A New Atmosphere Part 5

IX.

But whatever may be the opportunities and capabilities of infantine gymnastics, there is always one way in which fathers may indirectly, but very powerfully, influence their children, and that is through the mother. When her little children are around her, she needs above all earthly things the strength, support, society, and sympathy of her husband. It is wellnigh impossible to conceive the demand which a little child makes upon its mother's vitality. In Nature's plan, I believe, the supply is always equal to the demand. The new, fresh life gives back through a thousand channels all the life it draws. But if the mother is left alone, in such a solitude as is never found outside of marriage, but often and often within it; if she is left to seek in her baby her chief solace, unhappy is her fate. The little one exhausts her physical strength, and the inattentive and abstracted--alas! that one may not seldom say, the unkind and overbearing husband fails to supply her with moral strength, and her weary feet go on with ever-diminis.h.i.+ng joy. All this is unnecessary.

All this is contrary to the Divine economy. Every child ought to be a new spring of life, an El Dorado, fountain of immortal youth. Whether it shall be or not lies, if you look at it from one point, wholly with the husband, or if you look at it from another, wholly with the wife.

On the one hand, each is all-powerful. On the other, each is powerless. But the husband has always the advantage of strength, out-door activities, and continual commerce with the world, and consequent variety. The wife, surrounded by her children, is in danger of giving herself up to them entirely. She will incessantly dispense her life without being careful to furnish herself for such demands by opening her soul to new accessions. Here is where her husband should stand by her continually to encourage and stimulate. If she is not strong enough to go out into the world, let him bring the world home to her. He should by all means see to it that her heart and soul do not contract. Every child, every added experience, should have the effect of expanding her horizon, deepening and enlarging her sympathies, and enabling her to gather the whole earth into her motherly love. Her little world ought to be a type of the great world.

The wisdom which she gathers in the one, she ought to turn to the good of the other,--a good that will surely come back again in other shapes to her family world. So, every family should be both a missionary centre and the medium through which, in never-ending flow, all good and gracious influences shall pour. Every family should rise and fall with the pulse of humanity, and not be a mere k.n.o.b of organic matter, without dependencies or connections. But the father should see to this. He should gently lure the mother out of her nursery into such broad fresh air as she needs for healthy growth. What that shall be is a question of character and culture. A lyceum lecture, a sewing-society, an evening party, a concert, a county fair, may be elevation, amus.e.m.e.nt, improvement to her. Or he may do her most good by helping her to be interested in reading, either in the current or in cla.s.sic literature. Or, best of all, he may charm her with his own companions.h.i.+p, beguile her with pleasant drives, or walks and talks, keeping her heart open on the husband side, and so continually alive, while maintaining also the oneness which marriage in theory creates.

It is this respect in which husbands are perhaps most generally deficient. They do not talk with their wives. If a neighbor is married, they tell of it. If a battle is fought, or a village burnt down, they communicate the fact; but for any interchange of thought or sentiment or emotion, for any conversation that is invigorating, inspiring, that causes a thrill or leaves a glow, how often does such a thing occur between husband and wife? What intellectual meeting is there,--what shock of electricities? When a definite domestic question is to be decided, the wife's judgment may be sought, and that is better than a solitary stumbling on, regardless of her views or feelings; but this sort of bread-and-b.u.t.ter discussion of ways and means is not the gentle, animated play of conversation, not that pleasant sparkle which enlivens the hours, that trustful confidence which lightens the heart, that wielding of weapons which strengthens the arm, that sweet, instinctive half unveiling which increases respect and deepens love and fills the heart with inexpressible tenderness. Yet there is n.o.body in the world with whom it is so important for a man to be intimately acquainted as his own wife, while such intimate acquaintance is the exception rather than the rule. Ever one sees them going on each in his own path, each with his own inner world of opinions and hopes and memories, one in name, miserably two in all else.

Men often have too much confidence in their measuring-lines. They fancy they have fathomed a soul's depths when they have but sounded its shallows. They think they have circ.u.mnavigated the globe when they have only paddled in a cove. They trim their sails for other seas, leaving the priceless gems of their own undiscovered. To many a man no voyage of exploration would bring such rich returns as a persevering and affectionate search into the resources of the heart which he calls his own. Many and many a man would be amazed at learning that in the tame household drudge, in the meek, timid, apologetic recipient of his caprices, in the worn and fretful invalid, in the commonplace, insipid domestic weakling he scorns an angel unawares. Many a wife is wearied and neglected into moral shabbiness, who, rightly entreated, would have walked sister and wife of the G.o.ds. Human nature in certain directions is as infinite as the Divine nature, and when a man turns away from his wife, under the impression that he has exhausted her capabilities, and must seek elsewhere the sympathy and companions.h.i.+p he craves or go without it altogether, let him reflect that the chances are at least even that he has but exhausted himself, and that the soil which seems to him fallow might in other hands or with a wiser culture yield most plenteous harvests.

