Little, leafy brothers! You can feelWarmth o' the sun,Cool sap-streams run,The slow, soft, nuzzling creepOf roots sent deep,And a close-anchored flowingIn winds smooth-blowing.And in the Spring! the Spring!When the stars sing—The world's love in you growsInto the rose!
Little hairy brothers! You can feelThe kind sun too;Winds play with you,Water is live delight;In your swift flightOf wings or leaping feetLife rushes sweet—And in the Spring! the Spring!When the stars sing—The world's love stirs you firstTo wild, sweet thirst,Mad combat glorious, and soTo what you knowOf love in living. Yes, to you first cameThe joy past nameOf interchange—the small mouth pressedTo the warm, willing breast.
But O! the human brothers! We can feelAll, all belowThese small ones know;Earth fair and good,The bubbling floodOf life a-growing—in us multipliedAs man spreads wide;Not into leaves alone,Nor flesh and bone,But roof and wall and wheelOf stone and steel;Soft foliage and gorgeous bloomOf humming loom;And fruit of joy o'er-burdened heartPoured forth in Art!We can not only leap in the sun,Wrestle and run,But know the music-measured beatOf dancing feet,The interplay of hands—we holdDelight of doing, myriad-fold.Joy of the rose, we know—To bloom—to grow!—Joy of the beast we prove—To strive—to move!And in the Spring! the Spring!When the stars sing,Wide gladness of all living menComes back again,A conscious universe at restIn one's own breast!The world's love! Wholly ours;Through breathing flowers,Through all the living tumult of the wood,In us made good;Through centuries that rise and fall—We hold it all!The world's love! Given music, fitTo carry it.The world's love! Given words at last, to speak,Though yet so weak.The world's love! Given hands that hold so much,Lips that may touch!The worlds's love! Sweet!—it liesIn your dear eyes!
OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD
Among the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men in human development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great women artists. Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, they are either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the trifling exceptions which do but prove the rule.
Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating their performances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts. What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art? And what, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculine expression?
When we look for the beginnings of art, we find ourselves in a period of crude decoration of the person and of personal belongings. Tattooing, for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practice among certain classes, even in advanced people. Most boys, if they are in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves therewith; some do so—to later mortification. Early personal decoration consisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects. This we see among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them. In personal decoration today, women are still near the savage. The "artists" developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the sartorial, and all those specialized adorners of the body commonly known as "beauty doctors."
Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men. The greatest milliners, the greatest dressmakers and tailors, the greatest hairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorative toilettes and accessories, are men. Women, in this as in so many other lines, consume rather than produce. They carry the major part of personal decoration today; but the decorator is the man. In the decoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive industry, originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry, leatherwork, needlework, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing and embroideries of ancient peoples we see the work of the woman decorator. Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past. The art which is part of industry, natural, simple, spontaneous, making beauty in every object of use, adding pleasure to labor and to life, is not Art with a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are so few women of note.
Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; and by that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchate and become slaves in varying degree. The women who were idle pets in harems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut off from the joy of making things. Where constructive work remained to them, art remained, in its early decorative form. Men, in the proprietary family, restricting the natural industry of women to personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much impoverished the world.
There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted development of women than this commonplace—their lack of a civilized art sense. Not only in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in the pitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen the arrest in normal growth.
After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and the Drama, we find women in their primitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted; doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and "tidies"—as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lower race.
This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginning of our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the world at large. Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of one line of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as they have in other matters; but by refusing the same growth to women, they have not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market as it were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste.
Among the many sides of this great question, some so terrible, some so pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life is especially easy to study and understand, and has its own elements of amusement. Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, going on themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have found their efforts hampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the amazing indifference of the world at large. As the world at large consists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seem patent to the meanest understanding that the women must be allowed to rise in order to lift the world. But such has not been the method—heretofore.
We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on art through their interference with the art of women. There are other sides to the question. Let us consider once more the essential characteristics of maleness, and see how they have affected art, keeping always in mind the triune distinction between masculine, feminine and human. Perhaps we shall best see this difference by considering what the development of art might have been on purely human terms.
The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and adds decoration to construction as naturally. The cook, making little regular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition, and alternation. Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of specialists—artists of all sorts—and an accompanying development of appreciation on the part of the rest of us. Such is the case in primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popular appreciation of her work—or his.
Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic expression and appreciation far higher than we see now. Take the one field of textile art, for instance: that wide and fluent medium of expression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments and the decoration of them—all this is human work and human pleasure. It should have led us to a condition where every human being was a pleasure to the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed.
Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; the stiff, black ugliness of our men's attire; the irritating variegated folly of our women's; the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame the dignity of childhood by modes of dress.
In normal human growth, our houses would be a pleasure to the eye; our furniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom into beauty as naturally as they still do in those low stages of social evolution where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit.
Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one to some degree, either in production or appreciation, or both. "Pure art," as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of the true artist to this ideal is one of the highest forms of the social sacrifice. Of all the thousand ways by which humanity is specialized for inter-service, none is more exquisite than this; the evolution of the social Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of those whose work is wholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as the bread of life. This we should have in a properly developed community; the pleasure of applied art in the making and using of everything we have; and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work thereof, spread far and wide.
What do we find?
Applied art at a very low level; small joy either for the maker or the user. Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect few who openly despise the unappreciative many. Art has become an occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly.
Let us now see what part in this undesirable outcome is due to ourAndrocentric Culture.
As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right to perform all social functions, he necessarily brought to that performance the advantages—and disadvantages—of maleness, of those dominant characteristics, desire, combat, self-expression.
Desire has overweighted art in many visible forms; it is prominent in painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully degraded dancing.
Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on a high plane; but the last element is the main evil, self-expression. This impulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine. It rests on that most basic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the universe. In the very nature of the sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this difference: the one attracts, gathers, draws in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out. That projective impulse is seen in the male nature everywhere; the constant urge toward expression, to all boasting and display. This spirit, like all things masculine, is perfectly right and admirable in its place.
It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth in a thousand changing modifications—the female, selecting, may so incorporate beneficial changes in the race. It is his duty to thus express himself—an essentially masculine duty; but masculinity is one thing, and art is another. Neither the masculine nor the feminine has any place in art—Art is Human.
It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal processes of reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive social process, quite above the plane of sex. The true artist transcends his sex, or her sex. If this is not the case, the art suffers.
Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotion through the body; beginning in subhuman type, among male birds, as the bower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caper before their mates. Among early peoples we find it a common form of social expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military, and other. Later it becomes a more explicit form of celebration, as among the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and music held high place.
But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we find the broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more and more emphasized. As practiced by men alone dancing has become a mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all males. As practiced by men and women together we have our social dances, so lacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression, so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance.
As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the degrading effect of masculine dominance:—the dancing girl. In the frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on her merits. We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a bracelet dance on the table. Nowhere else in the whole range of life on earth, is this degradation found—the female capering and prancing before the male. It is absolutely and essentially his function, not hers. That we, as a race, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one clear cause.
Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause. The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, that we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts. It meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity.
The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home is essentially a place for the woman and the child; yet the needs of woman and child are not expressed in our domestic architecture. The home is built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; the kitchen is its working centre rather than the nursery.
Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his little harem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifest his ability to maintain her in idleness. The house is the physical expression of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the world with a small drab ugliness. A dwelling house is rarely a beautiful object. In order to be such, it should truly express simple and natural relations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop.
The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our general taste, the everlasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, is the natural result of the proprietary family and its expression in this form.
In sculpture we have a noble art forcing itself into some service through many limitations. Its check, as far as it comes under this line of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the human body, the vicious standards of sex-consciousness enforced under the name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize, all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture.
With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the high standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free womanhood; we should show a different product in this great art.
An interesting note in passing is this: when we seek to express socially our noblest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body as the highest human type. But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity and not biassed by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful indeed, but neverdecorated. Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills, with rings in her ears—or nose.
Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess of the one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general presence of egoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression, which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry.
Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a feature of human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his other feelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its base essentially masculine. Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with.
As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room for fine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradual emergence of the human note.
Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching on these various forms; and indicating lines of observation.
That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifying description—painting—is also a wide field; and cannot be done full justice to within these limits. The effect upon it of too much masculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit. The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observer does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the young and beautiful—sometimes. If there is in some an over-emphasis of feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader line of work.
But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on self-expression. The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels, strives to make other people aware of these sensations. This is now so generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that what is called "the art world" accepts it as established.
If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he, personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest importance. The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive, necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, uses the medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-cock uses his wings in drumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowly as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations.
The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the less personal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression.
The literary output of the ancient Hebrews must have been great, since we are told by their critical philosopher, "Of the making of many books there is no end."
There must have been some limit, however, because their books were hand made, and not everyone could do it. Since the printing press relieved this mechanical restriction, and educational facilities made reading and writing come, if not by nature, at least with general compulsion, the making of books has increased to the present output—which would have made the ancient philosopher blush for his premature complaint.
In this, as in all social functions, we have the normal and the abnormal growth before us; but so far we have not learned to divide them. There is no harm at all in having anybody and everybody write books if they choose, any more than in having anybody and everybody talk if they choose. Literature is only preserved speech.
Freedom of speech is dear to our hearts; it is an easy privilege, and costs little—to the speaker. People are free to talk, privately and publicly, and free to write, privately and publicly.
The harm comes, in this as in other processes, by the door of economic interest. It is not the desire to write which crowds our market so disadvantageously; it is the desire to sell.
Though a fair capacity in the art of literature were even more general than to-day, if our social conditions were normal only a certain proportion of us would naturally prefer that form of expression. Our literary output is abnormally increased by two influences; the hereditary and inculcated idea of superiority in this profession, and the emoluments thereof. These last are greatly over-estimated, as, in truth, is the first also.
There is nothing essentially more worthy in the art of saying things than in the art of doing things. The basic merit in literature, as in speech, lies in the thing said. This the makers of many books have utterly forgotten. "She's a beautiful talker!" we might say of someone. "It's perfectly lovely! Such language! Such expression! It's a joy to hear her!"
Then an unenthusiastic person might rudely inquire, "Yes—but what does she say?"
Talking is not fancy-work. It is not an exhibition of skill in the use of the vocal chords, in knowledge of grammar and rhetoric. Speech is developed in our race as a medium of transmission of thought and feelings. The greater or less ease and proficiency with which we elaborate the function should always be held subordinate to the real use. Literature is to be similarly judged by its initial purpose, the preservation and transmission of ideas and feelings. Even the picture-work of fiction must carry a certain content of ideas, else it cannot be read; it does not, as the children say, "make sense."
Now take up your current magazine—the largest medium of literary expression to-day—and consider it from this point of view.
The modern magazine is a distinctly new product. When the slow, thick stream of book-making first began to spread and filter out through the new channels of periodic publication, a magazine was a serious literary production. The word "magazine" implies an armory, a storehouse, a collection of valuable pieces of literature. Now we need a new word for the thing. It has become a more and more fluent and varied mouthpiece of popular expression. It is a halfway-house between the newspaper and the book. The older, higher-priced, more impressive of them, keep up, or try to keep up, the standards of the past; but the world of to-day is by no means so much interested in "beautiful letters" as in the fresh current of knowledge and feeling belonging to our times.
