I'll tell you what the trouble is with most women in connection with matrimony—they expect too much out of it. Not only do they expect too much, but, in their goodness, they prepare themselves to do too much, to give too much; in fact, they overtrain themselves.
The moment a woman is in love and becomes a fiancée she cultivates the growing of her wings, and orders a halo for her head—in fact, she sets herself to rehearse the part of an angel.
But see the 'cussedness' of things! Man is a strange animal, who prefers women to angels, and the result is that things go wrong. The dear soul is persuaded that she is going to marry a hero, a demi-god, and very soon she discovers that, after all, she has married only a man. How few of us can stand comfortably and long on the pedestals that our admiring friends have erected for us!
When that woman engaged herself she did not go straightway to her parents, as she should have done, and ask them for information on man and matrimony. Herfather might have gently disabused her on the subject of many illusions. Certainly her mother would. No, she did not do that. She kept to herself, read poetry, invented poetry, filled herself with poetry.
Boys dream of military life. To them it means gorgeous uniforms, a sword, a life of adventure, battle and glory. Girls dream of married life. To them it means beautiful dresses and jewels and a life of love-making. But soldiers do not always fight, and husbands do not always make love, and that is why military life and married life are often so sadly disappointing.
The dear little woman has prepared herself to be loving and devoted every minute of her life. She has stored provisions of all the best resolutions and virtues under the sun and above. She arrives in her new home ready to yield in everything, even ready to run the house and dress on nothing a year. How she loves that man! Her whole being is given up to love. By-and-by she discovers that the most loving couples require one or two meals a day, and that fig-leaves are much more expensive than they were when they were first worn. Her husband, who, like all men, is an idiot as far as the knowledge of housekeeping is concerned, begins to grumble when she asks for a reasonable sum to allow her to keep things going decently. Remarks pass, lectures are delivered, faces frown, and frowning faces don't go well with halos.
Why will young girls leave it to their imagination to find out what married life is? Why do they notconsult and listen to the advice of married lady friends, choosing those who are happy, of course?
They would hear the voice of common-sense.
'If you want your husband to love you and be happy, my dear,' some old stager will tell her, 'followPunch'sadvice—feed the brute. Never expect him to be loving while he is hungry. The way to his heart is through the portion of his anatomy that lies just under it.'
Another will say to her: 'Don't start married life by keeping your house on nothing a year, because your husband will find it quite natural, and will get used to it.'
Let that girl frankly confess to her sweetheart that she is not an angel, and the probability is that, if he is a man, he will say to her: 'Never mind the angels, dearie; be a woman: that's quite good enough for me.'
'Are you married?' once asked an English magistrate of an actress who had been summoned for assault. She had flung a pot of cold cream in the face of her manager.
'No, sir,' replied the lively lady, 'nor do I wish to be.'
'That is fortunate for your husband,' remarked the judge, who probably had Irish blood in his veins.
The actress—I do not mean the mere woman on the stage—is made by her profession unfit for matrimony. If she is fit for it, she is not, and never will be, a great actress.
I know that you will at once tell me that Mr. and Mrs. Kendal and Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Maude (Winifred Emery) have been married a good many years and lived most happy lives together. I even imagine that you will easily be able to name others, but I will still maintain that they are only exceptions, and you will please remark that in the exceptions I have named the husbands have, as actors, quite as high a reputation astheir wives, which may be the very explanation of those exceptions.
The actress is a heroine, partly owing to the rôles that she plays, and partly to the talent which she displays in them, and no heroine can be a good wife to a man unless he be a hero himself. A woman can never drop her love, and she never does; she gives it only to a man she can look up to.
But there are a great many other reasons. An actress wants perfect freedom of action. She cannot be bothered by household duties, hampered by the bringing up of children, mindful of the attentions required, or at least expected, by a husband.
Her soul and her very nervous system have to be stirred by the whole gamut of sentiments, sensations, and even passions, or she will never be able to stir the soul of her audience.
Can you imagine Lady Macbeth, Camille, Fedora, Phedre, La Tosca, Brunnehilde, played by young innocent virgins or by attentive and devoted wives who mend their husbands' stockings and make the puddings? Perhaps you will tell me that Mrs. Kendal does all that, and if you do, my reply will be, 'Will you please leave me alone with Mrs. Kendal?'
However, since we have mentioned the name of that great actress, I will quote her, and repeat what she said to me one day: 'It is a general rule with me never to engage married couples in my company; whenever I have done so I have had trouble. I want both men andwomen to act in my plays without having to mind what their wives or husbands may look like in the wings while they are making love on the stage.'
The husband of an actress is nine times out of ten an intolerable bore. He is jealous when she rehearses, he is jealous when she plays, he is jealous when the audience applauds her, he is jealous when she receives bouquets, he is jealous and suspicious if the manager increases her salary, he is jealous during the intervals, he makes scenes to her when she returns home, and, if he does not, he sulks, which is worse, because the man who consumes his own smoke is far less bearable than the one who 'has it out' and has done with it. Even if he is not all that, he has that feeling, which we can quite understand, that his wife belongs to the authors of the play, to the manager of the theatre, to the public, to the critics—in fact, to everybody except himself.
