Chapter V…

Chapter V

When the fig growns on the thistle, And the silk purse on the sow; When one swallow brings the summer, And blue moons on her brow--

Then we may look for strength and skill, Experience, good health, good will, Art and science well combined, Honest soul and able mind, Servants built upon this plan, One to wait on every man, Patiently from youth to age,-- For less than a street cleaner's wage!

When the parson's gay on Mondays, When we meet a month of Sundays, We may look for them and find them-- But Not Now!

When young Mrs. Weatherstone swept her trailing crepe from the automobile to her friend's door, it was opened by a quick, soft-footed maid with a pleasant face, who showed her into a parlor, not only cool and flower-lit, but having that fresh smell that tells of new-washed floors.

Mrs. Porne came flying down to meet her, with such a look of rest and comfort as roused instant notice.

"Why, Belle! I haven't seen you look so bright in ever so long. It must be the new maid!"

"That's it--she's 'Bell' too--'Miss Bell' if you please!"

The visitor looked puzzled. "Is she a--a friend?" she ventured, not sure of her ground.

"I should say she was! A friend in need! Sit here by the window, Viva--and I'll tell you all about it--as far as it goes."

She gaily recounted her climax of confusion and weariness, and the sudden appearance of this ministering angel. "She arrived at about quarter of ten. I engaged her inside of five minutes. She was into a gingham gown and at work by ten o'clock!"

"What promptness! And I suppose there was plenty to do!"

Mrs. Porne laughed unblushingly. "There was enough for ten women it seemed to me! Let's see--it's about five now--seven hours. We have nine rooms, besides the halls and stairs, and my shop. She hasn't touched that yet. But the house is clean--clean! Smell it!"

She took her guest out into the hall, through the library and dining-room, upstairs where the pleasant bedrooms stretched open and orderly.

"She said that if I didn't mind she'd give it a superficial general cleaning today and be more thorough later!"

Mrs. Weatherstone looked about her with a rather languid interest. "I'm very glad for you, Belle, dear--but--what an endless nuisance it all is--don't you think so?"

"Nuisance! It's slow death! to me at least," Mrs. Porne answered. "But I don't see why you should mind. I thought Madam Weatherstone ran that--palace, of yours, and you didn't have any trouble at all."

"Oh yes, she runs it. I couldn't get along with her at all if she didn't. That's her life. It was my mother's too. Always fussing and fussing. Their houses on their backs--like snails!"

"Don't see why, with ten (or is it fifteen?) servants."

"Its twenty, I think. But my dear Belle, if you imagine that when you have twenty servants you have neither work nor care--come and try it awhile, that's all!"

"Not for a millionaire baby's ransom!" answered Isabel promptly.

"Give me my drawing tools and plans and I'm happy--but this business"--she swept a white hand wearily about--"it's not my work, that's all."

"But you enjoy it, don't you--I mean having nice things?" asked her friend.

"Of course I enjoy it, but so does Edgar. Can't a woman enjoy her home, just as a man does, without running the shop? I enjoy ocean travel, but I don't want to be either a captain or a common sailor!"

Mrs. Weatherstone smiled, a little sadly. "You're lucky, you have other interests," she said. "How about our bungalow? have you got any farther?"

Mrs. Porne flushed. "I'm sorry, Viva. You ought to have given it to someone else. I haven't gone into that workroom for eight solid days. No help, and the baby, you know. And I was always dog-tired."

"That's all right, dear, there's no very great rush. You can get at it now, can't you--with this other Belle to the fore?"

"She's not Belle, bless you--she's 'Miss Bell.' It's her last name."

Mrs. Weatherstone smiled her faint smile. "Well--why not? Like a seamstress, I suppose."

"Exactly. That's what she said. "If this labor was as important as that of seamstress or governess why not the same courtesy--Oh she's a most superior and opinionated young person, I can see that."

"I like her looks," admitted Mrs. Weatherstone, "but can't we look over those plans again; there's something I wanted to suggest." And they went up to the big room on the third floor.

In her shop and at her work Isabel Porne was a different woman. She was eager and yet calm; full of ideas and ideals, yet with a practical knowledge of details that made her houses dear to the souls of women.

She pointed out in the new drawings the practical advantages of kitchen and pantry; the simple but thorough ventilation, the deep closets, till her friend fairly laughed at her. "And you say you're not domestic!"

"I'm a domestic architect, if you like," said Isabel; "but not a domestic servant.--I'll remember what you say about those windows--it's a good idea," and she made a careful note of Mrs. Weatherstone's suggestion.

That lady pushed the plans away from her, and went to the many cushioned lounge in the wide west window, where she sat so long silent that Isabel followed at last and took her hand.

"Did you love him so much?" she asked softly.

"Who?" was the surprising answer.

"Why--Mr. Weatherstone," said Mrs. Porne.

"No--not very much. But he was something."

Isabel was puzzled. "I knew you so well in school," she said, "and that gay year in Paris. You were always a dear, submissive quiet little thing--but not like this. What's happened Viva?"

"Nothing that anybody can help," said her friend. "Nothing that matters. What does matter, anyway? Fuss and fuss and fuss. Dress and entertain. Travel till you're tired, and rest till you're crazy! Then--when a real thing happens--there's all this!" and she lifted her black draperies disdainfully. "And mourning notepaper and cards and servant's livery--and all the things you mustn't do!"

Isabel put an arm around her. "Don't mind, dear--you'll get over this--you are young enough yet--the world is full of things to do!"

But Mrs. Weatherstone only smiled her faint smile again. "I loved another man, first," she said. "A real one. He died. He never cared for me at all. I cared for nothing else--nothing in life. That's why I married Martin Weatherstone--not for his old millions--but he really cared--and I was sorry for him. Now he's dead. And I'm wearing this--and still mourning for the other one."

Isabel held her hand, stroked it softly, laid it against her cheek.

"Oh, I'll feel differently in time, perhaps!" said her visitor.

"Maybe if you took hold of the house--if you ran things yourself,"--ventured Mrs. Porne.

Mrs. Weatherstone laughed. "And turn out the old lady? You don't know her. Why she managed her son till he ran away from her--and after he got so rich and imported her from Philadelphia to rule over Orchardina in general and his household in particular, she managed that poor little first wife of his into her grave, and that wretched boy--he's the only person that manages her! She's utterly spoiled him--that was his father's constant grief. No, no--let her run the house--she thinks she owns it."

"She's fond of you, isn't she?" asked Mrs. Porne.

"O I guess so--if I let her have her own way. And she certainly saves me a great deal of trouble. Speaking of trouble, there they are--she said she'd stop for me."

At the gate puffed the big car, a person in livery rang the bell, and Mrs. Weatherstone kissed her friend warmly, and passed like a heavy shadow along the rose-bordered path. In the tonneau sat a massive old lady in sober silks, with a set impassive countenance, severely correct in every feature, and young Mat Weatherstone, sulky because he had to ride with his grandmother now and then. He was not a nice young man.

*

Diantha found it hard to write her home letters, especially to Ross. She could not tell them of all she meant to do; and she must tell them of this part of it, at once, before they heard of it through others.

To leave home--to leave school-teaching, to leave love--and "go out to service" did not seem a step up, that was certain. But she set her red lips tighter and wrote the letters; wrote them and mailed them that evening, tired though she was.

Three letters came back quickly.

Her mother's answer was affectionate, patient, and trustful, though not understanding.

Her sister's was as unpleasant as she had expected.

"The idea!" wrote Mrs. Susie. "A girl with a good home to live in and another to look forward to--and able to earn money respectably! to go out and work like a common Irish girl! Why Gerald is so mortified he can't face his friends--and I'm as ashamed as I can be! My own sister! You must be crazy--simply crazy!"

It was hard on them. Diantha had faced her own difficulties bravely enough; and sympathized keenly with her mother, and with Ross; but she had not quite visualized the mortification of her relatives. She found tears in her eyes over her mother's letter. Her sister's made her both sorry and angry--a most disagreeable feeling--as when you step on the cat on the stairs. Ross's letter she held some time without opening.

She was in her little upstairs room in the evening. She had swept, scoured, scalded and carbolized it, and the hospitally smell was now giving way to the soft richness of the outer air. The "hoo! hoo!" of the little mourning owl came to her ears through the whispering night, and large moths beat noiselessly against the window screen. She kissed the letter again, held it tightly to her heart for a moment, and opened it.

"Dearest: I have your letter with its--somewhat surprising--news. It is a comfort to know where you are, that you are settled and in no danger.

"I can readily imagine that this is but the preliminary to something else, as you say so repeatedly; and I can understand also that you are too wise to tell me all you mean to be beforehand.

"I will be perfectly frank with you, Dear.

"In the first place I love you. I shall love you always, whatever you do. But I will not disguise from you that this whole business seems to me unutterably foolish and wrong.

"I suppose you expect by some mysterious process to "develope" and "elevate" this housework business; and to make money. I should not love you any better if you made a million--and I would not take money from you--you know that, I hope. If in the years we must wait before we can marry, you are happier away from me--working in strange kitchens--or offices--that is your affair.

"I shall not argue nor plead with you, Dear Girl; I know you think you are doing right; and I have no right, nor power, to prevent you. But if my wish were right and power, you would be here to-night, under the shadow of the acacia boughs--in my arms!

"Any time you feel like coming back you will be welcome, Dear.

"Yours, Ross."

Any time she felt like coming back?

Diantha slipped down in a little heap by the bed, her face on the letter--her arms spread wide. The letter grew wetter and wetter, and her shoulders shook from time to time.

But the hands were tight-clenched, and if you had been near enough you might have heard a dogged repetition, monotonous as a Tibetan prayer mill: "It is right. It is right. It is right." And then. "Help me--please! I need it." Diantha was not "gifted in prayer."

When Mr. Porne came home that night he found the wifely smile which is supposed to greet all returning husbands quite genuinely in evidence. "O Edgar!" cried she in a triumphant whisper, "I've got such a nice girl! She's just as neat and quick; you've no idea the work she's done today--it looks like another place already. But if things look queer at dinner don't notice it--for I've just given her her head. I was so tired, and baby bothered so, and she said that perhaps she could manage all by herself if I was willing to risk it, so I took baby for a car-ride and have only just got back. And I think the dinner's going to be lovely!"

It was lovely. The dining-room was cool and flyless. The table was set with an assured touch. A few of Orchardina's ever ready roses in a glass bowl gave an air of intended beauty Mrs. Porne had had no time for.

The food was well-cooked and well-served, and the attendance showed an intelligent appreciation of when people want things and how they want them.

Mrs. Porne quite glowed with exultation, but her husband gently suggested that the newness of the broom was visibly uppermost, and that such palpable perfections were probably accompanied by some drawbacks. But he liked her looks, he admitted, and the cooking would cover a multitude of sins.

On this they rested, while the week went by. It was a full week, and a short one. Mrs. Porne, making hay while the sun shone, caught up a little in her sewing and made some conscience-tormenting calls.

When Thursday night came around she was simply running over with information to give her husband.

"Such a talk as I have had with Miss Bell! She is so queer! But she's nice too, and it's all reasonable enough, what she says. You know she's studied this thing all out, and she knows about it--statistics and things. I was astonished till I found she used to teach school. Just think of it! And to be willing to work out! She certainly does her work beautiful, but--it doesn't seem like having a servant at all. I feel as if I--boarded with her!"

"Why she seemed to me very modest and unpresuming," put in Mr. Porne.

"O yes, she never presumes. But I mean the capable way she manages--I don't have to tell her one thing, nor to oversee, nor criticize. I spoke of it and she said, 'If I didn't understand the business I should have no right to undertake it."

"That's a new point of view, isn't it?" asked her husband. "Don't they usually make you teach them their trade and charge for the privilege?"

"Yes, of course they do. But then she does have her disadvantages--as you said."

"Does she? What are they?"

"Why she's so--rigid. I'll read you her--I don't know what to call it. She's written out a definite proposition as to her staying with us, and I want you to study it, it's the queerest thing I ever saw."

The document was somewhat novel. A clear statement of the hours of labor required in the position, the quality and amount of the different kinds of work; the terms on which she was willing to undertake it, and all prefaced by a few remarks on the status of household labor which made Mr. Porne open his eyes.

Thus Miss Bell; "The ordinary rate for labor in this state, unskilled labor of the ordinary sort, is $2.00 a day. This is in return for the simplest exertion of brute force, under constant supervision and direction, and involving no serious risk to the employer."

"Household labor calls for the practice of several distinct crafts, and, to be properly done, requires thorough training and experience. Its performer is not only in a position of confidence, as necessarily entrusted with the care of the employer's goods and with knowledge of the most intimate family relations; but the work itself, in maintaining the life and health of the members of the household, is of most vital importance.

"In consideration of existing economic conditions, however, I am willing to undertake these intricate and responsible duties for a seven day week at less wages than are given the street-digger, for $1.50 a day."

"Good gracious, my dear!" said Mr. Porne, laying down the paper, "This young woman does appreciate her business! And we're to be let off easy at $45.00 a month, are we"

"And feel under obligations at that!" answered his wife. "But you read ahead. It is most instructive. We shall have to ask her to read a paper for the Club!"

"'In further consideration of the conditions of the time, I am willing to accept part payment in board and lodging instead of cash. Such accommodations as are usually offered with this position may be rated at $17.00 a month."

"O come now, don't we board her any better than that?"

"That's what I thought, and I asked her about it, and she explained that she could get a room as good for a dollar and a-half a week--she had actually made inquiries in this very town! And she could; really a better room, better furnished, that is, and service with it. You know I've always meant to get the girl's room fixed more prettily, but usually they don't seem to mind. And as to food--you see she knows all about the cost of things, and the materials she consumes are really not more than two dollars and a half a week, if they are that. She even made some figures for me to prove it--see."

Mr. Porne had to laugh.

"Breakfast. Coffee at thirty-five cents per pound, one cup, one cent. Oatmeal at fourteen cents per package, one bowl, one cent. Bread at five cents per loaf, two slices, one-half cent. Butter at forty cents per pound, one piece, one and a-half cents. Oranges at thirty cents per dozen, one, three cents. Milk at eight cents per quart, on oatmeal, one cent. Meat or fish or egg, average five cents. Total--thirteen cents."

"There! And she showed me dinner and lunch the same way. I had no idea food, just the material, cost so little. It's the labor, she says that makes it cost even in the cheapest restaurant."

"I see," said Mr. Porne. "And in the case of the domestic servant we furnish the materials and she furnishes the labor. She cooks her own food and waits on herself--naturally it wouldn't come high. What does she make it?"

'Food, average per day . . . $0.35 Room, $1.50 per w'k, ave. per day . . . .22 ----- .57

Total, per month . . . $17.10

$1.50 per day, per month . . . $45.00

"'Remaining payable in cash, $28.00.' Do I still live! But my dear Ellie, that's only what an ordinary first-class cook charges, out here, without all this fuss!"

"I know it, Ned, but you know we think it's awful, and we're always telling about their getting their board and lodging clear--as if we gave'em that out of the goodness of our hearts!"

"Exactly, my dear. And this amazing and arithmetical young woman makes us feel as if we were giving her wampum instead of money--mere primitive barter of ancient days in return for her twentieth century services! How does she do her work--that's the main question."

"I never saw anyone do it better, or quicker, or easier. That is, I thought it was easy till she brought me this paper. Just read about her work, and you'll feel as if we ought to pay her all your salary."

Mr. Porne read:

"Labor performed, average ten hours a day, as follows: Preparation of food materials, care of fires, cooking, table service, and cleaning of dishes, utensils, towels, stove, etc., per meal--breakfast two hours, dinner three hours, supper or lunch one hour--six hours per day for food service. Daily chamber work and dusting, etc., one and one-half hours per day. Weekly cleaning for house of nine rooms, with halls, stairs, closets, porches, steps, walks, etc., sweeping, dusting, washing windows, mopping, scouring, etc., averaging two hours per day. Door service, waiting on tradesmen, and extras one-half hour per day. Total ten hours per day."

"That sounds well. Does it take that much time every day?"

"Yes, indeed! It would take me twenty!" she answered. "You know the week I was here alone I never did half she does. Of course I had Baby, but then I didn't do the things. I guess when it doesn't take so long they just don't do what ought to be done. For she is quick, awfully quick about her work. And she's thorough. I suppose it ought to be done that way--but I never had one before."

"She keeps mighty fresh and bright-looking after these herculean labors."

"Yes, but then she rests! Her ten hours are from six-thirty a.m., when she goes into the kitchen as regularly as a cuckoo clock, to eight-thirty p.m. when she is all through and her kitchen looks like a--well it's as clean and orderly as if no one was ever in it."

"Ten hours--that's fourteen."

"I know it, but she takes out four. She claims time to eat her meals."

"Preposterous!"

"Half an hour apiece, and half an hour in the morning to rest--and two in the afternoon. Anyway she is out, two hours every afternoon, riding in the electric cars!"

"That don't look like a very hard job. Her day laborer doesn't get two hours off every afternoon to take excursions into the country!"

"No, I know that, but he doesn't begin so early, nor stop so late. She does her square ten hours work, and I suppose one has a right to time off."

"You seem dubious about that, my dear."

"Yes, that's just where it's awkward. I'm used to girls being in all the time, excepting their day out. You see I can't leave baby, nor always take him--and it interferes with my freedom afternoons."

"Well--can't you arrange with her somehow?"

"See if you can. She says she will only give ten hours of time for a dollar and a half a day--tisn't but fifteen cents an hour--I have to pay a woman twenty that comes in. And if she is to give up her chance of sunlight and fresh air she wants me to pay her extra--by the hour. Or she says, if I prefer, she would take four hours every other day--and so be at home half the time. I said it was difficult to arrange--with baby, and she was very sympathetic and nice, but she won't alter her plans."

"Let her go, and get a less exacting servant."

"But--she does her work so well! And it saves a lot, really. She knows all about marketing and things, and plans the meals so as to have things lap, and it's a comfort to have her in the house and feel so safe and sure everything will be done right."

