BACKLOG EDITION

THE COMPLETE WRITINGS

OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

1904

AS WE WERE SAYING

CONTENTS:

AS WE WERE SAYING ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM THE RED BONNET THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION SOCIAL SCREAMING DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY? THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX THE CLOTHES OF FICTION THE BROAD A CHEWING GUM WOMEN IN CONGRESS SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE? FROCKS AND THE STAGE ALTRUISM SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE DINNER-TABLE TALK NATURALIZATION ART OF GOVERNING LOVE OF DISPLAY VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS THE CAP AND GOWN A TENDENCY OF THE AGE A LOCOED NOVELIST

AS WE WERE SAYING

ROSE AND CHRYSANTHEMUM

The Drawer will still bet on the rose. This is not a wager, but only astrong expression of opinion. The rose will win. It does not look so now. To all appearances, this is the age of the chrysanthemum. What this gaudyflower will be, daily expanding and varying to suit the whim of fashion, no one can tell. It may be made to bloom like the cabbage; it may spreadout like an umbrella--it can never be large enough nor showy enough tosuit us. Undeniably it is very effective, especially in masses ofgorgeous color. In its innumerable shades and enlarging proportions, itis a triumph of the gardener. It is a rival to the analine dyes and tothe marabout feathers. It goes along with all the conceits and fantasticunrest of the decorative art. Indeed, but for the discovery of thecapacities of the chrysanthemum, modern life would have experienced afatal hitch in its development. It helps out our age of plush with aflame of color. There is nothing shamefaced or retiring about it, and italready takes all provinces for its own. One would be onlyhalf-married--civilly, and not fashionably--without a chrysanthemumwedding; and it lights the way to the tomb. The maiden wears a bunch ofit in her corsage in token of her blooming expectations, and the youngman flaunts it on his coat lapel in an effort to be at once effective andin the mode. Young love that used to express its timid desire with theviolet, or, in its ardor, with the carnation, now seeks to bring itsemotions to light by the help of the chrysanthemum. And it can expressevery shade of feeling, from the rich yellow of prosperous wooing to thebrick-colored weariness of life that is hardly distinguishable from theliver complaint. It is a little stringy for a boutonniere, but it fillsthe modern-trained eye as no other flower can fill it. We used to saythat a girl was as sweet as a rose; we have forgotten that language. Weused to call those tender additions to society, on the eve of their eventinto that world which is always so eager to receive fresh young life, "rose-buds"; we say now simply "buds, " but we mean chrysanthemum buds. They are as beautiful as ever; they excite the same exquisite interest;perhaps in their maiden hearts they are one or another variety of thatflower which bears such a sweet perfume in all literature; but can itmake no difference in character whether a young girl comes out into thegarish world as a rose or as a chrysanthemum? Is her life set to the noteof display, of color and show, with little sweetness, or to that retiringmodesty which needs a little encouragement before it fully reveals itsbeauty and its perfume? If one were to pass his life in moving in apalace car from one plush hotel to another, a bunch of chrysanthemums inhis hand would seem to be a good symbol of his life. There are agedpeople who can remember that they used to choose various roses, as totheir color, odor, and degree of unfolding, to express the delicateshades of advancing passion and of devotion. What can one do with thisnew favorite? Is not a bunch of chrysanthemums a sort oftake-it-or-leave-it declaration, boldly and showily made, an offerwithout discrimination, a tender without romance? A young man will catchthe whole family with this flaming message, but where is that sentimentthat once set the maiden heart in a flutter? Will she press achrysanthemum, and keep it till the faint perfume reminds her of thesweetest moment of her life?

Are we exaggerating this astonishing rise, development, and spread of thechrysanthemum? As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-skirt, or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the lovelyhead. But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all nationsand times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has held itsown as the queen of flowers and as the finest expression of sentiment. But here comes a flaunting thing with no desirable perfume, looking as ifit were cut with scissors out of tissue-paper, but capable of takinginfinite varieties of color, and growing as big as a curtain tassel, thatliterally captures the world, and spreads all over the globe, like theCanada thistle. The florists have no eye for anything else, and thebiggest floral prizes are awarded for the production of itseccentricities. Is the rage for this flower typical of this fast andflaring age?

The Drawer is not an enemy to the chrysanthemum, nor to the sunflower, nor to any other gorgeous production of nature. But it has anold-fashioned love for the modest and unobtrusive virtues, and an abidingfaith that they will win over the strained and strident displays of life. There is the violet: all efforts of cultivation fail to make it as big asthe peony, and it would be no more dear to the heart if it werequadrupled in size. We do, indeed, know that satisfying beauty andrefinement are apt to escape us when we strive too much and force natureinto extraordinary display, and we know how difficult it is to get merebigness and show without vulgarity. Cultivation has its limits. After wehave produced it, we find that the biggest rose even is not the mostprecious; and lovely as woman is, we instinctively in our admiration puta limit to her size. There being, then, certain laws that ultimatelyfetch us all up standing, so to speak, it does seem probable that thechrysanthemum rage will end in a gorgeous sunset of its splendor; thatfashion will tire of it, and that the rose, with its secret heart oflove; the rose, with its exquisite form; the rose, with its capacity ofshyly and reluctantly unfolding its beauty; the rose, with that odor--ofthe first garden exhaled and yet kept down through all the ages of sin--will become again the fashion, and be more passionately admired for itstemporary banishment. Perhaps the poet will then come back again andsing. What poet could now sing of the "awful chrysanthemum of dawn"?

THE RED BONNET

The Drawer has no wish to make Lent easier for anybody, or rather todiminish the benefit of the penitential season. But in this period ofhuman anxiety and repentance it must be said that not enough account ismade of the moral responsibility of Things. The doctrine is sound; theonly difficulty is in applying it. It can, however, be illustrated by alittle story, which is here confided to the reader in the same trust inwhich it was received. There was once a lady, sober in mind and sedate inmanner, whose plain dress exactly represented her desire to beinconspicuous, to do good, to improve every day of her life in actionsthat should benefit her kind. She was a serious person, inclined toimproving conversation, to the reading of bound books that cost at leasta dollar and a half (fifteen cents of which she gladly contributed to theauthor), and she had a distaste for the gay society which was mainly aflutter of ribbons and talk and pretty faces; and when she meditated, asshe did in her spare moments, her heart was sore over the frivolity oflife and the emptiness of fashion. She longed to make the world better, and without any priggishness she set it an example of simplicity andsobriety, of cheerful acquiescence in plainness and inconspicuousness. 

One day--it was in the autumn--this lady had occasion to buy a new hat. From a great number offered to her she selected a red one with a dull redplume. It did not agree with the rest of her apparel; it did not fit herapparent character. What impulse led to this selection she could notexplain. She was not tired of being good, but something in the jauntinessof the hat and the color pleased her. If it were a temptation, she didnot intend to yield to it, but she thought she would take the hat homeand try it. Perhaps her nature felt the need of a little warmth. The hatpleased her still more when she got it home and put it on and surveyedherself in the mirror. Indeed, there was a new expression in her facethat corresponded to the hat. She put it off and looked at it. There wassomething almost humanly winning and temptatious in it. In short, shekept it, and when she wore it abroad she was not conscious of itsincongruity to herself or to her dress, but of the incongruity of therest of her apparel to the hat, which seemed to have a sort ofintelligence of its own, at least a power of changing and conformingthings to itself. By degrees one article after another in the lady'swardrobe was laid aside, and another substituted for it that answered tothe demanding spirit of the hat. In a little while this plain lady wasnot plain any more, but most gorgeously dressed, and possessed with thedesire to be in the height of the fashion. It came to this, that she hada tea-gown made out of a window-curtain with a flamboyant pattern. Solomon in all his glory would have been ashamed of himself in herpresence. 

But this was not all. Her disposition, her ideas, her whole life, waschanged. She did not any more think of going about doing good, but ofamusing herself. She read nothing but stories in paper covers. In placeof being sedate and sober-minded, she was frivolous to excess; she spentmost of her time with women who liked to "frivol. " She kept Lent in themost expensive way, so as to make the impression upon everybody that shewas better than the extremest kind of Lent. From liking the sedatestcompany she passed to liking the gayest society and the most fashionablemethod of getting rid of her time. Nothing whatever had happened to her, and she is now an ornament to society. 

This story is not an invention; it is a leaf out of life. If this ladythat autumn day had bought a plain bonnet she would have continued on inher humble, sensible way of living. Clearly it was the hat that made thewoman, and not the woman the hat. She had no preconception of it; itsimply happened to her, like any accident--as if she had fallen andsprained her ankle. Some people may say that she had in her a concealedpropensity for frivolity; but the hat cannot escape the moralresponsibility of calling it out if it really existed. The power ofthings to change and create character is well attested. Men live up to orlive down to their clothes, which have a great moral influence on manner, and even on conduct. There was a man run down almost to vagabondage, owing to his increasingly shabby clothing, and he was only saved frombecoming a moral and physical wreck by a remnant of good-breeding in himthat kept his worn boots well polished. In time his boots brought up therest of his apparel and set him on his feet again. Then there is thewell-known example of the honest clerk on a small salary who was ruinedby the gift of a repeating watch--an expensive timepiece that required atleast ten thousand a year to sustain it: he is now in Canada. 

Sometimes the influence of Things is good and sometimes it is bad. Weneed a philosophy that shall tell us why it is one or the other, and fixthe responsibility where it belongs. It does no good, as people alwaysfind out by reflex action, to kick an inanimate thing that has offended, to smash a perverse watch with a hammer, to break a rocking-chair thathas a habit of tipping over backward. If Things are not actuallymalicious, they seem to have a power of revenging themselves. We ought totry to understand them better, and to be more aware of what they can doto us. If the lady who bought the red hat could have known the hiddennature of it, could have had a vision of herself as she was transformedby it, she would as soon have taken a viper into her bosom as have placedthe red tempter on her head. Her whole previous life, her feeling of themoment, show that it was not vanity that changed her, but theinconsiderate association with a Thing that happened to strike her fancy, and which seemed innocent. But no Thing is really powerless for good orevil. 

THE LOSS IN CIVILIZATION

Have we yet hit upon the right idea of civilization? The process whichhas been going on ever since the world began seems to have a defect init; strength, vital power, somehow escapes. When you've got a manthoroughly civilized you cannot do anything more with him. And it isworth reflection what we should do, what could we spend our energies on, and what would evoke them, we who are both civilized and enlightened, ifall nations were civilized and the earth were entirely subdued. That isto say, are not barbarism and vast regions of uncultivated land anecessity of healthful life on this globe? We do not like to admit thatthis process has its cycles, that nations and men, like trees and fruit, grow, ripen, and then decay. The world has always had a conceit that theglobe could be made entirely habitable, and all over the home of asociety constantly growing better. In order to accomplish this we havestriven to eliminate barbarism in man and in nature:

Is there anything more unsatisfactory than a perfect house, perfectgrounds, perfect gardens, art and nature brought into the most absoluteharmony of taste and culture? What more can a man do with it? Whatsatisfaction has a man in it if he really gets to the end of his power toimprove it? There have been such nearly ideal places, and how strongnature, always working against man and in the interest of untamedwildness, likes to riot in them and reduce them to picturesquedestruction! And what sweet sadness, pathos, romantic suggestion, thehuman mind finds in such a ruin! And a society that has attained its endin all possible culture, entire refinement in manners, in tastes, in theart of elegant intellectual and luxurious living--is there nothingpathetic in that? Where is the primeval, heroic force that made the joyof living in the rough old uncivilized days? Even throw in goodness, acertain amount of altruism, gentleness, warm interest in unfortunatehumanity--is the situation much improved? London is probably the mostcivilized centre the world has ever seen; there are gathered more of theelements of that which we reckon the best. Where in history, unless someone puts in a claim for the Frenchman, shall we find a Man so nearlyapproaching the standard we have set up of civilization as theEnglishman, refined by inheritance and tradition, educated almost beyondthe disturbance of enthusiasm, and cultivated beyond the chance ofsurprise? We are speaking of the highest type in manner, information, training, in the acquisition of what the world has to give. Could thesemen have conquered the world? Is it possible that our highestcivilization has lost something of the rough and admirable element thatwe admire in the heroes of Homer and of Elizabeth? What is this London, the most civilized city ever known? Why, a considerable part of itspopulation is more barbarous, more hopelessly barbarous, than any wildrace we know, because they are the barbarians of civilization, the refuseand slag of it, if we dare say that of any humanity. More hopeless, because the virility of savagery has measurably gone out of it. We can dosomething with a degraded race of savages, if it has any stamina in it. What can be done with those who are described as "East-Londoners"?

Every great city has enough of the same element. Is this an accident, oris it a necessity of the refinement that we insist on callingcivilization? We are always sending out missionaries to savage orperverted nations, we are always sending out emigrants to occupy andreduce to order neglected territory. This is our main business. How wouldit be if this business were really accomplished, and there were no morepeoples to teach our way of life to, and no more territory to bring underproductive cultivation? Without the necessity of putting forth thisenergy, a survival of the original force in man, how long would ourcivilization last? In a word, if the world were actually all civilized, wouldn't it be too weak even to ripen? And now, in the great centres, where is accumulated most of that we value as the product of man's bestefforts, is there strength enough to elevate the degraded humanity thatattends our highest cultivation? We have a gay confidence that we can dosomething for Africa. Can we reform London and Paris and New York, whichour own hands have made?

If we cannot, where is the difficulty? Is this a hopeless world? Must italways go on by spurts and relapses, alternate civilization andbarbarism, and the barbarism being necessary to keep us employed andgrowing? Or is there some mistake about our ideal of civilization? Doesour process too much eliminate the rough vigor, courage, stamina of therace? After a time do we just live, or try to live, on literature warmedover, on pretty coloring and drawing instead of painting that stirs thesoul to the heroic facts and tragedies of life? Where did this virile, blood-full, throbbing Russian literature come from; this Russian paintingof Verestchagin, that smites us like a sword with the consciousness ofthe tremendous meaning of existence? Is there a barbaric force left inthe world that we have been daintily trying to cover and apologize forand refine into gentle agreeableness?

These questions are too deep for these pages. Let us make the worldpleasant, and throw a cover over the refuse. We are doing very well, onthe whole, considering what we are and the materials we have to work on. And we must not leave the world so perfectly civilized that theinhabitants, two or three centuries ahead, will have nothing to do. 

