Part 6

Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going so far, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. You evidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel that he is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. The American husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now," you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the talents God gave her just as a man does, and that it is a wrong against her 'higher self' to crush down these ambitions. He realizes, too, that this separation means greater powers of usefulness for me in the future, and greater opportunities for pleasure. It will be a long and lonely time for both of us, as I shall only come home once or twice and the doctor may not be able to go over at all, though I hope he will. But the expense of my studies will of course be great, and we shall both need to economize. It is my intention to start a little conservatory after I return and take a few high-priced pupils. In that way I can reimburse our expenditure."

But can you, my dear Winifred, _reimburse your mutual losses in other ways_? You do not seem to realize what such a separation may mean. You are both young and both attractive. I know now that you are beginning to be angry at my suggestion, but, fortunately, you cannot interrupt me, and you must hear what I have to say.

Of course you are not a frivolous flirt, or a silly-headed creature with no ideals or principles. You have nothing of the adventuress in your composition, but you are a young woman, with personal charms and talents, and life will be unutterably desolate for you if you make a recluse of yourself. You will be surrounded by people of artistic temperaments and tastes, and I know, if you do not, that many of these people do lack ideals, and some of them lack principles and take pride in the fact. "Art for art's sake, life for pleasure's sake," is their motto. The entire situation will be full of danger for you. But far more danger will surround your husband. A man's temptations are always greater than a woman's. That is, there are _more_ temptations in his pathway, from the fact that he is by nature and environment less guarded and protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe. And of all men, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed to temptation. He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer of domestic secrets. Many a woman believes she is ill only because she desires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herself disturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society of her minister.

Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise his reputation or disgrace his calling readily. I hear Doctor McAllister spoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows a well-balanced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a' that," my dear Winifred.

We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine creatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from the wife he loves for months and years.

Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying and pleasure-seeking wives.

I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true--_gambling-houses and dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave town for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when crops are ripe._ I do not suppose your husband will seek the companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake of any possible attainment.

You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his comfort secondary to your ambitions.

If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not loyal to you, it would be different.

But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted marrying him.

Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband can accompany you before you go abroad to study.

The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been "abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Do not be one of them.

There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy, united married life is one.

To Mrs. Charles Gordon

_Concerning Maternity_

I have tried to imagine myself in your place, as you requested, before answering your letter.

To be the mother of two children, and to know that a third may be added before the fifth anniversary of your wedding, is for the most maternal of women a situation requiring rare patience and much philosophy.

I know that your strength is depleted, that you are nervously unstrung, and I can understand your despondent state of mind.

It seems to you that all romance and sentiment in life is being sacrificed to breeding the species. You feel that you have some personal privileges as a wife and a woman, not less than a mother.

Like yourself, I do not believe woman's only mission in life to be the production of offspring, yet I consider motherhood the highest privilege accorded her who has for it the right physical and moral qualities.

Only strong, sensible, and healthy women should become mothers, and it is a mistake for even such as they to be kept constantly in that occupation.

You possess all the requisites, and you ought to bring fine children into the world, since you married the man you loved, and have been happy with him.

But I can understand your reluctance to pass through the ordeal which modern motherhood in civilized races means, for a third time, in so short a period. But try and take another view of the situation.

Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child of a poor tallow chandler. It is altogether probable that his coming seemed a misfortune to his mother, taxed with the care of such a brood. Think what the world would have missed had he not come to earth.

Then think of this unborn child as something wonderful and divine, given to you to perfect. Believe it is to be the greatest blessing to you and to the whole world.

Cultivate love and protection in your heart for it.

Tell yourself every hour of the day that the God of love will not desert you or deprive you of strength and courage for your ordeal. That he will be ever near, and sustain and comfort you.

Desire all beautiful and good qualities to be given your child, and resolutely turn away from the contemplation of anything that is hideous, or unwholesome, or depressing.

Look for pleasing objects, read cheerful and uplifting books, and from infinite space call to you all ministering influences.

Consider how short a time, when compared to the span of human life, expectant motherhood occupies, and realize the vastness of its influence upon the nature of the child, and through that nature upon all humanity.