"Well, it's your province, my dear. I don't profess to advise. But I assure you I appreciate the table, and the cleanness of everything, and the rested look in your eyes, dear girl!"

She slipped her hand into his affectionately. "It does make a difference," she said. "I could get a girl for $20.00 and save nearly $2.60 a week--but you know what they are!"

"I do indeed," he admitted fervently. "It's worth the money to have this thing done so well. I think she's right about the wages. Better keep her."

"O--she'll only agree to stay six months even at this rate!"

"Well--keep her six months and be thankful. I thought she was too good to last!"

They looked over the offered contract again. It closed with:

"This agreement to hold for six months from date if mutually satisfactory. In case of disagreement two weeks' notice is to be given on either side, or two weeks' wages if preferred by the employer." It was dated, and signed "Miss D. C. Bell."

And with inward amusement and great display of penmanship they added "Mrs. Isabel J. Porne," and the contract was made.

[Erratum]

Apology is due to Mr. Horace Traubel, by whose kind permission "Little Leafy Brothers," in our February issue, was reprinted from "The Conservator," for not giving proper acknowledgment. Also to our readers for the same omission.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

V.

MASCULINE LITERATURE.

When we are offered a "woman's" paper, page, or column, we find it filled with matter supposed to appeal to women as a sex or class; the writer mainly dwelling upon the Kaiser's four K's--Kuchen, Kinder, Kirche, Kleider. They iterate and reiterate endlessly the discussion of cookery, old and new; of the care of children; of the overwhelming subject of clothing; and of moral instruction. All this is recognized as "feminine" literature, and it must have some appeal else the women would not read it. What parallel have we in "masculine" literature?

"None!" is the proud reply. "Men are people! Women, being 'the sex,' have their limited feminine interests, their feminine point of view, which must be provided for. Men, however, are not restricted--to them belongs the world's literature!"

Yes, it has belonged to them--ever since there was any. They have written it and they have read it. It is only lately that women, generally speaking, have been taught to read; still more lately that they have been allowed to write. It is but a little while since Harriet Martineau concealed her writing beneath her sewing when visitors came in--writing was "masculine"--sewing "feminine."

We have not, it Is true, confined men to a narrowly construed "masculine sphere," and composed a special literature suited to it. Their effect on literature has been far wider than that, monopolizing this form of art with special favor. It was suited above all others to the dominant impulse of self-expression; and being, as we have seen essentially and continually "the sex;" they have impressed that sex upon this art overwhelmingly; they have given the world a masculized literature.

It is hard for us to realize this. We can readily see, that if women had always written the books, no men either writing or reading them, that would have surely "feminized" our literature; but we have not in our minds the concept, much less the word, for an overmasculized influence.

Men having been accepted as humanity, women but a side-issue; (most literally if we accept the Hebrew legend!), whatever men did or said was human--and not to be criticized. In no department of life is it easier to contravert this old belief; to show how the male sex as such differs from the human type; and how this maleness has monopolized and disfigured a great social function.

Human life is a very large affair; and literature is its chief art. We live, humanly, only through our power of communication. Speech gives us this power laterally, as it were, in immediate personal contact. For permanent use speech becomes oral tradition--a poor dependence. Literature gives not only an infinite multiplication to the lateral spread of communion but adds the vertical reach. Through it we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future. In its servicable common forms it is the indispensable daily servant of our lives; in its nobler flights as a great art no means of human inter-change goes so far.

In these brief limits we can touch but lightly on some phases of so great a subject; and will rest the case mainly on the effect of an exclusively masculine handling of the two fields of history and fiction. In poetry and the drama the same influence is easily traced, but in the first two it is so baldly prominent as to defy objection.

History is, or should be, the story of our racial life. What have men made it? The story of warfare and conquest. Begin at the very beginning with the carven stones of Egypt, the clay records of Chaldea, what do we find of history?

"I Pharaoh, King of Kings! Lord of Lords! (etc. etc.), "went down into the miserable land of Kush, and slew of the inhabitants thereof an hundred and forty and two thousands!" That, or something like it, is the kind of record early history gives us.

The story of Conquering Kings, who and how many they killed and enslaved; the grovelling adulation of the abased; the unlimited jubilation of the victor; from the primitive state of most ancient kings, and the Roman triumphs where queens walked in chains, down to our omni present soldier's monuments: the story of war and conquest--war and conquest--over and over; with such boasting and triumph, such cock-crow and flapping of wings as show most unmistakably the natural source.

All this will strike the reader at first as biased and unfair. "That was the way people lived in those days!" says the reader.

No--it was not the way women lived.

"O, women!" says the reader, "Of course not! Women are different."

Yea, women are different; and men are different! Both of them, as sexes, differ from the human norm, which is social life and all social development. Society was slowly growing in all those black blind years. The arts, the sciences, the trades and crafts and professions, religion, philosophy, government, law, commerce, agriculture--all the human processes were going on as well as they were able, between wars.

The male naturally fights, and naturally crows, triumphs over his rival and takes the prize--therefore was he made male. Maleness means war.

Not only so; but being male, he cares only for male interests. Men, being the sole arbiters of what should be done and said and written, have given us not only a social growth scarred and thwarted from the beginning by continual destruction; but a history which is one unbroken record of courage and red cruelty, of triumph and black shame.

As to what went on that was of real consequence, the great slow steps of the working world, the discoveries and inventions, the real progress of humanity--that was not worth recording, from a masculine point of view. Within this last century, "the woman's century," the century of the great awakening, the rising demand for freedom, political, economic, and domestic, we are beginning to write real history, human history, and not merely masculine history. But that great branch of literature--Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and all down later times, shows beyond all question, the influence of our androcentric culture.

Literature is the most powerful and necessary of the arts, and fiction is its broadest form. If art "holds the mirror up to nature" this art's mirror is the largest of all, the most used. Since our very life depends on some communication; and our progress is in proportion to our fullness and freedom of communication; since real communication requires mutual understanding; so in the growth of the social consciousness, we note from the beginning a passionate interest in other people's lives.

The art which gives humanity consciousness is the most vital art. Our greatest dramatists are lauded for their breadth of knowledge of "human nature," their range of emotion and understanding; our greatest poets are those who most deeply and widely experience and reveal the feelings of the human heart; and the power of fiction is that it can reach and express this great field of human life with no limits but those of the author.

When fiction began it was the legitimate child of oral tradition; a product of natural brain activity; the legend constructed instead of remembered. (This stage is with us yet as seen in the constant changes in repetition of popular jokes and stories.)

Fiction to-day has a much wider range; yet it is still restricted, heavily and most mischievously restricted.

What is the preferred subject matter of fiction?

There are two main branches found everywhere, from the Romaunt of the Rose to the Purplish Magazine;--the Story of Adventure, and the Love Story.

The Story-of-Adventure branch is not so thick as the other by any means, but it is a sturdy bough for all that. Stevenson and Kipling have proved its immense popularity, with the whole brood of detective stories and the tales of successful rascality we call "picaresque" Our most popular weekly shows the broad appeal of this class of fiction.

All these tales of adventure, of struggle and difficulty; of hunting and fishing and fighting; of robbing and murdering, catching and punishing, are distinctly and essentially masculine. They do not touch on human processes, social processes, but on the special field of predatory excitement so long the sole province of men.

It is to be noted here that even in the overwhelming rise of industrial interests to-day, these, when used as the basis for a story, are forced into line with one, or both, of these two main branches of fiction;--conflict or love. Unless the story has one of these "interests" in it, there is no story--so holds the editor; the dictum being, put plainly, "life has no interests except conflict and love!"

It is surely something more than a coincidence that these are the two essential features of masculinity--Desire and Combat--Love and War.

As a matter of fact the major interests of life are in line with its major processes; and these--in our stage of human development--are more varied than our fiction would have us believe. Half the world consists of women, we should remember, who are types of human life as well as men, and their major processes are not those of conflict and adventure, their love means more than mating. Even on so poor a line of distinction as the "woman's column" offers, if women are to be kept to their four Ks, there should be a "men's column" also; and all the "sporting news" and fish stories be put in that; they are not world interests; they are male interests.

Now for the main branch--the Love Story. Ninety per cent. of fiction is In this line; this is preeminently the major interest of life--given in fiction. What is the love-story, as rendered by this art?

It is the story of the pre-marital struggle. It is the Adventures of Him in Pursuit of Her--and it stops when he gets her! Story after story, age after age, over and over and over, this ceaseless repetition of the Preliminaries.

Here is Human Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions, all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human life fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as its necessary base.

"Ah! but we are persons most of all!" protests the reader. "This is personal experience--it has the universal appeal!"

Take human life personally then. Here is a Human Being, a life, covering some seventy years; involving the changing growth of many faculties; the ever new marvels of youth, the long working time of middle life, the slow ripening of age. Here is the human soul, in the human body, Living. Out of this field of personal life, with all of its emotions, processes, and experiences, fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, mainly of one sex.

The "love" of our stories is man's love of woman. If any dare dispute this, and say it treats equally of woman's love for man, I answer, "Then why do the stories stop at marriage?"

There is a current jest, revealing much, to this effect:

The young wife complains that the husband does not wait upon and woo her as he did before marriage; to which he replies, "Why should I run after the street-car when I've caught it?"

Woman's love for man, as currently treated in fiction is largely a reflex; it is the way he wants her to feel, expects her to feel; not a fair representation of how she does feel. If "love" is to be selected as the most important thing in life to write about, then the mother's love should be the principal subject: This is the main stream. This is the general underlying, world-lifting force. The "life-force," now so glibly chattered about, finds its fullest expression in motherhood; not in the emotions of an assistant in the preliminary stages.

What has literature, what has fiction, to offer concerning mother-love, or even concerning father-love, as compared to this vast volume of excitement about lover-love? Why is the search-light continually focussed upon a two or three years space of life "mid the blank miles round about?" Why indeed, except for the clear reason, that on a starkly masculine basis this is his one period of overwhelming interest and excitement.

If the beehive produced literature, the bee's fiction would be rich and broad; full of the complex tasks of comb-building and filling; the care and feeding of the young, the guardian-service of the queen; and far beyond that it would spread to the blue glory of the summer sky, the fresh winds, the endless beauty and sweetness of a thousand thousand flowers. It would treat of the vast fecundity of motherhood, the educative and selective processes of the group-mothers; and the passion of loyalty, of social service, which holds the hive together.

But if the drones wrote fiction, it would have no subject matter save the feasting of many; and the nuptial flight, of one.

To the male, as such, this mating instinct is frankly the major interest of life; even the belligerent instincts are second to it. To the female, as such, it is for all its intensity, but a passing interest. In nature's economy, his is but a temporary devotion, hers the slow processes of life's fulfillment.

In Humanity we have long since, not outgrown, but overgrown, this stage of feeling. In Human Parentage even the mother's share begins to pale beside that ever-growing Social love and care, which guards and guides the children of to-day.

The art of literature in this main form of fiction is far too great a thing to be wholly governed by one dominant note. As life widened and intensified, the artist, if great enough, has transcended sex; and in the mightier works of the real masters, we find fiction treating of life, life in general, in all its complex relationships, and refusing to be held longer to the rigid canons of an androcentric past.

This was the power of Balzac--he took in more than this one field. This was the universal appeal of Dickens; he wrote of people, all kinds of people, doing all kinds of things. As you recall with pleasure some preferred novel of this general favorite, you find yourself looking narrowly for the "love story" in it. It is there--for it is part of life; but it does not dominate the whole scene--any more than it does in life.

The thought of the world is made and handed out to us in the main. The makers of books are the makers of thoughts and feelings for people in general. Fiction is the most popular form in which this world-food is taken. If it were true, it would teach us life easily, swiftly, truly; teach not by preaching but by truly re-presenting; and we should grow up becoming acquainted with a far wider range of life in books than could even be ours in person. Then meeting life in reality we should be wise--and not be disappointed.

As it is, our great sea of fiction is steeped and dyed and flavored all one way. A young man faces life--the seventy year stretch, remember, and is given book upon book wherein one set of feelings is continually vocalized and overestimated. He reads forever of love, good love and bad love, natural and unnatural, legitimate and illegitimate; with the unavoidable inference that there is nothing else going on.

If he is a healthy young man he breaks loose from the whole thing, despises "love stories" and takes up life as he finds it. But what impression he does receive from fiction is a false one, and he suffers without knowing it from lack of the truer broader views of life it failed to give him.

A young woman faces life--the seventy year stretch remember; and is given the same books--with restrictions. Remember the remark of Rochefoucauld, "There are thirty good stories in the world and twenty-nine cannot be told to women." There is a certain broad field of literature so grossly androcentric that for very shame men have tried to keep it to themselves. But in a milder form, the spades all named teaspoons, or at the worst appearing as trowels--the young woman is given the same fiction. Love and love and love--from "first sight" to marriage. There it stops--just the fluttering ribbon of announcement, "and lived happily ever after."

Is that kind of fiction any sort of picture of a woman's life? Fiction, under our androcentric culture, has not given any true picture of woman's life, very little of human life, and a disproportioned section of man's life.

As we daily grow more human, both of us, this noble art is changing for the better so fast that a short lifetime can mark the growth. New fields are opening and new laborers are working in them. But it is no swift and easy matter to disabuse the race mind from attitudes and habits inculcated for a thousand years. What we have been fed upon so long we are well used to, what we are used to we like, what we like we think is good and proper.

The widening demand for broader, truer fiction is disputed by the slow racial mind: and opposed by the marketers of literature on grounds of visible self-interest, as well as lethargic conservatism.

It is difficult for men, heretofore the sole producers and consumers of literature; and for women, new to the field, and following masculine canons because all the canons were masculine; to stretch their minds to a recognition of the change which is even now upon us.

This one narrow field has been for so long overworked, our minds are so filled with heroes and heroes continually repeating the one-act play, that when a book like David Harum is offered the publisher refuses it repeatedly, and finally insists on a "heart interest" being injected by force.

Did anyone read David Harum for that heart interest? Does anyone remember that heart interest? Has humanity no interests but those of the heart?

Robert Ellesmere was a popular book--but not because of its heart interest.

Uncle Tom's Cabin appealed to the entire world, more widely than any work of fiction that was ever written; but if anybody fell in love and married in it they have been forgotten. There was plenty of love in that book, love of family, love of friends, love of master for servant and servant for master; love of mother for child; love of married people for each other; love of humanity and love of God.

It was extremely popular. Some say it was not literature. That opinion will live, like the name of Empedocles.

The art of fiction is being re-born in these days. Life is discovered to be longer, wider, deeper, richer, than these monotonous players of one June would have us believe.

The humanizing of woman of itself opens five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon to give up her "career"--her humanness--for marriage, and who objects to it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her discontent is social starvation--that it is not more love that she wants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women with women--a thing we could never write about before because we never had it before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action between mothers and children; this not the eternal "mother and child," wherein the child is always a baby, but the long drama of personal relationship; the love and hope, the patience and power, the lasting joy and triumph, the slow eating disappointment which must never be owned to a living soul--here are grounds for novels that a million mothers and many million children would eagerly read: Fifth the new attitude of the full-grown woman who faces the demands of love with the high standards of conscious motherhood.

There are other fields, broad and brilliantly promising, but this chapter is meant merely to show that our one-sided culture has, in this art, most disproportionately overestimated the dominant instincts of the male--Love and War--an offense against art and truth, and an injury to life.

WATER-LURE

We who were born of water, in the warm slow ancient years, Love it to-day for all we pay Of terror and loss and tears.

The child laughs loud at the fountain, laughs low in the April rain, And the sea's bright brim is a lure to him Where a lost life lives again.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

In a recent number of a leading "woman's" periodical is a disquisition on love--a girl's ideals of love, based on Elaine and the Sleeping Beauty.

This is a serious matter surely. Love being an essential preliminary to the best parenthood, and the major element of personal happiness, is a most commanding subject; and as the woman is the most important factor in both lines, her ideals are worth discussing.

We note that the author says "girl" instead of woman; but as boys and girls do have ideals they too are worth considering. What are these ideals as discussed in this worthy periodical?

We are told that the girl is often unfit to meet "the big grave questions of love itself;" and "to make sure that she has these ideals from the highest sources."

"What are these sources?" pursues this sagacious monitor; and then she offers--"fairy tales and old romance." For ideals of love--here--in America to-day--we are referred to Grimm's Marchen; to Cinderella, the Goose Girl, Beauty and the Beast, and the Sleeping Beauty! Various heroines of mythology and fiction are adduced, and the crowning type of all is Elaine, The Lily Maid of Astolat.

A careful reading of fairy tales, however worthy, does not seem to throw much light on the problems of marriage; and right marriage is what all this love and its ideals are for. Here is a matter calling for the widest knowledge, the noblest purpose, the highest principles, the most practical action; a matter concerning not only the private happiness of two persons, but the lives of several others; a matter not only of individual appeal, but of the very broadest social duty; and for its ideals we are referred to old fairy tales!

The Sleeping Beauty is a most happy instance of woman's right attitude toward love and marriage--she is to remain starkly unconscious, using absolutely no discretion; and cheerfully marry the first man that kisses her! In the fairy story he was a noble prince--but the average sleeping beauty of to-day is often waked up by the wrong man!

Sometimes she is married first, and wakes up afterward; like the lady in Lear's limerick:

"There a an old man of Jamaica, Who suddenly married a Quaker. But she cried out, "O Lack! I have married a Black!" Which grieved that old man of Jamaica."

How does Elaine answer as an ideal? Almost as well as the Sleeping Beauty. Ignorance absolute; instant surrender to the first man appearing; no shadow of inquiry as to his being married or single; much less as to his morals. Then the apotheosis of the tidy-making instinct--embroidering a cover for a steel shield! a thing meant to bear the hardest kind of blows, made for that purpose, and she so afraid it will get "rust or soilure" that she constructs this decorated case for it.

Then the going forth to nurse her wounded hero, and the ingenuous proposal, when he offers to requite her.

