I ask that women should be allowed to cultivate any art or science they may choose, and even aim at some eminence in its acquirement, without being annoyed in their honorable pursuit by the terrible anathema which the world launches against (for once we will use the coarse expression)blue-stockings. [Footnote 34] If there are women who, while attending thoroughly and seriously to their household affairs, rise above material life by a love and appreciation of the beautiful, seeking therein a delicate pleasure and pure emotions, enjoying the cultivation of the soul, and listening attentively to the claims of truth and goodness, it is a shame to cast reproach upon them.
[Footnote 34: In the language of unreflecting persons who instinctively love to attack every thing elevated, perhaps in order to drag others down to their own level, the word "blue-stocking" signifies a woman who reads, and greatest of all offences converses.]
5th. Above all things should rank the earnest study of religion. I dwelt long upon this subject in my "Letters to Men and Women of the World;" I will therefore simply say that it is above all in the higher classes, where fortune authorizes a free use of the luxury of education, that religious instruction should be pushed as far as the individual capacity of man and women allows; doctrine, proofs of religion, explanation of ceremonies, church history, selected works of the fathers, great pulpit orators, lives of the saints, etc., etc. all this I have explained and taught in detail. In a course of education there should be an appropriate progressive study of all that concerns religion. Religious facts are so intimately connected with those of modern history, that one can sometimes have a true idea of the latter only by becoming acquainted with the former.
The objection of want of time, the grand objection so often brought forward, remains to be examined. Have women the time to devote to intellectual pursuits? Let us be honest and confess that there are two obstacles to the leisure required: talking and dress.
Yes, the great misfortune of women is, that they indulge in long hours of conversation among themselves, and about what, if not dress, gossip, and housekeeping?
Now, nothing lowers the mind and soul like talking about trifles for hours, and there is but one method of remedying the evil; increase the time devoted to study, thus shortening in an equal degree the hours frittered away in conversation, and supplying mental food far superior to the vulgar subjects that now exhaust so many minds and souls.
As for dress, too much cannot be said against it, not only as a cause of ruin to women of the world, but as a dissolvent of all earnestness even among virtuous Christian women.
Dress! That is what wastes the time and exhausts the spirit of women; that is what takes them from their domestic duties, and not these poor calumniated books. Every attentive observer will recognize, as I do, that it is a taste for the world and for dress that detaches them from home interests far more than a taste for study.
For my own part, I can assert that the truly superior women I have known, those whose superiority was genuine and not a pretence or an affectation, were models of practical wisdom.
There are, on the other hand, certain households admirable in every respect but one—that on an average they discuss dress four or five hours a day. The mother of the family is a woman of great merit and virtue; she dresses with great simplicity; and yet there are no preoccupations so serious, no anxieties or sufferings so pressing, that they cannot be dissipated at least for the moment by the interest of ordering a new gown or bonnet.
These affairs are of vast importance; life slips away while the mind is wasting itself in their service.
Mothers of great merit teach their daughters to consider dress as one of their interests and principal duties, discussing and letting them discusstoilettefor hours every day, and judging every earthly thing from the standpoint oftoilette. The business of dressing, shopping, choosing materials, talking with shopkeepers and dressmakers, and the time passed by young girls, and even young women, with lady's maids in more confidential intercourse than is becoming; these are in truth the great obstacles to habits of industry.
But leaving the subject of frivolous persons and unoccupied lives, how, you will ask, can a mother who owes all her time to her family find leisure to study?
It is hardly necessary to remark that I am speaking of women in easy circumstances, for the reason that they especially have the means of putting in practice these suggestions. Poor women who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, are not less precious in the eyes of God or in our own than the favorites of fortune; but daily toil can hardly leave them opportunity to cultivate their minds. And yet even among them there are many not called upon to support their families who, without being rich, keep one domestic, or do the housework themselves with ease and quickness, and thus have nearly as much leisure as women of wealth. How many women there are in business, shop-girls, for instance, or bookkeepers, who surely have time for reading, since they do read—and read—what?
It is well known that a taste for reading is now penetrating even into country villages, affording a means of spending pleasantly the long winter evenings. There are useful directions, an elevated impulse to be given to the class of women of whom we have just spoken; but however worthy of interest such a subject may be, it is not our present theme. Perhaps we may enter on it at some future day.
We address ourselves then to women in easy circumstances. Can the head of a grand establishment, a wife, a mother, find time to study.
Beyond a doubt, yes! To begin with, she can devote to study the time that other women give to worldly entertainments that consume their nights, and to personal adornments that devour their fortunes. They can lay aside all the pursuits that, while absorbing them without offering any advantage, prepare them ill for the duties toward their children that belong to them as mothers of immortal souls.
Does not the secret of living lie in the reconciliation of apparent difficulties? Do not duties, tastes, affections often appear to contradict each other? I have often seen that habits of orderly activity combined with a simplicity that suppresses useless exactions multiply an industrious woman's hours and make it possible to meet every demand. It is a woman's science to understand how to give herself and yet reserve herself: a science composed of gentleness and activity, of devotion and firmness, whose first result is the retrenching of idle indulgences, and the keeping within due bounds the tribute to be paid to the claims of society.
