A New Atmosphere Part 7

"Exacting"? What word is that? An exacting woman? An exacting wife?

"Hail! Horrors, hail!" The unlovely being has existed, and within the memory of men still living, but it has always been looked upon as a monster,

"Whom none could love, whom none could thank, Creation's blot, creation's blank!"

We have fallen on evil times indeed if such a being is to be held up for approval and imitation.

But the character of exaction depends somewhat on the nature of the thing exacted. To exact from a man that to which you have a right, and which it is his own truest interest to bestow, is neither unchristian nor unamiable. One may and should grant large room for the play of tastes; for differences of organization, opinion, habit, education; but a catholicity which admits to its presence anything that defileth is no fruit of that tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The gardener who is tolerant of weeds and not untender towards misshapen, or dwarfed, or otherwise imperfect flowers will have but a sorry show for the eyes of the master. Such lat.i.tude is a source of deterioration. It is the kindness which kills. Each s.e.x should be to the other an incitement to lofty aims. Each should stand on its own mountain-height and call to the other through clear, bright air; but such sufferance only draws both down into the damp, unwholesome valley-lands where lurk fever and pestilence. A woman cannot with impunity open her doors to unworthy guests. There may be bowing and smiling, and never-ending smooth speech, but in the end, and long before the end, they shall draw their swords against the beauty of her wisdom and shall defile her brightness. A man may go all lengths in pursuit of his own selfish comfort, but he does not the less respect those who hold themselves above it, and if women, who should be pure and purifying, mar the spotlessness of a divine sanct.i.ty and lessen the claims of an imperial dignity, thinking thereby to be meeter for profane approach, they work a work whose evil strikes its roots into the inmost life of society. From mistaken kindness woman may weave a narrow garland, but there is lost a glory from the hand that bears and the brow that wears it. If the queen is content to spend her life in the kitchen over bread and honey, and if she is satisfied that the king spend his in the parlor counting out his money, neither king nor queen will receive that homage or command that allegiance which is the rightful royal prerogative.

There is a foolish subservience, an ostentatious and superficial chivalry, an undignified and slavish deference to whims which silly women demand and sillier men grant. Yet even this is not so much the fault of the weak women as of the strong men, who surround women with the atmosphere which naturally creates such weakness. But women have a right, and it is their duty to expect, to claim, to exact if you please, a constancy, spirituality, devotion, as great as their own.

Where G.o.d makes no distinction of s.e.x in his demands upon mankind, His creatures should not make distinctions. "Men are different from women," is the conclusion of the whole matter at female debating-societies, and the all-sufficient excuse for every short-coming or over-coming; but the Apostles and Prophets find therein no warrant for a violation of moral law, no guaranty for immunity from punishment, no escape from the obligations to unselfish and righteous living. Nowhere does the Saviour of the world proclaim to men a liberty in selfishness or sin. His kingdom will never come, nor his will be done on earth as it is done in heaven, so long as men are permitted to take out indulgences. If they do it ignorantly, not knowing the true character and claims of womanhood, nor consequently of manhood, they should be taught. If they think a wife's chief duty is to economize her husband's fortunes, or to minister to his physical comforts, they should be speedily freed from the illusion. If they suppose knowledge to be ill-adapted to the female const.i.tution, and harmless only when administered h.o.m.oeopathically, they should be quietly undeceived. If they have been so trained that marriage is to them but unholy ground whereon is found no place for modesty, chast.i.ty, delicacy, reverence, how shall they ever unlearn the bad lesson but through pure womanly teaching?

