Again, when you are sent out upon a commission to obtain an interview with any person, obtain what you seek and take nothing else away with you.

Just as you would scorn to pawn the watch of the famous actress which you may find lying on the table as you pass out, so scorn to sell any personal speech she may have carelessly dropped in your hearing which you know was not intended for publication. Petty larceny is not a noble feature of interviewing. Even though a facility for selling such dishonestly gained property to advantage be yours, do not convince yourself or be convinced that larceny should be included in your reportorial duties.

I recollect speaking with you once upon the difficulties young women encountered who attempted to win honours in a dramatic career. You felt that the necessity to cater to the ideas and wishes of inferior minds, in representing a character on the stage, would be one of the hardest phases of stage life to meet.

"To be loud and spectacular where I wanted to be refined and subtle," you said, "just to catch some rough audience and fill the house, would be insupportable. And yet I know actresses ofttimes must do that very thing, to keep a foothold in the profession."

I am wondering how you will meet what seems to me a more humiliating rôle, when you are sent out by an editor to gain an entree to some person who does not wish to be interviewed.

Will you, when refused entrance at the front door, go in at the rear and hobnob with the servants? will you spy, and watch and wait on street corners, and hide yourself in hallways, and intercept and surprise, and congratulate yourself when you have trapped your prey? That is the shameful pathway which nowadays leads to what is called "successful newspaper work."

You need to realize the facts before you enter the profession. Were you my daughter, I am certain I should feel much less concern were you to enter the theatrical field.

And yet if you choose to stand by your ideals, and retain your self-respect, you can do so, and succeed in journalism.

If you have, as you say, observation, expression, humour, and ambition, you can create a style of your own: which will not necessitate the loss of all womanly sense of decency and pride in dealing with your fellow beings. It might be well for you to cultivate and add to the list of your qualities appreciation of all that is best in human nature and worthiest of respect. If you understand the law of concentration and demand, you can obtain an entrance to the people you wish to see, through the front hall and a properly engraved card.

If that fails, a polite and frank note, stating your purpose and intimating your self-respecting ideas of your profession, may prove effective. Once establish your reputation as an interviewer who is not a highwayman in disguise, and you will achieve tenfold the success your less reputable confrères gain in the long run. Try and remember always that fame, glory, or even crime, do not destroy all human sensibilities, or render the possessor invulnerable to the thrust of a pen.

The greatest warrior who ever conquered armies has still the power to feel hurt when he sees some personal blemish or misfortune described in print.

You would never be guilty of saying to any man's face, "How hideous your harelip renders you"--and why should you go from his presence and make such a statement to the whole world concerning him? One of the most gifted men America ever claimed was driven from his native land by the cruel, bald, and heartless personalities of newspaper critics, who seemed to consider it necessary to comment on his physical infirmities whenever his genius was mentioned.

During the lifetime of one of England's great literary women, an American correspondent who had been given an interview in her home described her as possessing the "face of a horse." Surely this was agreeable reading for a gifted woman whose genius had delighted thousands!

It has sometimes seemed to me that theatrical road life with a one-night-stand company would be less brutalizing to the finer sensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than the method of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignore the fact that there is a mental as well as a physical prostitution.

Look to it that you do not trail your banner of noble womanhood in the dust, at the demand of any editor or syndicate. Keep your purity of pen, as well as your chastity of body, and believe no man who tells you that you will get on better in the world by selling either. There is room higher up.

To Nanette

_A Former Maid_

Curiously enough, my dear little Nanette, I was thinking about you, and wishing to know something of you, the very day your letter came.

Of many who have been helpers in my employ, you were one of the few who seemed to care more for me than for the wages I paid.

