Chapter 7

Now, if men have been slaves, what about women? Women have been the slaves of slaves; and that's a pretty hard position to occupy for life. They have been the slaves of slaves; and in my judgment it took millions of ages for women to come from the condition of abject slavery up to the institution of marriage. Let me say right here, tonight, I regard marriage as the holiest institution among men. Without the fireside there is no human advancement; without the family relation, there is no life worth living. Every good government is made up of good families. The unit of government is family, and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous. I believe in marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the opinions of long-haired men and short-haired women who denounce the institution of marriage. Let me say right here--and I have thought a good deal about it--let me say right here, the grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. That is my idea, and there is no success in life without it. If you are the grand emperor of the world, you had better be the grand emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the grand empress of yours. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success.

I say it took millions of years to come from the condition of abject slavery up to the condition of marriage. Ladies, the ornaments you bear upon your person tonight are but the souvenirs of your mothers' bondage. The chains around your necks and the bracelets clasped upon your wrists by the thrilling hand of love, have been changed by the wand of civilization from iron to shining, glittering gold. But nearly every religion has accounted for the devilment in this world by the crime of woman. What a gallant thing that is! And if it is true, I had rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men.

I say that nearly every religion has accounted for all the trouble in this world by the crime of woman. I read in a book--and I will say now that I cannot give the exact language; my memory does not retain the words--but I can give the substance. I read in a book that the supreme being concluded to make a world and one man; that he took some nothing and made a world and one man, and put this man in a garden: but he noticed that he got lonesome; he wandered around as if he was waiting for a train; there was nothing to interest him; no news; no papers; no politics; no policy; and as the devil had not yet made his appearance, there was no chance for reconciliation; not even for civil service reform. Well, he would wander about this garden in this condition until finally the supreme being made up his mind to make him a companion; and having used up all the nothing he originally took in making the world and one man, he had to take a part of the man to start a woman with, and so he caused a deep sleep to fall upon this man--now, understand me. I didn't say this story is true. After the sleep fell upon this man, he took a rib, or, as the French would call it, a cutlet out of this man, and from that he made a woman; and considering the raw material, I look upon it as the most successful job ever performed. Well, after He got the woman done, she was brought to the man; not to see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her. He liked her, and they started housekeeping; and they were told of certain things they might do, and one thing they could not do--and of course they did it. I would have done it in fifteen minutes, and I know it. There wouldn't have been an apple on that tree half an hour from date, and the limbs could have been full of clubs. And then they were turned out of the park, and an extra force was put on to keep them from getting back. Then devilment commenced. The mumps, and the measles, and the whooping cough and the scarlet fever started in their race for man, and they began to have the toothache, the roses began to have thorns, and snakes began to have poisoned teeth, and people began to divide about religion and politics; and the world has been full of trouble from that day to this. Now, nearly all of the religions of this world account for the existence of evil by such a story as that.

I read in another book what appeared to be an account of the same transaction. It was written about 4,000 years before the other; but all commentators agree that the one that was written last was the original, and that the one that was written first was copied from the one that was written last; but I would advise you all not to allow your creed to be disturbed by a little matter of four or five thousand years. In this other story the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make the world and man and woman; and he made the world, and he made the man and he made the woman, and he put them on the island of Ceylon; and according to the account, it was the most beautiful island of which man can conceive. Such birds, such songs, such flowers and such verdure! And the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the wind swept through them every tree was a thousand aeolian harps. The Supreme Brahma when he put them there said, "Let them have a period of courtship, for it is my desire and will that true love should forever precede marriage." When I read that, it was so much more beautiful and lofty than the other, that I said to myself, "If either one of these stories ever turns out to be true, I hope it will be this one."

Then they had their courtship, with the nightingales singing and the stars shining and the flowers blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine the courtship! No prospective fathers or mothers in law; no prying and gossiping neighbors, nobody to say, "Young man, how do you expect to support her?" Nothing of that kind. They were married by the Supreme Brahma, and he said to them: "Remain here; you must never leave this island." Well, after a little while the man--and his name was Amend, and the woman's name was Heva--and the man said to Heva: "I believe I'll look about a little;" and he went to the northern extremity of the island, where there was a little, narrow neck of land connecting it with the mainland; and the devil, who is always playing pranks with us, got up a mirage, and when he looked over to the mainland, such hills and dells, vales and dales; such mountains, crowned with silver; such cataracts, clad in robes of beauty, did he see there, that he went back and told Heva: "The country over there is a thousand times better than this; let us migrate." She, like every other woman that ever lived, said: "Let well enough alone; we have all we want; let us stay here." But he said, "No, let us go;" so she followed him, and when they came to this narrow neck of land he took her on his back like a gentleman and carried her over. But the moment they got over they heard a crash, and, looking back, discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen into the sea, with the exception of now and then a rock, and the mirage had disappeared and there was naught but rocks and sand; and then a voice called out, cursing them. Then it was that the man spoke up--and I have liked him ever since for it--"Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her fault, it was mine." That's the kind of man to start a world with. The Supreme Brahma said, "I will save her but not thee." She spoke up out of her feelings of love, out of a heart in which there was love enough to make all of her daughters rich in holy affection, and said, "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; I do not wish to live without him; I love him." Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have liked him first-rate ever since I read it--"I will spare you both and watch over you."