But women fear to take this att.i.tude. There are many indeed who have become so demoralized that they do not know there is any such att.i.tude to take; but there are others who do see it, and shrink from a.s.suming it. Women whose courage and fort.i.tude are indescribable, who will brave pain and fatigue and all definite physical obstacles in their path, will bow down their heads like a bulrush with fear of that indefinable thing which may be called social disapprobation. Through cowardice, they are traitors to their own s.e.x, and impediments to the other. One cannot find it in his heart to blame them harshly. The weakness has so many palliations, it is so natural a growth of their wickedly arranged circ.u.mstances, as to disarm rebuke and move scarcely more than pity; but it is none the less a fact, lamentable and disastrous. Women who know and lament the erroneous notions and the guilty actions of men concerning woman, and the culpable relations of men to women, will endeavor to hold back the opinions of a woman when they go against the current. They will admit the force of all her objections, the justice of every remonstrance, but will a.s.sure her that opposition will be of no avail. She will accomplish nothing, but--and here lies the real bugbear--but she will make men almost afraid of her!

I would that men were not only almost, but altogether afraid of every woman! I would that men should hold woman in such knightly fear that they should never dare to approach her, matron or maid, save with clean hands and a pure heart; never dare to lift up their souls to vanity nor swear deceitfully; never dare to insult her presence with words of flattery, insincerity, coa.r.s.eness, sensuality, mercenary self-seeking, or any other form of dishonor. I would that woman were herself so n.o.ble and wise, her approbation so unquestionably the reward of merit, that a man should not dare to think ign.o.bly lest his ign.o.ble thought flower into word or act before her eyes; should not wish to think ign.o.bly, since it removed him to such a distance from her, and wrought in him so sad an unlikeness to her; should not be able to think ign.o.bly, being interpenetrated with the celestial fragrance which is her native air. I would have the heathen cloud-divinity which inwraps her with a fact.i.tious light, only to hide her real features from mortal gaze, torn utterly away, that men may see in her the fullest presentation possible to earth of the G.o.d-like in humanity. So powerfully does the Most High stand ready to work in her to will and to do of his good pleasure, that she may be to man a living revelation, Emanuel, G.o.d with us.

We ought to stand in awe of one another. We do not sufficiently respect personality. Every soul comes fresh from the creative hand and bears its own divine stamp. We should not go thoughtlessly into its presence. We should not wantonly violate its holiness. Even the body is fearfully and wonderfully made, and well may be, for it is the temple of the Holy Ghost; but if the temple is sacred, how much more that holy thing which the temple enshrines,--the unseen, incomprehensible, infinite soul, the essential spirit, the holy ghost.

Who that cherishes the divine visitant in his own heart but must be amazed at the reckless irreverence with which we a.s.sail each other. It is not the smile, the chance word, the pleasant or even the hostile rencounter in the outer courts; it is that we do not respect each other's silences. We do not scruple to pry into the arcana. The hermit's sanctuary may lie in the huntsman's track, but he will have his pleasure though hermit and sanctuary were in the third heaven. We do not accept what is given with gladness and singleness of heart; we stretch out wanton hands to pull aside the curtain and reveal to the garish day what should be suffered to repose in the twilight of inner chambers.

When the prudent adviser, the practical man or woman, counsels, "Do not demand so much from your friends,--they won't stand it,"--am I to infer that friendship is a mercenary matter, a thing of compromise and barter? Shall I fence in my acts, words, thoughts, that I may secure something whose sole value, whose sole existence, indeed, lies in its spontaneity? Shall I haggle for incense? Am I loved for what I do, what I say, what I think, and not for what I am? Why, this is not love. I am myself, first of all, not Launcelot nor another. He who loves me can but wish me to be this in fullest measure. I will live my life. I will go whithersoever the spirit leads. He who loves me will rejoice in this and give me all furtherance. I demand all things--in you. I demand nothing--from you. "Will not stand it"? If you can hate me, hate me. If you can refrain from loving, love not. I can dispense with your regard, but there is something indispensable. You shall love me because you cannot help it, or you shall love me not at all. If I cannot compel affection in the teeth of all conflicting opinion, I renounce it altogether. If the aroma of character is not strong enough to overpower with its sweetness all unfragrant exhalations of opinion, it is a matter of but small account.