Once you grasp that consciousness, you will feel your closeness to the Creator of all things.

Indeed, there is no other being on earth so nearly Godlike in power as the mother who realizes what her influence over her unborn child may be.

The hard and painful path for you to walk is but a short one compared to the long roadway to eternity for your child.

Perhaps some great statesman, or some great artist, or some great scientist or philosopher is lying under your heart, and it is in your power to make or mar his development. Perhaps a Joan of Arc, or a Rosa Bonheur, or a Martha Washington will crown you with pride.

Such genius and influence for good as the world has never before known, from mortal sources, may be given to it through your unborn child. How wonderful your privilege, how vast your power!

Only a few short months, and then the growing wonder of a child's unfolding mind, to beautify your days.

Think of it in this way, dear little tired and nervous woman, and God and all his angels will hover over you, I know, and all will be well with you.

My prayers are with you.

To Mr. Alfred Duncan

_Concerning the Ministry_

And so you have changed your plan of life and, instead of becoming an experimenter with the flesh, are going to be a healer of souls.

And what do I think about it? I am glad you are not to be an M.D. There is an era coming when the doctor will be a prehistoric creature. Oh, it is far, far away, but already the most progressive minds have ceased to regard the family physician as an infallible being.

Medicine has made the least progress of any of the sciences in the last few centuries.

Credulity has cured more people than pills.

Were you to study medicine, I should advise you to take up surgery, osteopathy, electricity, the Kneippe Cure, milk diet, and all the various methods of stimulating circulation; for the people who patronize these treatments are increasing, as the powder and pill patrons are on the decrease.

Then, too, I should urge you to make a careful study of mental and spiritual methods of cure, that you might be wholly equipped for the dawn of the new age. You are a young man, and you will probably live to see a wonderful change in the treatment of disease, and to find the physician of the old school relegated to the historian.

But just as carefully you should now survey the religious horizon, before beginning your studies for the ministry.

It is utterly useless to stand with lifted eyes and say, "The faith of my parents is good enough for me--good enough for all mankind."

Had the children of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother of the opposite creed.

The narrow, intolerant old dogmas have been forced into elasticity by the later generations, and the broadening work still goes on.

It makes no difference how satisfied you may be with a prospective lake of fire for your enemies, the congregations you are to address will not listen to that style of sermon as did your grandparents.

Only the ignorant minds to-day harbour ideas of cruelty and revenge in connection with a Creator.

Thinkers find such theories inconsistent with religious belief. Individual thought is leading to individual faith.

Where once I believed in a universal church for all the world, I now believe in a separate creed for each soul, one fashioned to suit his own particular need, with the underlying basis of love for all created things as its foundation.

Let each man worship in his own way, and follow his own ideal of duty to God and humanity.

If it is the pleasure of one to give up all his worldly goods, and to go and live and labour among the poor, wish him Godspeed; but if another keeps his place among men of affairs, makes money honestly, and uses it unselfishly, let him, too, have your blessing, since he is setting a good example for the worldly-minded. If one man finds himself nearer to God on Sunday by going out and peacefully enjoying the beauties of nature and the association of his kind, do not try to convince him that he is on the highway to perdition because he does not sit in a pew and listen to depressing sermons.

The day is over for that type of clergyman to succeed.

Make a study of the needs of men _to-day_, and suit your sermons to those needs.

Men need to know more of the wonders of God's universe. Talk to them in a brief, concise, interesting manner of the recent discoveries of science, and their frequent remarkable corroboration of the old religious theories. Thousands of years ago, in Egypt and India, wise men said that metals and all created things possessed life, and were a part of one great immortal whole, of which man was the highest expression.

Science is "discovering" and proving the truth of many statements made by those old seers and savants. Call the attention of the men of to-day to this fact, and set them thinking on the wonders of the immortal soul.

The man of to-day is an egotist regarding his scientific achievements. He has grown to think of himself as a giant before whose material success all other things must give way. He believes that he has discovered, invented, photographed and made profitable all the "facts" of the universe, and is inclined to regard with intolerance any idea beyond his own mechanical domain.