There is another point which should be kept in solemn consideration.

The deportment of children to their parents is very largely influenced by the deportment of parents to each other. It is of small service that a child be taught to repeat the formula, "Honor thy father and thy mother," if, by his bearing, the father continually dishonors the mother. The Monday courtesy has more effect than the Sunday commandment. Every conjugal impoliteness is a lesson in filial disrespect. If a son sees that his father is regardless of his mother's taste, does not respect her opinions, or heed her sensitiveness or care for her happiness; or if, on the other hand, he sees that she is held in ever-watchful love, he will be very likely to follow in the same path. There are of course exceptions. A gross and brutal abuse may work an opposite effect by the law of contrarieties, but in ordinary cases this is the ordinary course of events. In common Christian families a boy will appraise his mother at his father's valuation. If the husband takes the liberty of speaking to her sharply, the son when irritated will not think it worth while to repress his inclination to do the same. If the husband is not careful to pay her outward respect, let it not be supposed that his son will set him the example. But if the husband cherishes her with delight, if his behavior always a.s.sumes that the best is to be reserved for her, the best will be her incense from the whole family, and no son will any more allow himself to indulge any evil propensity in her presence than he would pluck out his right eye. And in the delicacy, the refinement, the gentleness and warmth and consecration of her presence all this courtesy and consideration will come back to them a hundred-fold in constant dews of blessing.

As with habits so with principles. The mother's influence is strong, but the stories told of its strength are often hurtful in their tendency. It is not the strength of the mother's, but of the father's influence, that needs to be held up to prominence. By Divine sufferance, mothers can do much to abrogate the evil consequences of paternal misdoing,--but paternal misdoing is not for that any the less evil. If the husband laughs at his wife's temperance notions, and thinks wine-sipping to be elegant and harmless, his boy will sip wine elegantly and fancy his mother old-fas.h.i.+oned; and with his father's appet.i.te, but without his father's strength, and with more than his father's temptations,--in the great city, homeless, bewildered, and dazzled,--he will rush on to a bitter end. If the husband thinks religion a thing beautiful and becoming to woman, but unnecessary to manly character, his son will not long go to church and to Sunday school when he feels in his veins the thrill of approaching manhood. I know a community where not a man can be found to superintend the Sabbath school, and a woman, n.o.ble and whole-souled, takes its charge upon herself. The fathers do not disbelieve in Sunday schools, or they would not suffer their wives and children to go. They do not believe in them, or they would go themselves. They are simply indifferent,--and indifferent in a matter so important, that indifference is guilt. Will the young men of that community be likely to fear G.o.d and keep his commandments? Will they be likely to acknowledge the claims of a religion which their fathers despise? If they grow up hardened, selfish, headstrong, unfortified against a.s.sault, will it be the fault of the mothers who are struggling against wind and tide, or of the fathers who are lazily lounging at oar and rudder?

People in general are not half married. Half? If one would mathematically approximate the truth, he must multiply his denominator far beyond reach of the digits; and, what is still worse the fraction that is married is, in a vast majority of cases, not only the least, but the lowest. It is not the intellect, the spirit, the immortality, that is married, but that alone which is of the earth, earthy.

Xenophon, in his _Memorabilia Socratis_, presents to us Ischomacus, an Athenian of great riches and reputation, repairing to Socrates for help in extricating him from domestic entanglements. In laying the case before the philosopher, Ischomacus informs him that he told his wife that his main object in marrying her was to have a person in whose discretion he could confide, who would take proper care of his servants, and expend his money with economy,--which was certainly very frank.

But that was twenty-three hundred years ago, and people have grown less material and more spiritual since then. No man now would hold out to a woman such inducement to marriage. Certainly not. Men now wait till the Rubicon is pa.s.sed, and then lay down their pleasant little programmes in the newspapers,--general principles for private consumption. The popular voice, speaking in your everywhere circulating newspaper, says: "A man gets a wife to look after his affairs, and to a.s.sist him in his journey through life; to educate and prepare their children for a proper station in life, and not to dissipate his property. The husband's interest should be the wife's care, and her greatest ambition to carry her no farther than his welfare or happiness, together with that of her children. This should be her sole aim, and the theatre of her exploits in the bosom of her family, where she may do as much toward making a fortune as he can in the counting-room or the workshop."

