Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures Part 9

"The wife who girds her husband's sword, 'Mid little ones who weep or wonder, And bravely speaks the cheering word, E'en though her heart be rent asunder:

Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear The bolts of death around him rattle, Hath shed as sacred blood as ere Was poured upon the field of battle."

When elbows touch, ten thousand feet keep step together, martial music fills the air, the shout of battle is on, bayonets glitter in the sunlight, the flag flutters in the breeze, and the general commands, men will shout and rush into battle who without these stimulating influences would be going the other way. I remember when a boy how whistling kept up my courage in the dark. It is told of General Zeb Vance of the Confederate army, that while leading his forces across a field into an engagement he met a rabbit going the other way. As the hare dodged around the command, General Vance lifting his hat said: "Go it, Mollie; go it, Mollie Cotton-tail; if I didn't have a reputation to sustain I would be right there with you."

For Christine Bradley, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Governor of Kentucky, to stand on the dock at Newport News, against the customs of centuries and facing the jeers of prejudice, baptize the battles.h.i.+p Kentucky with water, required as blood-born bravery as coursed the veins of the ensign who cut the wires in Cardenas Bay, or the lieutenant who sunk the Merrimac in the entrance to Santiago Harbor.

Because she dared to violate a long-established custom by refusing to use what had blighted the hopes of many daughters, sent to drunkards'

graves so many sons, and buried crafts and crews in watery graves, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union presented her with a handsome silver service. I was chosen to make the presentation speech, which I closed by saying: "Heaven bless Christine Bradley, who by her example said:

I christen thee Kentucky, With water from the spring, Which enriched the blood of Lincoln, Whose praise the sailors sing.

I christen thee Kentucky, With prayers of woman true, That wine, the curse of sailors, May never curse your crew.

I christen thee Kentucky, And may this christening be, A lesson of safety ever To sailors on the sea."

Now if public sentiment has made such a mistake in the allotment of virtues, why may it not have made a greater mistake in the allotment of spheres? It has been well said: "G.o.d made woman a free moral agent, capable of the highest development of brain, heart and conscience; with these are interwoven interests that involve issues for time and eternity, and G.o.d expects of woman the best she can do in whatever field she is best fitted for the accomplishment of results for the world's good." If a young woman is fitted to preside over a home, and some young man desires to crown her queen of that realm, she can find no higher calling in this world. There is nothing on this earth more like heaven than a happy home. I can give to a young woman no better wish than that the future may find her presiding over a home made beautiful by her character and culture, and safe through her influence.

But if a young woman is qualified like Frances E. Willard to better the world by public life-work, or like Florence Nightingale or Jane Addams to relieve the suffering of thousands, then she should not confine herself to the limited sphere of one household. I believe in the call of capacity for usefulness in both s.e.xes. There are men who are called to be cooks; they know the art of the caterer. There are men fitted to be dressmakers; they know the colors that blend and the styles which give beauty to dress. There are women who are fitted for science, literature and medicine. Some of the best cooks we have are men; some of the best writers and speakers are women. Abraham Lincoln never did more by his proclamation to free the slave, than did Harriet Beecher Stowe with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." William E. Gladstone never did more to endear himself to the people of Ireland by his advocacy of the home-rule, than has Lady Henry Somerset endeared herself to the common people of the "United Kingdom," by turning away from the wealth, n.o.bility and aristocracy of England to devote her great heart, gifted brain and abundant means to the elevation of the ma.s.ses, the reformation of the wayward, and the relief of the poor.

There is a fitness that must not be ignored. Frances E. Willard would never have made a dressmaker. It is said she did not know when her own dress fit, or whether becoming; she depended upon Anna Gordon to decide for her. But by the music of her eloquence and the rhythm of her rhetoric, she could send the truth echoing through the hearts of her hearers like the strain of a sweet melody. Worth, of Paris, France, would not have made an orator, but he could design a robe to please a princess and make a dress to fit "to the queen's taste." Then let Worths make dresses, and Frances E. Willards charm the world by their eloquence.

Yonder is a boy. His soul is full of music; his fingers are as much at home on the key-board of a piano as a mocking-bird in its own native orange grove. His sister is a mathematician; she solves a problem in mathematics as easily as her brother plays a piece of music. Because one is a boy and the other a girl, don't make the girl teach music and the boy mathematics. What G.o.d has joined together in fitness, let not false education put asunder.

Recently I read of a man whose father left him a large business.

Though an exemplary man he could not make ends meet in a business out of which his father had made a fortune. The man worried himself into nervous prostration. While he remained at home for rest, his wife took charge of the business and made of it a great success. I say let that woman run the business and the man take care of his nerves.