Being refused, what then? Any thought of her duty in the world? Of her two good brothers? Of her aged father--very fond of her too, that old father? Not the slightest. Not even a glimmer of purpose to live on--if her love was so wonderful, and be of some use to the great man, by and by.

Nothing but herself. "I want something! I can't have it! I will die!"--and die she did, of set purpose, by a sort of flabby suicide; making the most careful arrangements for a spectacular funeral barge, and a letter that should wring the heart of the obdurate man.

Well, I can remember when I cried over it--at about thirteen. It does appeal to girls; but is it therefore an ideal to be held up as a High Source and followed?

It is time and more than time for us to recognize that marriage is for men and women, not girls and boys; that "love" is not a rosy dream but a responsible undertaking, with consequences; that no true ideals of love can be formed without full recognition of its purpose.

*

A thin small book of verse, a booklet, called "Philemon's Verses," from The Evergreen Press, Montrose, Pa., has been sent me for review.

Now I have a theory of my own in regard to what we are pleased to call "minor poets"; namely, that poetry is a natural form of expression to most human beings, and should be used as such.

Why do we imagine that the best method of ensuring our output of poetry is to have a few huge monoliths of poets--and no more? Is the great poet surer of recognition, safer in his unparalleled superiority because there is nothing between him and the unpoetical? Is a vast audience of the dumb and verseless, who do not care enough for poetry to write any of it, the best for the great poet?

According to my theory there is as much room for short-distance poetry as for the kind that rings around the world for centuries.

As I look over this small collection, I am impressed most with its clear sincerity, in feeling and expression. These verses are not cooked--they grew.

Then I feel anew the range of interests of the modern singer--so swiftly widening, so intensely human, and yet so sympathetic with nature. Democracy in literature is a good thing; not only in subject matter but in universal participation.

So that the contribution be genuine, the real speech of an honest soul, it has its own place in the literature of the day; and that is evidently the case with Philemon's Verses.

*

"The Lords of High Decision" is a title more high-sounding than descriptive. If the story had been called "The Slaves of Low Decision" it would be more recognizable.

Here is a man who wabbles through some thirty years of life without coming to any decision at all; a woman who at no time had any decision; another who decided wrong, then right, then wrong again, and was finally let out by an accident; a first-class pitcher who gives up his chosen field to be a chauffeur and general attache of the wabbler, and finally loses his life to save another man--perhaps he was a Lord of High Decision.

Perhaps Paddock, the settlement-running clergyman was. Or Walsh,--the suppressed parent. Colonel Craighill, the father of the Wabbler, is well drawn, evidently from nature.

A highly Episcopalian attitude toward divorce is taken; the heroine, who has been for some years free of a husband casually married in youth, is led to see her duty in going back to him; even though she deeply loves another man. As her ex-husband has more sense than she, he refuses to accept this living sacrifice. She succeeds in giving up something, however, for her lover, a man of considerable wealth, makes his proposal in this wise:

"I know I ask a great deal when I ask you to give up your work for me--and yet I ask it. Remember, there is no gratitude in this--you are a woman, and I am a man--and I love you."

Poor girl! She has struggled through poverty, a broken marriage, long years of valiant endeavor for this work of hers; it was the innocent and easily domesticated task of drawing children's faces--she was an illustrator. Yet the first thing her "lover" does, in the very height of his new virtue, in the very act of offering himself, is to assume as a matter of course that she would give it up. And she did--for this Lord of High Decision.

"The Lords of High Decision," by Meredith Nicholson. Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.50.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

Here is a "Personal" of distinct interest.

May it reach its mark!

"WANTED:

"By a Socialist woman of mature years, a congenial person of similar sex, education and tastes to share with her the expense of a country home in the mountains, and the study--as far as may be agreeable--of nature, music, literature, sociology and socialism. No objection to Suffragette or Vegetarian, but advocates of Anarchism or Free Love are hereby contra-indicated. Credentials to be frankly exchanged with personal history. Address: The Widow Baucis, Care of The Forerunner, 67 Wall St., New York City."

*

Apropos of the above, there are no more intimate and pressing problems than those of the business of living, the mere every day processes.

We are still so hampered by the customs and habits of the proprietary family that we assume as a matter of course that one must live, first, in childhood and youth, with one's parental family; second, in middle life, with one's matrimonial family; and third in age, with one's descendants.

Now suppose one is of age, unmarried, and not fond of living with one's parents. This is not wicked. It is not extremely unusual. One may be very fond of one's parents, as parents, yet prefer other society in daily life. Enforced residence in the same home of a number of grown people of widely different ages, interests, and ideas, is not made happy by the fact of blood-relationship.

There are many indications to show an increasing divergence of tastes between our rapidly changing generations. Each set of young people seem to differ more sharply from their parents than they, in their youth, similarly differed.

Moreover, there are a number of persons who do not marry, and yet have a right to live--yes, and to enjoy living.

Men have long ago solved this problem to their own satisfaction. They leave home early; they have learned in cabin, camp and club to live in groups, without women; and many, with an apartment of their own as a base, seem to find enough society in visits among their friends.

But women are only beginning to realize that it is possible to live, yes, and to have a "home," even if one has not, in the original sense, "a family." The amount of happiness that really congenial friends can find in living together is fully as great as that of some marriages; and quite outside of daily contact in the household remains that boundless field of strength, stimulus and delight which comes of true social contact.

But the machinery of life is all arranged for married couples; who rightly constitute the majority; and the unmarried woman is not allowed for. She is, however, rapidly awakening to the fact that she has an actual individual existence--as well as a potential marital existence; and is learning how to use and enjoy it.

PLAYTIME

AUNT ELIZA

(This was done by two persons, in alternate lines, as a game.)

Seven days had Aunt Eliza Read the Boston Advertiser, Seven days on end; But in spite of her persistence Still she met with some resistance From her bosom friend.

Thomas Brown, the Undertaker, Who declared he'd have to shake her, Daily called at ten; Asking if dear Aunt's condition Would allow of his admission, With his corps of men.

Aunt Eliza heard him pleading, Ceased an instant from her reading, Softly downward stole; Soon broke up the conversation, Punctuating Brown's oration, With a shower of coal.

THE CRIPPLE

There are such things as feet, human feet; But these she does not use; Firm and supple, white and sweet, Softly graceful, lightly fleet, For comfort, beauty, service meet-- There are feet, human feet, These she does with scorn refuse-- Preferring shoes.

There are such things as shoes--human shoes; Though scant and rare the proof; Serviceable, soft and strong, Pleasant, comely, wearing long, Easy as a well-known song-- There are shoes, human shoes, But from these she holds aloof-- Prefers the hoof!

There are such things as hoofs, sub-human hoofs, High-heeled, sharp anomalies; Small and pinching, hard and black, Shiny as a beetle's back, Cloven, clattering on the track, There are hoofs, sub-human hoofs, She cares not for truth, nor ease-- Preferring these!

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR .10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 6 APRIL, 1910 Copyright for 1910 C. P. Gilman

The human soul is built for the love and service of the whole world. We confine it to the love and service of five or six persons, and the salvation of one.

WHEN THOU GAINEST HAPPINESS

When thou gainest happiness, Life's full cup of sweetest wine; Dost thou stop in grieving blind Over those dark years behind? Bitter now, rebellious, mad, For the things thou hast not had-- Before everything was thine?

Dost not rather wonder why Nearing blaze of joy like this, Some prevision had not lit Those dark hours with hope of it? That thou couldst in patient strength Have endured that sorrow's length-- Nothing--to the coming bliss!

Now, awaken! Look ahead! See the earth one garden fair! See the evils of to-day Like a child's faults put away! See our little history seem Like a short forgotten dream! See a full-grown rising race Find our joy their commonplace! Find such new joy of their own As our best hopes have not known! And take shame for thy despair!

MARTHA'S MOTHER

It was nine feet long.

It was eight feet high.

It was six feet wide.

There was a closet, actually!--a closet one foot deep--that was why she took this room. There was the bed, and the trunk, and just room to open the closet door part way--that accounted for the length. There was the bed and the bureau and the chair--that accounted for the width. Between the bedside and the bureau and chair side was a strip extending the whole nine feet. There was room to turn around by the window. There was room to turn round by the door. Martha was thin.

One, two, three, four--turn.

One, two, three, four--turn.

She managed it nicely.

"It is a stateroom," she always said to herself. "It is a luxurious, large, well-furnished stateroom with a real window. It is not a cell."

Martha had a vigorous constructive imagination. Sometimes it was the joy of her life, her magic carpet, her Aladdin's lamp. Sometimes it frightened her--frightened her horribly, it was so strong.

The cell idea had come to her one gloomy day, and she had foolishly allowed it to enter--played with it a little while. Since then she had to keep a special bar on that particular intruder, so she had arranged a stateroom "set," and forcibly kept it on hand.

Martha was a stenographer and typewriter in a real estate office. She got $12 a week, and was thankful for it. It was steady pay, and enough to live on. Seven dollars she paid for board and lodging, ninety cents for her six lunches, ten a day for carfare, including Sundays; seventy-five for laundry; one for her mother--that left one dollar and sixty-five cents for clothes, shoes, gloves, everything. She had tried cheaper board, but made up the cost in doctor's bills; and lost a good place by being ill.

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor hall bedrooms a cage," said she determinedly. "Now then--here is another evening--what shall I do? Library? No. My eyes are tired. Besides, three times a week is enough. 'Tisn't club night. Will not sit in the parlor. Too wet to walk. Can't sew, worse'n reading--O good land! I'm almost ready to go with Basset!"

She shook herself and paced up and down again.

Prisoners form the habit of talking to themselves--this was the suggestion that floated through her mind--that cell idea again.

"I've got to get out of this!" said Martha, stopping short. "It's enough to drive a girl crazy!"

The driving process was stayed by a knock at the door. "Excuse me for coming up," said a voice. "It's Mrs. MacAvelly."

Martha knew this lady well. She was a friend of Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union Association. "Come in. I'm glad to see you!" she said hospitably. "Have the chair--or the bed's really more comfortable!"

"I was with Miss Podder this evening and she was anxious to know whether your union has gained any since the last meeting--I told her I'd find out--I had nothing else to do. Am I intruding?"

"Intruding!" Martha, gave a short laugh. "Why, it's a godsend, Mrs. MacAvelly! If you knew how dull the evenings are to us girls!"

"Don't you--go out much? To--to theaters--or parks?" The lady's tone was sympathetic and not inquisitive.

"Not very much," said Martha, rather sardonically. "Theaters--two girls, two dollars, and twenty cents carfare. Parks, twenty cents--walk your feet off, or sit on the benches and be stared at. Museums--not open evenings."

"But don't you have visitors--in the parlor here?"

"Did you see it?" asked Martha.

Mrs. MacAvelly had seen it. It was cold and also stuffy. It was ugly and shabby and stiff. Three tired girls sat there, two trying to read by a strangled gaslight overhead; one trying to entertain a caller in a social fiction of privacy at the other end of the room.

"Yes, we have visitors--but mostly they ask us out. And some of us don't go," said Martha darkly.

"I see, I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly, with a pleasant smile; and Martha wondered whether she did see, or was just being civil.

"For instance, there's Mr. Basset," the girl pursued, somewhat recklessly; meaning that her visitor should understand her.

"Mr. Basset?"

"Yes, 'Pond & Basset'--one of my employers."

Mrs. MacAvelly looked pained. "Couldn't you--er--avoid it?" she suggested.

"You mean shake him?" asked Martha. "Why, yes--I could. Might lose my job. Get another place--another Basset, probably."

"I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly again. "Like the Fox and the Swarm of Flies! There ought to be a more comfortable way of living for all you girls! And how about the union--I have to be going back to Miss Podder."

Martha gave her the information she wanted, and started to accompany her downstairs. They heard the thin jangle of the door-bell, down through the echoing halls, and the dragging feet of the servant coming up. A kinky black head was thrust in at the door.

"Mr. Basset, callin' on Miss Joyce," was announced formally.

Martha stiffened. "Please tell Mr. Basset I am not feeling well to-night--and beg to be excused.

She looked rather defiantly at her guest, as Lucy clattered down the long stairs; then stole to the railing and peered down the narrow well. She heard the message given with pompous accuracy, and then heard the clear, firm tones of Mr. Basset:

"Tell Miss Joyce that I will wait."

Martha returned to her room in three long steps, slipped off her shoes and calmly got into bed. "Good-night, Mrs. MacAvelly," she said. "I'm so sorry, but my head aches and I've gone to bed! Would you be so very good as to tell Lucy so as you're going down."

Mrs. MacAvelly said she would, and departed, and Martha lay conscientiously quiet till she heard the door shut far below.

She was quiet, but she was not contented.

*

Yet the discontent of Martha was as nothing to the discontent of Mrs. Joyce, her mother, in her rural home. Here was a woman of fifty-three, alert, vigorous, nervously active; but an automobile-agitated horse had danced upon her, and her usefulness, as she understood it, was over. She could not get about without crutches, nor use her hands for needlework, though still able to write after a fashion. Writing was not her forte, however, at the best of times.

She lived with a widowed sister in a little, lean dusty farmhouse by the side of the road; a hill road that went nowhere in particular, and was too steep for those who were going there.

Brisk on her crutches, Mrs. Joyce hopped about the little house, there was nowhere else to hop to. She had talked her sister out long since--Mary never had never much to say. Occasionally they quarreled and then Mrs. Joyce hopped only in her room, a limited process.

She sat at the window one day, staring greedily out at the lumpy rock-ribbed road; silent, perforce, and tapping the arms of her chair with nervous intensity. Suddenly she called out, "Mary! Mary Ames! Come here quick! There's somebody coming up the road!"

Mary came in, as fast as she could with eggs in her apron. "It's Mrs. Holmes!" she said. "And a boarder, I guess."

"No, it ain't," said Mrs. Joyce, eagerly. "It's that woman that's visiting the Holmes--she was in church last week, Myra Slater told me about her. Her name's MacDowell, or something."

"It ain't MacDowell," said her sister. "I remember; it's MacAvelly."

This theory was borne out by Mrs. Holmes' entrance and introduction of her friend.

"Have you any eggs for us, Mrs. Ames?" she said.

"Set down--set down," said Mrs. Ames cordially. "I was just getting in my eggs--but here's only about eight yet. How many was you wantin'?"

"I want all you can find," said Mrs. Holmes. "Two dozen, three dozen--all I can carry."

"There's two hens layin' out--I'll go and look them up. And I ain't been in the woodshed chamber yet. I'll go'n hunt. You set right here with my sister." And Mrs. Ames bustled off.

"Pleasant view you have here," said Mrs. MacAvelly politely, while Mrs. Holmes rocked and fanned herself.

"Pleasant! Glad you think so, ma'am. Maybe you city folks wouldn't think so much of views if you had nothing else to look at!"

"What would you like to look at?"

"Folks!" said Mrs. Joyce briefly. "Lots of folks! Somethin' doin'."

"You'd like to Iive in the city?"

"Yes, ma'am--I would so! I worked in the city once when I was a girl. Waitress. In a big restaurant. I got to be cashier--in two years! I like the business!"

"And then you married a farmer?" suggested Mrs. Holmes.

"Yes, I did. And I never was sorry, Mrs. Holmes. David Joyce was a mighty good man. We was engaged before I left home--I was workin' to help earn, so 't we could marry."

"There's plenty of work on a farm, isn't there?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

Mrs. Joyce's eager eyes kindled. "There is so!" she agreed. "Lots to do. And lots to manage! We kept help then, and the farm hands, and the children growin' up. And some seasons we took boarders."

"Did you like that?"

"I did. I liked it first rate. I like lots of people, and to do for 'em. The best time I ever had was one summer I ran a hotel."

"Ran a hotel! How interesting!"

"Yes'm--it was interesting! I had a cousin who kept a summer hotel up here in the mountains a piece--and he was short-handed that summer and got me to go up and help him out. Then he was taken sick, and I had the whole thing on my shoulders! I just enjoyed it! And the place cleared more that summer'n it ever did! He said 'twas owin' to his advantageous buyin'. Maybe 'twas! But I could 'a bought more advantageous than he did--I could a' told him that. Point o' fact, I did tell him that--and he wouldn't have me again."

"That was a pity!" said Mrs. Holmes. "And I suppose if it wasn't for your foot you would do that now--and enjoy it!"

"Of course I could!" protested Mrs. Joyce. "Do it better 'n ever, city or country! But here I am, tied by the leg! And dependent on my sister and children! It galls me terribly!"

Mrs. Holmes nodded sympathetically. "You are very brave, Mrs. Joyce," she said. "I admire your courage, and--" she couldn't say patience, so she said, "cheerfulness."

Mrs. Ames came in with more eggs. "Not enough, but some," she said, and the visitors departed therewith.

Toward the end of the summer, Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union Association, sweltering in the little office, was pleased to receive a call from her friend, Mrs. MacAvelly.

"I'd no idea you were in town," she said.

"I'm not, officially," answered her visitor, "just stopping over between visits. It's hotter than I thought it would be, even on the upper west side."

"Think what it is on the lower east side!" answered Miss Podder, eagerly. "Hot all day--and hot at night! My girls do suffer so! They are so crowded!"

"How do the clubs get on?" asked Mrs. MacAvelly. "Have your girls any residence clubs yet?"

"No--nothing worth while. It takes somebody to run it right, you know. The girls can't; the people who work for money can't meet our wants--and the people who work for love, don't work well as a rule."

Mrs. McAvelly smiled sympathetically. "You're quite right about that," she said. "But really--some of those 'Homes' are better than others, aren't they?"

"The girls hate them," answered Miss Podder. "They'd rather board--even two or three in a room. They like their independence. You remember Martha Joyce?"

Mrs. MacAvelly remembered. "Yes," she said, "I do--I met her mother this summer."

"She's a cripple, isn't she?" asked Miss Podder. "Martha's told me about her."

"Why, not exactly. She's what a Westerner might call 'crippled up some,' but she's livelier than most well persons." And she amused her friend with a vivid rehearsal of Mrs. Joyce's love of the city and her former triumphs in restaurant and hotel.

