EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS.
“Nothing is more neglected than the education of daughters,” said Fenelon, in the first sentence of his noted work on the subject. This cannot be said with truth now, when so much time, thought and money, are given to their instruction in the most opposite quarters. Whilst thinking upon this topic, it seems to me as if every one of its leading aspects had sent a representation of itself to help our judgment. This month, even the stranger in our city must have had his attention attracted by the costume and speech-making of the somewhat brave champions of the Woman’s Rights’ party, who have been holding their conventions; and, as if to show up one extreme by another, the debates of radicalism have run parallel with the rites of superstition; and, on his way to the hall that rings with feminine voices that claim masculine honors, he may as he passes many churches catch the strains of those vesper hymns to the Virgin Mother, by which Romanism strives to make this beautiful Mary confirm its daughtersin the faith, by that ideal of womanhood so deified in its own loveliness without need of any borrowed grace of man’s.
In his next morning’s walk, he will see in the many processions of boarding-school girls promenading with no very elastic step, quite another aspect of woman’s destiny, and one that may give him mingled feelings as he meditates upon the future of American mothers and their posterity. If the stranger comes from a foreign country, he will be interested less in these three aspects of the subject, than in a fourth of far less assuming air. He will be more impressed with the looks of the daughters of the people, with cheery step on their way to the public schools, than with the champions of reform, the pupils of fashion, or the devotees of the ancient ritual. Surely the education of girls is not neglected among us; yet, whether it is wisely attended to, is one of the most serious and pressing questions of our day,—a question in which every family is vitally concerned. There are few readers who are not ready to give some thought to the true idea and method of female education.
We must look for the true idea reverently, as under religious guidance, not according to our own caprices or opinions. Nothing surely should awe our wilful conceits into docile attention, more than the effort to find the calling and the place of the being beyond all others dependent upon our care. Where but in the school of the Creator and Preserver himself, shall we learn what ourdaughters are called to be under his Providence? Where but therein shall we learn to decipher that fair and wonderful hieroglyph which God himself carved out in the person of Eve, and which remains to this day the most expressive cipher of heaven’s grace and care.
The language of the Psalmist, so often quoted, is sufficient to define the idea of female education when freely interpreted. If our daughters, according to his prayer, should be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace, it is clear that their education is to have accomplishment and solidity such as to fit them for their place as the main supports of social life. They are to be polished stones. Does not this expression bring the sanction of Holy Writ against the too frequent notion that woman is made only to be the servant of man, and that her chief destiny is to be the drudging underling of his will; not like the polished stone of a palace wall, but the rough rock at the foundation,—useful, indeed, but buried under the dust. This idea exists not merely in savage countries, where woman is actually man’s slave, and reared to be such from childhood, so that a thoughtful mother mourns when a daughter is born; but our own Christendom reads its own darkest chapter in the condition of woman, so often forced to drudge for scanty bread and raiment, perhaps abused by the very man upon whose bidding she waits, and who dements himself in drunkenness whilst she plies her thankless tasks. In many quarters where such abominations would be condemned, views radically the same are held, and an idea ofwoman’s destiny prevails which takes her from her rightful place as the equal of man, which sinks her into his drudge, without time for intellectual and spiritual culture, with little of the leisure and conversation that beguile care of its sting, and toil of its weariness. Nay, how often is this destiny unconsciously entailed upon daughters by thoughtless, yet not consciously unkind, parents, who train up their girls without high aims and enlarged views, sending them into new homes so poorly endowed with commanding motives and practical knowledge, as to sink down into the dull monotony of domestic drudgery. Though the hands may not be overtasked, if the soul is weighed down to a servile routine, without sentiment or spirituality, woman is the slave of man,—the neglected rock beneath his dwelling, and not the polished stone of his home.
But this is not the chief danger now, but an opposite extreme equally degrading. The danger is not that the daughter shall lack polish, but that she will have but little else; and, instead of being a polished stone, shall be a polished vanity with no substance at all. Nothing can be more false and fatal than the notion that a daughter is to be educated for show, whilst the son is to be trained for usefulness. In her own way, the sister has quite as much strength of character as the brother has in his way, and she is cruelly treated when regarded only as a graceful toy. Sometimes this extreme meets the other, and she who in her girlhood was a dainty plaything, becomes in womanhood a plodding drudge, without aparticle of worthy spirit or elevated thought to retain the love won by her beauty, or to replace the fervor lost with her youth. It is very wrong to make accomplishments the main thing in female education. Accomplishments are poor tricks, unless their polish is but the smoothness of substantial knowledge and judgment. A showy girl who can dance, sing, and prattle two or three foreign languages, without being able to speak and write sensibly in her own tongue, is one of the most lamentable of counterfeits, and may chance to blight the peace and dignity of more hearts than one by her shams. She is the product of that flashy system of training, which is doing more mischief in America than any where else, and making society a tawdry Vanity Fair instead of a companionship of hearts and homes. Not a few of our daughters seem taught to think that distinction in society is graduated by clothes and confectionery, and to measure their social honor or obscurity by their ability to follow the silly code of extravagance. If the folly were confined to those who have such affluence as craves prodigality in expense to reduce the overplus, it might be comparatively harmless, but it bears most severely upon families of limited means, where mothers and daughters are in a fever to ape the extravagance that they ought to pity. Why all this infatuated excess in dress? What do our daughters, in their tender years, need for their grace and dignity beyond the simplest costume that good taste dictates as the fit robing of girlish innocence? Even a pure French taste, which, in other respects favors such excess, teaches analmost Christian simplicity in this respect; and the spectacle, so common with us, of school girls bedizened with costly dresses of all colors, and loaded with jewels, would be ludicrous in a Parisian drawing-room, as a walking, jingling toy-shop attached to a human creature. It is a fine remark of Fenelon in rebuking the foolish passion for dress, that if daughters were educated in a purer classic taste, and would study the beautiful in the schools of painting and sculpture, they would shun many excesses in costume on account of their deformity, as well as their extravagance. What judgment the good archbishop would have passed upon our present mode of sweeping the dusty sidewalks with costly robes of silk and velvet, we have no means of judging, for this folly seems a recent invention. What a recent French moralist, who claims to walk in the path of Fenelon, says of France, is doubly true of America: “The great care,” says L’Aimé Martin, “is to please the world, rather than to resist it: the wish is to shine, to reign:—vanity, that is the end to which tender mothers do not cease to point their daughters, and upon which the world that pushes them on sees them wrecked with indifference! Vanity in accomplishments! vanity in dress! vanity in learning! This show covers all: to seem, not to be, makes the sum and substance of education.” These strong words must have cost the bland French moralist some pain; but does not their strength come from their truth? Do they not apply, with fearful truth, to American society? Does not the prevalent code of feminine ostentation bear with cruel weightupon our domestic life, making almost a social necessity of the merest conventional artificiality, and raising up a generation of listless imbeciles, who measure their social salvation by the magnitude of their exactions and the littleness of their achievements? in short, setting up a code of dignity, in which utter uselessness not seldom bears the highest honor. It would be, probably, a somewhat peculiar revelation, if the young women who go from boarding-schools into our gay society were to submit to a thorough catechizing as to what they expect to receive in the world, and what they expect to do in return. The statistics thus gathered might shed some light upon our social and political economy, and disclose a standard of empty extravagance, not very common among the titled nobility of the Old World. Away with the error upon which the whole mischief rests,—the error that our daughters are not rational creatures, and that the very strength of their character is not the best reason and rule of their accomplishment. Let them be polished stones, not tinsel, with a refinement and solidity worthy their endowments.