No, actresses should certainly not marry unless they marry actors, but as a rule they do not, and will not.
The actor may be a hero to the susceptible matinée girl, who sees him as Othello, Hamlet, Romeo, Henry V., d'Artagnan, or some other romantic swashbuckler, but he is no hero to the woman who dwells in the dressing-room next to his, and who knows that he is putting on his wig, smearing his face with grease-paint, making-up his eyes, and covering his face with violet-powder with a puff, which he handles in ladylike manner. The actor loses in the eyes of an actress all the prestige which isdue to mystery and imagination, and which constitutes the primary and fundamental element of the attraction of one sex for the other. I have never met actresses of standing who had admiration for actors as men, much as they might praise them as members of their profession.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the marriage of an actress is a mistake, a remorse, or an act of folly. An actress, in order to interpret the works of dramatists, should love, love passionately, dream, suffer even terribly, in order to be able to incarnate love, voluptuousness, suffering, and despair. The drama is the reflection of humanity; the art of the actress should be the reflection of all the different passions that have stirred her own heart and soul.
Another thing: The public takes a greater personal interest in a woman who is not married than in one who is. Actresses know this so well that, when they are married, they insist on having their names put on the bills as Miss So-and-So. When they do not, managers make them do it.
For art's sake, for her own sake, and, remembering the remark of the magistrate, I will add, for her husband's sake, an actress should not marry.
There is quite a boom in the French matrimonial market just at present, and not marriages of convenience either, but real good love matches. Young girls elope with respectable young men holding good positions in order to compel their parents to give their consent. Sons now inform their fathers and mothers that they have, without their help or even their meddling, chosen wives for themselves. It is an open state of rebellion against the old state of affairs in France.
Hitherto there were practically only two kinds of marriages among the upper classes and the good bourgeoisie of France: the marriage of convenience from which love was excluded, and the marriage for love, which, nine times out of ten, was amésalliance. And, to do justice to the old system, let me say that, as a rule, the marriages of convenience turned out to be much happier thanmésalliances, which generally consisted in marrying mistresses—that is to say, according to Balzac, in changing tolerably good wine into very sour vinegar. However, in these marriages of convenience, arranged by families, the social position ofthe bridegroom and the dot of the bride were the first considerations, and these couples, after being married, often discovered they were made one for the other, and more than one husband won his wife by courting, and really fell in love with her. In cases ofmésalliance, after the hours of passion had gone, the husband discovered that all his prospects in life were destroyed through being married to a woman he would never be able to make acceptable to the people of the set he belonged to, and often despair followed disgust, for woe to married people if either of them has the slightest cause for being ashamed of the other!
But things are being changed, and a splendid sign of the times it is, too. Young Frenchmen now seek wives among the families of their own stations in life, court them, and make up their minds to marry them, and, what is best of all, parents begin to realize that, after all, it is their sons, and not themselves, who marry, and that it is they who should make their choices.
I believe that this new state of things, which I hope, for my country, will last, and even yet improve, is greatly due to the influence of the Anglo-Saxons, English and Americans, whose freedom in matrimonial matters is getting more and more familiar to the French through reading and travelling.
Like the Anglo-Saxons, they begin to see the practical side of matrimony. The young Frenchman says to himself: 'I do not send my father to my tailor to choose the clothes I am to wear, and I do not see whyI should allow him to go and choose for me the girl I am to marry.'
There are other reasons which may also be due to the ever-increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon manners and customs on France. The French girl is every day getting freer. She is no longer cloistered, as it were, at home and at school. She now frequents the society of young men, gets better acquainted with them, and on more intimate terms than before. She is more independent, feels more confidence in herself, knows more of life than before, and the consequence is that she is better able to provoke the love which she desires to inspire in a man of her choice.
There may also be an economical reason which incites young Frenchmen to seek love in matrimony instead of outside of it. They have been observing their elders, and come to the right conclusion that real love and respectable women are much more within their means than sham love and disreputable women. A charming companion, who is at the same time a sweet mistress and counsellor, a careful housekeeper and a devoted wife, appears to them in her true light—the best article in the market. Besides, they realize that the man who is married has a social advantage over the one who is not. The man who marries a girl of his own society can now explain that he married her simply because he loved her, without thinking that he has to apologize for his action by mentioning what a good stroke of business he has made.
Most men of the preceding generation avoided matrimony as they would have avoided ridicule. The part of husband and father struck them as unpleasant and toopetit bourgeois. Literature and the drama helped to fill them with this notion; but now literature and the drama are getting optimistic. We are getting over the period of problem novels and plays, in which all the morbid diseases of the heart were dissected. The heroes of novels and plays begin to get married without ceasing to be interesting, and the result is that the present generation of France is getting more healthy and more cheerful. This is most hopeful for France, for the regeneration seems to take place in every class of society. The friends of France will rejoice in this evolution. I have always maintained, and still maintain, that it is the educational system that explains the prosperity of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that absolute freedom for men to marry the women they love explains its strength and its marvellous vitality.
