Chapter 7

Then she had traveled! She had begun to teach in her own village when she was eighteen, and every summer she had spent a little of her salary in some interesting trip. As a teacher, she had taken advantage of excursion rates to the great National Teachers' Institutes. In this way she had visited most sections of the United States. And she had planned her trips so thoughtfully that she had been alive to everything which was to be seen. Once she had even taken the accumulations of several years and spent her summer abroad. The sisters looked scornful at this. How could anybody see anything worth seeing with an excursion party? Yet they had to own that what we see depends on the eyes we have as much as on our surroundings. She could not see everything in three months, but she knew what she wanted to see, and she had thoroughly assimilated that by much thought about it before and after the journey.

She had once spent six weeks at a summer school of languages, and had devoted herself so energetically to German that she had been able to go on reading it by herself, and thus in a few years she had become familiar with some of the masterpieces of its literature. But the sisters were most astonished when they found her reading Italian one day--Dante, too, which was too hard for them. The explanation of this was that for some years the Catholic priest in her native village had been a good-natured Tuscan who had been glad to exchange Italian for English with her.

You see, she had had no regular education and no money but what she earned, yet by choosing the best within reach at all times she had become as cultivated as her sisters-in-law who had had every opportunity.

All women are not so fond of study; but they may be cultivated, nevertheless. The finest manners I have ever seen belong to a woman who has lived all her life in the house where she was born in a little town in New England. She never went away to school, and has not the student temperament, though she is gifted in every direction. She has a love of beauty which has led her to make everything beautiful around her. She has had little musical training, yet her playing and singing have always had the indefinable musical quality. She has read a good deal, especially of the best novels and poetry, but "All for love and nothing for reward." She has traveled from time to time a little when she could spare the money, but always for pleasure and not to improve her mind.

She has had no artistic training, but with meagre materials she arranges tableaux which are famed throughout the county, and on every public occasion in the village she decorates the Town Hall exquisitely. She has added wonderfully to the happiness of the place by always following her love of beauty, making everything she touches beautiful without any pretense or even any consciousness of having a mission.

So women may be cultivated in the country as well as in the city. But some one may say that the hard workers have no time for culture. It does seem to be true that hard workers need to use more sagacity than others not to let their work crowd out everything else. They have one advantage. Nobody can be really cultivated without learning some one thing thoroughly. This their work compels workers to do. And the building is more important than its decoration, though without the decoration it may be a sombre structure.

Now, hard workers obviously cannot study French and German and Italian and music and art, at least all at once, and if they try and so crowd out all their little leisure, they miss the better culture which is within their reach. What must you who are hard workers take time to do?

1. Take a little time to think. Especially try to judge fairly in every-day matters. Culture, demands balance of mind; but is not that as good when it comes from thought as from study? If the subject in hand is one of which you do not know enough to judge, study it, if you have time. If not, suspend your judgment. That will show true culture. For instance, do not be a violent partisan either for or against the tariff unless you have carefully examined the arguments on both sides. Few perhaps have time to do that. You will still have an opinion. The few arguments you have studied all point in one direction. The people you trust most believe in one measure. Very well, keep your opinion. If you were a voter you might even vote in the way you believe to be best; but do not allow yourself to be violent or to denounce everybody whose judgment differs from yours.

2. Try to be enough at leisure to observe little courtesies. Hard workers are in danger of being irritable and hurried and careless of the trifles which add so much to the beauty and dignity of life. Of course my injunction includes some social life. We get much of our best intellectual as well as moral life from contact with others.

3. Keep open every avenue to beauty. You have no time to study, but read a few beautiful and noble sentences every day. You have no time to practice music; then it is doubly necessary to hear all you can and the best that you can. And you can always look at beauty. There is always a strip of blue sky with its stars at night. And there are few who could not see a beautiful sunset almost every day in the year if they made it a happy duty to look at it. I have often thought that any one who would persist in seeing this one vision every day would be lifted up above most of the turmoil of life.

VIII.

THE ESSENTIALS OF A LADY.

Within the last twenty-five years the wish to be considered a lady has spread so among all classes of American women as to have become almost ridiculous, as in the authentic case of the individual who presented herself at the front door of a fine house, and describing herself as an ash-_lady_, inquired for the _woman_ of the house. It has been so often repeated that: "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," and that "A man's a man for a' that," that all the ash-ladies and wash-ladies of the land have hastily concluded that the term "lady" stands for nothing substantial.