In preceding writings I have shown in detail that there are more empty hours, even in a busy woman's life, than is supposed. When once her children are grown up, she has often too much liberty on her hands. I once knew a lady who had six children. Her two elder sons were at a boarding-school; her three daughters passed the whole day with their governess; even the youngest had his lesson hours. This lonely mother said to me mournfully on one occasion, "I pass the whole day alone with my sewing, and poor company it is;" and she was reduced, poor lady, to seeking outside distractions, innocent but futile. If she had had a taste for study and habits of industry, she would not have been driven from home. Study makes women love their homes, the attraction of work commenced always drawing them thither. How little need of visits and society such persons feel! It is a joy to steal off to one's room and continue one's reading or drawing. It is with a light step that one turns toward home when heart and life are filled with a love of study instead of with an immoderate, ruinous taste for dress and luxury.
Much firmness, sweetness, and perseverance are necessary to secure one's liberty in a household, to make one's working hours respected, without failing in any other duty; in one word, to give and reserve one's self discreetly. It is a question of degree, like most other questions of conduct. But, in order to acquire courage for the struggle, women must be very sure that the right is on their side. They are too apt to mistake for a mere personal taste the duty of cultivating their mental faculties.
I have given strong and unanswerable arguments for the necessity of a rule of life. But in this, as in every human affair, temperament must be consulted. Though it may easily be made an illusion and a convenient pretext to cover self-indulgence, yet one can easily believe that some women, with the best will in the world, must plead the impossibility of having a rule of life, or must submit to see it violated so often as to become a dead letter.
The mistress of a household rises in the morning, she feels unwell, or her husband comes in to discuss plans, business, no matter what; work-people, children little and big, invade her room: the mother of a family has not an hour when she can shut herself up and forbid intrusion. There are women and even girls whose lives slip away under the oppression of these absolutely tyrannical customs, from which it is the more difficult to escape because they assert themselves in the name of devotion and domestic virtue.
If we tell these young people, "crushed and flattened out," as M. de Maistre expresses it, "under the enormous weight of nothing," to create an individual life for themselves, and seek occasional retirement, they answer: "But I cannot; I have not one moment absolutely my own. If I leave the parlor, my room is invaded; somebody wants to speak to me, and so somebody stands about for a quarter of an hour and then sits down. Then some one else comes, and so the time is devoured. With all the efforts in the world to keep my patience, I cannot conceal the annoyance this is to me skilfully enough to avoid being voted a strong-minded woman," [Footnote 35] the correlative term of blue-stocking.
[Footnote 35: Caractère roide, femmes affairée.]
Very well, I say, for want of regular hours let a woman devote odd minutes to study. There are always some in the busiest lives; moments that occur between the various occupations of the day; and she must learn to work by fits and starts, in a desultory fashion. There is a wide difference between the woman who reads sometimes and the woman who never reads.
If the desire to reserve a short time for study led to nothing more than the acquisition of thescience of odd minutes, the result would be very important.The science of odd minutes!It multiplies and fertilizes time, but books cannot impart it. It gives habits of order, attention, and precision that react from the external upon the moral life. The most cheerful women, the most equable, serviceable, and, I may add, the healthiest women, are those who are intelligent and industrious, and who, through the medium of a well-ordered activity, have discovered the secret of reconciling the duties they owe to God, to their families, and to themselves.
Between the spiritual and the material life, which answer to two orders of duty, the intellectual life must have its place; a place at present usurped by frivolity.
The intellectual life should be the porch of the spiritual life, material existence the support and instrument of the other two. But alas! it is far otherwise. Material existence usurps, suffocates, extinguishes the light of mind and soul. Art and literature elevate the heart, excite a distaste for gross enjoyments, and spiritualize life. They afford nourishment to mental activity, which is now the prey of levity, especially among women, seducing them to vain and dangerous pleasures. All grand and beautiful things, so worthy of the human intellect, betray the emptiness of material enjoyments, ennoble the soul and lead it to heights that approach heaven.
The culture of art and letters would occupy the feminine imagination profitably. It would create, or rather reveal to women admirable resources conducive to happiness, virtue, in short to a complete existence; whether in society, where woman's influence can elevate or debase ideas, occupations, interests, and sentiments; or at home, where talents and information, while conferring a great charm, would render her more skilful in the direction of children and in the exercise of salutary influence as a wife.
Thus the intellectual and the spiritual life would be united under the blessing of God; thus we should find in the various classes of society, intelligent Christian women, elevated above frivolity, capable of sustaining and inspiring every noble idea, every useful effort, every productive life; women who at home and in the world would be more enlightened, energetic, influential, estimable, forceful than the women of the present day.