"She'd be a fine one to run such a house for the girls, wouldn't she?" suddenly cried Miss Podder.

"Why--if she could," Mrs. MacAvelly admitted slowly.

"Could! Why not? You say she gets about easily enough. All she's have to do is manage, you see. She could order by 'phone and keep the servants running!"

"I'm sure she'd like it," said Mrs. MacAvelly. "But don't such things require capital?"

Miss Podder was somewhat daunted. "Yes--some; but I guess we could raise it. If we could find the right house!"

"Let's look in the paper," suggested her visitor. "I've got a Herald."

"There's one that reads all right," Miss Podder presently proclaimed. "The location's good, and it's got a lot of rooms--furnished. I suppose it would cost too much."

Mrs. MacAvelly agreed, rather ruefully.

"Come," she said, "it's time to close here, surely. Let's go and look at that house, anyway. It's not far."

They got their permit and were in the house very shortly. "I remember this place," said Miss Podder. "It was for sale earlier in the summer."

It was one of those once spacious houses, not of "old," but at least of "middle-aged" New York; with large rooms arbitrarily divided into smaller ones.

"It's been a boarding-house, that's clear," said Mrs. MacAvelly.

"Why, of course," Miss Podder answered, eagerly plunging about and examining everything. "Anybody could see that! But it's been done over--most thoroughly. The cellar's all whitewashed, and there's a new furnace, and new range, and look at this icebox!" It was an ice-closet, as a matter of fact, of large capacity, and a most sanitary aspect.

"Isn't it too big?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

"Not for a boarding-house, my dear," Miss Podder enthusiastically replied. "Why, they could buy a side of beef with that ice-box! And look at the extra ovens! Did you ever see a place better furnished--for what we want? It looks as if it had been done on purpose!"

"It does, doesn't it?" said Mrs. MacAvelley.

Miss Podder, eager and determined, let no grass grow under her feet. The rent of the place was within reason.

"If they had twenty boarders--and some "mealers," I believe it could be done! she said. "It's a miracle--this house. Seems as if somebody had done it just for us!"

*

Armed with a list of girls who would agree to come, for six and seven dollars a week, Miss Podder made a trip to Willettville and laid the matter before Martha's mother.

"What an outrageous rent!" said that lady.

"Yes--New York rents are rather inconsiderate," Miss Podder admitted. "But see, here's a guaranteed income if the girls stay--and I'm sure they will; and if the cooking's good you could easily get table boarders besides."

Mrs. Joyce hopped to the bureau and brought out a hard, sharp-pointed pencil, and a lined writing tablet.

"Let's figger it out," said she. "You say that house rents furnished at $3,200. It would take a cook and a chambermaid!"

"And a furnace man," said Miss Podder. "They come to about fifty a year. The cook would be thirty a month, the maid twenty-five, if you got first-class help, and you'd need it."

"That amounts to $710 altogether," stated Mrs. Joyce.

"Fuel and light and such things would be $200," Miss Podder estimated, "and I think you ought to allow $200 more for breakage and extras generally."

"That's $4,310 already," said Mrs. Joyce.

Then there's the food," Miss Podder went on. "How much do you think it would cost to feed twenty girls, two meals a day, and three Sundays?"

"And three more," Mrs. Joyce added, "with me, and the help, twenty-three. I could do it for $2.00 a week apiece."

"Oh!" said Miss Podder. "Could you? At New York prices?"

"See me do it!" said Mrs. Joyce.

"That makes a total expense of $6,710 a year. Now, what's the income, ma'am?"

The income was clear--if they could get it. Ten girls at $6.00 and ten at $7.00 made $130.00 a week--$6,700.00 a year.

"There you are!" said Mrs. Joyce triumphantly. "And the 'mealers'--if my griddle-cakes don't fetch 'em I'm mistaken! If I have ten--at $5.00 a week and clear $3.00 off 'em--that'll be another bit--$1,560.00 more. Total income $8,320.00. More'n one thousand clear! Maybe I can feed 'em a little higher--or charge less!"

The two women worked together for an hour or so; Mrs. Ames drawn in later with demands as to butter, eggs, and "eatin' chickens."

"There's an ice-box as big as a closet," said Miss Podder.

Mrs. Joyce smiled triumphantly. "Good!" she said. "I can buy my critters of Judson here and have him freight 'em down. I can get apples here and potatoes, and lots of stuff."

"You'll need, probably, a little capital to start with," suggested Miss Podder. "I think the Association could--"

"It don't have to, thank you just the same," said Mrs. Joyce. "I've got enough in my stocking to take me to New York and get some fuel. Besides, all my boarders is goin' to pay in advance--that's the one sure way. The mealers can buy tickets!"

Her eyes danced. She fairly coursed about the room on her nimble crutches.

"My!" she said, "it will seem good to have my girl to feed again."

*

The house opened in September, full of eager girls with large appetites long unsatisfied. The place was new-smelling, fresh-painted, beautifully clean. The furnishing was cheap, but fresh, tasteful, with minor conveniences dear to the hearts of women.

The smallest rooms were larger than hall bedrooms, the big ones were shared by friends. Martha and her mother had a chamber with two beds and space to spare!

The dining-room was very large, and at night the tables were turned into "settles" by the wall and the girls could dance to the sound of a hired pianola. So could the "mealers," when invited; and there was soon a waiting list of both sexes.

"I guess I can make a livin'," said Mrs. Joyce, "allowin' for bad years."

"I don't understand how you feed us so well--for so little," said Miss Podder, who was one of the boarders.

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce, privately. "Your breakfast don't really cost more'n ten cents--nor your dinner fifteen--not the way I order! Things taste good 'cause they're cooked good--that's all!"

"And you have no troubles with your help?"

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce again, more privately. "I work 'em hard--and pay 'em a bonus--a dollar a week extra, as long as they give satisfaction. It reduces my profits some--but it's worth it!"

"It's worth it to us, I'm sure!" said Miss Podder.

Mrs. MacAvelly called one evening in the first week, with warm interest and approval. The tired girls were sitting about in comfortable rockers and lounges, under comfortable lights, reading and sewing. The untired ones were dancing in the dining-room, to the industrious pianola, or having games of cards in the parlor.

"Do you think it'll be a success?" she asked her friend.

"It is a success!" Miss Podder triumphantly replied. "I'm immensely proud of it!"

"I should think you would be," aid Mrs. MacAvelly.

The doorbell rang sharply.

Mrs. Joyce was hopping through the hall at the moment, and promptly opened it.

"Does Miss Martha Joyce board here?" inquired a gentleman.

"She does."

"I should like to see her," said he, handing in his card.

Mrs. Joyce read the card and looked at the man, her face setting in hard lines. She had heard that name before.

"Miss Joyce is engaged," she replied curtly, still holding the door.

He could see past her into the bright, pleasant rooms. He heard the music below, the swing of dancing feet, Martha's gay laugh from the parlor.

The little lady on crutches blocked his path.

"Are you the housekeeper of this place?" he asked sharply.

"I'm more'n that!" she answered. "I'm Martha's mother."

Mr. Basset concluded he would not wait.

FOR FEAR

For fear of prowling beasts at night They blocked the cave; Women and children hid from sight, Men scarce more brave.

For fear of warrior's sword and spear They barred the gate; Women and children lived in fear, Men lived in hate.

For fear of criminals to-day We lock the door; Women and children still to stay Hid evermore.

Come out! You need no longer hide! What fear ye now? No wolf nor lion waits outside-- Only a cow.

Come out! The world approaches peace, War nears its end; No warrior watches your release-- Only a friend.

Come out! The night of crime his fled-- Day is begun; Here is no criminal to dread-- Only your son!

The world, half yours, demands your care, Waken, and come! Make it a woman's world, safe, fair, Garden and home!

NURSERY-MINDEDNESS

Where do we get our first training in the field of common behavior, our earliest and strongest impressions of ethics?

In the nursery, in the early environment of the little child, in the daily influences that affect the opening mind; or, to put it in a phrase hallowed by poetic imagery, "at our mother's knee." We are accustomed to think highly of these early influences. Almost any man will say that his mother taught him what was right--it was his own evil nature that drove him wrong. So believing, we perpetuate these influences unchanged from age to age, and it is small wonder we think human nature to be inherently perverse if it continues to show such poor results from such good education.

Suppose for a moment we take down one more old idol, and look into his record, examining the environment of the little child as dispassionately as we would examine the environment of a college student.

The child is born into an atmosphere of personality, which is essential, and reared continuously in that atmosphere, which is not so essential. Owing to these early impressions; so deep and ineffaceable, he grows to look at human life with a huge "I," and an almost as large "My Family," in his immediate foreground; so out of drawing as to throw the whole world into false perspective, seen as a generality, dim, confused and distant.

In this atmosphere of unbroken personality, he repeats continually the mistakes of the early savage, the animistic tendency we should as a race have long since outgrown. The family with the male head was the great hotbed of early religions.

In this primitive group, unchecked by any higher authority of king or governor, arose ancestor-worship--that unnatural religion which erases the laws of life and bids the chicken feed the hen--or rather the rooster. No matriarchal cult would have made that mistake. The patriarch owned his women, owned his children, owned all the property; he gave and took away at his pleasure. Therefore, looming vast in unchecked pride, he erected sacrificial religions all his own, demanding sons to perform sacred rites in his honor; and grew so inflated with superiority that he thanked his patriarchal God and Father every day that he was not born a woman.

This Personality has cast its shadow across heaven. It has deified its own traits and worships them. Through blind and selfish eyes it has mis-seen and misrepresented God, and forced dark dogmas on its children, age after age. Each child of us, though really born to the broad light of a democratic age, is reared in the patriarchate. Each child of us sees the father, dispenser of benefits, arbiter and ruler of the family; and, so reared, each child of us repeats from generation to generation the mistakes of personality.

The basic law of the patriarchal system was obedience, and is yet. The child's first ethical lesson is in the verb "to obey." Not with any convincing instance of right or wrong, though life bristles with them, but as the duty of submission. He is not taught to observe, to relate, to make his inference, to act, and to note results. He is taught that his one duty is not to think, observe, or experiment, but to do what he is told.

This is a convenient habit for those in authority; but not conducive to any true development of the ethical sense. We are turned out into a world of cause and effect, with no knowledge, no experience, no guide whatever, but the painfully acquired habit of doing what some one else tells us. We are not taught to study right and wrong conduct, to understand it, to see the wisdom of the one and the folly of the other.

The child's first notion of "being good" is either sheer inaction or prompt submission. What we call "a good baby" is one who does absolutely nothing. Here we have an explanation of the amazing inertia of people in general; of the smug immobility of those shining lights "the best people." We all have been taught--rigorously taught in our infancy--that to "keep quiet" was a virtue; and we keep quiet through life. This is one clear instance of our nursery-mindedness.

We are reared in a black and white world: sharp wrong,--to do almost anything amusing, and particularly and most of all, To Disobey; sharp right,--to do nothing whatever, and particularly and best of all, To Obey. We come out into a world that is all colors of the rainbow in every shade and blending, where the things people tell us to do are mostly wrong, and to do right requires the most strenuous and independent activity. Greatly are we hindered in the work of life to-day by our mis-taught infancy.

In the narrow round of family life, the inevitable repetitions, the natural ruts of usage, the child has forced upon him the conservatism he should have every help to out-grow. Habit uncriticized and unresisted; convention an unquestioned good; these are the rules of the little world. How he hates it! How he longs for something different--for something to happen! The world is full of differences and happenings, but he is helpless to meet them--he has been only trained in narrow routine.

The oldest status in life, that of serving woman, is about him in his infancy. That mother should do for him is right and natural, but why should his mother be waiting on these other persons? Why is she the house-servant as well as the mother? If she is but a fashionable person in gay attire, he still has about him women servants. He cannot think as yet, but he accepts from daily contact this serving womanhood as natural and right, grows up to demand it in his household and to rear his children in its shadow; and so perpetuate from age to age the patriarchal error.

Then deep into this infant soul sinks the iron weight of what we call Discipline. We women, having small knowledge of child-nature or world-nature, never studying nature at all, but each girl-mother handed on from nursery to nursery, a child teaching children, we undertake to introduce the new soul to life!

We show him, as "life," the nursery, kitchen and parlor group in which we live. We try to teach him the behavior required by these surroundings. Two of the heaviest crosses to both the child and mother lie in his bi- and tri-daily difficulties with clothing, and prolonged initiation to the sacred mysteries of the table. We seek, as best we may, to bend the new soul visiting this world to a correct fulfilment of the polite functions of our domestic shrine; and we succeed unhappily well. We rear a world of people who put manners before morals, conventions before principles, conformity before initiative. Sorely do we strive with the new soul, to choke questionings and crush its resistance.

"Why?" says the child, "Why?" protesting with might and main against the mummery into which he is being forced.

"Because Mother says so!" is the reason given. "Because you must obey!" is the duty given; and to enforce the command comes punishment.

Punishment is a pitiful invention arbitrarily inserted in place of consequence. Its power is in giving pain. Its appeal is to terror. We, immovable and besotted in our ancient sanctuaries, deliberately give pain to little children, deliberately arouse in them that curse of old savagery, blind fear. To compel behavior which we cannot explain even to ourselves, to force the new wine of their young lives into the old bottles of our traditional habits, we keep alive in the little child an attitude of mind the whole world should seek to outgrow and forget forever.

The ethics of the nursery does not give us laws to be learned and understood; relations of cause and effect for instructive practice; matters of general use and welfare not to know and practice which argues a foolish ignorance. It gives command purely arbitrary and disconnected; their profit is not visible to the child; and their penalties, while painfully conspicuous, bear no real relation to offences.

Besides being arbitrary and disconnected, the penalties we give our children have this alarming weakness--they are wholly contingent upon discovery. No whipped child is too young to learn that his whipping did not follow on the act--unless his mother knew he did it. Thus with elaborate care, with trouble to ourselves and anguish to the child, we develop in him the attitude of mind with which our criminals, big and little, face the world--it is not what you do that matters--it is being found out. This is not the position of the thinking being--it is nursery-mindedness.

Pain and terror we teach our babies, and also shame. The child is pure, innocent, natural. One of the first efforts of nursery culture is to smear that white page with our self-made foulness. We labor conscientiously and with patience, to teach our babies shame. We degrade the human body, we befoul the habits of nature, we desecrate life, teaching evil and foolish falsehood to our defenceless little children. The "sex-taboos" of darkest savagery, the decencies and indecencies of primitive convention, we have preserved throughout the ages in our guarded temple of ancient idols, and in that atmosphere we rear the child.

The heaviest drag on progress is the persistence of race-habits and traditions, once natural and useful, but long since outgrown. The main stronghold of this body of tradition is in that uneducated, undeveloped, unorganized, lingering rudiment of earlier social forms--the woman-servant group of primitive industries, in which our children grow.

We have cried out against the crushing restriction of old religions; and, going farther, have seen that these religions have their strongest hold on the woman and the child. It is here suggested that it is not the religion that keeps down the woman and renews its grip on each new generation of children, but that it is the degraded status of the woman and her influence on the child which made possible such religions in the first instance, and which accounts for their astonishing persistence in modern times.

In the atmosphere of the nursery each child re-learns continually the mental habits of a remote and lowly past. His sense of duty is a personal one, it is obligation; and justified when we attempt to justify it by the beneficent services of the parent. This parental religion naturally pictures God as a parent--a father of course, and people as his children. We, as his children, are to love and serve and glorify him, and he to take care of us, parentally.

Coming out into the world of which he has been taught nothing, the young man finds no corroboration whatever for this theory. He does not see the alleged grounds of the religious views given him, and so he drops his religion altogether.

If he had early been shown God in a thousand beautiful common instances, as ever-present, unescapable, and beneficent Law--the sure, sound constant force of life, then he would find the same God still visibly at work in the world of love and labor, and not lose his religion by outgrowing his nursery.

Instead of personal gratitude for personal service as a cause for good behavior, he should be shown that his parents and teachers serve him and other children because so best is the human race improved; and that he, and the other children, owe their life's service to the same great body, to the human race. This ideal would need neither patching nor enlargement, but would last unbroken through life.

Our nursery-bred consciences suffer personally for personal sins, with morbid keenness, but are stone blocks of indifference to the collective sins which are the major evils of life to-day. A man may pointed out to us as a wholesale malefactor, a dealer in bad meat, a poisoner of the public mind through a degraded press, an extortioner, liar, doer of uncounted evil; we reply that he is a "moral man"--that his personal relations are excellent; and, if one continues to complain, we say, "What has he done to you?"

Personality is the limit of our moral sense, the steady check to growth in ethical understanding, as it is in economics, and in art. The normal growth of the human soul to-day is into a wide, fluent, general relation with mankind; and a deeper more satisfying and workable conception of God than we ever knew before. In our nursery-mindedness we face the problems of civic morality, catching visible offenders and shutting them in a closet, sending them supperless to bed, hurting and depriving them in various ways, as blindly, stupidly and unprofitably as a woman spanks her child.

Children reared in a democratic, scientific, broadly educative atmosphere, would grow up able to see the absurdity of our primitive institutions--but such an atmosphere does not originate in and cannot be brought into the nursery.

As an inevitable reaction from nursery-government, the child finds joyous relief in sheer riot and self-will. The behavior of our boys in college shows well their previous uneducated and ill-educated condition. The persistence of "hazing" among twentieth century persons old enough to go to school, shows the weakness of nursery culture. This is a custom prevalent among low savage races, known as "initiation by torture." Its reason--if it ever had any--was to outdo nature's cruelest and most wasteful methods, and to prepare for a life of struggle and pain by a worse experience to begin with. About the age of puberty, when body and mind are both sensitive, this pleasant rite took place. Those who survived it, habituated to cruelty and unreason, were thereby fitted to live cruel and unreasonable lives--and did so.