SOCIAL SCREAMING

Of all the contrivances for amusement in this agreeable world the"Reception" is the most ingenious, and would probably most excite thewonder of an angel sent down to inspect our social life. If he shouldpause at the entrance of the house where one is in progress, he would bepuzzled. The noise that would greet his ears is different from the deepcontinuous roar in the streets, it is unlike the hum of millions ofseventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the springconventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not compareit to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really subduedand infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but when hecaught sight of the company he would be compelled to recognize it as thenoise of our highest civilization. It may not be perfect, for there arelimits to human powers of endurance, but it is the best we can do. It isnot a chance affair. Here are selected, picked out by special invitation, the best that society can show, the most intelligent, the mostaccomplished, the most beautiful, the best dressed persons in thecommunity--all receptions have this character. The angel would noticethis at once, and he would be astonished at the number of such persons, for the rooms would be so crowded that he would see the hopelessness ofattempting to edge or wedge his way through the throng without tearingoff his wings. An angel, in short, would stand no chance in one of thesebrilliant assemblies on account of his wings, and he probably could notbe heard, on account of the low, heavenly pitch of his voice. Hisinference would be that these people had been selected to come togetherby reason of their superior power of screaming. He would be wrong. 

--They are selected on account of their intelligence, agreeableness, andpower of entertaining each other. They come together, not for exercise, but pleasure, and the more they crowd and jam and struggle, and thelouder they scream, the greater the pleasure. It is a kind of contest, full of good-humor and excitement. The one that has the shrillest voiceand can scream the loudest is most successful. It would seem at firstthat they are under a singular hallucination, imagining that the morenoise there is in the room the better each one can be heard, and so eachone continues to raise his or her voice in order to drown the othervoices. The secret of the game is to pitch the voice one or two octavesabove the ordinary tone. Some throats cannot stand this strain long; theybecome rasped and sore, and the voices break; but this adds to theexcitement and enjoyment of those who can scream with less inconvenience. The angel would notice that if at any time silence was called, in orderthat an announcement of music could be made, in the awful hush thatfollowed people spoke to each other in their natural voices, andeverybody could be heard without effort. But this was not the object ofthe Reception, and in a moment more the screaming would begin again, thevoices growing higher and higher, until, if the roof were taken off, onevast shriek would go up to heaven. 

This is not only a fashion, it is an art. People have to train for it, and as it is a unique amusement, it is worth some trouble to be able tosucceed in it. Men, by reason of their stolidity and deeper voices, cannever be proficients in it; and they do not have so much practice--unlessthey are stock-brokers. Ladies keep themselves in training in theirordinary calls. If three or four meet in a drawing-room they all begin toscream, not that they may be heard--for the higher they go the less theyunderstand each other--but simply to acquire the art of screaming atreceptions. If half a dozen ladies meeting by chance in a parlor shouldconverse quietly in their sweet, ordinary home tones, it might be in acertain sense agreeable, but it would not be fashionable, and it wouldnot strike the prevailing note of our civilization. If it were true thata group of women all like to talk at the same time when they meet (whichis a slander invented by men, who may be just as loquacious, but not solimber-tongued and quick-witted), and raise their voices to a shriek inorder to dominate each other, it could be demonstrated that they would bemore readily heard if they all spoke in low tones. But the object is notconversation; it is the social exhilaration that comes from the wildexercise of the voice in working off a nervous energy; it is so seldomthat in her own house a lady gets a chance to scream. 

The dinner-party, where there are ten or twelve at table, is a favoritechance for this exercise. At a recent dinner, where there were a dozenuncommonly intelligent people, all capable of the most entertainingconversation, by some chance, or owing to some nervous condition, theyall began to speak in a high voice as soon as they were seated, and theeffect was that of a dynamite explosion. It was a cheerful babel ofindistinguishable noise, so loud and shrill and continuous that it wasabsolutely impossible for two people seated on the opposite sides of thetable, and both shouting at each other, to catch an intelligiblesentence. This made a lively dinner. Everybody was animated, and if therewas no conversation, even between persons seated side by side, there wasa glorious clatter and roar; and when it was over, everybody was hoarseand exhausted, and conscious that he had done his best in a high socialfunction. 

This topic is not the selection of the Drawer, the province of which isto note, but not to criticise, the higher civilization. But the inquiryhas come from many cities, from many women, "Cannot something be done tostop social screaming?" The question is referred to the scientific branchof the Social Science Association. If it is a mere fashion, theassociation can do nothing. But it might institute some practicalexperiments. It might get together in a small room fifty people all letloose in the ordinary screaming contest, measure the total volume ofnoise and divide it by fifty, and ascertain how much throat power wasneeded in one person to be audible to another three feet from thelatter's ear. This would sift out the persons fit for such a contest. Theinvestigator might then call a dead silence in the assembly, and requesteach person to talk in a natural voice, then divide the total noise asbefore, and see what chance of being heard an ordinary individual had init. If it turned out in these circumstances that every person presentcould speak with ease and hear perfectly what was said, then the ordermight be given for the talk to go on in that tone, and that every personwho raised the voice and began to scream should be gagged and removed toanother room. In this room could be collected all the screamers to enjoytheir own powers. The same experiment might be tried at a dinner-party, namely, to ascertain if the total hum of low voices in the natural keywould not be less for the individual voice to overcome than the totalscream of all the voices raised to a shriek. If scientific researchdemonstrated the feasibility of speaking in an ordinary voice atreceptions, dinner-parties, and in "calls, " then the Drawer is of opinionthat intelligible and enjoyable conversation would be possible on theseoccasions, if it becomes fashionable not to scream. 

DOES REFINEMENT KILL INDIVIDUALITY?

Is it true that cultivation, what we call refinement, killsindividuality? Or, worse than that even, that one loses his taste byover-cultivation? Those persons are uninteresting, certainly, who havegone so far in culture that they accept conventional standards supposedto be correct, to which they refer everything, and by which they measureeverybody. Taste usually implies a sort of selection; the cultivatedtaste of which we speak is merely a comparison, no longer an individualpreference or appreciation, but only a reference to the conventional andaccepted standard. When a man or woman has reached this stage ofpropriety we are never curious any more concerning their opinions on anysubject. We know that the opinions expressed will not be theirs, evolvedout of their own feeling, but that they will be the cut-and-dried resultsof conventionality. 

It is doubtless a great comfort to a person to know exactly how to feeland what to say in every new contingency, but whether the zest of life isnot dulled by this ability is a grave question, for it leaves no room forsurprise and little for emotion. O ye belles of Newport and of BarHarbor, in your correct and conventional agreement of what is proper andagreeable, are you wasting your sweet lives by rule? Is your compact, graceful, orderly society liable to be monotonous in its gay repetitionof the same thing week after week? Is there nothing outside of thatenvied circle which you make so brilliant? Is the Atlantic shore the onlycoast where beauty may lounge and spread its net of enchantment? TheAtlantic shore and Europe? Perhaps on the Pacific you might come back toyour original selves, and find again that freedom and that charm ofindividuality that are so attractive. Some sparkling summer morning, ifyou chanced to drive four-in-hand along the broad beach at Santa Barbara, inhaling, the spicy breeze from the Sandwich Islands, along the curvedshore where the blue of the sea and the purple of the mountains remindyou of the Sorrentine promontory, and then dashed away into the canon ofMontecito, among the vineyards and orange orchards and live-oaks andpalms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the gardenand the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious sea-air, would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new lifewhere it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to besurprised? It is a far cry from Newport to Santa Barbara, and a wholeworld of new sensations lies on the way, experiences for which you willhave no formula of experience. To take the journey is perhaps too heroictreatment for the disease of conformity--the sort of malaria of ourexclusive civilization. 

The Drawer is not urging this journey, nor any break-up of the socialorder, for it knows how painful a return to individuality may be. It iseasier to go on in the subordination of one's personality to the strictlyconventional life. It expects rather to record a continually perfectedmachinery, a life in which not only speech but ideas are brought intorule. We have had something to say occasionally of the art ofconversation, which is in danger of being lost in the confused babel ofthe reception and the chatter of the dinner-party--the art of listeningand the art of talking both being lost. Society is taking alarm at this, and the women as usual are leaders in a reform. Already, by reason ofclubs-literary, scientific, economic--woman is the well-informed part ofour society. In the "Conversation Lunch" this information is now broughtinto use. The lunch, and perhaps the dinner, will no longer be theoccasion of satisfying the appetite or of gossip, but of improving talk. The giver of the lunch will furnish the topic of conversation. Twopersons may not speak at once; two persons may not talk with each other;all talk is to be general and on the topic assigned, and while one isspeaking, the others must listen. Perhaps each lady on taking her seatmay find in her napkin a written slip of paper which shall be the guideto her remarks. Thus no time is to be wasted on frivolous topics. Theordinary natural flow of rejoinder and repartee, the swirling of talkaround one obstacle and another, its winding and rippling here and thereas individual whim suggests, will not be allowed, but all will beimproving, and tend to that general culture of which we have beenspeaking. The ladies' lunch is not to be exactly a debating society, butan open occasion for the delivery of matured thought and the acquisitionof information. 

The object is not to talk each other down, but to improve the mind, which, unguided, is apt to get frivolous at the convivial board. It isnotorious that men by themselves at lunch or dinner usually shun gravetopics and indulge in persiflage, and even descend to talk about wine andthe made dishes. The women's lunch of this summer takes higher ground. Itwill give Mr. Browning his final estimate; it will settle Mr. Ibsen; itwill determine the suffrage question; it will adjudicate between thetotal abstainers and the halfway covenant of high license; it will nothesitate to cut down the tariff. 

The Drawer anticipates a period of repose in all our feverish sociallife. We shall live more by rule and less by impulse. When we meet weshall talk on set topics, determined beforehand. By this concentration weshall be able as one man or one woman to reach the human limit ofcultivation, and get rid of all the aberrations of individual assertionand feeling. By studying together in clubs, by conversing in monotone andby rule, by thinking the same things and exchanging ideas until we havenone left, we shall come into that social placidity which is one dream ofthe nationalists--one long step towards what may be called a prairiemental condition--the slope of Kansas, where those who are five thousandfeet above the sea-level seem to be no higher than those who dwell in theMissouri Valley. 

THE DIRECTOIRE GOWN

We are all more or less devoted to 'liberte', 'egalite', and considerable'fraternite', and we have various ways of showing it. It is the opinionof many that women do not care much about politics, and that if they areinterested at all in them, they are by nature aristocrats. It is said, indeed, that they care much more about their dress than they do about thelaws or the form of government. This notion arises from a misapprehensionboth of the nature of woman and of the significance of dress. 

Men have an idea that fashions are haphazard, and are dictated and guidedby no fixed principles of action, and represent no great currents inpolitics or movements of the human mind. Women, who are exceedinglysubtle in all their operations, feel that it is otherwise. They have aprescience of changes in the drift of public affairs, and a delicatesensitiveness that causes them to adjust their raiment to express thesechanges. Men have written a great deal in their bungling way about thephilosophy of clothes. Women exhibit it, and if we should study them moreand try to understand them instead of ridiculing their fashions as whimsbred of an inconstant mind and mere desire for change, we would have abetter apprehension of the great currents of modern political life andsociety. 

Many observers are puzzled by the gradual and insidious return recentlyto the mode of the Directoire, and can see in it no significance otherthan weariness of some other mode. We need to recall the fact of theinfluence of the centenary period upon the human mind. It is nearly acentury since the fashion of the Directoire. What more natural, considering the evidence that we move in spirals, if not in circles, thatthe signs of the anniversary of one of the most marked periods in historyshould be shown in feminine apparel? It is woman's way of hinting what isin the air, the spirit that is abroad in the world. It will be rememberedthat women took a prominent part in the destruction of the Bastile, helping, indeed, to tear down that odious structure with their own hands, the fall of which, it is well known, brought in the classic Greek andrepublican simplicity, the subtle meaning of the change being expressedin French gowns. Naturally there was a reaction from all this towardsaristocratic privileges and exclusiveness, which went on for many years, until in France monarchy and empire followed the significant leadershipof the French modistes. So strong was this that it passed to othercountries, and in England the impulse outlasted even the Reform Bill, andskirts grew more and more bulbous, until it did not need more than threeor four women to make a good-sized assembly. This was not the result of, a whim about clothes, but a subtle recognition of a spirit ofexclusiveness and defense abroad in the world. Each woman became her ownBastile. Men surrounded it and thundered against it without the leasteffect. It seemed as permanent as the Pyramids. At every male attack itexpanded, and became more aggressive and took up more room. Women havesuch an exquisite sense of things--just as they have now in regard to bigobstructive hats in the theatres. They know that most of the plays areinferior and some of them are immoral, and they attend the theatres withhead-dresses that will prevent as many people as possible from seeing thestage and being corrupted by anything that takes place on it. They objectto the men seeing some of the women who are now on the stage. Ithappened, as to the private Bastiles, that the women at last recognized achange in the sociological and political atmosphere of the world, andwithout consulting any men of affairs or caring for their opinion, downwent the Bastiles. When women attacked them, in obedience to theirpolitical instincts, they collapsed like punctured balloons. Naturalwoman was measurably (that is, a capacity of being measured) restored tothe world. And we all remember the great political revolutionarymovements of 1848. 

Now France is still the arbiter of the modes. Say what we may aboutBerlin, copy their fashion plates as we will, or about London, or NewYork, or Tokio, it is indisputable that the woman in any company who hason a Paris gown--the expression is odious, but there is no other that inthese days would be comprehended--"takes the cake. " It is not that thewomen care for this as a mere matter of apparel. But they are sensitiveto the political atmosphere, to the philosophical significance that ithas to great impending changes. We are approaching the centenary of thefall of the Bastile. The French have no Bastile to lay low, nor, indeed, any Tuileries to burn up; but perhaps they might get a good way ahead bydemolishing Notre Dame and reducing most of Paris to ashes. Apparentlythey are on the eve of doing something. The women of the world may notknow what it is, but they feel the approaching recurrence of a period. Their movements are not yet decisive. It is as yet only tentatively thatthey adopt the mode of the Directoire. It is yet uncertain--a sort ofBoulangerism in dress. But if we watch it carefully we shall be able topredict with some assurance the drift in Paris. The Directoire dresspoints to another period of republican simplicity, anarchy, and the ruleof a popular despot. 

It is a great pity, in view of this valuable instinct in women and theprophetic significance of dress, that women in the United States do notexercise their gifts with regard to their own country. We should thenknow at any given time whether we are drifting into Blaineism, orClevelandism, or centralization, or free-trade, or extreme protection, orrule by corporations. We boast greatly of our smartness. It is time wewere up and dressed to prove it. 