I've got a baby, you know. There! if you laugh, I'll not tell you a single word about it.You won't laugh any more?Very well; then don't. My dear old toad—husband, I mean—Dan, who is the born image of baby—oh! yes, a very prettyruse, indeed, pretending to blow your nose. Can't I see you laughing behind your handkerchief?I've got sharp eyes!Of course I have. All mothers have. Now, be good, and sit up like a man, and—there—don't be putting your hand up that way over your face, because I can see clean through it. What do you say?Good gracious!That remark is not appropriate. However, I forgive you, for it might be if you knew what I'm going to tell you. My dear old toa—husband—is so fond of baby that I don't think I am fonder of him myself; and that is saying all I can say, and all I could wish to say, because baby's me, and I'm baby, as I love to imagine sometimes when I ask myself how much I want Dan to love his foolish little wife and Our Baby. Really, please don't hold your breath in that style; I'm always dreadfully frightened when baby does it.
Now, husband loving baby and me as he does, there's not the least doubt in the world that I am the happiest little woman, and the most contented little wife, that the world ever saw. Perhaps I may exaggerate, but ask dear Dan. If his opinion differs from mine, I'll modify it; forIthink he has the best judgment of any man I ever saw. "Tot," he often says, (the dear old toad always calls me Tot, because I'm small,) "my opinion coincides precisely with yours, and, if I have any amendment to make, I feel sure that you yourself would have made it under the circumstances." Of course, I ask if any amendment occurs tohismind. Then he tells me, and, in fact, I see that it is just such an amendment as Iwouldmake under the circumstances. Oh! he has the most perfect judgment, has my husband. He not only knows what is best, but he knows just what I would think best. For instance, about what name baby should be christened. If it was to be a boy, I settled at once in my mind that he should be called Daniel, after his papa, to be sure. To think of any other name would be sheer nonsense. But now see the judgment of my old toad. "I was thinking just the same as you, Tot," said he, "and your choice of my own name for the little stranger is the very one I had hoped you would choose; but, knowing how much you and I loved poor brother Alf—who was drowned at sea—I determined to renounce my name in his favor, and so dear brother Alf with his sunny face would live again in our child. If little Tot thinks of that, she will be sure to agree with me."Did I agree with him?Of course I did. What foolish questions you men will ask. I'd no more think of calling him Daniel after that, than of calling him, well—Nebuchodonosor—or some other such heathen name. So the priest christened him Alfred.
Oh! we had such fun at the party. Old Mr. Pillikins—the old gentleman, you recollect, you met here last winter, with the gold spectacles and shiny bald head—was so droll.He wanted to drink baby's health, but somehow he had not heard his name, so looking over to me he says:
"And his name is—"
"Begins with an A," said I.
"Begins with an A," he says after me. "Good, very good. First letter of the alphabet, where all good children ought to begin,
'A was an apple that hung on a tree:'
and the second letter is—"
"Is L, to be sure," said I.
"L! what else could it be?" Mr. Pillikins accented the wordelse, and then, after he had explained it to us, we had such a good laugh. Wasn't it an excellent pun? Then he thought he had it. So, taking up his glass in his right hand and putting the thumb of his left hand in the armhole of his waistcoat, he says;
"Alexander!"
"No, no," says I, "notAlexander."
"NotAlexander! True," says he, putting his glass down again. "I was about to add that Alexander had an A and an L, but did not have an—"
"F after it," cried Mrs. Gowsky, from the bottom of the table.
"Madam, you are quite right," replied Mr. Pillikins, bowing. "It has not an F after it, as the baby's name undoubtedly has, and theeffect is certainly, more inefable on account of it. Ha, ha! you understand?" Never was there such a punster as the old gentleman. "And then follows a—"
"All the rest," said I, "is just what you did with yourHeraldthis morning, Mr. Pillikins. What was that?"
"Madam, I tore it up."
"No, no. What was the first thing you did with it?"
"Madam, I dried it before the grate. The newspapers nowadays come so damp to one that it is enough to give one the gout in the fingers to hold them."
"Think again," I continued. "What did you do with it after having dried it?"
"Madam, I glanced over its contents, and—"
"O you tease!" said I, "you didn't do anything of the kind. You read it. There!"
"Yes, madam. I read it."
"Well, there's the baby's name, then," I exclaimed, almost losing my patience. "Don't you see?"
"Positively, madam, I did not. It is not the fashion to record births nowadays. Only the marriages and deaths."
"Well," said I, after the laugh this raised had somewhat subsided, "It might have been recorded there, for all I care. It would have been a happy piece of information, and giving a good example—" Now what are you laughing at?—"A happy piece of information," says I, "and that's more than can be said of many other items to be found in its columns."
Having got at the name, at last, Mr. Pillikins made a very pretty speech, at which everybody clapped their hands and smiled, and everything went off pleasantly, except Mr. Gowsky's son, Peter, who broke his wine-glass by hammering it on the table, and then fell backward, sprawling on the floor, from a bad habit he has of tilting his chair up. He scared baby so, that, to tell the truth, I had no pity for him in his confusion, and rather enjoyed his blushes, which never left him all the rest of the evening.