Don't smile. If there is a love absolutely beautiful, almost holy, it is love with white hair. If conjugal tenderness deserves at all the name of love, it is at that time of life when it becomes idealized and purified. If two hearts can, in this world, beat in perfect unison, it is the two hearts of old married couples united by a whole life of tender intimacy. Love, in getting old, does not become repulsive—like an old beau, who, with dyed hair and moustache perfumed, thinks he can pass for a handsome young man. In those kisses, which are no longer given on the lips, but, with sweet reverence, are discreetly given on the hand or on the forehead, in the effusions of an old married couple, I see the most profound and most holy of human tenderness.
They are no more lovers, but they are friends who cannot for a single moment forget that they were lovers, and who spend the winter of their lives in sweet remembrance of the beautiful spring, the glorious summer, and the restful, sober autumn they enjoyed together.
This final sublime love may be rare, but it does exist; it is the reward of concessions made and of faultsforgiven; the reward of cheerfulness, the result of long years spent together, sharing the same joys, the same sorrows, and the same dreams. Tactful, refined, they are at this very moment as thoughtful as they ever were before. Each one is the first consideration in the world to the other. The refinement of their courtesy to each other is a constant avowal of the esteem they feel; in their old intimacy they keep the same scruples, the same delicacy as they did in the first days of their married life. They do not call each other 'love,' 'darling,' not even, perhaps, by their Christian names, but 'dear friend'—and they lay on 'dear' an emphasis that shows how sincere the expression is.
I tell you that there is no love in which you can find as much poetry as in the love of those dear couples who for forty or fifty years have walked side by side loving, respecting, helping each other, dreaming, praying, suffering together, and whose actions, words, and thoughts have each added an item to that treasure which they can now count piece by piece. This long community of hearts, this habit of sharing everything, has even established between them a physical likeness which would almost cause you to take them for brother and sister rather than for man and wife.
And how children do love these dear old couples! how they feel attracted toward them! There is a wonderful affinity between very old people and very young children. Both are alike in many ways: the former have lost their strength, the latter have not yet gottheirs. The world goes in a circle, and at the end of his career the old man meets the child. They have sympathy for each other, they understand each other, and the past and the future are the best of friends. Old people play with children with their hearts and souls in absolute earnest, without any of those signs of condescension which children are so quick to detect and to resent; and I am not prepared to say that the young children enjoy the play more keenly than do the old ones.
Oh, if people would early prepare to become old, what pleasures would be kept in store for them!
In the peaceful winter of a well-spent life, love with white hair is an evening prayer that soars to the abode of the seraphs.
It would do most of us a great deal of good to always keep in mind, or to be now and then reminded of it, lest we should forget it, that, when we are gone, the earth will not stop, but will continue her course around the sun. No one is indispensable in this world.
In order to be successful, the cruet-stand should be used with a great deal of discretion: a little salt always, never any pepper, vinegar very sparingly, and oil always in plenty.
Never in your dealings with a man let him suppose that you take him for a fool. If he is not one, he will appreciate your consideration; and if he is one, he will go about singing your praises. Either way, you willprobably win; at any rate, you can't lose, and that's something.
When you have seen a man enjoying himself telling you a story, never tell him that you have heard that story before, and, above all, never tell him that you know a much better version of it, and proceed with it.
Remember that the acknowledged best conversationalists are those who have the reputation of being good listeners. You will be called brilliant according to the way in which you will give others a chance to shine.
People who tell you all the good things that are said of you teach you nothing new. Listen to criticism, especially that which is fair and kind; then you may learn something and profit by it.
When there is something nasty said about you in a newspaper, you never run the slightest risk of not seeing it. There is always a friend, even at the Antipodes, who will post it to you, well marked in blue pencil at the four corners. He takes an interest in you, and feels that the paragraph may not do you any harm in the way of antidote. It doesn't.
When you hear that a man has taken such and such a resolution, take it for granted, when you feel ready to criticise him, that you are not the only person in the world who knows what he is about.
The most valuable gift of nature to man is not talent, not even genius, but temperament and character. If you have both talent and character, the world will belong to you, if you succeed in making talent the servant, and not the master, of your character.
The successful man is not the one who seeks opportunities, but the one who knows how to seize them by the forelock when they present themselves. The great diplomatist is not the one who creates events, but the one who foresees them and knows best how to profit by them.
A man may be very clever without being very successful. This happens when he has more talent than character; but when a man is very successful, never be jealous of him, for you may take it for absolutely granted that he possesses qualities which account for his success.
Envy is the worst of evils, the one that pays least, because it never excites pity in the breast of anyone, and because it causes you to waste lots of time concerningyourself about other people's business instead of spending it all minding your own.
Watch your children most carefully, for when they are ten or twelve years of age you may detect in them signs of defects, or even vices, which, if developed, instead of checked at once, may prove to be their ruin.