I know a minister who is a good man, but his strength is in his limbs.

He's an athlete, but turn him loose in a field as full of ideas as a clover field of blossoms, and he can't preach a good sermon. Let Dr.

Anna Shaw enter the same field and she will gather blossoms of thought faster than you can store them away in your mind. Some one in my presence may believe the man should keep on preaching and Anna Shaw go to the sewing-room and run a sewing machine; but I say if the man's strength is in his limbs, and Doctor Shaw's in her head, let the preacher run the sewing machine and Doctor Shaw preach the gospel of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. If G.o.d fitted Anna Shaw's brain and tongue for the platform, it would be unwomanly in her to make herself the pedal power of a sewing machine. We want successful, useful men and women; and in fields for which G.o.d has fitted woman, don't be afraid to give her the freest, broadest liberty, or be uneasy about her uns.e.xing herself. She has entered two hundred fields in the last one hundred years. Yes, I guess one more field must be added, for I saw a woman a few years ago in an occupation I had never seen one engaged in before. In a city where I lectured a beautiful, intelligent young lady was running the elevator of a hotel, and I was completely "taken up" by her.

Of all the new fields entered by woman you cannot point to one where she has degraded her womanhood, or one that has not been blessed by the touch of her influence.

It is true there are fanatics among women as there are among men, but if the extreme woman goes too far, the average woman will call a halt every time. Fifteen years ago I could stand on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, in the evening and within a half hour count twenty young women, dressed in bloomers, riding bicycles. Now one may go to Chicago, spend a year and not see one. Woman is safe enough.

Some are uneasy lest woman will go beyond her sphere, but I am not so much disturbed about the future of woman as I am of man. Upon virtue and intelligence depends the future of this republic. Have men all the virtue? Go to the saloons; are they frequented by women? No; _men_. Go to the gambling halls; are they crowded with women? No; _men_. Go to the jails and penitentiaries; are they full of women? No; _men_. Go to the churches; are they crowded with men? No; mostly by women. What about intelligence? Have men all the intelligence? Two girls graduate from high schools to one boy. I am glad to be living now; one hundred years hence, if I were to be born again, I would want to be a girl.

Woman goes to the door of death to give life to man and man should be willing to let her seek out her own sphere for usefulness.

Not long since I read a book called "The New Woman." It was a novel by an Englishman. In it the author takes a beautiful young girl, about eighteen years of age, through a "Gretna-Green" experience with a young man of twenty. She is the daughter of a widow; he, the only son of a wealthy London merchant. They run away and after a month's search are found by the father of the young man in southern France. The girl is sent home to her mother; the young man sent to India in order to get him far away from his wife. The novelist makes the young man a n.o.ble character, who is determined to prove himself worthy of his wife, and he toils to send her means for support. The young wife becomes a mother, and the young husband toils the harder to care for his wife and babe. When time hangs heavy on the hands of the young mother, she is invited to join a woman's club. Here she imbibes the spirit of the new woman. She soon neglects her child and appears before the public for a lecture. She wears a low neck dress, paints her cheeks, blondines her hair, smokes cigarettes and drinks wine. A millionaire in India, who loses his own son, adopts the hero of the novel, dies and leaves him the great estate. Then the young man hurries back to his wife. He arrives in the evening, but finds she is not at home; she is delivering a lecture in the opera-house. He awaits her return; a storm rages outside; at a late hour she enters the door, throws off her wraps and stands before her husband, with blondined hair, painted cheeks, and eyes red with wine. He stares, then starts toward her, when she brings him to a halt by her strange manner. He asks, "Is not this my wife?" she answers, "No, I am the New Woman."

She refuses to let him see their child, drives him out into the storm, then goes to her room, disrobes and lies down to dream of great audiences and applause.

It is an insult to any intelligent reader. Where is the woman, who was a sweet, modest young mother, and who today is a public speaker, who has neglected her child, driven her husband without cause into the street, blondines her hair, paints her cheeks, drinks wine and smokes cigarettes? She would be hissed from the platform. The author simply shows his extreme prejudice in an abstract attempt to prove that to be a new woman means the surrender of all womanly graces.

Let me give you, not fiction but real history, that I may present to you the kind of new woman I indorse. She was born in the State of New York, was well educated, and at proper age married a young physician.