Articles about flying machines may or may not be "literature" but they are small doses of information highly desirable to persons who have not time enough, nor money enough, to read books.
If you have time, you can go to the libraries. If you have money, you can order from your dealer.
If you have only ten cents—no, fifteen, it takes in these days of prosperity—you can with that purchase a deal of valuable and interesting matter, coming on fresh every month—or week.
Sweeping aside all the "instructive" articles as hopelessly without the lofty pale of literature, we have left an overwhelming mass of fiction. This, too, is ruthlessly condemned by the austere upholder of high standards. This, too, is not literature.
What is literature?
Literature, in the esoteric sense of lofty criticism, is a form of writing which, like the higher mathematics, must be free from any taint of utility. Pure literature must perforce be a form of expression, but must not condescend to express anything.
To write with the narrow and vulgar purpose of saying something, is to be cut off hopelessly from the elect few who produce literature. This attitude of sublime superiority as an art is responsible for our general scorn of what we call,
"The Novel With a Purpose."
Have any of us fairly faced the alternative? Are we content to accept delightedly the "Novel Without a Purpose"?
Do you remember the Peterkin Papers? How Solomon John, the second son, thought he would like to write a book? How Agammemnon, the oldest son, and Elizabeth Eliza, the sister, and the Little Boys, in their beloved rubber boots, as also the parents, were all mightily impressed with the ambition of Solomon John? How a table was secured, and placed in the proper light? How a chair was brought, paper was procured, and pens and ink? How finally all was ready, and the entire family stood about in rapt admiration to see Solomon John begin?
He drew the paper before him; he selected a pen; he dipped it in the ink and poised it before him.
Then he looked from one to another, and an expression of pained surprise spread over his features.
"Why," said Solomon John, "I have nothing to say!"
(I quote from memory, not having the classics at hand.)
There was great disappointment in the Peterkin family, and the project was given up. But why so? Solomon John need not have been so easily discouraged. He was in the exact position to produce literature—pure, high, legitimate literature—the Novel Without a Purpose.
In the effort to preserve the purity of the Pierian Springs, those guardians of this noble art, who arbitrate in the "standard magazines," condemn and exclude what they define as "controversial literature."
Suppose someone comes along with a story advocating euthanasia, showing with all the force of the art of fiction the slow, hideous suffering of some helpless cancer patient or the like, the blessed release that might be humanly given; showing it so as to make an indelible impression—this story is refused as "controversial," as being written with a purpose.
Yet the same magazine will print a story no better written, showing the magnificent heroism of the man who slowly dies in year-long torment, helpless himself and steady drain on everyone about him, virtuously refusing to shorten his torments—and theirs.
What is a controversy? A discussion, surely. It has two sides.
Why isn't a story upholding one side of a controversy as controversial as a story upholding the other side?
Is it only a coincidence that magazines of large circulation and established reputation so consistently maintain that side of the controversy already popularly held as right?
Time passes. Minds develop. New knowledge comes. People's ideas and feelings change—some people's. These new ideas and feelings seek expression ion the natural forms—speech and literature, as is legitimate and right.
But the canons of taste and judgement say No.
The ideas and feelings of the peoples of past times found expression in this way, and are preserved in literature. But our ideas and feelings, so seeking expression, do not make literature.
It is not the first time that the canons were wrong. Straight down the road of historic progress, from the dim old days we can hardly see, into the increasing glare of the calcium-lighted present, there have always stood the Priesthood of the Past, making human progress into an obstacle race.
QUERY: "I am a woman of about forty; my children are pretty well grown up; my home does not take all my time. I could do some work in the world, but I do not know what to do. Can you advise me?"
QUERY: "I appreciate the need of women's working, and am free to do so, but cannot make up my mind what work to undertake. It is very easy for you people with 'a mission' and talents, but what is an ordinary woman to do?"
ANSWER: These two questions belong together, and may be answered together. Neither of the questioners seem to be driven by necessity, which simplifies matters a good deal.
Work has to be done for two real reasons. One is the service of humanity, of society, which cannot exist without our functional activity. Work is social service.
The other is personal development. One cannot be fully human without this functional social activity.
In choosing work, there are two governing factors always, and generally the third one of pressing necessity. Of the two, one is personal fitness—the instinctive choice of those who are highly specialized in some one line. This makes decision easy, but does not always make it easy to get the work. You may be divinely ordained to fiddle—but if no one wants to hear you, you are badly off. The other is far more general; it is the social demand—the call of the work thatneeds doing.
If you are able to work, free to work, and not hampered by a rigid personal bent, just look about and see what other people need. Study your country, town, village, your environment, near or distant; and take hold of some social need, whether it is a better school board or the preservation of our forests. So long as the earth or the people on it need service, there is work for all of us.
I once went out for a walk, walk, walk,For a walk beside the sea;And all I carried for to eat, eat, eat,Was a jar of ginger snaps so sweet,And a jug of ginger tea.
For I am fond of cinnamon pie,And peppermint pudding, too;And I dearly love to bake, bake, bake,A mighty mass of mustard cake,And nutmeg beer to brew.
And all I carried for drink, drink, drink,That long and weary way,Was a dozen little glassesOf boiled molassesOn a Cochin China tray.
For I am fond of the sugar of the grape,And the sugar of the maple tree;But I always eatThe sugar of the beetWhen I'm in company.
And all I carried for to read, read, read,For a half an hour or so,Was Milman's Rome, and Grote on Greece,And the works of Dumas, pere et fils,And the poems of Longfellow.
For I am fond of the Hunting of the Snark,And the Romaunt of the Rose;And I never go to bedWithout Webster at my headAnd Worcester at my toes.
"Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly."—Prov. 17th, 12th.
Singular insect! Here I watch thee spinUpon my pin;And know that thou hast not the least ideaI have thee here.Strange is thy nature! For thou mayst be slainOnce and again;Dismembered, tortured, torn with tortures hot—Yet know it not!As well pour hate and scorn upon the deadAs on thy head.While I discuss thee here I plainly seeThee sneer at me.
Marvellous creature! What mysterious powerIn idle hourArranged the mighty elements whence cameThy iron frame!In every item of thy outward planSo like a man!But men are mortal, dying every day,And thou dost stay.The nations rise and die with passing rule,But thou, O Fool!Livedst when drunken Noah asleeping lay,Livest to-day.
Invulnerable Fool! Thy mindIs deaf and blind;Impervious to sense of taste and smellAnd touch as well.Thought from without may vainly seek to pressThy consciousness;Man's hard-won knowledge which the ages pileBut makes thee smile;Thy vast sagacity and blatant dinCome from within;Thy voice doth fill the world from year to year,Helpless we hear.
Wisdom and wit 'gainst thee have no avail;O Fool—All Hail!
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMANAUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER
How many a useless stone we findSwallowed in that capacious, blind,Faith-swollen gullet, our ancestral mind!
It runs—it runs—the hourglass turning;Dark sands glooming, bright sands burning;I turn—and turn—with heavy or hopeful hands;So must I turn as long as the Voice commands;But I lose all count of the hours for watching the sliding sands.
Or fast—or slow—it ceases turning;Ceases the flow, or bright or burning—"What have you done with the hours?" the Voice demands.What can I say of eager or careless hands?—I had forgotten the hours in watching the sliding sands.
When Rosamond's brown eyes seemed almost too big for her brilliant little face, and her brown curls danced on her shoulders, she had a passionate enthusiasm for picture books. She loved "the reading," but when the picture made what her young mind was trying to grasp suddenly real before her, the stimulus reaching the brain from two directions at once, she used to laugh with delight and hug the book.
The vague new words describing things she never saw suggested "castle," a thing of gloom and beauty; and then upon the page came The Castle itself, looming dim and huge before her, with drooping heavy banners against the sunset calm.
How she had regretted it, scarce knowing why, when the pictures were less real than the description; when the princess, whose beauty made her the Rose of the World (her name was Rosamond, too!), appeared in visible form no prettier, no, not as pretty, as The Fair One with The Golden Locks in the other book! And what an outcry she made to her indifferent family when first confronted by the unbelievable blasphemy of an illustration that differed from the text!
"But, Mother—see!" she cried. "It says, 'Her beauty was crowned by rich braids of golden hair, wound thrice around her shapely head,' and this girl has black hair—in curls! Did the man forget what he just said?"
Her mother didn't seem to care at all. "They often get them wrong," she said. "Perhaps it was an old plate. Run away, dear, Mama is very busy."
But Rosamond cared.
She asked her father more particularly about this mysterious "old plate," and he, being a publisher, was able to give her much information thereanent. She learned that these wonderful reinforcements of her adored stories did not emanate direct from the brain of the beneficent author, but were a supplementary product by some draughtsman, who cared far less for what was in the author's mind than for what was in his own; who was sometimes lazy, sometimes arrogant, sometimes incompetent; sometimes all three. That to find a real artist, who could make pictures and was willing to make them like the picture the author saw, was very unusual.
"You see, little girl," said Papa, "the big artists are too big to do it—they'd rather make their own pictures; and the little artists are too little—they can't make real ones of their own ideas, nor yet of another's."
"Aren't there any middle-sized artists?" asked the child.
"Sometimes," said her father; and then he showed her some of the perfect illustrations which leave nothing to be desired, as the familiar ones by Teniel and Henry Holiday, which make Alice's Adventures and the Hunting of the Snark so doubly dear, Dore and Retsch and Tony Johannot and others.
"When I grow up," said Rosamond decidedly, "I'm going to be a middle-sized artist!"
Fortunately for her aspirations the line of study required was in no way different at first from that of general education. Her parents explained that a good illustrator ought to know pretty much everything. So she obediently went through school and college, and when the time came for real work at her drawing there was no objection to that.
"It is pretty work," said her mother, "a beautiful accomplishment. It will always be a resource for her."
"A girl is better off to have an interest," said her father, "and not marry the first fool that asks her. When she does fall in love this won't stand in the way; it never does; with a woman. Besides—she may need it sometime."
So her father helped and her mother did not hinder, and when the brown eyes were less disproportionate and the brown curls wreathed high upon her small fine head, she found herself at twenty-one more determined to be a middle-sized artist than she was at ten.
Then love came; in the person of one of her father's readers; a strenuous new-fledged college graduate; big, handsome, domineering, opinionative; who was accepting a salary of four dollars a week for the privilege of working in a publishing house, because he loved books and meant to write them some day.
They saw a good deal of each other, and were pleasantly congenial. She sympathized with his criticisms of modem fiction; he sympathized with her criticisms of modern illustration; and her young imagination began to stir with sweet memories of poetry and romance; and sweet hopes of beautiful reality.
There are cases where the longest way round is the shortest way home; but Mr. Allen G. Goddard chose differently. He had read much about women and about love, beginning with a full foundation from the ancients; but lacked an understanding of the modern woman, such as he had to deal with.
Therefore, finding her evidently favorable, his theories and inclinations suiting, he made hot love to her, breathing, "My Wife!" into her ear before she had scarce dared to think "my darling!" and suddenly wrapping her in his arms with hot kisses, while she was still musing on "The Hugenot Lovers" and the kisses she dared dream of came in slow gradation as in the Sonnets From the Portuguese.
