Part 7

Nothing, this side of God, do men revere, as they revere virtuous women. Let it be known among men, that the victims of their lust have been taken under your protection, and the whole aspect of the question would instantly change. Instead of looking upon the unhappy ones as fair game, men would suddenly become conscious that they were dealing with your friends, and, therefore, with you.

A SHORT SERMON ABOUT MATRIMONY.

I would address those young women who want husbands. There are such; I have noticed them. Girls, if any of you have really made up your minds that you "wouldn't marry the best man that ever lived, there!" skip this little sermon, because it really has no interest for you.

Men will shut their ears if they have a spark of delicacy; for every word of this is private and confidential.

MY TEXT.

The text, or rather the occasion for what I am about to say on the subject of marriage, was this:--

About a week ago, a young woman of twenty-six (she said twenty-six, so I am sure about her age,) came to me in regard to her health; and after the professional conversation was finished, we fell into a general and pleasant chat.

She was delightfully frank, and said, while we were discussing the ever fruitful subject of matrimony,--

"I wish I was little."

"That is too bad," I replied; "I have been admiring your grand, queenly proportions ever since you came in; and now you spoil it all by showing that you are not grateful."

"I can't help it; I wish I didn't weigh more than eighty pounds, and wasn't more than four and a half feet high."

"I am shocked! Do tell me what makes you wish so?"

"To be frank with you, the reason is just this: Men are so fond of saying, 'My little wife.'"

I laughed, thinking it was intended as a bright speech; but her flushed face assured me that, instead, she was uttering her very heart.

"Go on," I said, "tell me your thoughts."

"My thoughts are just these; and I believe they are the thoughts of all unmarried marriageable women. I long for nothing this side of heaven as I do to bury all my uncertainties and anxieties in the love of a husband. Eagerly would I make any sacrifice to secure this precious treasure. But I fear there is nothing left for me but to be sneered at as an old maid. So while I might otherwise be grateful for what you choose to call my queenly proportions, I can only wish I was one of the little women whom men seem to fancy."

I shall not tell you any more of this conversation, and my friend will excuse this much, as a text for my little sermon. Only she and I will know to whom this refers.

I wonder if it is improper to speak plainly about what so many are thinking of.

I will venture a little. Now don't take on airs and turn up your noses. My hair is of a color which might introduce me to you in the character of father. I shall speak very plainly. It cannot compromise anybody, for, as I told you, this is all private and confidential.

YOU WANT HUSBANDS.

Now don't deny it; it sounds silly in you. It is, all of a piece with the earnest declaration of the mother who is managing her daughters through Saratoga, Newport, and an endless round of parties, but who constantly declares, in the most earnest way, that she has no more girls than she wants, that she could not consent to part with a single one of them, and who, at length, when pressed to part with dear Arabella, gives a reluctant and painful assent, and who may be seen on the wedding day penetrated with inconsolable grief at parting with that dear child. Girls, don't join in this farce; it is too thin.

You want husbands. You think of them by day, and dream of them by night. You talk of nothing else. Think on, and dream on; even if you never get them, it will make you better and nobler to think about them.

On our side of the house we are all thinking and dreaming of you, and, although we may never marry, our hearts will be the warmer and purer for having been occupied with thoughts of you.

WHY MEN DO NOT PROPOSE.

In entering upon this most important and delightful relation, we men are expected to take the overt initiative. You are perplexed and grieved that so many of us hold back, and wander about, homeless bachelors all our lives, leaving you to die old maids.

Let me whisper in your ear.

We are afraid of you!

As I am out of the matrimonial market, I will let my friend Robert, who is in said market, explain.

Robert is a splendid fellow, and dying to have a home of his own. He declared in my parlor the other evening, that he would prefer ten years of happy married life to fifty years of this nothing and nowhere.

My wife said, "Well, Robert, if you cannot find a wife, you had better give a commission to somebody who can." With a flushed face; he replied:--

"Now see here, Mrs. Lewis, I am a banker; my salary is two thousand dollars. I cannot marry a scrub. I must marry a wife with manners, one who knows what's what. My mother and sisters, to say nothing of myself, would break their hearts if my choice were below their idea. Just tell me how, with such a wife, I could pull through on two thousand a year? Why, her dress alone would cost half of it. Board for the two would cost at least fifty dollars a week, and even with that, you know, we should not get first-class board.

"And then there are the extras,--the little trips, the lectures, the concerts, the operas, etc.; one cannot live in society without a little of such things.

"Oh no, unless I first make up my mind to rob the bank, I cannot think of matrimony. If I had five thousand a year I would venture; but with two thousand,--well, I am not quite a madman, and so I stay where I can pay my debts.