Is this very much more commanding than the att.i.tude of Ischomacus?

Does Anno Domini loom with immeasurable grandeur above Anno Mundi?

Ischomacus wanted his wife to manage his fortune. Young America wants his to help make one. Is it a very great stride in advance, considering we have been twenty-three centuries about it? This extract I take from a religious newspaper, and it is pagan to the heart's core; yes, and in these matters the Church is as pagan as the World.

Because a man is folded in the Church, one has no more expectation of finding in him spiritual views concerning marriage than if he belonged to the World. Unmitigated selfishness, worldliness, greed, and evil-seeking are the roots and fruits of such a "religious" paragraph.

Church and World are both gone aside and altogether become filthy. The holy sacrament is profaned alike by churchman and worldling. It is tossed on the spear-point of levity, it is clutched under the muck-rake of materialism, it is degraded and defiled till its pristine purity is wellnigh lost, and only a marred and defaced image rears its foul features from the mire. That it does not always cause disgust, is because the G.o.ddess is so chiefly hidden that women do not recognize the lineaments of the demon which has usurped her place. Miasma has polluted the atmosphere so long that people do not know the feeling of untainted air. O, it is good to speak your mind, be it only once in a lifetime! Now I wish I had walked softly all my days, that, with all the force of a rare indignation, I might just this once crush down that hateful, that debasing, that vile and leprous thing which flaunts the name of marriage, but does not even put on the white garments of its sanct.i.ty to hide its own shame. Leer and laugh, coa.r.s.e jest, advice, insinuation, interpretation, and conjecture beslime the surface of our social life and work abomination. Nature and unconsciousness become impossible, and one is swallowed up in stagnant depths, or borne above them only with an inward, raging tempest of irrepressible loathing. A blessing rest upon this pen-point that stamps black and heavy into receptive paper the wrath which it is not lawful otherwise to express. Sentiments the most repulsive, the most insulting to womanhood and to a woman, may be coolly, carelessly, unconsciously tossed at you by and in society, and you must smile and parry with equal nonchalance. Thank Heaven for Gutenberg and Dr.

Faustus, that whatsoever has been spoken in darkness may be heard to its shame in the light, and that which has been spoken in the ear may be proclaimed upon the house-tops with the detestation it deserves!

X.

Stay for a moment the pressure with which--though, perhaps, all unknown to themselves--you force women under the yoke of marriage, and let us look without pa.s.sion at a few palpable, commonplace facts.

Women must marry because they need a protector. They are weak, and cannot safely go down life's pathway without a strong arm to lean on.

What kind of protection do wives actually find? I once looked into an old-fas.h.i.+oned house and I saw a woman, the mother of seven sons, heating her oven with the boughs of trees, which she could manage only by resting the branching ends on the backs of chairs while the trunk ends were burning in the oven, and as they broke into coals the boughs were pushed in, till the whole was consumed. When her dinner was preparing, she would also take her pails and go through the hot summer morning a quarter of a mile to the spring for water. Was this "protection, freedom, tender-liking, ease." This was not in a brutal and quarrelsome, but in a united and Christian family; father and mother members of an Orthodox church in good and regular standing, owners of broad lands and plenty of money, the sons rather famous for their filial love and duty. It was not an unnatural thing, and excited no comment. The seven sons, all their lives, held their mother in affectionate remembrance, but it never occurred to them to leave the hay-fields in order to cut wood or fetch water.

This was sixty or seventy years ago, before any of you, my young readers, were born.

Once a rich man built a barn, and of course he had "a raising." To the raising came the men and women from all the country-side, as was their wont. For the men was a supper provided with lavish abundance. Before they came in, thirty women sat down to supper. Of course, when came the men's turn to be served, these women gave a.s.sistance at the tables, but all the previous cooking and arrangement had been done by the women of the family, without outside help. Besides the hot meat supper, the men were furnished with unlimited drink; cider, rum, and brandy were carried out to them by the pailful. An experienced carpenter from an adjoining village declared that he would take the timber in the woods, hew it and frame it, and raise it for what the mere festivities of raising cost. To perform one little piece of work, the men laid upon the shoulders of women a burden ten times heavier than their own, and incurred an expense which, if put upon their large, square, bare dwelling-house, would have given it beauties and conveniences, whose absence was a continual and severe drawback to the women's comfort. They turned the woman's work into hard labor, that they might turn their own into a frolic. Were those women protected?

That was only one instance, but that was the common machinery used in raising barns. That, too, was long ago.