I will not say that a washer-woman may not be a lady. It is certainly possible for her to have all the essentials of a lady. But such a case is so rare that I think we are justified in taking the contrary for granted till we have proof of the fact. Not there are washer-women so truthful, unselfish, and noble in character that they are far superior as women to many whom we may fairly call ladies. Such women usually have self-respect enough to understand that they lose rather than gain dignity in claiming to be anything they are not. The essential point in life is not the being considered a lady. It is not even to be a lady, though that is a beautiful thing. A woman is like a vigorous plant, with strong roots firmly fixed in the soil and abundant fresh green leaves. A lady is such a plant crowned by a beautiful blossom. You have sometimes seen a plant, a geranium, for instance, which had lost all its leaves, and yet bore at the top of its crooked stem a cluster of flowers. Such flowers are not very beautiful. The thrifty plant without a blossom is more beautiful. Of course my moral is this, that while the term "lady" does mean something different from "woman," it is only as a crown of womanhood that it is really significant.

Every girl should try to be a lady, however, and every girl who sincerely tries will have some measure of success. I remember when I was a girl, I once said to a high-bred woman, "Do you think, after all, that Mrs. A. is much of a lady?" She replied so firmly as to crush me for the time, "One is either a lady or she is not a lady." I supposed she was right, and that there were no stages on the perilous upward path which led to being a lady. I have changed my mind now. I think each of us may have some virtues without having all the virtues. I think with Emerson that in a society of gentlemen and ladies we shall find no complete gentleman and no complete lady; and so I say that every girl who tries to be a lady will have some measure of success. I do not mean that she should try to be recognized as a lady. If she is one she will probably, but not certainly, be so recognized. In a small community, where she can be known personally, she will be sure of her place, but not in a large town.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking in England, said something to this effect: "You think we have no classes in America because we have no titles to distinguish them. But a barbed wire fence is as effectual in keeping out intruders as one of boards, though you can see the boards and the barbed wire is invisible."

Why is a barbed wire fence put up in America? Because there is a real difference between coarse people and refined people, even when both have the best intentions. To be sure there are other less valid reasons. There are coarse people whom accident has put among the higher classes, who make themselves ridiculous by putting up a fence between themselves and poorer people even when the poor are refined. Nevertheless, there is a true basis for distinction of classes. Only the distinction is not as sharp as many would have it. The highly refined and the very coarse have so little in common that they can never associate with comfort. But the highly refined do not need barbed wire between themselves and those with one degree less of cultivation. We can always reach one hand to those below us, and if we reach the other to those above us, we shall be able to lift the lower to our plane instead of sinking to theirs. Such a chain of love, reaching from the lowest to the highest, is the ideal society, and the highest man does not need to lift all his fellows up by his unaided strength, because there is infinite help above him.

But in the unideal present most of us will sometimes be called upon to stand outside the charmed circle of barbed wire which incloses more fortunate mortals, in spite of all we can do for ourselves. We may be better women than those within the circle, we may be better-educated, more careful in our habits, and our manners may be finer, and yet we may not have the magic word which would admit us. There is no doubt, for instance, that blood and breeding do tell powerfully in refinement. I can think of half a dozen women, however, of no birth at all in the ordinary sense, and of no home education, who have blossomed into the loveliest and most refined of women. In one case, the ancestors had for generations been earnestly religious, so that the girl was really of noble birth and predestined to refinement, though she had nothing to help her in the world's estimation. But some of the girls came from wretched homes, some of them did not even have good mothers, and one was the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl. But they all had aspiration and intellect, and their refinement was not only wonderful under the circumstances, but wonderful under any circumstances. They were suitable associates for the most exclusive ladies in our cities so far as genuine refinement goes, only as their experience of life was much wider than that of these carefully guarded dames, perhaps they would not have assimilated very well with them after all.

Of course, the exclusive circles are suspicious of women whose antecedents are like these, and perhaps they have a right to be suspicious, because these girls were certainly exceptions to the rule. At all events, none of us can help ourselves by grasping at a position. We may, to be sure, get invitations sometimes if we are vulgar enough to ask for them, but we shall find the barbed wire fence even in the drawing-room to which we have been admitted. We must be content to stand outside every circle till we are invited to enter it, and our self-respect must heal our wounded pride.