"My lady friends think I am so much in love with the--Club that I have no time for them. One of them said to me the other day, when we were discussing this matter,--

"'Why, what you spend in that miserable club, would support a wife, easy.'

"'It wouldn't pay for her bonnets,' I replied."

Now ladies, Robert is getting extravagant, so we will let him retire, and I will go on with my little sermon. I do not often preach, but in this case, nothing but a sermon will do.

BEAUTY OF WOMAN'S BODY.

Firstly, you are perfect idiots to go on in this way. Your bodies are the most beautiful of God's creation. In the continental galleries I constantly saw groups of people, gathered about the pictures of women. It was not passion; the gazers were quite as likely to be women, as men. It was the wondrous beauty of woman's body.

Now stand with me at my office window, and see a lady pass. There goes one! Now isn't that a pretty looking object? A big hump, three big humps, a wilderness of crimps and frills, a hauling up of the dress here and there, an enormous hideous mass of false hair or bark piled on the top of her head, and on the very top of that, a little nondescript thing, ornamented with bits of lace, birds' tails, etc.; while the shop windows tell us all day long, of the paddings, whalebones, and springs, which occupy most of the space within that outside rig.

In the name of all the simple, sweet sentiments which cluster about a home, I would ask, how is a man to fall in love with such a compound, doubled and twisted, starched, comical, artificial, touch- me-not, wiggling curiosity?

THIS DRESS CHECKS YOUR MOVEMENTS.

Secondly, with that wasp waist, your lungs, stomach, liver, and other organs squeezed down out of their place, and into one half their natural size, and with that long trail dragging on the ground, how can any man of sense, who knows that life is made up of use, of service, of work; how can he take such partner? He must be desperate to unite himself for life with such a deformed, fettered, half breathing ornament.

If I were in the matrimonial market, I might marry a woman that had but one arm, or one eye, or no eyes at all, if she suited me otherwise; but so long as God permitted me to retain my senses, I could never join my fortunes with those of a woman with a small waist.

A small waist! I am a physiologist, and know what a small waist means. It means the organs of the abdomen jammed down into the pelvis; it means the organs of the chest stuffed up into the throat; it means a weak back; it means a delicate, nervous invalid; it means a suffering patient, and not a vigorous helpmate.

Thousands of men dare not venture, because they wisely fear that, instead of a helpmate, they will get an invalid to take care of. Besides, this bad health in you, just as in men, made the mind, as well as the body, faddled and effeminate.

You have no power, no magnetism. I know you giggle freely, and use big words, such as splendid, awful, etc.; but then, this does not deceive us; we see through all that sort of thing. The fact is, you are superficial, affected, silly. You have none of that womanly strength and warmth which are so assuring and attractive to men.

Why you have actually become so childish, that you refuse to wear decent names even, and insist upon little baby names.

Instead of Helen, Margaret and Elizabeth you affect Nellie, Maggie and Lizzie.

When your brothers were babies, you called them Bobbie, Dickie and Johnnie; but when they grow up to manhood, no more of that silly trash, if you please.

I know a woman, twenty-five years old, and as big as both my grandmothers put together, who insists upon being called Kittie, and her real name is Catherine; her brain is big enough to conduct affairs of State, she does nothing but giggle, cover up her face with her fan, and exclaim, "Don't now, you are real mean." How can a sensible man propose a life partnership to such a silly goose?

My dear girls, if you would get husbands, and sensible ones, dress in plain, neat, becoming garments, and talk like sensible, earnest sisters.

You say you don't care, you won't dress to please men, etc. Then, as I said in opening this sermon, I am not speaking to you. I am speaking to such girls as want husbands, and would like to know how to get them.

You say that the most sensible men are crazy after these butterflies of fashion. I beg your pardon, it is not so. Occasionally, even a brilliant man may marry a silly, weak woman. But to say, as I have heard women say a hundred times, that the most sensible men marry women without sense, is simply absurd. Nineteen times in twenty sensible men choose sensible women.

I grant you that in company men are very likely to gabble and toy with these over-dressed and forward creatures; but as to going to the altar with them, they beg to be excused.

Thirdly, among the men in the matrimonial market, only a very small number are rich; and in America very rarely make good husbands. But the number of those who are beginning in life, who are filled with a noble ambition, who have a future, is very large. These are worth having. But such will not, they dare not, ask you to join them, while they see you so idle, silly, and so gorgeously attired.

Let them see that you are industrious, economical, with habits that secure health and strength, that your life is earnest and real, that you are willing to begin at the beginning in life with the man you would consent to marry, then marriage will become the rule, and not as now, among certain classes, the exception.

Ah, if ever the time shall come, when young women have occupations, and can sustain a healthy, dignified attitude toward men,--if ever the time shall come when women are not such pitiful dependents, then marriage will become universal, and we shall all be happier, better, nobler.

