Part 8

The first act of the toddler was to toss all the books in sight upon the floor and to sit down and turn the leaves, hunting for pictures. This performance interested him for half an hour, when he proceeded to seek new fields of action.

"But now let us have great fun putting all the books back just where we found them," cried the tactful father, with a wink and a laugh, which made the child believe he was to enjoy the sport of his life. And it _was_ made sport by the foolish pranks of the father who knew how little it took to interest a child.

The next day, and the next, the same fall and rise in the book market took place, but on the fourth day the father was too deeply engrossed in work to assist in the replacing of the books: when, lo! the small lad, after a wistful waiting and unanswered call, proceeded to put the books all back alone.

_The first important brick in the foundation wall of order was laid_.

So you can teach your little girl all the womanly habits of method, and order, and neatness, and system, if you have the patience to act the part of playmate with her a few moments daily.

As she grows in understanding and years, keep yourself at her side, her nearest friend. Let her feel that she can express her every thought to you, and that every question which presents itself to her developing mind, you will seek to answer to the best of your ability.

Be her confidant, her adviser, her friend, and let her find pride and happiness in doing things for you.

Never act as maid or domestic to your daughter.

Be the queen and make her your first lady-in-waiting, and show her the courtesy and appreciation her position demands from royalty. She will be a better daughter, and a better wife and mother, later in life, if you do not make the mistake of the average American mother of waiting upon her from the cradle to the altar. Let her grow up with the quiet understanding that you are to be first considered, in matters social and financial. Your wardrobe must be as well looked after as her own, and if there is to be economy for one, let her practise it.

The daughter who has a whole household sacrificing and toiling for her pleasures is spoiled for a wife and woman. The most admirable young women I have known--and I have known many--are those who were taught to take it as a matter of course that the mother was first to be considered, and lovingly served.

Do not be afraid of making your daughter vain by telling her the attractive features she may possess.

Some one else will if you do not, and it is well for her to hear it from lips which may more successfully offer counsel afterward. A certain confidence in her own charms gives a sensibly reared young woman a poise and self-possession which is to be desired. A touch of feminine vanity renders a woman more anxious to please, and more alert to keep always at her best.

But beware of having her acquire egotism. Silly conceit is the death-blow to higher attainments and to all charm.

Teach your daughter early the accomplishment of listening well. She will be certain to please if she understands its value.

A woman who looks the converser in the eyes, and does not allow her glance to wander and become distrait, and who does not interrupt before the recital is finished, can be sure of popularity with both men and women.

Give both your son and daughter confidence in themselves and belief in their power to achieve. There is tremendous power in the early inoculation by the home influence of self-confidence, when it is tempered by modesty and consideration for others.

Remember whatever in your own bringing up seems to-day unfortunate, and avoid it in the training of your children.

Remember whatever was good and helpful, and emulate it.

To Miss Zoe Clayborn Artist

_Concerning the Attentions of Married Men_

I am sure, my dear niece, that you are a good and pure-minded girl, and that you mean to live a life above reproach, and I fully understand your rebellion against many of the conventional forms which are incompatible with the career of a "girl bachelor," as you like to call yourself. But let us look at the subject from all sides, while you are on the threshold of life, in the morning of your career, and before you have made any more serious mistakes than the one you mention.

For it was a mistake when you accepted Mr. Gordon's telephone message to lunch alone with him at a restaurant, even though you knew his wife might not object.

Mr. and Mrs. Gordon are happily married, parents of several children. They are broader and more liberal and more unselfish than most parents, and they went out of their path to extend courtesies to you, a young country girl--at first because you were my niece, then because they liked you personally.

When I first wrote Mrs. Gordon that you were to open a studio in Chicago after your course of study in the East, she expressed deep interest in you, and seemed anxious to have you consider her as a friend--always ready to act as a chaperon or adviser when you felt the need of wiser guidance than your own impulses.

Mrs. Gordon knew that your experience of the world was limited to a country village in the West, and two years' study at the Pratt Institute. While there she knew you boarded with a cousin of your mother's, and enjoyed the association and privileges of the daughters of the home.

To start alone in Chicago, and live in your studio, and dine from a chafing-dish, and sleep in an unfolded combination bureau and refrigerator--has more fascinations to your mind than to Mrs. Gordon's. She was reared in comfort, bordering on luxury, and while her early home life was not happy, she enjoyed all the refinements and all the privileges of protected girlhood.

She knows city life as you cannot know it, and, although she discards many of the burden-some conventions of society, she realizes the necessity of observing some of its laws.

