About People

Front matter

About People

By

Kate Gannett Wells

Chapter 1

Average People

Average People.

verage people are the ballast of the world. Notwithstanding their usefulness, how few people are willing to be ranked as average! How many secretly feel that they are beyond the limits of that epithet, and that their acquaintances are just below it!

Those who think they have escaped the boundary line, and are to be classed with remarkable people, indulge in a perpetual mirage of thought, which, to themselves, inverts their hulk of commonplaceness into mast-heads of prominence. We look at them through their self-imposed atmosphere, and believe that they are above the water-line; but the air changes, and the relative proportion of their attributes is plainly visible.

Insignificance is never greater than when it thinks it is just above the average. Endeavoring to avoid its limitations, it wraps itself in the restlessness which it supposes is the necessary malady of growth. It hugs its imagined headaches and heartaches, and believes that it is perpetually suffering from an access of creative thought, of original deed, which, always coming, never appears. Some men and women are ever on an uneven race for wealth and ambition; they are discontented with the restrictions of home and humility; they speak with pathos of their unfulfilled aspirations, of their weary, large-eyed gaze at society, of the hollowness of life, of the solace in "interior views," of the comfort in keeping thought-diaries, and in interchange of misty quotations with deep natures searching for peace and truth. They try to do and to be more than their mental and physical limitations allow. The women want some loftier mission than house-work, the men something more than clerkships. So many win the public-school diplomas that they are sure they can also succeed in the struggle for a profession, or for one of the higher avenues of employment. A failure is attributed to any other cause rather than to mistaken self-estimate. This desire for advancement, irrespective of personal qualifications, is the reason for the increasing influx of restlessness among so many persons. Within its proper sphere it must always be a permanent element of human nature; but at present it is assuming undue proportion, owing to the transitional state between woman's future definite activities, her possible, much-to-be-dreaded publicity, and her former quiescence; and because of the deductions made by young men from the false axiom, that, in this country, every one has a chance to be President. Biennial State elections or second presidential terms would be calamities to those who take "uppishness" as their motto in striving. That restlessness may often have a physical basis; may be fostered by temperament, if so, to be eradicated, — or by special individual conditions, — then to be conquered, — are but secondary causes for its existence.

Restlessness does not necessarily progress. It goes from one side to the other, tossing up one set of miseries, and exposing for public pity another set of foibles; it hates others' and condones its own short-comings. Education and culture are constantly regarded as antidotes to restlessness; and though such only to a certain extent, their value is not to be decried; but a restless nature cannot be satisfied with study alone. Education must be used as a means of enjoyment, not as a stimulus to personal ambition, nor as the sole implement for a livelihood. If valued for its power of securing success, rather than for giving peace and strength to the mind, it defeats its purpose, and is no longer the blessing it might become. Above culture rises the power of character, as cure for all the evils that beset us, and as the lever inserted under all difficulties. Instead of endeavoring to strengthen character by work for others, often unpaid, some seek to curb their discontent and want of self-poise by starting new schemes for the sake of novelty or personal ambition. Others strive for the same result by an endless pursuit of lectures, and many by a dilettante culture, when real interest in study is wanting. They aim too high in the beginning of their effort at self-improvement; enjoyment is a test of capacity, and capacity is increased by enjoyment. Religious faith or "ethical" trust can alone cure the restlessness which seeks its quietus in education and culture. Its evil is heightened by this endeavor to overstep limitations that cannot be passed without injury to one's self or one's duties. The debating societies of men are frequently opportunities for self-display, and the history and literature classes of women but an excuse for spending a morning elsewhere than at home. The culture thus sought comes from books alone, when the mood of mind or weariness of body makes it impossible to enjoy them except for the grim satisfaction that is found in doing for one's self.

Restless people often seek to rise by adventitious means; they use others' kindnesses and throw them away when a fresh social stepping-stone has been reached; they snub those below and fawn on those above them; they appropriate others' stories, and live on capital stolen or borrowed, no thought of interest on personal obligations ever occurring to them. Such conduct is more contemptible, but not so wearisome to aquaintances as uneasy introspection, using one's self as a claimant for sympathy.

The homes of those who think they are above the average, because in their search for distinction or a great soul they are devoured with restlessness, are decorated with cheap textiles of old-gold shades and ancestral discolorations; books are laid over literary ink-spots on the table-scarf (not table-cloth); chairs, purposely placed carelessly, are always in the way. Men wear oppressive sleeve-buttons; women divide their hair on the shadow of a diagonal and adopt æstheticism in dress, because it hides economy under the pretence of a cultured soul.

