The Golden Censer Part 14

PLUNGING INTO THE NIGHT OF DESTINY,

the storm of life. But she has had great powers of love, great powers of sacrifice, great depths of forgiveness, great fountains of tears--those still waters where bathes the human soul and rises clean before G.o.d's sight. "Women are the poetry of the world, in the same sense that the stars are the poetry of heaven," says Hargrave; "clear, light-giving, harmonious, they are the terrestrial planets that rule the destinies of mankind." "Man," says Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, "is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of his acts. But a woman's whole life is

A HISTORY OF THE AFFECTIONS

the heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if s.h.i.+pwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart." "O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman," cries Jean Paul Richter, "Should open before man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein!" "Honor to women!" sings his brother-countryman,

SCHILLER;

"they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of men; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands." "Win her and wear her, if you can," says Sh.e.l.ley; "she is the most delightful of G.o.d's creatures--Heaven's best gift--man's joy and pride in prosperity--man's support and comforter in affliction." "Her pa.s.sions are made of the finest parts of pure love," says Shakspeare. "Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears," says Rousseau. "She was

LAST AT THE CROSS, EARLIEST AT THE GRAVE,"

says Barrett. "Her errors spring almost always from her faith in the good or her confidence in the true" declares Balzac. "She has more strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments," says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman. "All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman," says Voltaire, skeptic in all else. "Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," writes Addison, "whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some have imagined, there may not be a kind of

s.e.x IN THE VERY SOUL,

I shall not pretend to determine." "It is not strange to me" says Boyle, a good, sensible man, "that persons of the fairer s.e.x should like, in all things about them, that handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked." Man reviles woman for her vanity. At the same time it is the particular delight of the man who will himself wear no decoration to load upon his willing wife the trinkets of his fancy as far as his purse will pay for them. Without woman's almost savage love of display, man would be robbed of nearly all the pleasure which

PERSONAL ORNAMENTS

now give him. He loves woman, just as she is. Just as she is she is much above the level of the thing he would love had he not her to claim his rapt attention. Man smiles at woman's weaknesses, but if he thought of his great meanness of soul when his mercy and fidelity are in the scale against her own, he would look grave and troubled. She dresses with expense and variety, because it is the first ordinance of her master.

Her very love of dress is the sign and seal of her intelligence. If it be folly, arraign man at the dock! Says

STAID OLD DR. JOHNSON:

"We see women universally jealous of the reputation of their beauty, and frequently look with contempt on the care with which they study their complexions, endeavor to preserve or supply the bloom of youth, regulate every ornament, twist their hair into curls, and shade their faces from the weather. We recommend the care of their n.o.bler part, and tell them how little addition is made by all their arts to the graces of the mind. But when was it known that female goodness or knowledge was able to attract that officiousness, or inspire that ardor, which beauty produces wherever it appears? And with what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that

THE TIME SPENT AT THE TOILET

is lost in vanity, when they have every moment some new conviction that their interest is more effectually promoted by a ribbon well disposed than by the brightest act of heroic virtue?" Listen to the praise of practical John Ledyard, whose word has the solid ring of fact about it: "I have observed among all nations [that he had seen, the statement not being applicable to a majority of the savages] that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that,

WHEREVER FOUND, THEY ARE THE MOST CIVIL,

kind, obliging, humane, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy and fond of society; industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable, in general, to err than man; but, in general, also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friends.h.i.+p to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving

A DECENT AND FRIENDLY ANSWER.

With men it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widespread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so: and, to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coa.r.s.e morsel with a double relish." Woman may read

THIS CANDID TESTIMONY

with a blush of gratification, for there breathes no flattery in it--only the serious observations of an old man bent on getting knowledge by personal experience. "A man may flatter himself as he pleases," says Sir Richard Steele, "but he will find that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have." Man suffers in his loves for woman. She often casts him on the rocks like an angry unfeeling sea, but when, at last she has smiled upon him, he becomes a broader, better man. Without the companions.h.i.+p of woman, man is truly half-made up. He loses his self-esteem, he lives without laws, without churches, without hospitals.

THE WESTERN WILDS,

during the early period of their settlement by Americans, have furnished us with accurate views of society without women. And what has that society been? More a den of wild beasts than a congregation of the most reasoning of G.o.d's creatures! There we find men living in constant suspicion of their comrades, in constant danger of hazarding their lives for some sentimental canon of personal vanity that, if they were boys in civilized society, would be flogged out of their moral code.

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF HUMAN SICKNESS

is a continuous outcry of the goodness of woman. Wherever the red hand of war has risen to smite, there the white hand of woman has hastened to soothe. After the roar of the conflagration and amidst the ruins piled up by the earthquake ever has that sweet minister sought out the hungry and succored the suffering.

CRITICISM OUT OF PLACE.

One does not feel that he can do any good by criticising woman. We love fruit that is perfect. We do not describe, and we would have little thanks for a description of, those specimens of cherries, strawberries, or grapes which fail to realize our antic.i.p.ations of a delightful product of the orchard, the garden, or the vineyard. But I have perhaps, by showing the respect in which men of intellect and honor hold a good woman, given needed encouragement to patient hearts, and testified my own humble regard for womanhood.

FATHER.

His hair just grizzled, As in a green old age.--Dryden.

The word _papa_, I believe, goes back, just as it is, through all the languages, to the Sanscrit, and even beyond to the unknown Aryan, the stock of our civilized tongues. The Pope is _papa_, kind father, in Italian. How his name ever came to be twisted into the ugly sound we hear in English is a problem, for the difference on the feelings between the sounds of Pope, and _papa_, kind father, cannot well be exaggerated. The kind father of a good man occupies an enviable place in that man's thoughts. It is no pa.s.sing admiration; that father is no hero of to-day no study of to-morrow, no dim recollection when the future shall have come--but an active exemplar, an honored memory, a potent spur and stay combined--a spur to urge to all a man should do; a stay to curb unwisdom's flying feet. That father has toiled in weariness that his son might follow an easier path of life. Perhaps you now tread that path. How carefully should your steps be taken; how earnestly you should climb to reach the round which meets your self-denying parent's gaze! With him there have come few paroxysms of delight in his labor. He has not been endowed with that mysterious joy your mother has felt in all your existence. He has delighted in you because he hoped you would bring honor to his house; he would rather you had not lived than to see you in a prisoner's cell--far rather. This could not be said of your mother. She would be contented that you had lived at all, that you had looked into her eyes and laughed. Your father has taken care of you, dutifully. Repay him in kindness. "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy G.o.d giveth thee."

This was graven by the Lord in the marble tablets on Sinai, and has been in turn graven on the countless millions of hearts that have beaten "their short funeral marches" since that awful hour.

ALL SOCIETY

has at one time or another rested on the sustaining power of the father.

The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents, and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human government. Next came the cities where the government was formed by all the fathers together in council, and our village and city legislators are, to this day, called "the city fathers," although the reverence in which so august a body was once held has departed with the silent flight of the dignity of our modern convocations. Some one has said of

A FINE AND HONORABLE OLD MAN,

that he is in the childhood of immortality. "One's age should be tranquil," says Dr. Arnold, "as one's childhood should be playful; hard work at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labor under it." See to it, if it be within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of his days. Let him sit in the cool. Let him listen to the voices of his night--the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that sing of Paradise!

"GRAY HAIRS

seem to fancy," says Richter, "like the light of a soft moon silvering over the evening of life." "Old age," says Madame Swetchine, "is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Shadows give light its worth; sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor."

EXPERIENCE.