She wanted you to feel that you had the background of a wholesome home, and the protection of clean, well-behaved married friends in your exposed situation; her attitude to you is just what she would want another woman to hold toward her daughter, were she grown up and alone in a large city.

You have been her guest, and she has been your good friend. Mr. Gordon admired you from the first, and that was a new incentive for this most tactful and liberal of wives to befriend you. She always cultivates the women he likes.

This is excellent policy on the part of a wife. If the husband has any really noble qualities or possesses a sterling character, he will appreciate and respect his wife's confidence, and never violate it; and added to this, he will usually become disillusioned with the women he has admired from a distance, when he sees them frequently at too close range.

A wife can make no greater mistake than trying to fence her husband about and obtruding high walls between him and the women he admires. Far better bring them near and turn on the calcium light.

Mr. Gordon is a born lover of the fair sex, a born gallant. He is, at the same time, a clean, self-respecting man. But he has grown a trifle selfish and a bit vain of late years.

He does not fully realize what the interesting family of children he shows with such pride to his friends has meant to their mother.

It has not occurred to him that to be the mother of three children, the youngest one year old, after six years of married life, has required a greater outlay of all the mental, moral, and physical forces than has been demanded of their father.

He is a good husband,--yet he is not the absolutely unselfish and liberal and thoughtful husband that Mrs. Gordon is wife.

If she seemed to you at all nervous, or less adaptable to your moods than he, you should stop and consider the many causes which might have led to this condition.

You are young, handsome, gifted, and unconventional, and all these things appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, and more than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend your knowledge of human nature.

You say your ambition is to know the world thoroughly,--that it will aid your art.

I think that is true, if you do not pass the border-line and lose your ideals and sacrifice your principles. Once you do that, your art will lose what it can never regain.

And remember this, my dear girl, no human being ever lived or ever will live who gained anything worth having _by sacrificing the golden rule._ In your search for knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with human nature, _keep that motto ever before your soul's sight,_ "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

You say Mr. Gordon said or did nothing in that tête-à-tête luncheon his wife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirely about you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoided any reference to his wife and children, surprised you.

And now you are wondering if you did wrong to accept this invitation. Never accept invitations of any kind from married men, unless the wife or some member of the family is included.

No matter how willing the wife may be to have you enjoy her husband's company, avoid tête-à-tête situations with benedicts.

You say you are not egotistical enough to imagine Mr. Gordon had any hidden motive for wanting to be alone with you, or for seemingly forgetting in his conversation that he was a husband and father. Yet I can see that in a measure it disillusioned you.

You do not ask a man to fling his wife and children at the head of each woman he meets, but you like him to recognize their existence.

You are a young, romantic girl seeking the ideal.

You want to find happy wives and husbands,--men and women who have sailed away from the Strands of Imagination to the more beautiful land of the Real, from whose shores they beckon you, saying: "Here is happiness and great joy. Come and join us, and feel no fear in flinging the illusions of youth behind you."

If married men only knew that is what young women are seeking,--if married women only knew that is what young men are seeking, what reconstruction would take place in the deportment of husbands and wives!

Never yet did a married woman indulge in flirtatious or sentimental converse with a bachelor without lowering herself and all women in his heart of hearts.

Never yet did a married man seem to forget his domestic ties in the presence of single women without losing a portion of their respect, however they may have been flattered by his attentions.

In every man's heart, in every woman's, is this longing to find husbands and wives who are satisfied and happy and proud, above all other things, of their loyalty.

It would be well for you to keep this fact before the minds of the men you meet. You can, in a small way, do your little toward educating on this subject the married men you encounter. And you can save yourself some embarrassing experiences.

It is no compliment to you if the husband of your friend, or a stranger, falls in love with you.

It is an easy matter for a young, attractive woman to infatuate irresponsible men.

It is a far greater compliment to you when women respect and trust you, and when you help elevate the ideals of weak men regarding your sex.

You can study the whole Encyclopedia of Manhood without breaking through the glass doors of your friend's bookcases. And you can live a free, unconventional life without sacrificing one principle, though you may ignore some customs. It is not the custom in conventional society for young women to go to theatres or dinners alone with young men. Yet I am perfectly willing you should join the large army of self-supporting, self-respecting, and well educated girls who do these things. You have been reared with that American idea of independence, and with that confidence in your ability to protect your virtue and good name, which carries the vast majority of our young women safely through all the vicissitudes of youth, and sends them chaste wives to the altar. Our American men understand this attitude of our girls, and half of them respect it, without being forced to, as the other half can be, if woman so wills.