Their speech is strewn with niceties of grammar and pronunciations which are painfully correct; acute accents are placed on syllables, and en is added to the participle got. They never use a slang term which would avoid the use of circumlocution; they choose their substantives and adjectives from Latin, rather than Saxon roots. They talk of psychological conditions, and use physiological terms with surprising familiarity. There is no humbug so easily penetrated as that of the striving to be above the level of humanity.

Those who are below it are rough and coarse, honest or not, as the case may be; but ever a terror. They are self-opinionated, careless in dress, words, and manner, because they do not wish to be otherwise. Want of personal refinement, absence of humor, jealousy, or indifference, mark them.

Average people, our needed commonplace friends, are the mean in the social relations of life between the two extremes of our ideals and realizations. They are constituted either as the average man or the average gentleman and the average woman or the average lady. So much conventionality has clung, in the past, to the word lady that the term woman was later employed, as indicating a being more nobly planned than its circumscribed and partial synonyme. But now no gentlewoman is content unless she is also called a lady, for the word woman has come to represent such intensified shortness in skirts, thickness in boots, such repulsive good sense and plainness of speech, such self-asserting, executive ability and dominant purpose, that in rebounding from this type of femineity, we would almost rather accept the sentimental heroines of the novels of a past age. The obloquy of being only a woman was ludicrously shown by the misnomer with which a real lady unconsciously spoke of A. S. Hardy's story, "But yet a Woman." "Not yet a lady," she rightly termed it. The tone in which society utters, "She is no lady," indicates so final a settlement of the matter that there is no opportunity for controversy. The fiat has gone forth as that of predestination, and there is no use in struggling against the mandate.

Man and gentleman have not inverted their significance to such an extent as their feminine correlatives. The exceptional gentleman includes the man, but to be a man does not compel one to be a gentleman; — and we say manhood suffrage! If we possess the blessedness of average excellence, the exceptional can easily be left aloft in its shining isolation.

The average man or woman understands arithmetic, spells correctly from memory rather than by intuition, is industrious, cordial, shakes hands heartily, is good-humored, sensible, moderate, free from prejudice, helpful, sometimes aggressive, generally unconscious.

The average gentleman or lady knows languages, writes an English hand, fulfils all needful demands, but does not work from real love of occupation, is well-bred, quotes bright and applicable sayings, is even-tempered, has honest prejudices, hides haste under a forced slowness, helps where there is no fear of being considered intrusive, lays the hand in another's palm as greeting, smiles serenely, laughs softly, and is self-contented, instead of self-conscious. Rarely does either the average gentleman or lady become the exceptional, for they are radically helplessly bornée."

On the other hand, average men or women have such a real simplicity of purpose that in evolution they skip the abortive growth of the average gentleman or lady and pass into exceptional gentlemen or ladies, who are not cast down at a mispronunciation, for the soul that is behind makes the tones of voice hit like hot shot on each emphatic word; and the handwriting bears a stamp of individuality which leaves the chance misspelling unnoticed. In such persons we are unaware of their motion, whether it is that of speed or slowness we know not, only that they are always coming to welcome us equals. We are ignorant of their personal or mental habits: the books they read, the soap or brushes they use, the clothes they wear; to be conspicuously neat and well-informed is but little less disagreeable than to be unneat or uncultured. They are far above customs, peculiarities; their methods are only known by results. Knowledge is their servant, not the cicerone of their requirements, for each one stands as a whole, not as a collection of points with intervening spaces. Their conversation does not consist of social items or of literary gossip. Their ready cordiality, sympathy, grace, and proportion mark their outward presentment. We know them best by knowing that we ourselves are never so brilliant, so learned, or so happy as when with them. The reality in them is the substratum of the average man or woman, which can be refined by the furnace of life-experience into the purest human ore; and which makes him of humble appreciation able to cope with the man of scholarship. No conversation is so rich as that which caps the littérateur's and critic's reference with some bit of present, human fact.