Associating thus the attribute of polish with that of solidity, in our idea of the education of daughters, we complete the definition by maintaining, that the two qualities should be so combined as best to fit the daughter for her providential position as the equal of man; not his rival, nor his slave, nor his toy. We claim for the daughter entire mental, moral, and religious equality with the son, yet find in the law alike of nature and revelationa distinction between their gifts and spheres. It would be merely beating the air to argue either point,—to try to prove that woman has all the faculties of human nature, and if, in her case, they are otherwise adjusted than with man, the difference is such as to forbid boasting on either side, and to favor mutual help instead of selfish rivalry. Nor need we couch our lance against the reform school that claims for woman a masculine position, and asks to have all offices open to her ambition or zeal. We are little in danger of such extravagances, and our daughters are more likely to slight the high moral influence now within their sphere, than to hanker after the notoriety of professional life or anniversary platforms. Our current modes of society are so lenient towards those who unsex themselves on the stage, or in the ball-room, that the moralist need trouble himself very little with the loquacious sisterhood, that seems determined to have the public ear upon most exciting questions. The most discouraging thing in their prospect is in the indifference of their own sex to their appeals. Men prefer to hear women talk in a less obtrusive manner; and women seem likely to follow their time-hallowed precedent, and to have men for their orators, leaders, physicians, and preachers. The freest system will not alter the divine order, and whatever worthy reforms may come, the end will be the reconsecration of woman in her true sphere—as the equal, not the rival, of man. Hers will still be full half the world, and the best half of it too. To be the polished corner-stone in the palace which the ruling heart makes royal, is honor andresponsibility enough. To carry out this idea of the education of daughters by a just method, is a work second to none other to be done or meditated in this world.
What have we to say of such a method? Nothing but simply to appeal to God’s own will as shown in the daughter’s faculties and in the spheres in which she is called to move. Let the method be such as best developes her powers and fits her for her position.
How great a thing it is to understand a soul, said Theresa of Spain, in view of the young hearts committed to her care after all her own trials of faith. How great a thing it is to understand a daughter’s mind in which sensibility, that demands sympathy, has so much larger a place than logic, that needs only to be reasoned out. We believe that there is sex in mind, and that the essential type of womanhood appears equally in the example of the highest culture and genius, as in the average standard. Every page shows the woman’s guiding pen, no matter whether a De Staël or a Godwin ranges into the bolder realms of thought, or an Edgeworth or Hemans walks among the daily affections and cares of life. A true culture must be based upon this fact, and the mind must be trained in accordance. Little may be gained by persisting in making a dry logician of a school girl, for abstract reasoning is rarely a woman’s forte, but precisely on that account, the reason must be appealed to by the living truth, which will find a ready response from perceptions so quick and intuitive as often to see at a glance what the logical understanding will with difficulty argue out.
It is a great mistake to try to train a girl to be a man in cast of mind or way of life. We can never slight the hint of nature without bringing down her retribution, and temporary success but delays the evil day. What better instance of this error have we than in the memoirs of that gifted woman so well known to most of our readers, and probably a personal friend to not a few of them, Margaret Fuller Ossoli? Her mental career is now made public property by able and congenial biographers; and who of us does not see the unconscious cruelty of the stern discipline which sought to mould her mind after the masculine standard, and which so repressed the springs of feminine power, until Providence took the noble woman into its own school, and the wife and mother learned a wisdom and a peace that classic letters and metaphysical theories never taught her; nay, far beyond the stature of the “Muse,” and the “Minerva,” that were once her chosen types of female dignity? Honor to her name, alike for the mistakes and the excellencies illustrated by her eventful life?
Truly trained, the girl will have as muchreasonas the boy; and hers will be more intuitive, whilst his may be more formal and severe in itsreasoning. Strength of character will be hers, not, perhaps, so much the stern sense of justice that most marks the masculine conscience, as the full and earnest affection that adds mercy to justice and love to duty. Force of will shall be hers, not perhaps the iron will of man, but what is quite as well, and in its place better, the heroic patience that conquers evilby enduring it. The result shall be a disciplined, sagacious intellect without masculine hardness, delicate sensibility without imbecile listlessness, active energy without moping drudgery, a combination of powers and graces that wins homage from every heart.
I would not adopt any definition of woman’s powers less generous than the hint of nature and the will of God. Rather allow the largest scope to the development of every gift, and trust the feminine instinct to vindicate its own prerogative, whatever be the talent called into requisition. Marked cases show that the feminine mind may sometimes have the faculty for the severest mathematical reasoning, and England and America have been taught this fact by the philosophical achievements of women who are an honor alike to the delicacy and the intellect of their sex. Full well do I remember a visit to William Mitchell the Nantucket astronomer, years ago, when I saw that the father and the daughter had each a station and a set of instruments for taking simultaneous observations of the heavens. Since that day a gold medal from the king of Denmark has marked the daughter’s triumph as the discoverer of a new comet. I am not ashamed to say, that at the time of the visit I had been several days puzzling over a difficult sum in algebra, and that, with a few touches of her pencil, the young lady made clear as day what I had but suspected, that the difficulty was in an error of the text-book. She evidently understood Arbogast’s polynomial theorem better than I did.
