The Young Man and the World Part 11

I am a.s.suming that you are man enough to be a man--not a mere machine of selfishness on the one hand, or an anemic imitation of masculinity on the other hand. I am a.s.suming that you think--and, what is more important, feel--that Nature knows what she is about; that "G.o.d is not mocked"; and that therefore you propose to live in harmony with universal law.

Therefore, I am a.s.suming that you have established, or will establish, the new home in place of the old home. I am a.s.suming that you will do this before there is a gray hair in your head or a wrinkle under your eye. These new homes which young Americans are building will be the sources of all the power and righteousness of this Republic to-morrow, just as the lack of them will be the source of such weakness as our future develops.

Within these new homes which young Americans are to build, the altar must be raised again on which the sacred fire of American ideals must be kept burning, just as it was kept burning in the old homes which these young Americans have left. And precisely to the extent that these new homes are not erected will American ideals pale, and finally perish.

It is a question, you see, which travels quite to the horizon of our vision and beyond it, and which searches the very heart of our national purity and power. No wonder that Bismarck considered the perpetuation of the German home, with its elemental and joyous productivity, as the source of all imperial puissance on the one hand, and the purpose and end of all statesmanship on the other hand.

It would be far better for America if our public men were more interested in these simple, vital, elemental matters than in "great problems of statesmanship," many of which, on a.n.a.lysis, are found to be imaginary and supposit.i.tious. Yes, and it would be better for the country if our literary men would describe the healthful life of the Nation's plain people, than tell unsavory stories of artificial careers and abnormal affections, and all that sort of thing.

They would sell more books, too. I never yet heard that anybody got tired of "The Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night." I think it quite likely that the Book of Ruth will outlast all the short stories that will be written during the present decade. Yes, decidedly, our public men, and our writers, too, ought to "get down to earth." There is where the people live. The people walk upon the brown soil and the green gra.s.s.

They dwell beneath the apple-blossoms. How fine a thing it is that our American President is preaching the doctrine of the American home so forcefully that he impresses the Nation and the world with these basic truths of living and of life.

It is a good deal more important that the inst.i.tution of the American home shall not decay, than that the Panama Ca.n.a.l be built or our foreign trade increase. So, in considering the young man and the new home, we are dealing with an immediate and permanent and an absolutely vital question, not only from the view-point of the young man himself, but from that of the Nation as well.

Of course n.o.body means that young men should hurl themselves into matrimony. The fact that it is advisable for you to learn to swim does not mean that you should jump into the first stream you come to, with your clothes and shoes on. Undoubtedly you ought first to get "settled"; that is, you ought to prepare for what you are going to do in life and begin the doing of it. Don't take this step while you are in college. If you mean to be a lawyer, you ought to get your legal education and open your office; if a business man, you should "get started"; if an artizan, you should acquire your trade, etc. But it is inadvisable to wait longer.

It is not necessary for you to "build up a practise" in the profession, or make a lot of money in business, or secure unusual wages as a skilled laborer. Begin at the beginning, and live your lives together, win your successes together, share your hardships together, and let your fortune, good or ill, be of your joint making.

It will help you, too, in a business way.

Everybody else is, or was, situated nearly as you are, and there is a sort of fellow-feeling in the hearts of other men and women who once had to "hoe the same row" you are hoeing; and it is among these men and women you must win your success. It is largely through their favor and confidence that you will get on at all. If you are making a new home you are in harmony with the world about you, and the very earth itself exhales a vital and sustaining sympathy.

It is not at all necessary that you should be able to provide as good a house and the furnishings thereof as that from which your wife comes. n.o.body expects you to be as successful in the very beginning of your life as her father was at the close of his. Least of all does she herself expect it. And even if this were possible, it is not from such continuous luxury that the best character is made. The absolute necessity to economize compels the ordinary young American couple to learn the value of things--the value of a dollar and the value of life.