I am malicious?Not I; but a poor, dear baby that cannot protect itself must not be abused with impunity. I was near fainting with fright, too, when I heard the sound; for I thought it must be the baby that had fallen out of its nurse's arms.First thought always about baby?To be sure, bless his little heart, and the last too! You can sit there twiddling your thumbs as if you did not agree with me; but I don't mind you; for what do you know about babies? Dan says, and very truly, that a mother whose first and last thought is not about her baby is not likely to give much thought at all, either first or last, to her husband. I can't understand it; but Dan tells me that nowadays Protestant wives have a horror of babies. I never thought of it before; but there is Mrs. Johnson, she has only one child; and there is Mrs. Thompson, who has but two; and Mrs. Simpson, who is married now six years, and has no children at all. It is so all through the Protestant community, Dan says; and that there are actually more Protestants die than are born. It must be their religion, I suppose, but I cannot imagine how a woman, if she had no religion at all—and the Protestants have got some kind of one or other—could hate babies.
As for me, I can hardly tell you how much I love baby, and how proud I am of him; and well I may be. Dinah Jenkins, his nurse, says that she has nursed a good many babies, but such a baby as Our Baby she never yet saw.
"Hi, missus," said she one day, "dis colored woman t'ought she knowed all kinds o' babies as ever war or ever couldbe. G'way, Dinah, says I, soon as I luff my eyes on todischild," (that's Our Baby,) "dis baby ain't no mo' like de babies you's nussed, an' I'se nussed a heap on 'em in my time, dan—dan—stick yer head in de fire!" And as I often say to dear Dan, she is the most truthful woman I ever met.
Have I a black woman for a wet-nurse?No, I have'nt a black woman for a wet-nurse, nor a white woman either. Oh! you aresucha stupid!
I am the child's mother, am I not? That's enough. I hope I shall never be reduced to such an extremity as that. I pity poor mothers who are. If you were a mother, you would say the same.People have wet-nurses?Yes, just as they have the cholera or the typhoid fever, I suppose, because they cannot help it. As to any woman, any mother, choosing to have one, I should say that is the sheerest nonsense ever dreamed of.Great people have them, queens and empresses, and I needn't be above them?Thank Heaven, I am neither a queen nor an empress, but the devoted wife of my dear old toad of a husband, Dan Gaylark, and the mother of Our Baby!
What is that you are saying to relieve your mind?Good gracious!You have made that remark once before, and equally to the point, as it seems to me. I was going to tell you all about the baby, but you are such a tease, Ned, and interrupt one so often with your exceedingly strange remarks, that I feel very much as one might suppose the "skirmishun" train feels in being "generally switched off into a sidin'." But, when I'm not switched off, I am good as the "skirmishun" at any rate. I "doos all as lays in my power" to get on. I suppose you call yourself the express train that is too proud even to whistle a salute in passing a poor, heavy-laden freight train, and utterly despises a modest country station as it goes thundering by, as if that was no place fit for its majesty to "stop at and blow at," as Professor Haman says in hisCavalry Tactics. I study military tactics?Yes, infantry tactics, you rogue, under Mrs. Professor Dinah Jenkins; but I read that in a book of Dan's one day. Dan has a great fancy for horses and dogs.Which of course, I'm jealous of?Not the least. It only makes me love horses and dogs more than I otherwise would.Simply because Dan loves them?Simply because Dan loves them; and if that is not good enough reason, I don't know what is. Ah! smile away as you please. What doyouknow about it, you wretched old bachelor!
Here! Dixie! Dixie! Dixie! Come here, you good-for-nothing old black —— There, then, that's enough now. Say "How d'ye" to Mr. Ned. Oh! you needn't be afraid of him. He barks loud, I know, but he won't bite. And he issoknowing. I sometimes wish he did not know quite so much. And so affectionate. He takes a great fancy for everything he sees that Dan and I are fond of. I do think he would die for baby any day. Yes, you would, wouldn't you, you dear old fellow? There, you see, he says yes; he always grins and wags his tail that way when he wants to say yes.
It was about Dixie and baby I was going to tell you. He was so fond of baby that he wanted to take him out to walk and play with him on the Palisades. Ah! I shudder when I think of it.
You recollect that hot Thursday in July? The very air seemed to be holding its own breath. I felt so oppressed with the heat and the closeness of the atmosphere that I could bear the inside of the house no longer, and after taking a look—and a kiss?—yes, and a kiss of baby, who was sleeping soundly in his cradle, I went out to saunter down the shady lane that leads to the Palisades. I noticed that Dinah was asleep in a chair, too, beside the window, and thought that, if she could sleep in such weather, it was a mercy, and so I left her undisturbed. As I went out of the room, I left the door open, so that, if any little breeze might spring up, it would refresh baby in his sleep. I'm sorry enough now that I did.