Once there existed a village containing four schools, which were in session three months in the summer and three months in the winter. At the beginning and end of the terms, the "committee," of whom there were two in each "district," used to visit the schools attended by the greater part of the adult male population of the district. At the conclusion of this visit, one of the district committee at the beginning of the term, and one at the end, was always expected to invite the other seven committee-men and all the visiting neighbors to his house to dinner. The hard-working farmer's wife, or the butcher's, or the shoemaker's wife, with her four, five, seven, little children around her, and no servant, prepared her three roast turkeys, her three plum-puddings, and all the attendant dishes; and the ten, twenty, thirty stalwart farmers, butchers, shoemakers, booted and burly, filed into her best room, swallowed her roast turkeys and her plum-puddings, with no a.s.sistance from her except the most valued service of flitting around the table to keep their plates supplied, and then filed away to visit another school and swarm into another best room, leaving her to the bones, and the dishes, and the six little children. And this is man's protection. But this was the old times, you say. Yes, and you look back upon it with a sigh, and call it the "_good_ old times."

Well, the times have changed. They are no longer old, but new. Have we changed with them? In a town I wot of, the doctors have a periodical meeting. They a.s.semble in the evening by themselves in a parlor, discussing no one knows what, among themselves, till ten or eleven o'clock, when they emerge into the dining-room and have a grand set-to upon lobster salads, stewed oysters, ices, and all manner of frothy fanfaronade. A minister is going to be ordained in a country village, and the village families round about heap up their tables and bid in all comers to feasts of fat things. A conference of churches is held in the meeting-house, and the same newspaper paragraph that notes the logical sermon and the gratifying reports of revivals, notes also the good things which the hospitable citizens provided, and the urgency with which strangers were pressed to partake. One would suppose that the reasoning of the fastidious old Jews was suspected to have descended to our own day and race, and that the sons of men must always come eating and drinking, or people will say they have a devil.

Every advance in science or skill seems to be attended by a corresponding advance in the claims of the cooking-range. The palate keeps pace with the brain. The one presents a claim for every victory of the other. The left hand reaches out to clutch what the right hand is stretched out to offer to humanity.

Now you all think this is very strange,--a most remarkable way of looking at things, a most inhospitable and cold-blooded view to take of society. What! begrudge a little pains to give one's friends a pleasant reception! and that only once a year, or a month! It is such a thing as was never heard of. You have always looked upon the affair as one of pleasure. The houses which, you have entered opened wide to you their doors. You met on all sides smiles, welcome, and good cheer.

You never for a moment dreamed or heard of such a thing as that you were considered a trouble, a visitation. Perhaps you were not. Very likely you were held in honor; but these customs are burdensome for all that. You must remember that by far the greater part of American housewives are already overborne by their ordinary domestic cares.

This makes the whole thing wear a very different aspect from what it otherwise would. If a cup is half full, you can pour in a great deal more, and only increase the cup's worth, for to such end was it created; but if it is already brimmed, you cannot add even a teaspoonful without mischief, and if you suddenly dash in another cupful, you will make a sad mess of it. Now when these various convocations occur, the note of preparation is sounded long beforehand, and the wail of weariness echoes long afterwards. This is simply a statement of fact. I am not responsible for the fact. I did not create it, and I wish it were otherwise; but so long as it is a fact, it is much better that it should be known. The woman who welcomed you so warmly, entreated you so tenderly, entertained you so agreeably, had no sooner shut the door behind you, when you had started for the church, than the suns.h.i.+ne which radiated from your presence went suddenly behind a cloud of odorous steam that rose up from stew-pan and gridiron. While you were listening to the eloquent address, she was flying about to have the dishes washed and the next meal ready. When, after your hour's pleasant talk in the evening over the day's doings, you were sleeping soundly in her airy chambers, she, as noiselessly as possible, till eleven and twelve o'clock at night, was sweeping her carpets and dusting her furniture in the only time which she could rescue from the duties of hospitality for that purpose. I maintain that, however agreeable are these social conventions, they are bought too dearly at such a price. A great many women who suffer from such causes never think of complaining. They are hospitable from the bottom of their hearts; but however sincere their welcome, pies do not bake themselves. Never a cow went in at one end of an oven to come out at the other a nicely-browned sirloin of beef.

