Ingersollia Part 2

21. Love and Freedom in a Cabin

I would rather go to the forest far away and build me a little cabin--build it myself and daub it with mud, and live there with my wife aud family--and have a little path that led down to the spring, where the water bubbled out day and night, like a little poem from the heart of the earth; a little hut with some hollyhocks at the corner, with their bannered bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush in the air, like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live there and have some lattice work across the window, so that the sunlight would fall checkered on the baby in the cradle; I would rather live there and have my soul erect and free, than to live in a palace of gold and wear the crown of imperial power and know that my soul was slimy with hypocrisy.

22. The Turnpike Road of Happiness

Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves a woman so well that he says, "I will make her happy," makes no mistake; and so with the woman who says, "I will make him happy." There is only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you can't be happy cross-lots; you have got to go the regular turnpike road.

23. Love Paying Ten Per Cent

I tell you to-night there is on the average more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich; and the meanest hut with love in it is fit for the G.o.ds, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. That's my doctrine! You can't be so poor but that you can help somebody. Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; and love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent, to borrower and lender both. Don't tell me that you have got to be rich! We have all a false standard of greatness in the United States. We think here that a man to be great must be notorious; he must be extremely wealthy or his name must be between the lips of rumor. It is all nonsense! It is not necessary to be rich to be great, or to be powerful to be happy; and the happy man is the successful man. Happiness is the legal-tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.

24. A Word to the Cross-Grained

A cross man I hate above all things. What right has he to murder the suns.h.i.+ne of the day? What right has he to a.s.sa.s.sinate the joy of life?

When you go home you ought to feel the light there is in the house; if it is in the night it will burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness. It is just as well to go home a ray of suns.h.i.+ne as an old, sour, cross curmudgeon, who thinks he is the head of the family. Wise men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking about who will be alderman from the Fifth ward; they have been thinking about politics; great and mighty questions have been engaging their minds; they have bought calico at eight cents or six, and want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain that must have been upon a man, and when he gets home everybody else in the house must look out for his comfort. Head of the house, indeed! I don't like him a bit!

25. Oh! Daughters and Wives be Beautiful

I am a believer in fas.h.i.+on. It is the duty of every woman to make herself as beautiful and attractive as she possibly can. "Handsome is as handsome does," but she is much handsomer if well dressed. Every man should look his very best. I am a believer in good clothes. The time never ought to come in this country when you can tell a farmer's daughter simply by the garments she wears. I say to every girl and woman, no matter what the material of your dress may be, no matter how cheap and coa.r.s.e it is, cut it and make it in the fas.h.i.+on. I believe in jewelry. Some people look upon it as barbaric, but in my judgment, wearing jewelry is the first evidence the barbarian gives of a wish to be civilized. To adorn ourselves seems to be a part of our nature, and this desire, seems to be everywhere and in everything. I have sometimes thought that the desire for beauty covers the earth with flowers. It is this desire that paints the wings of moths, tints the chamber of the sh.e.l.l, and gives the bird its plumage and its song. Oh! daughters and wives if you would be loved, adorn yourselves--if you would be adorned, be beautiful!

26. A Wholesome Word to the Stingy

I despise a stingy man. I don't see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty millions of dollars or ten millions of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty millions of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. I should not think he could do it. Do you know I have known men who would trust their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not with their pocketbook; not with a dollar. When I see a man of that kind I always think he knows which of these articles is the most valuable.

27. The Boss of the Family

If you are the grand emperor of the world, you had better be the grand emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the grand empress of yours. The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies a beggar, his life has been a success.

I tell you it is an infamous word and an infamous feeling--a man who is "boss," who is going to govern in his family; and when he speaks let all the rest of them be still; some mighty idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do you know I dislike this man?

28. Be Honor Bright!

A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker. Be perfectly honor bright with your children, and they will be your friends when you are old.

29. The Opera at the Table

I like to hear children at the table telling what big things they have seen during the day; I like to hear their merry voices mingling with the clatter of knives and forks. I had rather hear that than any opera that was ever put upon the stage. I hate this idea of authority.

30. A Child's laugh sweeter than Apollo's lyre

I said, and I say again, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, oh, weird musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch the skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering on the vine-clad hills: but know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou art the blessed boundary-line between the beasts and man, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, laughter, divine daughter of joy, make dimples enough in the cheeks of the world to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.

31. Don't Wake the Children

Let your children sleep. Do not drag them from their beds in the darkness of night. Do not compel them to a.s.sociate all that is tiresome, irksome and dreadful with cultivating the soil. Treat your children with infinite kindness--treat them as equals. There is no happiness in a home not filled with love. When the husband hates his wife--where the wife hates the husband; where the children hate their parents and each other--there is a h.e.l.l upon earth.

32. How to Deal with Children

Some Christians act as though they thought when the Lord said, "Suffer little children to come unto me," that he had a rawhide under his mantle--they act as if they thought so. That is all wrong. I tell my children this: Go where you may, commit what crime you may, fall to what depths of degradation you may, I can never shut my arms, my heart or my door to you. As long as I live you shall have one sincere friend; do not be afraid to tell anything wrong you have done; ten to one if I have not done the same thing. I am not perfection, and if it is necessary to sin in order to have sympathy, I am glad I have committed sin enough to have sympathy. The sterness of perfection I do not want. I am going to live so that my children can come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain." Whether you call that religion or infidelity, suit yourselves; that is the way I intend to do it.

33. Give a Child a Chance

Do not create a child to be a post set in an orthodox row; raise investigators and thinkers, not disciples and followers; cultivate reason, not faith; cultivate investigation, not superst.i.tion; and if you have any doubt yourself about a thing being so, tell them about it; don't tell them the world was made in six days--if you think six days means six good whiles, tell them six good whiles. If you have any doubts about anybody being in a furnace and not being burnt, or even getting uncomfortably warm, tell them so--be honest about it. If you look upon the jaw-bone of a donkey as not a good weapon, say so. Give a child a chance. If you think a man never went to sea in a fish, tell them so, it won't make them any worse. Be honest--that's all; don't cram their heads with things that will take them years to unlearn; tell them facts--it is just as easy. It is as easy to find out botany, and astronomy, and geology, and history--it is as easy to find out all these things as to cram their minds with things you know nothing about.

34. The Greatest Liars in Michigan

I was over in Michigan the other day. There was a boy over there at Grand Rapids about five or six years old, a nice, smart boy, as you will see from the remark he made--what you might call a nineteenth century boy. His father and mother had promised to take him out riding for about three weeks, and they would slip off and go without him. Well, after a while that got kind of played out with the little boy, and the day before I was there they played the trick on him again. They went out and got the carriage, and went away, and as they rode away from the front of the house, he happened to be standing there with his nurse, and he saw them. The whole thing flashed on him in a moment. He took in the situation, and turned to his nurse and said, pointing to his father and mother: "There go the two biggest liars in the State of Michigan!" When you go home fill the house with joy, so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors, and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.