Race-customs, as old as this, die hard. They have to be understood, condemned, opposed, and educated out of us. Our small children get no such education. They, as a class, get no influence tending to uplift and develop their sociological status. Clever and "well-trained" they may be; well-loved and well--at least, expensively-dressed. But as soon as they escape the nursery bounds, out pops the primeval savage, unrestrained. These young students, with their revolting practices, ought to know that they are in the social stage with cannibalism, voudooism, fetich-worship; and to be hot with shame at their condition. It is the race's babyhood,--a drooling, fumbling, infantile folly--manifested almost to adult age. That it endures is due to our nursery-mindedness.

About the little child should cluster and concentrate the noblest forces of our latest days, our highest wisdom and deepest experience, our most subtle skill. Such wisdom, skill and experience do not exist in the average young woman, albeit a mother; still less in her low-class, ignorant serving-maids. A wider, deeper love would desire better environment for the child, more foresight and more power would provide it. But our love, though intense, is narrow and largely childish--the mother has not long left the influence of her own nursery; and neither wisdom nor power grew there. Some day our women will see this. They will understand at last what womanhood is for, and the power and glory of civilized motherhood. They will see that the educative influences of the first few years are pre-eminently important, and prepare for them as assiduously as they prepare to give a college education to older children.

The baby is a new human soul, learning Life. He should have about him from the first, Truth and Order, with a sequence of impressions which great minds have labored to prepare. He should have his mother's love, his father's care, his brother's and sister's society; his home's seclusion; and he should also have from his earliest days, a place to share with many other children, and the love and care and service of such guides and teachers as are most fit to help the growing of the world.

We have gone far indeed in those things we learn after we leave home. In our trades and professions, our arts and sciences, in the broad avenues of the world's life, we have made great progress--albeit hampered always to some extent by our nursery-mindedness.

But in our own personal relations we are stagnant, hide-bound, inert. Our littleness, our morbidness, our self-consciousness, our narrowness, our short-sightedness, our oppressive, insistent, omnipresent personality--all these still crush us down. Bumptious with a good child's complacency, grieving with a bad child's remorse, indifferent and rebellious as ill-trained children are, we live unawakened among social laws. We enjoy when we can; we suffer much--and needlessly; but we seem incapable of taking hold of our large world-questions and settling them.

It is only an apparent limitation. We are quite capable were we but taught so. What hinders us is Nursery-Mindedness.

A VILLAGE OF FOOLS

There was a certain village, a little village on a little stream; and the inhabitants thereof were Fools.

By profession they were tillers of the soil; and they kept beasts, beasts of burden, and beasts to furnish meat. They lived upon the products of their tillage, and upon the beasts, and upon fish from the stream.

The Wise said, "This is a good village. There is land to furnish food, and beasts in plenty, and a good stream flowing steadily from the tree-clothed hills. These people should prosper well."

They did not know that the people of the village were Fools; Utter Fools. Observe now their Foolishness! They cut down the trees of the hills to make their fires withal; many and great fires, without stint or hindrance; and presently there was no more any forest upon the hills to cover them. Then the moist breath of the cloud-building forest was dried away; and the thick wet sponge about the roots of the forest was dried away; and the snow slid down the hills as it slides down steep roof gables; and the rain ran down the narrow valleys as it runs down gutter pipes; and the village was swept by floods in flood time, and lay parched and thirsty in the dry season. And the people of the village called the flood an Act of God, and they called the drought an Act of God; for they were Fools.

Their fields they tilled continuously, for they needs must eat; gathering from the good ground year after year, and generation after generation, till the ground became sour and stale, and was bad ground and bore no fruit.

"Surely," said the Wise, "they will gather from the stables of their beasts and from the village that which shall enrich their soil and make it bear fruit again."

They did not know that the people of the Village were Fools.

Thus did they with their beasts. They kept them thick in their village; draught animals and burden-bearers; and from the defiled streets arose a Plague of Flies, and tormented the people, so that they fell sick of divers diseases. And they themselves crowded together ever more thickly, till all the village became unsavory and unfit for human habitation. Then they arose, wagging their heads sagaciously; and with vast labor and expense they gathered together from their stables and their habitations all that which should enrich the soil and produce fruit again; and they poured it carefully into the stream. Now this was the stream from which they drank; and when they drank their diluted diseases they fell sick anew, and many died.

Also the fish fed upon this filth, and they also absorbed diseases; and the people fed upon the fish which had fed upon the filth, and again fell sick, and many died.

And those who died they carefully wrapped up in many coverings and laid in the ground--them and their diseases with them--that the seeds thereof might be fostered eternally, and continually came forth anew.

But the Wise burned their dead in clean fire, cherishing their memories in their hearts, but not their slowly deteriorating remains in the dark earth. And the wise kept their forests as a wild garden, planting as well as reaping; having wood therefrom at need, and always the green beauty and the cool shade, the moist winds and carpet of held water over the hill slopes.

Their streams were pure and steady, tree shadowed and grass bordered from end to end; for a tree beareth food as well as a field, and is planted in a moment and the young tree cometh up as the old tree dieth.

And their fields they fed continually, so that they bore more rather than less from year to year, and they prospered and did not die of hand-made diseases.

But they knew not their own wisdom, for these things it seemed to them that even Fools might see, and do accordingly.

Neither did the Fools know their own foolishness.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

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VI. THE CYNOSURE

It's a singular thing that the commonest place Is the hardest to properly fill; That the labor imposed on a full half the race Is so seldom performed with good will-- To say nothing of knowledge or skill!

What we ask of all women, we stare at in one, And tribute of wonderment bring; If this task of the million is once fitly done We all hold our hands up and sing! It's really a singular thing!

Isabel Porne was a cautious woman, and made no acclaim over her new acquisition until its value was proven. Her husband also bided his time; and when congratulated on his improved appearance and air of contentment, merely vouchsafed that his wife had a new girl who could cook.

To himself he boasted that he had a new wife who could love--so cheerful and gay grew Mrs. Porne in the changed atmosphere of her home.

"It is remarkable, Edgar," she said, dilating repeatedly on the peculiar quality of their good fortune. "It's not only good cooking, and good waiting, and a clean house--cleaner than I ever saw one before; and it's not only the quietness, and regularity and economy--why the bills have gone down more than a third!"

"Yes--even I noticed that," he agreed.

"But what I enjoy the most is the atmosphere," she continued. "When I have to do the work, the house is a perfect nightmare to me!" She leaned forward from her low stool, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and regarded him intently.

"Edgar! You know I love you. And I love my baby--I'm no unfeeling monster! But I can tell you frankly that if I'd had any idea of what housework was like I'd never have given up architecture to try it."

"Lucky for me you hadn't!" said he fondly. "I know it's been hard for you, little girl. I never meant that you should give up architecture--that's a business a woman could carry on at home I thought, the designing part anyway. There's your 'drawing-room' and all your things--"

"Yes," she said, with reminiscent bitterness, "there they are--and there they might have stayed, untouched--if Miss Bell hadn't come!"

"Makes you call her "Miss Bell" all the time, does she?"

Mrs. Porne laughed. "Yes. I hated it at first, but she asked if I could give her any real reason why the cook should be called by her first name more than the seamstress or governess. I tried to say that it was shorter, but she smiled and said that in this case it was longer!--Her name is Diantha--I've seen it on letters. And it is one syllable longer. Anyhow I've got used to Miss Bell now."

"She gets letters often?"

"Yes--very often--from Topolaya where she came from. I'm afraid she's engaged." Mrs. Porne sighed ruefully.

"I don't doubt it!" said Mr. Porne. "That would account for her six months' arrangement! Well, my dear--make hay while the sun shines!"

"I do!" she boasted. "Whole stacks! I've had a seamstress in, and got all my clothes in order and the baby's. We've had lot of dinner-parties and teas as you know--all my "social obligations" are cleared off! We've had your mother for a visit, and mine's coming now--and I wasn't afraid to have either of them! There's no fault to be found with my housekeeping now! And there are two things better than that--yes, three."

"The best thing is to see you look so young and handsome and happy again," said her husband, with a kiss.

"Yes--that's one. Another is that now I feel so easy and lighthearted I can love you and baby--as--as I do! Only when I'm tired and discouraged I can't put my hand on it somehow.

He nodded sympathetically. "I know, dear," he said. "I feel that way myself--sometimes. What's the other?"

"Why that's best of aIl!" she cried triumphantly. "I can Work again! When Baby's asleep I get hours at a time; and even when he's awake I've fixed a place where he can play--and I can draw and plan--just as I used to--better than I used to!"

"And that is even more to you than loving?" he asked in a quiet inquiring voice.

"It's more because it means both!" She leaned to him, glowing, "Don't you see? First I had the work and loved it. Then you came--and I loved you--better! Then Baby came and I loved him--best? I don't know--you and baby are all one somehow."

There was a brief interim and then she drew back, blushing richly. "Now stop--I want to explain. When the housework got to be such a nightmare--and I looked forward to a whole lifetime of it and no improvement; then I just ached for my work--and couldn't do it! And then--why sometimes dear, I just wanted to run away! Actually! From both of you!--you see, I spent five years studying--I was a real architect--and it did hurt to see it go. And now--O now I've got It and You too, darling! And the Baby!--O I'm so happy!"

"Thanks to the Providential Miss Bell," said he. "If she'll stay I'll pay her anything!"

The months went by.

Peace, order, comfort, cleanliness and economy reigned in the Porne household, and the lady of the house blossomed into richer beauty and happiness; her contentment marred only by a sense of flying time.

Miss Bell fulfilled her carefully specified engagement to the letter; rested her peaceful hour in the morning; walked and rode in the afternoon; familiarized herself with the length and breadth of the town; and visited continuously among the servants of the neighborhood, establishing a large and friendly acquaintance. If she wore rubber gloves about the rough work, she paid for them herself; and she washed and ironed her simple and pretty costumes herself--with the result that they stayed pretty for surprising periods.

She wrote letters long and loving, to Ross daily; to her mother twice a week; and by the help of her sister's authority succeeded in maintaining a fairly competent servant in her deserted place.

"Father was bound he wouldn't," her sister wrote her; "but I stood right up to him, I can now I'm married!--and Gerald too--that he'd no right to take it out of mother even if he was mad with you. He made a fuss about your paying for the girl--but that was only showing off--he couldn't pay for her just now--that's certain. And she does very well--a good strong girl, and quite devoted to mother." And then she scolded furiously about her sister's "working out."

Diantha knew just how hard it was for her mother. She had faced all sides of the question before deciding.

"Your mother misses you badly, of course," Ross wrote her. "I go in as often as I can and cheer her up a bit. It's not just the work--she misses you. By the way--so do I." He expressed his views on her new employment.

Diantha used to cry over her letters quite often. But she would put them away, dry her eyes, and work on at the plans she was maturing, with grim courage. "It's hard on them now," she would say to herself. "Its hard on me--some. But we'll all be better off because of it, and not only us--but everybody!"

Meanwhile the happy and unhappy households of the fair town buzzed in comment and grew green with envy.

In social circles and church circles and club circles, as also in domestic circles, it was noised abroad that Mrs. Edgar Porne had "solved the servant question." News of this marvel of efficiency and propriety was discussed in every household, and not only so but in barber-shops and other downtown meeting places mentioned. Servants gathered it at dinner-tables; and Diantha, much amused, regathered it from her new friends among the servants.

Does she keep on just the same?" asked little Mrs. Ree of Mrs. Porne in an awed whisper.

"Just the same if not better. I don't even order the meals now, unless I want something especial. She keeps a calendar of what we've had to eat, and what belongs to the time of year, prices and things. When I used to ask her to suggest (one does, you know: it is so hard to think up a variety!), she'd always be ready with an idea, or remind me that we had had so and so two days before, till I asked her if she'd like to order, and she said she'd be willing to try, and now I just sit down to the table without knowing what's going to be there."

"But I should think that would interfere with your sense of freedom," said Mrs. Ellen A Dankshire, "A woman should be mistress of her own household."

"Why I am! I order whenever I specially want anything. But she really does it more--more scientifically. She has made a study of it. And the bills are very much lower."

"Well, I think you are the luckiest woman alive!" sighed Mrs. Ree. "I wish I had her!"

Many a woman wished she had her, and some, calling when they knew Mrs. Porne was out, or descending into their own kitchens of an evening when the strange Miss Bell was visiting "the help," made flattering propositions to her to come to them. She was perfectly polite and agreeable in manner, but refused all blandishments.

"What are you getting at your present place--if I may ask?" loftily inquired the great Mrs. Thaddler, ponderous and beaded.

"There is surely no objection to your asking, madam," she replied politely. "Mrs. Porne will not mind telling you, I am sure."

"Hm!" said the patronizing visitor, regarding her through her lorgnette. "Very good. Whatever it is I'll double it. When can you come?"

"My engagement with Mrs. Porne is for six months," Diantha answered, "and I do not wish to close with anyone else until that time is up. Thank you for your offer just the same."

"Peculiarly offensive young person!" said Mrs. Thaddler to her husband. "Looks to me like one of these literary imposters. Mrs. Porne will probably appear in the magazines before long."

Mr. Thaddler instantly conceived a liking for the young person, "sight unseen."

Diantha acquired quite a list of offers; places open to her as soon as she was free; at prices from her present seven dollars up to the proposed doubling.

"Fourteen dollars a week and found!--that's not so bad," she meditated. "That would mean over $650 clear in a year! It's a wonder to me girls don't try it long enough to get a start at something else. With even two or three hundred ahead--and an outfit--it would be easier to make good in a store or any other way. Well--I have other fish to fry!"

So she pursued her way; and, with Mrs. Porne's permission--held a sort of girl's club in her spotless kitchen one evening a week during the last three months of her engagement. It was a "Study and Amusement Club." She gave them short and interesting lessons in arithmetic, in simple dressmaking, in easy and thorough methods of housework. She gave them lists of books, referred them to articles in magazines, insidiously taught them to use the Public Library.

They played pleasant games in the second hour, and grew well acquainted. To the eye or ear of any casual visitor it was the simplest and most natural affair, calculated to "elevate labor" and to make home happy.

Diantha studied and observed. They brought her their poor confidences, painfully similar. Always poverty--or they would not be there. Always ignorance, or they would not stay there. Then either incompetence in the work, or inability to hold their little earnings--or both; and further the Tale of the Other Side--the exactions and restrictions of the untrained mistresses they served; cases of withheld wages; cases of endless requirements; cases of most arbitrary interference with their receiving friends and "followers," or going out; and cases, common enough to be horrible, of insult they could only escape by leaving.

"It's no wages, of course--and no recommendation, when you leave like that--but what else can a girl do, if she's honest?"

So Diantha learned, made friends and laid broad foundations.

The excellence of her cocking was known to many, thanks to the weekly "entertainments." No one refused. No one regretted acceptance. Never had Mrs. Porne enjoyed such a sense of social importance.

All the people she ever knew called on her afresh, and people she never knew called on her even more freshly. Not that she was directly responsible for it. She had not triumphed cruelly over her less happy friends; nor had she cried aloud on the street corners concerning her good fortune. It was not her fault, nor, in truth anyone's. But in a community where the "servant question" is even more vexed than in the country at large, where the local product is quite unequal to the demand, and where distance makes importation an expensive matter, the fact of one woman's having, as it appeared, settled this vexed question, was enough to give her prominence.

Mrs. Ellen A. Dankshire, President of the Orchardina Home and Culture Club, took up the matter seriously.

"Now Mrs. Porne," said she, settling herself vigorously into a comfortable chair, "I just want to talk the matter over with you, with a view to the club. We do not know how long this will last--"

"Don't speak of it!" said Mrs. Porne.

"--and it behooves us to study the facts while we have them."

"So much is involved!" said little Mrs. Ree, the Corresponding Secretary, lifting her pale earnest face with the perplexed fine lines in it. "We are all so truly convinced of the sacredness of the home duties!"

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked their hostess.

"We must have that remarkable young woman address our club!" Mrs. Dankshire announced. "It is one case in a thousand, and must be studied!"

"So noble of her!" said Mrs. Ree. "You say she was really a school-teacher? Mrs. Thaddler has put it about that she is one of these dreadful writing persons--in disguise!"

"O no," said Mrs. Porne. "She is perfectly straightforward about it, and had the best of recommendations. She was a teacher, but it didn't agree with her health, I believe."

"Perhaps there is a story to it!" Mrs. Ree advanced; but Mrs. Dankshire disagreed with her flatly.

"The young woman has a theory, I believe, and she is working it out. I respect her for it. Now what we want to ask you, Mrs. Porne, is this: do you think it would make any trouble for you--in the household relations, you know--if we ask her to read a paper to the Club? Of course we do not wish to interfere, but it is a remarkable opportunity--very. You know the fine work Miss Lucy Salmon has done on this subject; and Miss Frances Kellor. You know how little data we have, and how great, how serious, a question it is daily becoming! Now here is a young woman of brains and culture who has apparently grappled with the question; her example and influence must not be lost! We must hear from her. The public must know of this."

"Such an ennobling example!" murmured Mrs. Ree. "It might lead numbers of other school-teachers to see the higher side of the home duties!"

"Furthermore," pursued Mrs. Dankshire, "this has occured to me. Would it not be well to have our ladies bring with them to the meeting the more intelligent of their servants; that they might hear and see the--the dignity of household labor--so ably set forth?

"Isn't it--wouldn't that be a--an almost dangerous experiment?" urged Mrs. Ree; her high narrow forehead fairly creped with little wrinkles: "She might--say something, you know, that they might--take advantage of!"

"Nonsense, my dear!" replied Mrs. Dankshire. She was very fond of Mrs. Ree, but had small respect for her judgment. "What could she say? Look at what she does! And how beautifully--how perfectly--she does it! I would wager now--may I try an experiment Mrs. Porne?" and she stood up, taking out her handkerchief.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Porne, "with pleasure! You won't find any!"

Mrs. Dankshire climbed heavily upon a carefully selected chair and passed her large clean plain-hemmed handkerchief across the top of a picture.

"I knew it!" she proclaimed proudly from her eminence, and showed the cloth still white. "That," she continued in ponderous descent, "that is Knowledge, Ability and Conscience!"