Tell him how much was divined thousands of years ago, and lead him to realize the mighty depths of the unsounded ocean of his own being.

To know your own triple self, body, mind, and spirit, and to make yourself a complete man, with the body beautiful, the mind clear, the spirit radiant, is better than to have all the Bibles of the ages, in all their ancient languages, at your tongue's tip.

Help men to the building of character, which shall enable them to be honest in street and mart, unselfish in home and society, and sympathetic to their fellow pilgrims.

Salvation is gained as a house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction of that effort in the remaining six.

And each man must be his own mason, and select and lay his own bricks. All the clergyman can do is to act the part of overseer.

The man who goes to another, and expects his prayers to save him, is like the mason who expects the "boss" to do his work, while he draws the pay. Do no man's task--physical, mental, or spiritual. That is not friendship or religion. Your work is to stimulate others to do their own work, think their own thoughts, and live their own lives.

The world to-day demands facts to sustain faith.

_Spiritual facts are to be obtained_.

Find them: for once convinced of the continuation of life beyond the grave, and of the necessity to earn its privileges, by self-conquest and character-building, humanity will rise "from the lowly earth to the vaulted skies," and will realize that this earth is but the anteroom to larger spheres of usefulness.

Go forth and find--go forth and find, and do not be afraid to strike out of beaten paths and avoid ruts. Cultivate spiritual courage. It is what few clergymen possess, and it will give you individuality at least.

Preach the religion of happy harmonious homes. Make men and women realize that heaven must begin here, in order to continue farther on, and that the angelic qualities, of love, sympathy, goodness, appreciation, must be rehearsed in the body, before they can be successfully enacted in full-dress angel costume with wings.

God will not care for the eternal praises sung about his throne by a man who swears at his wife on earth, or a wife who nags her husband and children. It is no use expecting a rôle in a continuous performance of happiness in heaven, if you do not learn one line of the part on earth.

Make your congregations think of the necessity to _live_ their religion in earth's commonplace daily situations.

That is the religion the world needs.

To Mr. Charles Gray

_Concerning Polygamy_

All that you say, regarding the excitement over the seating of your Salt Lake Senator, is quite true.

I have visited your city, and have made the acquaintance of many of your people, and I know the private life of the gentleman you sent to represent you in Washington is beyond reproach.

He is a good husband, a good father, a good citizen. He was born of a polygamous father and mother, and his childhood's home was a happy one. He was educated in the belief that it was wrong for a man to cohabit with any woman not his wife, but right for him to marry many wives.

He has not married many wives, however, and does not intend to. His private life, his domestic life and his financial record are all clean and clear of stain.

So much cannot be said of many other Senators and Representatives at our capitol.

Good women are horrified when seeking government positions to find how the sacrifice of virtue is demanded as payment for influence.

These statements cannot be evaded or denied. Let one who questions them investigate the conditions existing in Washington in the past and to-day.

What a record it would be were every girl and woman who had been led into the path of folly by married Senators and Representatives to come forth and tell her story!

There are clean, decent, high-minded men in both houses. There are good citizens, good patriots, good men there.

But so long as one married seducer and misleader of women retains a seat in either house unmolested, so long as one man stays who is unfaithful to his marriage vows, the opposers of the Senator from Utah should base their objections on other than moral grounds.

But despite the facts you bring to bear on your argument, that polygamy leads to more morality in the homes of the land than our present conditions illustrate, I must disagree with you.

I am opposed to polygamy. Any social arrangement which licenses men to possess several women, to give full rein to their desires, is a block to the wheels of progress.

Not until man learns the lesson of self-control, as woman has learned it, will humanity reach its highest development.

Not until man ceases to place himself on a par with the unreasoning male animal, when he argues on the subject of the sexual relations, will he become the master of circumstance he is meant to be.

One man and one woman living sexually true to each other is the ideal domestic life. Better strive toward that ideal, and fail and strive again, than to lower it and accept license and self-indulgence as the standard, under some religious name.

Polyandry and polygamy are both evidences of a crude and half-evolved humanity.

