[Illustration]

A Woman of the World

HER COUNSEL TO OTHER PEOPLE'S SONS AND DAUGHTERS

By

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1904

Fourth Impression, April, 1910

Contents

TO MR. RAY GILBERT, _Law Student, Aged Twenty-three_

TO MISS WINIFRED CLAYBORNE, _At Vassar College_

TO EDNA GORDON, _During Her Honeymoon_

TO MISS GLADYS WESTON, _Who Faces the Necessity to Earn a Living_

TO CLARENCE ST. CLAIRE, _Regarding His Sister's Betrothal_

TO MISS MARGARET RILEY, _Shop Girl, Concerning Her Oppressors_

TO MISS GLADYS WESTON, _After Three Years as a Teacher_

TO A YOUNG FRIEND, _Who Has Become Interested in the MetaphysicalThoughts of the Day_

TO WILFRED CLAYBORN, _Concerning His Education and His Profession_

TO MISS ELSIE DEAN, _Regarding the Habit of Exaggeration_

TO SYBYL MARCHMONT, _Who Has Learned Her Origin_

TO MISS DIANA RIVERS, _A Young Lady Contemplating a Career as aJournalist_

TO NANETTE, _A Former Maid_

TO THE REV. WILTON MARSH, _Regarding His Son and Daughter_

TO MRS. CHARLES MCALLISTER, _Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne_

TO MRS. CHARLES GORDON, _Concerning Maternity_

TO MR. ALFRED DUNCAN, _Concerning the Ministry_

TO MR. CHARLES GRAY, _Concerning Polygamy_

TO WALTER SMEED, _Concerning Creeds and Marriage_

TO SYBYL MARCHMONT, _Concerning Her Determination to Remain Single_

TO MRS. CHARLES GORDON, _Concerning Her Sister and Her Children_

TO MRS. CHARLES GORDON, _Concerning Her Children_

TO Miss ZOE CLAYBORN, ARTIST, _Concerning the Attentions of Married Men_

TO MR. CHARLES GORDON, _Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After SevenYears of Married Life_

TO MRS. CLARENCE ST. CLAIRE, _Concerning Her Husband_

TO YOUNG MRS. DUNCAN, _Regarding Mothers-in-Law. _

TO A YOUNG MAN, _Ambitious for Literary Honours_

TO MRS. MCALLISTER, _Concerning Her Little Girl_

TO MR. RAY GILBERT, _Attorney at Law, Aged Thirty_

TO THE SISTER OF A GREAT BEAUTY

TO MRS. WHITE PEAK, _One of the Pillars of Respectable Society_

TO MARIA OWENS, _A New Woman Contemplating Marriage_

TO MRS. ST. CLAIRE, _The Young Divorcée_

TO MISS JESSIE HARCOURT, _Regarding Her Marriage with a Poor Young Man_

TO MISS JANE CARTER, _Of the W. C. T. U_

To Mr. Ray Gilbert

_Late Student, Aged Twenty-three_

Were you an older man, my dear Ray, your letter would be consigned tothe flames unanswered, and our friendship would become constrained andformal, if it did not end utterly. But knowing you to be so many yearsmy junior, and so slightly acquainted with yourself or womankind, I amgoing to be the friend you need, instead of the misfortune you invite. 

I will not say that your letter was a complete surprise to me. It isseldom a woman is so unsophisticated in the ways of men that she is notaware when friendship passes the borderline and trespasses on the domainof passion. 

I realized on the last two occasions we met that you were not quitenormal. The first was at Mrs. Hanover's dinner; and I attributed someindiscreet words and actions on your part to the very old Burgundyserved to a very young man. 

Since the memory of mortal, Bacchus has been a confederate of Cupid, andthe victims of the former have a period (though brief indeed) ofbelieving themselves slaves to the latter. 

As I chanced to be your right-hand neighbour at that very merry board, where wit, wisdom, and beauty combined to condense hours into minutes, Iconsidered it a mere accident that you gave yourself to me with somewhatmarked devotion. Had I been any other one of the ladies present, itwould have been the same, I thought. Our next and last encounter, however, set me thinking. 

It was fully a week later, and that most unromantic portion of the day, between breakfast and luncheon. 

It was a Bagby recital, and you sought me out as I was listening to themusic, and caused me to leave before the programme was half done. Youwere no longer under the dominion of Bacchus, though Euterpe may havetaken his task upon herself, as she often does, and your manner andexpression of countenance troubled me. 

I happen to be a woman whose heart life is absolutely complete. I haverealized my dreams, and have no least desire to turn them intonightmares. I like original rôles, too, and that of the really happywife is less hackneyed than the part of the "misunderstood woman. " And Ifind greater enjoyment in the steady flame of one lamp than in theflaring light of many candles. 

I have taken a good deal of pride in keeping my lamp well trimmed andbrightly burning, and I was startled and offended at the idea of any mancoming so near he imagined he might blow out the light. 

Your letter, however, makes me more sorry than angry. 

You are passing through a phase of experience which comes to almostevery youth, between sixteen and twenty-four. 

Your affectional and romantic nature is blossoming out, and you are inthat transition period where an older woman appeals to you. 

Being crude and unformed yourself, the mature and ripened mind and bodyattract you. 

A very young man is fascinated by an older woman's charms, just as avery old man is drawn to a girl in her teens. 

This is according to the law of completion, each entity seeking for whatit does not possess. 

Ask any middle-aged man of your acquaintance to tell you the years ofthe first woman he imagined he loved, and you will find you arefollowing a beaten path. 

Because you are a worth while young man, with a bright future beforeyou, I am, as I think of the matter, glad you selected me rather thansome other less happy or considerate woman, as the object of yourregard. 

An unhappy wife or an ambitious adventuress might mar your future, andleave you with lowered ideals and blasted prospects. 

You tell me in your letter that for "a day of life and love with me youwould willingly give up the world and snap your fingers in the face ofconventional society, and even face death with a laugh. " It is easy fora passionate, romantic nature to work itself into a mood where thosewords are felt when written, and sometimes the mood carries a man and awoman through the fulfilment of such assertions. But invariablyafterward comes regret, remorse, and disillusion. 

No man enjoys having the world take him at his word, when he says he isready to give it up for the woman he loves. 

He wants the woman and the world, too. 

In the long run, he finds the world's respect more necessary to hiscontinued happiness than the woman's society. 

Just recall the history of all such cases you have known, and you willfind my assertions true. 

Thank your stars that I am not a reckless woman ready to take you atyour word, and thank your stars, too, that I am not a free woman whowould be foolish enough and selfish enough to harness a young husband toa mature wife. I know you resent this reference to the difference in ouryears, which may not be so marked to the observer to-day, but how wouldit be ten, fifteen years from now? There are few disasters greater forhusband or wife than the marriage of a boy of twenty to a woman a dozenyears his senior. For when he reaches thirty-five, despair and miserymust almost inevitably face them both. 

You must forgive me when I tell you that one sentence in your lettercaused a broad smile. 

That sentence was, "Would to God I had met you when you were free to bewooed and loved, as never man loved woman before. "

Now I have been married ten years, and you are twenty-three years old!You must blame my imagination (not my heart, which has no intention ofbeing cruel) for the picture presented to my mind's eye by your wish. 

I saw myself in the full flower of young ladyhood, carrying at my sidean awkward lad of a dozen years, attired in knickerbockers, andprobably chewing a taffy stick, yet "wooing and loving as never manloved before. "

I suppose, however, the idea in your mind was that you wished Fate hadmade me of your own age, and left me free for you. 

But few boys of twenty-three are capable of knowing what they want in alife companion. Ten years from now your ideal will have changed. 

You are in love with love, life, and all womankind, my dear boy, notwith me, your friend. 

Put away all such ideas, and settle down to hard study and seriousambitions, and seal this letter of yours, which I am returning with myreply, and lay it carefully away in some safe place. Mark it to bedestroyed unopened in case of your death. But if you live, I want you toopen, re-read and burn it on the evening before your marriage to somelovely girl, who is probably rolling a hoop to-day; and if I am living, I want you to write and thank me for what I have said to you here. Ihardly expect you will feel like doing it now, but I can wait. 

Do not write me again until that time, and when we meet, be my goodsensible friend--one I can introduce to my husband, for only suchfriends do I care to know. 

To Miss Winifred Clayborne

_At Vassar College_

My dear niece:--It was a pleasure to receive so long a letter from youafter almost two years of silence. It hardly seems possible that you areeighteen years old. To have graduated from high school with such honoursthat you are able to enter Vassar at so early an age is much to yourcredit. 

I indulged in a good-natured laugh over your request for my adviceregarding a college course. You say, "I remember that I once heard youstate that you did not believe in higher education for women, and, therefore, I am anxious to have your opinion of this undertaking ofmine. "

Now of course, my dear child, what you wish me to say is, that I amcharmed with your resolution to graduate from Vassar. You have enteredthe college fully determined to take a complete course, and you surelywould not like a discouraging or disapproving letter from your auntie. 

"Please give me your opinion of my course of action" always means, "Please approve of what I am doing. "

Well I _do_ approve. I always approve when a human being is carrying outa determination, even if I am confident it is the wrong determination. 

The really useful knowledge of life must come through strongconvictions. Strong convictions are usually obtained only on the pathwayof personal experience. 

To argue a man out of a certain course of action rarely argues away hisown beliefs and desires in the matter. We may save him some bitterexperience in the contemplated project, but he is almost certain to findthat same bitter experience later, because he has been coerced, notenlightened. 

Had he gained his knowledge in the first instance, he would have escapedthe later disaster. 

A college education does not seem to me the most desirable thing for awoman, unless she intends to enter into educational pursuits as a meansof livelihood. I understand it is your intention to become a teacher, and, therefore, you are wise to prepare yourself by a thorougheducation. _Be the very best_, in whatever line of employment you enter. 

Scorn any half-way achievements. Make yourself a brilliantly educatedwoman, but look to it that in the effort you do not forget two otherimportant matters--health and sympathy. My objection to higher educationfor women, which you once heard me express, is founded on the fact thatI have met many college women who were anaemic and utterly devoid ofemotion. One beautiful young girl I recall who at fourteen years of ageseemed to embody all the physical and temperamental charms possible forwomankind. Softly rounded features, vivid colouring, voluptuous curvesof form, yet delicacy and refinement in every portion of her anatomy, she breathed love and radiated sympathy. I thought of her as the idealwoman in embryo; and the brightness of her intellect was the finishingtouch to a perfect girlhood. I saw her again at twenty-four. She hadgraduated from an American college and had taken two years in a foreigninstitution of learning. She had carried away all the honours--but, alas, the higher education had carried away all her charms of person andof temperament. Attenuated, pallid, sharp-featured, she appeared mucholder than her years, and the lovely, confiding and tender qualities ofmind, which made her so attractive to older people, had given place tocold austerity and hypercriticism. 

Men were only objects of amusement, indifference, or ridicule to her. Sentiment she regarded as an indication of crudity, emotion as aninsignia of vulgarity. The heart was a purely physical organ, she knewfrom her studies in anatomy. It was no more the seat of emotion thanthe liver or lungs. The brain was the only portion of the human beingwhich appealed to her, and "educated" people were the only ones whointerested her, because they were capable of argument and discussion ofintellectual problems--her one source of entertainment. 

Half an hour in the society of this over-trained young person left oneexhausted and disillusioned with brainy women. I beg you to pay no suchprice for an education as this young girl paid. I remember you as arobust, rosy girl, with charming manners. Your mother was concerned, onmy last visit, because I called you a pretty girl in your hearing. Shesaid the one effort of her life was to rear a sensible Christiandaughter with no vanity. She could not understand my point of view whenI said I should regret it if a daughter of mine was without vanity, andthat I should strive to awaken it in her. Cultivate enough vanity tocare about your personal appearance and your deportment. No amount ofeducation can recompense a woman for the loss of complexion, figure, or charm. And do not let your emotional and affectional nature growatrophied. 

Control your emotions, but do not crucify them. 

Do not mistake frigidity for serenity, nor austerity for self-control. Be affable, amiable, and sweet, no matter how much you know. And listenmore than you talk. 

The woman who knows how to show interest is tenfold more attractive thanthe woman who is for ever anxious to instruct. Learn how to call out thebest in other people, and lead them to talk of whatever most intereststhem. In this way you will gain a wide knowledge of human nature, whichis the best education possible. Try and keep a little originality ofthought, which is the most difficult of all undertakings while incollege; and, if possible, be as lovable a woman when you go forth intothe world "finished" as when you entered the doors of your Alma Mater:for to be unlovable is a far greater disaster than to be uneducated. 

To Edna Gordon

_During Her Honeymoon_

I am very much flattered that you should write your first letter as Mrs. Gordon to me. Its receipt was a surprise, as I have known you soslightly--only when we were both guests under a friend's roof for oneweek. 

I had no idea that you were noticing me particularly at that time, therewas such a merry crowd of younger people about you. How careful wematrons should be, when in the presence of débutantes, for it seems theyare taking notes for future reference!

I am glad that my behaviour and conversation were such that you feel youcan ask me for instructions at this important period of your life. Hereis the text you have given me:

"_I want you to tell me, dear Mrs. West, how to be as happy, and loved, and loving, after fifteen years of married life, as you are. I so dreadthe waning of my honeymoon_. "

And now you want me to preach you a little sermon on this text. Well, mydear girl, I am at a disadvantage in not knowing you better, and notknowing your husband at all. 

Husbands are like invalids, each needs a special prescription, accordingto his ailment. 

But as all invalids can be benefited by certain sensible suggestions, like taking simple food, and breathing and exercising properly, andsleeping with open windows or out-of-doors, so all husbands can be aidedtoward perpetual affection by the observance of some general laws, onthe part of the wife. 

I am, of course, to take it for granted that you have married a man withprinciples and ideals, a man who loves you and desires to make a goodhusband. I know you were not so unfortunate as to possess a large amountof property for any man to seek, and so I can rely upon the naturalsupposition that you were married for love. 

It might be worth your while, right now, while your husband's memory isfresh upon the subject, to ask him what particular characteristics firstwon his attention, and what caused him to select you for a lifecompanion. 

Up to the present moment, perhaps, he has never told you any moresubstantial reason for loving you than the usual lovers'explanation--"Just because. " But if you ask him to think it over, I amsure he can give you a more explicit answer. 

After you have found what qualities, habits, actions, or accomplishmentsattracted him, write them down in a little book and refer to them two orthree times a year. On these occasions ask yourself if you are keepingthese attractions fresh and bright as they were in the days ofcourtship. Women easily drop the things which won a man's heart, and areunconscious that the change they bemoan began in themselves. But do notimagine you can rest at ease after marriage with only the qualities, and charms, and virtues, which won you a lover. To keep a husband inlove is a more serious consideration than to win a lover. 

You must add year by year to your attractions. 

As the deep bloom of first youth passes, you must cultivate mental andspiritual traits which will give your face a lustre from within. 

And as the mirth and fun of life drifts farther from you, and you findthe merry jest, which of old turned care into laughter, less ready onyour lip, you must cultivate a wholesome optimistic view of life, tosustain your husband through the trials and disasters besetting mostmortal paths. 

Make one solemn resolve now, and never forget it. Say to yourself, "Onno other spot, in no other house on earth, shall my husband find a morecheerful face, a more loving welcome, or a more restful atmosphere, thanhe finds at home. "

No matter what vicissitudes arise, and what complications occur, keepthat resolve. It will at least help to sustain you with a sense ofself-respect, if unhappiness from any outside source should shadow yourlife. An attractive home has become a sort of platitude in speech, butit remains a thing of vital importance, all the same, in actual life andin marriage. 

Think often and speak frequently to your husband of his good qualitiesand of the things you most admire in him. 

Sincere and judicious praise is to noble nature like spring rain and sunto the earth. Ignore or make light of his small failings, and when youmust criticize a serious fault, do not dwell upon it. A husband and wifeshould endeavour to be such good friends that kindly criticism isaccepted as an evidence of mutual love which desires the highestattainments for its object. 

But no man likes to think his wife has set about the task of making himover, and if you have any such intention I beg you to conceal it, and goabout it slowly and with caution. 

A woman who knows how to praise more readily than she knows how tocriticize, and who has the tact and skill to adapt herself to a man'smoods and to find amusement and entertainment in his whims, can lead himaway from their indulgence without his knowledge. 

Such women are the real reformers of men, though they scorn the word, and disclaim the effort. 

It is well to keep a man conscious that you are a refined anddelicate-minded woman, yet do not insist upon being worshipped on apedestal. It tires a man's neck to be for ever gazing upward, andstatues are less agreeable companions than human beings. 

If you wish to be thought spotless marble, instead of warm flesh andblood, you should have gone into a museum, and refused marriage. Remember God knew what He was about, when He fashioned woman to be man'scompanion, mate, and mother of his children. 

Respect yourself in all those capacities, and regard the fulfilment ofeach duty as sacred and beautiful. 

Do not thrust upon the man's mind continually the idea that you are avastly higher order of being than he is. 

He will reach your standard much sooner if you come half-way and meethim on the plane of common sense and human understanding. Meantime lethim never doubt your abhorrence of vulgarity, and your distaste for thefamiliarity which breeds contempt. 

It is a great art, when a wife knows how to attract a husband year afteryear, with the allurements of the boudoir, and never to disillusion himwith the familiarities of the dressing-room. 

Such women there are, who have lived with their lovers in poverty'sclose quarters, and through sickness and trouble, and yet have neverbrushed the bloom from the fruit of romance. But she who needs to betold in what this art consists, would never understand, and she whounderstands, need not be told. 

Keep your husband certain of the fact that his attention and society ismore agreeable to you than that of any other man. But never beg for hisattentions, and do not permit him to think you are incapable of enjoyingyourself without his playing the devoted cavalier. 

The moment a man feels such an attitude is compulsory, it becomesirksome. Learn how to entertain yourself. Cling to your accomplishmentsand add others. A man admires a progressive woman who keeps step withthe age. Study, and think, and read, and cultivate the art of listening. This will make you interesting to men and women alike, and your husbandwill hear you praised as an agreeable and charming woman, and thatalways pleases a man, as it indicates his good taste and good luck. 

Avoid giving your husband the impression that you expect a detailedaccount of every moment spent away from you. Convince him that youbelieve in his honour and loyalty, and that you have no desire tocontrol or influence his actions in any matters which do not conflictwith his self-respect or your pride. 

Cultivate the society of the women he admires. There is both wisdom andtact in such a course. 

Wisdom in making an ideal a reality, and tact in avoiding any semblanceof that most unbecoming fault--jealousy. 

Let him see that you have absolute faith in your own powers to hold him, and that you respect him too much to mistake a frank admiration for anunworthy sentiment. Do not hesitate to speak with equal frankness of thequalities you admire in other men. Educate him in liberality andgenerosity, by example. 

Allow no one to criticize him in your presence, and do not discuss hisweaknesses with others. I have known wives to meet in conclaves, anddissect husbands for an entire afternoon. And each wife seemed anxiousto pose as the most neglected and unappreciated woman of the lot. Withall the faults of the sterner sex, I never heard of such a caucus ofhusbands. 

Take an interest in your husband's business affairs, and sympathize withthe cares and anxieties which beset him. Distract his mind with pleasantor amusing conversation, when you find him nervous and fagged in brainand body. 

Yet do not feel that you must never indicate any trouble of your own, for it is conducive to selfishness when a wife hides all her worries andindispositions to listen to those of her husband. But since thework-a-day world, outside the home, is usually filled with irritationsfor a busy man, it should be a wife's desire to make his home-coming aseason of anticipation and joy. 

Do not expect a husband to be happy and contented with a continuous dietof love and sentiment and romance. He needs also much that is practicaland commonplace mingled with his mental food. 

I have known an adoring young wife to irritate Cupid so he went out andsat on the door-step, contemplating flight, by continual neglect ofsmall duties. 

There were never any matches in the receivers; when the husband wantedone he was obliged to search the house. The newspaper he had folded andleft ready to read at leisure was used to light the fire, although anoverfilled waste-basket stood near. The towel-rack was empty just whenhe wanted his bath, and his bedroom slippers were always kicked so farunder the bed that he was obliged to crawl on all fours to reach them. 

Then his loving spouse was sure to want to be "cuddled" when he wassmoking his cigar and reading, --a triple occupation only possible to ahuman freak, with three arms, four eyes, and two mouths. 

Therefore I would urge you, my dear Edna, to mingle the practical withthe ideal, and common sense with sentiment, and tact with affection, inyour domestic life. 

These general rules are all I can give to guide your barque into thesmooth, sea of marital happiness. 

It is a wide sea, with many harbours and ports, and no two ships startfrom exactly the same point or take exactly the same course. You willencounter rocks and reefs, perhaps, which my boat escaped, and I have nochart to guide you away from those rocks. 

If I knew you better, and knew your husband at all, I might steer you alittle farther out of Honeymoon Bay into calm waters, and tell you howto reef your sails, and how to tack at certain junctures of the voyage, and with the wind in certain directions. 

But if you keep your heart full of love, your mind clear of distrust, and your lips free from faultfinding, and if you pray for guidance andlight upon your way, I am sure you cannot miss the course. 

To Miss Gladys Weston

_Who Faces the Necessity to Earn a Living_

It is indeed a problem, my dear Gladys, to face stern-visaged Necessityafter walking with laughing-lipped Pleasure for twenty-two years. 

What an unforeseen event that your father should sink his fortune in arash venture and die of remorse and discouragement scarcely six monthsafter you were travelling through Europe with me, and laughing at myvain attempts to make you economize. 

You have acted the noble and womanly part, in using the last dollar ofyour father's property to pay his debts, and I could imagine you doingno other way. 

But now comes the need of earning a livelihood for yourself, and yourdelicate mother. 

I know you have gone over the list of your accomplishments and takenstock of all your inherited and acquired qualities. You play the pianowell, but in these days of Paderewskies and pianolas, no one wants toemploy a young girl music-teacher. You do not sing, and if you did, thatwould not afford you a means of support. The best of natural voices needa fortune spent before half a fortune can be earned. 

You dance like a fairy, and swim like a mermaid, and ride like an Indianprincess, but these accomplishments are not lucrative, save in a MidwayPlaisance or a Wild West show. You are well educated and your memory isremarkable. You have a facility in mathematics, and your knowledge ofgrammar and rhetoric will, as you say, enable you to pass theexamination for a teacher in the public schools after a little brushingup and study. Then, with the political influence of your father's oldfriends, you will no doubt be able to obtain a position. 

I recollect you as surpassingly skilful with the needle. I know youonce saw a charming morning gown in Paris which I persuaded you not tobuy at the absurd price asked for it, after the merchant understood wewere Americans. And I remember how you passed to another department, purchased materials, went home to our hotel, and cut and made asurprising imitation of the gown at one-tenth the cost. 

Why have you not considered turning this talent to account? Though theworld goes to war and ruin, yet women will dress, and the need of goodseamstresses ever exists. 

Go to some enterprising half-grown Western or interior Eastern town, announce yourself in possession of all the Paris styles (as you are), and launch out. Increase your prices gradually, and go abroad on yoursavings at the end of a year, then come back with new ideas, a largerstock, and higher prices. 

You will be on the road to fortune, and can retire with a competencebefore you are middle-aged. A little skill with the scissors andneedle, lots of courage and audacity, and original methods will make awoman succeed in this line of endeavour. 

But why do I not approve of the profession upon which you have almostdecided--that of teaching--you ask. 

I will tell you why. 

Next to motherhood, the profession of teacher in public or privateschools is the most important one on earth. 

It is, in a certain sense, more responsible than that of motherhood, since the work of poor and bad mothers must be undone by the teacher, and where the mother has three or four children for a period of years toinfluence, the teacher has hundreds continually. There are very fewperfect teachers. There are too few excellent ones. There are too manypoor ones. I do not believe you possess the requisites for the calling. 

A teacher should first of all love children as a class. Theirdependence, their ignorance, their helplessness, and their unformedcharacters should appeal to a woman's mind, and make her forget theirmany and varied faults and irritating qualities. You like lovable, well-bred, and interesting children, but you are utterly indifferent toall others. You adore beauty, and an ugly child offends your taste. Astupid child irritates you. 

You have a wonderful power of acquiring and remembering information, butyou do not possess the knack of readily imparting it. You expect othersto grasp ideas in the same way you do. This will make you unsympatheticand impatient as a teacher. You have no conception of the influence ateacher exerts upon children in public schools. You were educated inprivate schools and at home, I know. I attended the country publicschool, and to this day I can recall the benefits and misfortunes whichresulted to me from association with different teachers. Children arekeenly alive to the moods of teachers and are often adepts inmind-reading. 

A teacher should be able to enter into the hearts and souls of thechildren under her charge, and she should find as great pleasure inwatching their minds develop as the musical genius in watching acomposition grow under his touch. 

An infinite number of things not included in the school routine shouldbe taught by teachers. Courtesy, kindness to dependents and weakercreatures, a horror of cruelty in all forms, a love of nature, politeness to associates, low speaking and light walking, cleanlinessand refinement of manner, --all these may be imparted by a teacher wholoves to teach, without extra time or fatigue. I fear a proud disdain, and a scarcely hidden disgust, would be plainly visible in yourdemeanour toward the majority of the untrained little savages given toyour charge in a public school. You have not the love of humanity atlarge in your heart, nor the patience and perseverance to make you takean optimistic view in the colossal work of developing the minds ofchildren. Therefore it seems to me almost a sin for you to undertakethe profession merely because you need to earn a living. There are otherthings to be considered besides your necessities. Fond as I am of you, Ihave the betterment of humanity at my heart, too, and cannot feel it isright for you to place yourself in a position where you will not bedoing the best for those dependent upon you that could be done. 

I have given up hope of seeing mothers made to realize theirresponsibilities. But I still have hope of the teachers. On them andtheir full understanding of all it is in their power to do, lies thehope of the world. 

Therefore, my dear girl, I urge you to take up dressmaking or millineryinstead of school-teaching. 

If you ruin a piece of goods in the making, you can replace it andprofit by your error. But if you mar a child's nature in your attempt toteach him, you have done an irreparable injury not only to him but tohumanity. 