Honor bright, isn't that the better story?

And from that same book I want to show you what ideas some of these miserable heathen had--the heathen we are trying to convert. We send missionaries over yonder to convert heathen there, and we send soldiers out on the plains to kill heathen there. If we can convert the heathen, why not convert those nearest home? Why not convert those we can get at? Why not convert those who have the immense advantage of the example of the average pioneer? But to show you the men we are trying to convert--in this book it says: "Man is strength, woman is beauty; man is courage, woman is love. When the one man loves the one woman and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy." They are the men we are converting. Think of it! I tell you when I read these things I begin to say, "Love is not of any country; nobility does not belong exclusively here;" and through all the ages there have been a few great and tender souls lifted far above their fellows.

Now, my friends, it seems to me that the woman is the equal of the man. She has all the rights I have, and one more, and that is the right to be protected. That's my doctrine. You are married; try and make the woman you love happy; try and make the man you love happy. Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves a woman so well that he says "I will make her happy," makes no mistake; and so with the woman who says "I will make him happy." There is only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you can't be happy cross-lots; you have got to go the regular turnpike road.

If there is any man I detest, it is the man who thinks he is the head of the family--the man who thinks he is "boss". That fellow in the dug-out used that word "boss;" that was one of his favorite expressions--that he was "boss". Imagine a young man and a young woman courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as though the thorn touched her heart--imagine them stopping there in the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying "Now here, let's settle who's boss!" I tell you it is an infamous word, and an infamous feeling--a man who is "boss," who is going to govern his family, and when he speaks let all the rest of them be still--some mighty idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do you know I dislike this man unspeakably; and a cross man I hate above all things.

What right has he to murder the sunshine of the day? What right has he to assassinate the joy of life? Where you go home you ought to feel the light there is in the house; if it is in the night it will burst out of doors and windows and illuminate the darkness. It is just as well to go home a ray of sunshine as an old sour, cross curmudgeon, who thinks he is the head of the family. Wise men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking about who will be alderman from the fifth ward; they have been thinking about politics; great and mighty questions have been engaging their minds; they have bought calico at 8 cents, or 6, and want to sell it for 7. Think of the intellectual strain that must have been upon a man, and when he gets home everybody else in the house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken care of five or six children, and one or two of them may be sick; has been nursing them and singing to them, and taking care of them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the work of two--she, of course, is fresh and fine, and ready to wait upon this great gentleman--the head of the family I don't like him a bit!

Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy man. I don't see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty millions of dollars, or ten millions of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty millions of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. I should not think he could do it.

Do you know I have known men who would trust their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not with their pocketbook; not with a dollar. When I see a man of that kind I always think he knows which of these articles is the most valuable. Think of making your wife a beggar! Think of her having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for two dollars, or for fifty cents! "What did you do with that dollar I gave you last week?" Think of having a wife that was afraid of you! What kind of children do you expect to have with a beggar and a coward for their mother? Oh, I tell you, if you have but a dollar in the world, and you have got to spend it, spend it like a king; spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests! That's the way to spend it! I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king, than be a king and spend my money like a beggar. If it's got to go, let it go.

Get the best you can for your family--try to look as well as you can yourself. When you used to go courting, how nice you looked! Ah, your eye was bright, your step was light, and you just put on the very best look you could. Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in you to suppose that a woman is going to love you always looking as bad as you can? Think of it! Any woman on earth will be true to you forever when you do your level best. Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about loving, and wives, and all that is splendid for the rich, but it won't do for the poor." I tell you tonight there is on the average more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich; and the meanest but with love in it is fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. That's my doctrine!

You can't be so poor but that you can help somebody. Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; and love is the only thing that will pay 10 percent to borrower and lender both. Don't tell me that you have got to be rich! We have all a false standard of greatness in the United States. We think here that a man to be great, must be notorious; must be extremely wealthy, or his name must be between the lips of rumor. It is all nonsense! It is not necessary to be rich to be great, or to be powerful to be happy; and the happy man is the successful man. Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.

