Chapter 13

Nothing is further from the single man's thoughts than that he will continue in the single state all his life. He expects, when the young woman meets his gaze who satisfies either his esthetic or pecuniary ideas, generally the latter, or both, to take that young woman to his bosom and begin married life. This is a natural state of mind, and there is no harm in indulging it. It shall be the object of a few of these pages to present such aspects of the unmarried state of man as have principally commended themselves to general attention. The bachelor has plenty of arguments to keep him single while he is not in love. He thinks the arguments keep him single, good fellow. He says, as I heard one of them say: "I would ask the unbiased observer what there is in the world, after all, to induce a man to commit matrimony. Some one will say: 'To have some one to care for him when sick.' This is complimentary to woman--indicating that she marries to become a nurser of the sick and old. And must a man endure all the pains and throes of years of matrimonial cyclones that he may have some one to stew his gruel during the brief space of his last illness? If a bachelor have money, he will have friends to care for him, no fear, and if he be poor, a wife is the last thing in the world he needs. She divides his pleasures and doubles his sorrows.

HE MUST DANCE TO FASHION'S TUNE--

a palatial residence, a corps of servants, a livery, and dresses from Paris--for the sake of having some one to receive and entertain his friends' wives. He must support his wife's relations, and endure no end of feminine abuse, which is not always so feminine. The world is divided into two classes: Those who are unmarried, but wish they were, and those who are married, but wish they were not."

THIS IS A FAIR SPECIMEN

of the argument by which the bachelor convinces himself that he is happy. If it _does_ contribute to his peace of mind, why should the world care? And the world really does not care. When he comes to have his gruel stewed for him in a hospital, or, worse yet, a boarding-house, he finds out, all of a sudden, that he is really in the way, and that, in his life of perfect selfishness, he has never secured that thing which cannot be bought, yet which he so yearns for now in the hour of his feebleness, a woman's love. A good long sickness has greatly enlarged many a man's philosophy!

Still, it is not in the destiny of every man to have a wife, or to keep her if he get one. It is not unwise, therefore to consider that state as one of the phases of life, and to contemplate its various aspects, good and bad, as we have the other conditions of existence. "A man unattached and without wife," says Bruyere, "if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; this is less easy for him who is engaged; it seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank." "I have" says Burton, the melancholy, "no wife or children, good or bad, to provide for, and am a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures."

THE ONE GRAND RESULT OF SINGLE LIFE,

so far as is generally noticeable, is selfishness. The chief lesson of marriage is self-denial. Which is the more pleasing of the two traits? When the bachelor views life, he sees nothing good in it, for it all looks selfish. Being so deeply jaundiced, the eye tints everything with yellow. At forty he is heartily sick of it all. Why? Because he has learned that he has squeezed the orange dry. The faculties which God gave him to be pleased with when a recipient have been worked to death.

HE HAS BEEN A RECIPIENT WITHOUT CEASE.

He has chewed on one side of his mouth all his life. The teeth on the other side have loosened and are ready to fall out, while the overworked molars on the other are about to run into decay. The faculties whereby he was expected to please other people have become rudimentary, and he can now no more fascinate other people than he can sing soprano. He makes an effort to engage the interest of a young lady. The hollowness of his attack at once arrests her attention. The ease with which he speaks long sentences of admiration proclaims his long practice in the art, and the utter lack of real meaning in them. He knows that the girl will

LAUGH BEHIND HIS BACK,

and it irritates him, and disposes him to attribute her act to "the falseness of her sex," when it is merely her keen intelligence in such matters. The fact of the matter is, that though an old bachelor is seemingly greatly smitten with nearly every young girl he sees, he does not succeed in marrying because he is a hard man to catch. The young woman takes his measurement. His devotion is overpowering, but she easily sees that it is a sham. The bachelor looks at her glove, and, instead of admiring the hand, as the "marrying young man" does, he says "Dollar and a half!"

HE LOOKS INTO HER EYES AND FIGURES

on the probable cost of board for two. The time of mating is past with him, and that young woman can see it "as quick as a flash of lightning." He may be the man she could love if she "let go of herself," but his slippery words do not mean "marry," and she "passes him around." He loves to go to picnics and church sociables, for he must be amused, and he hopes to find that pleasure in next Tuesday's donation party which he did not get at last Friday's rehearsal.