If you saw a design started by a lace-maker, you would not think oftaking the work and attempting to complete it until you had learned theart of lace-making. 

Just so you ought not to think of developing the wonderful intricaciesof a child's mind until you have learned how. 

It is all right to deliberately choose a vocation which gives us contactonly with inanimate things, but we have no right to take the handling ofhuman souls unless we are specially fitted for the task. 

To Clarence St. Claire

_Regarding His Sister's Betrothal_

Your request, my dear Clarence, that I try to influence your sister tochange her determination in this matter, calls for some very plainstatements from me. 

I have known you and Elise since you were playing with marbles andrattles, and your mother and I have been very good acquaintances(scarcely intimate enough to be called friends) for more than a score ofyears. You are very much like your mother, both in exterior appearanceand in mind. Elise is the image of her father at the time he capturedyour mother's romantic fancy, and as I recollect him when he died. 

You were five years old, Elise three, at that time. Your mother livedwith your father six years in months, an eternity in experience. Youknow that she was unhappy, and that he disillusioned her with love, andalmost with life. He married your mother solely for her fortune. She wasa sweet and beautiful girl, of excellent family, but your father had noqualities of mind or soul which enabled him to appreciate or care forany woman, save as she could be of use to him, socially and financially. 

In six years he managed to dispose of all but a mere pittance of herfortune, and humiliated her in a thousand ways besides. His only decentact was to die and leave her undisturbed for the remainder of her life. Your uncle assisted in her support and saved the remnant of herproperty, so that she has, by careful and rigorous economy, been able toeducate you and Elise, and keep up a respectable appearance in a quietway. 

Of course it was impossible to retain her place among the associates ofher better days, and you know how bitter this fact has always madeElise. Your sister has the physical beauty and the overwhelming love ofmoney and power which characterized your father. She has a modicum ofyour mother's sense of honour, but has been reared in a way notcalculated to develop much strength of character. Your mother has been aslave to your sister. Elise is incapable of a deep, intense love for anyman, and your mother's pessimistic ideas of love and marriage have stillfurther acted upon her brain cells and atrophied whatever impulses mayhave been latent in her nature, to love and be loved. These qualitiesmight have been developed had Elise been under the tutelage of some oneversed in the science of brain building, but your mother, like mostmothers, was not aware of the tremendous possibilities within her grasp, or of the effect of the ideas she expressed in the hearing of herchildren. Neither did she seem to recognize the father's traits inElise, and undertake the work of eliminating them, as she might havedone. She has been an unselfish and devoted mother, and has made toomany sacrifices for Elise. At the same time, she has awakened the mindof your sister to ideals of principle and honour which will help her tobe a better woman than her inheritance from your father would otherwisepermit. But now, at the age of twenty-one, it is impossible to hope thatshe will develop into a self-sacrificing, loving, womanly woman, whosehappiness can be found in a peaceful domestic life. She has seen yourmother sad and despondent, under the yoke of genteel poverty, and heardher bemoan her lost privileges of wealth and station. This, added to hernatural craving for money and place, renders a wealthy marriage her onlyhope of happiness on earth. 

Mr. Volney has an enormous fortune. He is, as you say, a senile old manin his dotage. As you say again, such a marriage is a travesty. ButElise is incapable of feeling the love which alone renders marriage aholy institution. She has undesirable qualities which ought not to betransmitted to children, and she is absolutely devoid of maternalinstincts. 

I have heard her say she would consider motherhood the greatestdisaster which could befall her. But she is unfitted for aself-supporting career, and she wants a home and position. 

She has beauty, kind and generous impulses, and a love of playing LadyBountiful. It is not so much that she wants to benefit the needy, asthat she likes to place people under obligations and to have them lookup to her as a superior being. 

Old Mr. Volney is a miser, and his money is doing no one good. He hasonly distant relatives, and by taking Elise for a wife (according tolaw) he will wrong no one, and she will make much better use of hisfortune than his heirs would make. 

Your mother will be relieved of worry and care. Many worthy poor peopleand charities will receive help, and Elise will have her heart'sdesire--fine apparel, jewels, a social position, and no one to botherher. The valet and nurse will look after Mr. Volney, and his simple oldheart will bask in the pride of an old man--the possession of a prettyyoung wife. 

Had he full use of his mental faculties, and did he long for love anddevotion, I would try and dissuade Elise from the marriage, but solelyon _his_ account, not on hers. 

The young man you mention, as your choice of a suitor for the hand ofyour sister, might better go up in a balloon to seek for Eutopia than toexpect happiness as her husband. He has a sweet, gentle, loving nature, a taste for quiet home joys, fondness for children, and he has twothousand a year, with small prospects of more in the near future. 

He should marry a modest, domestic girl, with tastes similar to his own, and with no overweening ambitions. Elise would simply drive him mad in ayear's time, with her restless discontent, her extravagance, and herdesire for the expensive pleasures of earth. It is useless to reasonwith her, or to expect her to model her ideas to suit her circumstances. Inheritance and twenty-one years of wrong education must be taken intoconsideration. What would mean happiness for many women would meanmisery for her. I can imagine no more dreadful destiny than to be tiedto a senile old man by a legal ceremony, even were I given his millionsin payment. But that will mean happiness to Elise. 

I think we should let people seek their own ideals of happiness, whenthey break no law, and injure no other life by it. 

I shall congratulate Elise by this post on having made so fortunate analliance. I could not congratulate her were she to marry her youngsuitor. I shall congratulate your mother on having nothing to worryabout, regarding the future of Elise. 

And I advise you to take a philosophical view of the situation, and toremember that, in judging the actions of our fellow beings, we must taketheir temperaments, characteristics, and environment into consideration, not our own. 

You have made the very common error of thinking, because Elise is ahandsome young girl, that love, and home, and children would meanhappiness to her. 

Women vary as greatly as do plants and flowers in their needs. Thehorticulturist knows that he cannot treat them all alike, and he studiestheir different requirements. 

To some he gives moisture and sun, to some shade, and to some dry, sandysoil. The thistle pushes forth a gorgeous bloom from an arid bed. Itwould die in the pond where the lily thrives. 

Too much sentiment is wasted in this world and too much effort expendedin trying to make all people happy in some one way. 

When I was a little girl, a Sunday-school superintendent presented everygirl in the class with a doll, and each doll was exactly the same. Mostlittle girls like dolls, but I never played with one, as they werealways so hopelessly inanimate. If the good man had given me a sled, ora book, or a picture, I would have been happy. As it was, his gift was afailure. You want to present your sister with a devoted young husband, a cottage, and several children, because you think every woman shouldpossess these things. Your sister happens to be one who prefers awealthy old invalid. 

Let her have what she wants, my dear Clarence, and let her work out herdestiny in her own way. She will do less harm in the world than if youforced her into your way. Now you must remember that you asked me tohelp you in this matter, and I could only write you the absolute factsof the situation, as I knew it to be. I feel fairly confident that youwill accept my point of view, and act as best man at your sister'swedding. 

To Miss Margaret Riley

_Shop Girl, Concerning Her Oppressors_

Your letter has been destroyed, as you requested, and you need not fearmy betraying your confidence. 

Your mother was so long in my employ that I feel almost like afoster-mother to you, having seen you grow up from the cradle toself-supporting young womanhood. 

The troubles and evils which you mention as existing about you, I knowto be quite universal in all large shops, factories, and departmentstores, indeed in all houses where the two sexes are employed. 

I know that a certain order of men in power use that power to lower theideals and standards of womanhood when they can. 

A pretty young girl once in my service related to me the cold-bloodedsuggestions made to her by her employer to increase the miserable wagepaid her in a sweat-shop. 

The sacrifice of her virtue seemed no more to this man than the sale ofan old garment. 

The girl did not make the sacrifice, however, and she did not starve, freeze, or die. She managed to exist and to better her condition bydoing domestic work and saving her money to fit herself for morecongenial employment. When I last saw her she was planning to become atrained nurse, and had paid for a course of instruction in massage. Itell you this merely to illustrate a fact I fully believe, that any girlwho is determined to live an honourable life and retain her self-respectcan make her way in the world and rise from lesser to higher positions, if she is patient and willing to do what is termed menial work as astepping-stone. You tell me that scores of girls are kept in poorlypaying, inferior positions when capable of filling better places, simply because they will not accept the dishonourable attentions of someof the men in authority. 

You beg me to arouse the good women of America to a crusade against whatyou say is a growing evil and to boycott such shops and stores. 

But you ask me to do what is an impracticable thing. 

You would not like to be called as a witness were this matter broughtbefore the courts. Were all the good women of America to begin such acrusade, where would they obtain the proofs of their accusations?

And even if the witnesses were ready, there is not a newspaper in theland that would dare champion the reform. And no great reform can bemade without the aid of the press. The daily papers, as you say, givecolumns to protests against lesser evils, but you must know that thesenewspapers are largely supported by the profitable advertisements ofmanufactories and dry-goods houses. Glance over the columns of any ofour large dailies and see how much space such advertising occupies. 

Imagine what it would mean to lose all this high-priced patronage. Therefore, even if the most moral of editors knew that theseestablishments were undermining our social conditions and invading ourhomes, I doubt if he could be induced to make a protest. It is a curiousthing to see how many are the kinds of victims caught and held in theclutches of the money-devil-fish in our wonderful land of freedom. 

Even clergymen who are preaching morality and brotherly love arecompelled to keep their mouths shut on certain evils and abuses, lestthey offend the pillars of the church and deprive the treasury of itsincome. 

In a certain New England town famous for its educational institution, aclergyman denounced a corporation which had swindled the poor anddeceived scores of citizens. He was requested to discontinue furtherreferences to the matter, as the church treasury was supplied by themoney which accrued from this monopoly. 

The most powerful members of the church were officers in thecorporation. 

The young clergyman sent in his resignation and gave up an assuredsalary to follow the light of his own conscience. But there are few withhis bravery and, therefore, the strongholds of selfishness andself-indulgence remain impregnable. While we admire the splendidcharacter which makes a man capable of refusing a salary which meanshush-money, we can at the same time understand the difficult position ofa clergyman with a hungry brood of children to support, who hesitates atsuch a move. We can understand how he argues with himself, that bytaking the money of the monopolists, he is able to do more good forhumanity than by refusing it, and losing both influence and income. Itis a false argument, yet the worn and weary mind of the average orthodoxminister will accept it as the advisable course to pursue. So you willsee how difficult is the task you suggest my undertaking. You tell methat it is useless for you to leave one shop and go to another, as allare more or less conducted on the same lines; and that it is mere chanceif a girl finds herself in a position where she can advance on hermerits. Even then a sudden change in heads of departments some day maydestroy all her hopes. 

You say I have no idea how many girls go wrong just through thepersecution and tyranny of these men--forced to fall in order to keepherself fed and clothed. I repeat what I said already in thisconnection, --that I am certain any girl determined to keep herself abovereproach and ambitious to rise in the world can do so. She may have toendure many privations and sorrows for a time, and that time may seemlong and weary, _but a change will come for the better as surely asspring follows winter, if she does not waver_. 

If you will look carefully into the facts of the cases which fall underyour observation, I am confident you will see that it is vanity andindolence, not hunger and oppression, which cause the majority of thegirls you mention to go astray. They desire to make as good anappearance, and to be given the same privileges of leisure, as thefavourite who has been promoted through unworthy methods. 

You tell me you would rather jump from Brooklyn Bridge and end thestruggle at once than lose your self-respect, but that you are weary ofseeing the girls with less conscience, and lesser capabilities, pushedahead of you and your worthy associates. Yet I am certain from the toneof your letter that you will never forget your self-respect, and I havefaith that you can make your way in the world in spite of all thedesigning masculine oppressors in existence. 

So will any woman, who sets her mark high, and believes in theinvincible power of her own spirit to conquer all the demons of earth. 

Do not imagine your position is one of unusual trial and temptation. Ayoung actress of my acquaintance has been obliged to fight her wayslowly to partial recognition because she would not accept theconditions offered, with leading rôles and fine wardrobe, by twopolygamous-minded managers. 

She is making her way, however, and the very battle she is fighting withlife has strengthened her powers as an artist. A young stenographer hasbeen compelled to give up two positions because she would not allow theloverlike attentions of married employers. She was called a silly prudeand discharged. Yet she is occupying an excellent position with a cleanhigh-class business house to-day. 

Domestics are sometimes driven from private homes by the same pursuit ofthe employer. Men are only in a state of evolution, and the animalinstincts are still strong in them. The world has allowed them so muchlicense, and society has been so lenient with their misdeeds, that ithas been difficult for them to practise self-control and aspire to ahigher standard. You must be sorry for them and do what you can to helpthem understand the worth and value of true womanhood. Never for oneinstant believe that you can be hindered by the machinations of a fewunworthy men, from reaching any goal you set. 

One good, intelligently virtuous woman, determined to make the most ofher capabilities by fair methods, can overcome a whole army ofself-indulgent, sensual men, and compel them to doff their hats to her. I am always deeply sympathetic toward the girl who is tempted throughher emotions, or her affections, to forget herself. But I have no greatpity for the woman who sells herself. There are always charitablesocieties, and there are always menial labours to do, and either door ofescape from the sale of honour would be sought by the girl of rightideals. It is a bitter experience to see the woman who _has_ steppeddown into the soil of life flaunting her finery and her power in theface of virtue. But look about you and see how soon the finery becomestatters--how soon the power is transferred to another. 

Woman's position in the world is growing better, brighter, and moreindependent with each year. There are more avenues open to her--largeropportunities waiting for the employment of her abilities. She has trieda thorny path for centuries, but she has small reason to despair of heroutlook to-day. 

Each woman must fight her battle alone, and walk by the light fromwithin. 

The world gives her only a superficial protection, either through itscourts or its society. 

Men demand virtue from woman and endeavour in every way to lead her awayfrom its path. 

But the divinity within her can carry her to the heights, if she willnot be lured by the voice of the senses, or frightened by the demands ofthe appetite, or debased by the mercenary spirit of the age. 

Go on in your brave determination to lead a sensible and moral life, mydear girl, and let your example be a guide to others, and prove thatwoman may succeed on the right basis if she will, in spite oftemptations and oppressions. 

To Miss Gladys Weston

_After Three Years as a Teacher_

The way you took my frank criticisms and doubts of your ability to makea good school-teacher, proves you to be a girl of much character. Yoursuccess proves, too, that given the general qualifications of a fairlycapable and educated human being, add concentration and will, and we canachieve wonders in any line of work we undertake. I am still of theopinion that no woman of my acquaintance was more wholly unfit to teachyoung children, as they should be taught, than your fair self as I lastknew you. 

I take pride in believing that my heroic methods were what brought outthe undeveloped qualities you needed to ensure such success. 

There are certain natures that need to be antagonized before they dotheir best. Others are prostrated and robbed of all strength by acriticism or a doubt. 

You have realized this, I am sure, in your experiences with pupils. "_You cannot do it_" is a more stimulating war-cry to some people than"_You can_. " And to such the sneer of the foe does more good, than thesmile of the friend. A phrenologist would tell us that stronglydeveloped organs of self-esteem and love of approbation accompanied thistrait of character. 

I am sure it proves to be the case with you. 

Brought up as you were, the only child of indulgent parents, and givenadmiration and praise by all your associates, you could hardly reach theage of twenty-two without having developed self-esteem and love ofpraise. You were naturally brighter than most of your companions. (Theywere also children of fortune, as the term goes, but to my idea thechildren reared in wealth, are usually children of misfortune. For thereal fortune of life is to encounter the discipline which brings outour strongest qualities. )

Your father was a poor boy, who fought his way up to wealth and powerbefore you were born; but he unfortunately wanted the earth beside, andso died in poverty after staking all he had, which was enough, to makemore, which he did not need. 

You inherit much of his force of character, and that is what gave youthe reputation of extreme cleverness among your more commonplacecompanions. Compared with the really brilliant and talented people ofearth, you are not clever. That is why I found you so companionable andcharming, no doubt; for the brilliant people--especially women--arerarely companionable for more than a few hours at a time. I gave youthat supreme test of friendship--the companionship of travel for aperiod of months. And I loved you better at the end of the time than atthe beginning. 

I have often thought how much less occupation there would be for thedivorce courts and how many more "indefinitely postponed" announcementsof engagements would result from an established custom of apre-betrothal trip!

If a young man and woman who were enamoured could travel for two orthree months, with a chaperon (in the shape of a mother-in-law or two), the lawyers would lose much profit; but I fear race suicide might ensue. Nothing, unless it is the sick-room or the card-table, brings out thereal characteristics of human beings like travel. 

The irritating delays of boats and trains, and the still more irritatingunresponsiveness of officials, when asked the cause, will test thetemper and the patience of even a pair of lovers. It is not surprisingif the traveller does lose both at times, but it is admirable if he doesnot. I remember how adorable you were, while I was a bundle of dynamite, ready to explode and send the stolid, uncommunicative conductor andbrakemen into a journey through space, when we suffered that long delaycoming from California. It is due the travelling public to explain suchdelays, but the railroads of America have grown to feel that they owe noexplanation to any one, even to God, for what they do or do not. While Ilost vitality and composure by such idle reflections, you were amusingthe nervous travellers by your bright bits of narrative and readyrepartee. That fortunate fellow you have promised to marry at the end oftwo years has no idea what a charming companion he will find in you fortravel. 

It is interesting to have you say you feel that you need two more yearsas a teacher, before you are fully developed enough to take up theresponsibilities of marriage. You will be twenty-seven then:--that isthe age at which the average American girl begins to be mostinteresting, and the age when she is first physically mature. 

And your children will be more fully endowed mentally than if you hadbecome a mother in your teens. 

As a rule the brainy people of the world are not born of very youthfulparents; you will find youth gives physique, maturity gives brains tooffspring. 

I did not quite finish my train of reasoning about your self-esteem. 

It was because you had always believed yourself to be capable of doinganything you undertook to do, that you were roused by my assertion thatyou could not make a good school-teacher, to attempt it. I hurt yourpride a bit, and you were determined to prove me wrong. Had you beenself-depreciating and oversensitive, what I said would have turned youfrom that field of effort. And that would have been a desirable result, since one who can be turned from any undertaking _ought to be_. 

I still think the world has lost a wonderful artist by your not enteringthe lists of designers and dressmakers. But since my recital of thefaults which would prevent your success as a teacher led you to overcomethem, I am proud and glad, that you have gone on in the work youcontemplated. Good teachers are more needed than good dressmakers. 

And you are sweet and charming as usual, to tell me that yourpopularity with children and parents, is greatly due to that letter ofmine. 

What you write me of the young girl who is making you so much trouble byher jealousy of all other pupils, interests and saddens me. Her devotionto you is of that morbid type, so unwholesome and so dangerous to herpeace, and the peace of all her associates. It is a misfortune thatmothers do not take such traits in early babyhood, and eradicate them bypatient, practical methods. Instead, this mother, like many others, seems to think her little girl should be favoured and flattered becauseof her morbid tendency. 

She mistakes selfishness, envy, greediness, and hysteria for a lovingnature. 

I can imagine your feelings when this mother told you with a proudsmile, "Allie always wants the whole attention of any one she loves, andcannot stand sharing her friends. She was always that way at home. Wenever could pet her little brother without her going into a spasm. Andyou must be careful about showing the other children attention beforeher. It just breaks her heart--she is so sensitive. "

Oh, mothers, mothers, what are you thinking about, to be so blind to thework put in your hands to do?

You have little time comparatively to work upon this perverted youngmind: but under no conditions favour her, and, no matter what scenes shemakes, continue to give praise and affection to the other children whenit is their due. The prominence of her parents in the neighbourhood, andthe power her father wields in the school board, need not worry you. Goahead and do what is best for the child and for the school at large. Never deviate one inch from your convictions. Take Allie some day to agarden where there are many flowers, and talk to her about them. Speakof all their different charms, and gather a bouquet. Then say to her, "Now, Allie, you and I love each of these pretty flowers, and see howsweetly they nestle together in your hand. Not one is jealous of theother. Each has its place, and would be missed were it not there. Thebouquet needs them all. Just so I need all the dear children in myschool, and just so I would miss any one. It makes me ashamed to thinkany little girl is more selfish and unreasonable than a plant, forlittle girls are a higher order of creation, and we expect more of themthan we expect of plants or of animals. All are parts of God, but thehuman kingdom is the highest expression of the Creator. 

"When you show such jealousy of other children I lose respect for you, and cannot love you as much as I love them. When you are gentle andgood, and take your share of my love and attention, and let others havetheir share, then I am proud of you and fond of you. Suppose one plantsaid to the sunlight that it must have all the sun, would not that beridiculous and selfish?"

I would make frequent references to this idea when alone with her, andindeed it would serve as an excellent subject for a talk to all yourpupils some day. Then try and make Allie understand how unbecoming andunlovable jealousy is, and how it renders a man or woman an object ofpity and ridicule to others. 

Praise the people you know who are liberal and broad, and absolutelyignore her moods when in school. 

Perhaps in time you can do a little toward awakening her mind to a morewholesome outlook. 

What you tell me of her hysterical devotion to one of her classmates, makes me realize that the girl needs careful guidance. 

You should talk to her mother, and warn her against encouraging suchconditions of mind in her child. 

Urge her to keep the girl occupied, and to give her much out-door life, and to teach her that pronounced demonstrations of affection are notgood form between young girls. The mother should be careful what booksshe reads, and should see that she makes no long visits to other homesand receives no guests for a continued time. The child needs tocultivate universal love, not individual devotion. 

Ideals, principles, ambitions, should be given the girl, not closecompanions, for her nature is like a rank, weedy flower that needsrefining and cultivating into a perfected blossom. 

All this needs a mother's constant care and tact and watchfulness. It iswork she should have begun when her little girl first indicated herunfortunate tendencies. 

It is late for you to undertake a reconstruction of the misshapencharacter, but you may be able to begin an improvement, and if you canobtain the mother's cooperation the full formation may be accomplished. 

And do not fail to use mental suggestion constantly, and to help thechild by your assertions to be what you want her to become. Dwell inconversation with her and in her presence, upon the lovableness andcharm of generosity of spirit in general, rather than on the selfishnessyou observe in herself. 

At her least indication of an improvement, give her warm praise. Becareful about bestowing caresses upon her, as she needs to be guardedagainst hysteria, I should judge from your description. To some childrenthey are the sunlight, to others miasma. 

Think of yourself as God's agent, given charge of his unfinished work, and recognize the unseen influences ready to aid you with suggestion andcourage when you appeal to them. 

To a Young Friend

_Who Has Become Interested in the Metaphysical Thoughts of the Day_

Your letter bubbled with enthusiasm, and steamed with optimism. I amrejoiced that you have come into so healthful a line of thought, for Iknow of no one who was in more immediate need of it than you, when welast met. 

As your hostess, I could not tell you how wearing to the nerves yourcontinual reverting to your physical ills became: and I hope I did notseem wholly unsympathetic to you when I so frequently made the effort tochange the conversation to more cheerful topics. 

And now you tell me that you are astounded to find how universal is thistopic with all classes, and on all occasions when one or two humanbeings gather together even in "His name. " Your recital of the churchsewing-bee, where all the good Christian women described their diseasesand the different operations they and their friends had undergone, is asamusing as it is distressingly realistic. 

What a pity that the old theology fostered the idea that God especiallyloved the people he afflicted with illness and poverty and trouble! Ithas filled the world with egotistical and selfish invalids and idlers, who have believed they were "God's chosen ones, " instead of realizingthat they were the natural results of broken laws, which might be mendedby the aid of the God-power in themselves, once they understood it. 

How Christians have reconciled the idea of a God of love with a God whowanted his chosen ones to be sick and poor, is a problem I cannot solve. 

Of course you are well, and growing stronger daily, now that you realizethe fact that God made only health, wealth, and love, and that heintended all his children to share his opulence. 

As soon as the mind is filled with a dominating idea, no lesser ones canfind lodgment therein. 

A woman of my acquaintance suffered agonies from seasickness. 

She crossed the ocean twice each year, yet seemed unable to accustomherself to the experience. 

On her last voyage her child fell dangerously sick with typhoid fever onthe second day out at sea. 

So wrought up was the mother, and so filled with the thought of herchild, that she never felt one moment's seasickness. Her mind wasotherwise occupied. 

Now you have filled your mind with a consciousness of your divine rightto health and happiness, and the thought of sickness and disease has noroom. 

Yet do not be discouraged if you feel the old ailments andindispositions returning at times. A complete change in mental habits, is difficult to obtain in a moment. 

Be satisfied to grow slowly. A wise philosopher has said, "It is not innever falling that we show our strength, but in our ability to riseafter repeated falls, and to continue our journey in triumph. "

Avoid talking your belief to every individual you meet. It will bebreaking your string of pearls for the feet of swine to tread upon. Those who are ready for these truths will indicate the fact to you, andthen will be your time for speech. And when you do speak, say little, and say it briefly and to the point. 

Leave some things for other minds to study out alone. The people who arenot ready for higher ideals of religion and life, will only ridicule orcombat your theories and beliefs, if you force them to listen. 

Wait until you have fully illustrated by your own conduct of life, thatyou have something beside vague theories to prove your statements of thepower of the mind to conquer circumstance. The world is full to-day ofbedraggled and haggard men and women, who are talking loudly of thepower of mind to restore youth and health, and bestow riches andsuccess. 

Do not add yourself to the unlovely and tiresome army of talkers, untilyou prove yourself a doer. 

And even after you have shown a record of health and prosperity andusefulness, let your silent influence speak louder than your utteredwords. 

The moment a philosopher becomes a bore, he ceases to be a philosopher. 

To Wilfred Clayborn

_Concerning His Education and His Profession_

My Dear Nephew:--I have considered your request from all sides, and haveresolved to disappoint you. This seems to me the kindest thing I can dounder the circumstances. 