But the great difficulty in this whole matter is not somuch in a proper definition of characteristics to be cherished, as in the application of proper motives to bring out those characteristics. With boys the motive is near at hand, for the world speaks to them with its imperious voice and bids them prepare for some specific post of profit or ambition. Without such practical spur, our sons would be a languid generation, since self-culture merely for its own sake, as an amateur pursuit without any specific object, is a dull affair, that very feebly goes. Even those young men who have had a thorough collegiate education are very apt to forget their learning, and to lose their literary gift unless they carry out the work of education in actual affairs and keep their attainments by using them. What shall take the place of such motive in the education of our daughters? What aim shall we place before them in their early studies and keep before them in after years? Serious indeed is the question, and too frivolously answered by the hosts of bright girls who go from school into a career of folly and dissipation.
There can be but one answer, and that the most Christian word. It is simply this:—“Daughter, you are under God’s rule, and all your gifts and acquisitions are sacred trusts. Consecrate them by a true service. Look upon your life as folly and nothingness, until you regard it as a solemn charge and resolve to use its opportunities faithfully. Choose in the first bloom of your hope the true, the Christian standard of character, and give religion the grace and power of your youthful enthusiasm. You havefrom Heaven itself a sacred commission, large as the sphere of your sex, specific as the compass and aim of your own individual talents and position.” Take this ground, and it will appear that the daughter will find in her own religious susceptibility, and in the Divine grace, a motive to self-culture as efficient as the son finds in the spur of business and competition. Both indeed need the same religious discipline, but the one needs it more as an impelling, the other more as a restraining motive.
Let the motive spirit be just and fervent, it remains a question with daughters what shall be the chosen purpose of their after lives. Circumstances must in some measure influence their choice, for with a large portion, not merely taste, but the necessity of securing a livelihood, is to be consulted. But in either case the law of fitness is to be the guide; and all, without exception, make a sad mistake, who do not train themselves to some pursuit capable alike of adorning their affluence and of guarding them against need. It is very clear that there is some fatal error in the physical education of girls that needs correcting before they can be sure of any independence of position. “Very few girls that I know are well,” said a lady some time ago in speaking of the large circle of scholars under her observation. As American boys are not wanting in robust health, there must be some radical error in the training of the other sex, that they are so fragile, and that they fade and languish so prematurely. It is obvious that the power of the free air, generous exercise, and wholesome hours and diet, is too little understood, whilst the confectioner’strash often takes the place of substantial food, and the delicate nerves that the fresh breezes of heaven, the cold water of the spring, are so ready to soothe and brace with genial health, are sometimes insanely dosed with brandy or opium at caprice to an extent that might be too much for the constitution of a Goliath of Gath. There is no reason to believe that our daughters are doomed by nature to be less healthy than our sons, or less fitted for a field of usefulness congenial with their gifts. Small indeed in comparison with the field opened to sons, is the sphere at present for the talents of daughters. But small as it may seem, it has not yet been fully occupied, and it will be sure to enlarge when its capacities are faithfully tested. Certainly the saddest limitation of feminine competence comes from overdoing some few branches of labor, and there are great departments of the useful and the beautiful arts little resorted to by their skill. For ourselves, we have no fear of harming the delicacy of our daughters by opening to them any honorable field of culture or industry to which their tastes and talents call them. It is a sacred duty to employ well every faculty given by the Creator, and full and fair opportunity to develop all their gifts should be afforded. If young women wish to be lawyers, preachers, physicians, or merchants, we would put no harsher obstacle before them than our honest opinion that such is not their providential career, whilst we would do every thing in our power to throw open to their pursuit those spheres of action most congenial with their nature. In the industrial arts who shall number thedepartments in which the quick perception and ready fingers and instinctive neatness of girls would fit them for success more than the other sex? Who shall limit the range of beautiful arts open to their taste and genius? What may they not do with the pen, voice, pencil and chisel? Who shall begin to unfold the future of woman as the Providential teacher of mankind? Who shall adequately measure her present power over the young? Honor to the teacher, whether with or without a mother’s motive! Honor to the host of teachers who are now bearing to every border of our own land, the seeds of sound learning and social refinement. The school-mistress—not the crone whom Shenstone once painted—but the earnest, hopeful, high-minded daughter of a worthy home, is one of the ruling powers of our land, and at her approach barbarism yields and civilization reigns. I know well what I am talking about, and from years of pastoral experience I have learned to bless her work and worth.
But without dwelling more on this topic of employment, or expatiating upon the gifts of daughters for teaching in its various branches, and the demand for a higher order of teachers than are now easily found, may we not say that society among us is sadly crude and imperfect, from the inadequate culture of those especially called to be its light and joy? What art among those called beautiful or useful, can rank above the art of guiding the economy of the home, ruling its prosaic abilities so aptly, that they too shall wear an ideal expression, and the peace of God shall go with the goods his bounty hath provided?Who shall exaggerate the worth of the conversational power so congenial with the natural eloquence of women, and so apt for want of culture or high purpose to degenerate into the poorest gossip? Who shall over-estimate the power of her who, from a full and ready mind bears to every circle the charm of an apt, sparkling, and kindly utterance, making beauty a spiritual benediction where it exists, and where beauty is denied, making up for its absence by a grace that no loveliness of feature can rival? Blessed indeed this ministry, when deep and holy faith completes the consecration, and our daughters employ for the solace of the afflicted, or the light of the benighted, the gifts and attainments which make their name so blessed among friends and in homes.
Polished corner-stones of the temple, they are then builded upon Him who is the chief corner-stone, and parents with all their solicitude for beings so tenderly framed, and so exposed to the vicissitudes of the world, may leave them in perfect faith in guardianship of a heavenly goodness that cannot fail them. Great wrong we do them, unless, by the most decided precept and example, we lead them to the Heavenly Father, through the Gospel and the Church of Him, who is the Way and the Life. What miserable folly it is that looks upon feminine piety as a weakness, coming from an understanding too feeble to doubt, or a will too infirm to be self-relying! The daughter’s strength and wisdom are in her faith and love. The mind is most illuminated when most opened to the light that God sheds upon the confiding, and there is many ahouse in which the wife and daughter’s piety rises into a wisdom far beyond the husband and brother’s hard worldly understanding. Bless God for the mission of Him whose deepest truth and inmost life were revealed to the sisters of Bethany, when hid from the Scribes and the Pharisees, and who found in their spiritual sympathy a solace which did not desert him, when his foremost disciple denied his name. It is the recipient soil, tender and watered by gentle dews, that nurtures the acorn into the oak by an alchemy that the flinty rock knows nothing of. Thus has it been with the mighty seed of the Word. What would have become of it, had there been no feminine faith and love to receive and nurture it into the tree of life? May that grace which has so worked upon the heart of woman, and raised her from bondage, and given her a new throne on earth, work among us, and redeem our daughters from the snares of the world.
