Stray Thoughts for Girls Part 12

Are you, then, to reject all suggestions of a sensible marriage with any man who is not Prince Perfect? I once read a very sensible little poem which described the heroine waiting year after year for Prince Perfect. He came at last, but unfortunately "he sought perfection too," so nothing came of it! Cromwell's rule in choosing his Ironsides is the safest in choosing a husband: "Give me a man that hath principle--I know where to have him." If he comes to you disguised as one of these somewhat commonplace Ironsides, and recommended by your mother, consider how very much the fairy Prince of your dreams would have to put up with in you, and you will probably find it heavenly, as well as worldly wisdom, to "go down on your knees and thank Heaven fasting for a good man's love." You will tell me that many happy and useful lives are now open to women, and that they need not be dependent on marriage for happiness,--and I shall quite agree with you; you may go on to say that marriage can now be to a woman a mere choice amongst many professions, a mere accident, as it is to a man,--and there I shall totally disagree with you. It is quite possible that Happiness may lie in the narrower, more self-willed work of the single woman, but Blessedness, which is higher and more enduring than happiness, can only be known to the married woman whose whole nature is developed, and _fully_ known only to the "Queen of Marriage: a most perfect wife."

Are you, then, to spend your lives making nets, or, following Swift's wise caution, even in making cages, waiting, like Lydia Languish, for a hero of romance, and beguiling the interval with reading "The Delicate Distress,"

and "The Mistakes of the Heart"? Not at all! The best way to prepare for marriage is to prepare yourself to be like Bridget Elia, "an incomparable old maid."

"The soul, that goodness like to this adorns Holdeth it not concealed; But, from her first espousal to the frame, Shows it, till death, revealed.

Obedient, sweet, and full of seemly shame, She, in the primal age, The person decks with beauty; moulding it Fitly through every part.

In riper manhood, temperate, firm of heart, With love replenished, and with courteous praise, In loyal deeds alone she hath delight.

And, in her elder days, For prudence and just largeness is she known; Rejoicing with herself, That wisdom in her staid discourse be shown.

Then, in life's fourth division, at the last She weds with G.o.d again, Contemplating the end she shall attain; And looketh back, and blesseth the time past."--_Dante_.

[Footnote 6: James Martineau.]

[Footnote 7: Channing.]

A Good Time.

We sometimes hear people lamenting the dangers of this age as regards unsettled views in religion, while others lament that girls neglect home duties for outside work.

I am not at all sure that our greatest danger does not lurk in that most modern invention, "a good time," which, as a disturbing element, is closely related to that other modern inst.i.tution "week-ends."

Fifteen or twenty years ago, a self-willed or self-indulgent girl escaped from the monotony of home duties by the door which led into slums and hospitals. Nowadays the same girl finds that duties can be evaded by the simpler plan of staying at home and having "a good time." I do not think this will last, any more than slumming, as a mere fashion, has lasted. I hope not, for it means that girls have had very full liberty given to them, and that their sense of responsibility has not yet grown in proportion to their freedom. Just now, pending the growth of that sixth sense, "a good time" is very easily to be had--at the cost of a little want of consideration for others--since the elders of to-day are curiously large-hearted in giving freely and asking very little in return.

But it would be an ungenerous nature which took advantage of generosity, and was content to take much and give little.

Surely it is utterly ign.o.ble that any living soul sent into the great battle should ask to pick flowers, while every one worth their salt was hard at work fighting the foe, protecting the weak, nursing the wounded. I do not believe a girl would do it if she thought twice; every generous instinct would cry out against it. But a girl may drift into a very selfish pleasure-seeking life, and the tendency of the day is to regard this as a defendable and lawful line of life. Duty will hold its own with the morally thoughtful and with generous natures, but it is no longer an unquestioned motto for every one as it used to be in Nelson's days.