I hear some plucky, spirited young woman exclaiming:--

"This is all very well. No doubt your sermon, as you call it, contains a good deal of truth; but how about these young men who spend their time drinking, smoking, loafing about club-houses, and running after strange women? I suppose you think they are perfect angels."

My dear friend, have I said anything in this sermon, or do I say anything in this book, which leads you to suppose that I think men better than women?

It is because I believe that, in the constitution of the race, you are the fountain-head of social, moral and religious influence, that I come directly to you.

My mother taught me, long ago, the great moral superiority of woman. She taught me that most of the good and pure in this world comes from woman.

So far from thinking that man is an angel, and woman a nothing, and a bad nothing, the strongest article in my religious creed is, that when woman has been redeemed from the shilly-shally, lace, ribbon, and feather life, into which she has so unhappily drifted,--when woman shall be restored to herself, she will be strong enough in soul to take us men in her arms, and carry us to heaven.

I beg you will not suppose that, in my criticisms upon woman, I am prompted by the belief that she needs special exhortation on her own account. I appeal to her on account of us all, believing that the most direct and effective way to redeem the race, is to induce woman to lay aside every weight and the special sins that so beset her, and to run the race with the highest womanly heroism.

PIANO MUSIC.

Nothing so constantly troubled and pained me during the progress of the school at Lexington, as the strange passion for the piano. Of the one hundred and forty girls present during the third year, I cannot recall more than three or four who possessed any decided musical capacity, while nearly a hundred studied music. Fifteen pianos were going constantly.

Take any one of sixty or seventy who were studying music, simply because it was fashionable, and consider the waste. One hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars a year for instruction, with two to five hours' exhaustive daily practice. I cannot bear to think that this foolish waste, and worse than waste, was going on for years, in an institution under my management. But there are influences at work stronger than the will of the teachers. Those influences come from established prejudices.

Although the money and time given to the piano, among a large proportion of the girls in our school, was worse than wasted, I soon found that three out of four of them would refuse to enter the school, or remain in it, if they were urged not to study music.

After a young woman has studied music for five years, and has twisted her spine all out of shape in practicing upon the piano, she marries, plays a little on the splendid "Grand" which "Dear Aunt" gives her as a wedding present, and then drops it forever. If there is decided talent, she may continue; but I speak of the results as I have seen them.

IMPORTANCE OF VOCAL MUSIC.

If the voice be cultivated, and the piano used as an accompaniment, the music in a girl's education would prove ten-fold more valuable. Indeed, vocal music might prove, with many girls, the most valuable part of education. It is more likely to be continued, because of the greater pleasure it affords; while social singing serves more than any other influence to bind the inmates of a home together. As a source of general health, it stands unrivalled.

In this country of consumptives, it is especially valuable in fortifying the pulmonary apparatus.

Let us, by every means, foster social singing. Its influence is, in many ways, most precious. How interesting the group of sisters and brothers gathered about the piano, and how blessed the home where the evening is welcomed by family song.

Contrast this with the average mechanical execution of classical music, by one of the girls, or with the fashionable operatic singing by one of them.

And just here I wish to speak of a fashion which should be deprecated. It is another piece of that growing vice, which would remove music from the social sphere, and make it, like some peculiarity of dress, a mere show. Suppose we have singing. Instead of four persons performing the several parts of some rich melody, Miss Arabella is invited to "give us that exquisite Aria," and we all sit by, and wonder at her execution.

The great service of music is one of the heart, and not of the head.

There are departments of music, there are possibilities in this divinest of the arts, which appeal to the subtlest appreciations of the intellect, and the most exalted conceptions of the imagination; but still it is true that the greatest service which music renders to man is in the social sphere, is one of the heart When our voices blend, our hearts will not long be kept asunder.

The whole tendency of the times is to deprive music of this, its most precious influence. Indeed, so far has this gone, that even that natural and most happy of all the harmonies of music,--that between the male and female voice, is well-nigh lost. It is rare in what is called the better class of music to hear them together. A woman executes for awhile, then a man executes, then the woman executes again, then the man executes a little, so they execute by turns.

The great heart-service of music is subordinated to imagination and vanity.

BAD MANNERS OF PIANO PLAYERS.

It is a mistake to suppose that, even as an accomplishment, piano playing is so very highly prized.

I dropped in to spend an hour with an intelligent friend. I was particularly interested in the Franco-Prussian war, and, as he had lived much, both in Paris and Berlin, I hoped to learn about some things not discussed in the newspapers. His youngest daughter, a beautiful girl, had just arrived, fresh from the glories of the closing exercises of a seminary.

We were in the midst of our discussions, and he was repeating some conversations with Bismark, in which I was intensely interested, when the fond, proud mother said:--

"Now, if you will listen, Gertie will play the piece which she played last Thursday evening at Madame--'s." Gertie began, alas, and she kept on, and on, and on.