He was in desperate earnest. "O you are so beautiful!" he cried. "So unbelievably beautiful! Come to me, my Sweet!" for she had sprung away and stood panting and looking at him, half reproachful, half angry.
"You love me, Dearest! You cannot deny it!" he cried. "And I love you—Ah! You shall know!"
He was single-hearted, sincere; stirred by a very genuine overwhelming emotion. She on the contrary was moved by many emotions at once;—a pleasure she was half ashamed of; a disappointment she could not clearly define; as if some one had told her the whole plot of a promising new novel; a sense of fear of the new hopes she had been holding, and of startled loyalty to her long-held purposes.
"Stop!" she said—for he evidently mistook her agitation, and thought her silence was consent. "I suppose I do—love you—a little; but you've no right to kiss me like that!"
His eyes shone. "You Darling!MyDarling!" he said. "You will give me the right, won't you? Now, Dearest—see! I am waiting!" And he held out his arms to her.
But Rosamond was more and more displeased. "You will have to wait. I'm sorry; but I'm not ready to be engaged, yet! You know my plans. Why I'm going to Paris this year! I'm going to work! It will be ever so long before I'm ready to—to settle down."
"As to that," he said more calmly, "I cannot of course offer immediate marriage, but we can wait for that—together! You surely will not leave me—if you love me!"
"I think I love you," she said conscientiously, "at least I did think so. You've upset it all, somehow—you hurry me so!—no—I can't bind myself yet."
"Do you tell me to wait for you?" he asked; his deep voice still strong to touch her heart. "How long, Dearest?"
"I'm not asking you to wait for me—I don't want to promise anything—nor to have you. But when I have made a place—am really doing something—perhaps then—"
He laughed harshly. "Do not deceive yourself, child, nor me! If you loved me there would be none of this poor wish for freedom—for a career. You don't love me—that's all!"
He waited for her to deny this. She said nothing. He did not know how hard it was for her to keep from crying—and from running to his arms.
"Very well," said he. "Goodby!"—And he was gone.
All that happened three years ago.
Allen Goddard took it very hard; and added to his earlier ideas about women another, that "the new woman" was a selfish heartless creature, indifferent to her own true nature.
He had to stay where he was and work, owing to the pressure of circumstances, which made it harder; so he became something of a mysogynyst; which is not a bad thing when a young man has to live on very little and build a place for himself.
In spite of this cynicism he could not remove from his mind those softly brilliant dark eyes; the earnest thoughtful lines of the pure young face; and the changing lights and shadows in that silky hair. Also, in the course of his work, he was continually reminded of her; for her characteristic drawings appeared more and frequently in the magazines, and grew better, stronger, more convincing from year to year.
Stories of adventure she illustrated admirably; children's stories to perfection; fairy stories—she was the delight of thousands of children, who never once thought that the tiny quaint rose in a circle that was to be found in all those charming pictures meant a name. But he noticed that she never illustrated love stories; and smiled bitterly, to himself.
And Rosamond?
There were moments when she was inclined to forfeit her passage money and throw herself unreservedly into those strong arms which had held her so tightly for a little while. But a bud picked open does not bloom naturally; and her tumultuous feelings were thoroughly dissipated by a long strong attack ofmal de mer.She derived two advantages from her experience: one a period of safe indifference to all advances from eager fellow students and more cautious older admirers; the other a facility she had not before aspired to in the making of pictures of love and lovers.
She made pictures of him from memory—so good, so moving, that she put them religiously away in a portfolio by themselves; and only took them out—sometimes. She illustrated, solely for her own enjoyment some of her girlhood's best loved poems and stories. "The Rhyme of the Duchess May," "The Letter L," "In a Balcony," "In a Gondola." And hid them from herself even—they rather frightened her.
After three years of work abroad she came home with an established reputation, plenty of orders, and an interest that would not be stifled in the present state of mind of Mr. Allen Goddard.
She found him still at work, promoted to fifteen dollars a week by this time, and adding to his income by writing political and statistical articles for the magazines. He talked, when they met, of this work, with little enthusiasm, and asked her politely about hers.
"Anybody can see mine!" she told him lightly. "And judge it easily."
"Mine too," he answered. "It to-day is—and to-morrow is cast into the waste-basket. He who runs may read—if he runs fast enough."
He told himself he was glad he was not bound to this hard, bright creature, so unnaturally self-sufficient, and successful.
She told herself that he had never cared for her, really, that was evident.
Then an English publisher who liked her work sent her a new novel by a new writer, "A. Gage." "I know this is out of your usual line," he said, "but I want a woman to do it, and I want you to be the woman, if possible. Read it and see what you think. Any terms you like."
The novel was called "Two and One;" and she began it with languid interest, because she liked that publisher and wished to give full reasons for refusing. It opened with two young people who were much in love with one another; the girl a talented young sculptor with a vivid desire for fame; and another girl, a cousin of the man, ordinary enough, but pretty and sweet, and with no desires save those of romance and domesticity. The first couple broke off a happy engagement because she insisted on studying in Paris, and her lover, who could neither go with her, nor immediately marry her, naturally objected.
Rosamond sat up in bed; pulled a shawl round her, swung the electric light nearer, and went on.
The man was broken-hearted; he suffered tortures of loneliness, disappointment, doubt, self-depreciation. He waited, held at his work by a dependent widowed mother; hoping against hope that his lost one would come back. The girl meanwhile made good in her art work; she was not a great sculptor but a popular portraitist and maker of little genre groups. She had other offers, but refused them, being hardened in her ambitions, and, possibly, still withheld by her early love.