Week of Religious Anniversaries.
BUSINESS AND THE HEART.
Paul, the spiritualist and devotee, was eminently a practical man, and by what he did and what he said, gave it to be understood, that life has a serious business to be done, as well as a firm faith and hearty affections to be cherished. He himself was an efficient business man, and in his letters, preaching, and whole administration, he showed singular ability in dealing with men, and carrying his point in spite of their prejudices, or his own disadvantages. Even money matters, he did not neglect; but whilst rigidly simple and independent in his own habits, he had a wary eye upon the needs of the rising churches, insisted upon due charities and careful expenditure—nay, he expressly declared that the faculty for business was to be welcomed among the Christian gifts, and to be used for the common good, as decidedly as the faculty for teaching and exhorting. He bids men unite diligence in business with fervor of spirit, and a true service of God.
“Not slothful in business,” he said at a time, when in the first love of their new faith, many were in danger of slighting practical affairs for the raptures of devotion, or in impatience for the second coming of Christ, and the age of Millennial rest. “Not slothful in business,” may we not say now, great as is the temptation with many to think, that we do not need any such advice in an age and country where business seems to ride over every thing else, and trample down all fervor of spirit and service of God. Reflect a little upon the clause in its connection, and we shall see how admirably all the words go together, and fill out the sense. Interpreting them so, we will speak of the business man in and out of his business character, and especially in his character at home, or as a man of affections—at home, that place where he must show pretty thoroughly what he is at heart, to family and friends. To see what he is elsewhere, we will look at him first at his work, for his course there will decide in a great measure his spirit elsewhere. Look into his store, or study, workshop, or office, and what is he doing? Whatever it may be, it is the serious work of his life, and is taking most of his time and thought. He says to himself, however much or little he likes his occupation, “This is my business, and thus I use my faculties, and earn my livelihood, and maintain my family, and win whatever means or influence I can for objects that I approve.” He is willing very honestly to accept the motto, “not slothful in business” for himself and all in his employment. Does he know how much meaning lies within those words?
Sometimes when he thinks himself a prodigy of care and industry, and in the fever of hurry and anxiety, he is almost ready to give up every holy thought and Christian feeling for the absorbing chase, is not his very turmoil the fruit of slothfulness? If he had been better disciplined, more thoughtful, more methodical, would he not have been spared all this fever of mind, and excepting, perhaps, certain peculiar emergencies, would not the care as well as the evil of each day have been sufficient for itself, and send him to his home with heart open to friendly affections, and ready to thank Heaven for sweetening the repose of his pillow by the work he has done? Surely there is no way to make business so troublesome as by neglecting it. The only way of being rid of it, is to do it well, and the most thorough and careful system is more favorable to peace and spirituality of mind than slipshod negligence. If a man does not attend to his business it will attend to him, and dog him night and day, like a baying hound in chase of a stricken deer. If a man goes beyond negligence and is dishonest, so much the worse, for the best experience says, that dishonesty is a mistake, as well as a vice—the poor resort of bunglers in trade, as well as pigmies in morals. Nothing frets, and in the end confounds a man more than to patch together a tissue of lies, and this trouble a thorough business training must shun.
The very habit of earnest attention is wholesome, and need not end where it begins. Sluggishness of mind and heart is a sad foe to all true life, and he who studies generously, and does earnestly the work of any worthy calling,so far educates himself, and is open to all better influences by the discipline. Who of us, whatever our vocation, is not willing to take very modest views of himself in this respect? Whether in one of the learned professions, or in mercantile pursuits, have we been awake to the highest aspects of our position, and used its opportunities so well, that we may sincerely call it a liberal vocation? How many professional men there are, who are mere drudges among drugs, parchments, and ceremonials? how many merchants, may I not say, are there, who are profoundly ignorant of the history and relations of their own craft, ignorant of that wonderful science of trade which is changing the face of the world, and placing itself among the momentous facts of Providence. Consider the opportunities of a merchant to observe character, to study times, and nations; to procure the arts, books, and society best for the mind; to trace even the changes in the market to causes that connect themselves with the world’s want or welfare,—then say, who is not slothful in business? Think too, of the best practical examplars of mercantile culture,—how much of those two ruling forms of practical ability, the soldier’s and the statesman’s, have combined in the merchant’s enterprise and comprehension, and an emphasis beyond that of the market-place will attach to the words—“Not slothful in business.” Nay, how can a man be thoroughly faithful to his daily calling, and use the judgment, energy, and punctuality essential to the best efficiency, without a training that looks beyond the shop or office, and introduces him into all the generousrelations of life? In fact, what is business well understood, but the practical side of life in all its moral and spiritual aspects, as well as its bodily wants?
Certainly in its own way, the world is ready to require a certain kind of heartiness in practical affairs, and to regard a certain fervor of feeling as a pleasant trait in diligence. In its own way it will repeat the second clause of the apostle, and add “fervent in spirit” to “not slothful in business.” The spirit of trade itself is among us very earnest, and those men are liked best by their associates, who grace practical energy by a good share of hearty fellowship and generous enthusiasm. This is well, but it is not all of the interpretation of the words. Fervor thus interpreted sometimes would be more fitly called fever, for it is more the hot haste of the blood than the genial life of the affections, more the gambler’s madness than the disciple’s zeal. Fervor in spirit means far less and far more than this—far less in extravagance and far more in power. It means that the cares of business should neither chill the heart with avarice, nor inflame it with passion; and that a man should be more spiritual as he becomes more practical.
Does any one wonder at this statement? Some persons indeed speak, as if the spiritual and the practical were antagonist terms. But they are quite the reverse, and eminently in alliance. Consider them on their human and their divine side. What is more practical than spirit? what more essential to efficient action? Certainly he whoacts out the most and the best spirit is the most practical man. He who is most experienced in training himself or others to practical affairs, knows very well that success comes according as spirit animates the daily routine, and each day’s details grow out of a root of hearty interest. We really believe that the greatest business men have been full of spirit, and that the greatest spiritualists have been eminently practical,—the mere drudge being a faulty business man, and the mere dreamer a very poor spiritualist.