"I don't see how she gets the time!" breathed Mrs. Ree, shaking her head in awed amazement, and reflecting that she would not dare trust Mrs. Dankshire's handkerchief on her picture tops.

"We must have her address the Club," the president repeated. "It will do worlds of good. Let me see--a paper on--we might say 'On the True Nature of Domestic Industry.' How does that strike you, Mrs. Ree?"

"Admirable!" said Mrs. Ree. "So strong! so succinct."

"That certainly covers the subject," said Mrs. Porne. "Why don't you ask her?"

"We will. We have come for that purpose. But we felt it right to ask you about it first," said Mrs. Dankshire.

"Why I have no control over Miss Bell's movements, outside of working hours," answered Mrs. Porne. "And I don't see that it would make any difference to our relations. She is a very self-poised young woman, but extremely easy to get along with. And I'm sure she could write a splendid paper. You'd better ask her, I think."

"Would you call her in?" asked Mrs. Dankshire, "or shall we go out to the kitchen?"

"Come right out; I'd like you to see how beautifully she keeps everything."

The kitchen was as clean as the parlor; and as prettily arranged. Miss Bell was making her preparation for lunch, and stopped to receive the visitors with a serenely civil air--as of a country store-keeper.

"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Bell, very glad indeed," said Mrs. Dankshire, shaking hands with her warmly. "We have at heard so much of your beautiful work here, and we admire your attitude! Now would you be willing to give a paper--or a talk--to our club, the Home and Culture Club, some Wednesday, on The True Nature of Domestic Industry?"

Mrs. Ree took Miss Bell's hand with something of the air of a Boston maiden accosting a saint from Hindoostan. "If you only would!" she said. "I am sure it would shed light on this great subject!"

Miss Bell smiled at them both and looked at Mrs. Porne inquiringly.

"I should be delighted to have you do it," said her employer. "I know it would be very useful."

"Is there any date set?" asked Miss Bell.

"Any Wednesday after February," said Mrs. Dankshire.

"Well--I will come on the first Wednesday in April. If anything should happen to prevent I will let you know in good season, and if you should wish to postpone or alter the program--should think better of the idea--just send me word. I shall not mind in the least."

They went away quite jubilant, Miss Bell's acceptance was announced officially at the next club-meeting, and the Home and Culture Club felt that it was fulfilling its mission.

[Untitled]

I gave myself to God.-- With humility and contrition, In sacrifice and submission. "Take me! Do not refuse me! Order me--govern me--use me! Nothing I ask for my own-- I pray to be thine alone!--" And God smiled.

I gave myself to mankind.-- With sorrow and sympathy deep, With pity that would not sleep. "To serve you and save you, brothers! To give my life for the others! I ask no price--no place-- I seek but to help the race!--" And God smiled.

I gave myself to Myself.-- In the knowledge that opens power; In the truth's unfolding hour; In the glory of service free; The joy that such life can be:-- My life--that is never done! For my neighbor and I are One!-- And God smiled.

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

VI.

GAMES AND SPORTS

One of the sharpest distinctions both between the essential characters and the artificial positions of men and women, is in the matter of games and sports. By far the greater proportion of them are essentially masculine, and as such alien to women; while from those which are humanly interesting, women have been largely debarred by their arbitrary restrictions.

The play instinct is common to girls and boys alike; and endures in some measure throughout life. As other young animals express their abounding energies in capricious activities similar to those followed in the business of living, so small children gambol, physically, like lambs and kids; and as the young of higher kinds of animals imitate in their play the more complex activities of their elders, so do children imitate whatever activities they see about them. In this field of playing there is no sex.

Similarly in adult life healthy and happy persons, men and women, naturally express surplus energy in various forms of sport. We have here one of the most distinctively human manifestations. The great accumulation of social energy, and the necessary limitations of one kind of work, leave a human being tired of one form of action, yet still uneasy for lack of full expression; and this social need has been met by our great safety valve of games and sports.

In a society of either sex, or in a society without sex, there would still be both pleasure and use in games; they are vitally essential to human life. In a society of two sexes, wherein one has dictated all the terms of life, and the other has been confined to an extremely limited fraction of human living, we may look to see this great field of enjoyment as disproportionately divided.

It is not only that we have reduced the play impulse in women by restricting them to one set of occupations, and overtaxing their energies with mother-work and housework combined; and not only that by our androcentric conventions we further restrict their amusements; but we begin in infancy, and forcibly differentiate their methods of play long before any natural distinction would appear.

Take that universal joy the doll, or puppet, as an instance. A small imitation of a large known object carries delight to the heart of a child of either sex. The worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy village, the "Noah's Ark," the omnipresent "Teddy Bear," any and every small model of a real thing is a delight to the young human being. Of all things the puppet is the most intimate, the little image of another human being to play with. The fancy of the child, making endless combinations with these visible types, plays as freely as a kitten in the leaves; or gravely carries out some observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates its mother's hunting.

So far all is natural and human.

Now see our attitude toward child's play--under a masculine culture. Regarding women only as a sex, and that sex as manifest from infancy, we make and buy for our little girls toys suitable to this view. Being females--which means mothers, we must needs provide them with babies before they cease to be babies themselves; and we expect their play to consist in an imitation of maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, which interests all children, we have rendered as an eternal baby; and we foist them upon our girl children by ceaseless millions.

The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy as well as the girl, but not as a baby. He likes his jumping-jack, his worsted Sambo, often a genuine rag-doll; but he is discouraged and ridiculed in this. We do not expect the little boy to manifest a father's love and care for an imitation child--but we do expect the little girl to show maternal feelings for her imitation baby. It has not yet occurred to us that this is monstrous.

Little children should not be expected to show, in painful precocity, feelings which ought never to be experienced till they come at the proper age. Our kittens play at cat-sports, little Tom and Tabby together; but little Tabby does not play she is a mother!

Beyond the continuous dolls and their continuous dressing, we provide for our little girls tea sets and kitchen sets, doll's houses, little work-boxes--the imitation tools of their narrow trades. For the boy there is a larger choice. We make for them not only the essentially masculine toys of combat--all the enginery of mimic war; but also the models of human things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For them, too, are the comprehensive toys of the centuries, the kite, the top, the ball. As the boy gets old enough to play the games that require skill, he enters the world-lists, and the little sister, left inside, with her everlasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl," and "mustn't play with boys--boys are so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set. She "plays house." If very active she may jump rope, in solitary enthusiasm, or in combination of from two to four. Her brother is playing games. From this time on he plays the games of the world. The "sporting page" should be called "the Man's Page" as that array of recipes, fashions and cheap advice is called "the Woman's Page."

One of the immediate educational advantages of the boy's position is that he learns "team work." This is not a masculine characteristic, it is a human one; a social power. Women are equally capable of it by nature; but not by education. Tending one's imitation baby is not team-work; nor is playing house. The little girl is kept forever within the limitations of her mother's "sphere" of action; while the boy learns life, and fancies that his new growth is due to his superior sex.

Now there are certain essential distinctions in the sexes, which would manifest themselves to some degree even in normally reared children; as for instance the little male would be more given to fighting and destroying; the little female more to caring for and constructing things.

"Boys are so destructive!" we say with modest pride--as if it was in some way a credit to them. But early youth is not the time to display sex distinction; and they should be discouraged rather than approved.

The games of the world, now the games of men, easily fall into two broad classes--games of skill and games of chance.

The interest and pleasure in the latter is purely human, and as such is shared by the two sexes even now. Women, in the innocent beginnings or the vicious extremes of this line of amusement, make as wild gamblers as men. At the races, at the roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this is clearly seen.

In games of skill we have a different showing. Most of these are developed by and for men; but when they are allowed, women take part in them with interest and success. In card games, in chess, checkers, and the like, in croquet and tennis, they play, and play well if well-trained. Where they fall short in so many games, and are so wholly excluded in others, is not for lack of human capacity, but for lack of masculinity. Most games are male. In their element of desire to win, to get the prize, they are male; and in their universal attitude of competition they are male, the basic spirit of desire and of combat working out through subtle modern forms.

There is something inherently masculine also in the universal dominance of the projectile in their games. The ball is the one unescapable instrument of sport. From the snapped marble of infancy to the flying missile of the bat, this form endures. To send something forth with violence; to throw it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems to date back to one of the twin forces of the universe--the centrifugal and centripetal energies between which swing the planets.

The basic feminine impulse is to gather, to put together, to construct; the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy. It seems to give pleasure to a man to bang something and drive it from him; the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased he is.

Games of this sort will never appeal to women. They are not wrong; not necessarily evil in their place; our mistake is in considering them as human, whereas they are only masculine.

Play, in the childish sense is an expression of previous habit; and to be studied in that light. Play in the educational sense should be encouraged or discouraged to develop desired characteristics. This we know, and practice; only we do it under androcentric canons; confining the girl to the narrow range we consider proper for women, and assisting the boy to cover life with the expression of masculinity, when we should be helping both to a more human development.

Our settled conviction that men are people--the people, and that masculine qualities are the main desideratam in life, is what keeps up this false estimate of the value of our present games. Advocates of football, for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man for life. Life--from the wholly male point of view--is a battle, with a prize. To want something beyond measure, and to fight to get--that is the simple proposition. This view of life finds its most naive expression in predatory warfare; and still tends to make predatory warfare of the later and more human processes of industry. Because they see life in this way they imagine that skill and practice in the art of fighting, especially in collective fighting, is so valuable in our modern life. This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerous in its effects.

The valuable processes to-day are those of invention, discovery, all grades of industry, and, most especially needed, the capacity for honest service and administration of our immense advantages. These are not learned on the football field. This spirit of desire and combat may be seen further in all parts of this great subject. It has developed into a cult of sportsmanship; so universally accepted among men as of superlative merit as to quite blind them to other standards of judgment.

In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest. Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to accomplish something; and at the eleventh hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich triumph long deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to him, impudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself, quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to the effrontery and falsity of this claim--and all the country rose up and denounced him as "unsportsmanlike!"

Sport and the canons of sport are so dominant in the masculine mind that what they considered a deviation from these standards was of far more importance than the question of fact involved; to say nothing of the moral obliquity of one lying to the whole world, for money; and that at the cost of another's hard-won triumph.

If women had condemned the conduct of one or the other as "not good house-wifery," this would have been considered a most puerile comment. But to be "unsportsmanlike" is the unpardonable sin.

Owing to our warped standards we glaringly misjudge the attitude of the two sexes in regard to their amusements. Of late years more women than ever before have taken to playing cards; and some, unfortunately, play for money. A steady stream of comment and blame follows upon this. The amount of card playing among men--and the amount of money lost and won, does not produce an equivalent comment.

Quite aside from this one field of dissipation, look at the share of life, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide range of recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishing they maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a most rudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no service save as it affects bodily health, and of a most deterring influence on real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real human service, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like any other industry; it is no longer "sport."

The human being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the returns; he kills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort; or to protect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but the sportsman kills for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and under rules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beast or fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; that will give him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase."

The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, in its broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, the hiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, as they are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of this indulgence among mature civilized beings is due to their masculinity. That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts to the patient service and fierce defence of the little child, in the man has its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt is more than a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow at any cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and secure the central prize of his being--a mate.

His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. To support and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plain sight historically; but "the pleasure of the chase" is older than that. We should remember that associate habits and impulses last for ages upon ages in living forms; as in the tree climbing instincts of our earliest years, of Simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back through unmeasured time. Where for millions of years the strongest pleasure a given organism is fitted for, is obtained by a certain group of activities, those activities will continue to give pleasure long after their earlier use is gone.

This is why men enjoy "the ardor of pursuit" far more than women. It is an essentially masculine ardor. To come easily by what he wants does not satisfy him. He wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek it, chase it, catch it. He wants it to be "game." He is by virtue of his sex a sportsman.

There is no reason why these special instincts should not be gratified so long as it does no harm to the more important social processes; but it is distinctly desirable that we should understand their nature. The reason why we have the present overwhelming mass of "sporting events," from the ball game to the prize fight, is because our civilization is so overwhelmingly masculine. We shall criticize them more justly when we see that all this mass of indulgence is in the first place a form of sex-expression, and in the second place a survival of instincts older than the oldest savagery.

Besides our games and sports we have a large field of "amusements" also worth examining. We not only enjoy doing things, but we enjoy seeing them done by others. In these highly specialized days most of our amusement consists in paying two dollars to sit three hours and see other people do things.

This in its largest sense is wholly human. We, as social creatures, can enjoy a thousand forms of expression quite beyond the personal. The birds must each sing his own song; the crickets chirp in millionfold performance; but human being feels the deep thrill of joy in their special singers, actors, dancers, as well as in their own personal attempts. That we should find pleasure in watching one another is humanly natural, but what it is we watch, the kind of pleasure and the kind of performance, opens a wide field of choice.

We know, for instance, something of the crude excesses of aboriginal Australian dances; we know more of the gross license of old Rome; we know the breadth of the jokes in medieval times, and the childish brutality of the bull-ring and the cockpit. We know, in a word, that amusements vary; that they form a ready gauge of character and culture; that they have a strong educational influence for good or bad. What we have not hitherto observed is the predominant masculine influence on our amusements. If we recall once more the statement with regard to entertaining anecdotes, "There are thirty good stories in the world, and twenty-nine of them cannot be told to women," we get a glaring sidelight on the masculine specialization in jokes.

"Women have no sense of humor" has been frequently said, when "Women have not a masculine sense of humor" would be truer. If women had thirty "good stories" twenty-nine of which could not be told to men, it is possible that men, if they heard some of the twenty-nine, would not find them funny. The overweight of one sex has told in our amusements as everywhere else.

Because men are further developed in humanity than women are as yet, they have built and organized great places of amusement; because they carried into their humanity their unchecked masculinity, they have made these amusements to correspond. Dramatic expression, is in its true sense, not only a human distinction, but one of our noblest arts. It is allied with the highest emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic, covering the whole range of human feeling. Through it we should be able continually to express, in audible, visible forms, alive and moving, whatever phase of life we most enjoyed or wished to see. There was a time when the drama led life; lifted, taught, inspired, enlightened. Now its main function is to amuse. Under the demand for amusement, it has cheapened and coarsened, and now the thousand vaudevilles and picture shows give us the broken fragments of a degraded art of which our one main demand is that it shall make us laugh.

There are many causes at work here; and while this study seeks to show in various fields one cause, it does not claim that cause is the only one. Our economic conditions have enormous weight upon our amusements, as on all other human phenomena; but even under economic pressure the reactions of men and women are often dissimilar. Tired men and women both need amusement, the relaxation and restful change of irresponsible gayety. The great majority of women, who work longer hours than any other class, need it desperately and never get it. Amusement, entertainment, recreation, should be open to us all, enjoyed by all. This is a human need, and not a distinction of either sex. Like most human things it is not only largely monopolized by men, but masculized throughout. Many forms of amusement are for men only; more for men mostly; all are for men if they choose to go.

The entrance of women upon the stage, and their increased attendance at theatres has somewhat modified the nature of the performance; even the "refined vaudeville" now begins to show the influence of women. It would be no great advantage to have this department of human life feminized; the improvement desired is to have it less masculized; to reduce the excessive influence of one, and to bring out those broad human interests and pleasures which men and women can equally participate in and enjoy.

HIS AGONY

A Human Being goes past my house Day after day, hour after hour, Screaming in agony. It is dreadful to hear him. He beats the air with his hands, blindly, despairingly. He shrieks with pain. The passers-by do not notice him. The woman who is with him does not notice him. The policeman does not notice him. No ambulance comes ringing. No doctor rushes out of a house--no crowd collects. He screams and screams. No one notices him. I bear him coming again. It is terrible--one day after another. I look out of my window. Yes--the same Human Being--the same agony. I cannot bear it. I rush down--out into the street. I say to the woman who is with him-- "Why do you not do something?" She says there is nothing to be done. She resents my interference. She is a hired person, hired by the owner of the Human Being. That is why no one does anything-- We dare not interfere with the Owner. He is a very young Human Being, That is why no one notices-- We are used to the sound of agony and the indifference of hired persons.

COMMENT AND REVIEW

The spread of social ethics among the medical profession is cause for great rejoicing. Long and justly celebrated as benefactors of humanity, and upholding with devotion the high ideals of their profession, they have now begun to widen their usefulness and extend their ideals under the general social awakening of our time.

Social sanitation is a rapidly extending process; as fast as our discoveries reveal the nature of disease or new remedies therefor, our governments, local and national, are beginning to safeguard the community.

In the general movement to lengthen and strengthen human life, doctors are necessarily most prominent because of their special knowledge. They have long been necessary. they have become more and more valuable, but their usefulness is still checked (as is true of all of us) by the persistence of conservatism and old ideas.

Very recently the advance of bacteriological science has thrown new light on a group of especially dangerous diseases; and still more recently the doctors themselves, with a splendid exertion of social conscience against tradition and habit, have begun to disseminate this new light to the general public.

Those special payments of the "wages of sin," spoken of in varying euphemisms, most commonly as "social diseases" are now better understood by physicians; and they are making noble efforts to spread this understanding among the people. Their efforts are gravely hindered by two obstacles; one the professional tradition known as "the medical secret," the other the universal prevalence of that primordial superstition--the sex tabu.

This last belongs to the very deepest sedimentary deposit in the human mind. The first rules the lowest savage peoples began to make were the sex tabus and food tabus. Secrecy, mystery, all manner of childish hocus pocus, were used to establish these primitive ideas; and the weight of that black past is upon its yet.

The less developed a race, the less educated a class, the more solemn and earnest they are in preserving the sex tabus; whereas with wide scientific knowledge this field of facts is seen to be like others; important and worth understanding; but not as special arcana to be concealed and avoided.

If the doctors come forward to tell us how the typhoid bacillus is disseminated, how dangerous it is, and how it is to be avoided, we are interested, grateful, and more or less willing to profit by the instruction. But when they try to tell us how the gonococcus attacks humanity, how dangerous it, and how it is to be avoided, we say, "Sh! That is something you mustn't talk about!"