You have gone through two years of college life, and I am sure you arenot an ignoramus. Most of the great men of the world's history haveenjoyed no fuller educational advantages. To lend you money to finishthe college course, would be to help you to start life at the age oftwenty-two under the burden of debt. If you are determined to finish acollege course, and feel that only by so doing will you equip yourselffor the duties of life, I would advise you to drop out for a year andteach, or go into any kind of work which will enable you to earn enoughto proceed with your studies. However hard and however disappointingthis advice seems to you, I know it suggests a course which will do morefor your character than all the money I could lend you. 

Aside from the fact that you would begin life with a debt, is thepossibility of your contracting the debt habit. 

One man in a thousand who borrows money to help himself along in earlylife is benefited by it. 

The other 999 are harmed. 

To do anything on another's money is to lean on the shoulder of anotherinstead of walking upright. It is not good calisthenic exercise. 

A few years ago I would have acceded to your request. 

But each year I live I realize more and more that lending money is thelast method to be used in helping people to better themselves. In almostevery case where I have lent money, I have lived to regret it. Notbecause I lost my money (which has usually been the fact), but becauseI lost respect for my friends. 

I remember the case of a young newspaper man and author, who came to mefor the loan of five dollars. I had never seen him before, but I knewhis brother, a brilliant playwright, in a social way. 

The young man told me he had met with a series of disasters on thevoyage to New York, and was stranded there absolutely penniless, although money would come at almost any hour from his brother. 

Besides this, he showed me letters from editors who had taken work whichwould be paid for on publication. 

"I do not know any one here, " the young man said, "and to-day, when Iused my last twenty-five cents, I thought of you in desperation. 

"Your acquaintance with my brother would serve as an introduction, Ifelt, and I was confident you would realize my straits when I told youmy errand. "

Of course I lent the young man five dollars. "I am sure it must be agreat humiliation for you to ask for this, " I said, "and I am certainyou will repay it, though many former experiences have made me questionthe memory of friends and strangers to whom I have been of similarassistance. "

One week later the young man called to tell me he had not been able todo more than keep himself sustained at lunch-counters since he called, but hoped soon to obtain a position on a daily newspaper. 

That was ten years ago. The young man sat in an orchestra chair theother night at the theatre directly in front of me, and his attire wasfaultlessly up to date. From the costume of his companion, I shouldjudge their carriage waited outside. 

The young man did not seem to recognize me, and no doubt the incident Imention has escaped his memory. 

In all probability I was but one of a score of people who helped himwith small loans. Had the young man had been forced to appeal to thesociety organized in every city for aiding the deserving poor, by beingsent disappointed from my door, the ordeal would have so hurt his pride, that he might not have become the professional borrower he undoubtedlyis. 

I could relate innumerable cases of a similar nature. One man, who was afashionable teacher of French among the millionaires of New York forseveral seasons, appealed to me at a time of year when all his patronswere out of the city for a loan to enable him to give his wife medicaltreatment. 

He was to repay it in the autumn. Instead, he came to me then with amuch more distressing story of immediate need and seeming proof of moneycoming to him in a few months. To my chagrin, the loan I advanced wasemployed in giving a feast to friends at his daughter's wedding, afterwhich he obliterated himself from my vision. 

Financial aid lent a woman who soon afterward circled Europe, brought noreimbursement. Her handsomely engraved card, with the "Russell SquareHotel, London, " as address, reached me instead of the interest moneywhich perhaps paid the engraver. 

Money lent a young man to start a small business, was used for hiswedding expenses, and an interval of five years brings no word from him. Poor and despicable beings indeed, become the victims of the borrowinghabit. It is the shattered faith in humanity, and the heart hurts that Iregret, rather than the loss of what can be replaced. I tell you theseincidents that you may realize how I have come to regard money-lending, as a species of unkindness to a friend or relative. 

It is only one step removed from giving a sick or overtaxed man or womana morphine powder. 

Sleep and rest ensue, but ten to one the habit is formed for life. 

The happy experiences of my life in money-lending, have been twoinstances where I offered loans which were not asked, and which provedto be bridges over the chasm of temporary misfortune, to the successawaiting a worthy woman and man. The really deserving rarely ask forloans. 

I can imagine with what pleasure you would take a cheque from thisletter, for the amount which would carry you through college. 

Yet when you had finished your course, you would find so many things youwanted to do, and must do, the debt would become too heavy to lift, saveby borrowing from some one else. 

If not that, then you would impose upon the fact of our relationship, and on your belief that I had plenty of means without the amount youowed me: and so you would join the great army of good-for-nothings inthe world. 

There is one thing you must always remember:

No matter how close the blood tie between two beings, even twins, eachsoul comes into the world alone, and with a separate life destiny towork out. 

If I have worked out my destiny to financial independence, that doesnot entitle you to a share of it. If it seems best for me to aid you, itis not because a blood tie makes it a duty. I grow to believe there is asort of curse on money which is not earned, even when it is bestowed byfather, on son or daughter. 

It cripples individual development. Only when money is earned is itblest. 

Regarding your future profession, I cannot agree with your idea thatbecause you feel no particular love for any one calling, and have ahalfway tendency toward several, that you will never be a success. Greatgeniuses are often consumed with a passion for some one line of study oremployment, but there have been many great men who did not know whatthey were fitted to do until accident or necessity gave them anopportunity. 

Success means simply concentration and perseverance. 

Whether you decide to be a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, or a merchant, the one thing to do is to fix all your mental powers upon the goal youselect, and then call all the forces from within and from without, toaid you to reach it. 

It would, of course, be folly for you to select a profession whichrequires special talent. No matter how you might concentrate and applyyourself, you could never be a great poet, a great artist, or a greatmusician. 

You have not the creative genius. 

But law, medicine, mechanics, or mercantile matters, with your goodbrain and fair education, you could conquer. 

You say you vacillate from one to another, like the wind which goes tothe four points of the compass in twenty-four hours. 

But you are very young, and this should not discourage you. 

It would be well to think the four vocations over quietly, when alone, and sit down by yourself early in the morning asking for guidance. Then, when you feel you have made a decision, let nothing turn you from it. 

Direct all your studies and thoughts to further that decision. 

Think of yourself as achieving the very highest success in your chosenfield, and work for that end. 

You cannot fail. 

If you desire light from without upon the best path to pursue, I wouldadvise you to find a good phrenologist, and have a careful reading madeof your head. Its formation and the development of its organs wouldindicate in what direction lay your greatest strength, and where youneeded to be especially watchful. 

But remember if your phrenologist tells you that you have a weak will, it does not mean that you must necessarily _always_ have a weak will. Itmeans that you are to strengthen it, by concentration. There is a greattruth underlying phrenology, palmistry, and astrology; but it isridiculous to accept their verdicts as final and unchangeable, and it isunwise to ignore the good they may do, rightly applied and understood. 

I recall the fact that you were born in early June. I know enough aboutthe influence of the planets upon a child born at that period to assertthat you are particularly inclined to a Gemini nature--the twin nature, which wants to do two things at one time. You want to stay in and goout, to read a book and play tennis, to swim and sit on the sand. Laterin life, you will want to remain single and marry, and travel and remainat home, unless you begin _now_ to select one course of the two whichare for ever presenting themselves to you, in small and large matters. 

Whenever you feel yourself vacillating between two impulses, takeyourself at once in hand, decide upon the preferable course, and goahead. Dominate your astrological tendencies, do not be dominated bythem. Dominate your weaknesses as exhibited by your phrenological chart, and build up the brain cells which need strengthening, and lessen thepower of the undesirable qualities by giving them no food or indulgence. 

It is a great thing to understand yourself as you are, and then to goahead and make yourself what you desire to be. 

When a carpenter starts to build a house, he knows just what tools andwhat materials to work with are his. If there is a broken implement, hereplaces it with another, and if he is short of material he supplies it. But young men set forth to make futures and fortunes, with no knowledgeof their own equipment. 

They do not know their own strongest or weakest traits, and areunprepared for the temptations and obstacles that await them. 

I would advise you to call in the aid of all the occult sciences, tohelp you in forming an estimate of your own higher and lower tendencies, and in deciding for what line of occupation you were best fitted. Then, after you have compared the statistics so gathered with your own idea ofyourself, you should proceed to make your character what you wish it tobe. 

This work will be ten thousand times more profitable to you than a mereroutine of college studies, gained by running in debt. 

To know yourself is far better knowledge than to know Virgil. And tomake yourself is a million times better than to have any one else makeyou. 

To Miss Elsie Dean

_Regarding the Habit of Exaggeration_

During your visit here with my niece, I became much interested in you. 

Zoe had often written me of her affection for you, and I can readilyunderstand her feeling, now that I have your personal acquaintance. 

You have no mother, and your father, you say, absorbed in business, likeso many American fathers, seems almost a stranger. Even the most devotedfathers, rarely understand their daughters. 

Now, I want to take the part of a mother and write you to-day, as Iwould write my own daughter, had one been bestowed upon me with the manyother blessings which are mine. 

I could not ask for a fairer, more amiable, or brighter daughter thanyou, nor one possessed of a kinder or more unselfish nature. 

You are lovable, entertaining, industrious, and refined. 

But you possess one fault which needs eradicating, or at least apropensity which needs directing. 

_It is the habit of exaggeration in conversation_. 

I noticed that small happenings, amusing or exciting, became events ofcolossal importance when related by you. 

I noticed that brief remarks were amplified and grew into something likeorations when you repeated them. 

I confess that you made small incidents more interesting, andinsignificant words acquired poetic meaning under your tongue. 

And I confess also that you never once wronged or injured any one byyour exaggerations--save yourself. 

Zoe often said to me, "Isn't it wonderful how Elsie's imagination lendsa halo to the commonest event, " and all your friends know that you havethis habit of hyperbole in conversation. 

Now, in your early girlhood, it is lightly regarded as "Elsie's way. "Later, in your maturity, I fear it will be called a harsher name. 

When you come to the time of life that larger subjects than girlishpranks and badinage engage your mind, it will be necessary for you to bemore exact in your descriptions of occurrences and conversations. Besides this, there is the heritage of your unborn children to consider. I once knew a little girl who possessed the same vivid imagination, andallowed it to continue unchecked through life. She married, and her son, to-day, is utterly devoid of fine moral senses. He is a mentalmonstrosity--incapable of telling the truth. His falsehoods are many andvaried, and his name is a synonym of untruth. He relates, as truth, themost marvellous exploits in which he really never took part, anddescribes scenes and places he has never visited, save through thepages of some novel. 

His lack of moral sense has blighted his mother's life, and she iswholly unconscious that he is only an exaggerated edition of herself. 

I think, as a rule, such imaginations as you possess belong to theliterary mind. I would advise you to turn your attention tostory-writing, and in that occupation you will find vent for yourromantic tendencies. 

Meanwhile watch yourself and control your speech. 

Learn to be exact. 

Tell the truth in small matters, and do not allow yourself to indulge inseemingly harmless white lies of exaggeration. 

There are times when we should refrain from speaking all the truth, butwe should refrain by silence or an adroit change of subject. We shouldnot feel called upon to relate all the unpleasant truths we know ofpeople. 

When asked what we know of some acquaintance, we are justified intelling the worthy and commendable traits, and saying nothing of thefaults. 

Therefore, while to suppress a portion of the truth is at times wise andkind, to distort it, or misstate facts, is never needed and neverexcusable. 

When you and Zoe came from your drive one day you were full ofexcitement over an adventure with a Greek road merchant. 

As you told the story, the handsome peddler had accosted you at the exitof the post-office and asked you to look at his wares. 

When you declined he became familiar, paid a compliment to Zoe's beauty, and assured her that a certain lace shawl in his possession would beirresistible draped about her face. 

Then he had pursued the carriage on his wheel and continued to "makeeyes" and pay compliments to the very gate of my home, where heabandoned the chase. 

The facts were, according to further investigation, that the man paid asimple trade compliment in reference to the shawl and its becomingnessto a pretty face, mounted his wheel and rode away, as it happened, inthe same direction you and Zoe were taking. 

Again, you related a bit of repartee between Zoe and a caller, which Ihad chanced to over-hear, and out of two short sentences you made asmall brochure, most amusing, but most untrue. 

It was complimentary to both Zoe and her caller, yet it was not theconversation which took place, and therefore was not truthful. 

These are trifling incidents, yet they are the straws, telling that thewind blows from the marsh-lands of inexactness--not from the mountaintops of truth. 

Once a woman loses a sense of the great value of absolute truthfulness, she has blurred the clear mirror of her soul. 

Put yourself upon a diet of _facts_, my sweet young friend, and curethis propensity, harmless enough now, but dangerous for your future. 

Watch your tongue that it does not say _five or six_ when it should say_two_, or _yards_ when it should say _inches_. 

Even in the smallest matters, practise the habit of being exact. 

You will thank me for this advice sometime, even if it seemsunreasonable to you to-day, and remember, I would not take the libertyor the trouble to so advise you, did I not love you and feel anxious foryour welfare. 

To Sybyl Marchmont

_Who Has Learned Her Origin_

Your despairing letter lies before me. I wish you were here, my dearchild, that I might talk from my heart, instead of writing from it. I amsorry that the secret, so long hidden, has been revealed to you, and insuch a despicable manner. 

An anonymous letter always carries with it the venom of a serpent. Ihave long known your history, though the world generally believed you tobe the actual daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Marchmont, who adopted you whenyou were scarcely one week old. 

No daughter ever received more affection or better care than these goodpeople gave you. Mrs. Marchmont lived always with a fear in her heartthat you might learn your history from some idle or malicious lip, andbefore she died begged me to be your comforting friend, if that hourever came, which has now arrived. 

As your mother's nearest friend, it is natural you should turn to me inyour crucial hour of pain. And in reply to your questions regarding thetruth of this anonymous assertion, I will tell you all I know. 

Your own mother was well born, and a girl of great beauty and charm. Shewas of foreign blood, and her parents, after the foreign custom, selected for her, at the age of seventeen, a man of mature years andunattractive personality, but some fortune. The family lived in aseaport town, and your mother attracted the eye of a young seafaringman, holding a government position. An intense and uncontrollable lovesprang up between them. Your mother had been kept in ignorance of God'sgreat law of sex attraction, its purpose and its results, and she waslike a new-born babe towed on the sea of her own suddenly awakenedemotion. 

It was arranged that your mother was to elope with her lover on his nextarrival in port. All plans were to be made by him during the voyage onwhich he went forth, after a stolen interview with your mother. He waslost at sea, and all on board the ship perished with him. Mr. And Mrs. Marchmont chanced to be sojourning in the place at the time of yourbirth. Mr. Marchmont had longed for a child, and the tragic story cameto his ears through the physician of your mother's family, and he andhis wife decided to adopt you and take you to America. 

I was the one friend who shared with Mrs. Marchmont the story of yourbirth. Other friends knew she had adopted a child, and of course allsorts of rumours were afloat for a time. Mr. Marchmont's nephew wasparticularly unfriendly, I remember, as he had believed himself heir tohis uncle's estate until your adoption. 

Some three years ago I chanced to be in the seaport town where you wereborn, and I made quiet inquiries about your mother. I learned that shehad recently died, leaving a husband and three children. I hunted up thechildren, and found them to be most uninteresting and ordinary. Theoldest daughter I met and studied. She was plain and commonplace inappearance, and the other children were dull and unattractive. 

The husband was the elderly man selected by your grandparents. Just howhe had been led to accept the second place in your mother's life, andwhether he had known of the tragedy, I could not learn without askingmore questions than I deemed wise. 

But what I want to impress upon your mind by this recital is, _your owndivine inheritance of love, _ the inheritance which has bestowed upon youphysical beauty, mental power, and rare qualities of heart and soul. Iknow few women so endowed by the Creator as you. I know of few younggirls--in fact, not one--I would so gladly and proudly claim as adaughter, or wish a daughter to be like, as your lovely self. 

When I read your letter, with its wild expressions of self-abasement anddespair and regret that you were in the world, where, you seemed tobelieve, you had no right to be, I could not help picturing to myselfthe dull face and disagreeable personality of your half-sister, thechild whom you no doubt believe has a greater right than yourself onearth. Now whatever society has decided is legal and right for humanbeings, you must not forget that God also has made rules, and that thoserules must first be obeyed, before the rules of man can be regarded asperfect. 

God's first law, regarding the propagation of the human species, is thatthe _mother must be dominated by a supreme and ruling emotion to give tothe world the highest type of a child_. 

Your mother loved your father with all her heart and soul. She was ayoung girl, ignorant of the world. She thought of her lover as herrightful mate, and lived but for the hour when he should rescue herfrom the unhappy fate arranged by unwise and sordid-minded parents. 

Your father loved her, and they were in God's sight more truly husbandand wife than the soulless and loveless ceremony of the law made her andher legal husband afterward. 

It is a great misfortune that your parents lacked the self-control whichis necessary to every well-balanced human being who seeks for thefullest development. It is a sad thing that over your life this shadowof unlegalized birth must rest. 

But were I given the choice to-day to be what you are, or what yoursister is, and what thousands of children born of loveless marriagesare, I would not for one second hesitate in my choice. 

The world needs marriage laws to keep any order in society. 

The wisely reared and well-balanced woman will keep herself in womanlyreserve for her legal husband. 

Your mother, by a moment's weakness and loss of self-control, left ablight upon her life for ever, and a shadow upon yours. 

But do not for one instant think of yourself as anything but _a child ofGod_, endowed with all the wealth of the spiritual kingdom, whatever thelaw may withhold from you here. 

You are legitimized by love, your sister is legitimate by law. She isillegitimate in the sight of heaven, you in sight of earth. 

Be glad of your beautiful nature and beautiful qualities, and do notspoil them by despondency or pessimism. 

Think of yourself as if you were a child of Adam and Eve, born beforethe serpent appeared, when there was no law but the law of love togovern two souls, drawn together by irresistible attraction. 

The best and highest qualities of two human beings meet and mingle inyour nature. Do you suppose the great Creator of all things regards youas base born, when he has so endowed you with all that makes womanlovable and charming. 

Live up to your divine inheritance, my dear girl. Make the world betterfor your presence in it, and bear your sorrow with that resignation andphilosophy which all human beings must cultivate if they do not wish tobecome weak repiners when they face the sorrows of life. 

Look the world squarely in the eyes, and feel no shame. 

Your mother's marriage to the man she detested, and the birth ofchildren conceived in loathing, were acts which in my mind called formore shame on her part than your own birth. Both were misfortunes forher, since only by living an orderly, controlled, and lawful life canany human being find happiness or self-respect in the world. 

But when we come to the close analysis of motives and impulses, many anact the world condemns is far less reprehensible than other acts whichmeet its loud acclaim. 

You have received from the vast spiritual realms about us your rarelybeautiful qualities. Go forth and give them to humanity. 

Be strong, be good, be brave, be happy. 

No one and nothing can harm you but your own mind. 

The world, as we encounter it, is but an echo of our own strongconvictions. Respect yourself absolutely, believe in yourselfabsolutely, and the world will respect you and believe in you. 

Say to yourself every hour, "I am God's divine creature, " and no onewill dare look you in the eyes and say you are anything less than that. 

The arms of infinite love enfold you--have no fear. 

To Miss Diana Rivers

_Young Lady Contemplating a Career as a Journalist_

Your interesting letter regarding your future plans has been food for mythoughts ever since its receipt this morning. 

I remember when you were my guest a year ago that you told me you feltlike a big bird in a small cage. Every time you tried to spread yourwings you were bruised by bars. Your home environment with its fewduties and small responsibilities, your church and your charities, failed to give you full opportunity for the exercise of all your vitalforces. 

I knew then that you were longing for a career, and I felt confidentthat some word would come from you before long, announcing a change inyour life. 

I was prepared to hear one of two things--that you were soon to bemarried, or that you had decided to enter the dramatic profession. Whena young and attractive woman grows restless and eager for change, sheis, unconsciously to herself, sending out a challenge to Fate to createnew conditions in her life. Despite the fact that no male member in the"Fate" family has ever attained prominence in the eyes of the world, andthat the three sisters have claimed so much power over the destinies ofthe human family, a little investigation will prove that they never makeany pronounced move without calling in the aid of Cupid. 

Cupid is their prime minister, and we all know that prime ministers arethe power behind the throne of rulers. 

When you sent out your eager thoughts for "something to happen, " tochange the monotony of your existence, I knew the Fate sisters werequite likely telegraphing Cupid that his assistance was needed to quieta small riot in the human family. 

Once they set Cupid busy with a human heart, the Fates need give it nofurther attention. When Cupid reports that his work with the heart isfinished, then the Angel of Resignation or the Angel of Death mustfinish the task. 

Knowing you to be particularly fond of the theatre as a distraction, Ihad thought you might essay the rôle of society actress, confoundingappreciation for talent, as so many women do; and when your letteropened with the announcement that you were about to give me a greatsurprise, I was prepared to hear that you were billed to appear in awalking rôle, with a road company, next season, with promises of greaterthings "soon afterward. "

But I confess to absolute surprise, as I read on, and learned that yourcareer was to lead you, not through Lovers' Lane, not before thefootlights, but along the hurly-burly byways and highways of Americannewspaper work, beginning with interviews and reporting. Allow me toquote from your letter before me. 

"I do not imagine I have talent save the talent for work. I am, as youknow, well educated, as that expression goes to-day. I have always foundexpression with the pen an easy mode of communicating my impressions andideas. 

"I am observing, and I have a keen sense of humour, and I have (sopeople tell me) an agreeable personality. I know the value of correctdressing, and I am not oversensitive. That is, I am not one who will godown at the first rebuff. I have the real American spirit, which makesme believe myself as good as anybody, and you know my family name is oneto buoy up that impression. Therefore, it seems to me I cannot fail toattain some degree of success. I am sure to obtain entrée to people andfunctions, and I can describe what I see and hear in attractive form. Ishall shrink at no task, however difficult, and stop at no obstacle. 

"I am determined to make a success as a reporter and a correspondent, and after I have achieved something in that line I may look to aneditorial position; and who knows but my fertile imagination, coupledwith the experiences sure to come to me, may develop the great Americannovelist the world is waiting?"

This is all interesting and admirable reasoning. 

But, having seen much of the world, and known much of the various typesof young women writers and reporters and correspondents, I feel likediscussing the subject of your profession with you. At the instigation, perhaps, of some editor who makes the mistake of thinking success mustbe reached through sensationalism, you may be tempted to make your pen, not _mightier_, but more _cruel_ than the sword. 

I remember once upon a time meeting a young woman who had come, unbiddenby the hostess, to "write up" a social function where a number ofcelebrated people were congregated. 

Her employer had sent her to the house, telling her to obtain an entreeby fair means or foul; and as she was well dressed and quiet in manner, she was not repulsed by an amiable hostess. This lady realized that thereporter has his or her living to make, and must be either helped orhindered by the willingness or unwillingness of people to furnishmaterial for copy. Being informed that the young woman was "literary, "and chancing to stand near her for a few moments, I asked her the natureof her work. 

The young woman looked a trifle embarrassed, as she answered: "Well, totell you the truth, I write a good many disagreeable and nasty thingsabout people, especially people in public life. The editors who take mywork will have that kind. I have essayed better things, and they wouldnot touch them. So I am compelled to write the stuff they do want. Imust make a living. " When I read the "stuff" in question, I was inclinedto doubt the assertion of the writer that "she must make a living. " Theworld would be the better should she and all her kind cease to exist. Ridicule, falsehood, and insinuation were the leading traits of theyoung woman's literary style. Costumes and personalities werecaricatured, and conversations and actions misstated. The entire articlewould have been libelous, had it not been too cowardly to deserve sobold a word. 

It is useless for any man or woman to assert that such reportorial workis done from necessity. The blackmailer and the pickpocket have as muchright to the plea, as the newspaper masked-assassin, with the concealedweapon of a pen. 

If you are ever asked by any editor to do this reportorial stilettowork, let me urge you to take to professional burglary, rather thanconsent to write what such an employer demands. 

It is far less despicable to rob houses of things of mercantile value, than to rob characters and reputations and personalities. Again, whenyou are sent out upon a commission to obtain an interview with anyperson, obtain what you seek and take nothing else away with you. 

Just as you would scorn to pawn the watch of the famous actress whichyou may find lying on the table as you pass out, so scorn to sell anypersonal speech she may have carelessly dropped in your hearing whichyou know was not intended for publication. Petty larceny is not a noblefeature of interviewing. Even though a facility for selling suchdishonestly gained property to advantage be yours, do not convinceyourself or be convinced that larceny should be included in yourreportorial duties. 

I recollect speaking with you once upon the difficulties young womenencountered who attempted to win honours in a dramatic career. You feltthat the necessity to cater to the ideas and wishes of inferior minds, in representing a character on the stage, would be one of the hardestphases of stage life to meet. 

"To be loud and spectacular where I wanted to be refined and subtle, "you said, "just to catch some rough audience and fill the house, wouldbe insupportable. And yet I know actresses ofttimes must do that verything, to keep a foothold in the profession. "

I am wondering how you will meet what seems to me a more humiliatingrôle, when you are sent out by an editor to gain an entree to someperson who does not wish to be interviewed. 

Will you, when refused entrance at the front door, go in at the rear andhobnob with the servants? will you spy, and watch and wait on streetcorners, and hide yourself in hallways, and intercept and surprise, andcongratulate yourself when you have trapped your prey? That is theshameful pathway which nowadays leads to what is called "successfulnewspaper work. "

You need to realize the facts before you enter the profession. Were youmy daughter, I am certain I should feel much less concern were you toenter the theatrical field. 

And yet if you choose to stand by your ideals, and retain yourself-respect, you can do so, and succeed in journalism. 

If you have, as you say, observation, expression, humour, and ambition, you can create a style of your own: which will not necessitate the lossof all womanly sense of decency and pride in dealing with your fellowbeings. It might be well for you to cultivate and add to the list ofyour qualities appreciation of all that is best in human nature andworthiest of respect. If you understand the law of concentration anddemand, you can obtain an entrance to the people you wish to see, through the front hall and a properly engraved card. 

If that fails, a polite and frank note, stating your purpose andintimating your self-respecting ideas of your profession, may proveeffective. Once establish your reputation as an interviewer who is not ahighwayman in disguise, and you will achieve tenfold the success yourless reputable confrères gain in the long run. Try and remember alwaysthat fame, glory, or even crime, do not destroy all human sensibilities, or render the possessor invulnerable to the thrust of a pen. 