THE MYSTERY OF THE SEX

There appears to be a great quantity of conceit around, especiallyconcerning women. The statement was recently set afloat that a well-knownlady had admitted that George Meredith understands women better than anywriter who has preceded him. This may be true, and it may be a wilystatement to again throw men off the track; at any rate it contains theold assumption of a mystery, practically insoluble, about the gentlersex. Women generally encourage this notion, and men by their gingerlytreatment of it seemed to accept it. But is it well-founded, is there anymore mystery about women--than about men? Is the feminine nature any moredifficult to understand than the masculine nature? Have women, consciousof inferior strength, woven this notion of mystery about themselves as adefense, or have men simply idealized them for fictitious purposes? Torecur to the case cited, is there any evidence that Mr. Meredithunderstands human nature--as exhibited in women any better than humannature--in men, or is more consistent in the production of one than ofthe other? Historically it would be interesting to trace the rise of thisnotion of woman as an enigma. The savage races do not appear to have it. A woman to the North American Indian is a simple affair, dealt withwithout circumlocution. In the Bible records there is not much mysteryabout her; there are many tributes to her noble qualities, and somepretty severe and uncomplimentary things are said about her, but there islittle affectation of not understanding her. She may be a prophetess, ora consoler, or a snare, but she is no more "deceitful and desperatelywicked" than anybody else. There is nothing mysterious about her firstrecorded performance. Eve trusted the serpent, and Adam trusted Eve. Themystery was in the serpent. There is no evidence that the ancientEgyptian woman was more difficult to comprehend than the Egyptian man. They were both doubtless wily as highly civilized people are apt to be;the "serpent of old Nile" was in them both. Is it in fact till we come tomediaeval times, and the chivalric age, that women are set up as beingmore incomprehensible than men? That is, less logical, more whimsical, more uncertain in their mental processes? The play-writers and essayistsof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries "worked" this notioncontinually. They always took an investigating and speculating attitudetowards women, that fostered the conceit of their separateness and veiledpersonality. Every woman was supposed to be playing a part behind a mask. Montaigne is always investigating woman as a mystery. It is, forinstance, a mystery he does not relish that, as he says, women commonlyreserve the publication of their vehement affections for their husbandstill they have lost them; then the woful countenance "looks not so muchback as forward, and is intended rather to get a new husband than tolament the old. " And he tells this story:

"When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady who is yet living, and the widow of a prince, had, I know not what, more ornament in herdress than our laws of widowhood will well allow, which being reproachedwith as a great indecency, she made answer 'that it was because she wasnot cultivating more friendships, and would never marry again. '" Thiscynical view of woman, as well as the extravagantly complimentary onesometimes taken by the poets, was based upon the notion that woman was anunexplainable being. When she herself adopted the idea is uncertain. Ofcourse all this has a very practical bearing upon modern life, theposition of women in it, and the so-called reforms. If woman is sodifferent from man, to the extent of being an unexplainable mystery, science ought to determine the exact state of the case, and ascertain ifthere is any remedy for it. If it is only a literary creation, we oughtto know it. Science could tell, for instance, whether there is apeculiarity in the nervous system, any complications in the nervouscentres, by which the telegraphic action of the will gets crossed, sothat, for example, in reply to a proposal of marriage, the intended "Yes"gets delivered as "No. " Is it true that the mental process in one sex isintuitive, and in the other logical, with every link necessary andvisible? Is it true, as the romancers teach, that the mind in one sexacts indirectly and in the other directly, or is this indirect processonly characteristic of exceptions in both sexes? Investigation ought tofind this out, so that we can adjust the fit occupations for both sexeson a scientific basis. We are floundering about now in a sea of doubt. Associety becomes more complicated, women will become a greater and greatermystery, or rather will be regarded so by themselves and be treated so bymen. 

Who can tell how much this notion of mystery in the sex stands in the wayof its free advancement all along the line? Suppose the proposal weremade to women to exchange being mysterious for the ballot? Would they doit? Or have they a sense of power in the possession of this concededincomprehensibility that they would not lay down for any visible insigniaof that power? And if the novelists and essayists have raised a mistabout the sex, which it willingly masquerades in, is it not time that thescientists should determine whether the mystery exists in nature or onlyin the imagination?

THE CLOTHES OF FICTION

The Drawer has never undervalued clothes. Whatever other heresies it mayhave had, however it may have insisted that the more a woman learns, themore she knows of books, the higher her education is carried in all theknowledges, the more interesting she will be, not only for an hour, butas a companion for life, it has never said that she is less attractivewhen dressed with taste and according to the season. Love itself couldscarcely be expected to survive a winter hat worn after Easter. And thephilosophy of this is not on the surface, nor applicable to women only. In this the highest of created things are under a law having a much widerapplication. Take as an item novels, the works of fiction, which havebecome an absolute necessity in the modern world, as necessary to divertthe mind loaded with care and under actual strain as to fill the vacancyin otherwise idle brains. They have commonly a summer and a winterapparel. The publishers understand this. As certainly as the birdsappear, comes the crop of summer novels, fluttering down upon the stalls, in procession through the railway trains, littering the drawing-roomtables, in light paper, covers, ornamental, attractive in colors andfanciful designs, as welcome and grateful as the girls in muslin. Whenthe thermometer is in the eighties, anything heavy and formidable isdistasteful. The housekeeper knows we want few solid dishes, but saladsand cooling drinks. The publisher knows that we want our literature (orwhat passes for that) in light array. In the winter we prefer the boardsand the rich heavy binding, however light the tale may be; but in thesummer, though the fiction be as grave and tragic as wandering love andbankruptcy, we would have it come to us lightly clad--out of stays, as itwere. 

It would hardly be worth while to refer to this taste in the apparel ofour fiction did it not have deep and esoteric suggestions, and could notthe novelists themselves get a hint from it. Is it realized how muchdepends upon the clothes that are worn by the characters in the novels--clothes put on not only to exhibit the inner life of the characters, but to please the readers who are to associate with them? It is true thatthere are novels that almost do away with the necessity of fashionmagazines and fashion plates in the family, so faithful are they in thelatest millinery details, and so fully do they satisfy the longing of allof us to know what is chic for the moment. It is pretty well understood, also, that women, and even men, are made to exhibit the deepest passionsand the tenderest emotions in the crises of their lives by the clothesthey put on. How the woman in such a crisis hesitates before herwardrobe, and at last chooses just what will express her innermostfeeling! Does she dress for her lover as she dresses to receive herlawyer who has come to inform her that she is living beyond her income?Would not the lover be spared time and pain if he knew, as the novelistknows, whether the young lady is dressing for a rejection or anacceptance? Why does the lady intending suicide always throw on awaterproof when she steals out of the house to drown herself? Thenovelist knows the deep significance of every article of toilet, andnature teaches him to array his characters for the summer novel in theairy draperies suitable to the season. It is only good art that the coverof the novel and the covers of the characters shall be in harmony. Heknows, also, that the characters in the winter novel must be adequatelyprotected. We speak, of course, of the season stories. Novels that are torun through a year, or maybe many years, and are to set forth thepassions and trials of changing age and varying circumstance, requiredifferent treatment and wider millinery knowledge. They are naturallymore expensive. The wardrobe required in an all-round novel wouldbankrupt most of us. 

But to confine ourselves to the season novel, it is strange that some onehas not invented the patent adjustable story that with a slight changewould do for summer or winter, following the broad hint of thepublishers, who hasten in May to throw whatever fiction they have on handinto summer clothes. The winter novel, by this invention, could be easilyfitted for summer wear. All the novelist need do would be to change theclothes of his characters. And in the autumn, if the novel provedpopular, he could change again, with the advantage of being in the latestfashion. It would only be necessary to alter a few sentences in a few ofthe stereotype pages. Of course this would make necessary other slightalterations, for no kind-hearted writer would be cruel to his owncreations, and expose them to the vicissitudes of the seasons. He couldinsert "rain" for "snow, " and "green leaves" for "skeleton branches, "make a few verbal changes of that sort, and regulate the thermometer. Itwould cost very little to adjust the novel in this way to any season. Itis worth thinking of. 

And this leads to a remark upon the shocking indifference of somenovelists to the ordinary comfort of their characters. In practical lifewe cannot, but in his realm the novelist can, control the weather. He canmake it generally pleasant. We do not object to a terrific thunder-showernow and then, as the sign of despair and a lost soul, but perpetualdrizzle and grayness and inclemency are tedious to the reader, who hasenough bad weather in his private experience. The English are greatersinners in this respect than we are. They seem to take a brutal delightin making it as unpleasant as possible for their fictitious people. Thereis R--b--rt 'lsm--r', for example. External trouble is piled on to theinternal. The characters are in a perpetual soak. There is not a dry ragon any of them, from the beginning of the book to the end. They are sentout in all weathers, and are drenched every day. Often their wet clothesare frozen on them; they are exposed to cutting winds and sleet in theirfaces, bedrabbled in damp grass, stood against slippery fences, with hailand frost lowering their vitality, and expected under these circumstancesto make love and be good Christians. Drenched and wind-blown for years, that is what they are. It may be that this treatment has excited thesympathy of the world, but is it legitimate? Has a novelist the right tosubject his creations to tortures that he would not dare to inflict uponhis friends? It is no excuse to say that this is normal English weather;it is not the office of fiction to intensify and rub in the unavoidableevils of life. The modern spirit of consideration for fictitiouscharacters that prevails with regard to dress ought to extend in areasonable degree to their weather. This is not a strained corollary tothe demand for an appropriately costumed novel. 

THE BROAD A

It cannot for a moment be supposed that the Drawer would discourageself-culture and refinement of manner and of speech. But it would nothesitate to give a note of warning if it believed that the presentdevotion to literature and the pursuits of the mind were likely, by thehighest authorities, to be considered bad form. In an intellectuallyinclined city (not in the northeast) a club of ladies has been formed forthe cultivation of the broad 'a' in speech. Sporadic efforts havehitherto been made for the proper treatment of this letter of thealphabet with individual success, especially with those who have been inEngland, or have known English men and women of the broad-gauge variety. Discerning travelers have made the American pronunciation of the letter aa reproach to the republic, that is to say, a means of distinguishing anative of this country. The true American aspires to be cosmopolitan, anddoes not want to be "spotted"--if that word may be used--in society byany peculiarity of speech, that is, by any American peculiarity. Why, atthe bottom of the matter, a narrow 'a' should be a disgrace it is noteasy to see, but it needs no reason if fashion or authority condemns it. This country is so spread out, without any social or literary centreuniversally recognized as such, and the narrow 'a' has become soprevalent, that even fashion finds it difficult to reform it. The bestpeople, who are determined to broaden all their 'a''s, will forget inmoments of excitement, and fall back into old habits. It requiresconstant vigilance to keep the letter 'a' flattened out. It is in vainthat scholars have pointed out that in the use of this letter lies themain difference between the English and the American speech; eitherAmericans generally do not care if this is the fact, or fashion can onlywork a reform in a limited number of people. It seems, therefore, necessary that there should be an organized effort to deal with thispronunciation, and clubs will no doubt be formed all over the country, inimitation of the one mentioned, until the broad a will become as commonas flies in summer. When this result is attained it will be time toattack the sound of 'u' with clubs, and make universal the French sound. In time the American pronunciation will become as superior to all othersas are the American sewing-machines and reapers. In the Broad A Clubevery member who misbehaves--that is, mispronounces--is fined a nickelfor each offense. Of course in the beginning there is a good deal ofrevenue from this source, but the revenue diminishes as the clubimproves, so that we have the anomaly of its failure to beself-supporting in proportion to its excellence. Just now if these clubscould suddenly become universal, and the penalty be enforced, we couldhave the means of paying off the national debt in a year. 

We do not wish to attach too much importance to this movement, but ratherto suggest to a continent yearning for culture in letters and in speechwhether it may not be carried too far. The reader will remember thatthere came a time in Athens when culture could mock at itself, and therest of the country may be warned in time of a possible departure fromgood form in devotion to language and literature by the present attitudeof modern Athens. Probably there is no esoteric depth in literature orreligion, no refinement in intellectual luxury, that this favored cityhas not sounded. It is certainly significant, therefore, when thepriestesses and devotees of mental superiority there turn upon it andrend it, when they are heartily tired of the whole literary business. There is always this danger when anything is passionately pursued as afashion, that it will one day cease to be the fashion. Plato and Buddhaand even Emerson become in time like a last season's fashion plate. Evena "friend of the spirit" will have to go. Culture is certain to mockitself in time. 

The clubs for the improvement of the mind--the female mind--and ofspeech, which no doubt had their origin in modern Athens, should know, then, that it is the highest mark of female culture now in that beautifultown to despise culture, to affect the gayest and most joyous ignorance--ignorance of books, of all forms of so-called intellectual development, and all literary men, women, and productions whatsoever! This genuinemovement of freedom may be a real emancipation. If it should reach themetropolis, what a relief it might bring to thousands who are, under ahigh sense of duty, struggling to advance the intellectual life. There isthis to be said, however, that it is only the very brightest people, those who have no need of culture, who have in fact passed beyond allculture, who can take this position in regard to it, and actually revelin the delights of ignorance. One must pass into a calm place when he isbeyond the desire to know anything or to do anything. 

It is a chilling thought, unless one can rise to the highest philosophyof life, that even the broad 'a', when it is attained, may not be apermanence. Let it be common, and what distinction will there be in it?When devotion to study, to the reading of books, to conversation onimproving topics, becomes a universal fashion, is it not evident that onecan only keep a leadership in fashion by throwing the whole thingoverboard, and going forward into the natural gayety of life, which caresfor none of these things? We suppose the Constitution of the UnitedStates will stand if the day comes--nay, now is--when the women ofChicago call the women of Boston frivolous, and the women of Boston knowtheir immense superiority and advancement in being so, but it would be ablank surprise to the country generally to know that it was on the wrongtrack. The fact is that culture in this country is full of surprises, andso doubles and feints and comes back upon itself that the most diligentrecorder can scarcely note its changes. The Drawer can only warn; itcannot advise. 

CHEWING GUM

No language that is unfortunately understood by the greater portion ofthe people who speak English, thousands are saying on the first ofJanuary--in 1890, a far-off date that it is wonderful any one has livedto see--"Let us have a new deal!" It is a natural exclamation, and doesnot necessarily mean any change of purpose. It always seems to a man thatif he could shuffle the cards he could increase his advantages in thegame of life, and, to continue the figure which needs so littleexplanation, it usually appears to him that he could play anybody else'shand better than his own. In all the good resolutions of the new year, then, it happens that perhaps the most sincere is the determination toget a better hand. Many mistake this for repentance and an intention toreform, when generally it is only the desire for a new shuffle of thecards. Let us have a fresh pack and a new deal, and start fair. It seemsidle, therefore, for the moralist to indulge in a homily about annualgood intentions, and habits that ought to be dropped or acquired, on thefirst of January. He can do little more than comment on the passing show. 