THE TROUBLE ALL LIES

in his intense love of self. Society in general regards him as useful, and pities him. The older women generally suppose he would marry the first girl who would have him, and he himself hopes to sooner or later to come across a lady who is superior to all others, and who has money enough to pay her share of the expense of living. I wish him success, for

HE IS GENERALLY A GOOD FELLOW,

and strictly a creature of circumstances. If we catch the small-pox nothing is surer than that we will have it in spite of our pride. If a man is cast into a mold of events where he is bound to be taught nothing but selfishness, and to see nothing but the selfishness of others, the wonder is that he will assume, in the matter of self-denial, those relations, even for a day, which he so assiduously avoids for life.

SCHOLASTIC OPPORTUNITIES.

The single man has a fine chance to be "a scholar and a ripe good one." Having been denied the joys of a household all dependent on him, he may surround himself with books, he may pursue investigations, he may gather the ideas of the wits and the thinkers, and he may thus broaden his brains until he is the honored associate of the best minds in his region. This form of happiness is, to those who are within reach of it, one of the most satisfying within the gift of God. There is no reaction, there is no sorrow.

MAN LIVES TO LEARN,

after all. If the mind goes on in the culture of those high qualities which have been inwoven with his weak frame, it seems to me his selfishness has been well disposed of. The dollar which, in the cautious mind, was begrudged to a wee toddler who never lived, for a pair of shoes, has been placed where it has brought new knowledge of the power and wisdom of God, the Creator and Conservator of the Universe. The wisdom thus born out of selfishness will inculcate in those to follow him the folly of selfishness, and the tastelessness of its brightest apples of gold.

BE KIND TO THE OLD BACHELOR.

When he tries to be friendly, give him a lift. His mode of life has left him with many advantages for usefulness which married people have not got. On committees and in preliminary work he is often the best man in the neighborhood. At funerals, in sickness, he has been known to be almost the very instrument of the merciful Father. Teach the young ladies that he is harder to "catch" than they suppose, and perhaps they will turn toward him a portion of their character which will please him better with womankind.

TO HEAR SOME MEN TALK,

and from experience, too, you would think that a breed of creatures born from such women as are now living would be a herd of monsters, incapable of civilization and refinement. And yet the world will go on, and we know, almost, that our posterity will bring about wonders in the arts and sciences, and perhaps even in society itself,--wonders which will even surpass the triumph of our own generation. We are on the eve of both traveling and talking through the bare air. We are in a way to avoid the worst of our wars. It cannot be that the women who will bear the men who will do all these things are to be

JUDGED AS THE BACHELORS VIEW THEM.

The bachelor sees as through a glass, darkly. Being, for the time, incapable of the passion of love, having failed to exercise it when it came upon him, he thus rails at woman. If you are young enough, watch the events of the next thirty years, and see how they will give the lie to such a tirade as this, from

THE SAME BACHELOR

I quoted at the start: "Not one-half of our marriages have unbiased love as a foundation on both sides. (The love is usually on the man's side.) A woman marries for money, position, spite, pride, contrariness, fear of being an old maid, or for a home which she thinks will afford her more pleasure than the one she leaves. Love is the last thing to enter her head, and never her heart. Men of real sound judgment in business throw this judgment entirely aside when they come to select a wife. A man might better remain single than marry with the chances nine out of ten in favor of his making a mistake for life."

SEE HOW LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

of anybody's good points this gentleman displays. The young woman who has worked at ironing in the forenoon until her feet were swollen and her head has got dizzy, comes into the parlor in the evening, all frills and tucks, all "highty-tighty," all full of fun and God's good humor, and impresses my friend with the belief that she has never done an honest hour's labor in her life! Pshaw! she has got more pluck, and nerve, and "sand," than half a dozen men, when it comes to where the need is! She is going to be

THE MOTHER OF AN AMERICAN,

and Americans are not noted for their servility, their laziness, their mediocrity, or their lack of brains! For shame, then to judge a young woman as she appears to you when she is anxious to get rid of you! How would you like to be judged solely at those times when you were "carrying on," and "didn't care whether school kept or not"? That is precisely the way this gentleman has spoken of young women a page back. He thinks they love no one because they have never loved him! He never loved them, and how could he expect them to be swindled? Read his remarks over again, and see how events themselves deny his correctness.

HOW MANY HUSBANDS HAS HE SEEN

follow a drunken wife into a gutter? And, on the contrary, has he not seen the reverse of this sad picture many a time? I heard a Judge say to a poor woman once,--she was all scars: "I would send this woman-beater to the work-house for two hundred days if I did not know you would starve yourself to pay his way out." And then the poor, foolish, faithful heart appealed to his Honor to "spare the man, just once more;" she was sure he was a little the worse for drink when he misused her. What does our friend call this thing in woman, if it be not love? The being capable of a wife's love, and a mother's love, and a sister's love, is not much in danger of the criticisms of a man who has only a front-porch knowledge of all her sex!

SICKNESS.