The key to success in life is the knowledge of value of all things.
It often requires a head more solidly screwed on the shoulders to bear a great success than to stand a great misfortune.
The knowledge of the most insignificant thing is worth having.
It would be absurd to say that there is no such thing as luck. Of course, there is luck, and fortunate is the man who knows how to seize it at once by the forelock.
For instance, it is luck to be born handsome, strong, and healthy; it is luck to be born rich, or of generous parents who spend a little fortune in giving you a first-class education.
What is absurd, however, is to say that you are always unlucky. You cannot always be unlucky any more than you can always be lucky. When a man says to you, 'I am pursued by bad luck,' or, 'This is my usual bad luck,' you know that he is lazy, quarrelsome, unreliable, foolish, or a drunkard.
You may be unlucky at piquet a whole evening—even, though seldom, a whole week; but if you go on playing a whole year every day, you will find that, out of 365 games, you have won about 180 and lost about 180. I take it for granted, of course, that you are as good a player as your opponent.
There is no more constant luck or constant bad luckin life than there is at cards, but there is such a thing as good playing with either a good or bad hand, and in life such a thing as making the best of fortunate and unfortunate occurrences. A man is bound to have his chance, and his 'luck' consists in knowing how to avail himself of it.
Practically every officer has had a chance to distinguish himself one way or the other, and therefore to be noticed by his chiefs and obtain promotion. Every artist has seen something which may reveal his talent, his genius, if he has any. Every good actor is bound to come across a part which may make his fortune.
The same may be said of literary men and journalists. Every man in business, if he keeps a sharp look-out, has a chance for a good investment that will be the nucleus of his fortune if he knows how to watch and nurse it carefully. What most men call bad luck is not that chance does not present itself to them, but simply that they let it go by and miss it.
If you want to be lucky in life, force luck and make it yourself. Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you.
Rise early, be punctual, reliable, honest, economical, industrious, and persevering, and, take my word for it, you will be lucky—more lucky than you have any idea of.
Never admit that you have failed, that you have been beaten; if you are down, get up again and fight on.Frequent good company, be sober, constantly take advice, and refrain from giving any until you have been asked for it. Be cheerful, amiable, and obliging. Do not show anxiety to be paid for any good turn you may have the chance of doing to others. When you have discovered who your real friends are, be true to them, stick to them through thick and thin.
Do not waste time regretting what is lost, but prepare yourself for the next deal. Forget injuries at once; never air your grievances; keep your own secrets as well as other people's; get determined to succeed, and let no one, no consideration whatever, divert you from the road that leads to the goal; let the dogs bark and pass on. According to the way you behave in life, you will be your greatest friend or your bitterest enemy. There is no more 'luck' than that in the world.
'Leave well enough alone,' as the English say, is a piece of advice which may be followed with benefit in many circumstances of life.
How many excellent pictures have been spoiled by the finishing touch! How often have I heard art critics, after examining a beautiful portrait, exclaim, 'H'm, léché!' Well, I cannot translate that French art expression better than by 'Too much retouched—too well finished!' This is a fault commonly found in women's portraits.
How many fortunes have been lost because people, instead of being satisfied with reasonable profits, waited for stocks to go still higher, and got caught in a financial crash!
Even in literature I see sad results, when authors follow too closely that principle laid down by Boileau for the elaboration of style: 'Polish and repolish it incessantly.'
Alas! how many stilted lines are due to the too strict obedience to this advice! What is too well finished often becomes far-fetched and unnatural.
How many sauces have been spoiled by cooks trying to improve what was already very good!
How many wings have been singed for not knowing how to keep at a respectful distance from the fire or the light!
No doubt there is such a thing as perfection; but who is perfect and what is perfect in this world, except that ineffable lady who, some weeks ago, took me severely to task for having written an article in which I advised my readers to be good, but not to overdo it?
The firmaments are perfect, some flowers are perfect, but these are not the work of man. Nature herself seems to have divided her gifts so as to have no absolute perfection in her creatures. The nightingale has song, but no plumage; the peacock has plumage, but his voice makes you stop your ears.
And the women! Well, yes, the women—let us speak of them.
Which of us, my dear fellow-men, has not admired a woman of ours whose toilet was finished? We thought she looked beautiful then, we admired her, and we put on our gloves proudly, saying:
'She is coming.' Yet she did not come. True, her hat was on and fixed when we saw her, and we thought that she was ready. Not a bit of it. She was not.
After she has finished dressing, and is absolutely ready to go out, she will begin to fret and potter aboutin her room for another hour. She goes from looking-glass to looking-glass. That is the time when she thinks of the finishing touches.
She pulls her hat a little more to the right, then a little more to the left, in order to ascertain how that hat can be improved. She touches and retouches her hair.
Her complexion is beautiful, a natural rosy pink, for which she ought to return thanks, all day long, to the most generous and kind Nature who gave it to her. But, at the last moment, she thinks that this, too, might be improved.
So she rubs her cheeks and puts more powder on them. The rubbing makes her cheeks so red that she has to subdue the colour. She works and works, and now takes it into her head that, being warm, her nose must be shining.