It is this reality which makes average people so needful. As a rule they have not self-consciousness, — that venerable inheritance from American and English ancestry, — set round with religious tenets, which prevents our ease and our hospitalities, stifles our loud laughter, and generates the well-bred smile, makes its dread our enthusiasms and our heart friendships, repels us from superior and inferior, and keeps us on the look-out for snubs. They do not aim at special knowledge, nor take positions requiring it. They acquire book-knowledge from simple enjoyment of it rather than from a desire to know more than others. Culture pursued for selfish ends misses its beneficent power. Aspiration keeps its ideals, but wisdom recognizes that the grasping of them is not within the reach of all; so average people may have had dreams of possible future usefulness or attainment, but have become content to be nobodies with slight stock of general information. They take up the daily routine of daily duties, thankful that there is much in quantity to do, living to help others, and trusting that, when old age comes, serenity of mind will atone for the lack of high intelligence. They are guardians of their character, abiding within their limitations, hard as it is to do so, and happy because needful to the spot in which they are placed. They create a home for others, not for themselves alone, sheltering others in the wide sense of caring for and helping them, often bringing them within their own four walls. One must make one's self, not one's house alone, into a home. This is done by hundreds who live in boarding-houses, whose affection is so large that it hides the smallness of their room. Above all, average persons have a large moral sense, and are apt to judge of use, power and beauty, of story and poem, by their moral effects. They involuntarily adopt means to ends as a principle of economic force; their sense of harmony expresses itself by their choice of whatever will best accomplish their purpose. They even are religious; their trust in a higher power, which they do or do not try to bring within the bounds of personality, gives them calmness and self-poise. They take duty as the substance of existence, gladly accepting whatever joy comes as its lustre and letting life find its justification in growth.

"Home-keeping hearts are happiest." Average people make our homes, the homes with the sitting-rooms, which represent the common life of humanity. Let us keep the good old word, for we must sit as individuals, as families, and as nations, in order to rest, and wait, and pause, and think. There are the mothers who bake and mend, and are glad because husbands like pies and children love to romp. There are the fathers who quietly work all day that their boy may go to college; who have a common purse with their wife, and call her "mother," as tribute, unawares, to her blessed maternity which has beautified the home, and who, when death has led their life-long companion to another dwelling-place, quickly follow her, as they know not what else to do. It is the life of these average people that is described by William C. Gannett in his poem

In Twos.

Somewhere in the world there bide Garden-gates that no one sees, Save they come in happy twos,— Not in ones, nor yet in threes.

But from every maiden's door Leads a pathway straight and true; Maps and surveys know it not; He who finds, finds room for two!

Then they see the garden-gates! Never skies so blue as theirs! Never flowers so many-sweet As for those who come in pairs.

Round and round the alleys wind: Now a cradle bars their way, Now a little mound, behind,— So the two go through the day.

When no nook in all the lanes But has heard a song or sigh, Lo! another garden-gate Opens as the two go by!

In they wander, knowing not; "Five and Twenty!" fills the air With a silvery echo low, All about the startled pair.

Happier yet these garden-walks: Closer, heart to heart, they lean; Stiller, softer falls the light; Few the twos, and far between.

Till, at last, as on they pass Down the paths so well they know, Once again at hidden gates Stand the two: they enter slow.

Golden Gates of Fifty Years, May our two your latchet press! Garden of the Sunset Land, Hold their dearest happiness!

Then a quiet walk again: Then a wicket in the wall: Then one, stepping on alone,— Then two at the Heart of All!

In this average home there is the sister who washes and stiffens her one silk that the brother may have another suit; who turns his cravats, and for his sake invites all the girls; and there is the brother who is a better friend than beau, and who will not, even in his daydreams, think of her whom he wants to marry, that he may longer support the aging father and mother. Oh, it is the dear, blessed, average people whose names echo through our prayers, who make each economy a loving grace, each well-worn joke a blossom of goodwill!

Or, if wealth bas lightened daily cares, it is still the average mother who lovingly takes invisible darns in the merino sock which a new one could easily replace; who changes the brilliant chromo for Correggio's angels, and who gives the good-night kiss at each bedside. It is still the average father who bids his boy place emphasis on honor and use, instead of on popularity or high mark at examinations; and who demands rectitude and purity in the husbands of his girls. It is the average people who keep the churches even half-full, and the country from being only on the verge of ruin. It is their sturdy common-sense, independence through force of character, which makes them, unmindful of homage when offered to themselves, render it wherever it is due; their humble dignity, yet demanding payment of the every-day respect that belongs to each honest soul.