Even with the best of our philosophy we who are well are unable to command at will the feelings of those who are ill. We lie on a bed, racked with the pains of some passing affliction, and the chasm which separates us from the hale and hearty seems prodigious. We are led down the stairs, out into the sunlight. The very rays themselves sit heavily upon our shoulders, and nearly crush us to the earth. With those vivid impressions of the terrors of illness, we feel that our brains will remain steeped in memories such as will enable us to appreciate our health if we ever get it again, yea, though we have hardly a crust of bread to spare. But lo! behold us once well again, and we have forgotten our good fortune; at the slightest turn in our personal affairs we bemoan our fate as sharply as though the whole night had been rolling in upon us through some fever, or all the blasts of the arctic world had crept through our bones in some frigid chill. There is no boon so great as health. Of course everybody _admits_ that. But why can we not attach meaning to it? If a man rise in a public gathering and say "I will give a hundred dollars!" he knows exactly what he is saying, and so do his hearers know. But if he rise behind a pulpit or on a rostrum and say

"PRESERVE YOUR HEALTH

at all hazards!" no significance so deep attaches, though the one statement is a thousand times as important as the other. I cannot understand why we are so oblivious to the sufferings of illness while we are well unless it be a provision of nature to keep us from that suffering through sympathy which we would surely undergo if we really had any vivid feeling for the sick. On this earth each one has to do his own suffering--the King in the palace of the royal family and the baby in the hut of the miner. All who are well go their way rejoicing, even having no momentary realization of the state of mind of the disabled associate. It may be that this has not always been so, for we inherit a salutation among our other traits which implies a desire to be informed as to the physical condition of the body of the person addressed. Two men of affairs meet. One says:

"HOW ARE YE?"

The other responds: "How are ye? Are you going to be at the meeting to-night?" etc., the conversation being now under full headway. The words indicate that, at one time, they carried a meaning which they have lost. Yet we are not worse than our fathers before us, and are not exceeded in the milk of human kindness. It may be that the old form was such a cumbrous piece of hypocrisy that latter-day people have thrown it off in disgust. Anyway, there is nothing more certain nor more astonishing than that a well man cannot conceive the feelings of a sick man, even though he try, and that those who are sick have to grin and bear it all without any very great affliction falling to the lot of those who stand at the bedside.

BEHOLD THE STRONG MAN IN THE FEVERISH AIR

of the sick-chamber. Last week all his clock-wheels worked with ease, and merrily struck the hours of feast and sleep. Afterward the wheels dragged a little and annoyed him some. Suddenly a whole handful of sand was thrown into the cogs, and the cogs have been grinding it and the hammer striking continuously ever since. His brain is distracted, his soul is sorely perplexed, and his mind is like an infant in house-cleaning time, strangely in the way and infinitely aware of it. Here lies proud-riding vanity, thrown from his high saddle. Kindnesses are showered on him of which he feels that he deserves few, and yet wants more.

SYMPATHY IS EXPRESSED

for him which greatly moves him, for he is accompanying the words he hears with the ills he feels, while the speaker is speaking a conventionality which he would feel had he the ability. The sick man mentally resolves that all the mistakes of his life shall be corrected if he shall survive, and yet there are few who are able to fulfill the programmes thus formulated--frequently the thriftless man is more prodigal after an illness which has stabbed his pride with an advertisement of his indigence than he was before his great vow of future economy was recorded up on the ceiling, where,

IN THE RIFTS OF THE PLASTER,

the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi! Perhaps if the would-be reformer would take a look frequently at those objects in his whilom sick-room which so riveted his fevered attention, some of their old association would return upon him, and do him good. The ancients practiced the memory in this way. After a course of meanderings through a garden, each object represented and recalled some piece of knowledge which it was important the pupil should retain in his mind. "Few persons," says Thomas a Kempis "are made better by the pain and languor of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints." Here lies your bachelor now. He has always felt that when he got sick he could get his gruel stewed as well by the hired girl of his landlady, as the French say, as by a wife. He lies up there, O, so in need of care and kindness!

HIS BRAGS WERE MADE IN TIME OF STRENGTH,

and he expected to have strength to keep himself stoical. But now he is weak,--weak and truly miserable. He hears the people come in to their supper, go to their rooms, wash, run gayly down-stairs, chat, go down another pair of stairs,--and then come the jarring sounds of plates and knives and spoons, and, worse, the sickening smell of victuals. How can they laugh and joke when he, a man and a brother, lies sick of a fever? Ah! my friend, it would not be so were you the head of the house. All would be changed. The supper-hour would come with a hush instead of a clatter. The light stol'n forth o' the building would leave the whole house in gloom. And in your selfish soul you would be glad, for God so made all of us! Now you turn yourself to the wall, and marvel at the lightness of human words and

THE GREEDINESS OF HUMAN WANTS.