If two people should design simply to club together, to take their meals at the same table and dwell under the same roof, it would be a thing to be carefully considered; but when the question is, not of a.s.sociation alone, but of absolute oneness, not of similarity of tastes or habits, but of an inmost and all-prevailing sympathy, it becomes us to be wary. Mere mechanical junction is easy of accomplishment, but a chemical combination demands fine a.n.a.lysis and the most careful adjustment. It needs not that a globe of fire should come raging through the skies to set our world ablaze; a very slight change in the atmosphere which embraces it, a little less of one ingredient, a little more of another, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Yet the delicacy of matter is but a faint type of the delicacy of mind. He who would pa.s.s within the veil to commune with the soul between the cherubim must a.s.sume holy garments. If the trouble seem to him too great, let him be content to tarry without. Uzzah put forth an incautious hand and touched the ark of G.o.d unbidden, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against him, and there he died by the ark of G.o.d. Now, as then, if any man defile the temple of G.o.d, him shall G.o.d destroy; for the temple of G.o.d is holy, which temple ye are.

Yet the general opinion seems to be that human beings are made by machinery like Waltham watches, and will fit perfectly when brought together at random, as the different parts taken indiscriminately from a heap of similar parts will fit and form a watch. Juxtaposition is the only necessary preliminary to harmony. On the contrary, it is true not only of prodigies, but of every member of the race that nature made him and then broke the mould. Every person is a prodigy. So great, so radical, so out-spreading, are the differences between individuals, that the wonder is, not that they quarrel so much, but that they are ever peaceful when brought together. The wonder is that so many fierce antagonisms can be soothed even into an outward quiet.

Looking at it as mechanism, seeing how diverse, aggressive, and impatient are the qualities of man, and how peculiarly are his circ.u.mstances adapted to foster his peculiarities, one would say that the only security was in solitude. Indeed, young people are very apt to think so. They combine in an ideal all the charms which attract, and exclude from it all the disagreeable traits which repel them, and see reality fall so far short of their imaginary standard that they fully believe they shall never find the true Prince. And they never would, but for an inward, inexplicable suffusion of the Divine essence, whose source and action lie beyond knowledge or control, which works without instigation, but is all-powerful to create or annihilate. This, however, which is the sole explanation of the phenomenon, which is the sole conciliator between opposing forces, is generally left out of view. People scarcely seem to be conscious that there is any phenomenon. They philosophize sagaciously upon the singular skill which swings unnumbered worlds in s.p.a.ce, and spins them on in never-ending cycle, yet marks out their paths so wisely that world sweeps clear of world and never a collision crushes one to ruin.

But full as the universe is of stars, the nearest are hundreds of thousands of miles apart; while the intellectual, nervous worlds that are set going on the surface of our earth are close together. Half a dozen of them are placed as it were shoulder to shoulder. Their zigzag orbits intersect each other a hundred times a day. Is it any wonder that there is hard abrasion, that surfaces are seamed and furrowed, and that sometimes a crash startles us? Is not the wonder rather that crashes are not the order of the day, that the seams are seams and not cracks through the whole crust, and that the largest result of abrasion is smoothness and evenness and polish?

Yet, utterly unmindful of the fitness of things, people will wonder why a man and a woman who are thrown occasionally together do not--what? Attack each other in an outburst of impatience at stupidity and cross-purposes? Not at all, but "strike up a match." That is, put themselves into relations which shall turn an a.s.sociation whose redeeming feature is that it is casual and under control into an a.s.sociation that is constant and irrevocable! Masculine backwardness is not perhaps considered remarkable, as indeed there is very little of it to be remarked, but the utmost surprise is expressed on those rare occasions in which women are supposed to have declined a "desirable offer." That a woman should not avail herself of an opportunity to become the wife of a man who is well-educated, well-mannered, "well-off," seems to be an inexplicable fact. He is her equal in fortune, position, character. Commentators "cannot see any reason why she should not marry him." But is there any reason why she should marry him? The burden of proof lies upon motion, not rest; upon him who changes, not upon him who retains a position. All these things which are called inducements are no more than so many sticks and stones; you might just as well repeat the a b c, and call that inducement. The matters which bear on such conclusions are of an entirely different nature. Your "inducements" may come in by and by, when the main point is settled, to modify outward acts, but till the Divine Spirit moves, they are without form and void.