They learn to "know how it comes," again to employ one of the wise sayings of the common people. And the numberless experiences of their first few years of comparative hardship are the very things necessary to bring out in them sweetness, self-sacrifice, and uplifting hardihood of character. In these sharp experiences, too, there is greatest happiness. How many hundreds of times have you heard men and women say of their early married years, "Those were the happiest days of my life."

As a matter of good business on the one hand, and of sheer felicity on the other hand, make the ideals of this new home of yours as high as you possibly can. Don't make them so high that neither you nor any other human being can live up to them, of course; but if you can put them a notch beyond those even of the exalted standard of the old home, by all means do it. Do it, that is, if you can live up to them.

It is remarkable what individual power grows out of clean living. It is profitable also. The mere business value of a reputation for a high quality of home life will be one of the best a.s.sets that you can acc.u.mulate. "They are attending strictly to business and will make their mark," said a wise old banker to a group of friends in discussing a fine type of young business man, and the equally fine type of the young American woman who was his wife.

I do not know whether that young man was borrowing money for his business from that particular bank or not, but I do know that he could borrow it if he wanted it. And one reason why his credit was established with the money-wise old financier was the ideal home life which he and his wife were leading.

For, mark you, they were not "living beyond their means." That was the first thing. That is one of the best rules you can follow. Who has not known of the premature withering of young business men and lawyers (yes, and sometimes men not so young, alas!) who have suddenly blossomed out with houses and clothes and horses, and a lot of other things which their business or practise ought not reasonably to stand.

On the other hand, do not begin your life as a miser. Do not let the new home proclaim by its barrenness that it is the abode of a poor young man asking sympathy and aid of his friends. "Yes, rent a piano, by all means. Do not economize on your wife and your home," advised an old Methodist preacher noted for his horse-sense. And he was right.

After all, what is the purpose and end of all your labor? If it is not that very home, I do not know what it is. Put on a little more steam, therefore, and earn enough extra to buy a picture. And get a good one while you are at it. It will not break you up to buy a really good etching. A fine "print" is infinitely better than a poor painting.

Anything is better than a poor painting. If she has good taste, your wife will make the walls of that new home most attractive with an astonishingly small amount of money.

It is the new _home_ you and she are making, remember that. Very well; you cannot make it in a flat. "Apartments" cannot by any magic be converted into a home. For the purposes of a _home_, better a separate dwelling with dry-goods box for table and camp-stools for chairs than tapestried walls, mosaic floors, and all luxuriousness in those modern structures where human beings hive.

These buildings have their indispensable uses, but home-making is not one of them. "Apartments" are not cheaper for you and easier for her than a house to yourselves--no, not if you got the finest apartments for nothing, not even if you were paid to live in gilded rooms. For the making of a home is priceless. And that cannot be done in flats or hotels or other walled and roofed herding places. Every man would like to have a picture of "the house he was born in"; but who would choose a hotel for a birthplace? Boniface himself would not "admire" (to use one of our Westernisms) to have you select his hostelry for that purpose.

Of course you will spend all of your extra time at home. That is what home is for. Live in your home; do not merely eat and sleep there. It is not a boarding-house, remember that. Books are there, and music and a human sympathy and a marvelous care for you, under whose influence alone the soul of a young man grows into real grandeur, power, and beauty. And be sure that you let each day have its play-hour.

"I would not care to live," said one of the very ablest and most eminent members of the American Catholic priesthood--"I would not care to live," said he, "if I could not have my play-hour, music, and flowers. They are G.o.d's gifts and my necessity. Every young man who has a home commits a crime if he does not each day bring one hour of joy into his household."

The man who said that is not only brilliant and wise, but one of the most exalted souls it has ever been my fortune to know. And his words have good sense in them, have they not? Make that good sense yours, then. Make a play-hour each day for yourself and wife and children. I say children, for I a.s.sume, of course, that when you are making a new home you are making a _home_ indeed.

Very well. The absence of children is either unfortunate or immoral. A purposely childless marriage is no marriage at all; it is merely an arrangement. Robert Louis Stevenson calls it "a friendship recognized by the police." A house undisturbed and unglorified by the wailings and laughter of little ones is not a home--it is a habitation.