Some persons pass through the ordeal of finding that aspiration can never become achievement without pain. Others hide their suffering in obedience to duty, and know the cramping chills that come from never being more than one is. They see women loved with a passion which they can never inspire, and they know that any utterance of what they feel would lose its power through their awkwardness. They see men reverenced for that at which they thrill but can never describe. They are always missing, always trying; trembling with the harmonies of nature, they are dumb before their own formless selves. They know that beauty finds ill expression of itself through them; that their tame and ordinary words tell of affection which is never radiant; of feeling which never prophesies, and of appreciation which is never equality; for they are always conscious of the bitter refrain, — average, average. But above it rise the solemn chords of patient resolve, quieting their hopelessness. Duty remains for them, and, as the thought sings itself into the little moods of sadness, their moan ceases, and, while gazing afar off and fondly at the great and pleasant of earth, they seek only those whom they can help by their small attempts at making things pleasant. They take, gently, the ignoring of themselves, crush their half-shaped, might-have-been-bright answers, utter the remembered commonplaces, and do the little kindnesses, and are true to their circumscribed sphere of duty. These are the heroes of average life, the brave men and women who talk of the weather, and children, and business, and read the papers, and train themselves to suppression of all vague, beautiful dreams of self-possibilities. Grinding their souls into peace by repetition of their futilities at home, at school, and in society, by the time they are twenty-five or thirty years of age they have forgotten that there is aught but duty, except for the spasms that come as some poem or grand burst of music wakens again the struggle, — never a jealous one, only bitter, and always conquered by humility and duty, — gentle, inflexible, solacing duty.

In spite of this pain that comes to some, contentment and sense of responsibility are the prominent characteristics of average people; contentment with circumstances going hand in hand with acknowledgment of varying heights of mental stature, which humbly perceives that to-day's highest result may be to-morrow's future mediocrity. Contentment may have had to learn its lesson, temperament may have aided it, but once learned, the task has not been forgotten. Temperament is fraught with responsibility, not devoid of it; evil issues are to be shunned, beneficial ones to be deepened. The more of gifts we have, or the more of ease in acquiring them, the less depression weighs upon us; stronger will we possess, the more do we owe to others. Self-regeneration can never be effected by dependence on temperament as excuse. The healthy-mindedness of average people transforms the fancied force of temperament into the actual force of character. This feeling of responsibility recognizes that contentment is a personal attribute; that yet one can do little by himself; that the world de- mands utility as reason for daring to exist, and that, therefore, average people must justify themselves by organization if they are bent on accomplishment of work in any large direction.

Professor Price, the political economist, asked his class of English students, and, later, the New York Board of Trade, to define the difference between men and animals; but it was a woman who replied, "Progressive desire." Her excelsior was a constant, definite improvement, which necessitates Order; that is but a name for Organization, and that again is but the watchword of Progress. All must fall into line and pass on the word, or else be court-martialled. Time does not wait to gratify individual whims. The world's welfare depends on us only as we add our tiny personal strength to that of concerted action. Ordinary ardor, forethought, and imagination weld all the possibilities of service and being into action, which will employ its strength, not in endeavoring to arrange human society according to the latest invention patented by the latest philanthropist, but by trying to do whatever duty lies nearest, while waiting for the glory of the heavens to solve its puzzles and fill the soul with abiding convictions. Such effort takes in silence the very humblest services that the universe puts within its frail hands, and finds,—it may be happiness, it is contentment, in fulfilling responsibility and duty, which lead to the happy freedom of being an average person.

Chapter 2

Individuality in Home and Society

Individuality in Home and Society.

The reconciliation of individuality with the rights of others is one of life's problems. Its solution is constantly baffling us, yet it must be found, if our relations to home and society are to be adjusted on any equable division of mutual privileges. As Americans, we are prone to stand up for our rights, and take it for granted that everything should tend to our advancement; therefore, when we meet some one who cherishes similar ideas concerning his prerogatives, friction ensues. Whether the striking together shall bring success to each or end in destruction of one depends upon the adjustment of mutual claims.

Individuality in its nobler form is more than mere assertion of one's rights, — it becomes the maintenance of a principle. For that one works, contends, endures, dies. Often from conscious or unconscious obstinacy, or from self-love, sometimes from real absorption in a cause without regard to self, is the individuality merged in what one wishes to accomplish. Napoleon, Palissy, Fulton, Carlyle, Emerson, an anti-tobacconist or a pro-suffragist, are all alike instances of individuality. Without it one cannot think of a reformer, or of a leader in politics, charities, or social life. That it is often disguised may but intensify its power, for individuality may or may not be marked by self-control and tact. Just so far as it possesses such virtues, does it lead to power. It can be either angular or curved. When the former, we gain Simeon Stylites, monks of La Trappe, fanatics, persecutors, disagreeable friends; when curved, we gain our Philip Sidney, our Abraham Lincoln, our wise philanthropists, our calm enthusiasts, our guides and inspirers. It is intensity of feeling that can either be hidden or must find utterance of itself, and thus, in either case, it becomes the national expression of characteristics. It cannot be easily defined, because it is the "make up," — the whole of each one; it is the atmosphere that surrounds his moral, mental, and bodily qualities. It is both a derived and educated force. Whether it shall be our blessing or our curse depends upon the amount of righteous will-power exercised. Without it we lack the beauty of distinctiveness and the force of action; yet the want of recognition of each other's individuality is the efficient cause of many a discordant home and confused social action.