Never a barrel of flour and a bowl of yeast rushed spontaneously together and evoked a batch of bread, nor did the hen-fever at its hottest height ever produce bantam or Shanghai that could lay eggs which would leap lightly ceiling-ward to come down an omelet. All these things require time and pains, and generally the time and pains of people who, by reason of the stern necessities of their position, have none of either to spare. It is not just to say that these emergencies come only once in a great while, and are therefore too insignificant to be reckoned. The same injudiciousness which crops out in a conference of churches this week will reappear in a town-meeting next week, and in a ma.s.s-meeting the week after, and a teachers'-meeting the week after that. The same marital ignorance and inconsiderateness that brings on one thing will bring on another thing, and, except in the few cases where money and other ample resources enable one to secure adequate service, the wrong side, the prose side, the hard side of these pleasant "occasions" comes on the wife; who, whether she meet it gladly, or only acquiescently, or reluctantly, is surely worn away by the attrition. However welcome society may be to her, she cannot encounter these odds with impunity, and in a majority of cases the odds are so heavy that she has neither time nor spirits to enjoy the society. All this wear and tear is unnecessary. The doctors would be better off to go home without their hot suppers. There is seldom, in cities, any necessity for feeding ma.s.ses of people, because professional feeding-houses are always at hand, and people seldom congregate in the country except in summer, when each man might, with the smallest trouble, carry his own sandwich, and eat it on the gra.s.s, surrounded by his kinsfolk and acquaintance, with just as much hilarity as if he were sitting in a hard-cus.h.i.+oned high chair in a country-house parlor. Enjoyment would not be curtailed on the one side, and would be greatly promoted on the other.

The Ess.e.x Inst.i.tute has its Field-meetings,--its pleasant bi-weekly summer visits into the country, and is everywhere welcome. During the morning it roams over the fields, laying its inquisitive hands on every green and blossoming and creeping thing. The insects in the air, the fishes in the brook, the spiders in their webs, the b.u.t.terfly on its stalk, feel instinctively that their hour is come, and converge spontaneously into their little tin sarcophagi. At noonday hosts of heavy baskets unlade their toothsome freight, and a merry feast is seasoned with Attic salt. In the afternoon, the farm-wagons come driving up, and the farm-horses lash their contented sides under the friendly trees, while city and country join in the grave or sparkling or instructive talk which fixes the wisdom caught in the morning rambles. At night, young men and maidens, old men and children, go their several ways homeward, just as happy as if they had left behind them a dozen family-mothers wearied into fretfulness and illness by much serving. They depend upon no one for entertainment and owe no tiresome formalities. Go, all manner of convocations, and do likewise.

Note, if you please, that it is not feasting which is objectionable.

Truly or falsely, eating has always been held to be the promoter and attendant of conviviality, the mouth opening the way at the same time to the palate and the brain. If men can provide feasts without laying burdens upon their wives, let them do it and welcome; but if the material part of the feast cannot be accomplished without so serious an increase of a wife's labor as to destroy or diminish her capacity for enjoying the mental part, it ought not to be attempted.

You may say that women are as much to blame in this thing as men; that the great profusion, variety, and elaborateness of their meals are as much of their own motion as of men's; that they are indeed proud of and delight in showing their culinary resources; that they gather sewing-circles of their own s.e.x without any hint, help, or wish from the other, and make just as great table-displays on such occasions as on any others that I have mentioned,--all of which may be very true.

So the Doctor Southsides for many years maintained that slavery must be a good thing, because the slaves were content in it. So the Austrian despots point to peasants dancing on the greensward as the justification of their paternal government, their absolute tyranny; as if degradation is any less disastrous when its victims are sunk so low as to be unconscious of their situation,--as if, indeed, that were not the lowest pit of all. How came women, made as truly as man in the image and likeness of G.o.d, to be reduced to the level of sacrificing time, ease, intellectual and social good, to the low pride of sensual display? Is it not the fault of those whose walk and conversation have made the care of eating and drinking the one thing needful in a woman's education, the chief end of her life; who have not hesitated to degrade the high prerogatives of an immortal soul to the gratification of their own fleshly l.u.s.ts; who have manoeuvred so adroitly that the tickling of their own palates has become a more important and a more influential thing than the building up of the temple of the Holy Ghost? Profusion and variety and elaborateness are of the wife's own motion; but the more profuse, varied, and elaborate her display, the more you praise her. The more ingenuity her feast displays, the more ingeniously you combine words and exhaust your rhetoric to express approbation and delight. Your continued and conjoint praise is a far stronger incentive than the clubs and thongs with which husbands have been sometimes wont to urge their wives to action, and which you recognize as force. You do not compel her, but, directly and indirectly, with an almost irresistible potency, for years and years you have enjoined it upon her, till your moral pressure has become as powerful as any display of physical strength could be. And having, in French fas.h.i.+on, set up a cook on the shrine of your wors.h.i.+p, is it an extenuation of your offence, that women now vie with each other in striving to merit and attain such an apotheosis? Having caused your female children to pa.s.s through the kitchen-fire to the Moloch of your adoration, are you so illogical as to suppose that they will come out without any smell of fire upon their garments?