There is in children a certain immortality for you. Most of us believe in life after death; and that belief is a priceless possession of every human being who has it. But even the man who has not this faith beholds his own immortality in his children. "Why of course I am immortal," said a scientist who believed that death ends all. "Of course I am immortal," said he, "there goes my reincarnation"; and he pointed to his little son, glorious with the promise of an exhaustless vitality.

There is no doubt at all that a.s.sociation with infancy and youth puts back the clock of time for each of us. Besides all this, it is the natural life, and that is the only thing worth while. The "simple life" is all right, and the "strenuous life" excellent. The "artistic life" is charming, no doubt, and all the other kinds of "lives" have their places, I suppose. I am interested in all of them. But I am much more interested in the natural life. That alone is truthful. And, after all, only the truthful is important.

Get into the habit of happiness. It is positively amazing how you can turn every little incident into a sunbeam. And, mark you, it is quite as easy to take the other course. But what a coward a man is who releases in his home all the pent-up irritability and disappointment of the day.

There is no sense in it, either. It does not make you less black of spirit to fill your home with gloom. You ought not to do it, even from the view-point of good health. If you eat your meal in a sour silence which almost curdles the cream and scares your wife half to death, you do not and cannot digest your food. If you have had a hard day, say to yourself, "Well, that was a hard day. Now for some rest and some fun."

Get into the habit of being happy, I tell you. You can do it. Practise saying to yourself, when you waken in the morning, "Everything is all right," and keep on saying it. You will be surprised to find how nearly "all right" the mere saying of it at the beginning of the day will really make everything, after all. This is true of business as well as of the new home. Prophets of gloom are never popular, and ought not to be.

Then, too, a quiet cheeriness of heart makes you treat your fellow man better; and this is important in your dealings with other human male animals. They will make it unpleasant for you if you don't. But it is far more important in your new home than it is out in the world of men. That is what the new home is for--to exercise and multiply the beauties of character and conduct.

Returning again to the view-point of business wisdom, you cannot treat your wife too well, as a mere matter of policy--though you will never treat her well, nor anybody else, from that low motive. I am merely calling the attention of your commercial mind to the fact that there are actually dollars and cents in a reputation for chivalrous bearing in your new home.

You know yourself how you feel toward a man of whom everybody says, "He is good to his wife." Everybody wants to help that kind of a fellow. If he is a strong man, his community glories in his strength and increases it by their admiration and support. If he is not a strong man, everybody wishes that he were, and tries in a thousand ways, which a general kindly disposition toward him suggests, to supply his deficiencies.

And this is no jug-handled rule either. The same thing is true of the wife. When her acquaintances declare of any woman, "She is lovely in her home," they have placed upon her brow the crown of their ultimate tribute and regard. It depends upon both, of course, whether these domestic beat.i.tudes will exist in the new home.

Undoubtedly, however, it depends upon the young man more than the young woman. He is a _man_--and that is everything. And being a man, he should have a large and kindly forbearance, a sort of soothing strength and calming serenity. And to all this the rule of smile and cheeriness is helpful, if not essential.

When I was a boy in the logging-camps, I read in some stray newspaper an article about the influence which the pleasant countenance exercises over groups of men. The idea was that men work willingly under the control of a strong man who is strong enough to carry in his daily look the suggestion of a smile. It worked splendidly. It has never been satisfactorily explained why it is next to impossible for a man "to be down on his luck" if he will only keep the corners of his mouth turned up. Perhaps it is the mental effort of forcing this mechanism of a smile which brings a really happy state of mind.

Whatever the cause, it is literally true that you cannot look blackly on the world and your own fortunes if the lines of your face are ascending instead of drooping. This muscular state of your countenance is connected in some strange way with that mysterious thing called the mind; for you will find, if you try it, that a sort of serenity of soul comes to you, and a strong confidence that "everything will come out right in the end." When we Americans are older we shall pay more attention to these things.