But illustrate the principle on the divine side, by considering the method of God. Does He not work by His Spirit? He has breathed it, in some measure, into all creatures, chiefly into man; and is it not the necessity of its nature to work? There is something of it in every living thing, and this something is its true life. From our abounding harvests select a grain of wheat or corn. Within that little seed lodges a power which no man fully comprehends, but which is essential to the world’s life. Ask it to explain itself, and it says not a word; grind it to powder, and the dust is but dust. Keep it whole, and in the spring-time within the ground, its spirit will come out first in the green blade, and last in the golden ears. This is always the method of God, to work from within outward; from the spirit to the work. What is the course of nature but the going forth of life from the spirit to the work, and from the work back again to the spirit, all genuine growth multiplying the vitality from which it sprung? It is what the philosopher calls thelaw of ultimates, or the process from firsts to lasts and from lasts to firsts. The Gospel is its best illustration; for it put a new spirit into men, and worked itself out in new works, all its works diffusing and quickening the spirit from which they sprung. It took hold of the world practically, and made it a business to do away with old evils, and build up a kingdom more enlarged, and kindly, and pure,—more spiritual than the earth had seen before.
But how apply these thoughts to business now,—how insist upon fervor of spirit in pursuits whose aim is money-making; and, on our own principles, is not the spirit of trade itself the thing needed? We reply that money-making of itself is not the proper or the general end of trade, but only a means to a higher end. Trade is one of the essential forms of industry, and a true man will pursue it that he may do his part well in the world, and care well for all who depend upon or who justly claim his care. Money is one step in the process, not the end, and that man is a poor creature, below even the common worldly standard, whose success, instead of fixing his thoughts on his hoards, does not fill his mind and heart with new hopes for his family and friends, and people his unromantic counting-house with hovering images of hischildrenand home, visions of ampler culture and nobler charities. Leaving out of the account some miserable creatures, who heap up gold for themselves, and crush their heart under the heap, we must allow that there is much heart in trade, and the better class of business men have kindly and elevated aims in view. How much thearts and sciences, letters, philanthropy, and religion, owe to the merchant, the whole career of commerce shows. Think of what trade has done for the higher aims of society; study the fruits of commerce in modern times; read of the Medici, the Roscoes, the Gurneys, and the noble men in our land who have endowed our best institutions, and say what you please of the miser, but say not a word against the true merchant. Justice may be his ruling virtue, but mercy is not wholly absent, since forgiveness is often called for, and no liberal merchant can be found who cannot repeat honestly the prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” There is much heart in trade, yet not enough by any means, and a cold worldliness sometimes gains ground with those worthy of better things, and, in fact, desirous of better things. Men worthy of better things become more superficial and ostentatious with time and increased means, and, instead of acting independently and sensibly, join in vain rivalry of a set of people, whose emptiness is proved every time their mouths are opened. When shall the due check be found, and the true heart abound, and the spirit be fervent indeed?
We rest our answer upon the last clause of the apostle: “Serving the Lord.” It places before us distinctly the true end of life,—the service of God, and insists upon our regarding this in the choice and conduct of our business, so that it shall be a part of our religion. Does this seem chimerical? Not so; for it is surely the onlyview of religion that business men will consent to call practical. They think little of mere professions, and judge of men by their doings. They make merry at the thought of trusting a man’s word, because he belongs to some specified church; and they can quote too many cases of solemn persons who try to trade upon their alleged piety, who seem to think long prayers an offset to a little double dealing, and who, in more ways than one, shorten the commandments to piece out the catechism. Such judgment is well, only let it be consistent, and teach the judging party to look well to its ways, and lay hold of the substance in disgust at the mere shadow.
Here is the liberal and strict doctrine: that all of life is under God’s government, and should be conformed to the order of His law and Providence. Our business is part of our life, and should bear upon its highest spiritual interest. Any principle short of this is utter worldliness, and any principle that goes further than this, and shuts religion up in creeds and forms, is bigotry and superstition. The principle comes to nothing, unless it shapes our plans, and we start and go on with the resolution not to sacrifice true life in pursuit of the means of living. It comes to nothing, unless we follow a plan which makes a business of religion, instead of a religion of business, and insists upon a daily method which will give the mind and heart its due, careful quite as much of the claims of home affections, refined tastes, and elevating thoughts, as of the price-current and the market-place. Business is full of stubborn facts, and the true service of God or religion mustbe made as stubborn a fact as any of them, and keep its ground for all honesty, and purity, and kindness, and fidelity. It may be done, and the very method and energy trained in practical affairs may complete the plan of true living, and make and keep a place in the heart for home and friends, for humanity and God.
Is there not imperious call for such service,—for a decided stand in behalf of the moral and spiritual interests of our being? If men are ever so successful, how poor their success is apart from generous and Christian aims,—how poor is wealth, if it is only the means of a demoralizing extravagance, and he who began life as an industrious worker sinks into a swollen Sybarite, pampering his daughters into simpering, vaporing fashionists, and his sons into dainty, inefficient, good-for-nothing spendthrifts. How noble, on the other hand, is success, when it helps out worthy aims; and the friend of arts and letters, charity and piety, it gives peace to the soul in rendering service to God. If success do not come, and reverses follow, how essential is the stronghold of faith and peace, which will not fail to keep a man safe from the worst evil if he has faithfully kept himself within its covert. For the demands of either fortune, as well as for the good, not temporal but eternal, men are called to add to their diligence in business fervor of spirit in the service of God.