It will be admitted that if the world at this date is not sociallyreformed it is not the fault of the Drawer, and for the reason that ithas been not so much a critic as an explainer and encourager. It is inthe latter character that it undertakes to defend and justify a nationalindustry that has become very important within the past ten years. Agreat deal of capital is invested in it, and millions of people areactively employed in it. The varieties of chewing gum that aremanufactured would be a matter of surprise to those who have paid noattention to the subject, and who may suppose that the millions of mouthsthey see engaged in its mastication have a common and vulgar taste. Fromthe fact that it can be obtained at the apothecary's, an impression hasgot abroad that it is medicinal. This is not true. The medical professiondo not use it, and what distinguishes it from drugs-that they also do notuse--is the fact that they do not prescribe it. It is neither a narcoticnor a stimulant. It cannot strictly be said to soothe or to excite. Thehabit of using it differs totally from that of the chewing of tobacco orthe dipping of snuff. It might, by a purely mechanical operation, keep aperson awake, but no one could go to sleep chewing gum. It is in itselfneither tonic nor sedative. It is to be noticed also that the gum habitdiffers from the tobacco habit in that the aromatic and elastic substanceis masticated, while the tobacco never is, and that the mastication leadsto nothing except more mastication. The task is one that can never befinished. The amount of energy expended in this process if capitalized orconserved would produce great results. Of course the individual doeslittle, but if the power evolved by the practice in a district schoolcould be utilized, it would suffice to run the kindergarten department. The writer has seen a railway car--say in the West--filled with youngwomen, nearly every one of whose jaws and pretty mouths was engaged inthis pleasing occupation; and so much power was generated that it would, if applied, have kept the car in motion if the steam had been shutoff--at least it would have furnished the motive for illuminating the carby electricity. 

This national industry is the subject of constant detraction, satire, andridicule by the newspaper press. This is because it is not understood, and it may be because it is mainly a female accomplishment: the few menwho chew gum may be supposed to do so by reason of gallantry. There mightbe no more sympathy with it in the press if the real reason for thepractice were understood, but it would be treated more respectfully. Somehave said that the practice arises from nervousness--the idle desire tobe busy without doing anything--and because it fills up the pauses ofvacuity in conversation. But this would not fully account for thepractice of it in solitude. Some have regarded it as in obedience to thefeminine instinct for the cultivation of patience and self-denial--patience in a fruitless activity, and self-denial in the eternal act ofmastication without swallowing. It is no more related to these virtuesthan it is to the habit of the reflective cow in chewing her cud. The cowwould never chew gum. The explanation is a more philosophical one, andrelates to a great modern social movement. It is to strengthen anddevelop and make more masculine the lower jaw. The critic who says thatthis is needless, that the inclination in women to talk would adequatelydevelop this, misses the point altogether. Even if it could be provedthat women are greater chatterers than men, the critic would gainnothing. Women have talked freely since creation, but it remains truethat a heavy, strong lower jaw is a distinctively masculinecharacteristic. It is remarked that if a woman has a strong lower jaw sheis like a man. Conversation does not create this difference, nor removeit; for the development of a lower jaw in women constant mechanicalexercise of the muscles is needed. Now, a spirit of emancipation, ofemulation, is abroad, as it ought to be, for the regeneration of theworld. It is sometimes called the coming to the front of woman in everyact and occupation that used to belong almost exclusively to man. It isnot necessary to say a word to justify this. But it is often accompaniedby a misconception, namely, that it is necessary for woman to be likeman, not only in habits, but in certain physical characteristics. Nowoman desires a beard, because a beard means care and trouble, and woulddetract from feminine beauty, but to have a strong and, in appearance, aresolute under-jaw may be considered a desirable note of masculinity, andof masculine power and privilege, in the good time coming. Hence thecultivation of it by the chewing of gum is a recognizable and reasonableinstinct, and the practice can be defended as neither a whim nor a vainwaste of energy and nervous force. In a generation or two it may be laidaside as no longer necessary, or men may be compelled to resort to it topreserve their supremacy. 

WOMEN IN CONGRESS

It does not seem to be decided yet whether women are to take the Senateor the House at Washington in the new development of what is called thedual government. There are disadvantages in both. The members of theSenate are so few that the women of the country would not be adequatelyrepresented in it; and the Chamber in which the House meets is too largefor women to make speeches in with any pleasure to themselves or theirhearers. This last objection is, however, frivolous, for the speecheswill be printed in the Record; and it is as easy to count women on a voteas men. There is nothing in the objection, either, that the Chamber wouldneed to be remodeled, and the smoking-rooms be turned into Day Nurseries. The coming woman will not smoke, to be sure; neither will she, in comingforward to take charge of the government, plead the Baby Act. Only thosewomen, we are told, would be elected to Congress whose age and positionenable them to devote themselves exclusively to politics. The question, therefore, of taking to themselves the Senate or the House will bedecided by the women themselves upon other grounds--as to whether theywish to take the initiative in legislation and hold the power of thepurse, or whether they prefer to act as a check, to exercise the hightreaty-making power, and to have a voice in selecting the women who shallbe sent to represent us abroad. Other things being equal, women willnaturally select the Upper House, and especially as that will give theman opportunity to reject any but the most competent women for the SupremeBench. The irreverent scoffers at our Supreme Court have in the pastcomplained (though none do now) that there were "old women" in gowns onthe bench. There would be no complaint of the kind in the future. Thejudges would be as pretty as those who assisted in the judgment of Paris, with changed functions; there would be no monotony in the dress, and theSupreme Bench would be one of the most attractive spectacles inWashington. When the judges as well as the advocates are Portias, the lawwill be an agreeable occupation. 

This is, however, mere speculation. We do not understand that it is theimmediate purpose of women to take the whole government, though someextravagant expectations are raised by the admission of new States thatare ruled by women. They may wish to divide--and conquer. One plan is, instead of dual Chambers of opposite sexes, to mingle in both the Senateand the House. And this is more likely to be the plan adopted, becausethe revolution is not to be violent, and, indeed, cannot take placewithout some readjustment of the home life. We have at present whatCharles Reade would have called only a right-handed civilization. Tospeak metaphorically, men cannot use their left hands, or, to drop themetaphor, before the government can be fully reorganized men must learnto do women's work. It may be a fair inference from this movement thatwomen intend to abandon the sacred principle of Home Rule. Thisabandonment is foreshadowed in a recent election in a small Western city, where the female voters made a clean sweep, elected an entire citycouncil of women and most of the other officers, including the policejudge and the mayor. The latter lady, by one of those intrusions ofnature which reform is not yet able to control, became a mother and amayor the same week. Her husband had been city clerk, and held over; butfortunately an arrangement was made with him to stay at home and takecare of the baby, unofficially, while the mayor attends to her publicduties. Thus the city clerk will gradually be initiated into the dutiesof home rule, and when the mayor is elected to Congress he will be readyto accompany her to Washington and keep house. The imagination likes todwell upon this, for the new order is capable of infinite extension. Whenthe State takes care of all the children in government nurseries, and themayor has taken her place in the United States Senate, her husband, if hehas become sufficiently reformed and feminized, may go to the House, andthe reunited family of two, clubbing their salaries, can live in greatcomfort. 

All this can be easily arranged, whether we are to have a dual governmentof sexes or a mixed House and Senate. The real difficulty is about asingle Executive. Neither sex will be willing to yield to the other thisvast power. We might elect a man and wife President and Vice-President, but the Vice-President, of whatever sex, could not well preside over theSenate and in the White House at the same time. It is true that theConstitution provides that the President and Vice-President shall not beof the same State, but residence can be acquired to get over this aseasily as to obtain a divorce; and a Constitution that insists uponspeaking of the President as "he" is too antiquated to be respected. Whenthe President is a woman, it can matter little whether her husband orsome other woman presides in the Senate. Even the reformers will hardlyinsist upon two Presidents in order to carry out the equality idea, sothat we are probably anticipating difficulties that will not occur inpractice. 

The Drawer has only one more practical suggestion. As the right of votingcarries with it the right to hold any elective office, a great changemust take place in Washington life. Now for some years the divergence ofsociety and politics has been increasing at the capital. With women inboth Houses, and on the Supreme Bench, and at the heads of thedepartments, social and political life will become one and the samething; receptions and afternoon teas will be held in the Senate andHouse, and political caucuses in all the drawing-rooms. And then lifewill begin to be interesting. 

SHALL WOMEN PROPOSE?

The shyness of man--meaning the "other sex" referred to in the woman'sjournals--has often been noticed in novels, and sometimes in real life. This shyness is, however, so exceptional as to be suspicious. The shyyoung man may provoke curiosity, but he does not always inspire respect. Roughly estimated, shyness is not considered a manly quality, while it isone of the most pleasing and attractive of the feminine traits, and thereis something pathetic in the expression "He is as shy as a girl;" it mayappeal for sympathy and the exercise of the protective instinct in women. Unfortunately it is a little discredited, so many of the old playsturning upon its assumption by young blades who are no better than theyshould be. 

What would be the effect upon the masculine character and comfort if thisshyness should become general, as it may in a contingency that is alreadyon the horizon? We refer, of course, to the suggestion, coming fromvarious quarters, that women should propose. The reasonableness of thissuggestion may not lie on the surface; it may not be deduced from theuniform practice, beginning with the primitive men and women; it may notbe inferred from the open nature of the two sexes (for the sake ofargument two sexes must still be insisted on); but it is found in theadvanced civilization with which we are struggling. Why should not womenpropose? Why should they be at a disadvantage in an affair which concernsthe happiness of the whole life? They have as much right to a choice asmen, and to an opportunity to exercise it. Why should they occupy anegative position, and be restricted, in making the most important partof their career, wholly to the choice implied in refusals? In fact, marriage really concerns them more than it does men; they have to bearthe chief of its burdens. A wide and free choice for them would, then, seem to be only fair. Undeniably a great many men are inattentive, unobserving, immersed in some absorbing pursuit, undecided, and at timesbashful, and liable to fall into union with women who happen to be nearthem, rather than with those who are conscious that they would make themthe better wives. Men, unaided by the finer feminine instincts of choice, are so apt to be deceived. In fact, man's inability to "match" anythingis notorious. If he cannot be trusted in the matter of worsted-work, whyshould he have such distinctive liberty in the most important matter ofhis life? Besides, there are many men--and some of the best who get intoa habit of not marrying at all, simply because the right woman has notpresented herself at the right time. Perhaps, if women had the openprivilege of selection, many a good fellow would be rescued frommiserable isolation, and perhaps also many a noble woman whom chance, ora stationary position, or the inertia of the other sex, has left to bloomalone, and waste her sweetness on relations, would be the centre of acharming home, furnishing the finest spectacle seen in this uphill world--a woman exercising gracious hospitality, and radiating to a circle farbeyond her home the influence of her civilizing personality. For, notwithstanding all the centrifugal forces of this age, it is probablethat the home will continue to be the fulcrum on which women will movethe world. 

It may be objected that it would be unfair to add this opportunity to thealready, overpowering attractions of woman, and that man would be put atan immense disadvantage, since he might have too much gallantry, or notenough presence of mind, to refuse a proposal squarely and fascinatinglymade, although his judgment scarcely consented, and his ability tosupport a wife were more than doubtful. Women would need to exercise agreat deal of prudence and discretion, or there would be something like apanic, and a cry along the male line of 'Sauve qui peut'; for it ismatter of record that the bravest men will sometimes run away from dangeron a sudden impulse. 

This prospective social revolution suggests many inquiries. What would bethe effect upon the female character and disposition of a possible, though not probable, refusal, or of several refusals? Would she becomeembittered and desperate, and act as foolishly as men often do? Would herown sex be considerate, and give her a fair field if they saw she waspaying attention to a young man, or an old one? And what effect wouldthis change in relations have upon men? Would it not render that sporadicshyness of which we have spoken epidemic? Would it frighten men, rendering their position less stable in their own eyes, or would itfeminize them--that is, make them retiring, blushing, self-consciousbeings? And would this change be of any injury to them in their necessaryfight for existence in this pushing world? What would be the effect uponcourtship if both the men and the women approached each other as wooers?In ordinary transactions one is a buyer and one is a seller--to put itcoarsely. If seller met seller and buyer met buyer, trade would languish. But this figure cannot be continued, for there is no romance in a bargainof any sort; and what we should most fear in a scientific age is the lossof romance. 

This is, however, mere speculation. The serious aspect of the proposedchange is the effect it will have upon the character of men, who are notenough considered in any of these discussions. The revolution will be aradical one in one respect. We may admit that in the future woman cantake care of herself, but how will it be with man, who has had littledisciplinary experience of adversity, simply because he has beenpermitted to have his own way? Heretofore his life has had a stimulus. When he proposes to a woman, he in fact says: "I am able to support you;I am able to protect you from the rough usage of the world; I am strongand ambitious, and eager to take upon myself the lovely bondage of thisresponsibility. I offer you this love because I feel the courage andresponsibility of my position. " That is the manly part of it. What effectwill it have upon his character to be waiting round, unselected andundecided, until some woman comes to him, and fixes her fascinating eyesupon him, and says, in effect: "I can support you; I can defend you. Haveno fear of the future; I will be at once your shield and your backbone. Itake the responsibility of my choice. " There are a great many men now, who have sneaked into their positions by a show of courage, who aresupported one way and another by women. It might be humiliating to knowjust how many men live by the labors of their wives. And what would bethe effect upon the character of man if the choice, and theresponsibility of it, and the support implied by it in marriage, weregenerally transferred to woman?

FROCKS AND THE STAGE

The condescension to literature and to the stage is one of the notablecharacteristics of this agreeable time. We have to admit that literatureis rather the fashion, without the violent presumption that the authorand the writer have the same social position that is conferred by money, or by the mysterious virtue there is in pedigree. A person does not losecaste by using the pen, or even by taking the not-needed pay for usingit. To publish a book or to have an article accepted by a magazine maygive a sort of social distinction, either as an exhibition of a certainunexpected capacity or a social eccentricity. It is hardly too much tosay that it has become the fashion to write, as it used to be to dancethe minuet well, or to use the broadsword, or to stand a gentlemanly millwith a renowned bruiser. Of course one ought not to do thisprofessionally exactly, ought not to prepare for doing it by study andsevere discipline, by training for it as for a trade, but simply to tossit off easily, as one makes a call, or pays a compliment, or drivesfour-in-hand. One does not need to have that interior impulse whichdrives a poor devil of an author to express himself, that something tosay which torments the poet into extreme irritability unless he can berid of it, that noble hunger for fame which comes from a consciousness ofthe possession of vital thought and emotion. 