She takes the puff and puts powder on it. An hour before she was a woman who, in your eyes at all events, could not very well be improved.
Now she is ready, and emerges from her apartment. Her hair is undone behind and ruffed in front, her hat is too straight, and her face looks made-up. The rubbing has changed her lovely pink complexion into a sort of theatrical purple red.
You feel for her, because, being very proud of her complexion, you do not want your friends—you do not want anybody—to say: 'Oh, she is made-up.' And you own that she looks it, and altogether shedoes not look half so well as she did when she had finished dressing, and had not begun the finishing touches.
Beware, ladies! Many a most beautiful woman has been spoiled by the finishing touches.
Real sorrow is no more expressed by the correctness of a mourning attire and the despair written on a face than true religious fervour is expressed by the grimaces that are made at prayer-time.
Just as we are told in the Gospel to look cheerful and not to frown and make faces when we pray, just so, I believe, those who have gone before us would advise us not to advertise the sorrow we feel at their loss, but keep it in restraint, and not surround ourselves, and especially not compel those who are living with us to be surrounded, with gloom.
The outward signs of sorrow are often exaggerated and not uncommonly nothing but acts of selfishness. The memory of the departed is better respected by control over the most sincere sorrow, and children, young ones especially, who cannot at their age realize the loss they have sustained, have a right to expect to be brought up in that cheerfulness which is the very keynote of the education of children.
The real heroine is the woman who leaves her grief in her private apartments and appears smiling andcheerful before her children. The best way to serve the dead is to live for the living. There is no courage in the display of sorrow; there is heroism in the control of it.
Great hearts understand this so well that many of them, like the late Henry Ward Beecher, desire in their wills that none of their relatives should wear mourning at their death. There is a great difference between being in mourning and being in black, and I often suspect that the more in black a person is the less in mourning he or she is.
To be able to attend minutely to all the details of a most correct mourning attire almost shows signs of recovery from the depth of the sorrow.
But even when our sorrow is deeply felt and perfectly sincere is it not an act of selfishness on our part to impose it, to intrude it, on others—even on our nearest relatives?
I admire the Quaker who, quietly, without attracting the attention of anyone at table, silently says grace before taking his meal.
How favourably he compares with the host who invites every one of his guests to bend their heads, and to listen to him while he delivers a long recital of all the favours he has received from a merciful God, and of all the favours he expects to receive in the future!
The first is a Christian, the second a conceited Pharisee. There is as much selfishness in an exaggerated display of sorrow as there is in any act thatis indulged in in order to more or less command admiration.
The truly brave and courageous people are modest in their countenance; the truly religious are tolerant and forgiving; the truly great are forbearing, simple, and unaffected; the truly sorrowful remember that their griefs are personal; before strangers they are natural and even cheerful, and before their children they are careful to appear with cheerful and smiling faces.
After all, the greatest virtue, the greatest act of unselfishness, is self-control. Sorrow gives man the best opportunity for the display of this virtue.
A woman's prerogative, it is said, is the right of changing her mind. How is it that she so rarely avails herself of it when she is wrong?
It should be the prerogative of a man also. 'What is a mugwump?' once asked an American of a Democrat. 'It's a Republican who becomes a Democrat,' was the answer. 'But when a Democrat becomes a Republican, what do you call him?' 'Oh, a d—— fool!' quickly rejoined the Democrat.
We forgive people for changing their opinions only when they do so to espouse our views, otherwise they are, in our eyes, fools, scoundrels, renegades, and traitors.
To my mind the most dignified, praiseworthy, manly act of a man is to change his opinions the moment he has become persuaded that they are wrong. To acknowledge to be in the wrong is an act of magnanimity. To persist in holding views that one knows to be wrong is an act of cowardice. To try to impose them on others is an act of indelicacy. The successful man is the opportunist who does what he thinks to be right at themoment, whatever views he may have held on the subject before.
When, in full Parliament, Victor Hugo and Lamartine declared that they ceased to be Royalists, and immediately went to take their seats on the Opposition benches, their honesty and manliness deserved the applause they received.
Gladstone, who died the greatest leader of the Liberal party, began his political life as a Tory Member of Parliament. Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, who for years was the chief of the Tory party, began his public career as Radical member for Maidstone.
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, to-day practically the leader of the Conservative party, not only was an advanced Radical, but a Republican. Up to about eighteen years ago, the comic papers never failed to represent him with a Phrygian cap on.
Every man can be mistaken in politics as well as in science, just as he can for a long time be mistaken in his friends.
The more you study, the more independence of mind you acquire. Events take a new aspect, and strike you in a different light. With age, judgment becomes more sober: you weigh more carefully theprosandconsof all questions, and you often arrive at the conclusion that what you honestly believed to be right is absolutely wrong. And it is your duty to abide by your conclusions.
The greatest crimes in history were committed byirreconcilable men who lacked moral courage and dared not admit that they were not infallible. Philip II. of Spain was one.