There is no reason, to my thinking, why you should not enjoy the companionship of interesting bachelors and widowers, and take the courtesies they offer, with no chaperon but your own pride, taste, and will. So long as you know, and these men know, that you are doing nothing and going nowhere you need remember with shame or regret, the next day, just so long you are on no dangerous path.

But you must draw the line at married men, happy or unhappy. Any confidential, tête-à-tête companionship of a single woman with a married man cheapens her in the eyes of all other men and women.

It is a simpler matter to drift into free and easy manners and call them "bohemian" than to cleanse your reputation of their stain, or lift your mind from the mire to which they inevitably lead.

Once a woman begins to excuse her lawless conduct on the ground of her "artistic temperament," there are no depths to which she may not sink.

Take pride in being at once independent yet discreet; artistic, yet sensible; a student of men, yet an example of high-minded womanhood; an open foe to needless conventions, yet a staunch friend of principles; daring in methods, yet irreproachable in conduct; and however adored by men, worthy of trust by all women.

Do not take the admiration of men too seriously. Waste no vitality in a rage over their weaknesses and vices. Regard them with patience and inspire them to strive for a better goal than self-indulgence.

You can safely take it for granted that many who approach you with compliments for your charms, and pleas for your favours, would make the same advances to any other attractive girl they chanced to encounter.

Too many young women mistake a habit for a grand passion. And they forget, while they are studying man, that he is studying woman, and testing her susceptibility to flattery and her readiness to believe in his simulated infatuation.

Do not fall into the error of so many young country girls in a large city, and imagine you can establish new laws, create a new order of things, and teach men new lessons.

A great city is like an ever-burning fire,--the newcomers who thrust in their fingers will be scorched and scarred, but the fire will not be changed or extinguished.

_Keep out of the fire_.

There is no reason why you should scar yourself or smoke your garments while keeping comfortably warm.

To Mr. Charles Gordon

_Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After Seven Years of Married Life_

I have read your letter with care. I can readily understand that you would not appeal to your wife's mother in this matter upon which you write me, as she has been the typical mother-in-law,--the woman who never gets along well with her children, and who never wants others to succeed where she fails. I recollect your telling me how she marred the wedding ceremony, by weeping and fainting, after having nagged her poor daughter during twenty years of life, and interfered with her friendships, through that peculiar jealousy which she misnamed "devoted love."

And now you are afraid that your wife is developing the same propensity, and you ask me to use my influence to cure her of it in its incipiency. You think I stand closer to Edna than any other friend.

"It is only during the last two or three years that Edna has shown this tendency," you say. "Until then she seemed to me the most sensible and liberal-minded of women, always admiring the people I liked, and even going out of her way to be courteous and cordial to a woman I praised. Of late she has seemed so different, and has often been sarcastic, or sulky, or hysterical, when I showed the common gallantries of a man fond of the society of ladies."

You think it is her inherited tendency cropping out, and that she is unconscious of it herself.

Well now permit me, my dear Mr. Gordon, to be very frank with you.

I met your wife only once before she married you.

She was a merry-hearted, healthy girl, with superb colour, and the figure of a young Venus. She was a belle, and much admired by many worth-while men.

During her honeymoon, she wrote me a most charming letter speaking of her happiness, and of her desire to make you an ideal wife.

You and Edna were my guests for a few days when your first child was a year old. She seemed more beautiful than ever, with an added spiritual charm, and you were the soul of devotion.

You are the type of man who pays a compliment as naturally as he breathes, and whose vision is a sensitive plate which retains an impression of every feminine grace. This impression is developed in the memory-room afterward, and framed in your conversation.

The ordinary mind calls such a man a flirt, or, in common parlance, "a jollier;" but I know you to be merely appreciative of womankind in general, while your heart is beautifully loyal to its ideal. You are a clean, wholesome man, who could not descend to intrigue. You are fine-looking, and you possess a gift in conversing.

Of course women are attracted to you. Edna was proud of this fact, and seemed to genuinely enjoy your popularity.

That was five years ago.

One year ago I visited your home. Edna was the mother of three children, born during the first five years of marriage.

She had sacrificed her bloom to her babies, and was pallid and anaemic. Her form had lost its exquisites curves, and she seemed years older than her age--older indeed than you, although she is four years your junior. It is a mere incident to be a father of three children. It is a lifetime experience to be their mother. She had developed nerves, and tears came as readily as laughter came of old.

She was devoted to her children, and felt a deep earnestness regarding her responsibility as a mother. But she was still the intensely loving wife, while you had sunk your rôle of lover-husband in that of adoring father.