A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, fit for a dead deity almost, and gazed into the great circle at the bottom of it. In the sarcophagus, of black Egyptian marble, at last rest the ashes of that restless man. I looked over the balustrade, and I thought about the career of Napoleon. I could see him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon. I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the bridge at Lodi. I saw him in Egypt, fighting the battle of the pyramids. I saw him cross the Alps, and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Austerlitz. I saw him with his army scattered and dispersed before the blast. I saw him at Leipsic when his army was defeated and he was taken captive. I saw him escape. I saw him land again upon French soil, and retake an empire by the force of his own genius. I saw him captured once more, and again at St. Helena, with his arms behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea; and I thought of the orphans and Widows he had made.

I thought of the tears that had been shed for his glory. I thought of the only woman who ever loved him, who had been pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition; and as I looked at the sarcophagus, I said, "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I would rather have lived in a hut, with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing and ripening in the autumn sun; I would rather have been that peasant, with my wife by my side and my children upon my knees, twining their arms of affection about me; I would rather have been that poor French peasant, and gone down at last to the eternal promiscuity of the dust, followed by those who loved me; I would a thousand times rather have been that French peasant than that imperial personative of force and murder." And so I would, ten thousand times.

It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is not necessary to be rich to be just and generous, and to have a heart filled with divine affection. No matter whether you are rich or poor, use your wife as though she were a splendid creation, and she will fill your life with perfume and joy. And do you know, it is a splendid thing for me to think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you? Through the wrinkles of time, through the music of years, if you really love her, you will always see the face you loved and won. And a woman who really loves a man, does not see that he grows older; he is not decrepit; he does not tremble; he is not old; she always sees the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in that way. I like to think of all passions; love is eternal, and, as Shakespeare says, "Although Time, with his sickle, can rob ruby lips and sparkling eyes, let him reach as far as he can, he cannot quite touch love; that reaches even to the end of the tomb." And to love in that way, and then go down the hill of life together, and as you go down hear, perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren--the birds of joy and love sing once more in the leafless branches of age. I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty and equality with those we love.

If women have been slaves, what shall I say of children; of the little children in the alleys and sub-cellars; the little children who turn pale when they hear their father's footsteps; little children who run away when they only hear their names called by the lips of another; little children--the children of poverty, the children of crime, the children of brutality wherever you are--flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, mad sea of life, my heart goes out to you, one and all. I tell you the children have the same rights that we have, and we ought to treat them as though they were human beings; and they should be reared by love, by kindness, by tenderness, and not by brutality. That is my idea of children. When your little child tells a lie, don't rush at him as though the world were about to go into bankruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will have liars for children; do you know that? A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand and weakness upon the other, and when you rush at a poor little boy with a club in your hand, of course he lies. I thank Mother Nature that she has put ingenuity enough in the breast of a child, when attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie. When one of your children tells a lie, be honest with him; tell him you have told hundreds of them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; you have tried it. Tell him, as the man did in Maine when his boy left home: "John, honesty is the best policy; I have tried both." Just be honest with him. Imagine now; you are about to whip a child five years of age. What is the child to do? Suppose a man, as much larger than you are larger than a child five years old, should come at you with liberty-pole in hand, and in a voice of thunder shout, "Who broke the plate?" There is not a solitary one of you who wouldn't swear you never saw it, or that it was cracked when you found it. Why not be honest with these children? Just imagine a man who deals in stocks putting false rumors afloat!

Think of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood for evading the truth, when he makes half of his own living that way! Think of a minister punishing his child for not telling all he thinks! Just think of it! When your child commits a wrong, take it in your arms; let it feel your heart beat against its heart; let the child know that you really and truly and sincerely love it. Yet some Christians, good Christians, when a child commits a fault, drive it from the door, and say, "Never do you darken this house again." Think of that! And then these same people will get down on their knees and ask God to take care of the child they have driven from home. I will never ask God to take care of my children unless I am doing my level best in that same direction. But I will tell you what I say to my children: "Go where you will; commit what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; you can never commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, my heart to you; as long as I live you shall have no more sincere friend."

Do you know, I have seen some people who acted as though they thought when the Savior said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven," that he had a rawhide under his mantle and made that remark to get the children within striking distance. I don't believe in the government of the lash. If any one of you ever expect to whip your children again after you hear me, I want you to have a photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red with vulgar anger; and then the face of the little child, with eyes swimming in tears, and the little chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden, cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little child should die, I cannot find a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in bright colors, and little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth--than to go out to the cemetery and sit down upon the grave and look at this photograph, and think of the flesh, now dust, that you beat.