Nor are well-wishers always so careful as to take the man himself into the account. If surroundings are favorable, if to a by-stander there seems to be a sort of house-and-barn adaptation, it is enough. House and barn should at once join roof and become one edifice. It is of no importance that this holds stalls for horned oxen, and that entertainment for angels; that the one is informed with spiritual life and the other filled with hay: hay and heaven are all one to many eyes. "Why does she not marry him?" Why? Simply because there is not enough of him, or what there is is not of the right stuff. If he were twenty instead of one, she might dare promise to honor him, might dare hope to respect him. If he had just twenty times as much of _being_, or if his amplitude could be converted into fineness, he might meet her on equal ground; but being only one and such a one, she is in an overwhelming majority, and it is not republican that majorities should yield to minorities. He may be, as you say, "just as good as she," but not good for her.

These views appear in the (perhaps apocryphal) stories occasionally told of renowned personages. A poor man or an obscure man proposes to a young woman whose father is rich, and he is refused. The poor and obscure man becomes presently a great banker, a governor, president of a college, or recovers lost counties, or dukedoms in Europe. I have even heard the story repeated of the Emperor of the French and a New York young woman. Moral: Is not the woman sorry now that she did not marry the poor man? Probably not. Certainly not if she belongs to the true type. What have all these changes to do with the matter? Is he any more comfortable to live with because he is a governor? Is he any more adapted to her because he is a duke? It is barely possible that she was mistaken; but if she were, she is probably ignorant of it herself. His present state does not indicate a mistake. Only a close companionship would be likely to discover it. The qualities which make domestic content are not usually revealed by ever so brilliant public success. If they originally existed, they are little likely to have been developed. As business affairs are usually conducted, they are more likely to drown out home happiness than to create it. But all this is irrelevant. Nothing is really meant to which this is an answer. It is only the manifestation of a blindness to what const.i.tutes attraction. The man has discovered outside advantages, and it is a.s.sumed that that is enough. She of course refused him because she had not sagacity enough to discern the shadow of his coming greatness. It does not seem to be suspected that she could have refused him because he did not suit her! What difference does it make whether a man is a clown or a king, if you do not like him? Is a great judge necessarily an agreeable person to think of? Is a world-renowned financier necessarily the person who will have most power to draw out what is good and gracious in a woman? Girls naturally give their loyalty to men, not to crowns, or ermine. The lovely Florina was as fond of King Charming, when he came to her in the shape of a Bluebird, as when he appeared at court in royal majesty. Wicked outside opinion, it is true, warps their judgment in a very great degree, and destroys their freedom; but of their own nature, in their inmost hearts, they are true; and when they have independence enough to manifest their truth in these palpable acts, they may be safely set down as true.

They acted from sincerity and dignity, not from mercenary short-sightedness. They acted from the most simple and natural causes, and what have they to regret? It is much better to be the wife of an honest and respectable American citizen than to be Empress of the French,--even looking at it in a solely worldly point of view. When we add to this that one loves the American citizen, and does not love the French Emperor, the case may as well be ruled out of court at once.

There is no ground for any further proceedings.

Men and women act upon these views too much, as well in regulating as in establishing a home. They recognize and make liberal allowance for palpable, outspoken wants, yet are unmindful or contemptuous of others equally important, but less on the surface, and less sharply defined.

A man who would incur self-reproach and the contempt of his neighbors by allowing his wife to suffer from lack of bread in his house, will not suspect so much as a slight dereliction of duty in allowing her to suffer from lack of beauty there. A woman who is never weary of meeting the demands upon her husband's palate, who will have the joint cooked exactly to his liking, and the dinner prompt to his convenience, would scout the thought of leaving her morning's occupation to give him her company in a two hours' drive. People will devote their lives uncomplainingly to meeting each other's wants, but will neutralize all their efforts and sacrifice happiness hand over hand by neglecting or disregarding each other's tastes. They will spend all their money in thatching the roof, but will do just nothing at all to keep the fire alive on the hearth. There are very few indeed who are not able to do both. Of course if people lavish their whole strength on gross matters, they have none left for the finer; but it is not often that gross matters _need_ the whole strength. A careful observation and just views would be able, as a general thing without detriment, to wrest many an hour from vain, vulgar, useless, or harmful pursuits, to bestow it upon adornments and amenities that do not perish with the using. And if a man or a woman is so deteriorated as to prefer the indulgence of a coa.r.s.e or frivolous appet.i.te, or the inordinate indulgence of a merely natural appet.i.te, to the gratification and cultivation of refined and elevated tastes,--the more's the pity!