Street-preaching is, we are told, to be the order of the day, and the poor and neglected are to hear the Wordfrom lips before strange to them. Not only in the haunts of the miserable, and the streets narrow and wretched, is such ministry needed. Many a street, stately with warehouses and banks, needs more than any thing a voice that can reach the heart, and enlist the chiefs of business in a service better than luxury and worldliness. No revival is more demanded than the conversion of the votaries of wealth, not to some new creed or mannerism, but to a true and godly way of life. In some way this must be done, and God must have the sagacity and force for his own cause which are so often in bondage to the world. His spirit must breathe new life along the great arteries of trade, and make men better without making them less strong, multiplying the examples of characters like Gurney the banker, devout and charitable without ceasing to be shrewd, or, like Peel the statesman, using the comprehensive judgment, learned in practical business, for the welfare of his country and the glory of God. We need and must have a new order of men, and of their coming many bright signs appear,—men at once practical and spiritual, knowing well the world and its ways; not to be its servants, but to subdue its fierce forces into obedience to the kingdom not of this world. There are dreamers enough, and drudges enough. The want is of men with eyes wide open, and hearts quick and true. In no age more than ours has the deep need and earnest hope of society better interpreted the apostle’s definition of a truly practical man, “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”
God himself seems to stoop from heaven and show the worth of this character, in showing in himself the grand archetype of the practical mind. Nearer he comes, and reveals in all powers and laws, in the light, and air, and rain, in tree and rock, in earth and man, the working of his mind. He tells us anew, that he made the world, and that we find out the wisdom of his work, as we learn to do our work wisely. With him the useful goes with the lovely and the spiritual. Every dew-drop or sunbeam does a mighty business for him, and shows his loveliness and illustrates his service as it cheers the landscapes and helps the harvest. With reverence be it spoken, yet with all confidence: the God in whose image we are made is the eternal exemplar of the practical mind. In Christ we are followers of him when we do all our work earnestly, spiritually, faithfully, under his government; and open within our business a door into all the home affections and friendly graces of the earth,—all the sweet charities and blessed hopes of heaven.
Let not the thought lose itself in generalities. Our business men are strong and earnest in many things, and are probably as enterprising and efficient as any set of men in the world. Merchants, do you hold precious your written obligations? What of the unwritten? What would your credit be if you slighted your business promises as you often slight your Christian obligations, and treated the world as you treat the moral and spiritual interests of your home and church? Think seriously and do better. In spirit and in truth as well as in energy, be “followers of God as dear children.”
Your pursuits train you to calculation; despise not the word, but keep it, and weigh it well. It is a noble word, and the calculus is one line of the Divine reason. God calculates,—he geometrizes—he seeks due proportion, and number, and weight,—he counts time, and the round of the seasons; and the paths of the planets point the days, even the seconds, on the dial-plate of the heavens, and prove the punctuality of God. Calculate well and as he does. The good Samaritan calculated when he took care of the wounded man, and the priest calculated as he left him by the road-side. Howard calculated when he gathered the statistics of philanthropy, and Arnold calculated when he sold his country for gold and ambition. Judas calculated when he betrayed his Master for the pieces of silver, and Jesus calculated when he asked, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Among the great facts of our welfare, place the mind and heart, home affections, heavenward thoughts, and our business will have new blessings from Him whom we serve.
SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY.
That was a beautiful and expressive ordinance of the Old Dispensation which enjoined a rural festival upon the conscience of the faithful. Every year the whole nation were ordered to pass a week in rural bowers woven of the boughs of goodly trees, in remembrance of the time when their fathers dwelt in the wilderness, and God led them to the Land of Promise. By the Israelites, the ancient festival is still remembered, and one of the most gifted of their modern writers thus describes its observance in Southern Europe.
“Large branches of the palm and cedar, the willow, acacia and the oak, cut so as to prevent their withering for the seven days, formed the walls of the tent; their leaves intermingling overhead so as to form a shelter, and yet permit the beautiful blue of the heavens to peep within. Flowers of every shade and scent formed a bordering within, and bouquets, richly and tastefully arranged, placed in vases, filled with scented earth, hung from the branches forming the roof. Fruit, too, was there,—thepurple grape, the ripe, red orange, the paler lemon, the lime, the pomegranate, the citron.”
This festival in its ancient form, Christians do not observe, although we may see some of its traces in the camp-meetings of Methodism and in the evergreen boughs of Catholicism. Yet its essential idea should, and does remain. Each year we are sadly dull and worldly, if the luxuriance of summer does not lift our thoughts to Him who sustained our fathers in their hard conflict with rude nature, and enabled them to change the savage wilderness into fertile fields, and peaceful groves. Grovelling indeed we are, if, upon our return from the pleasant retreats where we have sought rest and recreation, we cannot bring back some grateful remembrances of what we have seen and enjoyed in rural places.
The old festival, kept as it was by the whole nation at Jerusalem, in green tents, was a kind of annual consecration of the relation between the city and the country. Thus the feast had at once a special and an universal meaning. The bigot may have thought only of the years of wandering, when, in nomad tents, the chosen race escaped from their oppressors. But more enlarged and sensitive minds, of the race of David and Isaiah, interpreted the season far more generously; and we are assured by the presence of Him who went from Nazareth to take part in the scene, that some eyes looked upon those rural tabernacles which stood among the streets of Jerusalem, as emblems of the permanent relations which man should sustain to nature,—of the constant ministry of the works of God to man.
Our topic now is the relation between the town and the country, especially the power of rural life upon them who dwell in cities.
We consider first the various objects which present themselves for contemplation. Cowper’s contrast may have been too strong, when he said that “God made the country, and man made the town,” for, in both places, we are surrounded by the works of God and man. The farm, as well as the busy street, shows what human toil can do, and they that live in cities are in themselves, and in the plenty that sustains them, constant proofs of the bounty of God; whilst upon all places the sunshine and the rain do fall with equal mercy. Yet, in the country, we see more of nature in its divine adaptations, less perverted by the artifices of man. The eye is not limited by streets and walls to some narrow spot, nor is the landscape curtailed of its breadth and beauty to suit the grasping policy of traffic. Generally the hand of rural art and labor rather interprets than obscures the plan of nature. The regions well cultivated are often the most picturesque, and at once charm by their scenery, and instruct by their varied uses and adaptations. We see man in just relations towards the soil as its cultivator, and towards the animal world as their master and friend. He lives in close sympathy with the heavens, the earth, the animated tribes. The sun in its rise, and course, and setting, counts to him the hours, and divides his times of labor and repose. He breathes the air as the Creatormingled it, and draws from the soil something of that quickening, vital force, which the great Mother never refuses to her children, who seek her. He enlarges the circle of his friendships more widely even than in metropolitan coteries, and has friends among birds and fowls; while, with the sheep, and horse, and ox, as well as with kindly neighbors, he can keep company. He is daily called to see the harmonious plan of the universe, the co-operation between light, and air, and rain, and dew, between all elements and all creatures in the universe of God. In fact, apart from any philosophical curiosity, the very necessity of his calling must make him not a little a sage in the observation of nature. When science is added to observation, the greater, of course, the privilege of his position, the more readily does he unlock the treasures around him, and his rural hours may be hours of favored vision, nay, of sacred communion.