The man after two or three years of empty misery and hard grinding work, falls desperately ill; the pretty cousin helps the mother nurse him, and shows her own affection. He offers the broken remnants of his heart, which she eagerly undertakes to patch up; and they become tolerably happy, at least she is.
But the young sculptor in Paris! Rosamond hurried through the pages to the last chapter. There was the haughty and triumphant heroine in her studio. She had been given a medal—she had plenty of orders—she had just refused a Count. Everyone had gone, and she sat alone in her fine studio, self-satisfied and triumphant.
Then she picks up an old American paper which was lying about; reads it idly as she smokes her cigarette—and then both paper and cigarette drop to the floor, and she sits staring.
Then she starts up—her arms out—vainly. "Wait! O Wait!" she cries—"I was coining back,"—and drops into her chair again. The fire is out. She is alone.
Rosamond shut the book and leaned back upon her pillow. Her eyes were shut tight; but a little gleaming line showed on either cheek under the near light. She put the light out and lay quite still.
*
Allen G. Goddard, in his capacity as "reader" was looking over some popular English novels which his firm wished to arrange about publishing in America. He left "Two and One" to the last. It was the second edition, the illustrated one which he had not seen yet; the first he had read before. He regarded it from time to time with a peculiar expression.
"Well," he said to himself, "I suppose I can stand it if the others do."And he opened the book.
The drawing was strong work certainly, in a style he did not know. They were striking pictures, vivid, real, carrying out in last detail the descriptions given, and the very spirit of the book, showing it more perfectly than the words. There was the tender happiness of the lovers, the courage, the firmness, the fixed purpose in the young sculptor insisting on her freedom, and the gay pride of the successful artist in her work.
There was beauty and charm in this character, yet the face was always turned away, and there was a haunting suggestion of familiarity in the figure. The other girl was beautiful, and docile in expression; well-dressed and graceful; yet somehow unattractive, even at her best, as nurse; and the man was extremely well drawn, both in his happy ardor as a lover, and his grinding misery when rejected. He was very good-looking; and here too was this strong sense of resemblance.
"Why he looks likeme!" suddenly cried the reader—springing to his feet. "Confound his impudence!" he cried. "How in thunder!" Then he looked at the picture again, more carefully, a growing suspicion in his face; and turned hurriedly to the title page,—seeing a name unknown to him.
This subtle, powerful convincing work; this man who undeniably suggested him; this girl whose eyes he could not see; he turned from one to another and hurried to the back of the book.
"The fire was out—she was alone." And there, in the remorseless light of a big lamp before her fireless hearth, the crumpled newspaper beside her, and all hope gone from a limp, crouching little figure, sat—why, he would know her among a thousand—even if her face was buried in her hands, and sunk on the arm of the chair—it was Rosamond!
*
She was in her little downtown room and hard at work when he entered; but she had time to conceal a new book quickly.
He came straight to her; he had a book in his hand, open—he held it out.
"Did you do this?" he demanded. "Tell me—tell me!" His voice was very unreliable.
She lifted her eyes slowly to his; large, soft, full of dancing lights, and the rich color swept to the gold-lighted borders of her hair.
"Did you?" she asked.
He was taken aback. "I!" said he. "Why it's by—" he showed her the title-page. "By A. Gage," he read.
"Yes," said she, "Go on," and he went on, 'Illustrated by A. N. Other.'"
"It's a splendid novel," she said seriously. "Real work—great work. I always knew you'd do it, Allen. I'm so proud of you!" And she held out her hand in the sincere intelligent appreciation of a fellow craftsman.
He took it, still bewildered.
"Thank you," he said. "I value your opinion—honestly I do! And—with a sudden sweep of recognition. "And yours is great work! Superb! Why you've put more into that story than I knew was there! You make the thing live and breathe! You've put a shadow of remorse in that lonely ruffian there that I was too proud to admit! And you've shown the—unconvincingness of that Other Girl; marvellously. But see here—no more fooling!"
He took her face between his hands, hands that quivered strongly, and forced her to look at him. "Tell me about that last picture! Is it—true?"
Her eyes met his, with the look he longed for. "It is true," she said.
*
After some time, really it was a long time, but they had not noticed it, he suddenly burst forth. "But how did youknow?"
She lifted a flushed and smiling face: and pointed to the title page again.
"'A. Gage.'—You threw it down."
"And you—" He threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "You threw down A-N-Other! O you witch! You immeasurably clever darling! How well our work fits. By Jove! What good times we'll have!"
And they did.
Shall no bird sing except the nightingale?Must all the lesser voices cease?Lark, thrush and blackbird hold their peace?The woods wait dumbUntil he come?
Must we forego the voices of the field?The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing,All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing,Where each revealsWhat joy he feels?
Should we know how to praise the nightingale,Master of music, ecstacy and pain,If he alone sang in the springtime rain?If no one heardA minor bird?
"Won't you step in?"
You step in.
"She will be down in a moment. Won't you sit down?"
You sit down. You wait. You are in the parlor.
What is this room? What is it for?
It is not to sleep in, the first need of the home. Not to eat in, the second. Not to shelter young in, the third. Not to cook and wash in, to sew and mend in, to nurse and tend in; not for any of the trades which we still practice in the home.
It is a place for social intercourse. If the family is sufficiently intelligent they use it for this purpose, gathering there in peace and decorum, for rest and pleasure. Whether the family is of that order or not, they use the parlor, if they have one, for the entertainment of visitors. Our ancient Webster gives first: "The apartment in monastery or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with each other, or with visitors and friends from without," and second, "A room in a house which the family usually occupy for society and conversation; the reception room for visitors." It is, as the derivation declares, "a talking room."
While you wait in the parlor you study it.