You know what curious notions presentiments, or whatever you choose to call them, will come into people's heads without their being able to give any reason for them? So it was with me then. I had no sooner got out of the house than I thought about my leaving the door open, and half-determined to go back and close it. The same thought came to me again as I was turning the lane; and when I was once upon the green sward under the pine-trees, looking down the dizzy height from the top of the Palisades upon the river, I would most assuredly have returned and closed the door, had it not been for the intense heat, and I may say the cool and refreshing appearance the water had at that time.You don't believe in presentiments?Well, I acknowledge that it savors a little of the fanciful and the romantic—reason enough, I suppose, for you to reject any such notion, you matter-of-fact old stick. But we women cannot take life as you men do, or, at least, as some men do. What!you are very glad we cannot?Pray, what do you mean by that? Oh! I see, you incorrigible old bachelor, our different habits, idiosyncrasies, and tastes lead us to avoid (not your company, you know better) but your own pet schemes and fancies.I, for one, don't ask either to meddle with them or to share them. But you are very fond of getting our approbation of them, nevertheless. Dan says that there is not an orator in the country who would not prefer the waving of a lady's handkerchief to all that abominable rat-a-tat-tat you men make with your heels and canes. The more silent the sign of one's appreciation is, the better. Sincerity, Ned, is seldom noisy. True love is dumb as well as blind. But this is hardlyà proposof Dixie and the baby. Where was I? Oh! the Palisades, yes.If you were anything of a listener, I might take the trouble to give you a nice little bit of description of the sunny afternoon and the beautiful scene which the river presented to my gaze; but I won't, because I see you are gaping.
I had been seated on the grass about half an hour, watching the boats lolling about in the water as if they were too lazy to move in such hot weather, when not a breath of air was stirring, and I had been thinking how happy my life had been, and what a still happier future might yet be in store for me; and, as I looked up at the bright, cloudless sky, I said to myself, "Thus has God blessed my life, for not a cloud can I see in the firmament of my soul," when my reverie was interrupted by the noise of footsteps behind me. Thinking it was some children, I turned my head, smiling at the same time, that they might see they were welcome. Imagine my surprise. It was Dixie and baby. He had caught baby up in his mouth by the waist, and was bringing him along just as he is accustomed to carry cook's basket to market, wagging his tail and curveting about in the highest state of delight. My first thought was that, the baby was dead—an awful thought that went through my mind, and felt like an electric shock—either that Dixie had bitten him to death, or had struck his poor, dear little head against the trees, or the fences, or the stones, or something else; but a second glance assured me that he was yet unhurt, for he was doubling up his fat little fists, and—will you believe it?—actually pummelling Dixie on his black nose.
Instead of coming up to me as I hoped he would, Dixie no sooner caught sight of me than he dashed off, running round and round on the green grassy bank, stopping suddenly, and looking at me as if he would entice me to chase him.
You know that pretty spot at the end of the lane, how smooth the sward is, and how gently the ground slopes down to the sudden brink of the Palisades? The circles Dixie described in his gambols began to grow larger and larger, and to my horror I saw him run nearer and nearer to the edge of the dreadful precipice each time he came around. You know the edge there is just as sharp as if it had been cut away with a knife, and that, with the exception of a narrow line of jagged rocky ledges, the whole front of the Palisades is a smooth, perpendicular height of a hundred and fifty feet at least. What if the dog should lose his footing and slip off in one of those rapid courses he made! Now, I'm sure you cannot tell me what I did.I sprang up and ran after him?I knew you would think so. You are mistaken. I never moved a muscle. I sat as still as a statue, and as silent too. Dan said that was mother's wisdom, and wished that he had never missed baby out of his cradle when he came home; for, when Dixie had had his play out, I would have obtained quiet possession of baby, and all the fearful consequences of his appearance on the bank would have been spared. As it was, he no sooner saw the empty cradle and the little white coverlet lying on the floor all marked with Dixie's dirty paws, than he suspected the truth instantly. Cook told him, besides, that she had seen me going off to walk down the lane, and that she was sure I had not carried baby with me. Dinah had fallen so fast asleep that she had heard nothing.
I heard his footsteps as he came running down the lane, and knew it was he, but did not turn my head to look. By this time Dixie seemed to take delight in running straight down the bank, as if he were about to jump over the Palisades with baby in his mouth, but would wheel about sharply as he came to the edge.It was horrible. My eyes followed his every movement, and they ached with pain. I did not dare to close them long enough even to wink. You think my heart was beating fast? No. It beat slowly, very slowly. I could feel its dull, heavy strokes like a sexton slapping the earth as he heaps it over a newly filled grave. Dan said I was not only as still and as silent as a statue, but as white too. I do not think I shall suffer more when I come to die.
No sooner had Dixie espied my husband running toward him than he bounded off to the extremity of the sward, just where that narrow line of ragged rocks runs down the front of the Palisades. He saw that his master had anger in his face, and began to slink off to escape punishment. It is a wonder he did not drop the baby on the ground; but, do you know, I fancy that he thought the baby was going to get whipped too, and wanted to get him to a place of safety. Nothing else will explain why, finding himself nearly overtaken, he looked first on one side and then on another for a way to escape, and not seeing any, he went straight to the dizzy edge, and, gathering up his feet, sprang over the precipice. I saw them both disappear, and heard that most heart-rending of sounds, a man's cry of anguish; the very ground seemed whirling around me and the sky coming down upon me, and crushing me; but I did not faint. "You are a brave little woman, Tot," Dan has said to me many a time since, "and worth a whole regiment of soldiers." I rose from the ground, and staggered toward Dan, who ran to me and threw his arms about me and pressed my head to his breast. O moment of agony untold, and of the supremest comfort! He uttered only one word, speaking the two syllables separately, as though he loved to dwell upon every letter, and in a tone of mingled horror, grief, tenderest love, and sublime resignation—
"Ba—by!"