But is not man the crown of nature? and where is man to be found in such perfection, as in the great centres where men congregate? If we would be wise, why not seek the great multitude and dwell most among the crowd? I will not disparage city life as a school of instruction in the science of human nature. He who knows nothing of the great market-places, and social resorts of his race, is ignorant certainly of our nature under very important aspects. But to be constantly mingling with men, is a very different thing from the true knowledge of man. The judicious analysis of a few characters will teach more wisdom than a superficial observation of ten thousandpassers by, just as the dissection of a plant or an animal shows more of its structure than a glance at a whole kingdom or continent frequented by the same tribes. Human nature may be wisely studied wherever it is to be found, and if extent, as well as sharpness of observation is essential, we must remember that all men do not live in cities; that the country has its own forms of humanity; and moreover, that they who dwell among the great crowd, learn best in more quiet scenes to judge of the true meaning of the bustling life around them; and they that are wisest in their views of the busy town, are they who have been able to survey its characters and circumstances frequently, from the commanding elevation and distance of rural retirement.
Men and their arts, indeed, appear in utmost number and force in cities; but without the constant reinforcements from the country, the tribute of fresh energy and enterprise, the products of mechanical ingenuity, and of agricultural labor, the metropolis would soon languish, deprived at once of its daily bread, and its best intellectual resources. Even the beautiful arts, which adorn the homes and halls of cities, appeal to an eye and taste that ought to be well schooled in the observation of nature, and the canvas can never reveal its best meaning to minds conversant only with crowded streets and busy marts. If we must go to the city to see the gathered treasures of rural labor and skill, we must go to the country to learn to comprehend the affluence of the city, to understand the secret of its wealth, and to interpret the wonders of its useful and beautiful arts.
Surely, then, we cannot but recognize the worth of the country in respect to the objects which it presents. Its beauty, although in some measure expressive of the work of man’s hand, is most eloquent with the glory of God. Its plainest utilities bloom into loveliness, and to a devout ear sing out in anthems. Its wealth speaks less of man’s arrogance than of heaven’s bounty. We might institute in this respect a comparison between the pursuits of men in town and country. They are in both situations toiling for gain, and in both cases more or less in competition with men, and in contact with natural laws. But in the country, men depend less upon shrewd bargaining, and far more upon the direct return of their labor in the products of the soil. They deal more directly with their Creator, and there is more constancy and security, if not so much excitement of hope and fear in their gains. Refreshing and instructive it is for those whose business habits lead them to look upon the chances of traffic as the source of wealth, to learn for themselves how much stronger security the Creator has given for the sustenance of man; and important as are finance and traffic, the best treasures of man come from the soil in return for his skill and industry. Surely the pursuits most habitual in rural life teach many a sober lesson to men fevered with the competitions of traffic. We might show also that the country may afford quite as valuable hints in the simplicity of its pleasures, as in the sobriety of its industry. They who are in the habit of regarding enjoyment as the result of some costly dissipation, needto learn of nature a stern, yet blessed lesson, and find that true happiness is not a far-fetched luxury, but is very near us, when we live near to God, and true to his laws. Wretched are they who make of their seasons of recreation but a new round of dissipation, and repeat the orgies of the winter in the retreats of the summer!
It is often asked whether life in the town or the country is, on the whole, most favorable to the formation of character,—the pursuit of true wisdom, virtue, happiness. Without being obliged to take either side of the question, it is sufficient at present to urge the importance of guarding against the peculiar exposures of each condition; and especially, of urging people of the town to look well to the sins that beset them, and seek in the broad fields truths that they need in their own homes.
They live in the midst of excitement and need sobriety. If they have more intensity, they have also more fever of mind, and may take counsel wisely of those whose temper is more serene, if, perhaps, sometimes more sluggish, and whose habits are likely to be more equable, if in danger of becoming sometimes monotonous. We absolutely need the influence of rural life to soothe our spirits and calm our nerves. The pulse itself abates its fevered beat, and the heart is quieted down into harmony with the gentler pulse of nature. If the town offers stimulus to the visitor from the country, the country repays the gift by giving calmness, and thus the power of new energy to the visitor from the city.
A serene frame of body and mind is certainly one requisite of wisdom, and not the only requisite which rural life favors. We need to look beyond the horizon of fashion and conventionality, which we are so apt to mistake for the entire world, and correct our observations by careful notes of those forms of rural life, which, after all our city pride, we must regard as most expressive of the common lot of man in all nations and ages. The man who sums up all his views of rural manners in the contemptuous wordcountrified, will do well to remember that there is not a little reason to form a more contemptuous word in reference to such persons as himself, and call the fop, who mistakes his circle of loiterers for the human race, and his haunts of folly for the world of wisdom, as sillier than the simplest rustic, farther from the true mark in beingcitifiedthan the latter in beingcountrified. They that dwell in crowds very easily become very knowing, but not necessarily wise. They that frequent the haunts of vice and frivolity learn many things that do but add to their folly. They do not view life in its best aspects and true aims, nor interpret it as its Divine Author teaches. Even those whose minds are open to the true science of humanity, need to flee from the crowd to ponder soberly upon its lessons. In the busy world, they are constantly finding seeds of thought, but in a far less troubled soil these seeds must be nurtured and matured. Probably the wisest meditations upon man, society, Providence, have been engaged in by persons well taught indeed in the ways of the great world, but ruminating inquiet upon its teachings, and correcting the prejudices of the hour by the sober reasonings of calmer scenes and influences. To such truthful judgment of distant things surveyed from its serener retreats, rural life adds a wisdom peculiarly its own,—a wisdom such as Solomon so sagaciously incorporated in his proverbs, and Jesus so divinely presented in his parables.