That irreconcilable Imperialist, M. Paul de Cassagnac, wrote the other day: 'When a statesman, a leader of men, perceives that he has made a mistake, he has only one thing left for him to do: disappear altogether from the scene, for, having deceived himself, he has been guilty of deceiving others.'
The aim of man—of the leader of men especially—is to seek truth at any price.
Some men proudly say at the top of their voices: 'I swear by the faith of my ancestors, what I thought at twenty I think now. I have never changed my opinions, and, with God's help, will never change them.'
Those men believe themselves to be heroes; they are asses, and if they are leaders of men, they are most dangerous asses.
To live and learn should be the object of every intelligent man whose eyes are not blinded by conceit or obstinacy.
Pascal once said that if Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch shorter the face of the world would have been changed. If we read history, or even only use our own recollections, we can get up an interesting and sometimes amusing record of more or less important events which are entirely due to chance or most insignificant incidents.
To begin with my noble self. On August 30, 1872, I went to the St. Lazare station in Paris to catch a train to Versailles. At the foot of the stairs I met a friend whom I had not seen for a long time. He took me to the café, and there, over a cup of coffee, we chatted for half an hour. I missed my train; but fortunately for me I did, for that train which I was to have caught was a total wreck, and thirty lives were lost in the accident.
A lady whom I knew many years ago once eloped with a young man she had fallen in love with. Now, this was very wicked, because she was married. It was on a cold December day. When both arrived at the hotel where they were going to stay, they found no firein their apartment, and ordered one to be made at once. While this was going on they both caught a cold, and were seized with an endless fit of sneezing. They thought that they looked so ridiculous—well, the lady did, at any rate—that she ordered her trunk to be taken to the station immediately. She caught the next train to Paris, and never did I hear that she was guilty of any escapade ever after. But for that fire that was not lit, all would have been lost.
At the inquest which a few days ago was held over the body of Mrs. Gore, the American lady who was shot accidentally while in the room of her Russian friend, it was discovered that the bullet had struck the eye without even grazing the eyelid. The experts came to the conclusion that if she had been murdered, or had committed suicide, she would have blinked, and her eyelids would have been touched by the bullet. But for this marvellous occurrence, the young Russian would have been tried for murder, and perhaps found guilty.
An Australian of my acquaintance some years ago wrote to his broker ordering him to sell 500 shares in the Broken Hill Mining Company. The servant to whom the letter was given mislaid it, and only screwed up his courage to tell his master two days later. In the meantime the shares had gone up, and, so seeing, the Australian waited a little longer before selling. Then came the boom. Two months after the day on which he had ordered his broker to sell the 500 shares at 40s. apiece these shares were worth £96. He sold, andthrough the carelessness of his servant became a rich man. This is luck, if you like.
The late Edmond About, the famous French novelist, came out first of the Normale Supérieure School. As such he was entitled to be sent to the French school at Athens for two years before being appointed professor in some French Faculty. About had a humorous turn of mind. Instead of studying ancient Greece at Athens, he studied the modern Greeks. After his two years he returned with the manuscripts of two books, 'Contemporary Greece' and 'The Mountain King,' which were such successes that he immediately resigned his professorship to devote his time to literature. If, instead of coming out first, he had come out second, he would never have been sent to Athens, and About would probably have spent his life as a learned Professor of Greek or Latin at one of our Universities.
'When my next birthday comes,' once said to me Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'I shall be eighty years young.' And he looked it—young, cheerful, with a kind, merry twinkle in his eyes.
'And,' I said to him, 'to what in particular do you attribute your youth? To good health and careful living, I suppose?'
'Well, yes,' he replied, 'to a certain extent, but chiefly to a cheerful disposition and invariable contentment, in every period of my life, with what I was. I have never felt the pangs of ambition.'
'You needn't,' I remarked. 'The most ambitious man would have been content with being what you have been—what you are.'
'Happiness, which has contentment for its invariable cause, is within the reach of practically everyone,' the amiable doctor asserted. 'It is restlessness, ambition, discontent, and disquietude that make us grow old prematurely by carving wrinkles on our faces. Wrinkles do not appear on faces that have constantly smiled.Smiling is the best possible massage. Contentment is the Fountain of Youth.'
That same evening he was the guest at a banquet given by a Boston club, to which I had been kindly invited. When he rose to make a speech, they cheered and applauded to the echo. His face was radiant, beautiful. After he sat down, I said to him:
'Are you not tired of cheers and applause, after all these years of triumphs?'
'No,' he replied; 'they never cheer loud enough, they never applaud long enough to please me.'
Oliver Wendell Holmes was right; he had found the key to happiness.
The philosophers of all ages have deservedly condemned that universal discontent and disquietude which runs through every rank of society and degree of life as one of the bitterest reproaches of human nature, as well as the highest affront to the Divine Author of it.
If we look through the whole creation, and remark the progressive scale of beings as they rise into perfection, we shall perceive, to our own shame, that every one seems satisfied with that share of life that has been allotted to it, man alone excepted. He is pleased with nothing, perpetually repining at the decrees of Providence, and refusing to enjoy what he has, from a ridiculous and never-ceasing desire for what he has not.