The greatest warrior who ever conquered armies has still the power tofeel hurt when he sees some personal blemish or misfortune described inprint. 

You would never be guilty of saying to any man's face, "How hideousyour harelip renders you"--and why should you go from his presence andmake such a statement to the whole world concerning him? One of the mostgifted men America ever claimed was driven from his native land by thecruel, bald, and heartless personalities of newspaper critics, whoseemed to consider it necessary to comment on his physical infirmitieswhenever his genius was mentioned. 

During the lifetime of one of England's great literary women, anAmerican correspondent who had been given an interview in her homedescribed her as possessing the "face of a horse. " Surely this wasagreeable reading for a gifted woman whose genius had delightedthousands!

It has sometimes seemed to me that theatrical road life with aone-night-stand company would be less brutalizing to the finersensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than themethod of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignorethe fact that there is a mental as well as a physical prostitution. 

Look to it that you do not trail your banner of noble womanhood in thedust, at the demand of any editor or syndicate. Keep your purity of pen, as well as your chastity of body, and believe no man who tells you thatyou will get on better in the world by selling either. There is roomhigher up. 

To Nanette

_A Former Maid_

Curiously enough, my dear little Nanette, I was thinking about you, andwishing to know something of you, the very day your letter came. 

Of many who have been helpers in my employ, you were one of the few whoseemed to care more for me than for the wages I paid. 

There was between us that ideal condition which I wish might existbetween all employers and employees. You wanted the work you were fittedto do, and I wanted such work done. You were glad of the money itbrought you, and I was glad to recompense you. You wanted appreciationand sympathy and consideration aside from your earnings, and I wanted apersonal interest in my affairs, and a friendly wish to please me, aside from the mere work well done. You never seemed to me less womanlyor less refined because you were a wage-earner, and I did not representto you oppression or monopoly merely because I paid the money and youreceived it. I took you into my confidence in many ways, and you made mefeel I was your friend as well as your employer. We enjoyed cosy chats, and yet you no more desired or wished to be present at my socialfunctions than you desired me to enter into all your merrymakings andpleasures. You were, in fact, one of the most agreeable and sensiblewomen I have ever known in any station in life. And now you write methat you are engaged to be married, and ask me to give you counsel in avery serious matter. 

Together with your other excellent qualities, you have possessed economyand prudence. 

At the age of twenty-five you have a tidy bank-account, the savings ofeleven years. This money is increasing, year by year, and drawing asmall interest. 

Now comes your lover, a hard-working and sober young man, so you say, but earning only a small salary as a clerk. 

He has met with some reverses, and is temporarily embarrassed. He wantsyou to lend him a few hundred dollars, and he will pay you the sameinterest you are now receiving, but you fear it would be unwomanly onyour part to take this interest money. At the same time you feel areluctance to break in upon your savings, which you had planned to usein helping establish a home. You want to befriend your lover, and youwant to be wise and careful, and so you write to me, your old-timeadviser, for counsel. I fear I may hurt your feelings in what I am aboutto say. 

I have seen much of the world, and have studied humanity in many phasesand in many classes. 

There is one type of man I have never yet known to be strong, reliable, and trustworthy, --a man for a woman to lean upon in times of trouble andsorrow, --a man I would like to see any friend take for a lifecompanion, --_and that is the young man who asks a loan of money from awoman he loves, or one who loves him_. Believe me, there is some lack ofreal moral fibre in such a man. 

A husband and wife many years married, and united by common interests, may become so one in purpose and thought that a common purse would be asnatural to them as a common dinner-table. 

With mutual interests, planning for their future and the future of theirchildren, there could be no talk of "My money" and "Your money" betweenthem. 

But before marriage, or immediately after, the man who begins to ask awoman for the use of her purse, should be distrusted by her. He couldnot broach such a subject unless he lacked a certain refined strengthwhich makes a manly man a woman's protector by nature. Even where nosentiment exists between a man and a woman, the really strong men of theworld never become borrowers from women. If through friendly interestand affection some woman compelled such a man to take a loan, he wouldknow no rest or peace of mind until he had liquidated the debt. 

When a man is a woman's lover, and asks her to advance money to him forany reason, she may as well realize at once the reed on which she willlean if she accepts him for a life companion. To deceive herself for amoment with the idea that he will be a staff of strength, is but todelay disillusion. A vital quality is left out of his character. 

He is but one step removed from the man who _seeks_ a woman because shehas money. And he is the most despicable of the human race. 

I have known three women of different social positions to lend money totheir lovers. 

One man invested it and lost it, and never made an effort to reimbursethe lady, who broke her engagement in consequence, after two unhappyyears. Another went away owing the money, and was never again heardfrom. The third married the unwise woman who had loaned him hercompetence, and continued to look to her for support. 

Therefore, my dear Nanette, I would urge you to think twice, and yet athird time, before you lend your fiancé your savings. 

Tell him frankly that you will feel more respect for him if he iswilling to sacrifice comfort and save from his own income enough to liftthe debt he has incurred, and that you are sure he will feel lesshumiliated as time goes by if he is not financially in debt to you. Ifhe were to fall ill tell him it would be your first impulse to devoteyour money to his care; but while he is able-bodied and well, you do notlike to have him lean on you for aid. 

You can judge something of the man's character by the way he receivesthis statement from you. 

And whatever may result, even if it is the end of your engagement, donot grieve your heart away over it. Better far to have the end come nowthan to marry a dependent and shiftless man, who will humiliate yourpride by a thousand and one mean traits. The moment a young wife becomesthe financial head of a household, and the man depends upon her to keepthe family free from debt, sentiment and romance fly from the windows ofthe heart, and poor Cupid goes away with his head under his wing. Thissituation might befall people long married, as I said before, withoutcausing disaster, because the wife would have years of other experiencesstored up in memory, to maintain her respect for her husband. 

The natural instinct of a manly man is to be the protector and thebreadwinner. He loves to shield and support the woman of his choice. Ifshe has any talent or profession which gives her satisfaction to pursue, and which yields her an income, he will, if broad-minded andsympathetic, place no obstacle in her path so long as this vocation isno barrier to their domestic happiness. But he is sensitive to herassuming any of the financial burdens of life. 

If circumstances render it necessary for her to do so, he sufferskeenly, and the utmost delicacy and consideration on her part alone cansave him from utter humiliation. 

This is the attitude of the manly man, my dear Nanette, the man whomakes the good husband and father. 

The unselfish, broad-minded and considerate wife will lead a husband tothink of her right to aid in the establishment and maintenance of a homewhen she is able to do her part. But the man who makes a good husbandnever suggests it as her duty, or asks her to advance money. 

It is commendable in you to wish to aid in making a home. It is unmanlyin your lover to ask you to help him pay his debts. Beware of the loverwho asks for or accepts a loan. 

To The Rev. Wilton Marsh

_Regarding His Son and Daughter_

My dear Cousin Wilton:--You have no idea how your letter took me back tomy merry girlhood, when you and I resided in the same neighbourhood, andI was the concern of your precociously serious mind. Yes, indeed, I dorealize what a mistake you made in living the repressed life you did allthose early boyhood years. What a pity your parents reared one of yoursensitive and imaginative nature in the gloomy old doctrines of adepressing religion, which so misrepresented the God of love: and howodd that your father and mine should have been born of the same parents, educated in the same schools, and yet be no more alike in beliefs ormethods of life than two people of a different race and era. 

And again it is not strange, when we realize that hundreds ofgenerations lie back of both parents, and innumerable ancestors of bothfather and mother contribute their different mentalities to the childrenin a family. Back of that is the great philosophy of reincarnation--thetruth of which impresses me more and more each year I live. 

Do you recall your horror the first time I told you I had read a book onreincarnation, and confessed that it had made me anxious to study thetheory?

You said I was a pagan and a heathen, and that I would surely be damnedforever unless I turned to the way of salvation. 

And do you recall your misery when I seized you one evening at yourbirthday party (you were twenty), and dragged you about the room in awaltz? That is, I waltzed, while you hobbled about like a lame calf, much to the amusement of most of the company. 

There were more who sympathized with my views of life than with yours. You were such a wet blanket on our youthful spirits. Your ever-blazinglake of brimstone did not even serve to warm the blanket. 

I have been gratified to watch your growth the last ten years. 

You have so changed your point of view, which indicates your real worthand progressive good sense. And when you tell me that you have for yearsregretted your lost opportunities for natural and moral pleasure, andthat you suffered beyond your power to describe in those old days inconquering your desire to dance and play games, it brings the tears ofmingled rage and pity to my eyes. Rage at the old theology, and pity forthe poor children whose lives were shadowed by it. 

And now what you tell me of your son and daughter proves another of mytheories true, and shows me how nature revenges its wrongs. 

Children, my dear Wilton, especially the offspring of strong characters, _inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents_. They bring intoaction the unexhausted impulses and the ungratified desires of thoseparents. 

The greatest singers are almost invariably the offspring of mothers orfathers who _were music hungry_, and who were given no completegratification of this craving. 

The poet, you will find, is the voice of an artistic-natured parent, whowas forced to be emotionally dumb. 

And the proverbial clergyman's son is merely the natural result of thesame cause. He is charged with the tendencies and impulses which hisfather crucified. 

That your son loathes study, and hates church-going, and adores a brassband and a circus, and runs away to the races, does not in the leastsurprise me. Nor that your sixteen-year-old daughter grows hysterical atthe sound of dance music, and prefers a theatrical show in your villagehall to a Sunday-school picnic, and is mad to become an actress. 

_They are your own wronged and starved emotions personified, and cryingout to you for justice. _

The very best thing for you to do with the boy is to put him into agymnasium and a football team as soon as possible. Offer no oppositionwhen he wants to see a good horse-race. Urge him to go, and ask him totell you all about it when he returns. Begin right now to get close tothe heart of your children. 

Once you do that, once you convince them you are near enough to theirlives to understand their needs and to try and gratify their naturallongings, all your worries will take wing and fly away; for yourchildren will cease to hide and cloak their actions and natures, andthey will no longer wish to deceive or attempt to defy you. 

Send your daughter where she can learn dancing, in company with otherrefined and well-bred young people. You have so far emancipated yourselffrom your old superstitions and beliefs that this action on your partwill not antagonize the desirable members of your congregation. 

Only a remnant of the old bigots and intolerants are to be found in anycongregation of intelligent people of to-day. 

If that remnant is shaken out of its winding-sheet by being antagonized, you may galvanize it into life. 

At all events, do not endanger the peace of your home and the happinessof your children, for fear of antagonizing a few parishioners ofarrested spiritual development. 

Give your son and daughter an outlet for the youthful vitality which islike steam: a moving power when used, dangerous and destructive whenpent up. 

Take young Wilton and Rebecca into a room, and talk the whole matterover. 

Tell them how deeply you love them, and how you have just come torealize the mistake you have made in trying to eradicate from them thenatural desire for wholesome pleasure instead of giving it properavenues of expression. 

Say frankly that you see your error, and that you intend to rectify it. 

Ask their coöperation, and appeal to their good taste and affection notto mortify or humiliate you in your position of clergyman, byoverstepping the bounds of decorum or discretion. 

Lead them to talk of their ambitions and desires, and, as consistentlyas you can, gratify them. 

Let your daughter come to me for a season. I will help to reshape andmodify her ideals of enjoyment to some degree. 

I am sure if she sees a few of our best spectacular plays, and hearsgood music, and enjoys beautiful rhythmic dancing, she will not be socarried away with the travelling show. 

I will acquaint her with some of the commonplace facts concerning thelives of theatrical people, and show her the frayed tinsel and wornfaces by daylight. This will do more for her than all your sermons onthe dangers of a theatrical career. 

The young heart is fascinated with the thought of danger and temptation. 

It is repelled by the commonplace and the ugly. 

When you talk to a young mind in a whisper and behind locked doors abouta temptation to be avoided, you but give edge to appetite and curiosity. 

When you bring the temptation out into the glare of sunlight, and speakof it in presence of the whole world, you dispel the illusion. 

I will gather together some data concerning the sporting men of America, and send your son. I will also mail him the sporting papers regularly. Let him talk and read openly about the subject, and it will lose halfits weird charm. 

He, too, should learn to dance, swim, fence, and ride. His boundingvitality needs directing in wholesome channels. I have never understoodthe prejudice against dancing. 

To me, it is a form of religious praise of the Creator of youth, health, vitality, and grace. I have always loved dancing, and the exercise, besides being eminently beneficial to the health and wonderfullyconducive to grace is, to my thinking, highly moral in its effect. Itsonly danger lies in wrong associations, and these seem to threaten youngpeople who are restricted from the enjoyment in their homes and amongtheir rightful companions. 

I cannot help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hallof fame, among the "Immortals, " for having given the last century herexquisitely beautiful creations in dancing. 

No woman has given us a great epic, or a great painting, or a greatmusical composition, but she has given us a great dance-poem, which isat the same time a painting and a song. Oh, you poor starved, blindsoul, to be deprived of such beautiful spectacles. How I pity you, andhow I pray you to give your children the privileges you have missedthrough a belittling idea of your Creator. 

Do you fancy God would punish beautiful young Rebecca for dancing, anysooner than he would blight the willow-tree for waving its graceful armsto the tune the wind-harps play?

Come up out of the jungles of ignorance and bigotry, my dear cousin, and live on the hilltops and bring your children with you. For there youwill all find yourself nearer to God and to humanity. 

To Mrs. Charles McAllister

_Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne_

I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before youbegan your course of action. 

You wrote me after you entered Vassar and asked me what I thought ofyour doing so. 

You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what Ithought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of goodwishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and askme to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you andthe doctor. 

"He did not take my view of the matter at first, " you say, "but he doesnow. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinionbefore I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college beforefinishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to makehim wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so Iconsented. "

Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, andthat you have the best husband in the world. But you have decidedmusical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroadto cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition hastaken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of yourclassmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to takea two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with anaccomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded. 

"One never knows what the future holds, " you say, "and it is the duty ofevery woman to make the most of herself. " Both remarks are as true asthey are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original inexpressing herself. 

But there is another duty a woman should not forget--the duty to standby her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems thedoctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad hedid not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has anailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfullyseconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home. 

When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season, there is something wrong with his heart. 

Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going sofar, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. Youevidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel thathe is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. TheAmerican husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now, "you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the talents God gaveher just as a man does, and that it is a wrong against her 'higher self'to crush down these ambitions. He realizes, too, that this separationmeans greater powers of usefulness for me in the future, and greateropportunities for pleasure. It will be a long and lonely time for bothof us, as I shall only come home once or twice and the doctor may not beable to go over at all, though I hope he will. But the expense of mystudies will of course be great, and we shall both need to economize. Itis my intention to start a little conservatory after I return and take afew high-priced pupils. In that way I can reimburse our expenditure. "

But can you, my dear Winifred, _reimburse your mutual losses in otherways_? You do not seem to realize what such a separation may mean. Youare both young and both attractive. I know now that you are beginning tobe angry at my suggestion, but, fortunately, you cannot interrupt me, and you must hear what I have to say. 

Of course you are not a frivolous flirt, or a silly-headed creaturewith no ideals or principles. You have nothing of the adventuress inyour composition, but you are a young woman, with personal charms andtalents, and life will be unutterably desolate for you if you make arecluse of yourself. You will be surrounded by people of artistictemperaments and tastes, and I know, if you do not, that many of thesepeople do lack ideals, and some of them lack principles and take pridein the fact. "Art for art's sake, life for pleasure's sake, " is theirmotto. The entire situation will be full of danger for you. But far moredanger will surround your husband. A man's temptations are alwaysgreater than a woman's. That is, there are _more_ temptations in hispathway, from the fact that he is by nature and environment less guardedand protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe. And of allmen, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed totemptation. He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer ofdomestic secrets. Many a woman believes she is ill only because shedesires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herselfdisturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society ofher minister. 

Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise hisreputation or disgrace his calling readily. I hear Doctor McAllisterspoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows awell-balanced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a'that, " my dear Winifred. 

We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demandof half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divinecreatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated fromthe wife he loves for months and years. 

Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy orsorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great troubleor duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measureforgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habitsof distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which nowoman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are invitingthe inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeyingand pleasure-seeking wives. 

I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true--_gambling-housesand dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave townfor summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season whencrops are ripe. _ I do not suppose your husband will seek thecompanionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men asseemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believehe will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long asmen as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distractionand entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a youngwife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sakeof any possible attainment. 

You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and hiscomfort secondary to your ambitions. 

If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was notloyal to you, it would be different. 

But you say he is "the best of men, " and that you never have regrettedmarrying him. 

Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to makewhat progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husbandcan accompany you before you go abroad to study. 

The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been"abroad to study, " leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Donot be one of them. 

There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy, united married life is one. 

To Mrs. Charles Gordon

_Concerning Maternity_

I have tried to imagine myself in your place, as you requested, beforeanswering your letter. 

To be the mother of two children, and to know that a third may be addedbefore the fifth anniversary of your wedding, is for the most maternalof women a situation requiring rare patience and much philosophy. 

I know that your strength is depleted, that you are nervously unstrung, and I can understand your despondent state of mind. 

It seems to you that all romance and sentiment in life is beingsacrificed to breeding the species. You feel that you have some personalprivileges as a wife and a woman, not less than a mother. 

Like yourself, I do not believe woman's only mission in life to be theproduction of offspring, yet I consider motherhood the highest privilegeaccorded her who has for it the right physical and moral qualities. 

Only strong, sensible, and healthy women should become mothers, and itis a mistake for even such as they to be kept constantly in thatoccupation. 

You possess all the requisites, and you ought to bring fine childreninto the world, since you married the man you loved, and have been happywith him. 

But I can understand your reluctance to pass through the ordeal whichmodern motherhood in civilized races means, for a third time, in soshort a period. But try and take another view of the situation. 

Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child of a poor tallow chandler. Itis altogether probable that his coming seemed a misfortune to hismother, taxed with the care of such a brood. Think what the world wouldhave missed had he not come to earth. 

Then think of this unborn child as something wonderful and divine, givento you to perfect. Believe it is to be the greatest blessing to you andto the whole world. 

Cultivate love and protection in your heart for it. 

Tell yourself every hour of the day that the God of love will not desertyou or deprive you of strength and courage for your ordeal. That he willbe ever near, and sustain and comfort you. 

Desire all beautiful and good qualities to be given your child, andresolutely turn away from the contemplation of anything that is hideous, or unwholesome, or depressing. 

Look for pleasing objects, read cheerful and uplifting books, and frominfinite space call to you all ministering influences. 

Consider how short a time, when compared to the span of human life, expectant motherhood occupies, and realize the vastness of itsinfluence upon the nature of the child, and through that nature upon allhumanity. 

Once you grasp that consciousness, you will feel your closeness to theCreator of all things. 

Indeed, there is no other being on earth so nearly Godlike in power asthe mother who realizes what her influence over her unborn child may be. 

The hard and painful path for you to walk is but a short one compared tothe long roadway to eternity for your child. 

Perhaps some great statesman, or some great artist, or some greatscientist or philosopher is lying under your heart, and it is in yourpower to make or mar his development. Perhaps a Joan of Arc, or a RosaBonheur, or a Martha Washington will crown you with pride. 

Such genius and influence for good as the world has never before known, from mortal sources, may be given to it through your unborn child. Howwonderful your privilege, how vast your power!

Only a few short months, and then the growing wonder of a child'sunfolding mind, to beautify your days. 

Think of it in this way, dear little tired and nervous woman, and Godand all his angels will hover over you, I know, and all will be wellwith you. 

My prayers are with you. 

To Mr. Alfred Duncan

_Concerning the Ministry_

And so you have changed your plan of life and, instead of becoming anexperimenter with the flesh, are going to be a healer of souls. 

And what do I think about it? I am glad you are not to be an M. D. Thereis an era coming when the doctor will be a prehistoric creature. Oh, itis far, far away, but already the most progressive minds have ceased toregard the family physician as an infallible being. 

Medicine has made the least progress of any of the sciences in the lastfew centuries. 

Credulity has cured more people than pills. 

Were you to study medicine, I should advise you to take up surgery, osteopathy, electricity, the Kneippe Cure, milk diet, and all thevarious methods of stimulating circulation; for the people whopatronize these treatments are increasing, as the powder and pillpatrons are on the decrease. 

Then, too, I should urge you to make a careful study of mental andspiritual methods of cure, that you might be wholly equipped for thedawn of the new age. You are a young man, and you will probably live tosee a wonderful change in the treatment of disease, and to find thephysician of the old school relegated to the historian. 

But just as carefully you should now survey the religious horizon, before beginning your studies for the ministry. 

It is utterly useless to stand with lifted eyes and say, "The faith ofmy parents is good enough for me--good enough for all mankind. "

Had the children of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeatedit, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a"witch, " instead of a brother of the opposite creed. 

The narrow, intolerant old dogmas have been forced into elasticity bythe later generations, and the broadening work still goes on. 

It makes no difference how satisfied you may be with a prospective lakeof fire for your enemies, the congregations you are to address will notlisten to that style of sermon as did your grandparents. 

Only the ignorant minds to-day harbour ideas of cruelty and revenge inconnection with a Creator. 

Thinkers find such theories inconsistent with religious belief. Individual thought is leading to individual faith. 

Where once I believed in a universal church for all the world, I nowbelieve in a separate creed for each soul, one fashioned to suit his ownparticular need, with the underlying basis of love for all createdthings as its foundation. 

Let each man worship in his own way, and follow his own ideal of duty toGod and humanity. 

If it is the pleasure of one to give up all his worldly goods, and togo and live and labour among the poor, wish him Godspeed; but if anotherkeeps his place among men of affairs, makes money honestly, and uses itunselfishly, let him, too, have your blessing, since he is setting agood example for the worldly-minded. If one man finds himself nearer toGod on Sunday by going out and peacefully enjoying the beauties ofnature and the association of his kind, do not try to convince him thathe is on the highway to perdition because he does not sit in a pew andlisten to depressing sermons. 

The day is over for that type of clergyman to succeed. 

Make a study of the needs of men _to-day_, and suit your sermons tothose needs. 

Men need to know more of the wonders of God's universe. Talk to them ina brief, concise, interesting manner of the recent discoveries ofscience, and their frequent remarkable corroboration of the oldreligious theories. Thousands of years ago, in Egypt and India, wise mensaid that metals and all created things possessed life, and were a partof one great immortal whole, of which man was the highest expression. 

Science is "discovering" and proving the truth of many statements madeby those old seers and savants. Call the attention of the men of to-dayto this fact, and set them thinking on the wonders of the immortal soul. 

The man of to-day is an egotist regarding his scientific achievements. He has grown to think of himself as a giant before whose materialsuccess all other things must give way. He believes that he hasdiscovered, invented, photographed and made profitable all the "facts"of the universe, and is inclined to regard with intolerance any ideabeyond his own mechanical domain. 

Tell him how much was divined thousands of years ago, and lead him torealize the mighty depths of the unsounded ocean of his own being. 

To know your own triple self, body, mind, and spirit, and to makeyourself a complete man, with the body beautiful, the mind clear, thespirit radiant, is better than to have all the Bibles of the ages, inall their ancient languages, at your tongue's tip. 

Help men to the building of character, which shall enable them to behonest in street and mart, unselfish in home and society, andsympathetic to their fellow pilgrims. 

Salvation is gained as a house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction ofthat effort in the remaining six. 

And each man must be his own mason, and select and lay his own bricks. All the clergyman can do is to act the part of overseer. 

The man who goes to another, and expects his prayers to save him, islike the mason who expects the "boss" to do his work, while he draws thepay. Do no man's task--physical, mental, or spiritual. That is notfriendship or religion. Your work is to stimulate others to do their ownwork, think their own thoughts, and live their own lives. 

The world to-day demands facts to sustain faith. 

_Spiritual facts are to be obtained_. 

Find them: for once convinced of the continuation of life beyond thegrave, and of the necessity to earn its privileges, by self-conquest andcharacter-building, humanity will rise "from the lowly earth to thevaulted skies, " and will realize that this earth is but the anteroom tolarger spheres of usefulness. 

Go forth and find--go forth and find, and do not be afraid to strike outof beaten paths and avoid ruts. Cultivate spiritual courage. It is whatfew clergymen possess, and it will give you individuality at least. 

Preach the religion of happy harmonious homes. Make men and womenrealize that heaven must begin here, in order to continue farther on, and that the angelic qualities, of love, sympathy, goodness, appreciation, must be rehearsed in the body, before they can besuccessfully enacted in full-dress angel costume with wings. 

God will not care for the eternal praises sung about his throne by a manwho swears at his wife on earth, or a wife who nags her husband andchildren. It is no use expecting a rôle in a continuous performance ofhappiness in heaven, if you do not learn one line of the part on earth. 

Make your congregations think of the necessity to _live_ their religionin earth's commonplace daily situations. 

That is the religion the world needs. 

To Mr. Charles Gray

_Concerning Polygamy_

All that you say, regarding the excitement over the seating of your SaltLake Senator, is quite true. 

I have visited your city, and have made the acquaintance of many of yourpeople, and I know the private life of the gentleman you sent torepresent you in Washington is beyond reproach. 

He is a good husband, a good father, a good citizen. He was born of apolygamous father and mother, and his childhood's home was a happy one. He was educated in the belief that it was wrong for a man to cohabitwith any woman not his wife, but right for him to marry many wives. 

He has not married many wives, however, and does not intend to. Hisprivate life, his domestic life and his financial record are all cleanand clear of stain. 

So much cannot be said of many other Senators and Representatives at ourcapitol. 

Good women are horrified when seeking government positions to find howthe sacrifice of virtue is demanded as payment for influence. 

These statements cannot be evaded or denied. Let one who questions theminvestigate the conditions existing in Washington in the past andto-day. 

What a record it would be were every girl and woman who had been ledinto the path of folly by married Senators and Representatives to comeforth and tell her story!

There are clean, decent, high-minded men in both houses. There are goodcitizens, good patriots, good men there. 