One thing, however, we can do. We can quietly resist being patronized. We are not often called upon to accept favors from those who are not our superiors but who condescend to us because we are poor or obscure. It is true we must be humble, and we need not resent such favors, but we must beware of being flattered by the notice of any one who is simply rich or powerful. When we recognize true superiority either in the rich or the poor, we ought to be glad to acknowledge it. We can accept a favor from those who are really above us, though we know we cannot return it. And we can always be ready to do our best work for others whether they slight us or not. That does not show a mean but a noble spirit.

What are the essentials of a lady?

A knowledge of the manners of the world is generally considered necessary if one would be a lady. Even where customs themselves are trivial, ignorance of them makes a woman awkward and self-conscious, so that she does not have the grace we associate with a perfect lady. Etiquette is superficial, it is true, but it has a genuine value. The manners which belong instinctively to a woman of kindness and refinement are a far better test of her real rank.

I think, on the whole, a lady is most quickly recognized by her purity. Even a pure enunciation is a sign of a lady, for it gives a certain beauty of speech rarely heard except among those not only carefully educated, but brought up among those who have the same habits. And nobody is quite willing to pronounce any one a lady who is not exquisitely neat in her personal habits. These, to be sure, are only an outward and visible sign, but they point clearly to something within. Somebody is sure to remember a class of New England housekeepers who spend all their time scrubbing floors and have no spirit left for anything else, and ask if they have the visible stamp of a lady. The idea of neatness is so distorted in them that we cannot admire it very much, yet perhaps it is their one connecting link with refinement. Such women, however, are, curiously enough, seldom particularly neat in their personal habits. Their dress is often untidy, their hair uncombed, they are careless about bathing, and their teeth are neglected. Personal neatness is far more characteristic of a lady than neatness of surroundings, and cleanliness is better than order. The lover of "Shirley" says, "I have often seen her with a torn sleeve, but the arm beneath it was white."

Somebody else will say that neatness is, after all, a luxury beyond the means of poor people. How can you be clean when you do dirty work? It takes either time or money. I know a wealthy lady who used to be poor, who says that for years she could never afford as much washing as she thought indispensable, and she was too much of an invalid to do her own washing. Nevertheless, she was always a lady and always looked like one, though her dresses were sometimes absurdly old-fashioned. I should say that her love of neatness was so strong that she sacrificed less important things to it, and always did reach a high standard, though not the standard of luxury.

I know a gentleman whose lot has been to do the heaviest and dirtiest work on a ranch for years, and yet his hands to the tips of his fingernails look as if he had just come from a manicure's. I suppose he has been determined that his hands should be clean and has been willing to take the trouble to keep them so. Still, we ought to make some allowance for poverty in our estimate of neatness. "Why are you building an addition to your house?" asked one lady of another. "Oh, for Mr. B.'s tooth-brushes," replied Mrs. B, carelessly. "When a man has been brought up as Mr. B. has been, his tooth-brushes take up a great deal of room."

I have said all this of outward purity, because it is easier to speak of this, but it is still more the purity of mind and character which distinguishes a lady. In some classes of society even in America girls are kept almost isolated chiefly to preserve their purity of thought. Purity, even the purity of ignorance, is beautiful, but such purity has not deep foundations, and I cannot think that girls are best guarded in this way. Nevertheless, purity is so essential to a lady that such girls will always be counted as ladies.

The love of beauty is characteristic of a real lady. This is recognized in some measure. Girls are taught dancing and music and something of art. They listen to good music even if they are not musicians, and they look at good pictures if they cannot paint them. This is partly a matter of fashion, but it has a genuine root. And so with the beauty of dress, and of the home. Both these ought to be beautiful, but as few women are artistic enough to design anything, they follow the fashion. In this way they escape criticism from their companions who are like them. But the moment ugly dress or furniture is out of fashion its ugliness is apparent. I suppose most of us must be content to be tyrannized over more or less by fashion, or by fashion and poverty combined, till we develop greater genius in working out the problem of how to make our surroundings beautiful. I would simply suggest that we should resist fashions we know to be hideous, and try to follow those which commend themselves to our sense of beauty.

The two forms of beauty which are free to all of us are, I think, most neglected, and more neglected among those who are surest of their title as ladies than among those of more modest pretensions. These are poetry and nature. To read beautiful poems constantly and to learn them by heart, and to look out day by day on the glory of the world--these things give higher refinement than can be won by anything else merely intellectual. And such a love of beauty usually has deep springs in the moral nature.