He is ambitious, restless, and unhappy, and instead of dying young at eighty, dies old at forty. He misseshappiness which is close at hand all his lifetime. The object which is at a distance from him is always the most inviting, and that possession the most valuable which he cannot acquire. With the ideas of affluence and grandeur he is apt to associate those of joy, pleasure, and happiness.
Because riches and power may conduce to happiness, he hastily concludes that they must do so. Alas! pomp, splendour, and magnificence, which attend the great, are visible to every eye, while the sorrows which they feel escape our observation. Hence it arises that almost every condition and circumstance of life is considered preferable to our own, that we so often court ruin and do our very best to be unhappy.
We complain when we ought to be thankful; we weep when we ought to rejoice; we fidget and fret. Instead of smiling, which keeps the cheeks stretched and smooth, we frown, which keeps them contracted and engraves wrinkles on them.
Instead of looking at the rosy side of things, which makes the eyes clear and bright, we run after the impossible or the unlikely to happen, which makes us look gloomy. In short, I may say that old age is of our own make, for youth is placed at our disposal for ever and ever.
The organs of man are like the works of a clock. If they are not used, they rust; and when, after a period of rest, it is attempted to set them in motion again, the chances are that the human machine will work badly, or not at all.
Therefore, wind up your clock always and regularly, and it will keep going. This does not apply only to your bodily clock, but to your mental one as well.
Persons who work regularly, and, above all, in moderation, especially those who maintain the activity of their physical and mental faculties, live longer than those who abandon active life at the approach of old age.
Do not stop taking bodily exercise. Go on having your walk and your ride; go on working steadily; go on even having your little smoke, if you have always been used to it, without ever abusing it—in fact, if your constitution is good, forget that you are advancing in age; go on living exactly as you have always lived, only doing everything in more and more moderation. Busypeople live much longer than idle ones. Sovereigns who lead a very active life live long.
See the Pope! Moltke, Bismarck, Disraeli, Carlyle, Victor Hugo, Gladstone, Ruskin, Littré, Darwin, De Lesseps, Renan, Pasteur—all great workers—died nearly eighty or over eighty years of age.
It is not work, but overwork, that may kill; it is not smoking, but inveterate smoking, that hurts; it is not a little drinking that does any harm, but too much indulgence in drink which kills.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who died only a short time ago, was writing brilliant articles for the New YorkAmericanonly a few days before her death; maybe, she was writing one an hour before it.
Her death at the age of eighty-seven may furnish a moral lesson to those who desire a long life. She died in complete possession of her mental and physical faculties.
At eighty-five, Gladstone was felling trees in his garden and writing articles on Homer and theology as a rest from his political labours. At eighty-two, De Lesseps was riding three hours every day in the Bois de Boulogne. At ninety-eight, Sidney Cooper was exhibiting pictures at the Royal Academy.
Yes, so long as the human machine is kept well oiled and regularly wound up, it goes; and not only do active bodies and minds who go on working live long, but they live happily and die peacefully, and they also make happy all those who live with them.
It was a lovely sight to see De Lesseps ride and drive with a troop of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The youngest and most boisterous member of the party was the old gentleman, and all that band of joyous youngsters adored him.
The man of healthy body and active mind, who abandons work at fifty, even at sixty, prepares himself for a life of mere vegetation.
Let him stop remunerative work, if he does not find it congenial, and has enough or more than he wants to live upon, but let him immediately trace out for himself a programme of life that will enable him to keep his body and mind active, or let him look out for dyspepsia, gout, rheumatism, paralysis, stiffness of the joints, and the gradual loss of his mental faculties.
'I am sorry to be getting an old man,' once remarked Ferdinand de Lesseps, 'but what consoles me is the thought that there is no other way of living a long time.'
It is activity, it is work, that keeps you young, healthy, cheerful, and happy; it is work—thrice blessed work—that makes you feel that you are not a useless piece of furniture in this world, and makes you die with a smile on your face. Work, work again, work always!
1. When you go out with the intention of posting a letter, be sure you do not put it in your pocket, or the odds are ten to one that you will return home with it.
2. Always address the envelope before you write a letter.
3. If you write love-letters to two different women, be careful to enclose the first one in its properly addressed envelope before you begin writing the second one, or Maria may receive the letter intended for Eliza, andvice versâ.
4. Do not apologize in your postscript for having forgotten to stamp your letter. It might get you found out.
5. If you have written an important letter, or one containing money, put it in the letter-box yourself. If anything wrong happens to it, you will have no one to accuse or suspect.
6. When you send currency by post, do not let anyone know it by having the letter registered. Money stolen through the post has always been abstracted from registered letters. I have never heard of oneletter of mine not being delivered in Europe and in America. People never take their chance. They never open a letter unless they know there is money in it. How can they know if you are careful in concealing paper money under cover? Never label your letters, 'There is money in it.'