I thought I had loved dear Dan before that with all the love my poor little woman's heart could hold. No. The deepest love is only born of the deepest suffering. There are chords of love whose music joy can never waken. Since then Dan is to me more than he ever was, more than he ever could have been, had not our souls passed together that moment of agony.
I do not know how long we stood thus, neither daring to go to the brink of the precipice and look over. Baby and Dixie must be both lying dead on the rocks below. At last Dan mustered up courage enough to say to me,
"It is all over, darling. God is good."
"God is good," I repeated; "but, O Dan, dear! it is a cruel blow."
"For us to bear, Tot, for us to bear; but not for him to give—no, not for him to give."
He seemed to wring the words from his noble Christian heart, as if he tore away his very life and offered it to God.
"Stay here, Tot," said he, "I am strong enough now." But his whole body trembled from head to foot, and his voice was hoarse and broken. "I will go and look."
I feared to let him go. Yet why should I detain him? But I could not watch him. Throwing myself upon the ground, I buried my face in my hands, and gave way to floods of bitter, bitter tears.
I had not lain thus a moment, when I heard a sharp, piercing cry. Raising my head in alarm, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I saw Dan spring over the edge of the Palisades and disappear. Again I heard him cry as before, "Ba—by!" but there was now a tone of joy mingled with that of fear, which told me that the child was not dead.It was a brief instant that I was on my knees, it is true, it was nothing more than a look of gratitude I gave to God; but he knows that not all the language ever expressed by man could fully tell all that thought of thanksgiving which my soul sent up to him, as I raised my clasped hands to the cloudless sky.
In a moment I was at the edge of the Palisades, just where that ragged, rocky line runs down its front, jutting out here and there in rough ledges. There was a story of a man who, being pursued by the officers of justice, had clambered down there and escaped. Few people who saw the place believed it. The very first rock that jutted out was ten feet from the top, and that did not present more than two or three feet of surface. A little to the right of this, and about three feet lower, was another, on which a man might easily stand, but not for any length of time, as its surface shelved outward, and the rock overhanging it above would not allow him to stand perfectly upright. Any one who had gotten thus far must perforce take his chances of clambering down the rest or be precipitated head foremost below, to certain death.
On this second ledge, I saw Dan holding the baby by his mouth, just as Dixie had held him before. Dixie himself was crouched up beside him. Poor Dan could not hold his place long there. As it was, he was forced to grasp little, sharp edges of rock with both hands to prevent himself falling off. He saw at once that there was no time to send for help from above, and that he must try the perilous descent. As he told me afterward, he had not calculated upon this when he leapt from above. The first glance he caught of the dog told him that, if he released his hold upon the child's dress and opened his mouth, were it but for an instant, baby would roll over the edge and be dashed to pieces. Dan says now that he shall never regret taking one hasty step in his life. He makes that an exception, you see, for he is always saying to me, "Now, darling Tot, let us see the pros and the cons; for it is my principle never to leap before I think, but to let my mind jump before my feet."
Holding on, as I told you, to baby by his teeth, Dan went clambering down the line of rocks. He had managed to wave his hand backward to me as he left the ledge where Dixie was. I knew what that meant—"Don't look." There was little or no hope of his ever reaching the bottom safely, and he wished to spare me the awful sight of his headlong fall, which might take place at any step of the way. But I could not stir; my feet were riveted to the ground. Besides, could I not help him? It seemed to me that, as he went down, almost falling from one sharp rock to another, I held him up with my eyes. When I told Dan my fancy afterward, he laughed and said:
"Not the least doubt of it, Tot. I have felt the power of those eyes before."
It did not last long, but it appeared to my mind, wrought up to such a state of excitement, as if it had been going on and was going on forever. It is stamped on my mind to-day as a memory of years. As for dear Dan, it cost him, he said, the strength of many days. He was no sooner at the bottom than he turned and lifted up the baby in one hand, and, looking up to me, waved the other as a sign of safety. Ah! his hands, his poor hands, you should have seen them, all cut and gashed by the rocks. Those hands seem to have something sacred about them ever since that day.I saw him on his knees, and then off I scampered to the house to get the carriage. It is two miles around by the road to the bottom of the Palisades, and it took us a long while to get to him. When we did, he was still so weak that Mike, the coachman, and I had to lift him up into the carriage. Dinah went down to the place I had left, to make signs to him that he should remain. Poor dear, there was no need of it. So we came home in more joy than I can tell you—Dan, baby, and I. Mike rescued Dixie afterward, by getting himself let down from above with a rope, to where the patient old dog still was, wondering, who knows? how he ever came to be there.
What is that you say?Good gracious?Well, I don't mind your saying it now, after what I have told you. But don't you think, now, Mr. Ned, that I ought to be very proud of Our Baby after that? What?Ought to be very careful of him?The idea! An old bachelor telling a mother to be careful of her baby!