XIII.

I marvel that men who lay so little stress on the heart, by reason of the great stress they lay upon the intellect, should use their intellects to so little purpose in matters so important, and which come so closely home to their business and bosoms as those we have been discussing. I marvel that, while they see facts so distinctly, they have so little skill to trace out causes. Many instances have been given to show how far more unreasonable, intense, malignant, vulgar, and venomous is the hatred of their country shown and felt by Southern women than that evinced by Southern men. It is very commonly said that they have done more than the men to keep alive the rebellion. The coa.r.s.eness and impropriety of their behavior have been relatively far greater than that of the men. Has any one ever suggested that the narrowness, the utter insufficiency of their education, the state of almost absolute pupilage bedizened over with a gaudy tinsel of tilt and tournament chivalry in which they have been kept, absolutely incapacitating them for broad views, rational thinking, or even a refined self-possession in emergencies, had anything to do with it? In a newspaper published under the auspices of one of our Sanitary Fairs, a contributor says: "I never saw a nurse from any hospital, but I asked her the question if the ladies there worked without jealousy or unkind feeling toward each other? _and I have not found the first one who could answer 'yes' to that question_.... I know a gentleman (a n.o.ble one, too) who urged his daughter _not_ to go to the hospitals, 'because,' said he, 'you will surely get into a muss: it cannot be helped; women cannot be together without it." Is it indeed an arrangement of Divine Providence, that women cannot act together without so much bickering, jealousy, petty domineering, small envies, and venomous quarrels, as to make it undesirable that they should act together at all? Is magnanimity impossible to women? Are they incapable of exercising it towards each other? Or may it not be that their lives have generally so little breadth, they are so universally absorbed in limited interests, their "sphere" has been so rigidly circ.u.mscribed to their own families, that when they are set in wider circles, they are like spoiled children? In the troubles that arise in female conventions and combinations, I do not see any inherent deficiency of female organization, but every sign of very serious deficiencies in female education.

Men make merry over the unwillingness of women to acknowledge their increasing years; over the artifices to which they resort for the purpose of hiding the encroachments of time; but the reluctance and the deception are the direct harvest of men's own sowing. It is men, and n.o.body else, who are chiefly to blame for the weakness and the meanness. They have decreed what shall be coin and what counters, and women do but acknowledge their image and superscription. Exceptions are not innumerous, but I think every one will confess, upon a moment's reflection, that in the general apportionment the heroines of literature are the lovely and delightful young women, and the hatred, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness are allotted to the old. Hetty Sorrels are not very common, nor Mrs. Bennetts very uncommon. Why should not women dread to be thought old, when age is tainted and taunted? Why should they not fight off its approaches, when it is indissolubly connected with repulsive traits? Women see themselves prized and petted, not chiefly for those qualities which age improves, but for those which it destroys or impairs. And as women are made by nature to set a high value upon the good opinions of men, and are warped by a vicious education into setting almost the sole value of life upon them, they logically cling with the utmost tenacity to that youth which is their main security for regard. "Youth and beauty" are the twin deities of song and story. "Youth and beauty" are supposed to unlock the doors of fate. It is no matter that in real life fact may not comport with the statements of fiction. No matter that in real life the strongest power carries the day, whether it be youthful or aged, fair or frightful. The events of real life have but small radii, but the ripples of romance circle out over the whole sea of civilization, and wave succeeds wave till the impression becomes wellnigh continuous.