You are little to be pitied in justice--greatly, in mercy! Lie there and pity humanity, for they would be all like you, did not they follow in nature's paths, where the roses of the wayside hide more of their ugliness. All I would impose is that you walk where you will look least hideous, even in your own eyes.

As, in Paradise, when Milton was all ablaze with poetic glory, he waved his more than kingly sceptre and thus ushered in the night--

Now came still evening on-- Now glowed the firmament With living sapphires: Hesperus that led The starry host rode brightest--

--So does woman, soft as still Evening, shining as all the starry hosts with goodness and with mercy, come into the night of disease, and soften its harsh desert with the dews of her kindness. Sickness teaches us how good and true is woman, how useful in the world, how necessary to our welfare and proper destiny. If any man have learned this on a sick bed

HE HAS NOT BEEN SICK FOR NAUGHT.

He is a man of progressive ideas and unfolding nature. Sir Walter Scott has put into words a thought that has ever had man's approbation:

O woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

"It is in sickness," says Hosea Ballou, "that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for our comfort and even necessities. This desire, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing." "Sickness," says Burton, "puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a sense of our duty." "It is then," says Pliny, "that man recollects there is a God, and that he himself is but a man. No mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt." "In sickness," says Shakspeare, playing with his prepositions, "let me not so much say, 'Am I getting better of my pain?' as 'Am I getting better for it?'"

LET US THEREFORE GIVE UP THE IDEA

of those great reformations which we formulate upon our mattresses of misery, and rather confine ourselves to a few betterments of our lives which are possible. If we are spendthrifts, we should vow to spend our money for goods of more solid worth than a taste of this thing, a whiff of that, or a sight of the other. If we are proud, let us resolve to speak kindly at least to those who have been lately ill. If we are stingy, let us make ready to give, notwithstanding, to those who need as badly as we have needed. If we are doubtful of the goodness of the gentle sex, let us at any rate thereafter except forever their qualities as a faithful succor of

THE MOST MISERABLE OF CREATURES,

a sick man who cannot move from his bed of pain and discontent. If we are impenitent, let us arise out of our wearying couch respectful to those who worship God, and reverent also before God in the presence of other worshipers. Perhaps if we aim our sudden goodness at a lower mark, we may make a record that will not entirely proclaim (as the quick eye of Pope has cynically perceived) our unpromising folly, and our unteachable ignorance of human nature.

SORROW.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.--Shakspeare.

But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.--Campbell.

Gathering clouds crowd thickest round the tallest mountain, yet do their summits, far up above, forever gaze out upon the undimmed sun. So is it with the great heart smitten with deep sorrow. There is no soul upon whom the glory of God's love falls more serenely and uninterruptedly. There is no better friend, no lovelier associate. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." And comfort does come, in the broad and kindly love and mercy toward humanity which those who have known suffering so frequently evince, "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;" says Chapin, "the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of heaven." "The echo of the nest-life, the voice of our modest, fairer, holier soul" says Richter, "is audible only in a sorrow-darkened bosom, as the nightingales warble when one veils their eye." "Every noble crown is, and on earth will ever be, a crown of thorns," says Carlyle "Sorrow", says Haunay, with rare knowledge, "turns all the stars into mourners, and every wind of heaven into a dirge." Sometimes all nature seems to condole with animate woes:

One weeping heart may tone a rural scene To sadness. Reverently the trees will bend; The little stream will sigh, with heaving pulse, And swans, in soft and solemn silence float-- Grief's snowy celebrants.

It is a manifest peculiarity of the human mind to believe that its sorrows should be more enduring than they really are. We have in this phenomenon some of the clearest views of our weakness and inconsistency, for though we deplore the destiny which deals out so much misery to us, yet we despise ourselves, and are also thought somewhat less of by our associates, if we do not embalm our griefs and remain a sort of mummy-house above ground until the memory of our friends has grown faulty and unreliable when applied to our affairs. Thus,

A WIFE LOSES HER HUSBAND.

The grief which she feels nearly crushes her spirit and evokes the sympathies of her neighbors, as well it may. She finds a bitterness within her heart which it is difficult to sweeten into resignation. Why should the blow have singled her as its object? Then, with the lapse of the days, comes a change of the season, and the wonderful climatic effects on both mind and body accompanying them. She wanders into the woods, and the rustling of the leaves beneath her feet betrays her from her dead husband for the first time, and her

CONSCIENCE, THE SOLEMN OFFICER