It is the best room. It has the best carpet, the best furniture, the pictures and decorations considered most worthy. It is adorned as a shrine for the service of what we feel rather than think to be a noble purpose—to promote social intercourse.
In the interchange of thought and feeling that form so large and essential a part of human life, these parlors are the vehicles provided. Are they all the vehicles provided? Is it in parlors that the sea of human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new lights in science? the moving thoughts of the world?
If you could hide in a thousand parlors and listen to the talk therein what would you hear? When "she" has come down, greeted her friend with effusion or her caller with ample cordiality, and the talk begins, the interchange of thought, what does the parlor bring forth?
Alas and alas! It brings forth the kitchen, the nursery, and the dressmaker's shop. It furnishes shop-talk mostly, gossip of the daily concerns of the speakers.
Are there no men then in the parlors? Yes, frequently. The man of the house is there with his family in the evening; other men call with their wives; young men call on young women to court them; but in all these cases the men, talking to the women, must needs confine the conversation to their lines of work and thought. When men talk with men it is not in parlors. The women may be ignorant, knowing only household affairs; or they may be "cultivated," more highly educated than the men, talking glibly of books they have read, lectures they have heard, plays they have seen; while the men can talk well only of the work they have done.
When men wish to talk with men of world-business of any sort, they do not seek the parlor. The street, the barroom, the postoffice, some public place they want where they may meet freely on broader ground. For the parlor is the women's meeting ground—has been for long their only meeting ground except the church steps.
Its limits are sharp and clear. Only suitable persons may enter the parlor; only one's acquaintances and friends. Thus the social intercourse of women, for long years has been rigidly confined to parlor limits; they have conversed only with their own class and kind, forever rediscussing the same topics, the threadbare theme of their common trade; and the men who come to their parlor, talk politely to them there within prescribed lines.
It is interesting and pathetic to see the woman, when means allow, enlarge the size of her parlor, the number of her guests, seeking continually for that social intercourse for which the soul hungers, and which the parlor so meagerly provides. As we see the fakir;
"Eating with famished patience grain by grain,A thousand grains of millet-seed a day,"—
So the woman talks incessantly with as many as she can—neither giving nor getting what is needed.
When we find an institution so common as the parlor, exerting a constant influence upon us from childhood up, carrying with it a code of manners, a system of conduct, a scheme of decoration, a steady prohibitive pressure upon progressive thought, we shall be wise to study that institution and in especial its effect upon the mind.
First, we may observe as in the kitchen the dominant note of personality.
In the parlor more than elsewhere are to be found the "traces of a woman's hand." It is her room, the Lady of the House and other Ladies of other Houses, having each their own to exhibit, all politely praise one another's display.
When a knowledge of art, a sense of beauty, grows in the world, and slowly affects the decorators and furnishers, then does it through the blandishments of the merchants filter slowly into a thousand parlors. But as easily when there is neither art nor beauty in such furnishings, are they foisted upon the purchasing housewife. Such as it is, provided through the limitations of the housewife's mind and the husband's purse, this "best room" becomes a canon of taste to the growing child.
"The parlor set" he must needs see held up as beautiful; the "reception chairs," the carefully shadowed carpet,—these and the "best dress" to go with them and the "company manners" added, are unescapable aesthetic influences.
Few children like the parlor, few children are wanted or allowed in the parlor, yet it has a steady influence as a sort of social shrine.
Most rigidly it teaches the child exclusiveness, the narrow limits of one's "social acquaintances." As rigidly and most evilly it teaches him falsehood. Scarcely a child but hears the mother's fretful protest against the visitor, followed by the lightning change to cordial greeting. The white lie, the smiling fib, the steady concealment of the undesirable topic, the mutual steering off from all but a set allowance of themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable repetition—all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed to stay if quiet, hears and remembers. See the little girl's "playing house." See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and servants,—these they have well learned are proper subjects for parlor talk.
The foolish and false ideas of beauty held up to them as "best," they seek to perpetuate. The arbitrary "best dress" system, develops into a vast convention, a wearing of apparel not for beauty, and not for use, not for warmth, protection nor modesty (often quite the opposite of all these), but as a conventional symbol of respectability.
So interwoven with our inner consciousness are these purely arbitrary codes of propriety in costume, that we have such extremes as Kipling shows us in his remote Himalayan forests,—a white man thousands of miles from his kind, who "dressed for dinner every night to preserve his self-respect." No doubt a perfectly sincere conviction, and one sunk deep in the highbred British breast, but even so of a most shallow and ephemeral nature, based on nothing whatever but a temporary caprice of our parlor-mindedness.
Being reared in that state of mind, and half of us confined to it professionally, we are inevitably affected thereby, and react upon life—the real moving world-life, under its pitiful limitations.
If one's sense of beauty must be first, last and always personal, and confined to one's parlor,—for of course we cannot dictate as to other women's parlors,—then how is it to be expected that we should in any way notice, feel or see the ugliness of our town or city, schoolhouse or street-car?
See the woman who has had "an education," who has even "studied art," perhaps, and whose husband can pay for what she wants. Her parlor may become a drawing-room, or two, or more, but she does not grow to care that a public school-room is decorated in white plaster trimmed with a broad strip of blackboard.
The bald, cruel, wearing ugliness of the most of our schools, is worthy of penal institutions, yet we with cheerful unconcern submit growing children to such influences without ever giving it a thought.
"My parlor" must be beautiful, but "our school" is no business of mine. Is there any real reason, by the way, why blackboards must be black? A deep dull red or somber green would be restful and pleasant to the eye, and show chalk just as well. As is being now slowly discovered. There are no blackboards in our parlors. Our children leave home to go to school, and their mother's thoughts do not. In the small measure of parlor decoration grows no sense of public art.