There was between us that ideal condition which I wish might exist between all employers and employees. You wanted the work you were fitted to do, and I wanted such work done. You were glad of the money it brought you, and I was glad to recompense you. You wanted appreciation and sympathy and consideration aside from your earnings, and I wanted a personal interest in my affairs, and a friendly wish to please me, aside from the mere work well done. You never seemed to me less womanly or less refined because you were a wage-earner, and I did not represent to you oppression or monopoly merely because I paid the money and you received it. I took you into my confidence in many ways, and you made me feel I was your friend as well as your employer. We enjoyed cosy chats, and yet you no more desired or wished to be present at my social functions than you desired me to enter into all your merrymakings and pleasures. You were, in fact, one of the most agreeable and sensible women I have ever known in any station in life. And now you write me that you are engaged to be married, and ask me to give you counsel in a very serious matter.

Together with your other excellent qualities, you have possessed economy and prudence.

At the age of twenty-five you have a tidy bank-account, the savings of eleven years. This money is increasing, year by year, and drawing a small interest.

Now comes your lover, a hard-working and sober young man, so you say, but earning only a small salary as a clerk.

He has met with some reverses, and is temporarily embarrassed. He wants you to lend him a few hundred dollars, and he will pay you the same interest you are now receiving, but you fear it would be unwomanly on your part to take this interest money. At the same time you feel a reluctance to break in upon your savings, which you had planned to use in helping establish a home. You want to befriend your lover, and you want to be wise and careful, and so you write to me, your old-time adviser, for counsel. I fear I may hurt your feelings in what I am about to say.

I have seen much of the world, and have studied humanity in many phases and in many classes.

There is one type of man I have never yet known to be strong, reliable, and trustworthy,--a man for a woman to lean upon in times of trouble and sorrow,--a man I would like to see any friend take for a life companion,--_and that is the young man who asks a loan of money from a woman he loves, or one who loves him_. Believe me, there is some lack of real moral fibre in such a man.

A husband and wife many years married, and united by common interests, may become so one in purpose and thought that a common purse would be as natural to them as a common dinner-table.

With mutual interests, planning for their future and the future of their children, there could be no talk of "My money" and "Your money" between them.

But before marriage, or immediately after, the man who begins to ask a woman for the use of her purse, should be distrusted by her. He could not broach such a subject unless he lacked a certain refined strength which makes a manly man a woman's protector by nature. Even where no sentiment exists between a man and a woman, the really strong men of the world never become borrowers from women. If through friendly interest and affection some woman compelled such a man to take a loan, he would know no rest or peace of mind until he had liquidated the debt.

When a man is a woman's lover, and asks her to advance money to him for any reason, she may as well realize at once the reed on which she will lean if she accepts him for a life companion. To deceive herself for a moment with the idea that he will be a staff of strength, is but to delay disillusion. A vital quality is left out of his character.

He is but one step removed from the man who _seeks_ a woman because she has money. And he is the most despicable of the human race.

I have known three women of different social positions to lend money to their lovers.

One man invested it and lost it, and never made an effort to reimburse the lady, who broke her engagement in consequence, after two unhappy years. Another went away owing the money, and was never again heard from. The third married the unwise woman who had loaned him her competence, and continued to look to her for support.

Therefore, my dear Nanette, I would urge you to think twice, and yet a third time, before you lend your fiancé your savings.

Tell him frankly that you will feel more respect for him if he is willing to sacrifice comfort and save from his own income enough to lift the debt he has incurred, and that you are sure he will feel less humiliated as time goes by if he is not financially in debt to you. If he were to fall ill tell him it would be your first impulse to devote your money to his care; but while he is able-bodied and well, you do not like to have him lean on you for aid.

You can judge something of the man's character by the way he receives this statement from you.

And whatever may result, even if it is the end of your engagement, do not grieve your heart away over it. Better far to have the end come now than to marry a dependent and shiftless man, who will humiliate your pride by a thousand and one mean traits. The moment a young wife becomes the financial head of a household, and the man depends upon her to keep the family free from debt, sentiment and romance fly from the windows of the heart, and poor Cupid goes away with his head under his wing. This situation might befall people long married, as I said before, without causing disaster, because the wife would have years of other experiences stored up in memory, to maintain her respect for her husband.