They moved to a western city, where for a while the young physician did well; but in an evil hour he commenced to drink. Like many a n.o.ble young man, he was too weak to resist the power of appet.i.te, and soon his practice left him. His wife, the mother of two boys, secured a position in the public schools and by her ability, won her way to a princ.i.p.als.h.i.+p. The husband wandered away, while the brave wife and mother remained with her children, but followed her husband with letters of loving appeal. After long separation he was taken seriously ill in the far Southwest. She left children, home and school work to go to his bedside. Her watchful care brought him back from the very door of death, and her prayers were answered in seeing him forsake the cup and hide for safety in the cleft of the Rock of Ages. He returned with her to their home, but soon after pa.s.sed away. She buried him beneath the green Missouri sod, planted flowers about the grave, paid him tribute of her tears, and returned to her work.

In the course of these years she had joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and was recognized as one of its greatest leaders.

Several years ago I gave an address in Hot Springs, Ark. A card was presented at my door, which bore the name of the heroine of my story.

Going to the parlor I said: "What are you doing here?"

"My boy has been very ill with rheumatism and I have been here with him for several weeks. He is better now and I return to my work tomorrow."

Months later she was called again to the bedside of this son, and with all the tenderness of mother-love, he was cared for until he too pa.s.sed over the river. Again she took up her work on the platform, where she inspired many young women to do their best in life, and called many to righteousness. She was the salt of the earth, the embodiment of n.o.bility, the soul of truth; and not only her own state but the whole country is better because she lived.

Ask the author of the novel for the _real_ to his story; he cannot name her; she does not live in England or America. Ask me for mine and I answer Clara C. Hoffman, for years the a.s.sociate of Frances E.

Willard as national officer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and state president of the white ribb.o.n.e.rs of Missouri.

In a magazine article an author said: "Out of one hundred and forty-five graduates of a certain female college, only fifteen have married." A Chicago editor quoted the statement and asked: "Is it possible education breeds in woman a distaste for matrimony and home life?" In the first place, I would answer: "You never can know how many are going to marry until they are all dead."

Another explanation is that the average school girl goes out of school at that impulsive age when "love acts independent of all law, and is subject to nothing but its own sweet will," no matter how many years father has toiled to give her the comforts of life, nor how many sleepless nights mother has spent to give her rest. She meets a young man; he is handsome, dresses well and talks fluently. She falls in love, and sees in "love at first sight," the "inspiration of all wisdom." In a week, though she knows nothing of the young man's character or disposition, she is ready to say to her parents: "I appreciate all you have done for me: I love you devotedly, but I have met such a nice fellow; he has asked me to marry him, and I have accepted; ta-ta!" She's gone. If her parents ask about the prospect for a living, she answers as did the young girl whose father said: "Mary, are you determined to marry that young man?"

"I am, Father."

"Why, my child, he has no trade, no money, and very little education; what are you going to do for a living?"

She replied: "Aunt is going to give me a hen for a wedding present.

You know, Father, it is said one hen will raise twenty chickens in a season. The second season, twenty each, you see, will be four hundred; the third season, eight thousand; the fourth season, one hundred and sixty thousand; and the fifth season, only five years, twenty each will be three million, two hundred thousand chickens. At twenty-five cents each they will bring eight hundred thousand dollars. We will then let you have money enough to pay off the mortgage on the farm and we will move to the city."

To a girl in love, every hen egg will hatch; not a chicken will ever die with the gapes; they will all live on love, like herself, and everything will be profit.

The college girl cannot marry at this impulsive, air-castle age. She must wait until she gets through college. By that time she is old enough for her heart to consult her head, and her head inquires into the character and capacity of the young man. Beside this, it has been the custom for women to look up to man, and when the college woman looks up, quite often she doesn't see anybody. Young man, if you want the college girl you must "get up" in good qualities to where she will see you without looking down.

I believe this higher education for women will tend to arrest the recklessness by which life is linked with life at the marriage altar.

There is a legend among the Jews that man and woman were once one being; an angel was sent down from Heaven to cleave them into two.

Ever since, each half has been running around looking for the other, and the misfits have been many at the marriage altar.

These misfits remind me of an experience when I lectured for the Colfax, Iowa, Chautauqua, some years ago. Frank Beard, the famous chalk talker, was there and on Grand Army day he was on the program for a short talk. I was seated by Mr. Beard while the speaker who preceded him was telling war stories of his regiment and himself.

Frank Beard said to me: "Well! I guess I can exaggerate a little myself." It was evident he intended to measure up to the occasion.