To the credit of the profession they have kept on talking, many of them. To the credit of some of our bravest and wisest editors the talk has been widely published. And right here I wish to pay a well deserved tribute to the "Ladies' Home Journal," which ought to have a Nobel prize for great public service.

That paper--long scorned by me as the arch-type of all small ultra-feminine backwardness, did the bravest thing a paper can do, risked its whole position by flying in the face of the public and printing the clearest, fullest, most enlightening accounts of the present status of these "social diseases," their terrible effects, and our duty toward them. It lost subscribers by the thousand and hundred thousand, but it did the work; and did it better than any other publication could; not only on account of its enormous circulation, but because it went into the homes of pious and unenlightened persons who would never have seen the information in more progressive magazines.

The negative inertia and positive resistance of the popular mind cannot forever resist the constantly increasing pressure of knowledge now poured forth on this subject.

But there is that other obstacle--the tradition of secrecy in the medical profession.

Doctors take the Hipprocratic oath. They solemnly swear not to reveal the confidences of their patients; or, more properly their innocent confidences. They are not bound like priests in the confessional; if a patient tells the doctor he has poisoned his mother or is about to poison his father, the doctor is not bound to conceal the facts.

Nevertheless, if a patient afflicted with one of these highly contagious diseases tells his doctor that he has poisoned his wife, or is to poison his child--the doctor feels professionally bound to keep silence.

What puzzles an outsider is to see why the medical mind discriminates so sharply here between the conduct required in cases of small pox or scarlet fever, and in this case. If you tell the doctor you have leprosy--there's nothing sacred about that. Off with you to the pest house, at any cost of pain and shame to you or your family. Is the whole community to be exposed to infection just to save your feelings?

So even with measles, with diphtheria, with yellow fever. The privacy of the home is invaded, families are ruthlessly separated, the strong arm of the law is reached out to protect the public against this danger; and the doctor, so far from conniving with the patient, is legally required to record all cases of this sort.

Now where is the difference?

These special diseases are more dangerous--and far more common, than most of these mentioned above; and their effects, hereditary as well as contagious, of measureless evil.

We are told that the difference is one of moral obliquity.

But surely there is no veil of secrecy about moral obliquity! If a man is a thief or a murderer we do not respect his confidence and conceal his offence. The papers justify their fierce blazonry of crimes and sins by saying that it strengthens public opinion--protects the people. No, it is not because of moral obliquity.

It is for precisely the same reason that you must not make inquiries of a Chinaman as to his wife's health, or see a Turkish lady without her veil--it is "improper!"

The doctors and the boards of health together can soon change this silly convention, and the physician be required to register every case of this sort as he does in other contagious diseases.

All this is called up at this time by a little book named "Never Told Tales," sent me by the author, Dr. William Robinson of New York City.

It is a brave little book. Dr. Robinson is not a novelist by profession, but his heart is so wrung and his brain so roused by the hidden tragedy he sees all about him that he has reached out into literature for aid. Everywhere this mischief creeps about, centering rankly in every large city; carried everywhere by those infected; bringing death, deformity, and hideous diseases into thousands of innocent families; spreading, growing, and nobody saying anything about it!

Dr. Robinson has said something. He has thrown out the little book of stories, hoping that in the vivid narrative form it may reach and appeal to those who would not read "medical literature"; or even the new and impressive books now to be had on this subject.

For solid information of a clear and serious sort, readable and clean, Dr. Prince Morrow's book, "Social Diseases and Marriage" is the best I know. Dr. Morrow is the founder of the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis in New York City; a splendid effort on the part of the medical profession to spread even to unwilling ears this necessary knowledge.

The New York Federation of Women's Clubs has lately taken action on the subject; passing resolutions urging in this state an amendment to the Domestic Relations law requiring every marriage certificate to be accompanied by a medical certificate also, certifying the applicant to be free from contagious disease. This is already required in several western states. It seems a simple and righteous proposition. If a man wishes to join the army or navy, or to have his life insured, he has to pass a physical examination, and is refused if he is unfit. Is not marriage and parenthood as important as carrying life insurance?

There is a large and growing interest in these matters among intelligent women; and it is a natural and proper one. If a woman is to unite her life with a man, she surely has a right to know whether her own life is to be risked by the union. If she looks forward to motherhood as every normal woman should, she should be safeguarded from this terrible possibility.

It is time there was wide, full public knowledge on this subject.

PERSONAL PROBLEMS

This from a recent newspaper: "When a reporter called at the address, Miss Doe or Mrs. Roe appeared in a highly nervous state as a result of her struggles during the day to keep out of the way of reporters. It took half an hour's argument to induce her to acknowledge the marriage."

As the whole story treats of this lady's marriage, the calling her "Miss" appears to be a needlessly elaborate insult; but what seems most prominent here is the naive brutality of the inquisitor.

Here is a runaway match; the groom being a student and the son of a somewhat prominent man; it is a bit of gossip, of no general importance whatever, the publication of which is sure to cause intense distress to the bride, the groom, the father, and the heads of the institution where the young man was being educated.

In pursuit of this utterly unnecessary "news" the young bride is hounded into a "highly nervous condition" by the person hired to meddle in private affairs for trade purposes. The effect of her previous "struggle to keep out of the way" is calmly noted by the successful intruder; he forces himself in where he was not wanted; he remains admittedly against the will of the occupier; he talks like a book-agent and wears out the already nervous woman till he makes her "acknowledge the marriage."

As a personal problem, why should any citizen submit to be exploited in this manner for trade purposes?

As a public problem, why should any tradesman be allowed to practice this sort of psychic assault and battery?

The position was well expressed by a wise man as follows: "If the newspaper is a public business for public service, by what right do personal owners make fortunes out of it? If it is a personal business for personal profit, by what right does it meddle with my private affairs?"

This might be made an extremely debatable question: What right has anyone to keep to himself some process, drug, or special knowledge of real value to humanity? Patents or royalties may be allowed, with full freedom to use, but has he the right to conceal and withhold his benefaction? Or suppose again, that one has some distinction of no use to humanity, yet of sufficient interest to the gaping crowd to command a price for exhibition; if one is a Bearded Lady, say, or a Living Skeleton, or a Fat Boy, and if one makes a living by exhibiting these peculiarities and selling one's photograph--then would it be just to allow any and every photographer to forcibly take one's picture and sell it?

Further, suppose one has a private history rich in biographical revelations, and intended to publish the same, after the manner of those major and minor ego-maniacs of the astounding "confessions"; then is it right that the public scandal pedlars be allowed to chase their prey into his or her private house, and by a sort of "third degree" process wring from the exhausted and irritated victim these biographical tidbits, that they may go and sell them to their own profit?

"The public is interested in these things," we are gravely told by these who thus make a living.

The Public might, conceivably, be interested in the table manners of certain noted persons, or their expressions while shaving, or "doing their hair."

Is it therefore permissible that dealers in picture post-cards, or makers of moving picture. shows, come in with cameras at mealtimes or toilette hours, and photograph the lifted soupspoon, the purchased hair, or cheek stretched under the razor?

The right of society to the best service of all, we must accept as paramount; but what right has a private individual to exploit the secrets of other private individuals merely for his own financial profit? And how can he claim "social service" as his excuse, when what he does is no benefit but an injury to society?

Do we not need a wide and thorough revision of our ideas as to social and personal rights?

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THE FORERUNNER CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

AS TO PURPOSE:

What is The Forerunner? It is a monthly magazine, publishing stories short and serial, article and essay; drama, verse, satire and sermon; dialogue, fable and fantasty, comment and review. It is written entirely by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

What is it For? It is to stimulate thought: to arouse hope, courage and impatience; to offer practical suggestions and solutions, to voice the strong assurance of better living, here, now, in our own hands to make.

What is it about? It is about people, principles, and the questions of every-day life; the personal and public problems of to-day. It gives a clear, consistent view of human life and how to live it.

Is it a Woman's magazine? It will treat all three phases of our existence--male, female and human. It will discuss Man, in his true place in life; Woman, the Unknown Power; the Child, the most important citizen.

Is it a Socialist Magazine? It is a magazine for humanity, and humanity is social. It holds that Socialism, the economic theory, is part of our gradual Socialization, and that the duty of conscious humanity is to promote Socialization.

Why is it published? It is published to express ideas which need a special medium; and in the belief that there are enough persons interested in those ideas to justify the undertaking.

AS TO ADVERTISING:

We have long heard that "A pleased customer is the best advertiser." The Forerunner offers to its advertisers and readers the benefit of this authority. In its advertising department, under the above heading, will be described articles personally known and used. So far as individual experience and approval carry weight, and clear truthful description command attention, the advertising pages of The Forerunner will be useful to both dealer and buyer. If advertisers prefer to use their own statements The Forerunner will publish them if it believes them to be true.

AS TO CONTENTS:

The main feature of the first year is a new book on a new subject with a new name:--

"Our Androcentric Culture." this is a study of the historic effect on normal human development of a too exclusively masculine civilization. It shows what man, the male, has done to the world: and what woman, the more human, may do to change it.

"What Diantha Did." This is a serial novel. It shows the course of true love running very crookedly--as it so often does--among the obstructions and difficulties of the housekeeping problem--and solves that problem. (NOT by co-operation.)

Among the short articles will appear:

"Private Morality and Public Immorality." "The Beauty Women Have Lost" "Our Overworked Instincts." "The Nun in the Kitchen." "Genius: Domestic and Maternal." "A Small God and a Large Goddess." "Animals in Cities." "How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money." "Prize Children" "Kitchen-Mindedness" "Parlor-Mindedness" "Nursery-Mindedness"

There will be short stories and other entertaining matter in each issue. The department of "Personal Problems" does not discuss etiquette, fashions or the removal of freckles. Foolish questions will not be answered, unless at peril of the asker.

AS TO VALUE:

If you take this magazine one year you will have:

One complete novel . . . By C. P. Gilman One new book . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve short stories . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve-and-more short articles . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve-and-more new poems . . . By C. P. Gilman Twelve Short Sermons . . . By C. P. Gilman Besides "Comment and Review" . . . By C. P. Gilman "Personal Problems" . . . By C. P. Gilman And many other things . . . By C. P. Gilman

DON'T YOU THINK IT'S WORTH A DOLLAR?

THE FORERUNNER CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S MAGAZINE CHARLTON CO., 67 WALL ST., NEW YORK

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Please find enclosed $_____ as subscription to "The Forerunner" from _____ 19___ to _____ 19___

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TO RENT

A Summer Cottage on Lake Champlain Near the Adirondacks

This is a six-room two-story cottage, natural wood finish, unplastered, on two and a half acres of land, 600 feet on the lake, with an old apple orchard and many other trees. It has on two sides covered piazzas, outside blinds, open fireplaces in two rooms; and new white enameled open plumbing, with hot and cold water. It is about a mile and a half from Essex Village, and about one-quarter of a mile from the post office, at the Crater Club, an exclusive summer colony. Access by boat and train.

I have not seen this cottage, but I've seen plans, elevations and photographs of it, and of views from it. It stands on a bluff, close to the lake, the Green Mountains far in the east, and the Adirondacks some twelve miles to the west. The people who own it will answer further questions and state facts fully on request, both advantages and disadvantages.

The list of furnishings is accurate and circumstantial, as follows:

INVENTORY OF CONTENTS OF COTTAGE

LIVING ROOM

Mahogany sofa, small mahogany table Marble-topped table and "Crowning of Esther" 4 rosewood chairs, steamer chair Whatnot, wall-bracket, books, basket Mahogany table, small round 3-legged Long mantel mirror, gilt frame 3 oil paintings, 3 engravings Rustic seat (filled with wood) Old-fashioned heating stove, crated Candle-lantern, 2 Japanese trays Door-scraper, woodbasket Tongs-holder, hearth brush Child's garden tools 2 sofa cushions Various small ornaments

KITCHEN

Ironing Table, stand, wax, bosom board Tin pail, dipper, basin 1 new broom, 1 old broom Tool box, tools, nails, saw, hatchet Hammock, barrel hammock, tie ropes Soap rack, dustpan, scrap basket Folding hat rack, ladder Carving set, 6 knives (very old) Coffee pot, toaster, egg whip, egg beater 5 large white china plates 5 medium and 6 small ditto 6 demi tasse and saucers, same 2 tea cups, 6 saucers, same 2 egg stands, green; 2 sugar bowls 1 butterfly cup and saucer 6 glasses, 1 lemon squeezer 1 mechanical red-glass lamp 2 reading lamps, 3 small hand lamps 3 small bracket lamps, 1 shade White shades at all windows

GREEN BEDROOM

Green bedstead (three-quarter) 2 mattresses, 2 pillows, madras cover Green bureau; green washstand Green table; green rocking chair Oak chair; 2 pictures; 1 chamber

LARGE EAST BEDROOM

Oak bedstead (double) Oak bureau, oak washstand 2 mattresses, 2 feather beds, 1 bolster 2 pillows, madras spread 1 box cot, 1 mattress, straw pillow 2 chairs, 2 towel racks Bureau cover, pen cushion, etc. 3 pictures

SOUTHWEST BEDROOM Black walnut single bedstead 1 hair mattress and bolster 1 pillow, 1 feather bed, 1 madras spread Bureau (mirror broken), 2 towel racks Mahogany washstand, mirror Small 3-legged table 3 rosewood chairs Bureau cover, pin cushion, etc. Shoebag on wall Oil painting, on copper Brass stair rods, in closet

NORTHWEST BEDROOM

2 mahogany bureaus, empty trunk Portable bath-tub, clothes basket On shelves: 7 sheets, 7 pillow cases 3 table cloths, 10 doilies 4 towels, dish cloths and towels Bureau and tray cloths Curtains, enough for doors Curtains for some windows

Apply to "Summer Cottage," care of The Forerunner or to John B. Burnham, Agent, Essex, N.Y.

THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR .10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 7 MAY, 1910 Copyright for 1910 C. P. Gilman

Having made pockets, we need not carry so many things in our hands. Having made books, we need not carry so many things in our heads.

BRAIN SERVICE

We offer our hearts to God, contrite and broken; Why not offer our brains, whole and alive? Why follow the grovelling words wailing old races have spoken? Bow and submit, when we ought to resist and strive!

What is this "heart" that you offer? A circulator, An organ that quivers and starts at the fears of the hour. Why not offer your head? And hold it straighter? Bring to the service of God your noblest power?

When we learn to credit Him with our great ideals, and greater-- When we all stand up at last, stop kissing the rod-- When we bring the brains of to-day to seek and serve the Creator-- God will look better to us, and we shall look better to God.

WHEN I WAS A WITCH

If I had understood the terms of that one-sided contract with Satan, the Time of Witching would have lasted longer--you may be sure of that. But how was I to tell? It just happened, and has never happened again, though I've tried the same preliminaries as far as I could control them.

The thing began all of a sudden, one October midnight--the 30th, to be exact. It had been hot, really hot, all day, and was sultry and thunderous in the evening; no air stirring, and the whole house stewing with that ill-advised activity which always seems to move the steam radiator when it isn't wanted.

I was in a state of simmering rage--hot enough, even without the weather and the furnace--and I went up on the roof to cool off. A top-floor apartment has that advantage, among others--you can take a walk without the mediation of an elevator boy!

There are things enough in New York to lose one's temper over at the best of times, and on this particular day they seemed to all happen at once, and some fresh ones. The night before, cats and dogs had broken my rest, of course. My morning paper was more than usually mendacious; and my neighbor's morning paper--more visible than my own as I went down town--was more than usually salacious. My cream wasn't cream--my egg was a relic of the past. My "new" napkins were giving out.

Being a woman, I'm supposed not to swear; but when the motorman disregarded my plain signal, and grinned as he rushed by; when the subway guard waited till I was just about to step on board and then slammed the door in my face--standing behind it calmly for some minutes before the bell rang to warrant his closing--I desired to swear like a mule-driver.

At night it was worse. The way people paw one's back in the crowd! The cow-puncher who packs the people in or jerks them out--the men who smoke and spit, law or no law--the women whose saw-edged cart-wheel hats, swashing feathers and deadly pins, add so to one's comfort inside.

Well, as I said, I was in a particularly bad temper, and went up on the roof to cool off. Heavy black clouds hung low overhead, and lightning flickered threateningly here and there.

A starved, black cat stole from behind a chimney and mewed dolefully. Poor thing! She had been scalded.

The street was quiet for New York. I leaned over a little and looked up and down the long parallels of twinkling lights. A belated cab drew near, the horse so tired he could hardly hold his head up.

Then the driver, with a skill born of plenteous practice, flung out his long-lashed whip and curled it under the poor beast's belly with a stinging cut that made me shudder. The horse shuddered too, poor wretch, and jingled his harness with an effort at a trot.

I leaned over the parapet and watched that man with a spirit of unmitigated ill-will.

"I wish," said I, slowly--and I did wish it with all my heart--"that every person who strikes or otherwise hurts a horse unnecessarily, shall feel the pain intended--and the horse not feel it!"

It did me good to say it, anyhow, but I never expected any result. I saw the man swing his great whip again, and--lay on heartily. I saw him throw up his hands--heard him scream--but I never thought what the matter was, even then.

The lean, black cat, timid but trustful, rubbed against my skirt and mewed.

"Poor Kitty" I said; "poor Kitty! It is a shame!" And I thought tenderly of all the thousands of hungry, hunted cats who stink and suffer its a great city.

Later, when I tried to sleep, and up across the stillness rose the raucous shrieks of some of these same sufferers, my pity turned cold. "Any fool that will try to keep a cat in a city!" I muttered, angrily.

Another yell--a pause--an ear-torturing, continuous cry. "I wish," I burst forth, "that every cat in the city was comfortably dead!"

A sudden silence fell, and in course of time I got to sleep.

Things went fairly well next morning, till I tried another egg. They were expensive eggs, too.

"I can't help it!" said my sister, who keeps house.