The beauty of this condescension to literature of which we speak is thatit has that quality of spontaneity that does not presuppose either acapacity or a call. There is no mystery about the craft. One resolves towrite a book, as he might to take a journey or to practice on the piano, and the thing is done. Everybody can write, at least everybody doeswrite. It is a wonderful time for literature. The Queen of England writesfor it, the Queen of Roumania writes for it, the Shah of Persia writesfor it, Lady Brassey, the yachtswoman, wrote for it, Congressmen writefor it, peers write for it. The novel is the common recreation of ladiesof rank, and where is the young woman in this country who has not triedher hand at a romance or made a cast at a popular magazine? The effect ofall this upon literature is expansive and joyous. Superstition about anymystery in the art has nearly disappeared. It is a common observationthat if persons fail in everything else, if they are fit for nothingelse, they can at least write. It is such an easy occupation, and theremuneration is in such disproportion to the expenditure! Isn't it indeedthe golden era of letters? If only the letters were gold!

If there is any such thing remaining as a guild of authors, somewhere onthe back seats, witnessing this marvelous Kingdom Come of Literature, there must also be a little bunch of actors, born for the stage, who seewith mixed feelings their arena taken possession of by fairer if not morecompetent players. These players are not to be confounded with theplay-actors whom the Puritans denounced, nor with those trained to theprofession in the French capital. 

In the United States and in England we are born to enter upon anyavocation, thank Heaven! without training for it. We have not in thiscountry any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais, but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, PrivateTheatricals (not always so private as they should be), which domesticatethe drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and bestdressed performers the world has ever seen. Whatever they may say of it, it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, andall women recognize a talent for clothes. We do not say that there is notsuch a thing as dramatic art, and that there are not persons who need assevere training before they attempt to personate nature in art as thepainter must undergo who attempts to transfer its features to his canvas. But the taste of the age must be taken into account. The public does notdemand that an actor shall come in at a private door and climb a steepstaircase to get to the stage. When a Star from the Private Theatricalsdescends upon the boards, with the arms of Venus and the throat of Juno, and a wardrobe got out of Paris and through our stingy Custom-house inforty trunks, the plodding actor, who has depended upon art, finds out, what he has been all the time telling us, that all the world's a stage, and men and women merely players. Art is good in its way; but what abouta perfect figure? and is not dressing an art? Can training give one anelegant form, and study command the services of a man milliner? The stageis broadened out and re-enforced by a new element. What went ye out forto see?

A person clad in fine raiment, to be sure. Some of the critics may growla little, and hint at the invasion of art by fashionable life, but theeditor, whose motto is that the newspaper is made for man, not man forthe newspaper, understands what is required in this inspiring histrionicmovement, and when a lovely woman condescends to step from thedrawing-room to the stage he confines his descriptions to her person, anddoes not bother about her capacity; and instead of wearying us with alist of her plays and performances, he gives us a column about herdresses in beautiful language that shows us how closely allied poetry isto tailoring. Can the lady act? Why, simpleminded, she has nearly ahundred frocks, each one a dream, a conception of genius, a vaporousidea, one might say, which will reveal more beauty than it hides, andteach the spectator that art is simply nature adorned. Rachel in all herglory was not adorned like one of these. We have changed all that. Theactress used to have a rehearsal. She now has an "opening. " Does itrequire nowadays, then, no special talent or gift to go on the stage? Nomore, we can assure our readers, than it does to write a book. But homelypeople and poor people can write books. As yet they cannot act. 

ALTRUISM

Christmas is supposed to be an altruistic festival. Then, if ever, weallow ourselves to go out to others in sympathy expressed by gifts andgood wishes. Then self-forgetfulness in the happiness of others becomes atemporary fashion. And we find--do we not?--the indulgence of the feelingso remunerative that we wish there were other days set apart to it. Wecan even understand those people who get a private satisfaction in beinggood on other days besides Sunday. There is a common notion that thisChristmas altruistic sentiment is particularly shown towards theunfortunate and the dependent by those more prosperous, and in what iscalled a better social position. We are exhorted on this day to rememberthe poor. We need to be reminded rather to remember the rich, the lonely, not-easy-to-be-satisfied rich, whom we do not always have with us. TheDrawer never sees a very rich person that it does not long to give himsomething, some token, the value of which is not estimated by its cost, that should be a consoling evidence to him that he has not lostsympathetic touch with ordinary humanity. There is a great deal ofsympathy afloat in the world, but it is especially shown downward in thesocial scale. We treat our servants--supposing that we are society--better than we treat each other. If we did not, they would leave us. Weare kinder to the unfortunate or the dependent than to each other, and wehave more charity for them. 

The Drawer is not indulging in any indiscriminate railing at society. There is society and society. There is that undefined something, morelike a machine than an aggregate of human sensibilities, which is setgoing in a "season, " or at a watering-place, or permanently selectsitself for certain social manifestations. It is this that needs amissionary to infuse into it sympathy and charity. If it were indeed amachine and not made up of sensitive personalities, it would not be toits members so selfish and cruel. It would be less an ambitious scramblefor place and favor, less remorseless towards the unsuccessful, not soharsh and hard and supercilious. In short, it would be much moreagreeable if it extended to its own members something of theconsideration and sympathy that it gives to those it regards as itsinferiors. It seems to think that good-breeding and good form areseparable from kindliness and sympathy and helpfulness. Tender-heartedand charitable enough all the individuals of this "society" are topersons below them in fortune or position, let us allow, but how are theyto each other? Nothing can be ruder or less considerate of the feelingsof others than much of that which is called good society, and this is whythe Drawer desires to turn the altruistic sentiment of the world upon itin this season, set apart by common consent for usefulness. Unfortunateare the fortunate if they are lifted into a sphere which is sapless ofdelicacy of feeling for its own. Is this an intangible matter? Takehospitality, for instance. Does it consist in astonishing the invited, inoverwhelming him with a sense of your own wealth, or felicity, or family, or cleverness even; in trying to absorb him in your concerns, yoursuccesses, your possessions, in simply what interests you? Howeverdelightful all these may be, it is an offense to his individuality toinsist that he shall admire at the point of the social bayonet. How doyou treat the stranger? Do you adapt yourself and your surroundings tohim, or insist that he shall adapt himself to you? How often does thestranger, the guest, sit in helpless agony in your circle (all of whomknow each other) at table or in the drawing-room, isolated and separate, because all the talk is local and personal, about your little world, andthe affairs of your clique, and your petty interests, in which he or shecannot possibly join? Ah! the Sioux Indian would not be so cruel as thatto a guest. There is no more refined torture to a sensitive person thanthat. Is it only thoughtlessness? It is more than that. It is a want ofsympathy of the heart, or it is a lack of intelligence and broad-mindedinterest in affairs of the world and in other people. It is thistrait--absorption in self--pervading society more or less, that makes itso unsatisfactory to most people in it. Just a want of human interest;people do not come in contact. 

Avid pursuit of wealth, or what is called pleasure, perhaps makes peoplehard to each other, and infuses into the higher social life, which shouldbe the most unselfish and enjoyable life, a certain vulgarity, similar tothat noticed in well-bred tourists scrambling for the seats on top of amountain coach. A person of refinement and sensibility and intelligence, cast into the company of the select, the country-house, the radiant, twelve-button society, has been struck with infinite pity for it, andasks the Drawer to do something about it. The Drawer cannot do anythingabout it. It can only ask the prayers of all good people on Christmas Dayfor the rich. As we said, we do not have them with us always--they arehere today, they are gone to Canada tomorrow. But this is, of course, current facetiousness. The rich are as good as anybody else, according totheir lights, and if what is called society were as good and as kind toitself as it is to the poor, it would be altogether enviable. We are notof those who say that in this case, charity would cover a multitude ofsins, but a diffusion in society of the Christmas sentiment of goodwilland kindliness to itself would tend to make universal the joy on thereturn of this season. 

SOCIAL CLEARING-HOUSE

The Drawer would like to emphasize the noble, self-sacrificing spirit ofAmerican women. There are none like them in the world. They take up allthe burdens of artificial foreign usage, where social caste prevails, andbear them with a heroism worthy of a worse cause. They indeed representthese usages to be a burden almost intolerable, and yet they submit tothem with a grace and endurance all their own. Probably there is noharder-worked person than a lady in the season, let us say in Washington, where the etiquette of visiting is carried to a perfection that it doesnot reach even in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, and where woman'seffort to keep the social fabric together requires more expenditure ofintellect and of physical force than was needed to protect the capital inits peril a quarter of a century ago. When this cruel war is over, themonument to the women who perished in it will need to be higher than thatto the Father of his Country. Merely in the item of keeping an account ofthe visits paid and due, a woman needs a bookkeeper. Only to know theetiquette of how and when and to whom and in what order the visits are tobe paid is to be well educated in a matter that assumes the firstimportance in her life. This is, however, only a detail of bookkeepingand of memory; to pay and receive, or evade, these visits of ceremony isa work which men can admire without the power to imitate; even on thesupposition that a woman has nothing else to do, it calls for our humblegratitude and a recognition of the largeness of nature that can put asideany duties to husband or children in devotion to the public welfare. Thefutile round of society life while it lasts admits of no rival. It seemsas important as the affairs of the government. The Drawer is far fromsaying that it is not. Perhaps no one can tell what confusion would fallinto all the political relations if the social relations of the capitalwere not kept oiled by the system of exchange of fictitious courtesiesamong the women; and it may be true that society at large--men are soapt, when left alone, to relapse--would fall into barbarism if ourpasteboard conventions were neglected. All honor to the self-sacrifice ofwoman!

What a beautiful civilization ours is, supposed to be growing inintelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself thisartificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven mustadmire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for anyrational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receiveformal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish tosee. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people andreceiving their cards? When a woman makes her tedious rounds, why is shealways relieved to find people not in? When she can count upon her tenfingers the people she wants to see, why should she pretend to want tosee the others? Is any one deceived by it? Does anybody regard it asanything but a sham and a burden? Much the cynic knows about it! Is itnot necessary to keep up what is called society? Is it not necessary tohave an authentic list of pasteboard acquaintances to invite to thereceptions? And what would become of us without Receptions? Everybodylikes to give them. Everybody flocks to them with much alacrity. Whensociety calls the roll, we all know the penalty of being left out. Isthere any intellectual or physical pleasure equal to that of jamming somany people into a house that they can hardly move, and treating them toa Babel of noises in which no one can make herself heard withoutscreaming? There is nothing like a reception in any uncivilized country. It is so exhilarating! When a dozen or a hundred people are gatheredtogether in a room, they all begin to raise their voices and to shoutlike pool-sellers in the noble rivalry of "warious langwidges, " raspingtheir throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring. If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would bepossible. But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it. Wecannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life. We trainfor it in lower assemblies. Half a dozen women in a "call" are obliged toshout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in theneighborhood except themselves. Do not men do the same? If they do, itonly shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization. 

But does society--that is, the intercourse of congenial people--dependupon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people whoare not congenial? Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter firesideof rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talkwithout a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottagein the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normaltemperature. We fancy that sometimes people will give way to a realenjoyment of life and that human intercourse will throw off thisartificial and wearisome parade, and that if women look back with pride, as they may, upon their personal achievements and labors, they will alsoregard them with astonishment. Women, we read every day, long for therights and privileges of men, and the education and serious purpose inlife of men. And yet, such is the sweet self-sacrifice of their nature, they voluntarily take on burdens which men have never assumed, and whichthey would speedily cast off if they had. What should we say of men ifthey consumed half their time in paying formal calls upon each othermerely for the sake of paying calls, and were low-spirited if they didnot receive as many cards as they had dealt out to society? Have they notthe time? Have women more time? and if they have, why should they spendit in this Sisyphus task? Would the social machine go to pieces--theinquiry is made in good faith, and solely for information--if they maderational business for themselves to be attended to, or even if they gavethe time now given to calls they hate to reading and study, and to makingtheir household civilizing centres of intercourse and enjoyment, and paidvisits from some other motive than "clearing off their list"? If all theartificial round of calls and cards should tumble down, what valuablething would be lost out of anybody's life?

The question is too vast for the Drawer, but as an experiment insociology it would like to see the system in abeyance for one season. Ifat the end of it there had not been just as much social enjoyment asbefore, and there were not fewer women than usual down with nervousprostration, it would agree to start at its own expense a new experiment, to wit, a kind of Social Clearing-House, in which all cards should bedelivered and exchanged, and all social debts of this kind be balanced byexperienced bookkeepers, so that the reputation of everybody forpropriety and conventionality should be just as good as it is now. 

DINNER-TABLE TALK

Many people suppose that it is the easiest thing in the world to dine ifyou can get plenty to eat. This error is the foundation of much socialmisery. The world that never dines, and fancies it has a grievancejustifying anarchy on that account, does not know how much misery itescapes. A great deal has been written about the art of dining. From timeto time geniuses have appeared who knew how to compose a dinner; indeed, the art of doing it can be learned, as well as the art of cooking andserving it. It is often possible, also, under extraordinarily favorableconditions, to select a company congenial and varied and harmoniousenough to dine together successfully. The tact for getting the rightpeople together is perhaps rarer than the art of composing the dinner. But it exists. And an elegant table with a handsome and brilliant companyabout it is a common conjunction in this country. Instructions are notwanting as to the shape of the table and the size of the party; it isuniversally admitted that the number must be small. The bigdinner-parties which are commonly made to pay off social debts aregenerally of the sort that one would rather contribute to in money thanin personal attendance. When the dinner is treated as a means ofdischarging obligations, it loses all character, and becomes one of thesocial inflictions. While there is nothing in social intercourse soagreeable and inspiring as a dinner of the right sort, society hasinvented no infliction equal to a large dinner that does not "go, " as thephrase is. Why it does not go when the viands are good and the company isbright is one of the acknowledged mysteries. 