But so long as one married seducer and misleader of women retains a seatin either house unmolested, so long as one man stays who is unfaithfulto his marriage vows, the opposers of the Senator from Utah should basetheir objections on other than moral grounds. 

But despite the facts you bring to bear on your argument, that polygamyleads to more morality in the homes of the land than our presentconditions illustrate, I must disagree with you. 

I am opposed to polygamy. Any social arrangement which licenses men topossess several women, to give full rein to their desires, is a block tothe wheels of progress. 

Not until man learns the lesson of self-control, as woman has learnedit, will humanity reach its highest development. 

Not until man ceases to place himself on a par with the unreasoning maleanimal, when he argues on the subject of the sexual relations, will hebecome the master of circumstance he is meant to be. 

One man and one woman living sexually true to each other is the idealdomestic life. Better strive toward that ideal, and fail and striveagain, than to lower it and accept license and self-indulgence as thestandard, under some religious name. 

Polyandry and polygamy are both evidences of a crude and half-evolvedhumanity. 

They belong to a society which has not learned the law of self-controlas a part of its religious creed and the march of progress. The light ofscience makes havoc of all such primitive conditions. 

You tell me that your father was the husband of three wives, and thatall lived under one roof in sisterly love, and that you never heard anunkind word spoken in your home, and that all three wives loved you as ason. You tell me your father held high ideals of womankind, and that theexistence of a fallen woman was impossible in your community. 

Now I contend that any woman who accepts less than the full loyalty ofthe man to whom she gives herself for life _has fallen from woman'shighest estate_. She lowers not only herself, but the whole sex. 

To take a third of a man's love, and to share his physical and mentaland spiritual comradeship with two other wives, is far more immoral, tomy thinking, than to take the whole of a man without legal authority. 

It drags down and belittles woman in the eyes of man. It is useless tocontend that such conditions lead to respect. 

There is too much of the big male I, and the little female you, in thearrangement. There is too much of the old idea that God made man, andaccident made woman, for man's use. There is too much of self-indulgencefor the man, and repression for the woman, --a condition which hasblocked the highest development of the race for centuries. 

Meanwhile, I think it a great pity that society does not hold theexpectant mother in the same reverence as in your community. That iscertainly a lesson we can learn from the Mormons. And that explains whyyour children, born of polygamous mothers, are stronger physically, andmore universally endowed mentally, than the average children in theworld at large. 

Mothers were guarded and protected and revered, and children were madewelcome, and no such crime as darkens our own social world--the crime ofdestroying embryo life--was known in your midst. 

It is a glorious heritage to give a child this parental love andwelcome. It lasts through eternity. 

But it does not seem to me that it is necessary to have polygamy prevailin order to produce right conditions for the propagation of offspring. In time the world will realize the importance of teaching men and womenhow to become good parents. 

It will learn, too, the magnificent results to be obtained from onemoral code for both sexes, and this result could never be obtained in apolygamous community. 

To Walter Smeed

_Concerning Creeds and Marriage_

Before you left us, I realized that you and my pretty secretary werefinding matters of mutual interest. 

Therefore, I am not surprised that you are thinking seriously of her asa future companion. 

Rosalie is a charming, intelligent, warm-hearted, excellent girl, andthere is no reason why she would not make you a good wife, save the oneyou mention--the difference in your creeds. 

You are a Roman Catholic, Rosalie is a devout Protestant. 

Were the cases reversed, and were you the Protestant and Rosalie theCatholic, I should say the chances of happiness were greater than asconditions now stand. 

As a rule, the most religious man is more liberal than the religiouswoman. And when marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant isthe question, there is need of greater liberality on the part of theProtestant than on that of the Catholic. 

Why? Because with the Protestant there is no consideration to be thoughtof outside of his or her own convictions and feelings. 

With the Catholic, the power of the Church and the law regarding therearing of the children in its faith walks beside the contracting party, sits at the table, and sleeps on the marital couch. 

There is no happiness for the husband or wife who has entered into sucha marriage, after the arrival of children, unless the laws of the Churchare obeyed. 

When the wife is a Catholic, the fact that she is a good woman and truewife satisfies the Protestant husband, as a rule, and he makes noobjection to her carrying out the contract with her Church regarding theeducation of the children. 

If they are as moral and good as their mother, he does not care whatfaith occupies their hearts or in what way they worship God. 

But to the mother this is a matter of vital importance. 

Woman is by nature more devout than man. 

Woman is by nature more tyrannical than man. 

Take those two characteristics, and add to them the tendency of manywomen to bigotry and intolerance, and it makes the matter of creedsvital in marriage. 

Rosalie is broader-minded than many women, yet she is devoted to theCongregational Church, and rarely misses attendance. 

It will be an easy matter for her to accept your faith for yourself andto allow you to attend your own church, and she is, I am sure, broadenough to go with you occasionally, if you request it. 

But when she becomes a mother, and the children's minds are unfolding, Idoubt her willingness to have them brought up in any faith save her own. 

To an unwedded girl in love, a child is a very indistinct creature. 

To a mother, it is a very real being. 

I have seen men as deeply in love as you are, with women asliberal-minded as Rosalie, become very unhappy after marriage throughthe opposite ideas of the wife regarding the education of children. 

You must remember how much more closely a mother's life is entwinedabout her children, and how much more of their association usually fallsto her than to the father. 

This is especially true of daughters, and is true of sons up to acertain age. 

You can understand, I am sure, how much more companionship a motherwould find in children who accepted her faith and attended her churchthan in those whose spiritual paths led in another direction. 

I know Rosalie realizes that a good life, not a certain creed, leads tothe goal she seeks, after this phase of existence closes, and she doesnot ask you to change your faith. But while she would also believe herchildren were on the road to that goal, she would want them to walkthrough her path and by her side. 

It will be hard to relinquish the woman you love, to-day, for thechildren who might not come to-morrow. 

Yet I can give you the counsel you asked on this matter only from mypersonal observation of similar unions. 

I should advise you to try an absence of some duration, and to forgetRosalie if you can, since you have not yet declared yourself. 

Better a little temporary sorrow than a life of discord. 

As you grow older your religion will, in all probability, gain astronger ascendency over your nature, and the church to which you belongis very tenacious in its hold upon its members. 

Rosalie is not of a yielding nature, and as I said before, she is moredevoted to her church than most young women of the day. 

The physical phases of your love blind you now. But these phases areonly a part of the tie which must bind husband and wife to make loveenduring through all of life's vicissitudes. 

There must be mental companionship, and to be a complete union theremust be sympathy in spiritual ideas. 

The very young do not realize this fact, but it is forced upon themature. 

Marital love is like a tree. It first roots in the soil of earth, andthen lifts its branches to the heavens. Unless it does so lift itsbranches it is stunted and deformed, and is not a tree. Unless it rootsin earth it is not a tree, but an air-plant or a cobweb. 

You want to be sure the tree you are thinking to make a shelter for yourwhole life, will have far-reaching and uplifting branches, and will notbe merely an earth-bound twig. 

Since your church permits no second marriage save by the door of death, do not make a mistake in your first. 

Take a year, at least, of absence and separation, and think the matterover. 

To Sybyl Marchmont

_Concerning Her Determination to Remain Single_

It is with genuine regret that I learn of your determination to send mynephew out of your life. Wilfred is a royal fellow, as that term isemployed by us. He is what a man of royal descent in monarchies rarelyproves to be, --self-reliant, enterprising, industrious, clean, and withhigh ideals of woman. 

Eight years ago I declined a request of his for a loan, and told him myreasons--that I believed loans were an injury to our friends orrelatives. My letter seemed to arouse all the strength latent in hisnature, and he has made a remarkable record for himself since that time. I have known that he was deeply in love with you for the last two years, and I had hoped you would listen to his plea. He tells me that youimparted your history to him, and that you say it is your intention toremain single, as you would not like to bring children into the world tosuffer from the stigma upon your name. He has shown me your letterwherein you say, "I am not in fault for having to blush for the sins ofmy parents; but I would be in fault if my children had to blush for theblemish upon the name of their grandparents. I do not feel I could meettheir questioning eyes when they asked me about my parents. I can betterbear the loss of the personal happiness of a home and a husband's love. "

Wilfred is just the man to protect you and to keep the world at adistance, where it could not affect your life by its comments. Heregards your birth in the same light that I do, and would rathertransmit your lovely qualities of soul and mind to his descendants thanthe traits of many proudly born girls who are ready to take him at thefirst asking: for you must know how popular he is with our sex. 

I can not believe you are insensible to his magnetic and lovablequalities, but, as you say, you have been so saddened by the suddenknowledge of your history that it has blunted your emotions in otherdirections. I can only hope this will wear away and that you willreconsider your resolve and consent to make Wilfred the happy and proudman you could, by becoming his wife. 

_Never forget that God created love and man created marriage_. 

And to be born of a loveless union is a darker blight than to be born inlove without union. 

But what I want to talk about now, is your determination to live asingle life and to devote yourself to reclaiming weak and erring women. You are young to enter this field of work, yet at twenty-four you areolder than many women of thirty-five, because you have had theprematurely ripening rain of sorrow on your life. I know you will gointo the work you mention with the sympathy and understanding whichalone can make any reformatory work successful. Yet you are going toencounter experiences which will shock and pain you, in ways you do notimagine now. 

You are starting out with the idea of most sympathetic good women, thatall erring souls of their own sex fall through betrayed trust, andbroken promises, and misplaced love. Such cases you will encounter, andthey will most readily respond to your efforts for their reformation. But many of those you seek to aid will have gone on the road to follythrough mercenary motives, and this will prove a vast obstacle. 

When a woman sells to Mammon, under any stress of circumstance, thatwhich belongs to Cupid, there is something left out of her nature andcharacter which renders the efforts of the reformers almost useless. Youknow all real, lasting reform must come from within. The woman who hasonce decided that fine apparel, and comfort, and leisure, are of morevalue to her than her virtue usually reaches old age or disease beforethe reformer can even gain her attention. You will find many such amongyour protégées, and you may as well leave them to work out their ownreformation, and turn your energies to those who long for a better life. 

It is that longing which means real reformation. To paraphrase an oldcouplet--

 The soul reformed against its will Clings to the same old vices still. 

I do not believe in a forced morality, save as a protection to acommunity. I believe in it as a legal fence, but it possesses no valueas a religious motive. It helps to save society some annoyance, but itdoes not materially improve the condition of humanity. Such improvementsmust come from the desire of men and women to reach higher standards. So, after you have planted a little seed in the mind of the mercenaryMagdalene which may in time sprout and grow, pass on, and find those whohave gone wrong from other causes, and who are longing for a hand tolead them right. 

And of all things do not expect a girl who has lived in the glare of redlights, and listened to the blare of bands, and worn the ofttimesbecoming garb of folly, and stimulated her spirits with intoxicants--donot expect her, I say, to suddenly be contented with quiet and solitude, and drudgery, and cheap, unlovely garments, and goodness. Give hersomething to entertain her and to occupy her mind, give her something tolive for and hope for and to be pleased over, besides the mere fact ofreformation. The opium victim, you must remember, can not at oncepartake of wholesome food and be well and happy in the thought that hehas given up his drug. Neither can the folly victim. The standards ofhappiness and contentment which the moral woman has always foundsatisfactory, she too often considers sufficient for the sister who haswandered from the path. But they are standards which, once lost, must begained step by step, painfully and slowly. They are not reached by abound. As much as possible keep your reformed sister's mind fromdwelling on the past, or from talking of her mistakes and sins. Blotthem from her memory by new and interesting plans and occupations. Theway to live a new life is to live it. 

And our thoughts and conversation are important parts of living. Insteadof praying aloud to God to forgive her sins, show the God spirit inyourself by forgiving and forgetting and helping her to forget. 

And now a word about yourself. 

You are twenty-four, lovely, sympathetic, fond of children and animals, wholesome and normal in your habits, without crankiness, and popularwith both sexes. While there are many wives and widows possessed ofthese qualities, there seems to be some handicap to the spinster in therace of life who undertakes to arrive at middle age with all the womanlyattributes. Almost invariably she drops some of them by the wayside. Shebecomes overorderly and fussy--so that association with her for anylength of time is insupportable--or careless and indifferent. Or she maygrow inordinately devoted to animal pets, and bitter and critical towardchildren and married people. 

She may develop mannish traits, and dress and appear more like a manthan a feminine woman. 

She may ride a hobby, to the discomfort of all other equestrians orpedestrians on the earth's highway. She may grow so argumentative andpositive that she is intolerant and intolerable. And whichever of thesepeculiarities are hers, she is quite sure to be wholly unconscious ofit, while she is quick to see that of another. Now watch yourself, mydear Sybyl, as you walk alone toward middle life; do not allow yourselfto grow queer or impossible. It was God's intent that every plant shouldblossom and bear fruit, and that every human being should mate andproduce offspring. The plant that fails in any of its functions isusually blighted in some way, and the woman who fails of life's fullexperiences seems to show some repellent peculiarity. But she need not, once she sets a watch upon herself; she has a conscious soul and mind, and can control such tendencies if she will. 

It is unnatural for a woman to live without the daily companionship ofman. The superior single woman must make tenfold the effort of theinferior wife, to maintain her balance into maturity, because of herenforced solitude. As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touchwith youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for closecompanionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty, unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, andsympathetic. 

And this is what I want you to do. At twenty-four it is none too soon tobegin planning for a charming maturity. 

If you are determined upon a life of celibacy, determine also to be themost wholesome, and normal, and all around liberal, womanly spinster theworld has ever seen. 

Peace and happiness to you in your chosen lot. 

To Mrs. Charles Gordon

_Concerning Her Sister and Her Children_

No, my dear Edna, I do not think it strange that you should seek adviceon this subject from a woman who has no living children. 

It seems to me no one is fitted to give such unbiased counsel regardingthe training of children as the woman of observation, sympathy, andfeeling, who has none of her own. 

Had I offspring, I would be influenced by my own successes, andprejudiced by my own failures, and unable to put myself in your place, as I now do. 

A mother rarely observes other people's children, save to compare themunfavourably with her own. I regret to say that motherhood with theaverage woman seems to be a narrowing experience, and renders her lesscapable of taking a large, unselfish view of humanity. 

The soldier in the thick of battle is able to tell only of what hepersonally experienced and saw, just in the spot where he was engaged inaction. 

The general who sits outside the fray and watches the contest can form amuch clearer idea of where the mistakes occurred, and where the greatestskill was displayed. 

I am that general, my dear friend, standing outside the field ofmotherhood, and viewing the efforts of my battling sisters to reardesirable men and women. And I am glad you have appealed to me whileyour two children are yet babies to give you counsel, for I can tell youwhere thousands have failed. 

And I thank you and your husband for reposing so much confidence in myideas. 

I think, perhaps, we had better speak of the postscript of your letterfirst. You ask my opinion regarding the chaperon for yoursixteen-year-old sister, who is going abroad to study for a period ofyears. Mrs. Walton will take her and keep her in her home in Paris, andMiss Brown also stands ready to make her one of three young girls shedesires to chaperon and guide through a foreign course of study inFrance and Germany. 

You like the idea of having your sister in a home without theassociation of other American girls, until she perfects herself inFrench, but you are worried about Mrs. Walton's being a divorced woman. Miss Brown, the spotless spinster, seems the safer guide to yourfriends, you tell me. 

I know the majority of women would feel that a single woman of goodstanding and ungossiped reputation was a safe and desirable protectorfor a young girl. 

The same majority would hesitate to send their girls away with adivorced woman. 

But as I remarked in the beginning, I have stood outside the fray andwatched similar ventures, and I have grown to realize that it is notmere respectability and chastity in a woman which make her a safechaperon for a young girl, --it is a deep, full, broad understanding oftemperaments and temptations. 

Had I a daughter or a sister like your sweet Millie, I would not allowher to live one year under the dominion of such a woman as Miss Brownfor any consideration. Why? because Miss Brown is all brain and bigotry. She is narrow and high, not deep and broad. 

She is so orthodox that she incites heresy in the rebellious mind ofindependent youth. She is so moral she makes one long for adventure. Shewould not listen to any questioning of old traditions, or anyspeculative philosophizing of a curious young mind, and she would beintolerant with any girl who showed an inclination to flirt or beindiscreet. 

Your sister Millie is as coquettish as the rose that lifts its fair faceto the sun, and the breeze, and the bee, and expects to be admired. Sheis as innocent as the rose, too, but that fact Miss Brown would neverassociate with coquetry. 

She would class it with vulgarity and degeneracy. Miss Brown is ahandsome woman, but she has no sex instincts. She does not believe withthe scientist, "that in the process of evolution it is only with thecoming of the sex relation that life is enabled to rise to higherforms. "

She believes in brain and spirit, and is utterly devoid of that feminineimpulse to make herself attractive to men, and wholly incapable ofunderstanding the fascination that Folly holds out to youth. She hasnever experienced any temptation, and she would be shocked at any girlwho fell below her standard. 

She would carefully protect Millie from danger by high walls, but shewould never eradicate the danger impulse from her nature by sympatheticcounsel, as a more human woman could. 

Mrs. Walton is a much better guide for your sister. 

She ran away from boarding-school at seventeen, and married the recklessson of a rich man. She had a stepmother of the traditional type, andhad never known a happy home life. She was of a loving and trusting andat the same time a coquettish nature, and she attracted young Walton'seye while out for a walk with a "Miss Brown" order of duenna. Theduenna saw the little embryo flirtation, and became very much horrified, and preached the girl a long sermon, and set a close watch upon heractions. 

There was no wise, loving guidance of a young girl's life barque fromthe reefs of adventure. It was homily and force. The result was, thatthe girl escaped from school before six weeks passed, and married heradmirer. 

He was fifteen years her senior, a reckless man of the world, even olderin experience than in years. He proved a very bad husband, but his youngwife remained with him until his own father urged her to leave him. Shewas quietly divorced, and has lived abroad almost ever since, and holdsan excellent position in the French capital, as well as in otherEuropean centres, and she is most exemplary in her life. Mr. Walton isnow an inmate of a sanitarium, a victim of paresis. 

I can imagine no one so well fitted to exert the wisest influence uponMillie's life as Mrs. Walton. 

There is a woman who has run the whole gamut of girlish folly, and whoknows all the phases of temptation. She knows what it is to possessphysical attractions, and to be flattered by the admiration of men, andshe has passed through the dark waters of disillusion and sorrow. Shewould be the one to help Millie out of dangerous places by sympathy andunderstanding, instead of using sermons and keys. 

She would mould her young, wax-like character by the warmth of love, instead of freezing it by austere axioms. 

Miss Brown would make an indiscreet young girl feel hopelessly vulgarand immodest; Mrs. Walton that she understood all about her foolishpranks, and was able to lead her in the better paths. 

Miss Brown prides herself upon never having lost her head with any man. 

Mrs. Walton is like some other women I have known, who have mademistakes of judgment. She lost her head, but in the losing and thesorrow that ensued she found a heart for all humanity. 

There are women in this world whose cold-white chastity freezes the poorwayfarer who tries to find in their vicinity rest and comfort andcourage. 

Other women cast a cooling shadow, in which the sun-scorched pilgrimfinds peace--the shadow of a past error, from which spring fragrantferns and sweet grasses, where tired and bleeding feet may softly tread. 

Mrs. Walton's life casts the shadow of divorce on her pathway, but it isonly the warm, restful shadow of a ripening and mellowing sorrow. Do notfear to have Millie walk in it. 

It will be better for her than the steady glare from a glacier. 

I find I have said so much about your sister that I must reserve mycounsel about your children for another letter. 

Your postscript was brief, but pregnant with suggestion, and called forthis long reply. 

I shall write you again in a few days. 

To Mrs. Charles Gordon

_Concerning Her Children_

Your wish to have your son, who is now four years old, begin to developthe manly qualities, and your oldest daughter, who has reached themature age of three, start wisely on the path to lovely womanhood, isfar from being premature. 

"The tree inclines as the twig is bent, " we are told. 

Most mothers wait until the tree is in blossom before they begin totrain its inclination. 

Your boy is quite old enough to be taught manly pride, in being usefulto you and his sisters. 

Such things are not successfully taught by preaching or scolding orpunishing; but are more easily inculcated by tact and praise, object-lesson and play. 

A four-year-old boy is all ears when his father's praises andachievements are recounted. Any father, save a brute, is a hero in theeyes of his four-year-old son. I am sure Mr. Gordon has many admirabletraits you can use as interesting topics. 

Tell little Charlie how proud you are to have a son who will be like hisfather, and attend to the needs of and look after the interests of hismother and sisters. 

Make him think that to be of service to you or his sisters is one of thefirst steps toward manhood, as indeed it is. 

When he performs any small kindness, praise his manliness. 

Teach him to open doors, and to make way for women and elders, as a partof manly courtesy. 

Speak with gentle disapproval of the unfortunately common type ofAmerican boy who pushes women and older people aside to scramble intopublic conveyances and secure a seat before them. 

Say how proud you are that your son could not be guilty of such unmanlyconduct. 

When you are walking with him, call his attention to any woman or childor poor man in trouble, and if his services can be of use, urge him tooffer them. 

I saw one day a small boy spring to the aid of an old coloured woman whohad dropped a lot of parcels in the street, and I thought it was acertain evidence that his mother was a rare and sweet woman. For themanners of little boys are almost invariably what their mothers makethem. 

Awake early in his heart a sympathy for the deformed, the crippled, andotherwise unfortunate beings. 

There is no other country where such vulgar and heartless curiosity, andeven ridicule, is bestowed upon grotesque or unsightly types ofhumanity, as in America. 

A little dwarfed girl in New York City committed suicide a few yearsago because she was so weary of being laughed at and ridiculed by herassociates in the street and at school. 

Think of that, in this Christian age, and in the metropolis of America!

An old street peddler was set upon by school-children and so annoyed andmisused that he became insane. 

Another was injured by street children--the children of the publicschools--and died from the effects of their abuse. 

This is the fault of mothers who have never deemed it their duty andprivilege to awaken the tender and protective qualities in the characterof their children. 

Speak often to your boy of the pathos of dumb animals dependent uponhuman thoughtfulness for food, drink, and decent usage. 

Say what a privilege it seems to you to be able to befriend them, and tobe a voice for them in making others realize their duty to our dumbbrothers. 

Obtain interesting books on natural history and read stories of animallife to your boy. Instruct him in the habits of beast, bird, and insect, and talk to him of the wonderful domestic instincts and affections inmany of our speechless associates. The exhilaration of the wild bird, and the happiness of the deer and the hare in the woods and fields, callto his mind day by day. It will be more gratifying to you when he is mangrown to feel he is the loving friend and protector, rather than theskilled hunter of bird and beast. 

The higher order of man does not seek slaughter for amusement. Herealizes that he has no right to take, save for self-protection, thatwhich he cannot give. 

Make your son a higher order of man by developing those brain cells andleaving the destructive and cruel portions of the brain to shrink fromlack of use. 

Even in his play with his inanimate toys, you can be arousing the bestor the worst part of your boy's nature. 

The child who whips and screams at his hobby-horse usually, when a man, whips and bellows at his flesh and blood steed. 

Tell him the play-horse is more easily managed by coaxing and petting, and that loud voices make it nervous and frightened. 

Suggest water and feed at suitable times, and express sorrow for thehorses with no kind boys to look out for them. 

Start a humane society in the nursery and make your boy president andyour little girl honorary member, and act as treasurer and secretaryyourself. 

Give him a medal when he offers food to a hungry street animal or speaksto a driver cruel to his horse, or performs any other kind act. Thiswill be interesting play to your children, and it will be sowing seed infallow ground. 

Your baby girl is already old enough to take pride in picking up thetoys she scatters, and putting her chair where it belongs. Make it apart of your hour of sport with her to help her do these things. Shewill not know she is being taught order. 

I learned this lesson from a famous author whose baby son was anxiousto play about the library where his father was at work. 

The first act of the toddler was to toss all the books in sight upon thefloor and to sit down and turn the leaves, hunting for pictures. Thisperformance interested him for half an hour, when he proceeded to seeknew fields of action. 

"But now let us have great fun putting all the books back just where wefound them, " cried the tactful father, with a wink and a laugh, whichmade the child believe he was to enjoy the sport of his life. And it_was_ made sport by the foolish pranks of the father who knew how littleit took to interest a child. 

The next day, and the next, the same fall and rise in the book markettook place, but on the fourth day the father was too deeply engrossed inwork to assist in the replacing of the books: when, lo! the small lad, after a wistful waiting and unanswered call, proceeded to put the booksall back alone. 

_The first important brick in the foundation wall of order was laid_. 

So you can teach your little girl all the womanly habits of method, andorder, and neatness, and system, if you have the patience to act thepart of playmate with her a few moments daily. 

As she grows in understanding and years, keep yourself at her side, hernearest friend. Let her feel that she can express her every thought toyou, and that every question which presents itself to her developingmind, you will seek to answer to the best of your ability. 

Be her confidant, her adviser, her friend, and let her find pride andhappiness in doing things for you. 

Never act as maid or domestic to your daughter. 

Be the queen and make her your first lady-in-waiting, and show her thecourtesy and appreciation her position demands from royalty. She will bea better daughter, and a better wife and mother, later in life, if youdo not make the mistake of the average American mother of waiting uponher from the cradle to the altar. Let her grow up with the quietunderstanding that you are to be first considered, in matters social andfinancial. Your wardrobe must be as well looked after as her own, and ifthere is to be economy for one, let her practise it. 

The daughter who has a whole household sacrificing and toiling for herpleasures is spoiled for a wife and woman. The most admirable youngwomen I have known--and I have known many--are those who were taught totake it as a matter of course that the mother was first to beconsidered, and lovingly served. 

Do not be afraid of making your daughter vain by telling her theattractive features she may possess. 

Some one else will if you do not, and it is well for her to hear it fromlips which may more successfully offer counsel afterward. A certainconfidence in her own charms gives a sensibly reared young woman a poiseand self-possession which is to be desired. A touch of feminine vanityrenders a woman more anxious to please, and more alert to keep always ather best. 