It would not be difficult to show the happy influence of familiarity with the country in teaching lessons of virtue—in bracing the frame for hardier labors—in urging the worth of the lesser ethics of frugality and economy, and the higher morals of true manliness and godliness. Virtue is moral strength, and is taught in every school that strengthens the moral energies. The genial air and simple habits of rural life favor manly fortitude, and a manly spirit. Poor would be the future prospects of our nation if they rested wholly with the dwarfed and fevered offspring of our cities. Our people would ere long lose their place among the nations, and would drop their heads in shame in comparison with men trained in hardy sports and healthful labors, as the yeomanry and gentry of England. Religion itself, which is the crown of true manliness, would languish if there were no more check to vice and skepticism than the check, strong indeed as it is, which metropolitan churches afford. How wonderfully the power of faith among the peasants of La Vendee withstood the sneers and threats of Paris, with its armed bands of Atheists in the great convulsion, when priests became scoffers and churches were places of rioting! How noblyour own churches have been favored by the words and thoughts of elect minds devoted to God and his truth, in peaceful villages away from the crowded marts! Where would the pulpit find the teachers that are needed, if its sole dependence were upon the youth reared in cities? I could not but think much of the power of rural life in raising up vigorous and independent preachers, whilst I was enjoying a few weeks of recreation in the lovely town in which President Dwight prepared himself for his more conspicuous ministry at New Haven. I have rambled with delight again and again over that noble Greenfield Hill, which he celebrated in a poem, and have not wondered that the vast and charming prospect, ranging as it does from the broad waters of Long Island Sound to the peak of the Catskill Mountains, should have made something of a poet of a theologian, sometimes so remorseless a logician. May we not see, however, in his theological works, and still more in the pages of his mighty predecessor in theology, Edwards, of Northampton, who, too, dwelt among scenes of singular beauty, ample proofs that nature never deserts her votaries, nor fails to breathe into them a spirit of beauty, that can live, after the harsh dogmas have perished like the husks that inclose the grain for the harvest.
I would not disparage our town life, nor call it by any means godless. It is happy in being able to command so many resources, happy in being able to ally to itself so many influences not its own. Where there are souls there God may be known, and where learning and experiencegather their treasure; we may find light upon the ways of God and his Providence. But very poorly do we study this manifold creation, and the word of its Creator, if we limit our horizon to the streets and walls, and business and pleasure even of the greatest metropolis. The Bible itself—that book so full of the poetry of nature—from its first to its last chapter, from the Old Eden to the New Jerusalem exhaling the fragrance of fields and breathing the genial air of rivers and mountains,—lifting the soul to God by the contemplation of his works,—the Bible is a sealed book to us, if we do not always read its parallel revelation in the heavens and upon the earth. There is an expression in nature which must be caught, like that on a friend’s countenance, from itself. Description is not enough, and the best scientific analysis, however valuable as an aid, is but a poor substitute for the original reality. God speaks to us still in his works, and what prophets and bards of old have heard, we may now hear. We may hear it perhaps all the more eagerly for the comparative rarity of the privilege. They that are trained in cities wisely yearn to breathe the country air, and in its diviner meaning, interpret the landscape. Pastoral poets and rural philosophers find their fondest admirers in such minds. Who has exercised this blessed ministry of the interpretation of nature better than Wordsworth, poet and philosopher at once as he is? With all their exquisite refinement, and their sometimes mystical sentiment, his poems are tinted with the hues of sky and mountain, lake and meadow, eloquent with the voices of the seasons, breathing thecalm spirit of nature in its pleadings with the rebel temper of man. In how many of us they awaken blessed remembrances of our childhood, refresh us in our worn, anxious, and weary life as with the gush of living waters, and the sight of grassy meadows! Kind Heaven would not have us lose the companionship of nature, and has given us elect minds as well as glorious scenery to be itsinterpretation. There is peace as well as power in listening to such ministries. Nor do I fear to place upon this list, those men who have brought a fine taste and genial humility to the culture and adornment of the soil, the improvement of rural architecture and landscape gardening! What name deserves more grateful mention than that of Downing, that lover of nature and of the art that best interprets her ideal. I know of no village which does not bear directly or indirectly some mark of his mind, in the form of a cottage or school-house, or a garden devised after his idea. He has brought out the wealth of our forests, and in our summer retreat, many a tree that else had been cramped and hidden in the swamp has whispered his requiem to our ears.
The course of thought which I have pursued regarding the objects and influences of country life, will find an answer in many of my city readers. We need no tent of green branches to quicken our remembrance of Heaven’s bounty to us and our fathers in our relations to rural scenes. Our memory has a leafy arbor of unfading foliage, in which we may every day celebrate God’s goodness to us in the gift of so noble a heritage, where we dwell and where we may visit.
It is not well to conclude these thoughts upon the influence of scenes upon character without urging home the truth, that our ruling principle is the main index and source of character; and he is sadly deluded who trusts to any position to secure his virtue or to excuse his vices. Apt enough we are to be discontented with our lot, and to burden fate or Providence with the blame that is our own. We imagine some more favored condition to be the sure warranty of success and worth. He who lives among the crowd ascribes to their example his vices, and he who lives among the fields refers his rudeness to want of better opportunity. Older than the Satire of Horace on human discontent is the wish of man for change of fortune, even as old as man himself. Better for him to make the best of what he has, and find his content thus keeping pace with his progress.
He that dwells in the country, while he should use every opportunity for enlarging his circle of experience by travel, must take heed lest he slight the privileges of his own position. He may fall into the vices of the town among the simpler habits of his neighbors, and be eaten at heart by the worst passion while breathing the purest airs of heaven. He must learn simple truth of a power above man, or nature will not save him from corruption.
He who lives in the city need not ascribe the evil that he suffers solely to circumstances, nor expect mental enlargement as the consequence of a cosmopolitan home. He must keep true simplicity in the midst of artificial conventions, and may narrow himself into an earthworm inthe midst of the men and the culture of all climes and nations. He may be in bondage to a metropolitan mannerism which is quite as slavish as any provincial prejudice, and full as far short of a wise humanity as of a genuine faith.
Better counsel do we need than crowds can teach or nature alone can unfold. Wherever we dwell, we are to look to a kingdom not of this world, and by communion with its sovereign Head, elect Messiah and sainted intellects, we are to confirm what is best on earth by what is most gracious on high.
Still, though only in thought, need we weave our green bowers to tell us of the ancient march through the wilderness to the promised land, for still are we on our pilgrimage. Wisely do we keep the feast of tabernacles when we erect them at once in our remembrance and hope, looking upon the emblems of God’s love for us in the past as the assurance of his love when the soul shall reach the river whose waters never fail, and rest beneath the tree of life whose leaf never fades, whose fruit never withers.
August.