There need be no mystery about it. The social instinct and the socialhabit are wanting to a great many people of uncommon intelligence andcultivation--that sort of flexibility or adaptability that makesagreeable society. But this even does not account for the failure of somany promising dinners. The secret of this failure always is that theconversation is not general. The sole object of the dinner is talk--atleast in the United States, where "good eating" is pretty common, howeverit may be in England, whence come rumors occasionally of accomplished menwho decline to be interrupted by the frivolity of talk upon theappearance of favorite dishes. And private talk at a table is not thesort that saves a dinner; however good it is, it always kills it. Thechance of arrangement is that the people who would like to talk togetherare not neighbors; and if they are, they exhaust each other to wearinessin an hour, at least of topics which can be talked about with the risk ofbeing overheard. A duet to be agreeable must be to a certain extentconfidential, and the dinner-table duet admits of little exceptgeneralities, and generalities between two have their limits ofentertainment. Then there is the awful possibility that the neighbors attable may have nothing to say to each other; and in the best-selectedcompany one may sit beside a stupid man--that is, stupid for the purposeof a 'tete-a-tete'. But this is not the worst of it. No one can talk wellwithout an audience; no one is stimulated to say bright things except bythe attention and questioning and interest of other minds. There islittle inspiration in side talk to one or two. Nobody ought to go to adinner who is not a good listener, and, if possible, an intelligent one. To listen with a show of intelligence is a great accomplishment. It isnot absolutely essential that there should be a great talker or a numberof good talkers at a dinner if all are good listeners, and able to "chipin" a little to the general talk that springs up. For the success of thedinner does not necessarily depend upon the talk being brilliant, but itdoes depend upon its being general, upon keeping the ball rolling roundthe table; the old-fashioned game becomes flat when the balls alldisappear into private pockets. There are dinners where the object seemsto be to pocket all the balls as speedily as possible. We have learnedthat that is not the best game; the best game is when you not only dependon the carom, but in going to the cushion before you carom; that is tosay, including the whole table, and making things lively. The hostesssucceeds who is able to excite this general play of all the forces at thetable, even using the silent but not non-elastic material as cushions, ifone may continue the figure. Is not this, O brothers and sisters, an evilunder the sun, this dinner as it is apt to be conducted? Think of theweary hours you have given to a rite that should be the highest socialpleasure! How often when a topic is started that promises well, and mightcome to something in a general exchange of wit and fancy, and some onebegins to speak on it, and speak very well, too, have you not had a ladyat your side cut in and give you her views on it--views that might beamusing if thrown out into the discussion, but which are simplyimpertinent as an interruption! How often when you have tried to get a"rise" out of somebody opposite have you not had your neighbor cut inacross you with some private depressing observation to your nextneighbor! Private talk at a dinner-table is like private chat at a parlormusicale, only it is more fatal to the general enjoyment. There is anotion that the art of conversation, the ability to talk well, has goneout. That is a great mistake. Opportunity is all that is needed. Theremust be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement ofgood listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, towhisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights. Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world isdumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk betweenseat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right tospoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilizationhas evolved. 

NATURALIZATION

Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?--that is, to bedenationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one countryand take up those of another; to give up what may be called theinstinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another. It iseasy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, andto take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one'sself from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair. One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, andas a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or thedragon, or the cross of St. George. Probably no other sentiment is, sostrong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, asub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachmentshe may form. One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag forit, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man's nature is something, nodoubt, that no oath nor material interest can change, and that is nevernaturalized. We see this experiment in America more than anywhere else, because here meet more different races than anywhere else with theserious intention of changing their nationality. And we have a notionthat there is something in our atmosphere, or opportunities, or ourgovernment, that makes this change more natural and reasonable than ithas been anywhere else in history. It is always a surprise to us when aborn citizen of the United States changes his allegiance, but it seems athing of course that a person of any other country should, by an oath, become a good American, and we expect that the act will work a suddenchange in him equal to that wrought in a man by what used to be called aconviction of sin. We expect that he will not only come into our family, but that he will at once assume all its traditions and dislikes, thatwhatever may have been his institutions or his race quarrels, the movinginfluence of his life hereafter will be the "Spirit of '76. "

What is this naturalization, however, but a sort of parable of humanlife? Are we not always trying to adjust ourselves to new relations, toget naturalized into a new family? Does one ever do it entirely? And howmuch of the lonesomeness of life comes from the failure to do it! It is atremendous experiment, we all admit, to separate a person from his race, from his country, from his climate, and the habits of his part of thecountry, by marriage; it is only an experiment differing in degree tointroduce him by marriage into a new circle of kinsfolk. Is he everanything but a sort of tolerated, criticised, or admired alien? Does thetime ever come when the distinction ceases between his family and hers?They say love is stronger than death. It may also be stronger thanfamily--while it lasts; but was there ever a woman yet whose mostineradicable feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood, a sort ofbase-line in life upon which trouble and disaster always throw her back?Does she ever lose the instinct of it? We used to say in jest that apatriotic man was always willing to sacrifice his wife's relations inwar; but his wife took a different view of it; and when it becomes aquestion of office, is it not the wife's relations who get them? To besure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest Iwill go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time, and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things. But isit true that a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her nature tobe? Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to manyendurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man's; butwould she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted fromthe associations and interlacings of her family life? Does anythingreally take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has inkin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society? There are twotheories about life, as about naturalization: one is that love is enough, that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of humanrelations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that inthe long-run the question of family is a preponderating one. Does thegate of divorce open more frequently from following the one theory thanthe other? If we were to adopt the notion that marriage is really atremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender on one side orthe other of the deepest sentiments and hereditary tendencies, wouldthere be so many hasty marriages--slip-knots tied by one justice to beundone by another? The Drawer did not intend to start such a deepquestion as this. Hosts of people are yearly naturalized in this country, not from any love of its institutions, but because they can more easilyget a living here, and they really surrender none of their hereditaryideas, and it is only human nature that marriages should be made withlike purpose and like reservations. These reservations do not, however, make the best citizens or the most happy marriages. Would it be anybetter if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood ofpeoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism orfamily, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people thinkit should be? Very likely, if we could radically change human nature. Buthuman nature is the most obstinate thing that the InternationalConventions have to deal with. 

ART OF GOVERNING

He was saying, when he awoke one morning, "I wish I were governor of asmall island, and had nothing to do but to get up and govern. " It was anobservation quite worthy of him, and one of general application, forthere are many men who find it very difficult to get a living on theirown resources, to whom it would be comparatively easy to be a very fairsort of governor. Everybody who has no official position or routine dutyon a salary knows that the most trying moment in the twenty-four hours isthat in which he emerges from the oblivion of sleep and faces life. Everything perplexing tumbles in upon him, all the possible vexations ofthe day rise up before him, and he is little less than a hero if he getsup cheerful. 

It is not to be wondered at that people crave office, some salariedposition, in order to escape the anxieties, the personalresponsibilities, of a single-handed struggle with the world. It must bemuch easier to govern an island than to carry on almost any retailbusiness. When the governor wakes in the morning he thinks first of hissalary; he has not the least anxiety about his daily bread or the supportof his family. His business is all laid out for him; he has not to createit. Business comes to him; he does not have to drum for it. His day isagreeably, even if sympathetically, occupied with the troubles of otherpeople, and nothing is so easy to bear as the troubles of other people. After he has had his breakfast, and read over the "Constitution, " he hasnothing to do but to "govern" for a few hours, that is, to decide aboutthings on general principles, and with little personal application, andperhaps about large concerns which nobody knows anything about, and whichare much easier to dispose of than the perplexing details of privatelife. He has to vote several times a day; for giving a decision is reallycasting a vote; but that is much easier than to scratch around in all theanxieties of a retail business. Many men who would make very respectablePresidents of the United States could not successfully run a retailgrocery store. The anxieties of the grocery would wear them out. Forconsider the varied ability that the grocery requires-the foresight aboutthe markets, to take advantage of an eighth per cent. Off or on here andthere; the vigilance required to keep a "full line" and not overstock, todispose of goods before they spoil or the popular taste changes; thesuavity and integrity and duplicity and fairness and adaptability neededto get customers and keep them; the power to bear the daily and hourlyworry; the courage to face the ever-present spectre of "failure, " whichis said to come upon ninety merchants in a hundred; the tact needed tomeet the whims and the complaints of patrons, and the difficulty ofgetting the patrons who grumble most to pay in order to satisfy thecreditors. When the retail grocer wakens in the morning he feels that hisbusiness is not going to come to him spontaneously; he thinks of hisrivals, of his perilous stock, of his debts and delinquent customers. Hehas no "Constitution" to go by, nothing but his wits and energy to setagainst the world that day, and every day the struggle and the anxietyare the same. What a number of details he has to carry in his head(consider, for instance, how many different kinds of cheese there are, and how different people hate and love the same kind), and how keen mustbe his appreciation of the popular taste. The complexities and annoyancesof his business are excessive, and he cannot afford to make manymistakes; if he does he will lose his business, and when a man fails inbusiness (honestly), he loses his nerve, and his career is ended. It issimply amazing, when you consider it, the amount of talent shown in whatare called the ordinary businesses of life. 

It has been often remarked with how little wisdom the world is governed. That is the reason it is so easy to govern. "Uneasy lies the head thatwears a crown" does not refer to the discomfort of wearing it, but to thedanger of losing it, and of being put back upon one's native resources, having to run a grocery or to keep school. Nobody is in such a pitiableplight as a monarch or politician out of business. It is very difficultfor either to get a living. A man who has once enjoyed the blessedfeeling of awaking every morning with the thought that he has a certainsalary despises the idea of having to drum up a business by his owntalents. It does not disturb the waking hour at all to think that adeputation is waiting in the next room about a post-office in Indiana orabout the codfish in Newfoundland waters--the man can take a second napon any such affair; but if he knows that the living of himself and familythat day depends upon his activity and intelligence, uneasy lies hishead. There is something so restful and easy about public business! It isso simple! Take the average Congressman. The Secretary of the Treasurysends in an elaborate report--a budget, in fact--involving a complete andharmonious scheme of revenue and expenditure. Must the Congressman readit? No; it is not necessary to do that; he only cares for practicalmeasures. Or a financial bill is brought in. Does he study that bill? Hehears it read, at least by title. Does he take pains to inform himself byreading and conversation with experts upon its probable effect? Or aninternational copyright law is proposed, a measure that will relieve thepeople of the United States from the world-wide reputation of sneakingmeanness towards foreign authors. Does he examine the subject, and try tounderstand it? That is not necessary. Or it is a question of tariff. Heis to vote "yes" or "no" on these proposals. It is not necessary for himto master these subjects, but it is necessary for him to know how tovote. And how does he find out that? In the first place, by inquiringwhat effect the measure will have upon the chance of election of the manhe thinks will be nominated for President, and in the second place, whateffect his vote will have on his own reelection. Thus the principles oflegislation become very much simplified, and thus it happens that it iscomparatively so much easier to govern than it is to run a grocery store. 

LOVE OF DISPLAY

It is fortunate that a passion for display is implanted in human nature;and if we owe a debt of gratitude to anybody, it is to those who make thedisplay for us. It would be such a dull, colorless world without it! Wetry in vain to imagine a city without brass bands, and militarymarchings, and processions of societies in regalia and banners andresplendent uniforms, and gayly caparisoned horses, and men clad in redand yellow and blue and gray and gold and silver and feathers, moving inbeautiful lines, proudly wheeling with step elate upon some responsivehuman being as axis, deploying, opening, and closing ranks in exquisiteprecision to the strains of martial music, to the thump of the drum andthe scream of the fife, going away down the street with nodding plumes, heads erect, the very port of heroism. There is scarcely anything in theworld so inspiring as that. And the self-sacrifice of it! What will notmen do and endure to gratify their fellows! And in the heat of summer, too, when most we need something to cheer us! The Drawer saw, withfeelings that cannot be explained, a noble company of men, the pride oftheir city, all large men, all fat men, all dressed alike, but each oneas beautiful as anything that can be seen on the stage, perspiringthrough the gala streets of another distant city, the admiration ofcrowds of huzzaing men and women and boys, following another company asresplendent as itself, every man bearing himself like a hero, despisingthe heat and the dust, conscious only of doing his duty. We make a greatmistake if we suppose it is a feeling of ferocity that sets these mentramping about in gorgeous uniform, in mud or dust, in rain or under abroiling sun. They have no desire to kill anybody. Out of theseresplendent clothes they are much like other people; only they have anobler spirit, that which leads them to endure hardships for the sake ofpleasing others. They differ in degree, though not in kind, from thoseorders, for keeping secrets, or for encouraging a distaste for strongdrink, which also wear bright and attractive regalia, and go about inprocessions, with banners and music, and a pomp that cannot bedistinguished at a distance from real war. It is very fortunate that mendo like to march about in ranks and lines, even without anydistinguishing apparel. The Drawer has seen hundreds of citizens in abody, going about the country on an excursion, parading through townafter town, with no other distinction of dress than a uniform high whitehat, who carried joy and delight wherever they went. The good of thisdisplay cannot be reckoned in figures. Even a funeral is comparativelydull without the military band and the four-and-four processions, and thecities where these resplendent corteges of woes are of daily occurrenceare cheerful cities. The brass band itself, when we consider itphilosophically, is one of the most striking things in our civilization. We admire its commonly splendid clothes, its drums and cymbals andbraying brass, but it is the impartial spirit with which it lends itselfto our varying wants that distinguishes it. It will not do to say that ithas no principles, for nobody has so many, or is so impartial inexercising them. It is equally ready to play at a festival or a funeral, a picnic or an encampment, for the sons of war or the sons of temperance, and it is equally willing to express the feeling of a Democratic meetingor a Republican gathering, and impartially blows out "Dixie" or "Marchingthrough Georgia, " "The Girl I Left Behind Me" or "My Country, 'tis ofThee. " It is equally piercing and exciting for St. Patrick or the Fourthof July. 

There are cynics who think it strange that men are willing to dress up infantastic uniform and regalia and march about in sun and rain to make aholiday for their countrymen, but the cynics are ungrateful, and fail tocredit human nature with its trait of self-sacrifice, and they do not atall comprehend our civilization. It was doubted at one time whether thefreedman and the colored man generally in the republic was capable of thehigher civilization. This doubt has all been removed. No other race takesmore kindly to martial and civic display than it. No one has a greaterpassion for societies and uniforms and regalias and banners, and the pompof marchings and processions and peaceful war. The negro naturallyinclines to the picturesque, to the flamboyant, to vivid colors and thetrappings of office that give a man distinction. He delights in the drumand the trumpet, and so willing is he to add to what is spectacular andpleasing in life that he would spend half his time in parading. Hiscapacity for a holiday is practically unlimited. He has not yet the meansto indulge his taste, and perhaps his taste is not yet equal to hismeans, but there is no question of his adaptability to the sort ofdisplay which is so pleasing to the greater part of the human race, andwhich contributes so much to the brightness and cheerfulness of thisworld. We cannot all have decorations, and cannot all wear uniforms, oreven regalia, and some of us have little time for going about in militaryor civic processions, but we all like to have our streets put on aholiday appearance; and we cannot express in words our gratitude to thosewho so cheerfully spend their time and money in glittering apparel and inparades for our entertainment. 