[Footnote 36:The Churchman,Hartford, Ct., August 31, 1867.]
The Churchman, an Episcopalian weekly periodical, contains an article of no little philosophic pretension, entitledScience and God, which we propose to make the occasion of a brief discussion of what is known in the philosophic world as the Cartesian Doubt, or Method of Philosophizing.The Churchmanbegins by saying:
"A distinction is frequently and very justly taken between philosophic and religious scepticism. When Descartes, in order to find firm ground for his philosophical system, declared that he doubted the truth of every thing, even of the existence of the sensible world and the being of God, he did it in the interest of science. He wished to stand upon a principle which could not be denied, to find a first truth which no one could question. And this philosophic scepticism is an essential element in all investigations of truth. It says to every accredited opinion, Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham? By thus exploring the foundation of current beliefs, we come to distinguish those which have real vitality in them, and stand on the rock and not on the sand; and by gathering up the living (true) and casting away the dead, (false,) science goes step by step toward its goal."
Whether Descartes recommended a real or only a feigned doubt, as the first step in the scientific process he defended, has been and still is a disputed point. If it is only a feigned or pretended doubt, it is no real doubt at all, and he who affects it is a real believer all the time. It is a sham doubt, and we have never seen any good in science or in anything else come from shams or shamming. If the doubt is real, and is extended to all things, even to the being of God and our own existence, as Descartes recommends, we are at a loss to understand any process by which it can be scientifically removed. To him who really doubts of everything, even for a moment, nothing can be proved, for he doubts the proofs as well as the propositions to be proved. All proofs must be drawn either from facts or from principles, and none can avail anything with one who holds all facts and principles doubtful. The man who really doubts everything is out of the condition of ever knowing or believing anything. There is no way of refuting a sceptic but by directing his attention to something which he does not and cannot doubt; and if there is nothing of the sort, his refutation is impossible.
Descartes, according toThe Churchman,when he declared he doubted the truth of everything, even of the existence of the sensible world and the being of God, did it in the interest of science, in order to find firm ground for his philosophical system. Doubt is ignorance, for no man doubts where he knows. So Descartes sought a firm ground for his philosophical system in universal ignorance! "He wished to stand upon (on) a principle which could not be denied, a first truth which no one could question." If he held there is such a principle, such a first truth, or anything which cannot be denied, he certainly did not and could not doubt of everything. If he doubted the being of God, how could he expect to find such a principle or such a first truth?The Churchmanseems to approve of the Cartesian doubt, and says, "This philosophical scepticism is an essential element in all investigations of truth." If this real or feigned scepticism were possible, no investigations could end in anything but doubt, for it would always be possible, whatever the conclusions arrived at, to doubt them. But why can I not investigate the truth I do not doubt or deny?
Moreover, is it lawful, even provisionally, in the interest of science, to doubt, that is, to deny, the being of God? No man has the right to make himself an atheist even for a moment. The obligation to believe in God, to love, serve, and obey him, is a universal moral obligation, and binds every one from the first dawn of reason. To doubt the being of God is to doubt the whole moral order, all the mysteries of faith, the entire Christian religion. And doesThe Churchmanpretend that any man in the interest of science or any other interest has the right voluntarily to do that?
Undoubtedly, every man has the right to interrogate "every accreditedopinion" and to demand of it, "Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham?" But the right to question "accredited opinions" is one thing, and the right to question the first principles either of science or of faith is another. A man has no more right voluntarily to deny the truth than he has to lie or steal.The Churchmanwill not deny this. Then either it holds that all science as all faith is simply opinion, or it deceives itself in supposing that it accepts the Cartesian doubt or adopts his philosophical scepticism. Doubt in the region of simple opinion is very proper. It would be perfectly right forThe Churchmanto doubt the opinion accredited among Protestants that Rome is a despotism, the papacy a usurpation, the Catholic religion a superstition, or that the church has lost, falsified, corrupted, or overlaid the pure Christian faith, and demand of that opinion, "Have you any right to exist? are you a reality or a sham?" And we have little doubt, if it would do so, that it would find itself exchanging its present opinion for the faith "once delivered to the saints." It is clear enough from the extract we have made thatThe Churchmanmeans to justify scepticism only in matters of opinion, and that it is far enough from doubting of everything, or supposing that there is nothing real which no man can doubt.
But, if we examine a little more closely this Cartesian method which bids us doubt of everything till we have proved it, we shall find more than one reason for rejecting it. The doubt must be either real or feigned. If the doubt is only feigned for the purpose of investigation, it amounts to nothing, serves no purpose whatever; for every man carries himself with him wherever he goes, and enters into his thought as he is, with all the faith or science he really has.No man ever does or can divest himself of himself. Hence the difficulty we find even in imagining ourselves dead, for even in imagination we think, and in all thinking we think ourselves living, are conscious that we are not dead. In every thought, whatever else we affirm, we affirm our own existence, and this affirmation of our own existence is an essential and inseparable element of every thought. When I attempt to think myself dead, I necessarily think myself as surviving my own death, and as hovering over my own grave. No one ever thinks his own death as the total extinction of his existence, and hence we always think of the grave as dark, lonely, cold, as if something of life or feeling remained in the body buried in it. Men ask for proofs that the soul survives the dissolution of the body, but what they really need is proof that the soul dies. Life we know; but death, in the sense of total extinction of life, we know not; it is no fact of our experience. Life we can conceive, death we cannot. I am always living in my conceptions, and that I die with my body I am utterly unable to think, because I can think myself only as living.