You are not to blame for the thistle-field. You did not make the thistles grow. No; but you planted the seed, you watered the soil, you supplied all the conditions of growth; and when the Lord of the vineyard cometh seeking fruit, and findeth only thistles, what shall he do but miserably destroy those wicked men and give the vineyard unto others?

These are only the difficult hills over which you urge women to climb when you urge them on to marriage. Of the levels between, of the plains over which lies the every-day path of the great majority of married women, I have spoken with sufficient distinctness in another connection. Whether they are the wives of inefficient or of enterprising men makes small difference. The overwhelming probability is, that your blooming bride will encounter a fate similar to that of the prince in the fairy-tale, who, enchanted by an ugly old witch, was compelled to spend his life sitting inside a great iron stove; only, instead of sitting comfortably inside, she will be kept in perpetual motion outside. Poverty or wealth, ignorance or education, in the husband, may affect the quality, but scarcely the quant.i.ty, of the wife's work. Hard, grinding, depressing toil is not the peculiar lot of the poor housewife. It is the "protection," the "cheris.h.i.+ng," which men "well to do in the world" award their wives,--the thriving farmers, the butchers, the blacksmiths, who "get a good living," and perhaps have "money at interest." What advantageth it a woman to be the wife of a "rising man"? He rises by reading, by reasoning, by attention to his business, by intercourse with intelligent people, by journeys, by constant growth, and constant contact with stimulating circ.u.mstances; but she is tied down by the endless details of housekeeping and the nursery. Growth, intelligence, and rising in the world are not for her. His increasing business and fair political prospects only bring more cares to her, and bring them long before any permanent increase of income justifies, or can command, anything approximating to adequate a.s.sistance in the home department. And his increase of business, his widening circle of acquaintance, are sure to take him more away from home, to absorb more of his time and his thoughts, and so not only create heavier burdens, but call to other tasks the strength that ought to bear them. The selfsame circ.u.mstances which raise the man depress the woman. If he does not make especial effort to upbear her with himself, the result will presently be, that, while he rides on the crest of the wave, she is engulfed in the trough of the sea. There is small reason to suppose he will make the effort.

It is the men in "comfortable circ.u.mstances," shrewd, with an eye to the main chance, who often sin most deeply in this respect. Their main chance does not include husbandly love, wifely repose. It is a part of their "business talent" to turn their wives to account just as they turn everything else. She is a partner in the concern. She is a part of the stock in trade. She is one of the stepping-stones to eminence or competence. All that she can earn or save, all the labor or supervision that can be wrested from her, is so, much added to the working capital; and so long as she does not lose her health, so long as she remains in good working order, they never suspect that anything is wrong. If she were not doing the house-work or taking care of the children, she would not be doing anything that would bring in money, or nearly so much money, as her economy and foresight save. Even if she does lose her health, her husband scarcely so much as thinks of laying the sin at his own door. It was not hard work or low spirits, it was rheumatism or slow fever, that brought her down. If her life lapses away, and she descends into the grave before she has lived out half her days, her sorrowing husband lays it to the account of a mysterious Providence, and--"the world is all before him where to choose."

Have I drawn a cold, harsh picture? The coldness and harshness are not alone in the drawing. It spreads before you every day and all around you: a picture whose figures throb with hidden life,--a very _tableau vivant_. What else can be expected from our social principles? What kind of husbands do you look for in men who have set their affections on fortune or fame? What kind of husbands can a society turn out that publicly and shamelessly avows the preservation and increase of property to be the object of marriage? A people's practice is sometimes, but very rarely, better than its principles. If wealth or position be the chief goal of a man's ambition, he only acts consistently in harnessing his wife along with all his other powers and possessions to his chariot. Looking at it dispa.s.sionately, freed from the glamour which popular opinion throws upon our eyes, it would seem to be better for a woman to marry the Grand Turk, since a friendly bowstring might put a period to her trouble, or she might hope to be tied up in a sack and safely and quietly deposited in the Bosphorus; while in America there is no such possibility. You must live on to the end, come it never so tardily.