(One can hardly suppress a smile, by the way, at the absurdity which this coupling sometimes presupposes. A man will think to swell your horror of rebel barbarities by a.s.serting that they spared neither youth nor beauty, as if you like to be shot any better because you are old and ugly!)

So with tight-lacing and the new attachment of a _chiropodist_ to fashionable families. Most men, it is true, harangue against the former; but if masculine sentiment were really set against tight-lacing and its results, do you think girls would long make their dressing-maids sit up waiting their return from b.a.l.l.s, lest an unpractised hand should not unloose the lacings by those short and easy stages which are necessary to prevent the shock of nature's too sudden rebound? Or if you plead "not guilty" to this count, do you believe that girls who have been liberally educated, taught to turn their eyes to large prospects, large duties, and large hopes, could be induced so to put themselves to the torture? Was a right-minded and right-hearted loving and beloved wife, an intelligent and judicious Christian mother, a wise and kindly woman, ever known voluntarily to a.s.sume a strait-waistcoat? If girls were trained as every living soul should be trained, would it be necessary to have a "professor" go the rounds of fine houses in the morning to undo the injuries inflicted by tight shoes on the previous evening? If a girl were sagaciously managed, would she not have too much discrimination to suppose that, when a poet sings of

"Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice,"

she is expected to reduce her feet to the dimensions of mice, or that, when he announces

"That which her slender waist confined Shall now my joyful temples bind,"

she is thinking of a slenderness produced by lashing herself to the bedpost? Be sure a woman will never cramp her body in that way, until society has cramped her soul and mind to still more unnatural distortion. Lay the axe unto the root of the tree, if you wish to accomplish anything; do not merely stand off and throw pebbles at the fruit.

Society is unsparing in its censure of the girl who boasts of her "offers." There are few things which men will not sooner forgive than the revelation of their own rejected proposals. Bayard Taylor makes Hannah Thurston recoil in disgust at Seth Wattles's hesitating suggestion: "You,--you won't say anything about this?" "What do you take me for?" exclaims immaculate womanhood. Why then is a girl's life made to consist in the abundance of her suitors? It is stamped a shame for a woman not to receive an offer, and then it is stamped a shame for her to take away her reproach by revealing that she has received one. Surely, she is in evil case!

I do not profess any overweening admiration for those qualities of character which induce the exultant publication of such personal items; but I do say that men have no right to complain. The natural results of their own course would not be any more than accomplished, if "offers" were published in the newspapers along with the deaths and marriages.

If you really wish women to be magnanimous, catholic, you must grant to them the conditions of becoming so. Just so long as their souls are cabined, cribbed, and confined, whether in a palace or in a hovel, with only such fresh air as a narrow crevice or cas.e.m.e.nt may afford, they will have but a stunted and unsymmetrical development. You cannot systematically and deliberately dwarf or repress nine faculties, and wickedly stimulate one, and that a subordinate one, and then have as the result a perfect woman. You may force Nature, but she will have her revenges. He that offendeth in one point, is guilty of all. The blow that you aim at the head, not only makes the whole head sick, but the whole heart faint. When you have brought women to the point of writing such babble as,

"We poor women, feeble-natured, Large of heart, in wisdom small, Who the world's incessant battle Cannot understand at all," &c., &c, &c.,

do you think you have laid the foundation for solid character? Lay aside your alternate weakness and severity, your silly coddling and your equally silly cautioning, and permit a woman to be a human being.

Let the free winds have free access to her, bringing the fragrance of June and the frostiness of December. Fling wide open all the portals, that the sacred soul may go in and out as G.o.d decreed. Let every power which G.o.d has bestowed have free course to run and be glorified, and you shall truly find before long that the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in the hands of women.