Education has so much to do with refinement that we expect a lady to be educated as a matter of course, at least in some directions, mathematics and science being thus far not included. George Eliot says of Nancy in "Silas Marner," that she often used ungrammatical language, and was not highly educated, but that she was a thorough lady because she had delicate personal habits and high rectitude.

This brings us to the deep foundations. A lady must be truthful. And the outward marks of truthfulness are sometimes recognized when their source is misunderstood. The lady wears real lace instead of a showy imitation. If she cannot afford what is real, she goes without. She is as careful about neat underclothing as neat dress. She does not pretend to accomplishments she has not. Indeed, the modesty essential to a lady is intimately connected with truthfulness. When she is wrong she does not think it beneath her dignity to own it. She never allows blame which belongs to her to fall on any one else. She makes no display. She wishes to be loved for herself and not because she belongs to the "best set," so she does not take pains to introduce the names of great acquaintances into her conversation. And of course she always tells the truth. She may observe all these things simply because it is good form, but a truthful woman will observe them without knowing they are good form, and she will be the real lady.

But one may have all the qualities we have enumerated and yet miss the charm we associate with the name "lady." A truthful person may not be kind. A woman may love beauty and still be hard. A perfectly pure woman may be unfeeling, perhaps all the more because she needs no charity herself. But a woman who does not show consideration for others cannot be an ideal lady. If she is considerate in a mechanical way, because she knows a lady must be so, it does not amount to much. And some women do all they can for others from a sense of duty. They study to make others happy in even trivial ways. They are good women, and on the whole--ladies. But the woman whose love for others is spontaneous, who sheds the radiance of kindness about her because she cannot help it--she is the lovely lady whose charm we all feel. Truth and love are the eternal foundations of the character of a real lady.

IX

THE PROBLEM OF CHARITY.

I suppose every large-hearted girl wishes to do some work which will add to the happiness of others, and most girls would like to do a little, at least, outside of their own immediate circle. It seems to me that the most beautiful charity is always that which is done within one's own circle. There is the personal giving, the real denial of ourselves for others, the doing of the duties which come to us rather than of those we have fancifully chosen. And these duties are done for love.

Do you remember how Mrs. Pardiggle in "Bleak House" tried to interest Esther and Ada in some great schemes for doing good by wholesale, and how Esther modestly answered that they hardly felt equal to such great things, but that they hoped if they were careful to do all they could for those immediately about them their circle would gradually widen? This is the ideal way to do good. You help your neighbor simply without any pretense or self-consciousness. She helps her neighbor, and so on. There need be no break in the chain from lowest to highest. Mrs. Whitney has taught beautiful lessons of this kind in her stories, emphasizing the theory of "nexts." I have often thought this was the only kind of charity which did not injure the giver; for the moment we try to help those perceptibly below us we are apt to be condescending and to feel a secret pride. Probably this inward satisfaction accounts for the readiness of many people to undertake forms of missionary work, though they are by no means thoughtful of those around them. There has often been bitter criticism of foreign missions to the heathen on this ground. Part of it is, no doubt, just. But as bitter criticism might be made of much noble work at home, like that of the Associated Charities, for instance.

In Boston, it is said, there is not one woman of any standing in society who is not interested in some charity. Most of their work is probably genuine. It is done from a sincere wish to do the best thing--very likely in many cases simply to ease the importunate New England conscience, yet also, no doubt, with the hope of relieving suffering. But we can hardly hope that much of it is ideal since the true charity is "Not what we give but what we share."

The women who are readiest to give their money and even their time to the desperately poor do not like to share their pew in church with some quiet person whom they consider below them in the social scale. Some one tells of a woman who spent all her time in going about among the poor giving practical help, but who really cared so little about those she helped that every day on her return from her rounds she amused the family by satirizing her pensioners. She could not love them, perhaps, and it may still have been an excellent thing for her to help them. Nevertheless, this was not the ideal charity.

There are a great many girls who would like to do some definite charitable work. They would like to be the founders of a great charity. They are ambitious, and their ambition is, on the whole, a noble one. Some of them are so sweet and generous to everybody about them that I really think they might be trusted to do something on a large scale. One of them might even oversee an orphan asylum; yet I do not think she could be such a blessing to little children as is a woman I know who is the matron of such an institution, for this woman had an unsympathetic step-mother, and she learned through a lonely childhood how to pity motherless children, and I heard a thoughtful woman say of her orphan asylum, "It was a shabby place, but beautiful to me because there was such a motherly atmosphere about it."