You did not seem to think of Edna's delicate state of health, or notice her fading beauty. You regarded her as a faithful nurse for your children, and whenever you spoke of her it was as the mother, not as the sweetheart and wife.

When I mentioned the drain upon a woman's vitality to bring three robust children into life in five years, you said it was only a "natural function," and referred to the old-time families of ten and twelve children. Your grandmother had fourteen, you said, and was the picture of health at seventy-five.

My own grandmother gave ten children to the world. But we must recollect how different was the environment in those days.

Our grandmothers lived in the country, and knew none of the strain and excitement of these modern times. The high pressure of social and financial conditions, as we know them, the effort to live up to the modern standards, the congested city life and the expensive country life, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our women than our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of the care and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesome country fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly that they can only whirl around and around and attend "to business," and all the care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nurses and governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry to the wife.

You assured me Edna had all the assistants in caring for her children she wanted, but you did not realize that every paid employé in a household is, as a rule, just so much more care to the mistress, not less than a tax on the husband's purse and, consequently, on his time.

What Edna craves is _your_ love, _your_ attention, _your_ sympathy, not the service of paid domestics. She wants you to notice her fading bloom, and to take her in your arms and say, tenderly, "Little girl, we must get those old roses back. And we must go away for a new honeymoon, all alone, and forget every care, even if we forget the babies for a few days."

One little speech like that, one little outing like that, would do more toward driving away the demon of jealousy than all I could by a thousand sermons and homilies.

I remember at your own board you made me uncomfortable talking about my complexion, which you chose to say was "remarkable for a woman of my age." And then you proceeded to describe some wonderful beauty you had seen at the Country Club the day previous, and all the time I saw the tears hidden back under the lids of Edna's tired eyes, and a hurt look on her pale face. Do you imagine she was _jealous_ of your compliment to me? or of your praise of the girl's beauty at the Country Club?

No, no, my dear Mr. Gordon, I know Edna too well to accuse her of such petty feelings. She was only hurt at your lack of taste in accenting her own lost bloom by needlessly emphasizing another's possession of what had once been hers.

Yet she called upon the young lady that very day and invited her to luncheon, and even then you indulged in pronounced admiration of the guest's cheeks, gallantly requesting your wife to have the bouquet of carnation pinks removed from the table, as they were so shamed by the complexions of the ladies.

Of course it was gracefully worded in the plural, but your pallid wife could not claim her share of it, and you should have realized the fact. And the reason she could not was that she had sacrificed her health in your service, in giving your children to you, and in losing her lover.

She adores her splendid babies, but she is still a woman and a wife,--though you seem to ignore that she is anything but a mother.

Right about face, Mr. Gordon, and become the lover you were, and jealousy will be driven from your threshold.

It is your own lack of thoughtfulness, your own tactless and tasteless methods with your wife, which have caused the change in her manner. She is not jealous, she is only lonely, heart-hungry, disillusioned.

You are less noble, less considerate, less tender, less sympathetic than she believed. For the man to whom these adjectives can be applied will guard, love, and cherish the wife of his youth, and the mother of his children, before all other considerations; and he will understand how sensitive a fading wife may be, and not confound that sensitiveness with ignoble jealousy.

It is you, Charles Gordon, who must cure your wife of nerves, hysteria, and incipient jealousy, not I.

To Mrs. Clarence St. Claire

_Concerning Her Husband_

I am sorry that your matrimonial barque meets so many rough winds while hardly out of Honeymoon Bay.

Clarence and you seemed so deeply in love when I last saw you, six months after your wedding, that I had hoped all might go well with you.

I knew the disposition of Clarence to be tainted with jealousy, but hoped you would be able to eradicate it from his nature.

You know his poor mother suffered agonies from the infidelities of his father before Clarence was born. She had married a handsome foreigner with whom she was desperately enamoured, while he cared only for the fortune she brought him.

While still in the full light of the honeymoon he began to indulge in flirtations and amours, and poor Clarence, during the important prenatal period of life, received the mark of suspicion and the tendency to hypersensitiveness which then dominated the mother.

By the time Elise was born she had passed through the whole process, and was passive and indifferent.

I cannot help a sensation of amusement, even in face of the condition you describe (which is little short of tragic), as I recall the letter Clarence wrote begging me to try and prevent, by fair means or foul, his sister's marriage to old Mr. Volney.

That was two years before you and Clarence were married.

Elise, we all know, wedded for the money and position Mr. Volney gave, in return for her young beauty.