But beware of having her acquire egotism. Silly conceit is thedeath-blow to higher attainments and to all charm. 

Teach your daughter early the accomplishment of listening well. She willbe certain to please if she understands its value. 

A woman who looks the converser in the eyes, and does not allow herglance to wander and become distrait, and who does not interrupt beforethe recital is finished, can be sure of popularity with both men andwomen. 

Give both your son and daughter confidence in themselves and belief intheir power to achieve. There is tremendous power in the earlyinoculation by the home influence of self-confidence, when it istempered by modesty and consideration for others. 

Remember whatever in your own bringing up seems to-day unfortunate, andavoid it in the training of your children. 

Remember whatever was good and helpful, and emulate it. 

To Miss Zoe Clayborn Artist

_Concerning the Attentions of Married Men_

I am sure, my dear niece, that you are a good and pure-minded girl, andthat you mean to live a life above reproach, and I fully understand yourrebellion against many of the conventional forms which are incompatiblewith the career of a "girl bachelor, " as you like to call yourself. Butlet us look at the subject from all sides, while you are on thethreshold of life, in the morning of your career, and before you havemade any more serious mistakes than the one you mention. 

For it was a mistake when you accepted Mr. Gordon's telephone message tolunch alone with him at a restaurant, even though you knew his wifemight not object. 

Mr. And Mrs. Gordon are happily married, parents of several children. They are broader and more liberal and more unselfish than most parents, and they went out of their path to extend courtesies to you, a youngcountry girl--at first because you were my niece, then because theyliked you personally. 

When I first wrote Mrs. Gordon that you were to open a studio in Chicagoafter your course of study in the East, she expressed deep interest inyou, and seemed anxious to have you consider her as a friend--alwaysready to act as a chaperon or adviser when you felt the need of wiserguidance than your own impulses. 

Mrs. Gordon knew that your experience of the world was limited to acountry village in the West, and two years' study at the PrattInstitute. While there she knew you boarded with a cousin of yourmother's, and enjoyed the association and privileges of the daughters ofthe home. 

To start alone in Chicago, and live in your studio, and dine from achafing-dish, and sleep in an unfolded combination bureau andrefrigerator--has more fascinations to your mind than to Mrs. Gordon's. She was reared in comfort, bordering on luxury, and while her early homelife was not happy, she enjoyed all the refinements and all theprivileges of protected girlhood. 

She knows city life as you cannot know it, and, although she discardsmany of the burden-some conventions of society, she realizes thenecessity of observing some of its laws. 

She wanted you to feel that you had the background of a wholesome home, and the protection of clean, well-behaved married friends in yourexposed situation; her attitude to you is just what she would wantanother woman to hold toward her daughter, were she grown up and alonein a large city. 

You have been her guest, and she has been your good friend. Mr. Gordonadmired you from the first, and that was a new incentive for this mosttactful and liberal of wives to befriend you. She always cultivates thewomen he likes. 

This is excellent policy on the part of a wife. If the husband has anyreally noble qualities or possesses a sterling character, he willappreciate and respect his wife's confidence, and never violate it; andadded to this, he will usually become disillusioned with the women hehas admired from a distance, when he sees them frequently at too closerange. 

A wife can make no greater mistake than trying to fence her husbandabout and obtruding high walls between him and the women he admires. Farbetter bring them near and turn on the calcium light. 

Mr. Gordon is a born lover of the fair sex, a born gallant. He is, atthe same time, a clean, self-respecting man. But he has grown a trifleselfish and a bit vain of late years. 

He does not fully realize what the interesting family of children heshows with such pride to his friends has meant to their mother. 

It has not occurred to him that to be the mother of three children, theyoungest one year old, after six years of married life, has required agreater outlay of all the mental, moral, and physical forces than hasbeen demanded of their father. 

He is a good husband, --yet he is not the absolutely unselfish andliberal and thoughtful husband that Mrs. Gordon is wife. 

If she seemed to you at all nervous, or less adaptable to your moodsthan he, you should stop and consider the many causes which might haveled to this condition. 

You are young, handsome, gifted, and unconventional, and all thesethings appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, andmore than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend yourknowledge of human nature. 

You say your ambition is to know the world thoroughly, --that it will aidyour art. 

I think that is true, if you do not pass the border-line and lose yourideals and sacrifice your principles. Once you do that, your art willlose what it can never regain. 

And remember this, my dear girl, no human being ever lived or ever willlive who gained anything worth having _by sacrificing the golden rule. _In your search for knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with humannature, _keep that motto ever before your soul's sight, _ "Do untoothers as you would have them do unto you. "

You say Mr. Gordon said or did nothing in that tête-à-tête luncheon hiswife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirelyabout you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoidedany reference to his wife and children, surprised you. 

And now you are wondering if you did wrong to accept this invitation. Never accept invitations of any kind from married men, unless the wifeor some member of the family is included. 

No matter how willing the wife may be to have you enjoy her husband'scompany, avoid tête-à-tête situations with benedicts. 

You say you are not egotistical enough to imagine Mr. Gordon had anyhidden motive for wanting to be alone with you, or for seeminglyforgetting in his conversation that he was a husband and father. Yet Ican see that in a measure it disillusioned you. 

You do not ask a man to fling his wife and children at the head of eachwoman he meets, but you like him to recognize their existence. 

You are a young, romantic girl seeking the ideal. 

You want to find happy wives and husbands, --men and women who havesailed away from the Strands of Imagination to the more beautiful landof the Real, from whose shores they beckon you, saying: "Here ishappiness and great joy. Come and join us, and feel no fear in flingingthe illusions of youth behind you. "

If married men only knew that is what young women are seeking, --ifmarried women only knew that is what young men are seeking, whatreconstruction would take place in the deportment of husbands and wives!

Never yet did a married woman indulge in flirtatious or sentimentalconverse with a bachelor without lowering herself and all women in hisheart of hearts. 

Never yet did a married man seem to forget his domestic ties in thepresence of single women without losing a portion of their respect, however they may have been flattered by his attentions. 

In every man's heart, in every woman's, is this longing to find husbandsand wives who are satisfied and happy and proud, above all other things, of their loyalty. 

It would be well for you to keep this fact before the minds of the menyou meet. You can, in a small way, do your little toward educating onthis subject the married men you encounter. And you can save yourselfsome embarrassing experiences. 

It is no compliment to you if the husband of your friend, or a stranger, falls in love with you. 

It is an easy matter for a young, attractive woman to infatuateirresponsible men. 

It is a far greater compliment to you when women respect and trust you, and when you help elevate the ideals of weak men regarding your sex. 

You can study the whole Encyclopedia of Manhood without breaking throughthe glass doors of your friend's bookcases. And you can live a free, unconventional life without sacrificing one principle, though you mayignore some customs. It is not the custom in conventional society foryoung women to go to theatres or dinners alone with young men. Yet I amperfectly willing you should join the large army of self-supporting, self-respecting, and well educated girls who do these things. You havebeen reared with that American idea of independence, and with thatconfidence in your ability to protect your virtue and good name, whichcarries the vast majority of our young women safely through all thevicissitudes of youth, and sends them chaste wives to the altar. OurAmerican men understand this attitude of our girls, and half of themrespect it, without being forced to, as the other half can be, if womanso wills. 

There is no reason, to my thinking, why you should not enjoy thecompanionship of interesting bachelors and widowers, and take thecourtesies they offer, with no chaperon but your own pride, taste, andwill. So long as you know, and these men know, that you are doingnothing and going nowhere you need remember with shame or regret, thenext day, just so long you are on no dangerous path. 

But you must draw the line at married men, happy or unhappy. Anyconfidential, tête-à-tête companionship of a single woman with a marriedman cheapens her in the eyes of all other men and women. 

It is a simpler matter to drift into free and easy manners and call them"bohemian" than to cleanse your reputation of their stain, or lift yourmind from the mire to which they inevitably lead. 

Once a woman begins to excuse her lawless conduct on the ground of her"artistic temperament, " there are no depths to which she may not sink. 

Take pride in being at once independent yet discreet; artistic, yetsensible; a student of men, yet an example of high-minded womanhood; anopen foe to needless conventions, yet a staunch friend of principles;daring in methods, yet irreproachable in conduct; and however adored bymen, worthy of trust by all women. 

Do not take the admiration of men too seriously. Waste no vitality in arage over their weaknesses and vices. Regard them with patience andinspire them to strive for a better goal than self-indulgence. 

You can safely take it for granted that many who approach you withcompliments for your charms, and pleas for your favours, would make thesame advances to any other attractive girl they chanced to encounter. 

Too many young women mistake a habit for a grand passion. And theyforget, while they are studying man, that he is studying woman, andtesting her susceptibility to flattery and her readiness to believe inhis simulated infatuation. 

Do not fall into the error of so many young country girls in a largecity, and imagine you can establish new laws, create a new order ofthings, and teach men new lessons. 

A great city is like an ever-burning fire, --the newcomers who thrust intheir fingers will be scorched and scarred, but the fire will not bechanged or extinguished. 

_Keep out of the fire_. 

There is no reason why you should scar yourself or smoke your garmentswhile keeping comfortably warm. 

To Mr. Charles Gordon

_Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After Seven Years of Married Life_

I have read your letter with care. I can readily understand that youwould not appeal to your wife's mother in this matter upon which youwrite me, as she has been the typical mother-in-law, --the woman whonever gets along well with her children, and who never wants others tosucceed where she fails. I recollect your telling me how she marred thewedding ceremony, by weeping and fainting, after having nagged her poordaughter during twenty years of life, and interfered with herfriendships, through that peculiar jealousy which she misnamed "devotedlove. "

And now you are afraid that your wife is developing the samepropensity, and you ask me to use my influence to cure her of it in itsincipiency. You think I stand closer to Edna than any other friend. 

"It is only during the last two or three years that Edna has shown thistendency, " you say. "Until then she seemed to me the most sensible andliberal-minded of women, always admiring the people I liked, and evengoing out of her way to be courteous and cordial to a woman I praised. Of late she has seemed so different, and has often been sarcastic, orsulky, or hysterical, when I showed the common gallantries of a man fondof the society of ladies. "

You think it is her inherited tendency cropping out, and that she isunconscious of it herself. 

Well now permit me, my dear Mr. Gordon, to be very frank with you. 

I met your wife only once before she married you. 

She was a merry-hearted, healthy girl, with superb colour, and thefigure of a young Venus. She was a belle, and much admired by manyworth-while men. 

During her honeymoon, she wrote me a most charming letter speaking ofher happiness, and of her desire to make you an ideal wife. 

You and Edna were my guests for a few days when your first child was ayear old. She seemed more beautiful than ever, with an added spiritualcharm, and you were the soul of devotion. 

You are the type of man who pays a compliment as naturally as hebreathes, and whose vision is a sensitive plate which retains animpression of every feminine grace. This impression is developed in thememory-room afterward, and framed in your conversation. 

The ordinary mind calls such a man a flirt, or, in common parlance, "ajollier;" but I know you to be merely appreciative of womankind ingeneral, while your heart is beautifully loyal to its ideal. You are aclean, wholesome man, who could not descend to intrigue. You arefine-looking, and you possess a gift in conversing. 

Of course women are attracted to you. Edna was proud of this fact, andseemed to genuinely enjoy your popularity. 

That was five years ago. 

One year ago I visited your home. Edna was the mother of three children, born during the first five years of marriage. 

She had sacrificed her bloom to her babies, and was pallid and anaemic. Her form had lost its exquisites curves, and she seemed years older thanher age--older indeed than you, although she is four years your junior. It is a mere incident to be a father of three children. It is a lifetimeexperience to be their mother. She had developed nerves, and tears cameas readily as laughter came of old. 

She was devoted to her children, and felt a deep earnestness regardingher responsibility as a mother. But she was still the intensely lovingwife, while you had sunk your rôle of lover-husband in that of adoringfather. 

You did not seem to think of Edna's delicate state of health, or noticeher fading beauty. You regarded her as a faithful nurse for yourchildren, and whenever you spoke of her it was as the mother, not as thesweetheart and wife. 

When I mentioned the drain upon a woman's vitality to bring three robustchildren into life in five years, you said it was only a "naturalfunction, " and referred to the old-time families of ten and twelvechildren. Your grandmother had fourteen, you said, and was the pictureof health at seventy-five. 

My own grandmother gave ten children to the world. But we must recollecthow different was the environment in those days. 

Our grandmothers lived in the country, and knew none of the strain andexcitement of these modern times. The high pressure of social andfinancial conditions, as we know them, the effort to live up to themodern standards, the congested city life and the expensive countrylife, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our womenthan our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of thecare and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesomecountry fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly thatthey can only whirl around and around and attend "to business, " and allthe care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nursesand governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry to the wife. 

You assured me Edna had all the assistants in caring for her childrenshe wanted, but you did not realize that every paid employé in ahousehold is, as a rule, just so much more care to the mistress, notless than a tax on the husband's purse and, consequently, on his time. 

What Edna craves is _your_ love, _your_ attention, _your_ sympathy, notthe service of paid domestics. She wants you to notice her fading bloom, and to take her in your arms and say, tenderly, "Little girl, we mustget those old roses back. And we must go away for a new honeymoon, allalone, and forget every care, even if we forget the babies for a fewdays. "

One little speech like that, one little outing like that, would do moretoward driving away the demon of jealousy than all I could by a thousandsermons and homilies. 

I remember at your own board you made me uncomfortable talking about mycomplexion, which you chose to say was "remarkable for a woman of myage. " And then you proceeded to describe some wonderful beauty you hadseen at the Country Club the day previous, and all the time I saw thetears hidden back under the lids of Edna's tired eyes, and a hurt lookon her pale face. Do you imagine she was _jealous_ of your compliment tome? or of your praise of the girl's beauty at the Country Club?

No, no, my dear Mr. Gordon, I know Edna too well to accuse her of suchpetty feelings. She was only hurt at your lack of taste in accenting herown lost bloom by needlessly emphasizing another's possession of whathad once been hers. 

Yet she called upon the young lady that very day and invited her toluncheon, and even then you indulged in pronounced admiration of theguest's cheeks, gallantly requesting your wife to have the bouquet ofcarnation pinks removed from the table, as they were so shamed by thecomplexions of the ladies. 

Of course it was gracefully worded in the plural, but your pallid wifecould not claim her share of it, and you should have realized the fact. And the reason she could not was that she had sacrificed her health inyour service, in giving your children to you, and in losing her lover. 

She adores her splendid babies, but she is still a woman and awife, --though you seem to ignore that she is anything but a mother. 

Right about face, Mr. Gordon, and become the lover you were, andjealousy will be driven from your threshold. 

It is your own lack of thoughtfulness, your own tactless and tastelessmethods with your wife, which have caused the change in her manner. Sheis not jealous, she is only lonely, heart-hungry, disillusioned. 

You are less noble, less considerate, less tender, less sympatheticthan she believed. For the man to whom these adjectives can be appliedwill guard, love, and cherish the wife of his youth, and the mother ofhis children, before all other considerations; and he will understandhow sensitive a fading wife may be, and not confound that sensitivenesswith ignoble jealousy. 

It is you, Charles Gordon, who must cure your wife of nerves, hysteria, and incipient jealousy, not I. 

To Mrs. Clarence St. Claire

_Concerning Her Husband_

I am sorry that your matrimonial barque meets so many rough winds whilehardly out of Honeymoon Bay. 

Clarence and you seemed so deeply in love when I last saw you, sixmonths after your wedding, that I had hoped all might go well with you. 

I knew the disposition of Clarence to be tainted with jealousy, buthoped you would be able to eradicate it from his nature. 

You know his poor mother suffered agonies from the infidelities of hisfather before Clarence was born. She had married a handsome foreignerwith whom she was desperately enamoured, while he cared only for thefortune she brought him. 

While still in the full light of the honeymoon he began to indulge inflirtations and amours, and poor Clarence, during the important prenatalperiod of life, received the mark of suspicion and the tendency tohypersensitiveness which then dominated the mother. 

By the time Elise was born she had passed through the whole process, andwas passive and indifferent. 

I cannot help a sensation of amusement, even in face of the conditionyou describe (which is little short of tragic), as I recall the letterClarence wrote begging me to try and prevent, by fair means or foul, hissister's marriage to old Mr. Volney. 

That was two years before you and Clarence were married. 

Elise, we all know, wedded for the money and position Mr. Volney gave, in return for her young beauty. 

Clarence and you were ideal lovers, seeing nothing in the world outsideof your own selves. 

Yet Elise is quite contented, and Mr. Volney uses what little brain hehas left to exult over his possession of such a beautiful young wife. 

Elise upholds his dignity and flatters him into a belief that he is agreat philanthropist and a social power, and in this way she has thehandling of his millions, which is her idea of happiness. She travels, entertains, and poses for photographs and paintings in imported gowns, and there is no rumour of discontent or divorce. 

Meanwhile, Clarence, who was so opposed to her marriage because it wasloveless, is making a mess of his own love-match, through his jealousy. 

You, who knew him to be insanely jealous as a lover, and who seemed tobe flattered with what you thought a proof of his devotion, appeal to menow to know what to do with the husband who is destroying your love andyour happiness! Surely, if Elise knew of this she might well say, "Helaughs best who laughs last. "

I know that you were absorbed in Clarence for the first year of yourmarried life, and that you gave no least cause for any jealousy, and Iknow, as you say, that even then he was often morbid and unhappy overnothing at all. 

He was jealous even of girl friends and relatives, and if you attended amatinée with one of them, he sulked the whole evening. 

This was little more than he did as a lover, and you should have begunin those days to reason him out of such moods. 

You imagined then it was his mad love for you which caused hisunreasonable jealousy. 

But jealousy is self-love, and selfishness lies at the root of suchconditions of mind as his. 

A woman should say to a man who sulks or goes into tantrums when shepays courteous attentions to relatives or acquaintances, "You arelowering my ideal of you--I cannot love a man who will indulge suchunworthy moods. You insult my womanhood and doubt my principles by yoursuspicions; you intimate that I have neither truth, or judgment, orpride. You must conquer yourself, and learn to trust me and to believein me, or I must decide I am no woman for you to take as a lifecompanion. " A man should take the same course toward a jealoussweetheart or wife. 

A few quiet but firm assertions of this nature, when you were beingwooed, would have given Clarence an idea that he could lose you, andthat he was making himself ridiculous in your eyes. Instead, you boastedto your friends how wildly infatuated he was, and Clarence took newpride in his own blemish of character. 

Now that you have to live day, and night, and week, and month, and year, with this trait, it seems a less romantic phase of devotion, I fancy. But you are not wise to grow reckless and ignore the wishes of yourhusband in all ways, because he is unreasonable. "Since he is soabsolutely impossible to please, " you say, "I may as well please myself. I have decided to take some of the liberties so many of my acquaintancesdo, and enjoy life outside my home if I cannot enjoy it within. "

Then you proceed to tell me how more than half your associates drive, lunch, and dine with men acquaintances, and how old-fashioned theyconsider your scruples. And you tell me that, despite your rectitude, Clarence insults you almost daily by his unreasoning jealousy of men, women, and even children. 

"I have about made up my mind to be less prudish and enjoy myself, as Iam sure Clarence cannot be any more jealous than he is, " you say. 

Now since you have asked my advice in the matter, I can only urge you toreconsider this last determination. 

So long as you are, according to law and in the eyes of the world, thewife of a man, you cannot escape comment if you are frequently seen inpublic places alone with another. 

Were you to look into the hearts of other men who ask you to dine, drive, or lunch alone with them, you would find a feeling of increasedrespect when you decline, although they may show only disappointment onthe surface. I know that many wives of unblemished reputation acceptcourtesies of this kind from masculine friends, and I of courseunderstand that circumstances may arise which make an occasionalacceptance proper. 

But the fewer such occasions, the better and the safer for the marriedwoman. The man who is perfectly willing his wife should appearfrequently in public with other men does not fully appreciate thedignity of her position or his own, or else he has lost his love forher. 

The fact that your husband is jealous without reason is no excuse forgiving him reason. The moment men know that a husband is inclined tojealousy, he falls in their estimation, and they are seized with adesire to aggravate him, while they sympathize with the wife. 

The sympathetic friend of the abused wife is a dangerous companion forher. He may mean to be platonic and kind, but almost invariably hebecomes sentimental and unsafe. 

Once in a thousand times the absolutely happy wife of a husband sherespects as well as loves can enjoy a platonic friendship with a man whorespects her, and himself, and her husband. But even that situation isliable to prove insecure, if they are much together, owing to theselfishness and weakness of human nature when the barriers of conventionare removed. 

But the unhappy wife must take no chances with Fate. 

She must either decide to accept her lot and bear it with philosophy, orescape from it and begin life over, after the courts have given her theright to reconstruct her destiny. 

You know all that entails. It is not a pleasant process. 

If your love for your husband is entirely dead, and you feel that he hasforfeited all right to your sympathy, pity, or patience, then break thefetters and go free. But if you feel that you are not ready for thatordeal, and that you must still remain living under the same roof withhim, and continue to bear his name, then do not join the great army ofwives who are to be seen in public restaurants and hotels diningtête-à-tête with "platonic friends" over emptied glasses. 

You can but make trouble for yourself and add to the misery of yourhusband by such a course. In your particular case, I feel that yourknowledge of the jealous disposition of the man you married renders ityour duty to bear and forbear, and to try every method of reformationbefore you resort to the very common highway of divorce as an exit fromyour unhappiness. 

A woman has no right to complain of the fault in a husband which shecondoned in a lover. And a man has no right to complain of the fault ina wife he condoned in a sweetheart. Yet both may strive to correct thatfault. 

Insist upon having women and men friends who can be received at yourhome in presence of your husband. Make Clarence realize how he belittleshimself in your estimation by unreasoning jealousy. Give him tounderstand that you want to love him and respect him, and that you haveno intention of lowering your standard of behaviour, because he isconstantly expecting you to. Tell him it mortifies you to find greaterpleasure away from him than in his presence, yet when he insults youwith his suspicions, and destroys your comfort with his moods, you canno longer think of him as your girlhood's ideal. 

Ask him to try, for your sake, to use more common sense and self-controlin this matter, and to help you to restore the happiness which seemsflying from your wedded lives. 

Do nothing to aggravate or irritate him, but do not give up your friendsof either sex; this is but to increase his inclination to petty tyranny, while it will in no sense lessen his jealousy. 

And when you are alone, endeavour to think of him always as sensible, reasonable, and kind. 

By your mental picture you can help to cure him of the blight hereceived before his birth. It is the task set many a wife, to counteractthe errors and neglect of mothers. 

Look to the Divine source for help in your work, and remember the lovelyqualities Clarence possesses when he is not under the ban of thisprenatal mark. 

Love him out into the light if you can--and I believe you can if you arenot too soon discouraged. 

It is a nobler effort to try and create in your husband the ideal youhave in your mind, than to go seeking him elsewhere. 

Be patient and wait awhile. Such love as you and Clarence felt in yourcourtship and early marriage cannot so soon have died. It is onlysleeping, and suffering from a nightmare. Awaken it to life and realityand happiness. 

To Young Mrs. Duncan

_Regarding Mothers-in-Law_

And so the serpent has appeared in your Eden, attired in widow's weeds, and talking the usual jargon of "devoted mother love. " I do not like tosay I told you so, but you must remember our rather spirited discussionof this very serpent, when you announced your engagement and said Mr. Duncan's mother was to make her home with you after your return fromabroad. 

I had met Mrs. Duncan, and I knew her type all too well. Alfred is heronly child, and she adores him, naturally, but it is adoration somingled with selfishness and tyranny that it is incapable of consideringthe welfare of its object. 

Mrs. Duncan was always jealous of any happiness which came to her sonthrough another source than herself. That type of mother love is to beencountered every day, and that type of mother believes herself to bethe most devoted creature on earth; while the fact is, she sits for everin the boudoir of her mentality, gazing at her own reflection. She lovesher children because they also reflect herself, and is incapable ofunselfish pleasure in their happiness apart from her. 

You will remember I urged you to wait until you could have a home, however humble, alone with your husband, and even at the cost of thatmost undesirable condition, a long engagement. 

But you assured me with much spirit that you had every confidence inyour power to win Mrs. Duncan's heart, and to crown her declining yearswith peace and happiness. 

As well talk of decking a porcupine with wreaths of flowers, and makingit a household pet, to coddle and caress. 

When I congratulated Mrs. Duncan on her son's engagement to such asweet, bright girl as my cousin, she assumed a martyr expression andsaid, "She hoped he would be happy, even if her own heart must sufferthe pain of losing an only son. "

"But, " I urged, "he really adds to your life by bringing you thecompanionship of a lovely daughter. My cousin will, I am sure, provesuch to you. "

"I have no doubt your cousin is a most estimable girl, " Madame Duncananswered, with dignity, "but I have never yet felt the need of any closecompanion save my son. You, having no children, are excusable for notunderstanding my feelings, now when another claims his thoughts. "

"Yet the world is maintained by such occurrences, " I replied. "You tooksome mother's son, or you would not have had your own. "

With austere self-righteousness Mrs. Duncan corrected me. 

"I married an orphan, " she said. 

"How thoughtful of you, " I responded. "But you see it is not lack ofthought, only an accident of fate, which has prevented my cousin frommarrying an orphan. There are not enough desirable orphans to keep ouryoung women supplied with husbands, you know. "

I think Mrs. Duncan suspected me of covert sarcasm, for she changed thetopic of conversation. But I heard her afterward talking to a bevy ofwomen on the sorrow of giving up a child after having reared him tomanhood's estate, and her listeners all seemed duly sympathetic. 

Of course, my dear Ruth, there is an element of sadness in the happiestof marriages for the parents of children. I think it is particularly sadwhen a mother gives up a daughter, whose every thought she has shared, and whose every pleasure she has planned, and sees her embark upon theuncertain ocean of marriage, with a strange pilot at the helm. 

The really good and loving mother endears herself to that pilot, andloves him and seeks his affection for her daughter's sake. She hidesher own sorrow in her heart, and does not shadow her daughter's voyageby her repining. 