VALUE OF THE COMMONPLACE

The vitality of a fallacy is incalculable. Although the Drawer has beengoing many years, there are still remaining people who believe that"things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. " Thismathematical axiom, which is well enough in its place, has been extendedinto the field of morals and social life, confused the perception ofhuman relations, and raised "hob, " as the saying is, in politicaleconomy. We theorize and legislate as if people were things. Most of theschemes of social reorganization are based on this fallacy. It alwaysbreaks down in experience. A has two friends, B and C--to state itmathematically. A is equal to B, and A is equal to C. A has for B andalso for C the most cordial admiration and affection, and B and C havereciprocally the same feeling for A. Such is the harmony that A cannottell which he is more fond of, B or C. And B and C are sure that A is thebest friend of each. This harmony, however, is not triangular. A makesthe mistake of supposing that it is--having a notion that things whichare equal to the same thing are equal to each other--and he brings B andC together. The result is disastrous. B and C cannot get on with eachother. Regard for A restrains their animosity, and they hypocriticallypretend to like each other, but both wonder what A finds so congenial inthe other. The truth is that this personal equation, as we call it, ineach cannot be made the subject of mathematical calculation. Humanrelations will not bend to it. And yet we keep blundering along as ifthey would. We are always sure, in our letter of introduction, that thisfriend will be congenial to the other, because we are fond of both. Sometimes this happens, but half the time we should be more successful inbringing people into accord if we gave a letter of introduction to aperson we do not know, to be delivered to one we have never seen. On theface of it this is as absurd as it is for a politician to indorse theapplication of a person he does not know for an office the duties ofwhich he is unacquainted with; but it is scarcely less absurd than theexpectation that men and women can be treated like mathematical units andequivalents. Upon the theory that they can, rest the present grotesqueschemes of Nationalism. 

In saying all this the Drawer is well aware that it subjects itself tothe charge of being commonplace, but it is precisely the commonplace thatthis essay seeks to defend. Great is the power of the commonplace. "Myfriends, " says the preacher, in an impressive manner, "Alexander died;Napoleon died; you will all die!" This profound remark, so true, sothoughtful, creates a deep sensation. It is deepened by the statementthat "man is a moral being. " The profundity of such startling assertionscows the spirit; they appeal to the universal consciousness, and we bowto the genius that delivers them. "How true!" we exclaim, and go awaywith an enlarged sense of our own capacity for the comprehension of deepthought. Our conceit is flattered. Do we not like the books that raise usto the great level of the commonplace, whereon we move with a sense ofpower? Did not Mr. Tupper, that sweet, melodious shepherd of theundisputed, lead about vast flocks of sheep over the satisfying plain ofmediocrity? Was there ever a greater exhibition of power, while itlasted? How long did "The Country Parson" feed an eager world withrhetorical statements of that which it already knew? The thinner thissort of thing is spread out, the more surface it covers, of course. Whatis so captivating and popular as a book of essays which gathers togetherand arranges a lot of facts out of histories and cyclopaedias, set forthin the form of conversations that any one could have taken part in? Isnot this book pleasing because it is commonplace? And is this because wedo not like to be insulted with originality, or because in our experienceit is only the commonly accepted which is true? The statesman or the poetwho launches out unmindful of these conditions will be likely to come togrief in her generation. Will not the wise novelist seek to encounter theleast intellectual resistance?

Should one take a cynical view of mankind because he perceives this greatpower of the commonplace? Not at all. He should recognize and respectthis power. He may even say that it is this power that makes the world goon as smoothly and contentedly as it does, on the whole. Woe to us, isthe thought of Carlyle, when a thinker is let loose in this world! Hebecomes a cause of uneasiness, and a source of rage very often. But hispower is limited. He filters through a few minds, until gradually hisideas become commonplace enough to be powerful. We draw our supply ofwater from reservoirs, not from torrents. Probably the man who first saidthat the line of rectitude corresponds with the line of enjoyment wasdisliked as well as disbelieved. But how impressive now is the idea thatvirtue and happiness are twins!

Perhaps it is true that the commonplace needs no defense, since everybodytakes it in as naturally as milk, and thrives on it. Beloved and read andfollowed is the writer or the preacher of commonplace. But is not thesunshine common, and the bloom of May? Why struggle with these things inliterature and in life? Why not settle down upon the formula that to beplatitudinous is to be happy?

THE BURDEN OF CHRISTMAS

It would be the pity of the world to destroy it, because it would be nextto impossible to make another holiday as good as Christmas. Perhaps thereis no danger, but the American people have developed an unexpectedcapacity for destroying things; they can destroy anything. They have eveninvented a phrase for it--running a thing into the ground. They haveperfected the art of making so much of a thing as to kill it; they canmagnify a man or a recreation or an institution to death. And they do itwith such a hearty good-will and enjoyment. Their motto is that youcannot have too much of a good thing. They have almost made funeralsunpopular by over-elaboration and display, especially what are calledpublic funerals, in which an effort is made to confer great distinctionon the dead. So far has it been carried often that there has been areaction of popular sentiment and people have wished the man were alive. We prosecute everything so vigorously that we speedily either wear it outor wear ourselves out on it, whether it is a game, or a festival, or aholiday. We can use up any sport or game ever invented quicker than anyother people. We can practice anything, like a vegetable diet, forinstance, to an absurd conclusion with more vim than any other nation. This trait has its advantages; nowhere else will a delusion run so fast, and so soon run up a tree--another of our happy phrases. There is alargeness and exuberance about us which run even into our ordinaryphraseology. The sympathetic clergyman, coming from the bedside of aparishioner dying of dropsy, says, with a heavy sigh, "The poor fellow isjust swelling away. "

Is Christmas swelling away? If it is not, it is scarcely our fault. Sincethe American nation fairly got hold of the holiday--in some parts of thecountry, as in New England, it has been universal only about fiftyyears--we have made it hum, as we like to say. We have appropriated theEnglish conviviality, the German simplicity, the Roman pomp, and we haveadded to it an element of expense in keeping with our own greatness. Isanybody beginning to feel it a burden, this sweet festival of charity andgood-will, and to look forward to it with apprehension? Is the timeapproaching when we shall want to get somebody to play it for us, likebase-ball? Anything that interrupts the ordinary flow of life, introducesinto it, in short, a social cyclone that upsets everything for afortnight, may in time be as hard to bear as that festival of housewivescalled housecleaning, that riot of cleanliness which men fear as they doa panic in business. Taking into account the present preparations forChristmas, and the time it takes to recover from it, we arebeginning--are we not?--to consider it one of the most serious events ofmodern life. 

The Drawer is led into these observations out of its love for Christmas. It is impossible to conceive of any holiday that could take its place, nor indeed would it seem that human wit could invent another so adaptedto humanity. The obvious intention of it is to bring together, for aseason at least, all men in the exercise of a common charity and afeeling of good-will, the poor and the rich, the successful and theunfortunate, that all the world may feel that in the time called theTruce of God the thing common to all men is the best thing in life. Howwill it suit this intention, then, if in our way of exaggeratedostentation of charity the distinction between rich and poor is made toappear more marked than on ordinary days? Blessed are those that expectnothing. But are there not an increasing multitude of persons in theUnited States who have the most exaggerated expectations of personalprofit on Christmas Day? Perhaps it is not quite so bad as this, but itis safe to say that what the children alone expect to receive, in moneyvalue would absorb the national surplus, about which so much fuss ismade. There is really no objection to this--the terror of the surplus isa sort of nightmare in the country--except that it destroys thesimplicity of the festival, and belittles small offerings that have theirchief value in affection. And it points inevitably to the creation of asort of Christmas "Trust"--the modern escape out of ruinous competition. When the expense of our annual charity becomes so great that the poor arediscouraged from sharing in it, and the rich even feel it a burden, therewould seem to be no way but the establishment of neighborhood "Trusts" inorder to equalize both cost and distribution. Each family could buy ashare according to its means, and the division on Christmas Day wouldcreate a universal satisfaction in profit sharing--that is, the richwould get as much as the poor, and the rivalry of ostentation would bequieted. Perhaps with the money question a little subdued, and the femaleanxieties of the festival allayed, there would be more room for thedevelopment of that sweet spirit of brotherly kindness, or all-embracingcharity, which we know underlies this best festival of all the ages. Isthis an old sermon? The Drawer trusts that it is, for there can benothing new in the preaching of simplicity. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WRITERS

It is difficult enough to keep the world straight without theinterposition of fiction. But the conduct of the novelists and thepainters makes the task of the conservators of society doubly perplexing. Neither the writers nor the artists have a due sense of theresponsibilities of their creations. The trouble appears to arise fromthe imitativeness of the race. Nature herself seems readily to fall intoimitation. It was noticed by the friends of nature that when the peculiarcoal-tar colors were discovered, the same faded, aesthetic, and sometimessickly colors began to appear in the ornamental flower-beds and masses offoliage plants. It was hardly fancy that the flowers took the colors ofthe ribbons and stuffs of the looms, and that the same instant nature andart were sicklied o'er with the same pale hues of fashion. If thisrelation of nature and art is too subtle for comprehension, there isnothing fanciful in the influence of the characters in fiction uponsocial manners and morals. To convince ourselves of this, we do not needto recall the effect of Werther, of Childe Harold, and of Don Juan, andthe imitation of their sentimentality, misanthropy, and adventure, downto the copying of the rakishness of the loosely-knotted necktie and thebroad turn-over collar. In our own generation the heroes and heroines offiction begin to appear in real life, in dress and manner, while they arestill warm from the press. The popular heroine appears on the street in ahundred imitations as soon as the popular mind apprehends her traits inthe story. We did not know the type of woman in the poems of theaesthetic school and on the canvas of Rossetti--the red-haired, wide-eyedchild of passion and emotion, in lank clothes, enmeshed in spider-webs--but so quickly was she multiplied in real life that she seemed to havestepped from the book and the frame, ready-made, into the street and thedrawing-room. And there is nothing wonderful about this. It is a truismto say that the genuine creations in fiction take their places in generalapprehension with historical characters, and sometimes they live morevividly on the printed page and on canvas than the others in their pale, contradictory, and incomplete lives. The characters of history we seldomagree about, and are always reconstructing on new information; but thecharacters of fiction are subject to no such vicissitudes. 

The importance of this matter is hardly yet perceived. Indeed, it isunreasonable that it should be, when parents, as a rule, have so slight afeeling of responsibility for the sort of children they bring into theworld. In the coming scientific age this may be changed, and society mayvisit upon a grandmother the sins of her grandchildren, recognizing herresponsibility to the very end of the line. But it is not strange that inthe apathy on this subject the novelists should be careless andinconsiderate as to the characters they produce, either as ideals orexamples. They know that the bad example is more likely to be copied thanto be shunned, and that the low ideal, being easy to, follow, is morelikely to be imitated than the high ideal. But the novelists have toolittle sense of responsibility in this respect, probably from aninadequate conception of their power. Perhaps the most harmful sinnersare not those who send into the world of fiction the positively wickedand immoral, but those who make current the dull, the commonplace, andthe socially vulgar. For most readers the wicked character is repellant;but the commonplace raises less protest, and is soon deemed harmless, while it is most demoralizing. An underbred book--that is, a book inwhich the underbred characters are the natural outcome of the author'sown, mind and apprehension of life--is worse than any possible epidemic;for while the epidemic may kill a number of useless or vulgar people, thebook will make a great number. The keen observer must have noticed theincreasing number of commonplace, undiscriminating people of lowintellectual taste in the United States. These are to a degree the resultof the feeble, underbred literature (so called) that is most hawkedabout, and most accessible, by cost and exposure, to the greater numberof people. It is easy to distinguish the young ladies--many of thembeautifully dressed, and handsome on first acquaintance--who have beenbred on this kind of book. They are betrayed by their speech, theirtaste, their manners. Yet there is a marked public insensibility aboutthis. We all admit that the scrawny young woman, anaemic and physicallyundeveloped, has not had proper nourishing food: But we seldom think thatthe mentally-vulgar girl, poverty-stricken in ideas, has been starved bya thin course of diet on anaemic books. The girls are not to blame ifthey are as vapid and uninteresting as the ideal girls they have beenassociating with in the books they have read. The responsibility is withthe novelist and the writer of stories, the chief characteristic of whichis vulgar commonplace. 

Probably when the Great Assize is held one of the questions asked willbe, "Did you, in America, ever write stories for children?" What aquaking of knees there will be! For there will stand the victims of thissort of literature, who began in their tender years to enfeeble theirminds with the wishy-washy flood of commonplace prepared for them by dullwriters and commercial publishers, and continued on in those so-calleddomestic stories (as if domestic meant idiotic) until their minds werediluted to that degree that they could not act upon anything that offeredthe least resistance. Beginning with the pepsinized books, they mustcontinue with them, and the dull appetite by-and-by must be stimulatedwith a spice of vulgarity or a little pepper of impropriety. Andfortunately for their nourishment in this kind, the dullest writers canbe indecent. 

Unfortunately the world is so ordered that the person of the feeblestconstitution can communicate a contagious disease. And these people, bredon this pabulum, in turn make books. If one, it is now admitted, can donothing else in this world, he can write, and so the evil widens andwidens. No art is required, nor any selection, nor any ideality, onlycapacity for increasing the vacuous commonplace in life. A princess bornmay have this, or the leader of cotillons. Yet in the judgment theresponsibility will rest upon the writers who set the copy. 

THE CAP AND GOWN

One of the burning questions now in the colleges for the higher educationof women is whether the undergraduates shall wear the cap and gown. Thesubject is a delicate one, and should not be confused with the broaderone, what is the purpose of the higher education? Some hold that thepurpose is to enable a woman to dispense with marriage, while othersmaintain that it is to fit a woman for the higher duties of the marriedlife. The latter opinion will probably prevail, for it has nature on itsside, and the course of history, and the imagination. But meantime thepoint of education is conceded, and whether a girl is to educate herselfinto single or double blessedness need not interfere with theconsideration of the habit she is to wear during her college life. Thatis to be determined by weighing a variety of reasons. 

Not the least of these is the consideration whether the cap-and-gownhabit is becoming. If it is not becoming, it will not go, not even by anamendment to the Constitution of the United States; for woman's dressobeys always the higher law. Masculine opinion is of no value on thispoint, and the Drawer is aware of the fact that if it thinks the cap andgown becoming, it may imperil the cap-and-gown cause to say so; but thecold truth is that the habit gives a plain girl distinction, and ahandsome girl gives the habit distinction. So that, aside from themysterious working of feminine motive, which makes woman a law untoherself, there should be practical unanimity in regard to this habit. There is in the cap and gown a subtle suggestion of the union of learningwith womanly charm that is very captivating to the imagination. On theother hand, all this may go for nothing with the girl herself, who isconscious of the possession of quite other powers and attractions in avaried and constantly changing toilet, which can reflect her moods fromhour to hour. So that if it is admitted that this habit is almostuniversally becoming today, it might, in the inscrutable depths of thefeminine nature--the something that education never can and never shouldchange--be irksome tomorrow, and we can hardly imagine what a blight to ayoung spirit there might be in three hundred and sixty-five days ofuniformity. 