Each generation, as it is born, lives, and passes away, talks of individuality as if it were the product of itself alone, — a wonder only then to be beheld; regarding it as a distinct fact in man and a more easily recognized concept of thought, than the myriad beauty and separateness of leaf and stone, of cloud and snow-flake, the individuality of and in nature.

Somehow we all like to be called individual, if the word is applied as an adjective; the epithet original our modesty refuses, while to be told that we have idiosyncrasies or peculiarities excites our silent or outspoken ire. The frank information that the complexion is bad, tones of voice and manners annoying, is most disagreeable; but to be regarded as individual places us on a height from which we serenely take note of others' peculiarities. Individuality, idiosyncrasy, peculiarity, — they are the three terms in which our distinctiveness is rated, yet each falls short of the force of the word genius. We are right, however, in liking to be considered individual, for it is a recognition that we have striven for something; it is better to be on the heights — if noble heights — than on the plains. For something, that is the point. Who can tell whether it is a good or bad something?

The consensus of the competent is needed as judge of the right; but the hour may come when one alone is competent. Then the multitude stand aloof and gaze. Only when the voice of the wise is as the sound of many waters do the people praise. An individual who is such for the sake of growth, and not from aggressiveness or a liking for peculiarity, feels the sting in everything that separates him from his fellows; it is painful work to be alone, yet to be alone with one's truth often means living farther from men and nearer to God, and what begins as an act of self-protection becomes the religious deed and communion with the Most High. As we swing ourselves on to the heights we must often feel the pain that comes to us through the self-complacency of others, who misunderstand our simple longing to be true, our unconsciousness is disturbed, and we analyze our motives till afraid of ourselves. Self-inflicted torture should always bring, at last, clearer vision and thankfulness for release from self.

Long before individuality has attained such lustre that it becomes an attractive rather than a repellent force does it manifest itself in the early stages of home-life. The entreaty to the child to amuse himself, or to take care of himself, is the first open declaration of the rights of the parent against those of the child. Infantile graces and motherly love quickly adjust any difference of opinion; but, as years increase, the child finds himself under the shelter of law (ineffective it often is) which guarantees his right to a certain amount of physical and mental growth before he is used as a means of support for the family. The laboring classes chiefly reap the benefit of these laws, but in other ways than caring, for which necessity is often the justification, do the rights of parent and older child conflict. The school brings the difficulty. School-hours, home-lessons, music, drawing, dancing, sleeping, dressing, eating, leave literally no time for the girl's mending or the boy's carpentering jobs about the house. The dining-table is almost the only place where meets a modern family bent on modern education. The theatre, the winter dance, and the summer hotel, rather than the home, furnish recreation and rest, and cause the little sympathy that too often exists between children and their parents, who are spoken of as old or nervous. We calmly allow this result to be reached, feeling that the child's individuality has demanded it; that it is right to allow him to be snobbish, snubbish, and patronizing to commonplace friends and parents; to be cross, nervous, dyspeptic, because he must have time for study. It is far better to maintain him a year longer in school, as an offset to the minutes consumed in doing family errands, than to allow him to evade them. Notwithstanding, the child is right in feeling that his school is of the utmost importance, with which family-life should interfere as little as possible, and parents must submit to personal losses in convenience and enjoyment because of the "schooling." The study gained, the adult child has a right to decide for himself on his future occupation, unhampered by aught but parental advice. How often it is said: "I should have been an engineer, lawyer, mechanic, if my father had not wished me to do otherwise." Far wiser that the young man should struggle longer in the pursuit for self-support than bear all through life the burden of wishing he had been something else, because there seemed need of immediate decision, either from pecuniary reasons or regard for his father's wishes.

That parent makes a fortunate discovery who early sees that, while it is her duty to train the child as a child, to admonish and punish, yet that, as the years go by, her duties as direct guide lessen, and life-experience becomes the greater teacher. It is often said that grown-up families cannot live together, because of the want of this recognition of each other's individuality. The home which unites many varying interests, in which each feels that his or her peculiar hobby meets will consideration and fairness, is the home that is richest in intellectual wealth and affection, — the home which broadens others, into which it is a liberal education to enter, — the home that makes coöperation possible.

But parents do not show that unbiassed judgment of their children's divergence from them which they manifest in regard to strangers. The adult son or daughter feels that his or her measure of difference is a source of poignant regret. That there must be regret is natural, but that the adult child should always be uncomfortable, under the added force of keen bitterness in his father's feeling, hampers his own harmonious growth; he grows, but with a sense of doing injury to those he loves best.