The natural instinct of a manly man is to be the protector and the breadwinner. He loves to shield and support the woman of his choice. If she has any talent or profession which gives her satisfaction to pursue, and which yields her an income, he will, if broad-minded and sympathetic, place no obstacle in her path so long as this vocation is no barrier to their domestic happiness. But he is sensitive to her assuming any of the financial burdens of life.

If circumstances render it necessary for her to do so, he suffers keenly, and the utmost delicacy and consideration on her part alone can save him from utter humiliation.

This is the attitude of the manly man, my dear Nanette, the man who makes the good husband and father.

The unselfish, broad-minded and considerate wife will lead a husband to think of her right to aid in the establishment and maintenance of a home when she is able to do her part. But the man who makes a good husband never suggests it as her duty, or asks her to advance money.

It is commendable in you to wish to aid in making a home. It is unmanly in your lover to ask you to help him pay his debts. Beware of the lover who asks for or accepts a loan.

To The Rev. Wilton Marsh

_Regarding His Son and Daughter_

My dear Cousin Wilton:--You have no idea how your letter took me back to my merry girlhood, when you and I resided in the same neighbourhood, and I was the concern of your precociously serious mind. Yes, indeed, I do realize what a mistake you made in living the repressed life you did all those early boyhood years. What a pity your parents reared one of your sensitive and imaginative nature in the gloomy old doctrines of a depressing religion, which so misrepresented the God of love: and how odd that your father and mine should have been born of the same parents, educated in the same schools, and yet be no more alike in beliefs or methods of life than two people of a different race and era.

And again it is not strange, when we realize that hundreds of generations lie back of both parents, and innumerable ancestors of both father and mother contribute their different mentalities to the children in a family. Back of that is the great philosophy of reincarnation--the truth of which impresses me more and more each year I live.

Do you recall your horror the first time I told you I had read a book on reincarnation, and confessed that it had made me anxious to study the theory?

You said I was a pagan and a heathen, and that I would surely be damned forever unless I turned to the way of salvation.

And do you recall your misery when I seized you one evening at your birthday party (you were twenty), and dragged you about the room in a waltz? That is, I waltzed, while you hobbled about like a lame calf, much to the amusement of most of the company.

There were more who sympathized with my views of life than with yours. You were such a wet blanket on our youthful spirits. Your ever-blazing lake of brimstone did not even serve to warm the blanket.

I have been gratified to watch your growth the last ten years.

You have so changed your point of view, which indicates your real worth and progressive good sense. And when you tell me that you have for years regretted your lost opportunities for natural and moral pleasure, and that you suffered beyond your power to describe in those old days in conquering your desire to dance and play games, it brings the tears of mingled rage and pity to my eyes. Rage at the old theology, and pity for the poor children whose lives were shadowed by it.

And now what you tell me of your son and daughter proves another of my theories true, and shows me how nature revenges its wrongs.

Children, my dear Wilton, especially the offspring of strong characters, _inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents_. They bring into action the unexhausted impulses and the ungratified desires of those parents.

The greatest singers are almost invariably the offspring of mothers or fathers who _were music hungry_, and who were given no complete gratification of this craving.

The poet, you will find, is the voice of an artistic-natured parent, who was forced to be emotionally dumb.

And the proverbial clergyman's son is merely the natural result of the same cause. He is charged with the tendencies and impulses which his father crucified.

That your son loathes study, and hates church-going, and adores a brass band and a circus, and runs away to the races, does not in the least surprise me. Nor that your sixteen-year-old daughter grows hysterical at the sound of dance music, and prefers a theatrical show in your village hall to a Sunday-school picnic, and is mad to become an actress.

_They are your own wronged and starved emotions personified, and crying out to you for justice._

The very best thing for you to do with the boy is to put him into a gymnasium and a football team as soon as possible. Offer no opposition when he wants to see a good horse-race. Urge him to go, and ask him to tell you all about it when he returns. Begin right now to get close to the heart of your children.

Once you do that, once you convince them you are near enough to their lives to understand their needs and to try and gratify their natural longings, all your worries will take wing and fly away; for your children will cease to hide and cloak their actions and natures, and they will no longer wish to deceive or attempt to defy you.