The thinker, then, enters as an indestructible element into every one of his thoughts. Then he must enter as he is and for what he is. His real faith or science enters with him, and no doubt can enter that is not a real doubt. A feigned or factitious doubt, being unreal, does not and cannot enter with him. He is always conscious that he does not entertain it, and therefore can never think as he would if he did. The Christian, firm in his Christian faith, whose soul is clothed with Christian habits, cannot think as an infidel, or even in thought put himself in the infidel's position. Hence one reason why so many defences of Christianity, perfectly conclusive to the believer, fail of their purpose with the unbeliever. Even the unbeliever trained in a Christian community or bred and born under Christian civilization cannot think as one bred and born under paganism. What we assert is, that every man thinks as he is, and cannot think otherwise; simply what all the world means when it says of a writer, "Whatever else he writes, he always writes himself." Men may mimic one another, but always each in his own way. The same words from different writers produce not the same impression upon the reader. Something of himself enters into whatever a man thinks or does, and no translator has ever yet been able to translate an author from one language to another without giving something of himself in his translation. The Cartesian doubt, then, if feigned, factitious, or merely methodical, is impracticable, is unreal, and counts for nothing; for all along the investigator thinks with whatever faith and knowledge he really has; or simply, we cannot feign a doubt we do not feel.
It will be no better if we assume that the doubt recommended is real. No man really doubts what he does not doubt, and no man does or can doubt of everything; for even in doubt the existence of the doubter is affirmed. But suppose a man really does doubt of everything, the Cartesian method will never help him to resolve his doubts. From doubt you can get only doubt. To propose doubt as a method of philosophizing is simply absurd, as absurd as it would be to call scepticism philosophy, faith, or science. The mind that doubts of everything, if such a mind can be supposed, is a perfect blank, and, when the mind is a perfect blank, is totally ignorant of everything, how is it to understand, discover, or know that anything is or exists?There have indeed been men, sometimes men called philosophers, who tell us that the mind is at first atabula rasa, or blank sheet, and exists without a single character written on it. If so, if it can exist in a state of blank ignorance, how can it, we should like to know, ever become an intelligent mind, or ever know anything more than the sheet of paper on which we are now writing? Intelligence can speak only to intelligence, and no mind absolutely unintelligent can ever be taught or ever come to know anything? But if we assume that the mind is in any degree intelligent, we deny that it can doubt of everything; for there is no intelligence where nothing is known, and what the mind knows it does not and cannot doubt. Either, then, this blank ignorance is impossible, or no intelligence is possible.
But, as we have already said, no man does or can doubt of everything, and hence the Cartesian method is an impossible method. Descartes most likely meant that we should doubt of everything, the external world, and even the being of God, and accept nothing till we have found a principle that cannot be denied, or a first truth that cannot be doubted, from which all that is true or real may be deduced after the manner of the geometricians. He did not mean to deny that there is such first truth or principle, but to maintain that the philosopher should doubt till he has found or obtained it. His error is in taking up the question of method before that of principles or first truths—an error common to nearly all philosophers who have succeeded him, but which we never encounter in the great Gentile philosophers, far less in the great fathers and mediaeval doctors of the church. These always begin with principles, and their principles determine their method. Descartes begins with method, and, as Cousin has justly said, all his philosophy is in his method. But, unhappily, his method, based on doubt, recognizes and conducts to no principles, therefore to no philosophy, to no science, and necessarily leaves the mind in the doubt in which it is held to begin. The discussion of method before discussing principles assumes that the mind is at the outset without principles, or, at least, totally ignorant of principles; and that, being without principles or totally ignorant of them, it is obliged to go forth and seek them, and, if possible, find or obtain them by its own active efforts. But here comes the difficulty, too often overlooked by our modern philosophers. The mind can neither exist nor operate without principles, or what some philosophers call first truths. The mind is constituted mind by the principles, and without them it is nothing and can do nothing. The supposedtabula rasais simply no mind at all. Principles must be given, not found or obtained. We cannot even doubt without them, for doubt itself is a mental act, and therefore the principles themselves, without which no doubt or denial is possible, are not and cannot be denied or doubted; for even in denying or doubting the mind affirms them. Principles, again, cannot be given the mind without its possessing them, and for the mind to possess a thing is to know it. As the principles create or constitute the mind, the mind always knows them, and what it knows it does not and cannot doubt. The philosopher, as distinguished from the sophist, does not start from doubt, and doubt of everything till he has found something which he cannot doubt; but he starts from the principles themselves, which, being given, arenota per se, or self-evident, and therefore need no proof—in fact, are provable only from the absurd consequences which would follow their denial.