Great art must be largely conceived, largely executed. For the temple and palace and forum rose the columns and statues of the past; for the church and castle the "frozen music" of mediaeval architecture; for church and palace again, the blazing outburst of pictorial art in the great re-birth. Now the struggling artist must cater to the tastes of parlor-bred patrons; must paint what suits the uses of that carpeted sanctuary, portraits of young ladies most successful! Or he must do for public buildings, if by chance he gets the opportunity, what meets the tastes of our universal parlor-mindedness.
With this parlor-mindedness, we repudiate and condemn in painting, literature, music, drama and the dance, whatever does not conform to the decorum of this shrine, whatsoever is not suitable to ladylike conversation. Be the book bad, it is unsuited to the parlor table. Be the book good—too good, or be it great, then it is equally unsuited. Controversy has no place in parlors, hence no controversial literature. Pleasant if possible, or sweetly sad, and not provocative of argument—this is the demeanor of the parlor table, and to this the editor conforms. To the editorial dictum the "reader" must submit; to the "readers" decisions the writer must submit; to themenufurnished by the magazines, the public must submit, and so grows up among us a canon of literary judgment, best described as "parlor-minded." This is by no means so damaging as kitchen-mindedness, for those who escape the influence of the parlor are many, and those who escape the influence of the kitchen are few; but it is quite damaging enough.
One of the main elements of beauty in our lives is the human body. Some keep swans, some peacocks, and some deer, that they may delight their eyes with the beauty thereof. We ourselves are more beautiful than any beast or bird, we are the inspiration of poet, painter, and sculptor; yet we have deliberately foregone all this constant world of beauty and substituted for it a fluctuating nightmare.
In what sordid or discordant colors do we move about! What desolate blurring of outline and action, by our dragging masses of cloth, stiffened and padded like Chinese armor! What strange figures, conventionalized as a lotus pattern, instead of the moving glory of the human form!
Why do we do it? Having done it why do we bear it longer? Why not fill our streets with beauty, gladden our eyes and uplift our souls with the loveliness that is ours by nature, plus the added loveliness of the textile art? We have pictures of our beauty, we have statues of our beauty—why go without the real thing? Suppose our swans could show us in paint and marble the slow white grace of their plumed sailing, but in person paddled about in a costume of stovepipes. Suppose deer and hound,—but wait!—this we have seen, this extreme of human folly forced upon the helpless beast,—dogs dressed to suit the taste of their parlor-minded owners! Not men's dogs,—women's dogs.
To cover—at any cost, with anything, that is a major ideal of the parlor. There is an exception made, when, at any cost of health, beauty and decency, we uncover—but this too, is to meet one of the parlor purposes. In it and its larger spread of drawing and assembly rooms, we provide not only for "social intercourse"—but for that necessary meeting of men and women that shall lead to marriage.
A right and wholesome purpose, but not a right and wholesome place. Men and women should meet and meet freely in the places where they live, but they should not live in parlors. They should meet and know one another in their working clothes, in the actual character and habit of their daily lives.
Marriages may be "made in heaven," but they are mainly—shall we say "retailed"? in parlors. What can the parlor-loved young woman know of the parlor-bound young man? Parlor manners only are produced, parlor topics, parlor ideas. He had better court her in the kitchen, if she is one of the "fifteen sixteenths" of our families who keep no servants, to know what he is going to live with. She never knows what she is going to live with; for the nature of man is not truly exhibited either in kitchen or parlor. A co-educational college does much, a studio or business office or work-shop does more, to show men and women to each other as they are. Neither does enough, for the blurring shadow of our parlor-mindedness still lies between. It has so habituated us to the soft wavelets and glassy shallows of polite conversation, that we refuse to face and discuss the realities of life. With gifts of roses and bonbons, suppers and theatres that cost more than the cows of the Kaffir lover, and ought to make the girl feel like a Kaffir bride, the man woos the woman. With elaborate toilettes and all the delicate trickery of her unnatural craft, the woman woos the man. And the trail of the parlor is over it all.
Gaily to the gate of marriage they go, and through it—and never have they asked or answered the questions on which the whole truth of their union depends. Our standards of decorum forbid,—parlor standards all. We have woven and embroidered a veil over the facts of life; an incense-clouded atmosphere blinds us; low music and murmured litanies dull the mind, but not the senses. We drift and dream. In the girl's mind floats a cloud of literary ideals. He is like a "Greek god," a "Galahad," a "Knight of old." He is in some mystic way a Hero, a Master, a Protector. She pictures herself as fulfilling exquisite ideals of wifely devotion, "all in all" to him, and he to her.
She does not once prefigure to herself the plain common facts of the experience that lies before her. She does not known them. In parlors such things are not discussed,—no naked truths can be admitted there.
We live a marvellous life at home. Visibly we have the care and labor of housekeeping, the strain and anxiety of childbearing as it is practised, the elaborate convention of "receiving" and "entertaining." Under these goes on life. Our bodies are tired, overtaxed, ill-fed, grossly ill-treated. Our minds are hungry, unsatisfied, or drugged and calm. We live, we suffer and we die,—and never once do we face the facts. Birth and death are salient enough, one would think, but birth and death we particularly cover and hide, concealing from our friends with conventional phrases, lying about to our children. Over the strong ever-lasting life-processes, we spin veil on veil; drape and smother them till they become sufficiently remote and symbolic for the parlor to recognize.
In older nations than ours, we can see this web of convention thickened and hardened till life runs low within. Think what can be the state of mind in India which allows child-marriage—the mother concurrent! Think of the slow torture of little girls in foot-bound China, the mother concurrent! Then turning quickly, think of our own state of mind, which allows young girls to marry old reprobates,—the mother concurrent!