The man who is worthy of a good girl's love will understand what it mustmean to a mother to give her daughter to him, and he will in every wayseek to recompense her for her loss, by bestowing upon her sympathy, courteous attentions, and a son's devotion. 

Just so will the girl, who is worthy of being a good man's wife, seek tomake his mother love her. 

I know how you have tried to win Mrs. Duncan's heart. I know youramiable, sweet disposition, and your unselfishness and tact, and I knowhow you failed. 

I can imagine your feelings when you overheard Mrs. Duncan say to acaller that she was going to leave your house and take rooms elsewhere, as she could not endure your "billing and cooing. "

Do you know, Ruth, that nearly all the trouble between mothers-anddaughters-in-law is due to vanity and jealousy. 

Fifty mothers are friends to their daughters' husbands where one is afriend to her son's wife. That is because, wholly unconsciously toherself, the mother resents another woman sharing the attention of a manshe loves. The fact that he is her son, and that the love he gives hiswife is a wholly different sentiment, does not prevent blind, unreasoning jealousy from dominating her nature. 

Mrs. Duncan wants to stand always in the centre of the stage, with everyother woman in the play in the background. 

It is a most pathetic situation for a man, --this position between a wifeand a jealous mother. My heart always aches for the man in the case evenmore than for the woman who is misused. 

All young men are reared to think mother-love the most unselfish andwonderful devotion on earth, even in the face of facts which so oftenprove it otherwise; and when a son sees his mother unhappy he isinclined to make every possible excuse for her, because he feels that totake issue against her will put him in a false light before the wholeestablished order of society, and that he will beat his head againsttraditions wherever he turns. 

So, he ofttimes tries to conciliate the wife he has promised to cherish, and to convince her that she may exaggerate matters, and that she mayeven be the aggressor, and then he finds himself standing between tworaging fires, with no escape save through flames, and over hot fagots, which will leave him scarred for life. 

Sometimes the wife _is_ in the wrong. Sometimes a man marries a womanwho is so narrow and so selfish and so jealous that she begrudges thehusband's mother her son's affection. But I must affirm that, in myobservation of humanity, I have seen but one such wife, where I haveseen ten jealous and unreasonable mothers. 

And with what pleasure and admiration I recall the few beautiful andnoble mothers-in-law I have known! I can count them on the fingers ofone hand without including the thumb. I mean mothers of sons. 

There are just four whom I can recall. They really loved their sons, andloved whatever and whoever gave those sons happiness. 

One mother objected to her son's choice before marriage, and triedvainly to convince him that he had made a mistake. But after hismarriage she took the girl into her heart, made her a companion andfriend, and when the son began to discover her glaring faults, she toldhim to be patient and wait, and that all would be well. Instead ofsaying, "I told you so, " she said, "Your wife is young, and has had nowise hand to guide her. You married her for love, and if you exercisethe love-spirit, and are patient and self-controlled in your treatmentof her, she will overcome these faults which annoy you. "

And day by day she called his attention to the pleasing qualities thegirl possessed, and by praise, tact, love, and sympathy bridged overthe threatened chasm. 

The couple live happily together to-day, thanks to the mother-in-law. Oh, that there were more such mothers of sons!

Be as patient and sweet as you can, dear Ruth, toward Mrs. Duncan; thinkhow difficult the situation is for your husband, and say or do nothingto make it harder for him. But allow Mrs. Duncan to live by herself, and, if need be, bear many privations cheerfully that she may do so, andthat you may have your own home in peace. Every wife is entitled tothat, and if she has made every possible effort which love and tact canmake to cast the seven devils of jealousy out of her mother-in-law, andthey still remain, it is for the general welfare that two separatehouseholds exist. 

When a son has done all he can in reason to make his mother happy, saveto turn against the wife he has promised to cherish, he is a cad and aweakling if he does the latter. He must learn that it is a larger dutyto be a just man than to be an obedient son. 

I am sure Mr. Duncan will have the character and judgment to do what isright in this matter. 

To a Young Man

_Ambitious for Literary Honours_

Your achievements in college, where you distinguished yourself inrhetoric and literature, would justify you in thinking seriously of acareer as an author. 

And the fact that your father wishes you to take charge of his brokeragebusiness, and to relinquish your literary aspirations, should not deteryou from carrying out your ambitions. 

Prom your mother you inherit a mind and temperament which wholly unfityou for the pursuits your father follows and enjoys. You are no moresuited to make a successful broker than he is fitted to write an Iliad. 

Try and make him understand this, and try and convince him that toyield to his wishes in this matter, means the sacrifice of your tastes, the waste of your talents, and the destruction of your happiness. 

If he cannot be convinced by your consistent and respectful arguments, then you must quietly, but firmly, refuse to accept a career distastefulto you. 

No parent has a right to drive a child into so undesirable a path forlife as this would prove to one of your nature. 

Your father would think the horticulturist insane, who took a delicatefern and planted it in arid soil, on a hilltop, far from shade, andexpected it to thrive and bear blossoms like the cactus. 

Yet this would be no more unreasonable, than to expect a son of yourtemperament and inclinations to be happy and successful in Wall Street. 

It is a curious study to watch parents, and to observe their utter lackof knowledge regarding a child's nature and capabilities; and to findthem not only ignorant in those important matters, but unwilling to beenlightened. 

You say it makes your father angry to have any one refer to yourliterary talents. 

I remember when your father bred race-horses, and how proud he was thata two-year-old colt showed traits and points noticeably like itshigh-priced dam. 

He chose for your mother, a woman of rare mind, and of poetic taste, andwhy should he not be proud and glad that his son resembles her? Whenwill fathers learn that sons are more frequently like their mothers, anddaughters like their fathers, than otherwise?

The temporary dissatisfaction of your father is not so sad tocontemplate as your own lifelong disappointment if you accede to hiswishes in this matter. 

Each individual has a right to choose his own career in life, so long asthat career is respectable and bodes no evil to humanity. 

If, as your father threatens, he refuses to give you support while youare exploring the field of literature, you should feel grateful to himfor this unintentional incentive to success. 

I do not agree with those who consider the necessity to earn money amisfortune to genius. 

I believe the greatest works of art given to the world have been broughtto light through necessity. 

The artistic temperament is almost invariably combined with a propensityto dream, and to float upon the clouds of imagination. 

The ranks of wealth and comfort are full of talented and accomplishedpeople who "never are, but always to be" great. 

One great man in a score may have been reared in affluence, but I doubtif the statistics would show so large a percentage. 

There are many hills which contain valuable ore, but if the owner sitsin ease upon these elevations, and gazes at the sunsets, he does notfind the ore. If he is a poor man, and takes his pick and _digs_, hefinds his fortune. 

At first he may cast out only loose earth and stones, but by this verynecessity to find valuables, he continues to search until the ore isreached. 

Were you to remain at home and enjoy all the benefits of your father'swealth, I doubt if you would have the persistence to dig down into themine you possess within you. 

You would sit on the hilltop and dream. 

If you are forced to write to live, you may cast up some rubbish fromthe surface; yet by the continual digging you will reveal all that liesbelow. 

Regarding the style you speak of adopting, let your feeling come_first_, your style of expressing that feeling _second_. Say nothingmerely to exhibit your style--and hold back some strong feelings untilyou can give them the best expression. 

As to the methods of getting your work before the public and the"influence" you need, I can only assure you that unless you write withpurpose, and power, and passionate enjoyment of your art, forgetful ofall things save your desire to express yourself, no influence on earthcan do more than give you a page in a magazine, or a column in anewspaper for an occasion or two. And if you do write under thoseconditions, you will need no influence: for it is just such writing theworld wants; and the editors and publishers will be forced to read you, whether they are inclined to or not. 

Christopher Columbus found his continent because he was so determined, so persistent, so certain that unknown lands awaited him. 

It made no difference who told him that all the earth had beendiscovered, and that he would never be able to succeed in his wildventure. His purpose was too strong to be influenced by the doubts ofothers. 

It has always seemed to me that God would have made a continent toreward such a search, had it not already existed. 

Unless you set forth on the sea of literature, with the spirit of aColumbus in your soul, you may as well give up the idea of finding thePort of Glory. If you do set forth with that spirit, you need ask nomortal influence. 

God is the only influence genius needs. 

Perseverance the only method. 

To find the way to success alone, is the test of talent. 

Some influential author might give you the entreé once to a magazine. But editors and publishers are men of purely business instincts, andthey will not accept work on the recommendation of any third party, which they think their public will not like. Their constant effort is tofind what that public _does like_, and the unknown author has an equaladvantage with the genius, if he sends such material. 

An author once told me that he "trapped" twenty manuscripts and sentthem out to editors, and all came back unread, as his "trap" proved. 

Since he sent them forth with such doubts in his mind, it is no wonderhis trap succeeded and his manuscripts failed. 

No great literary fire of purpose could be in the mind of a man whospent thought and time on such a plot to trick an editor. And becausethere was no great flame, the inanimate manuscripts were returnedunread. For even a package of paper sends out its "aura, " and invites orrepels attention. 

If you are discouraged by the people who tell you that "everything hasbeen written, " and that you can only be a faint echo of greater souls, then you do not deserve success. I have no doubt the croakers of thatday told Shakespeare the same. 

It seems that Shakespeare did take many old themes and other people'splots and ideas to re-create in his own way. And what a way! Surely hewho best uses an idea is most entitled to the credit. 

There is nothing new under the sun, but there is always the newaudience. For the majestic old poem of Spring, bound over in new coversof green, God creates fresh, eager young eyes and hearts each year. Andnot yet has he said to the year, "Do not attempt another spring--therehave been so many before, you can but repeat their beauties. " Then whyshould any mortal say to the poet or the author, "Do not try towrite--it has all been said before. "

Proceed, my young friend, and write what is in your heart. Nothing quitethe same was ever in any heart before, and yet the greater part of ithas been in all hearts, and will be in all hearts, so long as the worldlasts. 

Remember that when you write from the heart, it will go to the hearts ofyour readers: and when you write from your head it will go no lower thanthe head. 

And if the critics score or ridicule you, consider yourself on the pathto success. 

If you have a message for the world, nothing and nobody can prevent youfrom delivering it. 

He only fails who has nothing to say. 

To Mrs. McAllister

_Concerning Her Little Girl_

How strange it seems that your daughter is ten years old. 

It is such a brief hour since you wrote me you were eighteen and hadentered Vassar. Having no children of my own to stand as milestones onlife's highway, and keeping a very young heart in my breast all theseyears, it seems at times little less than impertinent in the children Ihave known to develop so rapidly into matrons and fathers. 

I am glad for you that the doctor has reached the desirable goal wherehe can rest from his laborious profession for two years, and take thatjourney abroad you have so long contemplated. And I am glad that youfeel the satisfaction you say you do, in never having left him alonefor a whole season as you once thought of doing. 

A satisfied conscience is a better comrade to journey along beside, thana remembered pleasure. 

But now about Genevieve. 

You tell me she is to be left with your sister, and that she will, forthe first time, attend the public school. 

You are right in thinking this will make her more American in spiritthan an education gained through home teaching or private schools. 

The girl who attends private schools only, is almost invariablyinoculated with the serum of aristocracy. 

She believes herself a little higher order of being than the childrenwho attend public schools, and it requires continual association withpeople of broad common sense to counteract this influence. I know youand the doctor have exerted this influence, but your sister might notrealize the necessity of making a special effort in that direction. 

Then, too, since the fathers or grandfathers of our most conspicuoussocial leaders were self-made and self-taught, and since our Americansociety is composed of so many varied types of humanity, it is well fora young girl to come in contact with all classes while she is yet achild, that she may understand humanity as she is sure to encounter itlater. Yet, as you say, it is indeed a serious thought to know yourlittle rosebud of a child is to be tossed into the dust of the publicschoolroom. 

"I do not want the delicate leaves forced into premature blossom orblight, " you say, and I feel for you, as I read the words. 

You remember your own experience as a school-child in the country, andyou tell me you would fain guard your daughter from hearing or seeingmuch that came to your ears and eyes as a school-child. 

But now, my dear Winifred, listen. 

It is utterly and absolutely impossible for you to keep Genevieveignorant of _life_, or of the great fundamental principles of life. Itis utterly useless to undertake to ignore the set impulse in all nature. Since God did not ignore it in constructing the universe, parents cannotafford to in educating children. The one thing to do is to teach yourchild early to respect and revere the subject, and to regard all thingspertaining to birth as sacred, never to be lightly discussed. Whereverthe eyes of an observing child turn, they see something to arousecuriosity upon this subject. 

All literature (the Bible particularly) contains some reference to sexand birth. Unless you stuff the ears of children with cotton, they musthear expressions, suggestions, and references, which necessitateexplanations of the same vital subject. From insects to man, through allthe various kingdoms, sex laws are the foundation of life. 

Why parents have chosen to taboo this important subject, and why theysurround it with falsehood and subterfuge, and suggest that it isunclean or vulgar, has always puzzled me. 

Inconceivable harm, lifelong disaster, has befallen many a girl and manya boy through this mistaken attitude of parents to God's basic law ofthe universe. 

Genevieve is only ten. But she is a child with a most inquiring mind, and she already indicates a tendency to coquetry. She prefers boys todolls, and evidently finds them more interesting than girls. 

The things you would guard her from knowing, she is sure to learn insome undesirable and unfortunate manner, unless you prepare her for themwith loving delicacy and refinement. 

My suggestion is that you take a plant, and talk to her about itsgrowth. Tell her how it springs from a seed, and hides in the bosom ofthe earth, expanding until it bursts through, and becomes the baby ofmother earth. 

Tell her, too, of the bird life in the egg, and make her realize themother-impulse in all nature. Then say to her that she is a part of itall and that she came into life by the same divine law, and that whenshe is older you will explain whatever puzzles her young mind. 

Tell her that she was carried under your heart, as the sprout wascarried in the bosom of mother earth, and that it is a very holy andbeautiful thing; so holy and so beautiful that the refined and sweetpeople of the world do not talk freely of the subject, but keep it likea religion, for those very near to them. 

Then say, You will hear other children, who have not been told this bytheir mothers, speak rudely and even jest on this subject. They are tobe pitied, for not knowing such jests are vulgar, but you must walk awayfrom them, and refuse to listen, after telling them your mother hasexplained all you need to know. Impress upon her that she is never todiscuss the topic with any one else, unless you advise her to do so. 

I have known only two mothers who took this method with their children, but both succeeded in rearing beautiful and remarkable daughters andsons. For the sons were included in the talk by one mother, and theywere ideal boys and gentlemen--popular with, and respected by theircomrades, in spite of their delicacy and reserve on subjects jested overby other boys. 

I am sure that you can protect Genevieve from the soil and shock youfear for her, by making her your confidante at this early age, and byconvincing her of your loving companionship in the future. Under noother conditions would I for one day allow a little girl (or a littleboy for that matter) to attend a public school. Not one parent in athousand realizes the moral dangers surrounding small children who go toand from school in country or city places. 

Many remember their own precocious education on forbidden topics, yetseem to imagine their children will be immune from such experiences. 

But until the Creator produces life by some new process, children willnever be exempt from curiosity regarding the present method, and parentsmay as well realize the fact and become their children's reverentinstructors, instead of leaving them to be taught God's holiest truthsby vulgar chance or dreadful design. 

Do not imagine that innocence necessitates ignorance. 

Your child will be far more innocent minded, if you give her theinstruction I suggest, than if you leave her to ungoverned imaginationand unenlightened observation. 

Deep in each human entity the sex impulse is planted, and will assertitself sooner or later. 

Ignorance and curiosity lead often to precocious development of theimpulse. By proper care on your part, your child's mind may be keptnormal, innocent, and wholesome. 

See to it that you give this important care before you leave. 

To Mr. Ray Gilbert

_Attorney at Law, Aged Thirty_

My dear Mr. Gilbert:--Your letter followed me across the ocean, andchanced to be the first one opened and read in my weighty home mailto-day. I have lost all trace of you during the last six years, in thatwonderful way people can lose sight of one another in a large city. Onceor twice I heard you had just left some social function as I arrived, orwas expected just as I was leaving, and once, recently, I saw you acrossthe house at a first night, with a very pretty girl at your side. Ifancy this is the "one woman in the world for you, " of whom you speak inthe letter before me--the letter written the evening before yourmarriage. How good you are to carry out my request made seven yearsago, and to write me this beautiful letter, after reading over andburning your former boyish epistle, returning to me my reply. 

It is every man's duty to himself, his bride, and the other woman, todestroy all evidences of past infatuations and affections, before heenters the new life. It is every woman's duty to do the same--_with areservation_. Since men demand so much more of a wife than a wifedemands of a husband, a woman is wise to retain any proof in herpossession that some man has been an honourable suitor for her hand. Sheshould make no use of such evidence, unless the unaccepted loverindulges in disrespectful comments or revengeful libels, as some men areinclined to when the fruit for which they reached is picked by anotherhand. 

And it is when the grapes are called sour that the evidence may proveeffective of their having been thought sweet and desirable. 

It is a curious fact that no woman thinks less of a man for his havinghad his vain infatuations, and that all men think less of a woman if shehas loved without response. 

Therefore, it behoves her to destroy no evidence that the other man, notherself, was the discarded party. 

But woe unto the man who retains old love-letters, or other tokens ofdead loves and perished desires. 

Few men could be guilty of showing or repeating the contents of anotherman's love-letters. Women who are models of virtue and goodness havebeen known to make public the letters written a man in earlier years byanother object of his affections. I have to my personal knowledge knowna woman to place before the eyes of a third person, lines writtenevidently in the very heart's blood of a former sweetheart of herhusband--words the man believed he had destroyed with other letters, more than a score of years before. Imagine what the feelings of thatearly sweetheart, now a happy and beloved wife, would be, did she knowthe words written so long ago were spread before cold and criticaleyes, and discussed by two people who could have no comprehension of theconditions and circumstances which led to their expression. 

Because I know otherwise tender-hearted and good women are capable ofsuch acts, I am glad you have obeyed my wish of seven years ago, andthat all proofs of your boyish infatuation for an older woman aredestroyed. You say you have told the girl you love that you once werefoolishly fond of me, and that I helped you to higher ideals ofwomanhood and life. 

That is wise and well, since you found her to be broad and sensibleenough to share such a confidence. But had she seen your written wordsto me and my reply, it would have been less agreeable to her than tohear your own calm recital of the now dead passion. 

Words written in a state of high-wrought intensity retain a sort ofphosphoric luminosity, like certain decaying substances, and even afterthe passage of years, and when the emotions which gave them expressionare dead and for-gotten, they seem to emit life and feeling. 

_Burn your bridges as you walk along the highways of romance to St. Benedict's land_. 

Since you compliment me by saying I have helped you to higher ideals oflife, will you allow me to give you a little advice regarding yourtreatment of your wife?

You have every reason to know that I have been a happy and well-lovedwife of the man of my choice. You know that I have neither sought noraccepted the attentions of other men when they crossed the danger-linelying between friendship and love. 

Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time youtemporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent offeminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a youngand talented man with so sincere a feeling. 

A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult, since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtationwith a married woman means. But your ingenuousness, and your romantic, boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, andmade me lenient toward you. 

My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment offeminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it ledme to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman'sweakness and folly. 

As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misusedwife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for therecognition of an affinity. 

Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, howacceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me. 

And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning thatwe were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions. 

There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man's unruly love forher, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard alawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, andneglected, and hungry for affection. 

See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs noromance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment. 

Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forgetto pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover. 

Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures andinterests when it is possible. 

Not that you should always be together, for separate enjoyments andoccupations sometimes lend an added zest to life for husband and wife, but do not drift apart in all your ideas and interests, as have so manymarried people. 

You are the husband of a bright and lovely girl, and if you forget thisfact after a time, remember there are other Ray Gilberts who may realizeit, and seek to awaken such an interest in her heart as you sought toarouse in mine. 

You found the room occupied by its rightful host. 

See it that no man finds the room vacant in your wife's heart. 

Study the art of keeping your wife interested and interesting. 

A woman thrives on love and appreciation. I know a beautiful bride ofeighty years, who has been the daily adoration of her husband for morethan half a century. 

She has been "infinite in her variety, " and he has never failed toappreciate and admire. 

Devote a portion of each day to talking to your wife about herself. 

Then she will not find it a novelty when other men attempt the samemethod of entertainment. 

Whatever other matters engross your time and attention, let your wiferealize that she stands first and foremost in your thoughts and in yourheart. 

Do not forget the delicacies of life, manner, speech, and deportment inthe intimacy of daily companionship. 

Never descend to the vulgar or the commonplace. 

One characteristic of men has always puzzled me. No matter how wide hasbeen a bachelor's experience with the wives and daughters of other men, when he marries it never occurs to him that his wife or daughters couldmeet temptation or know human weakness. 

It must be the egotism of the sex. 

Each man excuses the susceptibility of the women with whom he has hadromantic episodes, on the ground of his especial power or charm. Andwhen he marries, he believes his society renders all the women of hisfamily immune from other attractions. 

Do not rely upon the fact that your wife is legally bound to you, andtherefore need not be wooed by you hereafter. 

There are women who are born anew with each dawn, and who must be wonanew with each day, or the lover loses some precious quality than cannever be regained. 

It will pay you to study your wife as the years pass. 

Do not take for granted that you know her to-day, because you knew herthoroughly last year. 

This is a long letter, but when one writes only once in seven years, brevity is not to be expected. 

My greeting to you, and may the years be weaver's hands, which shallinterlace and bind two lives into one complete pattern. 

To the Sister of a Great Beauty

I am far from laughing, my dear girl, at your assertion that yourposition is little short of tragic. 

To be the ordinary sister of an extraordinary beauty, is a positionwhich calls for the exercise of all the great virtues in order to beborne with dignity, good taste, and serenity. 

I remember seeing you and Pansy when you were ten and she twelve yearsof age. I foresaw what lay before you then, and have often wondered howyou would meet the occasion when you were both "finished, " and at homeunder the same roof, and socially launched. It was wise for your motherto separate you so early in life, and place you under differentteachers, and in different schools. 

It is difficult for a girl in her late childhood and early teens to usephilosophy and religion to support her, when she is made a Cinderella byunthinking associates and friends, and forgotten and neglected while amore attractive sister is lionized. 

Had you always walked in the shadow of your handsome sister untilto-day, I fancy your disposition would have become warped withresentment and envy. 

And perhaps your feelings for Pansy would have been less affectionatethan now. 

I am glad to have you tell me that Pansy is so modest and unassuming andso genuinely solicitous for your happiness. 

She must have been particularly fortunate in her environment while atschool to possess such qualities after knowing as she has known fortwenty-two years that her beauty is dazzling to the eye of even thechance beholder. 

There is no greater obstacle to the development of the best qualitiesin a young woman than the possession of such unusual beauty. From hercradle she is made to realize its power, and men and women teach her ina thousand unconscious ways to be selfish and self-centred. She receivesattentions, and her acquaintance is sought, with no effort on her part, while more gifted and deserving companions are unnoticed. She is made torealize that she is one to be served, where less attractive girls aretaught to "stand and wait. "

The love nature of each human being is either developed or stunted byneglect during the early years of life, and, as a rule, the beautifulwoman is incapable of a deep, absorbing, and unselfish love, because shehas grown up the receiver instead of the giver. 

Were you, my dear Sallie, to know the number of great beauties who havefailed to find happiness in marriage, you would be amazed. But theexplanation is simple; for man is a being who, however he may worshipbeauty before marriage, worships his own comfort more deeply afterward. And it is rare indeed when a famous beauty troubles herself to plan forthe comfort or happiness of the man she marries. It is the naturalresult of her education to think man made to adore and serve her. 

I hope Pansy may keep her loving and lovable qualities, and that she maymarry before the adoration and admiration of many men become necessaryto her life. For the beauties' matrimonial barque most often founders onthe reef of plural lovers. 

As for yourself, I can only suggest that you acquire manyaccomplishments, and perfect yourself in music and languages, and thatyou seek for the attainment of all the subtle graces, which are, in thelong run, more lasting as sources of happiness for a woman than merebeauty. It is a peculiarly significant fact that the great passions ofhistory have not been inspired by very young or startlingly beautifulwomen, but by those of maturity and mental charms. 

Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Aspasia, Petrarch's Laura, had all crossedthe line between youth and middle life, and there are no authenticproofs that any one of the number was a dazzling beauty. Some of theworld's most alluring women have been absolutely plain. 

You are not plain. It is only by comparison that you so regard yourself. 

There is much you can do to make yourself more attractive personally. You know what Rochefoucauld said: "No woman is in fault for not beingbeautiful at sixteen; any woman is in fault if she is not beautiful atforty. "

However much it may sound like a platitude, it is a great and eternaltruth that your mental activities are chiselling your features. Bykeeping yourself concerned with good, gracious, and great thoughts, youare shaping your face into a noble beauty minute by minute, and hour byhour. 

Avoid as much as possible looking at repulsive and ugly objects. 

Look at whatever is beautiful and seek for it. 

Search for whatever is admirable in nature and human nature, and museupon those things in your moments of solitude. 

Cultivate love-thoughts for humanity at large. 

Avoid severe criticisms, and develop sympathy and pity in your soul. Study the comfort and pleasure of strangers in public places, andfriends and associates in nearer relations. 

Remember always how brief a thing, and ofttimes sad, life is to many, and seek to brighten and better it as you pass along. 

Meanwhile, take care of your person, study your lines and your features, and learn how to dress and how to carry yourself; how to obtain"presence, " that indescribable charm in woman. 

Take daily care of your complexion, which to a woman is of primeimportance. 

Call in the skill of the specialist to help you preserve and beautifyyour skin and hair, just as the dentist and the oculist are to beconsulted to help you preserve teeth and eyes. Think beauty for mind, soul, and body; live it, and believe it is your right. 

And just as surely as you pursue this line of conduct for ten years, just so surely will you find yourself at thirty far more attractive thanat twenty, and at forty more lovely than at thirty. Learn to be alinguist, and acquire skill upon some one instrument, that you mayentertain those who care to converse, and give pleasure to those whowish to be silent. 