I have heard a girl rebel against her life, on the ground that she had a right to a good time; youth was the time for pleasure, she would never again have such a power of enjoyment, and it was absolutely criminal on her parents' part not to provide her with more. I thought she already had more than most; but in any case, I did not agree with her in saying that she must enjoy now, or not at all. In case it should be any comfort to those of you who may have a dull life, I can tell you that it is not so. I am convinced we all have a certain power of enjoyment, and if you can get your fill of pleasure in youth, you do not find as much keen enjoyment in middle life as if you had been kept on a shorter allowance. It is true you do not enjoy quite the same things--there are youthful amus.e.m.e.nts which you can only enjoy at a certain stage; but take comfort, if you do not get as much as you would like now, it will only mean keener enjoyment of the pleasures of the next stage of life.

But what struck me most was her fundamental a.s.sumption that Pleasure was a valid object in life, and that she was sent into the world to get as much as she could.

If so, I think the world is a great Failure. I often hear people saying, "I cannot believe in G.o.d, because of the Pain in the world;" and if this world was the end of things, that would be reasonable; if Pleasure is the object of Life, it would be better never to be born! But if we are sent here to grow, then I cannot understand Pain being a reason for doubting G.o.d's love. Looking back on life, I am sure each will feel, "I could not afford to miss one of its shadows, no matter how black they were at the time." And the fact that you and I each feel that the key of G.o.d's love fits the lock of our individual life, should be one valid reason for believing that all Life is ordered for a right and n.o.ble purpose; our happy lives are as real a bit of Life, and as good a specimen of G.o.d's government, as sad ones.

People say to me, "Yes, I feel as you do about myself, but others have such terrible shadows that I cannot feel G.o.d is good!" Well, some sufferers tell me they would not change their life, for they feel G.o.d's love in it: surely they have a right to speak. We learn from them that Pain works rightly into life.

What makes a woman's life worth living? That she has had this or that pleasure--that she has riches or poverty--that she is married or lonely, that she married the right man or the wrong?

No! What matters is, whether she is growing more and more into tune with the Infinite? Is she learning G.o.d's lesson, and fitting herself for the still n.o.bler life He wants to give her?

You and I came into the world to do our part in a n.o.ble battle--

"'Twere worth a thousand years of strife, 'Twere worth a wise man's best of life.

If he could lessen but by one The countless ills beneath the sun."

Besides, you will not find Pleasure-seeking pays in the long run! If you are feeling that Pleasure with a big "P" is your due, then all the little annoyances p.r.i.c.k and irritate. If you pay heavily for a new dress which hangs badly, it is trying; if you never expected a new dress at all, and that same dress was unexpectedly given you, the drawback would be looked at very differently.

It would pay pleasure-seekers to try the old plan of looking on life as a Duty, where pleasures came by accident or kindness, and were heartily and gratefully enjoyed. Do you remember in the "Daisy Chain," how Ethel says, after the picnic, that the big attempts at pleasure generally go wrong, and that the true pleasures of life are the little unsought joys that come in the natural course of things? Dr. May disliked hearing her so wise at her age, but I think it must have been rather a comfort to Ethel to have found it out. No thought of that kind damps your pleasure when the dance or the picnic turn out a great success! And when they do not, it is nice to feel there are other things in life. Every one knows how often something goes wrong at a big pleasure; the right people are not there, or your dress is not quite right; you are tired, or you say the wrong thing; while, if you get much pleasure, a certain monotony is soon felt, and you envy the vivid enjoyment of the girl who scarcely ever has a treat.

It stands to reason, that if you are deliberately arranging to get pleasure, and plenty of it, you cannot (from a purely pleasure point of view) enjoy it as much as if your life consisted of duties, and your pleasures came by the way. But there is a deeper reason why a life of amus.e.m.e.nt fails to amuse. It is not only that we are so made that nearly all our sensations of pleasure depend on novelty, the keenness wearing off if a sensation is repeated.

The reason lies in a fact which militates against the Pleasure-seeker's foundation idea:--the fact that we are made for something else than pleasure, failing which we remain unsatisfied. "There is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness."

Here is the point I should like you to think clearly out for yourselves.