There were four of us gentlemen, three were callers, one the editor of a city paper. We were all eager to listen to our host, of Bismark and Napoleon.

That unhappy child kept at it. We sat there with a hypocritical smile on our faces but, internally, as mad as we could be. When at length, the sixteen pages had been finished, and the girl turned around for the prescribed adulation, all but one of us exclaimed, "wonderful, exquisite, delightful!" and the editor, (who, when coming down in the car an hour later, emphasized his disgust with an awful big word,) declared he had never heard anything so wonderful, and added, that she really ought to go abroad to study with the great masters. The lying executed by some of us was perfect. I have forgotten whether this kind of falsehood is mentioned in the works upon white lying, but if I ever write upon "white lies," I shall give this kind a prominent place.

Girls, if you ever obtrude an average piano performance upon a company of intelligent people, engaged in conversation, nine in ten of them will secretly regard you as a nuisance, no matter how much they exclaim "exquisite, delicious, wonderful!" Of course your parents will be gratified with your performance; mamma will be pleased and proud with the show-off, and papa will smile. How else could he do, after paying $2,000 piano bills? It is a pretty picture to their eyes--the loved one seated at a splendid, great instrument, executing one of the grandest compositions of one of the immortal masters. And, although you are not inspired with the passion of the heaven-born composer, and your performance is a mechanical, soulless hum-drum, that matters not to your father and mother, their loving imaginations will supply all that is needed to make the picture complete. But the rest of us will heartily wish that you had not interrupted our conversation.

It is an amazing blindness on the part of parents. It always astonishes me that they don't see the impertinence of the thing. They certainly wouldn't think of asking the company to cease their conversation to hear you speak your piece, or perform a dance. The piano alone is licensed to say to everybody, "cease your conversation, and listen to me; I am about to make a big noise!"

But the fashion has never imposed upon people of sense and real politeness. When the piano has started up without even a notice, I have seen such people flush with indignation.

VICES IN MODERN MUSIC.

It may be mentioned as illustrating still further, the false tendencies in music, that it takes a brave man to ask for a sweet, simple song. I tried it the other night. I asked a Flora McFlimsey to give us "Way down upon the Swanee River." The words, it will be remembered, are singularly pure, sweet and pathetic.

Many of the Italian songs just now so fashionable, are couched in language, listened to by pure-minded people, only because they don't understand it.

When I said, "Please sing 'Way down upon the Swanee River,'" Miss McFlimsey replied, "Excuse me, I never sing that class of music. I haven't sung one of those simple airs, I don't know when." I know, by the way the girls looked at me, that their respect for my musical taste vanished at once and forever. If I had asked her for "Ah, que j'aime les militaire," or "Une Paule sur la mur," insufferable trash, both as to music and words, utterly beneath contempt, she would have eagerly screamed the bald bosh, and the weak ones would have declared it ineffably exquisite.*

ITALIAN OPERA.

If you understand Italian, I need not explain; and if you do not, purchase a libretto, with English translation, of almost any of the operas, and read.

Among those most popular on the American stage, I cannot recall more than two, that I should be willing to have my daughter read. But the music pupil must study every word, often every syllable of a word.

The lascivious suggestion, the sly innuendo, the bold challenge,-- they are all exhausted in the language of the opera.

One of the charms of much of this class of music is similar to that of a new dance introduced into this country last winter; and it came, too, from the land of Italian opera. Of this dance I will only say that I overheard a buxom lass telling her lady friends "that the new dance was perfectly glorious; but," said she, "it's of no use to put flowers or bows in your bosom, for they get pressed flat enough, long before the first dance is over."

Is it not a simple fact that operatic songs are popular just in proportion as they are indelicate? I have asked this question of more than a score of devotees of the opera. Half of them, perhaps, have said yes, the other half have said that the finest music happened to be associated with naughty words. Read the words of "Un mari sage" without the music. Where, outside of a brothel, could there be found a company of girls, who, with men present, would keep their faces uncovered, and listen.

I wish you would go to the opera with me; I will show you something which will impress you more deeply than any words I can write.

Here we are, so placed, that we can look into the faces of a part of the audience. Let us select a couple, and, with our glasses, watch them.

There is a beautiful black-eyed girl,--the one with that fat, red- faced gentleman. She is about sixteen, and he about thirty. I know him. He is a regular roue, although he has the entree of many of our best homes. His companion seems a modest, sweet girl.

The opera is "Faust," one of the most unclean of the whole unclean batch.

They are both using one and the same libretto, with an English translation. This gives him an opportunity to put his arm behind her, but of course he is careful not to touch her shoulder. But we shall see, when we come to certain parts of the opera.