After getting his audience into proper spirit for the manufactured war story, he said:

"I was in the war myself and had a few experiences. At the battle of s.h.i.+loh, I was lying behind a log, when I saw about forty Confederates come das.h.i.+ng down toward me. My first impulse was to rise, make a charge and capture the whole forty. But I knew that would not be strategy; generals did not manage a battle that way with such odds against them, so I determined to make a detour. Perhaps some of you young people do not know what a detour means. It means, when in such a position as I was, to get up and go the other way. So I detoured. The chaplain of our regiment detoured also; he could detour a little faster than I, and was directly in front of me when a sh.e.l.l caught up with me and took my leg off just above the knee. You may notice I walk very lame." (Which he did just then for effect). "Well, the same sh.e.l.l took off the chaplain's leg, and we tumbled into a heap. The surgeon came up, and having a little too much booze, he got things mixed; he put the chaplain's leg on me and my leg on the chaplain. We were in good health, and the legs grew on all right. When I recovered, I concluded to celebrate my restoration to usefulness, so I went into a saloon and said to the bartender, 'Give me some good old brandy.' He set out the bottle, and I began to fill the gla.s.s, when that chaplain's leg began to kick. The chaplain was a very ardent temperance man, and the first thing I knew, that temperance leg was making for the door, and I followed. But what do you think? As I went out, I met my leg bringing the chaplain in."

That's a very absurd story, a rather ridiculous one, but if the surgeon had made the mistake Mr. Beard charged, he would not have made any greater than is made every day at the marriage altar. Young women, I would not silence the love songs in your hopeful hearts, but I would have every betrothed girl demand of her lover not only a loving heart, but a well rounded character and a reasonable store of useful knowledge.

A writer on this question said: "This progress of woman lessens mother love in our country." Is that true? Before the opening of a southern exposition, a mother of four boys applied for and was engaged as chime bell ringer. Perhaps some saw in the selection a woman as brazen as the bells she would ring. On opening day she played, "He who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps"; on New York day she played, "Yankee Doodle" and "Hail Columbia;" on Pennsylvania day, "The Star Spangled Banner;" on Kentucky day, "My Old Kentucky Home;" on Maryland day, "Maryland, my Maryland;" on Georgia day, "The Girl I Left Behind Me;" on colored people's day, the airs of the old plantation; on newsboy's day, "The Bowery" and "Suns.h.i.+ne of Paradise Alley;" then "Nearer, my G.o.d, to Thee," "Rock of Ages, Cleft For Me," soothed the tired Christian heart. One afternoon she took two of her boys into the belfry-tower; one seven, the other about three years of age. When they tired of the confinement, the older boy said: "Mother, can we go out for a walk?"

"Yes, son, but don't let go little brother's hand."

She was so absorbed by the music of her bells she did not notice the pa.s.sing of time until the night shadows began to gather. Then her older boy came running up in the tower crying, "Mother, I've lost little brother!"

She quit her bells and running through the grounds set every policeman looking for her boy; then she hurried back to her bells and began to play "Home, Sweet Home." It is said the bells never rang so clear and sweet. Over and over again she played, "Home, Sweet Home;" some wondered why the tune did not change. At last, while trembling with dread and eyes filled with tears, she heard a sweet voice say, "Mama, I hear de bells and I tome to you." The mother, turning from the bells, clasped the child to her bosom and thanked G.o.d for its safety.

It is said everything is undergoing a constant change, but until the chime bells ring in the eternal morning mother love will live on, the same unchanging devotion. Several years ago I stood on Portland Heights, Oregon, in the evening, and saw Mount Hood in its snow-capped majesty, when the stars seemed to be set as jewels in its crown. If you ask me by what force that giant was lifted from the level of the sea till its dome touched the sky, I cannot answer you, but I know it stands there, a towering sentinel to traveler on land and sailor on the sea. So mother love, which no one can solve, exists as unchanging as the love of G.o.d; broad enough and strong enough to meet all the changing conditions of time.

While I did not make this lecture to include the suffrage question, I cannot turn away from the new woman without a word about the ballot for women. It is no longer a question of right, but whether or not men will grant the right. This I believe men will do when the sentiment of women is strong enough to force the issue. "Taxation without representation" is no less a tyranny to women than to men. I was the guest of a wealthy widow, who paid more taxes than any man in the county, yet a foreigner, who had been in this country less than three years, who had not a dollar of property nor a patriotic impulse, laid down the hoe in the garden, and going to the polls, voted additional tax upon the woman he worked for; and the saloon influence upon her two boys, while she had no voice in what taxes her property, or what might tax her heart by the ruin of a son. There being no question about woman's right to the ballot, there should be no hesitation on man's part in bestowing the right.

I now turn from the new woman to the old man. I do not mean the man old in years; for him I have only words of honor and praise. I mean the man set in old ways and habits that neutralizes the progress and wastes the forces of the republic. At the door of this old man lie the causes of commercial disturbances, depression in trade and recurring panics more than in the causes stressed by partisans for political effect.