And how far extends even so much protection as this,--the protection which consists in appropriating a woman's time and strength, and deteriorating both her mind and body by incessant, chiefly menial, and not unfrequently repulsive toil, and giving her in return--food, clothing, and shelter, which, if female labor were justly paid, she could earn by one fourth of the effort, and which is often bestowed with more or less reluctance and unpleasant conditioning, as a favor rather than a right? Look around upon all the people whose circ.u.mstances you know, and see if the number of families is small whose support depends partly upon the mother? Do you know any families which depend chiefly or entirely upon the mother? Do you know any, where the husbands are invalids, and have laid by nothing for a rainy day? any, where the husbands are lazy and inefficient, and perhaps intemperate, and neglect to provide for their families? any, where they have been unfortunate and lost all, and only the mother's courage and energy supply deficiency? any, where the husband has died insolvent, and the survivor struggles single-handed against the tide?

any, where the husband's death was the lifting of an incubus, which removed, the family seemed at once to be prosperous and happy? Do you ever see a woman, with a family of children and a husband, taking the entire care of her household, and, besides this, earning a little money at knitting or sewing or was.h.i.+ng? Judging from my own observation, setting aside inability from disease, where you find one woman who is a dead-weight upon her energetic husband, you will find seven men who are a dead-weight upon their energetic wives.

But all this is "protection." All this is the superior s.e.x cheris.h.i.+ng the inferior; the chivalrous s.e.x defending the helpless; the strong caring for the delicate; the able providing for the dependent. To all this you urge women when you goad them on to marriage. And you do well to apply your goad. You are wise in your generation, when you create such an overwhelming outside pressure; without it, women would not go down quick into the pit. Left to their own unprejudiced reason, to their own clear eyes and rapid and just conclusions, they would not choose, the greatest of all evils,--a living death. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. If you cannot help this state of things, where is your logic? If you can help it, where is your conscience?

XI.

You will say that I have left the main element out of the calculation; that I have looked at marriage only in respect of its material combinations, in which light it appears but as a body without the soul; whereas, in its real wholeness it is penetrated by love which transforms all common scenes, persons, and duties "into something rich and strange." But will truth permit one to view it otherwise? Is marriage, as we see it practically carried out, penetrated with this vivifying and spiritualizing element? Love, indeed, calls nothing common or unclean; but, as a matter of homely fact, is there love enough in ordinary housekeeping to keep it sweet? The first year or two runs well, but how much living love survives the first olympiad?

How much outlasts a decade? In marriages openly mercenary, we do not count on finding affection; where they are entered into honestly, are they followed by different results? If a woman marries for money, or station, or respectability, she may compa.s.s her ends, but if she marries for love, are not the odds against her? Motive affects her character, but scarcely her fate. Her love will be wasted on a thankless heart; she may consider herself fortunate if it be not trampled under a brutal, or perhaps only a heedless foot. Love in marriage! Marriage is the grave of love. Look at best for a.s.sociation, habit, support, tranquillity, freedom from outside compa.s.sion, in marriage, but do not look for love.

On such a topic as this the truth must be felt rather than proved, yet authority is not wanting. So eminent and trustworthy a man as Paley, in his Moral and Political Philosophy, having spoken of the necessity that a man and wife should make mutual concession, adds: "A man and woman in love with each other do this insensibly; but love is neither general nor durable; and where that is wanting, no lessons of duty, no delicacy of sentiment, will go half so far with the generality of mankind as this one intelligible reflection, that they must each make the best of their bargain."

This work was published in 1785. We have all studied it at school, under the guidance of men and women, married and single. Its positions have been variously, frequently, and sometimes successfully a.s.sailed.

But I have never heard a whisper breathed or seen a line written impugning his statement, that love is neither general nor durable.

This statement is not made under the influence of pa.s.sion, or to compa.s.s any purpose, but is simply the basis of an argument,--a general truth, as if he should say that man is endowed with a conscience.

In that most fascinating of biographies, the "Memoirs of Frederic Perthes," written by his son, and published in Edinburgh, we have a very charming picture of home life. Perthes, a man known throughout Germany, the intimate friend of her most distinguished scholars and statesmen, is the husband of Caroline, a woman whose character, indirectly but minutely and impressively portrayed in her husband's memoirs, seems to be without flaw. Fresh, simple, truthful, sensible, sympathetic, affectionate, educated, and accomplished, the qualities of her head and heart alike command something deeper than respect. As daughter, wife, mother, and woman she is equally admirable. Her letters to her husband and her children are as full of wisdom as of love. Everywhere she s.h.i.+nes white and clear and pure as the moon, yet warm, beneficent, and bountiful as the sun. It is only as the wife of Perthes that we know her; but, magnificent as Perthes unquestionably was, he pales before the most beautiful, most gracious, most womanly woman whom he won to his heart and home. No suspicion of her own exceeding excellence ever seems to have dawned upon her own mind. Her Perthes was the object of her deep respect and her lasting love. This fact of itself shows that he must have been a man of extraordinary conjugal merit. His relations to her must have been of a very rare delicacy. He must have bestowed an attention and been capable of an appreciation far beyond the ordinary measure, or such a woman as his wife could not have written after several years of marriage, "The old song is every morning new, that, if possible, I love Perthes still better than the day before." If one may not find satisfaction in the contemplation of a marriage pa.s.sed under circ.u.mstances so favoring, where shall he look for satisfaction? Nevertheless, listen to a story lightly told by her son, the biographer, the learned law-professor of the world-renowned Bonn,--told as the old prophets are supposed to have frequently uttered their prophecies, with but the most vague and imperfect comprehension of what it was that they were saying.