Fifty years ago, Carlyle taught this truth as with thunder from Sinai. Let us imbue our minds with his pa.s.sionate scorn for those who come into this n.o.ble world to suck sweets,--to have "a good time." "Sartor Resartus," one of the Battle-cries of Life, and "Past and Present," which has small mercy for idlers and pleasure-seekers, are character-making books:--

"There went to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a gla.s.s that ran,"

and there also go, to the making of man and woman, certain books.

These may vary in each case and in generation. Tom Brown and Mr. Knowles'

"King Arthur" may not do for you what they did for me; "Sesame and Lilies," "Past and Present," Emerson's "Twenty Essays" may be superseded, though I can hardly believe it; but see to it that you find and read their true successors, carry out Dr. Abbott's advice to his boys--to "read half a dozen de-vulgarizing books before leaving school."

Surely R.L. Stevenson should be on the list, for he speaks so splendidly on Carlyle's great point that man was born for something better than Happiness. He says, over and over again, "Happiness is not the reward that mankind seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings; his soul is in the journey; he was born for struggle, and only tastes his life in effort." He sounds the same note as Marcus Aurelius, another of the de-vulgarizing man-making books of the world.

The message of all these men is, "Love not Pleasure; love G.o.d. This is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein who walks and works it is well with him."

Surely, when we look into things and leave our hungry wishes on one side, it seems clear to the best side of our nature that we are born, not with a right to Pleasure, but with a right to opportunity for development on our own highest lines.

A pig has a right to pigs-wash--he has no higher capacity. You and I have a capacity for courage and helpfulness and friendship with G.o.d. Our life will be a success if these things are developed, and a failure if they are not. This is the success we have a right to, but as likely as not it may need Pain, not Pleasure, for its achievement; and in this case you and I are born with a right to Pain, and we should be defrauded if any one saved us from it.

I know you want Happiness and pleasure, and I sympathize with you; but it makes all the difference to your whole life if you go out into the world like a vulture screaming for prey, or if you start out hoping, in the first place, to be brave and helpful, and, only in the second place, ready to take any pleasure as a good gift to be happy and grateful about.

"How needlessly mean our life is; though we, by the depth of our living, can deck it with more than regal splendour!"[8]

Do you feel that this is very tall talk for quiet lives like yours and mine? Yes, it is; but we need great ideals to live even small lives by.

Probably no one of us will ever get near living a n.o.ble life, but we can make our lives of the same fibre as those of the heroes. We can live on n.o.ble lines.

How?

I.--Let us _work for others_: which may mean no more than being the useful one in the house and perhaps taking a Sunday-school cla.s.s.

II.--Let us live with n.o.ble people, _i.e._ read steadily books which keep us in touch with larger minds--if you are constantly meeting clever people that does instead, but if you lead quiet lives with not much to talk about, except gossip and family events, then secure a daily talk with people worth talking to.

III.--Let us live part of each day with G.o.d. St. Christopher is the patron saint of those who want to lead a n.o.ble, helpful life, and yet feel that in them there lies no touch of saintliness, save it be some far-off touch to know well they are not saints.

You know his story: how he sought to serve the strongest, first the Emperor, then the Devil, then the Crucified; how he went to an old hermit and said, "I am no saint, I cannot pray, but teach me to work for the Master;" and how at last he found that in his common work he attained to the service of the Crucified.

You and I are sent into the world to serve the strongest, and we know that means the Crucified.

What makes Life worth while, and increasingly worth while, every year you live, is that He does not offer us Pleasure, though He gives it to most of us in overflowing measure: He offers us a share in His work. Think of all we owe to others, to all who love us--to all who make life easy to us--and feel what a debt we owe. Think of the work He is doing--of the work He died for. Think how He calls each one to His side to be His friend and helper and fellow-soldier. Think of the possibility which belongs to each one of us, of being one of His great army of those whose name is Help.

Let us thank Him for our Creation, in that such possibilities are before us. Verily, Life is well worth living.

"Go forth and bravely do your part, O knights of the unshielded heart."

[Footnote 8: Emerson.]