7. If you post a letter, which you do not want anybody to read except the person to whom it is addressed, do not forget to write your name and address on the back of the envelope, so that, if not delivered, or mislaid, it may be returned to you unopened.
8. If you want an important letter to be delivered in New York at a determined time, take my advice: Post that letter, in the city, twenty-four hours before the said determined time.
9. Never, or very seldom, in some exceptional cases, answer a letter by return post, even if the request be made. Always take twenty-four hours for consideration. Besides, it will give you the appearance of being a very busy man, which is always a splendid advertisement.
10. When you enclose a bill or a cheque in a letter, pin it to the letter, that it may not drop when the envelope is opened, and before posting it feel the letter-box inside to see that it is not choked.
11. If you write a letter of a private nature—words of love that you would be sorry for everyone to read except the lady you are addressing, put a blank sheet of notepaper around the letter. Most envelopes are transparent, and may disclose your secrets.
12. Always read twice the address you have written on your envelopes. Apply the same process to your letters; your time will not be wasted.
13. When you write to a friend, do not inquire about his health and that of his family after your signature. It would look like an afterthought.
14. Ladies, whose minds are full of afterthoughts, generally write the most important part of their letters in the postscript. I once received a letter, in a woman's handwriting, the signature of which was unknown to me. At the end of sixteen pages of pretty prattle there was a postscript: 'You will see by my new signature that I am married.'
Steer clear once for all of useless people and parasites of all sorts—bores, who make you waste your time; indelicate people, who borrow money when they do not know whether they will be able to return it; swindlers, who know perfectly well they will never pay you back a penny. Elbow your way out of all those frauds—poseurs, spongers, leeches, fleas, and bugs—who try to fasten themselves to you.
Be generous, and help a friend in need; devote a reasonable portion of your income to the hospitals, charitable institutions, and the sufferers from public calamities; after that, attend to yourself and to all those who live around you and depend on you for their comfort and happiness.
Bang your door in the face of people who, in your hour of success, come to treat you with a few patronizing sneers in order to take down your pride. Kick down your stairs, even if you live on the tenth floor, the man with an alcoholic breath who calls to tell you that, as you are a fortunate man, it is your duty, and should be your pleasure, to help those who have no luck.
Life is too short to allow you to play the part of a friend to the whole human race. Concern yourself about interesting and deserving people; cultivate the friendship of pleasant men and women, who brighten up your life, and that of useful ones, who may occasionally give you the lift you deserve. Attend to your business; carefully watch over the interests of those who have a right to expect you to keep them in comfort, and dismiss the rest, even from your thoughts.
Advice is a piece of luxury thoroughly enjoyed by the one who gives it. If you want to be popular with your friends, do them all the good turns you can. Lend them your money if you have a surplus to spare, and which you can comfortably make up your mind to the loss of, but give them advice when they ask you for it.
People who are lavish of advice are seldom guilty of any other act of generosity. If, however, you cannot resist the temptation of advice-giving, be sure, at least, that you give it in time. People who keep on saying to their friends, 'I told you so,' are the most aggravating bores in the world.
If a little boy wants to venture on a dangerous piece of ice, give him a warning and advise him not to go, but if he disregards your advice and falls into a hole, rescue him and wait until he is quite well again before you say to him, 'I told you so.'
Of all your best friends, your wife is the last person to whom you should say, 'I told you so.' These four words have killed happiness in matrimonial life more than any number of blasphemous words put together.
A wife forgives a few hot words uttered in moments of bad temper or passion, but there is something cold, sneering, provoking, blighting, assertive, presumptive in 'I told you so,' which gives you an unbearable air of superiority and self-satisfaction.
When you are already upset, dissatisfied with yourself, ready to take your revenge out of anyone who takes advantage of your awkward and unenviable position, 'I told you so' is the drop that causes the cup to overflow.
The amateur advice-giver is a nuisance, a fidget, a kill-joy, and an unmitigated bore. Men avoid him, women despise him, and children mind him until he is out of sight. To the latter he sets up as a model, and always begins his admonitions with the inevitable 'When I was a boy.' Then they know what is coming, and giggle—when they do not wink.
Advice given by old folks to children sows as much valuable seed as do sermons on congregations, with this difference to the advantage of congregations, that they can close their eyes during a sermon in order to take it in better, whereas children cannot do the same for fear of being called rude and of being punished for it.
Among other advice-givers whom I have in my mind's eye, I remember the one who calls on me the day after I have given a lecture in order to make suggestions which 'I might use with advantage the next time I give this lecture.' Also the one who calls to advise me to introduce a 'reminiscence of his,' which I might use on theplatform to illustrate a point, and which 'reminiscence of his' I have heard for twenty years and know to be part of a classic on the subject.
The chairman who, before I go on the platform, advises me how to use my voice in order to be well heard by all the members of the audience, a piece of advice which I thoroughly appreciate, as I have lectured only 3,000 times—well, over 2,500 times, to be perfectly exact.
I even remember one who criticised my pronunciation of a French word in my lecture, and suggested his as an improvement.