Send your daughter where she can learn dancing, in company with other refined and well-bred young people. You have so far emancipated yourself from your old superstitions and beliefs that this action on your part will not antagonize the desirable members of your congregation.

Only a remnant of the old bigots and intolerants are to be found in any congregation of intelligent people of to-day.

If that remnant is shaken out of its winding-sheet by being antagonized, you may galvanize it into life.

At all events, do not endanger the peace of your home and the happiness of your children, for fear of antagonizing a few parishioners of arrested spiritual development.

Give your son and daughter an outlet for the youthful vitality which is like steam: a moving power when used, dangerous and destructive when pent up.

Take young Wilton and Rebecca into a room, and talk the whole matter over.

Tell them how deeply you love them, and how you have just come to realize the mistake you have made in trying to eradicate from them the natural desire for wholesome pleasure instead of giving it proper avenues of expression.

Say frankly that you see your error, and that you intend to rectify it.

Ask their coöperation, and appeal to their good taste and affection not to mortify or humiliate you in your position of clergyman, by overstepping the bounds of decorum or discretion.

Lead them to talk of their ambitions and desires, and, as consistently as you can, gratify them.

Let your daughter come to me for a season. I will help to reshape and modify her ideals of enjoyment to some degree.

I am sure if she sees a few of our best spectacular plays, and hears good music, and enjoys beautiful rhythmic dancing, she will not be so carried away with the travelling show.

I will acquaint her with some of the commonplace facts concerning the lives of theatrical people, and show her the frayed tinsel and worn faces by daylight. This will do more for her than all your sermons on the dangers of a theatrical career.

The young heart is fascinated with the thought of danger and temptation.

It is repelled by the commonplace and the ugly.

When you talk to a young mind in a whisper and behind locked doors about a temptation to be avoided, you but give edge to appetite and curiosity.

When you bring the temptation out into the glare of sunlight, and speak of it in presence of the whole world, you dispel the illusion.

I will gather together some data concerning the sporting men of America, and send your son. I will also mail him the sporting papers regularly. Let him talk and read openly about the subject, and it will lose half its weird charm.

He, too, should learn to dance, swim, fence, and ride. His bounding vitality needs directing in wholesome channels. I have never understood the prejudice against dancing.

To me, it is a form of religious praise of the Creator of youth, health, vitality, and grace. I have always loved dancing, and the exercise, besides being eminently beneficial to the health and wonderfully conducive to grace is, to my thinking, highly moral in its effect. Its only danger lies in wrong associations, and these seem to threaten young people who are restricted from the enjoyment in their homes and among their rightful companions.

I cannot help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hall of fame, among the "Immortals," for having given the last century her exquisitely beautiful creations in dancing.

No woman has given us a great epic, or a great painting, or a great musical composition, but she has given us a great dance-poem, which is at the same time a painting and a song. Oh, you poor starved, blind soul, to be deprived of such beautiful spectacles. How I pity you, and how I pray you to give your children the privileges you have missed through a belittling idea of your Creator.

Do you fancy God would punish beautiful young Rebecca for dancing, any sooner than he would blight the willow-tree for waving its graceful arms to the tune the wind-harps play?

Come up out of the jungles of ignorance and bigotry, my dear cousin, and live on the hilltops and bring your children with you. For there you will all find yourself nearer to God and to humanity.

To Mrs. Charles McAllister

_Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne_

I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before you began your course of action.

You wrote me after you entered Vassar and asked me what I thought of your doing so.

You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what I thought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of good wishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and ask me to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you and the doctor.

"He did not take my view of the matter at first," you say, "but he does now. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinion before I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college before finishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to make him wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so I consented."

Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, and that you have the best husband in the world. But you have decided musical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroad to cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition has taken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of your classmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to take a two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with an accomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded.

"One never knows what the future holds," you say, "and it is the duty of every woman to make the most of herself." Both remarks are as true as they are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original in expressing herself.

But there is another duty a woman should not forget--the duty to stand by her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems the doctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad he did not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has an ailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfully seconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home.

When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season, there is something wrong with his heart.