"With her lively fancy, and a heart ever seeking sympathy, she felt it to be hard that Perthes, laden with cares, business, and interests of all kinds, could devote so little time to her and the children. 'My hope becomes every day less that Perthes will be able to make any such arrangement of his time as will leave a few quiet hours for me and the children. There is nothing that I can do but to love him, and to bear him ever in my heart, till it shall please G.o.d to bring us together to some region where we shall no longer need house or housekeeping, and where there are neither bills to be paid nor books to be kept. Perthes feels it a heavy trial, but he keeps up his spirits, and for this I thank G.o.d.' To these and kindred feelings which she had long cherished in her heart Caroline now gave expression in letters which she wrote to Perthes during his absence. After eighteen years of trial and vicissitude, her affection for her husband had retained all its youthful freshness; life and love had not become merely habitual, they remained fresh and spontaneous as in the bride. She always gave free utterance to her feelings, in a manner at once unrestrained and characteristic, and felt deeply when Perthes, as a husband, addressed her otherwise than he had done as a bridegroom. During Perthes's detention for some weeks in Leipsic, this state of feeling found expression on both sides, half in jest and half in earnest. 'You indeed renounced all sensibility for this year, because of your many occupations,' wrote Caroline a few days after her husband's departure; 'but I, for my part, when I write to you, cannot do so without deep feeling; for the thought of you excites all the sensibility of which my heart is capable. Not a line have I yet received. Tell me, is it not rather hard that you did not write me from Brunswick? At least I thought so, and felt very much that your companion G. should have written to his newly-married wife, and you not to me. It is the first time you have ever gone on a journey without writing to me from your first resting-place. I have been reading over your earlier letter to find satisfaction to myself, in some measure at least, but it has been a mixed pleasure. Last year, at Blankenese, you promised me many happy hours of mutual companions.h.i.+p. I have not yet had them; and yet you owe many such to me,--yes, you do indeed.' Perthes answered: 'You write, telling me that I have renounced all sensibility for this year.

This is not true, my dearest heart; it is quite otherwise. I think that, after so many years of mutual interchange of feeling and of thought, and when people understand each other thoroughly, there is an end of all those little tendernesses of expression, which represent a relations.h.i.+p that is still piquant because new. Be content with me, dear child, we understand each other. I did not write to you from Brunswick, because we pa.s.sed through quickly. Moreover, it is not fair to compare me with my companion, the bridegroom; youth has its features, and so also has middle age. It would be absurd, indeed, were I now to be looking by moonlight under the trees and among the clouds for young maidens, as I did twenty years ago, or were to imagine young ladies to be angels. Nor would it become _you_ any better if you were to be dancing a gallopade, or clambering up trees in fits of love enthusiasm. We should not find fault with our having grown older; only be satisfied, give G.o.d the praise, and exercise patience and forbearance with me.'"

Can anything be more natural than Caroline's gentle remonstrance? Can anything be more hopeless than Perthes's shuffling reply? Lonely wife, languis.h.i.+ng for a draught of the olden tenderness, and with nothing to medicine her weariness but the information that it had all come to an end; reaching out for a little of the love that was her life, and met by the a.s.sertion that climbing trees was not becoming to a woman of her age! It is good to know that she replied with spirit, though still with no diminution of her immeasurable love. "Your last letter is indeed a strange one. I must again say, that my affection knows neither youth nor age, and is eternal. I can detect no change, except that I now _know_ what formerly I only hoped and believed. I never took you for an angel, nor do I now take you for the reverse; neither did I ever beguile you by a.s.suming an angel's form or angelic manners.

I never danced the gallopade, or climbed trees, and am now exactly what I was then, only rather older; and you must take me as I am, my Perthes;--in one word, love me, and tell me so sometimes, and that is all I want."

Men, you to whose keeping a woman's heart is intrusted, can you hear that simple prayer,--"Love me, and tell me so sometimes, and that is all I want"?