If the weakness and ignorance and frivolity of which I have spoken be natural, as it is insisted, if the heaven-born instincts of women do, as you in effect a.s.severate, lead women to devote themselves exclusively to all manner of materialism and pettinesses, and to be content with what sustenance they can find in the crumbs of love that fall from their husbands' tables; if it is unnatural and unwomanly, as you say it is, to have other inclinations and aspirations, and to experience any personal or social discontent,--why do you say so much to urge them to such devotion and content? People are not largely given to doing unnatural things. They do not need incentives, strenuous persuasion, labored and reiterated arguments, to induce them to do what their hearts by creation incline them to do; nor do they need to be held back by main force from that to which they have no natural leaning. n.o.body builds a dam to make water run down hill. No tunnelling nor blasting of rocks is necessary to lure rivers to the ocean. No urging and coaxing must be resorted to before the parent-robins build a nest and gather food for their young. But the instincts of women are as strong, the nature of women is as marked, as those of birds, and there is no need of your counselling them to walk in the paths which G.o.d has appointed for their feet. No. You do not really believe what you are saying. You feel, if you do not know,--you have a dim, instinctive sense that the life which you appoint to women is not their natural life. It crushes and deforms their nature continually, and continually Nature bursts out in violent resistance, and continually with shriek and din and clamor you strive to frighten her back into her narrow torture-house, with a success all too great.

There seems to lurk in the masculine breast an unmanly fear lest the development of the female mind should be fatal to the superiority of the male mind. But a superiority which must prolong its existence by the enforcement of ignorance is of a very ign.o.ble sort. If, to preserve his relative position, man must, by persuasion or by law, forbid to women opportunities for education and a field for action, together with moral support in obtaining the one and contesting in the other, he pays to the female mind a greater compliment, and heaps upon his own character a greater reproach, than the highest female attainments could do. He shows that he dares not risk a fair trial. If she cannot rival him, the sooner she makes the attempt, and incurs the failure, the sooner will she revert to her old position, and the sooner will peace be restored. The very discouragement by which man surrounds her shows that he does not believe in the original and inherent necessity of her present position. If this counsel be of women merely, it will come to naught of itself. You need not bring up so much rhetoric against it. But if it be of G.o.d, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against G.o.d.

There is another fear, equally honest, but more honorable, or rather less dishonorable. There is a belief, apparently, that the womanly character somehow needs the restraints of existing customs. It is feared that a sudden rush of science to the female brain would produce asphyxia in the female heart. It is feared that the study of philosophy, the higher mathematics, and the ancient languages would uns.e.x women,--would destroy the gentleness, the tenderness, the softness, the yieldingness, the sweet and endearing qualities which traditionally belong to them. They would lose all the graces of their s.e.x, and become, say men, as one of us.

From such a fate, good Lord! deliver us. I agree most heartily with men in the opinion, that no calamity could be more fatal to woman than a growing likeness to men; but no cloud so big as the smallest baby's smallest finger-nail portends it. Healthy development never can produce unhealthy results. Nature is never at war with herself. The good and wise and all-powerful Creator never created a faculty to be destroyed, a faculty whose utmost cultivation, if harmonious and not discordant, should be injurious. He made all things beautiful and beneficial in their proper places. It is only arbitrary contraction and expansion that produce mischief. It is the neglect of one thing and the undue prominence given to another that destroys symmetry and causes disaster.

There has been so little experiment made in female education, that we must reason somewhat abstractly; yet we are not left, even in this early stage, without witnesses.

On the 26th of May, 1863, died Mrs. O. W. Hitchc.o.c.k, wife of one of the Presidents of Amherst College. A writer, who professes to have known her well, gives the following account of her:--

"Born in Amherst, March 8th, 1796, fitted for college and accomplished alike in the fine arts and the exact sciences in an age when the standard of female education was comparatively low, a.s.sociated with Dr. Hitchc.o.c.k, then unknown to the public, in the instruction of Deerfield Academy, and there the instrument of her future husband's conversion, _filling_ to the full the office of a pastor's wife for five years, in Conway, Ma.s.sachusetts, and for the rest of her long life sharing all her husband's labors, sorrows, joys, and honors, while at the same time she was the centre of every private, social, charitable, and public movement of which it was suitable for a lady to be the centre, she pa.s.sed away from us by a death as serenely beautiful as the evening on which she died, May 26, 1863, at the age of sixty-seven, leaving a vacancy not only in the home and the hearts of her bereaved husband and afflicted children, but in the community and the wide circle of her acquaintance, which can be filled by none but Him who comforted the mourning family at Bethany. If strangers would form some idea of what Mrs. Hitchc.o.c.k was, especially as a _help meet_ for her honored husband, and if friends would refresh their memory of a truly 'virtuous woman,' let them read, as it were over her still open grave, the dedication, by Dr. Hitchc.o.c.k, of his 'Religion and Geology' to his 'beloved wife.' Never did husband pay to wife a higher or _juster_ tribute of respect and affection.