You are young, and life with its splendid possibilities is before you. There is nothing a woman with youth, will-power, and _love_ may notaccomplish--even to the convincing of the world that she is beautiful, when her mirror may say otherwise. 

For enduring and all-encompassing beauty is a composite thing, andunless a woman possesses the spiritual and mental portions, the physicalphase soon loses its attractions for the cultivated eye; while with thedevelopment of the first two, the third is certain to come. 

Begin to-day, my dear girl, to _grow beauty_ which shall make you apower and an influence in the world where you move, and which shallinvite, rather than fear, the approach of time. 

To Mrs. White Peak

_One of the Pillars of Respectable Society_

Ever since your call and our conversation regarding Sybyl Marchmont, Ihave felt a rising tide of indignation. It has reached the perigee markand must overflow. If it reaches you and gives you a thorough soaking, Ishall feel satisfied. 

I have always known you were only half-developed. There are many suchpeople in the world. They serve their purpose and often do much good. They miss a great deal of life, but as they rarely know that they missanything, it is a waste of sentiment to pity them. 

I have pitied you, nevertheless. I have often wished I could give youthe vital qualities you lack. 

My pity turned to indignation when I heard you express yourself in suchunqualified terms of condemnation regarding other women who happened tobe unlike you in temperament. 

You say there is a certain line which no well-born and womanly woman canpass in thought or feeling or action. 

You regard the true women of earth as a higher and rarer order ofcreation than the best of men, and any woman who by action or wordconfesses herself to be quite human in her temperament, you feel is, toa certain extent, "unclean and unsexed. " You believe the really goodwomen of earth are always on a plane above and beyond the physical. Whenany woman falls from her pedestal you despise her. 

How dare you, madam, sitting in your cold, white chastity, lay down lawsof what you consider purity, morality, and cleanliness, for other humansouls?

How dare you condemn those who do not reach your standard?

What do you know of life, great, palpitating, throbbing, vital life, terrible and beautiful life, terrible while passing through the valleysof temptation, beautiful upon the heights of self-control?

How dare you assume greater virtue, greater respectability, greaterfineness of sentiment, than the tempest-tossed, passion-beaten souls, about you?

What do you know of real virtue, real strength?

You have been poor, you tell me, in worldly riches, and you have beenlonely, yet you have never once degraded your womanhood by an "unworthy" impulse. Never known a temptation of the senses. Those thingsdisgusted you. 

You have preferred toil to taking favours from inferiors, and you havekept yourself clean in thought, word, and deed, and now you have thereward of such virtues--a good home, a husband, and children. 

You are a more devoted mother than wife, as you have always dwelt upon alofty white peak of chaste womanhood, from which any descent into theearthly realms of life and love was repugnant--so rarely "pure" and highyour nature. 

Yet you have been a dutiful, loyal wife, and you are a devoted mother. 

You despise all carnal-minded women, and cannot understand how womenfall--save that they lack good birth and breeding. 

You will aid in a benefit for their reformation, but you do not want tosee them or to come near them. It makes you ill. 

You are to be congratulated on never having added to the evil in theworld. 

But permit me, madam, to tell you some truths about yourself--and thelarge army of "respectable women" you represent. 

However "well born" you may be, you are only half-born. The completehuman being has three sides to his nature--spiritual, mental, physical. 

The men and women who are evenly developed on the three sides are few. This is sometimes their fault--sometimes their misfortune. 

We all pity the human being who is mentally dwarfed. We are sorry forthe one whose spiritual nature is undeveloped. 

But why should the many women who are devoid of the physical qualitiesof human nature presume to lay claim to perfection and to regard thenormal woman as a suspicious character?

You have a fine, active mind, a highly spiritual nature, but you arestunted in strong, physical emotion. You are incapable of it, and prideyourself upon the fact. 

If that pleases you, well and good. 

But how dare you criticize God's _complete human_ beings, who feel thegreat vibrations of the universe, who glow and thrill with that divinecreative force, who live a thousand lives and die a thousand deathsbefore they learn the glory of self-conquest. 

How dare you shrink even from those who fall by the wayside, and callyour shrinking "purity"!

Let me ask you another question:

How dare you turn away from that girl who went through the door of theMagdalene Home you helped establish, with her fatherless child in herarms?

She fell from woman's holy estate!

Yes, through mad love for a man--she loved him with her soul, her mind, her body. She lacked knowledge, balance, and wisdom; she had only loveand passion. 

And you, madam, how about _your_ children?

They were born of a "dutiful" wife. You descended from your loftyaltitude unwillingly--only at duty's call. You are so "refined, " yet youare a loving mother and pose as the highest type of woman. 

_God never made in his whole universe of worlds such a "duty" asunwilling motherhood_. Motherhood without the call of sex for sex isindecent--criminal. You, too, madam, _fell_. 

That girl in yonder "home" your "charity" helped establish, who lovedunwisely, fell. Her fall was through love--yours through a legalceremony. 

All the churches, all the religions and the laws of earth, cannot makemotherhood holy and right without the mutual mental, spiritual, andphysical union of two beings. 

Heaven and earth _both_ must sanction a child's conception to produce a"well-born" soul. 

There is no greater sin on earth than the creation of a human lifewithout complete accord of the creators. 

No wonder the world is full of miserable half-born beings, when motherslike _you_ claim to be the Madonnas of earth. 

No wonder natural, complete, striving souls hide their true naturesunder a false exterior, when women like _you_ rule church and society. 

What shame or degradation is there, pray, in being animate with theall-pervading impulse which underlies the entire universe? Every planet, every tree, every flower, every insect, is the result of sex seekingsex, atom calling atom. 

The universe _is_ because of the law of sex attraction. 

And you, poor, puny, pallid woman, dare decry and despise that law, anddare insult God's animate creature!

Know this, madam, there is no strength worth boasting that has notconquered weakness. No virtue worth the name that has not conqueredtemptation. No greatness of character that has not overcome unworthyimpulses. 

Enjoy your negative goodness and be glad you are "good. "

Morality is acceptable to the world, however it conies; but dare not sitin judgment on other human beings fighting battles whose smoke neverreaches your nostrils, striving for heights of which you never evendream, and who meanwhile have missed certain degradations which you seemto consider creditable achievements. 

Madam, I bid you adieu. That word means "I commend you to God, " the Godwho made the two sexes, and intended love to unite them. 

May He enlighten you in other lives, if not in this. 

To Maria Owens

_A New Woman Contemplating Marriage_

Surprise, I am free to confess, was my dominant emotion on reading yourletter. Marriage and Maria had never associated themselves in my mind, fond as I am of alliteration. 

Never in the ten years I have known you have I heard you devote tenminutes to the subject of any man's good qualities. You always havediscoursed upon men's faults and vices, and upon their tendency, sincethe beginning of time, to tyrannize over woman. I was unable todisprove many of your statements, for I know the weight of argument isupon your side, even while I boldly confess my admiration and regard formen, as a class, is greater than that for women. 

The fact that the world has allowed men such latitude, and suchlicense, and made them pay such very small penalties, comparativelyspeaking, for very large offences, causes me to admire their wonderfulachievements in noble living all the more: and to place the man ofunblemished reputation and unquestioned probity on a pedestal higherthan any I could yet ask builded for woman. 

It is more difficult to be great before the extended tentacles of theself-indulgence octopus than in the face of oppression and danger. Whenthe laws of the land and the sentiment of the people permit a man to beselfish, licentious, tyrannical, and yet call him great if heaccomplishes heroic deeds, it proves what intrinsic worth must lie inthe nature of those who attain the heights of unselfishness andbenevolence, and martyrdom, asking no reward and often receiving noneuntil posterity bestows it. 

Those who can take the broad road of selfishness unmolested, and choosethe narrow path of high endeavour instead, seem to me greater than thosewho overcome mere externals. 

Many such men have existed, and the steady, slow, but certain progressof the world from barbarism to civilization, from accepted cannibalismand slavery to ideals of brotherhood, we owe to them. All newdiscoveries, all greatest achievements are due to men. Woman, I know, has been handicapped and oppressed for centuries by superstitions, andtraditions, and unjust laws; but it is unfair to ignore the bright, andsee only the dark side of the picture, which the centuries have paintedfor us, on the background of time. 

This letter is only a résumé of many conversations between you and me, and it leads up to the explanation of why I am somewhat dazed andstunned by your announcement that marriage is a possible event in yournear future. 

My self-conceit in regard to my knowledge of human nature every now andthen receives a blow. So soon as I have arrived at a positive convictionthat I understand any human being thoroughly, and feel that I can safelypredict what that person will or will not do, I usually meet some suchbewildering experience as this. 

I would have laughed at any one who suggested the possibility of yourconsidering a proposition of marriage. 

You tell me you are thirty-five years old, and say you have never beforemet the man to whom your thoughts reverted, no matter how youendeavoured to occupy yourself with other subjects. You also tell me "heis not like other men. " These two statements are wonderfully familiar tome, indeed they have been confided to me in precisely the same words byat least a score of women, young and not so young, who met thecompelling man. _Maria, I believe you are in love_. Your heart isawakened from its stupor, caused by an overdose of intellect. For toomuch intellect is often a drug which deadens the consciousness of awoman's heart. But you have been drugged so long that you are stillunder a hazy spell, to judge from that portion of your letter which tookthe form of an inquiry. 

You ask my opinion in regard to the point of disagreement between youand your semi-fiancé. To much that you say I agree. You have carved aname and a place for yourself in the world. Your lectures, and yourbooks, have made your name familiar to many people. Your lover isunknown to the public, a man in the private walks of life. Therefore youthink if he loves you as he should to become your husband, he ought togive up his own name and take yours, or at least add yours to his own. You assure me it is merely a matter of habit, that women haveobliterated themselves on the altar of marriage, and that it is time anew order was instituted. You think the hour calls for pioneers toestablish new boundaries, in a new world where woman will be allowed tokeep her individuality after marriage. Meantime your lover does not feelthat you really love him, when you ask him to take this somewhat radicalstep for your sake, or for the sake of all women, as you put it. 

And there you both stand, with only this ridiculous barrier between youand happiness. 

You are still influenced by the intellectual drug, and it hinders yourheart from following out its best impulses. You have not yet learnedmore than the A B C of love, or you would know that the greatesthappiness in loving lies in sacrifice. To take and not give, to gainsomething and give up nothing, is not loving. Now I think I hear yousaying, "But why should not my lover give this proof of devotion as wellas I? Why should not he be ready to sacrifice a tradition, and a name, to please me? Why am I more unloving, or selfish, than he, to refuse togive up my name?"

My answer follows. 

Any woman who asks a man to give up his name and take hers (unless somegreat legal matter which involves the property rights of others hangs onso doing) asks him to make himself ridiculous in the eyes of the world. She indicates, also, that her family name and her own achievements aredearer to her than his. No woman loves a man enough to be happy as hiswife, if he is not dearer to her than any mere personal success, howevergreat. 

The man who asks a woman to take his name obeys a tradition and acustom, to be sure, and the woman who accepts it does not display anyespecially heroic trait. Therefore, what you demand of your lover is afar greater proof of devotion than what he asks of you. No woman whofully understood the meaning of love could ask this of her futurehusband. If he occupied the place in her life which a husband should, nomatter what were her personal attainments, she would glory in adding hisname to her own, and in having its shelter to hide under at times fromthe glare of publicity. 

Should you choose to keep your name Maria Owens with no addition, foryour lectures and your books, it is quite probable your husband wouldnot object. And again, if your achievements are worth the thought yougive them in this matter, they are great enough to endure even shouldyou add the name of Chester to that of Owens. But certainly, if you lovethe man you think of marrying, you will be happy in the thought ofwearing his name legally and socially in every-day life, and the sightof a card engraved, "Mrs. Rupert Chester, " will give your heart asweeter thrill than it has ever known in connection with the newspapernotices of Maria Owens. 

Unless you can arouse your heart to such an understanding of love, youare not yet acquainted with the little god. If your lover consents tothe sacrifice you have demanded, he will indicate a weakness ofcharacter which augurs ill for the future: and if you insist upon thesacrifice, you will establish a selfish precedent which can only makeyou a tyrant in your own domain, and at the same time belittle yourhusband in the public eye. 

However proud and happy you may be in the thought of noble achievementsof your own, you must realize that there are many brutal and painfulphases to a public career for a woman. These phases do not exist to anysuch degree for a man. I do not believe it is the result of tradition orhabit, but of sex and temperament, that this difference exists, and thatthe shelter of a man's name means more to woman than any shelter to befound in her own, and that the sacrifice of her own name means less toher than the sacrifice of his means to him. Unless you can reach thissame conclusion, do not marry--for you do not love. 

To Mrs. St. Claire

_The Young Divorcée_

And so you have joined the increasing army of the divorcées. 

It is worse than useless to discuss again the causes which led to thissituation, and now that the law of the land has made you a free woman, the one thing for you to consider is your future, and to formulate tosome degree a code of conduct for your guidance. 

You are in the prime of beautiful womanhood, pleasing to the eye, andagreeable to the mind. Women will regard you with more or less mentalreservation, and men will seek you at every opportunity. 

Some witty creature has said, "A little widow is a dangerous thing. "

It might be added, "A grass widow whets the appetites of bovines". 

You will find yourself at a loss to choose when an escort is needed, somany and persistent will be the applicants for the position. 

After having passed through the black waters of an unhappy marriage, this sudden freedom and return to the privileges of girlhood will beliable to affect you like the glare of sunlight after confinement in adark room. 

You will be blinded for a time. It would be well for you to walk slowly, and to use a cane of common sense, and even to feel your way with theoutstretched hands of discretion, until you become accustomed to thelight. 

To fall and scar yourself now, would be a disaster. 

It is a curious fact that a woman who has been unhappy with one manusually finds many others ready to give her the opportunity for arepetition of her experience. And it is equally curious that one unhappymarriage frequently leads to another. 

A disastrous rencontre with Hymen seems to destroy a woman's finerintuitions. If you feel that you must marry again, go slowly, and waituntil the bruised tendrils of your heart have healed and are rooted inhealthy soil. Do not let them twine about any sort of a dead tree orfrail reed. Run no chance of a second sorrow. 

One divorce always contains elements of tragedy. A second becomes afarce. 

You tell me that you and your former husband entertain the kindestfeeling for each other. You have seen him and talked with him on severaloccasions, and you regard him as a friend. You say all love andsentiment perished long before your separation, and that to continue ashis wife was to die a thousand deaths daily. 

You tell me that your own higher development demanded this separation. Iknow such situations do exist in the world of men and women, and that tosubmit to them is a crime. Yet I also know that this idea of"development" is used often as a cloak for all sorts of selfish impulsesand moods. 

Many men and women to-day seem to forget that certain other objectsbesides happiness enter into self-development. 

It is not only the pilot who deserts the ship and swims ashore who saveshis life. The one who keeps his hand on the wheel, and his eye on thelighthouse, he, too, sometimes saves his own life, as well as saves theship. 

But since to jump overboard was the only way to save your own life, nowthat you are ashore, and dry, and comfortable, your first considerationshould be to avoid falling into mires and pits as you go along. 

Though romance died out of your marriage, do not let it die out of yourheart. It is commendable that you feel no bitterness or resentmenttoward your husband. But do not carry your kindly feelings toward him tothe extent of frequent association and comradeship. 

Outside of criminal situations, life offers no more ghastly andunpleasant picture than that of dead passion galvanized into a semblanceof friendship, and going about the world devoid of the strong elementsof either sentiment. 

There is something radically wrong with a woman's ideals when she doesnot feel an instinctive unwillingness to be thrown with the man fromwhom she has been divorced. 

There is something akin to degeneracy in the man or woman who cancontemplate without shrinking the intimate encounter of legally partedhusbands or wives. 

The softening of the human brain is a terrible malady. 

Quite as terrible is the hardening of the human heart. 

The loss of happiness is deemed a tragedy. But far greater is thetragedy when the illusive charm of romance departs, and love andmarriage are reduced to the commonplace. Unless you find the man whocarries your whole nature by storm, and who makes you feel that lifewithout him will be insupportable, do not be led again to the altar ofmarriage. 

Life has many avenues for a bright and charming woman which lead tosatisfaction and peace, if not to happiness. 

If you desire to be a picturesque figure in the world, remember that thedivorced woman who never marries again is far more so than she who hastaken the names of two living men. 

And remember how much there is in life to do for other people, how muchthere is to achieve, and how much there is to enjoy, for the woman whohas eyes wherewith to see, and ears with which to hear. 

Life is a privilege, even to the unhappy. It allows them the opportunityto display the great qualities which God implanted in every soul, and togive the world higher examples of character. 

He who leaves such an example to the world earns happiness for eternity. 

To Miss Jessie Harcourt

_Regarding Her Marriage with a Poor Young Man_

And so there is trouble in the house of Harcourt, my dear Jessie. Youwant to marry your intellectual young lover, who has only his penbetween him and poverty, and your cruel father, who owns the town, saysit is an act of madness on your part, and of presumption on his. 

And you are thinking of going to the nearest clergyman and defyingparental authority. 

You have even looked at rooms where you believe you and Ernest could beideally happy. And you want me to act as matron-of-honour at that veryinformal little wedding. 

Now, my dear girl, before you take this important step, give the mattercareful study. 

Your impulses are beautiful, and your ideal natural and lovely. Godintended men and women to choose their mates in this very way, with noconsideration of a worldly nature to mar their happiness. 

But civilized young ladies are a far call from God's primitive woman. You have lived for twenty-three years in the lap of modern luxury. Yourfather prides himself upon the fact that, although your mother died whenyou were very young, he has carefully shielded you from everything whichcould cast a shadow upon your name or nature. Your lover is fascinatedwith your absolute purity and innocence. Yet he does not realize that ayoung woman who has so long "sat in the lap of Luxury, " is unfit to be apoor man's wife. 

Some girl who might know much more than you of the dark and vulgar sideof life, would make him a better companion if he could love her enoughto ask her hand in marriage. 

The girl who has received the addresses of this fascinating old fellow"Luxury, " never quite forgets him, or ceases to bemoan him if shethrows him over for a poor man. 

To _look_ at two rooms and a bath is one thing, to _live_ in themanother, after having all your life occupied a suite which a queen mightenvy, with retinues of servitors at call. 

You tell me you could die for your lover. 

But can you bathe from a wash-bowl and pitcher, and can you take yourmeals at cheap restaurants, and make coffee and toast on an oil-stove ora chafing-dish?

Can you wear cheap clothing and ride in trolleys, and economize onlaundry bills to prove your love for this man?

You never have known one single hardship in your life; you never havefaced poverty, or even experienced the ordinary economies of well-to-dopeople. 

You are an only daughter of wealth--_American wealth_. That sentenceconveys a world of meaning. _It means that you are spoiled for anythingbut comfort in this life_. 

For a few weeks you might believe yourself in a fairy-land of romanceif you married your lover and went to live in the two rooms. But at theend of that period you would begin to realize that you were in a veryactual land of poverty and discomfort. 

Discomfort is relative. Those rooms to the shop-girl who had toiled foryears, and lived in a fourth-flight-back tenement, would representluxury. To you, after a few months, they would mean absolute penury. 

You would begin to miss your beautiful home, and your maids, and yourcarriages. Your husband would know you were missing them, and he wouldbe miserable. Unless your father came to your rescue, your dream ofromantic love would end in a nightmare of regret and sorrow. 

Your father knows you, --the creature of refined tastes and luxurioushabits that he has made you, --and your lover does not. Neither do youknow yourself. 

It requires a woman in ten thousand, one possessed of absolute heroism, like the old martyrs who sang at the stake while dying, to do what youcontemplate, and to be happy in the doing. 

Nothing like a life of self-indulgence disintegrates great qualities. You are romantically and feverishly in love with a handsome and giftedyoung man. But do not rush into a marriage with him until you can bringyour father to settle a competence upon you, or until your lover hasspanned the abyss of poverty with a bridge of comfort. You have had notraining in self-denial or self-dependence. The altar is a bad place tobegin your first lesson. 

Wait awhile. I know my advice seems worldly and cold, but it is theresult of wide observation. 

If you cannot sit in your gold and white boudoir, and be true to Ernestwhile he battles a few more years with destiny, then you could notremain loyal in thought while you held your numb fingers over a chillyradiator in an uncomfortable flat, or omitted dessert from your dinnermenu to cut down expenses. 

Your brain-cells have been developed in opulence. 

You could not train your mind to inexorable economy, even at the commandof Cupid. 

Take the advice of a woman of the world, my dear girl, and do notattempt the impossible and so spoil two lives. 

Again I say, wait awhile. 

There are girls who could be perfectly happy in the position you picturefor yourself with Ernest, but not you. 

Better hide your ideal in your heart than shatter it on the unswepthearthstone of the commonplace. 

Better be in your lover's life the unattained joy, than ruin hishappiness by discontent. 

It is less of a tragedy for a man to hear a woman say "I cannot go withyou, " than to hear her say "I cannot stay with you. "

To Miss Jane Carter

_Of the W. C. T. U. _

And so, my dear Jane, I have fallen from my pedestal, in yourestimation. Yet, having carefully regarded myself in the mirror, andfinding no discolorations, and feeling no wounds or contusions, I thinkmy pedestal must have been very near the earth, else I would beconscious of some bruises. 

And now, Jane, to be frank, I am very glad to be off my perch. 

I do not want to dwell upon a pedestal. 

It necessitates a monotonous life, and it is an unsocial position. 

I prefer to walk on the earth, among my fellow creatures. 

You were greatly shocked, I saw, when I told my little Russian guestthat she might light her cigarette in my boudoir. Your sudden departuretold its own story, and your letter was no surprise. But I am glad youwrote me so frankly, as it gives me the opportunity to be equally frank. 

There is nothing more beneficial, in true friendship, than a freeexchange of honest criticisms. 

You tell me that I lowered my standard by lending countenance to apernicious and unladylike habit. You felt I owed it to myself, as a goodwoman, and to my home, as a respectable house, to show my unswervingprinciples in this matter, and to indicate my disapproval of adisgusting vice, which is growing in our midst. 

Life is too short, my dear Jane, in which to achieve all our ideals, andto arrive at all our goals. 

I have learned the futility of attempting to reform the whole world inone day. And I have also learned that there are more roads than one, toall destinations. 

Miss Ordosky is the daughter of a dear old friend of my youth, whomarried a Russian nobleman with more titles than dollars. 

Her parents are dead, and Wanda has come to her mother's native land, toteach her father's language. She has come with all her Russian habitsand ideas accented by her mother's American indifference to publicopinion. The girl is young, lovely, and wholly dependent upon herselffor a livelihood. I invited her to be my guest for two months, beforeestablishing herself in her business, with the hope of helping her toadapt herself somewhat to American ideas and customs. 

I could never hope for such a result, had I antagonized her the firstday under my roof by an austere attitude toward a habit which I knew shehad been reared to think proper. 

I do not like to see a woman smoke, and I regret as much as you do theincreasing prevalence of the vice in America. 

Like almost every schoolgirl, I had my day of thinking a surreptitious, cigarette was wonderfully cunning. 

That day passed, like the measles and the whooping-cough, and left meimmune. I have never seen a woman so beautiful and alluring that she wasnot less charming when she put a cigarette to her lips. I am confidentthe habit vitiates the blood, injures the digestion, and renders thebreath offensive. I have known many American men who taught their wivesto smoke; and I do not know _one_ who has not lived to regret it, whenthe cigarette he fancied would be an occasional luxury became anecessity. 

A woman who expects ever to bring children into the world, is littlebetter than a criminal to form such a habit: for, argue as we may forone moral code for both sexes, we cannot change nature's law, whichimposes the greater responsibility upon the mother of the unborn child;the child she carries so many months beneath her heart, giving it hourby hour the impression of her mental and physical conditions. 

Fathers ought not to smoke or indulge in other bad habits. 

_Mothers must not_. 

I hope in time to discuss these topics with Wanda, and to make animpression upon her mind by my arguments. 

But your methods and mine, dear Jane, differ widely. And, begging yourpardon, I believe mine accomplish more good for a larger number of humanbeings than yours. 

And, added to that fact, I get more happiness for myself out of life. 

Miss Ordosky would have managed to smoke her cigarette, however rigidhad I been in expressing my principles. And she would have found someexcuse to shorten her visit under my roof, and then where would be myopportunity to influence her?

As it is, she puffs her cigarette in my company, listens to my opinions, seems to respect my ideas, and is interested in my views of life. We arebecoming excellent comrades, and this is far more gratifying to me thanto know that I had antagonized her into a formal acquaintance by myaggressive morality. I have an idea that, before my pretty guestreaches the time when she will consider wifehood and motherhood as lifeprofessions, I may convince her from a scientific standpoint that shebetter abandon her cigarettes. And to convince one's mind is far betterthan to drive one to submission. 

And now, Jane, has it never occurred to you that you have made somemistakes in life by the very methods you are so sorry I did not pursuewith Miss Ordosky?

Years ago, I recall your surrounding a certain young man with an aureoleof idealism. Then you were obliged to dethrone him from his pedestalbecause he, too, forsooth, smoked a cigar. 

That young man married a woman quite as worthy and good as yourself, andhe has made the best of husbands and citizens. I know of no man who doesmore good in the world in a quiet way than this same unpedestaled oldadmirer of yours. Whether he still smokes his cigar or not I could notsay. But as a man, it seems to me, he is quite as worthy and noble acitizen, as you are a woman. 

I know that you are doing all you can, to spread the gospel of cleanliving abroad in the land, and that your influence is all for a higherstandard of morality. 

But if you live on too high an altitude, in this world, and refuse toassociate with any one who will not climb up to your plane, you aredestined to a lonely life, and your sphere of influence is limited. Youwill do far more good by taking your place with other human beings, andby gradual, sane efforts leading the thoughts of your associates to turnto your wholesome ideas of life. You are making morality unpopular byyour present aggressive methods. And you are missing many sweetfriendships and experiences by your insistence that all your friendsmust follow the narrow path you have decided is the only road to goodbehaviour. 

Come down from your pedestal, my dear Jane--come and dwell on the earth. 

THE END.