The devotees of the higher education will perhaps need to approach thesubject from another point of view--namely, what they are willing tosurrender in order to come into a distinctly scholastic influence. Thecap and gown are scholastic emblems. Primarily they marked the student, and not alliance with any creed or vows to any religious order. Theybelong to the universities of learning, and today they have no moreecclesiastic meaning than do the gorgeous robes of the Oxford chancellorand vice-chancellor and the scarlet hood. From the scholarly side, then, if not from the dress side, there is much to be said for the cap andgown. They are badges of devotion, for the time being, to an intellectuallife. 

They help the mind in its effort to set itself apart to unworldlypursuits; they are indications of separateness from the prevailingfashions and frivolities. The girl who puts on the cap and gown devotesherself to the society which is avowedly in pursuit of a largerintellectual sympathy and a wider intellectual life. The enduring of thishabit will have a confirming influence on her purposes, and help to keepher up to them. It is like the uniform to the soldier or the veil to thenun--a sign of separation and devotion. It is difficult in this age tokeep any historic consciousness, any proper relations to the past. In thecap and gown the girl will at least feel that she is in the line of thetraditions of pure learning. And there is also something of order anddiscipline in the uniforming of a community set apart for an unworldlypurpose. Is it believed that three or four years of the kind ofseparateness marked by this habit in the life of a girl will rob her ofany desirable womanly quality?

The cap and gown are only an emphasis of the purpose to devote a certainperiod to the higher life, and if they cannot be defended, then we maybegin to be skeptical about the seriousness of the intention of a highereducation. If the school is merely a method of passing the time until acertain event in the girl's life, she had better dress as if that eventwere the only one worth considering. But if she wishes to fit herself forthe best married life, she may not disdain the help of the cap and gownin devoting herself to the highest culture. Of course education has itsdangers, and the regalia of scholarship may increase them. While ourcap-and-gown divinity is walking in the groves of Academia, apart fromthe ways of men, her sisters outside may be dancing and dressing into theaffections of the marriageable men. But this is not the worst of it. Theuniversity girl may be educating herself out of sympathy with theordinary possible husband. But this will carry its own cure. The educatedgirl will be so much more attractive in the long-run, will have so manymore resources for making a life companionship agreeable, that she willbe more and more in demand. And the young men, even those not expectingto take up a learned profession, will see the advantage of educatingthemselves up to the cap-and-gown level. We know that it is the office ofthe university to raise the standard of the college, and of the collegeto raise the standard of the high school. It will be the inevitableresult that these young ladies, setting themselves apart for a period tothe intellectual life, will raise the standard of the young men, and ofmarried life generally. And there is nothing supercilious in theinvitation of the cap-and-gown brigade to the young men to come uphigher. 

There is one humiliating objection made to the cap and gown-made bymembers of the gentle sex themselves--which cannot be passed by. It is ofsuch a delicate nature, and involves such a disparagement of the sex in avital point, that the Drawer hesitates to put it in words. It is saidthat the cap and gown will be used to cover untidiness, to conceal themakeshift of a disorderly and unsightly toilet. Undoubtedly the cap andgown are democratic, adopted probably to equalize the appearance of richand poor in the same institution, where all are on an intellectual level. Perhaps the sex is not perfect; it may be that there are slovens (it is abrutal word) in that sex which is our poetic image of purity. But a neatand self-respecting girl will no more be slovenly under a scholastic gownthan under any outward finery. If it is true that the sex would takecover in this way, and is liable to run down at the heel when it has achance, then to the "examination" will have to be added a periodic"inspection, " such as the West-Pointers submit to in regard to theiruniforms. For the real idea of the cap and gown is to encouragediscipline, order, and neatness. We fancy that it is the mission of womanin this generation to show the world that the tendency of woman to anintellectual life is not, as it used to be said it was, to untidy habits. 

A TENDENCY OF THE AGE

This ingenious age, when studied, seems not less remarkable for itsdivision of labor than for the disposition of people to shift labor on toothers' shoulders. Perhaps it is only another aspect of the spirit ofaltruism, a sort of backhanded vicariousness. In taking an inventory oftendencies, this demands some attention. 

The notion appears to be spreading that there must be some way by whichone can get a good intellectual outfit without much personal effort. There are many schemes of education which encourage this idea. If onecould only hit upon the right "electives, " he could become a scholar withvery little study, and without grappling with any of the realdifficulties in the way of an education. It is no more a short-cut wedesire, but a road of easy grades, with a locomotive that will pull ourtrain along while we sit in a palace-car at ease. The discipline to beobtained by tackling an obstacle and overcoming it we think of smallvalue. There must be some way of attaining the end of cultivation withoutmuch labor. We take readily to proprietary medicines. It is easier todose with these than to exercise ordinary prudence about our health. Andwe readily believe the doctors of learning when they assure us that wecan acquire a new language by the same method by which we can restorebodily vigor: take one small patent-right volume in six easy lessons, without even the necessity of "shaking, " and without a regular doctor, and we shall know the language. Some one else has done all the work forus, and we only need to absorb. It is pleasing to see how this theory isgetting to be universally applied. All knowledge can be put into a kindof pemican, so that we can have it condensed. Everything must be choppedup, epitomized, put in short sentences, and italicized. And we haveprimers for science, for history, so that we can acquire all theinformation we need in this world in a few hasty bites. It is anadmirable saving of time-saving of time being more important in thisgeneration than the saving of ourselves. 

And the age is so intellectually active, so eager to know! If we wish toknow anything, instead of digging for it ourselves, it is much easier toflock all together to some lecturer who has put all the results into anhour, and perhaps can throw them all upon a screen, so that we canacquire all we want by merely using the eyes, and bothering ourselveslittle about what is said. Reading itself is almost too much of aneffort. We hire people to read for us--to interpret, as we call it--Browning and Ibsen, even Wagner. Every one is familiar with thepleasure and profit of "recitations, " of "conversations" which aremonologues. There is something fascinating in the scheme of gettingothers to do our intellectual labor for us, to attempt to fill up ourminds as if they were jars. The need of the mind for nutriment is likethe need of the body, but our theory is that it can be satisfied in adifferent way. There was an old belief that in order that we should enjoyfood, and that it should perform its function of assimilation, we mustwork for it, and that the exertion needed to earn it brought the appetitethat made it profitable to the system. We still have the idea that wemust eat for ourselves, and that we cannot delegate this performance, aswe do the filling of the mind, to some one else. We may have ceased torelish the act of eating, as we have ceased to relish the act ofstudying, but we cannot yet delegate it, even although our power ofdigesting food for the body has become almost as feeble as the power ofacquiring and digesting food for the mind. 

It is beautiful to witness our reliance upon others. The house may befull of books, the libraries may be as free and as unstrained ofimpurities as city water; but if we wish to read anything or studyanything we resort to a club. We gather together a number of persons oflike capacity with ourselves. A subject which we might grapple with andrun down by a few hours of vigorous, absorbed attention in a library, gaining strength of mind by resolute encountering of difficulties, bypersonal effort, we sit around for a month or a season in a club, expecting somehow to take the information by effortless contiguity withit. A book which we could master and possess in an evening we can haveread to us in a month in the club, without the least intellectual effort. Is there nothing, then, in the exchange of ideas? Oh yes, when there areideas to exchange. Is there nothing stimulating in the conflict of mindwith mind? Oh yes, when there is any mind for a conflict. But the minddoes not grow without personal effort and conflict and struggle withitself. It is a living organism, and not at all like a jar or otherreceptacle for fluids. The physiologists say that what we eat will not dous much good unless we chew it. By analogy we may presume that the mindis not greatly benefited by what it gets without considerable exercise ofthe mind. 

Still, it is a beautiful theory that we can get others to do our readingand thinking, and stuff our minds for us. It may be that psychology willyet show us how a congregate education by clubs may be the way. But justnow the method is a little crude, and lays us open to the charge--whichevery intelligent person of this scientific age will repudiate--of beingcontent with the superficial; for instance, of trusting wholly to othersfor our immortal furnishing, as many are satisfied with the review of abook for the book itself, or--a refinement on that--with a review of thereviews. The method is still crude. Perhaps we may expect a furtherdevelopment of the "slot" machine. By dropping a cent in the slot one canget his weight, his age, a piece of chewing-gum, a bit of candy, or ashock that will energize his nervous system. Why not get from a similarmachine a "good business education, " or an "interpretation" of Browning, or a new language, or a knowledge of English literature? But even thiswould be crude. We have hopes of something from electricity. There oughtto be somewhere a reservoir of knowledge, connected by wires with everyhouse, and a professional switch-tender, who, upon the pressure of abutton in any house, could turn on the intellectual stream desired. --[Prophecy of the Internet of the year 2000 from 110 years ago. D. W. ]--There must be discovered in time a method by which not only informationbut intellectual life can be infused into the system by an electriccurrent. It would save a world of trouble and expense. For some clubseven are a weariness, and it costs money to hire other people to read andthink for us. 

A LOCOED NOVELIST

Either we have been indulging in an expensive mistake, or a great foreignnovelist who preaches the gospel of despair is locoed. 

This word, which may be new to most of our readers, has long been currentin the Far West, and is likely to be adopted into the language, andbecome as indispensable as the typic words taboo and tabooed, whichHerman Melville gave us some forty years ago. There grows upon thedeserts and the cattle ranges of the Rockies a plant of the leguminosaefamily, with a purple blossom, which is called the 'loco'. It is sweet tothe taste; horses and cattle are fond of it, and when they have onceeaten it they prefer it to anything else, and often refuse other food. But the plant is poisonous, or, rather, to speak exactly, it is a weed ofinsanity. Its effect upon the horse seems to be mental quite as much asphysical. He behaves queerly, he is full of whims; one would say he was"possessed. " He takes freaks, he trembles, he will not go in certainplaces, he will not pull straight, his mind is evidently affected, he ismildly insane. In point of fact, he is ruined; that is to say, he is'locoed'. Further indulgence in the plant results in death, but rarelydoes an animal recover from even one eating of the insane weed. 

The shepherd on the great sheep ranges leads an absolutely isolated life. For weeks, sometimes for months together, he does not see a human being. His only companions are his dogs and the three or four thousand sheep heis herding. All day long, under the burning sun, he follows the herd overthe rainless prairie, as it nibbles here and there the short grass andslowly gathers its food. At night he drives the sheep back to the corral, and lies down alone in his hut. He speaks to no one; he almost forgetshow to speak. Day and night he hears no sound except the melancholy, monotonous bleat, bleat of the sheep. It becomes intolerable. The animalstupidity of the herd enters into him. Gradually he loses his mind. Theysay that he is locoed. The insane asylums of California contain manyshepherds. 

But the word locoed has come to have a wider application than to the poorshepherds or the horses and cattle that have eaten the loco. Any one whoacts queerly, talks strangely, is visionary without being actually alunatic, who is what would be called elsewhere a "crank, " is said to belocoed. It is a term describing a shade of mental obliquity and queernesssomething short of irresponsible madness, and something more thantemporarily "rattled" or bewildered for the moment. It is a good word, and needed to apply to many people who have gone off into strange ways, and behave as if they had eaten some insane plant--the insane plant beingprobably a theory in the mazes of which they have wandered until they arelost. 

Perhaps the loco does not grow in Russia, and the Prophet ofDiscouragement may never have eaten of it; perhaps he is only like theshepherd, mainly withdrawn from human intercourse and sympathy in amorbid mental isolation, hearing only the bleat, bleat, bleat of the'muxhiks' in the dullness of the steppes, wandering round in his ownsated mind until he has lost all clew to life. Whatever the cause may be, clearly he is 'locoed'. All his theories have worked out to theconclusion that the world is a gigantic mistake, love is nothing butanimality, marriage is immorality; according to astronomical calculationsthis teeming globe and all its life must end some time; and why not now?There shall be no more marriage, no more children; the present populationshall wind up its affairs with decent haste, and one by one quit thescene of their failure, and avoid all the worry of a useless struggle. 

This gospel of the blessedness of extinction has come too late to enableus to profit by it in our decennial enumeration. How different the censuswould have been if taken in the spirit of this new light! How muchbitterness, how much hateful rivalry would have been spared! We shouldthen have desired a reduction of the population, not an increase of it. There would have been a pious rivalry among all the towns and cities onthe way to the millennium of extinction to show the least number ofinhabitants; and those towns would have been happiest which could exhibitnot only a marked decline in numbers, but the greater number of oldpeople. Beautiful St. Paul would have held a thanksgiving service, andinvited the Minneapolis enumerators to the feast, Kansas City and St. Louis and San Francisco, and a hundred other places, would not havedesired a recount, except, perhaps, for overestimate; they would not havesaid that thousands were away at the sea or in the mountains, but, on thecontrary, that thousands who did not belong there, attracted by thesalubrity of the climate, and the desire to injure the town's reputation, had crowded in there in census time. The newspapers, instead of callingon people to send in the names of the unenumerated, would have rejoicedat the small returns, as they would have done if the census had been forthe purpose of levying the federal tax upon each place according to itspopulation. Chicago--well, perhaps the Prophet of the Steppes would havemade an exception of Chicago, and been cynically delighted to push it onits way of increase, aggregation, and ruin. 

But instead of this, the strain of anxiety was universal andheart-rending. So much depended upon swelling the figures. The tensionwould have been relieved if our faces were all set towards extinction, and the speedy evacuation of this unsatisfactory globe. The writer metrecently, in the Colorado desert of Arizona, a forlorn census-taker whohad been six weeks in the saddle, roaming over the alkali plains in orderto gratify the vanity of Uncle Sam. He had lost his reckoning, and didnot know the day of the week or of the month. In all the vast territory, away up to the Utah line, over which he had wandered, he met human beings(excluding "Indians and others not taxed ") so rarely that he was indanger of being locoed. He was almost in despair when, two days before, he had a windfall, which raised his general average in the form of awoman with twenty-six children, and he was rejoicing that he should beable to turn in one hundred and fifty people. Alas, the revenue thegovernment will derive from these half-nomads will never pay the cost ofenumerating them. 

And, alas again, whatever good showing we may make, we shall wish it werelarger; the more people we have the more we shall want. In this directionthere is no end, any more than there is to life. If extinction, and notlife and growth, is the better rule, what a costly mistake we have beenmaking!