"The following is the dedication referred to. It was written in 1851:--

"'_To my beloved Wife._ Both grat.i.tude and affection prompt me to dedicate these Lectures to you. To your kindness and self-denying labors I have been mainly indebted for the ability and leisure to give any successful attention to scientific pursuits. Early should I have sunk under the pressure of feeble health, nervous despondency, poverty, and blighted hopes, had not your sympathies and cheering counsels sustained me. And during the last thirty years of professional labors, how little could I have done in the cause of science, had you not, in a great measure, relieved me of the cares of a numerous family! Furthermore, while I have described scientific facts with the pen only, how much more vividly have they been portrayed by your pencil! And it is peculiarly appropriate that your name should be a.s.sociated with mine in any literary effort where the theme is geology; since your artistic skill has done more than my voice to render that science attractive to the young men whom I have instructed. I love especially to connect your name with an effort to defend and ill.u.s.trate that religion which I am sure is dearer to you than everything else. I know that you would forbid this public allusion to your labors and sacrifices, did I not send it forth to the world before it meets your eye. But I am unwilling to lose this opportunity of bearing a testimony which both justice and affection urge me to give. In a world where much is said of female deception and inconstancy, I desire to testify that one man at least has placed implicit confidence in woman, and has not been disappointed. Through many checkered scenes have we pa.s.sed together, both on the land and the sea, at home and in foreign countries; and now the voyage of life is almost ended. The ties of earthly affection, which have so long united us in uninterrupted harmony and happiness, will soon be sundered. But there are ties which death cannot break; and we indulge the hope that by them we shall be linked together and to the throne of G.o.d through eternal ages. In life and in death I abide

"'Your affectionate husband, "'EDWARD HITCHc.o.c.k.'"

Note here everything, but specially two things

1. Mrs. Hitchc.o.c.k was fitted for college, accomplished in the fine arts and the exact sciences, sympathized in her husband's tastes and understood his pursuits so thoroughly as to be able to render him essential a.s.sistance in his professional duties.

2. Note the use and connections of the word _kindness_. She relieved him of the cares of a numerous family, and so gave him leisure for his scientific researches. Does that invalidate what I have before said regarding paternal duties? On the contrary, it strengthens my words.

Dr. Hitchc.o.c.k, in the fulness of his beautiful fame, in the ripeness of his years, confirms the truth of my principles. He knew--the great-hearted gentleman, the beloved disciple--that these cares belonged to him by right, and that it was of grace and not of law that his wife a.s.sumed them. So impressed is he with her kindness, so filled with grat.i.tude is his magnanimous heart, that he even ventures to run the risk of wounding her delicacy by offering thanks in this public manner; shielding her, however, from every breath of offence by skilfully declaring her freedom from all partic.i.p.ation in the publicity. _He_ uses the word kindness properly. It was a kindness, indeed, for her to step out of her own sphere and a.s.sume the burdens of his; but her husband's love was her impelling motive, and his grat.i.tude her exceeding great reward. Not strictly her duty, it became undoubtedly her delight. For love is lavish. Love counts no sacrifice, knows of none. For a husband who loved and recognized her, a wife would bear Atlas on her shoulders. Only when it is coldly reckoned upon as a right, coldly received as a due, does service become servitude.

Read now the dedication of that royal book "On Liberty," by John Stuart Mill, "one of the most powerful and original thinkers of the nineteenth century," a man of culture so thorough that his has been said to be the most cultivated mind of the age:--