They belong to a society which has not learned the law of self-control as a part of its religious creed and the march of progress. The light of science makes havoc of all such primitive conditions.

You tell me that your father was the husband of three wives, and that all lived under one roof in sisterly love, and that you never heard an unkind word spoken in your home, and that all three wives loved you as a son. You tell me your father held high ideals of womankind, and that the existence of a fallen woman was impossible in your community.

Now I contend that any woman who accepts less than the full loyalty of the man to whom she gives herself for life _has fallen from woman's highest estate_. She lowers not only herself, but the whole sex.

To take a third of a man's love, and to share his physical and mental and spiritual comradeship with two other wives, is far more immoral, to my thinking, than to take the whole of a man without legal authority.

It drags down and belittles woman in the eyes of man. It is useless to contend that such conditions lead to respect.

There is too much of the big male I, and the little female you, in the arrangement. There is too much of the old idea that God made man, and accident made woman, for man's use. There is too much of self-indulgence for the man, and repression for the woman,--a condition which has blocked the highest development of the race for centuries.

Meanwhile, I think it a great pity that society does not hold the expectant mother in the same reverence as in your community. That is certainly a lesson we can learn from the Mormons. And that explains why your children, born of polygamous mothers, are stronger physically, and more universally endowed mentally, than the average children in the world at large.

Mothers were guarded and protected and revered, and children were made welcome, and no such crime as darkens our own social world--the crime of destroying embryo life--was known in your midst.

It is a glorious heritage to give a child this parental love and welcome. It lasts through eternity.

But it does not seem to me that it is necessary to have polygamy prevail in order to produce right conditions for the propagation of offspring. In time the world will realize the importance of teaching men and women how to become good parents.

It will learn, too, the magnificent results to be obtained from one moral code for both sexes, and this result could never be obtained in a polygamous community.

To Walter Smeed

_Concerning Creeds and Marriage_

Before you left us, I realized that you and my pretty secretary were finding matters of mutual interest.

Therefore, I am not surprised that you are thinking seriously of her as a future companion.

Rosalie is a charming, intelligent, warm-hearted, excellent girl, and there is no reason why she would not make you a good wife, save the one you mention--the difference in your creeds.

You are a Roman Catholic, Rosalie is a devout Protestant.

Were the cases reversed, and were you the Protestant and Rosalie the Catholic, I should say the chances of happiness were greater than as conditions now stand.

As a rule, the most religious man is more liberal than the religious woman. And when marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant is the question, there is need of greater liberality on the part of the Protestant than on that of the Catholic.

Why? Because with the Protestant there is no consideration to be thought of outside of his or her own convictions and feelings.

With the Catholic, the power of the Church and the law regarding the rearing of the children in its faith walks beside the contracting party, sits at the table, and sleeps on the marital couch.

There is no happiness for the husband or wife who has entered into such a marriage, after the arrival of children, unless the laws of the Church are obeyed.

When the wife is a Catholic, the fact that she is a good woman and true wife satisfies the Protestant husband, as a rule, and he makes no objection to her carrying out the contract with her Church regarding the education of the children.

If they are as moral and good as their mother, he does not care what faith occupies their hearts or in what way they worship God.

But to the mother this is a matter of vital importance.

Woman is by nature more devout than man.

Woman is by nature more tyrannical than man.

Take those two characteristics, and add to them the tendency of many women to bigotry and intolerance, and it makes the matter of creeds vital in marriage.

Rosalie is broader-minded than many women, yet she is devoted to the Congregational Church, and rarely misses attendance.

It will be an easy matter for her to accept your faith for yourself and to allow you to attend your own church, and she is, I am sure, broad enough to go with you occasionally, if you request it.

But when she becomes a mother, and the children's minds are unfolding, I doubt her willingness to have them brought up in any faith save her own.

To an unwedded girl in love, a child is a very indistinct creature.

To a mother, it is a very real being.

I have seen men as deeply in love as you are, with women as liberal-minded as Rosalie, become very unhappy after marriage through the opposite ideas of the wife regarding the education of children.

You must remember how much more closely a mother's life is entwined about her children, and how much more of their association usually falls to her than to the father.