The j.a.panese neglect none of these deep psychological truths in warfare. It is said that they are taught to smile in action, and especially when they charge. Doubtless this report is true. It has at bottom the same reason that music in battle has. What could be more terrifying than the approach of an enemy determined on your death, and who looks upon your execution as so pleasant and easy a thing that he smiles about it or who regards his own possible extinction as no unhappy consummation?

Also it is interesting to note how a pleasant expression begets its like. I have observed this even in Manchuria, and other parts of China--a smile unfailingly won a return smile from children who were watching you from the fields, whereas a frown would instantly becloud the little face with a kindred expression of disfavor. I am spending a good deal of time upon this item of good cheer in the new home, because I think that as long as happiness surrounds the American fireside all is well with the Republic.

There is no investment which yields such dividends as the society you will find in your home. The company, the talk, the silent sympathy of that sagacious and congenial person who is your wife yield a return in spirit, wisdom, moral tone, and pure pleasure to be found in like measure nowhere else on earth.

It is said that Charles James Fox, the most resourceful debater the British Parliament has ever seen, was so fond of his home and his wife that he would actually absent himself from Parliament for the sheer pleasure of her presence and conversation. Lord Beaconsfield, who, we are told, married for the mere purpose of ambition, afterward fell deeply in love with his wife and spent every moment he could in her society. She proved, too, to be his shrewdest counselor.

Bismarck's boundless love for his princess increased with the years; yet she was chiefly, and perhaps only, a German "hausfrau"--an ideal housewife. The German people particularly loved the wife of Bismarck because of these exclusively domestic traits. Perhaps that was why he adored her more and more as the years went by. Gladstone, who was a very surly and irritable person, declared that his wife had made his life "cushiony."

Of course it is taken for granted in this paper that the young American wife is this kind of a woman--wise and gentle and good-natured--above all things good-natured. For says the Bible, "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman." But read what is written in the Book of the right kind of a woman--one "in whose tongue is the law of kindness," as the Scriptures' exquisite phraseology has it.

I don't like the tone of the common comment of the American medical profession about the neurotic condition of our American women. Our physicians are saying that there is not one American woman in a hundred who is nervously normal. The profession declares that they are excitable, irritable, peevish, and that this unfortunate state is produced by the unnatural and absurd tension they are under all the time.

Their so-called "social duties"; the minute and nerve-destroying precision of their housekeeping; their unnecessary overloading of themselves with tasks futile and fict.i.tious; the determination to "appear" a little better than their neighbors, and, above all, to have their children (their _one_ or _two_ children) particularly spick and span; the long catalogue of folly into which our high-geared, modern civilization has led our women, and through no fault of theirs--"all these," said an eminent neurologist, in talking of this absorbing topic, "are impairing the agreeableness and curtailing the usefulness of our women, and will in the end destroy our women themselves."

I hope it is not true. If it is true, we had better find the cause of it and apply the remedy, or we are a lost people; for that nation is doomed whose women have ceased to be vital, good-tempered, and home-loving.

May not the too heavy early education of young girls have something to do with this later desperation of their nerves? Is not the blood taken from vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings?

While we may thus gain a staccato smartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here--I merely suggest the query. Why don't the doctors begin a crusade about this? It is their business.

The keen, practical sense of women in purely business affairs has been noted in other papers, and the causes of it. The young man who neglects this helpfulness simply throws away wisdom. Not to counsel with your wife on business matters that affect your mutual fortune is sheer stupidity. Also, it is morally wrong. From the very nature of her she is more interested than you in strengthening the walls of your new home, in making your joint experiment in the living of life a beautiful success. Her words are the counsel of instinct, and therefore of Nature. And Nature is wise.

Of course there are some things you cannot tell her. If you are a lawyer, or a doctor, you are dishonorable if you tell your wife or any other human being any secret of client or patient. Not that she is not to be trusted--for she is. She will carry to her grave any secret that affects you. But the disclosures of client or patient are not _your_ secrets. If they were, she would be ent.i.tled to know them--ought to know them. But no woman of sense will permit you to tell her any professional confidences. Don't expect her to be helpful to you in your profession or occupation except by counsel.