"I know you can't," I admitted. "But somebody could help it. I wish the people who are responsible had to eat their old eggs, and never get a good one till they sold good ones!"

"They'd stop eating eggs, that's all," said my sister, "and eat meat."

"Let 'em eat meat!" I said, recklessly. "The meat is as bad as the eggs! It's so long since we've had a clean, fresh chicken that I've forgotten how they taste!"

"It's cold storage," said my sister. She is a peaceable sort; I'm not.

"Yes, cold storage!" I snapped. "It ought to be a blessing--to tide over shortages, equalize supplies, and lower prices. What does it do? Corner the market, raise prices the year round, and make all the food bad!"

My anger rose. "If there was any way of getting at them!" I cried. "The law don't touch 'em. They need to be cursed somehow! I'd like to do it! I wish the whole crowd that profit by this vicious business might taste their bad meat, their old fish, their stale milk--whatever they ate. Yes, and feel the prices as we do!"

"They couldn't you know; they're rich," said my sister.

"I know that," I admitted, sulkily. "There's no way of getting at 'em. But I wish they could. And I wish they knew how people hated 'em, and felt that, too--till they mended their ways!"

When I left for my office I saw a funny thing. A man who drove a garbage cart took his horse by the bits and jerked and wrenched brutally. I was amazed to see him clap his hands to his own jaws with a moan, while the horse philosophically licked his chops and looked at him.

The man seemed to resent his expression, and struck him on the head, only to rub his own poll and swear amazedly, looking around to see who had hit him. the horse advanced a step, stretching a hungry nose toward a garbage pail crowned with cabbage leaves, and the man, recovering his sense of proprietorship, swore at him and kicked him in the ribs. That time he had to sit down, turning pale and weak. I watched with growing wonder and delight.

A market wagon came clattering down the street; the hard-faced young ruffian fresh for his morning task. He gathered the ends of the reins and brought them down on the horse's back with a resounding thwack. The horse did not notice this at all, but the boy did. He yelled!

I came to a place where many teamsters were at work hauling dirt and crushed stone. A strange silence and peace hung over the scene where usually the sound of the lash and sight of brutal blows made me hurry by. The men were talking together a little, and seemed to be exchanging notes. It was too good to be true. I gazed and marvelled, waiting for my car.

It came, merrily running along. It was not full. There was one not far ahead, which I had missed in watching the horses; there was no other near it in the rear.

Yet the coarse-faced person in authority who ran it, went gaily by without stopping, though I stood on the track almost, and waved my umbrella.

A hot flush of rage surged to my face. "I wish you felt the blow you deserve," said I, viciously, looking after the car. "I wish you'd have to stop, and back to here, and open the door and apologize. I wish that would happen to all of you, every time you play that trick."

To my infinite amazement, that car stopped and backed till the front door was before me. The motorman opened it. holding his hand to his cheek. "Beg your pardon, madam!" he said.

I passed in, dazed, overwhelmed. Could it be? Could it possibly be that--that what I wished came true. The idea sobered me, but I dismissed it with a scornful smile. "No such luck!" said I.

Opposite me sat a person in petticoats. She was of a sort I particularly detest. No real body of bones and muscles, but the contours of grouped sausages. Complacent, gaudily dressed, heavily wigged and ratted, with powder and perfume and flowers and jewels--and a dog.

A poor, wretched, little, artificial dog--alive, but only so by virtue of man's insolence; not a real creature that God made. And the dog had clothes on--and a bracelet! His fitted jacket had a pocket--and a pocket-handkerchief! He looked sick and unhappy.

I meditated on his pitiful position, and that of all the other poor chained prisoners, leading unnatural lives of enforced celibacy, cut off from sunlight, fresh air, the use of their limbs; led forth at stated intervals by unwilling servants, to defile our streets; over-fed, under-exercised, nervous and unhealthy.

"And we say we love them!" said I, bitterly to myself. "No wonder they bark and howl and go mad. No wonder they have almost as many diseases as we do! I wish--" Here the thought I had dismissed struck me agin. "I wish that all the unhappy dogs in cities would die at once!"

I watched the sad-eyed little invalid across the car. He dropped his head and died. She never noticed it till she got off; then she made fuss enough.

The evening papers were full of it. Some sudden pestilence had struck both dogs and cats, it would appear. Red headlines struck the eye, big letters, and columns were filled out of the complaints of those who had lost their "pets," of the sudden labors of the board of health, and interviews with doctors.

All day, as I went through the office routine, the strange sense of this new power struggled with reason and common knowledge. I even tried a few furtive test "wishes"--wished that the waste basket would fall over, that the inkstand would fill itself; but they didn't.

I dismissed the idea as pure foolishness, till I saw those newspapers, and heard people telling worse stories.

One thing I decided at once--not to tell a soul. "Nobody'd believe me if I did," said I to myself. "And I won't give 'em the chance. I've scored on cats and dogs, anyhow--and horses."

As I watched the horses at work that afternoon, and thought of all their unknown sufferings from crowded city stables, bad air and insufficient food, and from the wearing strain of asphalt pavements in wet and icy weather, I decided to have another try on horses.

"I wish," said I, slowly and carefully, but with a fixed intensity of purposes, "that every horse owner, keeper, hirer and driver or rider, might feel what the horse feels, when he suffers at our hands. Feel it keenly and constantly till the case is mended."

I wasn't able to verify this attempt for some time; but the effect was so general that it got widely talked about soon; and this "new wave of humane feeling" soon raised the status of horses in our city. Also it diminished their numbers. People began to prefer motor drays--which was a mighty good thing.

Now I felt pretty well assured in my own mind, and kept my assurance to my self. Also I began to make a list of my cherished grudges, with a fine sense of power and pleasure.

"I must be careful," I said to myself; "very careful; and, above all things, make the punishment fit the crime."

The subway crowding came to my mind next; both the people who crowd because they have to, and the people who make them. "I mustn't punish anybody, for what they can't help," I mused. "But when it's pure meanness!" Then I bethought me of the remote stockholders, of the more immediate directors, of the painfully prominent officials and insolent employees--and got to work.

"I might as well make a good job of it while this lasts," said I to myself. "It's quite a responsibility, but lots of fun." And I wished that every person responsible for the condition of our subways might be mysteriously compelled to ride up and down in them continuously during rush hours.

This experiment I watched with keen interest, but for the life of me I could see little difference. There were a few more well-dressed persons in the crowds, that was all. So I came to the conclusion that the general public was mostly to blame, and carried their daily punishment without knowing it.

For the insolent guards and cheating ticket-sellers who give you short change, very slowly, when you are dancing on one foot and your train is there, I merely wished that they might feel the pain their victims would like to give them, short of real injury. They did, I guess.

Then I wished similar things for all manner of corporations and officials. It worked. It worked amazingly. There was a sudden conscientious revival all over the country. The dry bones rattled and sat up. Boards of directors, having troubles enough of their own, were aggravated by innumerable communications from suddenly sensitive stockholders.

In mills and mints and railroads, things began to mend. The country buzzed. The papers fattened. The churches sat up and took credit to themselves. I was incensed at this; and, after brief consideration, wished that every minister would preach to his congregation exactly what he believed and what he thought of them.

I went to six services the next Sunday--about ten minutes each, for two sessions. It was most amusing. A thousand pulpits were emptied forthwith, refilled, re-emptied, and so on, from week to week. People began to go to church; men largely--women didn't like it as well. They had always supposed the ministers thought more highly of them than now appeared to be the case.

One of my oldest grudges was against the sleeping-car people; and now I began to consider them. How often I had grinned and borne it--with other thousands--submitting helplessly.

Here is a railroad--a common carrier--and you have to use it. You pay for your transportation, a good round sum.

Then if you wish to stay in the sleeping car during the day, they charge you another two dollars and a half for the privilege of sitting there, whereas you have paid for a seat when you bought your ticket. That seat is now sold to another person--twice sold! Five dollars for twenty-four hours in a space six feet by three by three at night, and one seat by day; twenty-four of these privileges to a car--$120 a day for the rent of the car--and the passengers to pay the porter besides. That makes $44,800 a year.

Sleeping cars are expensive to build, they say. So are hotels; but they do not charge at such a rate. Now, what could I do to get even? Nothing could ever put back the dollars into the millions of pockets; but it might be stopped now, this beautiful process.

So I wished that all persons who profited by this performance might feel a shame so keen that they would make public avowal and apology, and, as partial restitution, offer their wealth to promote the cause of free railroads!

Then I remembered parrots. This was lucky, for my wrath flamed again. It was really cooling, as I tried to work out responsibility and adjust penalties. But parrots! Any person who wants to keep a parrot should go and live on an island alone with their preferred conversationalist!

There was a huge, squawky parrot right across the street from me, adding its senseless, rasping cries to the more necessary evils of other noises.

I had also an aunt with a parrot. She was a wealthy, ostentatious person, who had been an only child and inherited her money.

Uncle Joseph hated the yelling bird, but that didn't make any difference to Aunt Mathilda.

I didn't like this aunt, and wouldn't visit her, lest she think I was truckling for the sake of her money; but after I had wished this time, I called at the time set for my curse to work; and it did work with a vengeance. There sat poor Uncle Joe, looking thinner and meeker than ever; and my aunt, like an overripe plum, complacent enough.

"Let me out!" said Polly, suddenly. "Let me out to take a walk!"

"The clever thing!" said Aunt Mathilda. "He never said that before."

She let him out. Then he flapped up on the chandelier and sat among the prisms, quite safe.

"What an old pig you are, Mathilda!" said the parrot.

She started to her feet--naturally.

"Born a Pig--trained a Pig--a Pig by nature and education!" said the parrot. "Nobody'd put up with you, except for your money; unless it's this long-suffering husband of yours. He wouldn't, if he hadn't the patience of Job!"

"Hold your tongue!" screamed Aunt Mathilda. "Come down from there! Come here!"

Polly cocked his head and jingled the prisms. "Sit down, Mathilda!" he said, cheerfully. "You've got to listen. You are fat and homely and selfish. You are a nuisance to everybody about you. You have got to feed me and take care of me better than ever--and you've got to listen to me when I talk. Pig!"

I visited another person with a parrot the next day. She put a cloth over his cage when I came in.

"Take it off!" said Polly. She took it off.

"Won't you come into the other room?" she asked me, nervously.

"Better stay here!" said her pet. "Sit still--sit still!"

She sat still.

"Your hair is mostly false," said pretty Poll. "And your teeth--and your outlines. You eat too much. You are lazy. You ought to exercise, and don't know enough. Better apologize to this lady for backbiting! You've got to listen."

The trade in parrots fell off from that day; they say there is no call for them. But the people who kept parrots, keep them yet--parrots live a long time.

Bores were a class of offenders against whom I had long borne undying enmity. Now I rubbed my hands and began on them, with this simple wish: That every person whom they bored should tell them the plain truth.

There is one man whom I have specially in mind. He was blackballed at a pleasant club, but continues to go there. He isn't a member--he just goes; and no one does anything to him.

It was very funny after this. He appeared that very night at a meeting, and almost every person present asked him how he came there. "You're not a member, you know," they said. "Why do you butt in? Nobody likes you."

Some were more lenient with him. "Why don't you learn to be more considerate of others, and make some real friends?" they said. "To have a few friends who do enjoy your visits ought to be pleasanter than being a public nuisance."

He disappeared from that club, anyway.

I began to feel very cocky indeed.

In the food business there was already a marked improvement; and in transportation. The hubbub of reformation waxed louder daily, urged on by the unknown sufferings of all the profiters by iniquity.

The papers thrived on all this; and as I watched the loud-voiced protestations of my pet abomination in journalism, I had a brilliant idea, literally.

Next morning I was down town early, watching the men open their papers. My abomination was shamefully popular, and never more so than this morning. Across the top was printing in gold letters:

All intentional lies, in adv., editorial, news, or any other column. . .Scarlet All malicious matter. . .Crimson All careless or ignorant mistakes. . .Pink All for direct self-interest of owner. . .Dark green All mere bait--to sell the paper. . .Bright green All advertising, primary or secondary. . .Brown All sensational and salacious matter. . .Yellow All hired hypocrisy. . .Purple Good fun, instruction and entertainment. . .Blue True and necessary news and honest editorials. . .Ordinary print

You never saw such a crazy quilt of a paper. They were bought like hot cakes for some days; but the real business fell off very soon. They'd have stopped it all if they could; but the papers looked all right when they came off the press. The color scheme flamed out only to the bona-fide reader.

I let this work for about a week, to the immense joy of all the other papers; and then turned it on to them, all at once. Newspaper reading became very exciting for a little, but the trade fell off. Even newspaper editors could not keep on feeding a market like that. The blue printed and ordinary printed matter grew from column to column and page to page. Some papers--small, to be sure, but refreshing--began to appear in blue and black alone.

This kept me interested and happy for quite a while; so much so that I quite forgot to be angry at other things. There was such a change in all kinds of business, following the mere printing of truth in the newspapers. It began to appear as if we had lived in a sort of delirium--not really knowing the facts about anything. As soon as we really knew the facts, we began to behave very differently, of course.

What really brought all my enjoyment to an end was women. Being a woman, I was naturally interested in them, and could see some things more clearly than men could. I saw their real power, their real dignity, their real responsibility in the world; and then the way they dress and behave used to make me fairly frantic. 'Twas like seeing archangels playing jackstraws--or real horses only used as rocking-horses. So I determined to get after them.

How to manage it! What to hit first! Their hats, their ugly, inane, outrageous hats--that is what one thinks of first. Their silly, expensive clothes--their diddling beads and jewelry--their greedy childishness--mostly of the women provided for by rich men.

Then I thought of all the other women, the real ones, the vast majority, patiently doing the work of servants without even a servant's pay--and neglecting the noblest duties of motherhood in favor of house-service; the greatest power on earth, blind, chained, untaught, in a treadmill. I thought of what they might do, compared to what they did do, and my heart swelled with something that was far from anger.

Then I wished--with all my strength--that women, all women, might realize Womanhood at last; its power and pride and place in life; that they might see their duty as mothers of the world--to love and care for everyone alive; that they might see their dirty to men--to choose only the best, and then to bear and rear better ones; that they might see their duty as human beings, and come right out into full life and work and happiness!

I stopped, breathless, with shining eyes. I waited, trembling, for things to happen.

Nothing happened.

You see, this magic which had fallen on me was black magic--and I had wished white.

It didn't work at all, and, what was worse, it stopped all the other things that were working so nicely.

Oh, if I had only thought to wish permanence for those lovely punishments! If only I had done more while I could do it, had half appreciated my privileges when I was a Witch!

[Untitled]

"I can understand," says Eugene Wood, "how some women want to vote. And I can understand how some women do not want to vote."

"But I can't understand how some women do not want other women to vote."

BELIEVING AND KNOWING

What is Believing--psychologically? What does the brain do when it "believes" that is different from what it does when it "knows"?

There is a difference. When you know a thing you don't have to believe it. There is no effort, and no credit attached, in knowing; but this act of "believing" has long been held as both difficult and worthy.

There seems to be not only a clearly marked distinction between knowing and believing, but a direct incompatibility. It may be said roughly that the less we know the more we believe, and the more we know the less we believe. The credulity of the child, the savage, and the less educated classes in society, is in sharp contrast with the relative incredulity of the adult civilized human, and the more highly educated.

There is a difference also shown in our mental sensations as to a thing believed and a thing known. If a man tells you that grass is red and the sky yellow, you merely think him color blind--It does not anger you nor alter your opinion. If he tells you that two and two make ten, you think him ignorant, weak-minded, but your view is not changed, nor are you enraged by him. But if he contradicts you on some religious dogma you are hurt and angry. Why? As a matter of direct physicho-psychological action, why?

To make a physical comparison, it is like the difference between being pushed against when you stand square on your feet, and pushed when you stand on one leg.

Or again, the thing you know is like something nailed down, or planted and growing; the thing you believe like something held up by main force, and quite likely to be joggled or blown away. "Do not try to shake my faith!" protests the believer. He does not object to your trying to shake his knowledge.

If the new knowledge you bring him is evidently a matter of fact, if his brain rationally perceives that he was wrong about this thing, and you are right, he removes his incorrect idea and establishes the correct one, with no more disagreeable sensation than a little sense of shame:--not that, if he was wise enough to admit ignorance gracefully.

But the new faith you bring him is quite another matter. He hangs on to his old faith as if there was a virtue in the mental attitude of belief--aha! now we are on the track! He has been taught that there is!

We receive knowledge and faith in quite different ways, with quite different emphasis. The child learns--and learns--and learns--every day of his life; learns year after year, as long as his brain is able to receive impressions. This vast mass of knowledge is for the most part received indiscriminately and assorted by the brain after its own fashion.

There are but few departments of knowledge to which we have attached arbitrary ideas of superiority; and those fortunately, are all old ones. Knowledge of "the classics" was once kept in the same box with social standing, if not with orthodoxy; and to this day an error in spelling or grammar will condemn a person far more than entire ignorance of physiology or mechanics. Knowledge is a vast range, an unlimited range, visibly subject to extension; each new peak surmounted showing us many more. We learn, unlearn, and relearn, without much opposition or criticism, so long as our little bunch of specialties is assured--the spelling, for instance.

But when it comes to believing, disbelieving, and rebelieving--that is a different matter. Certain things were given us to believe--in our racial infancy--before we knew much of anything, and were therefore far more capable of believing. These articles of belief were sincerely held to be the most important matters; and they were too; because, if any stronger minded race infant refused to believe them, he was ostracised--or executed. What a man believed, or disbelieved, was the keynote of life--in that interesting race infancy of ours. All the other mental processes were as nothing compared to this. Knowledge? There was none to speak of. Doubt was a crime. Inquiry was the beginning of doubt.

The dogmas inserted did change, though slowly; but their importance in the scheme of life did not change. Whatever else the man might or might not be the first question was, "Art thou a Believer?" And he was. What he believed might be the One Absolute Truth; or one of many contemptible heresies; but he was always a believer.

They began with the helpless little children, and told them as the most important basic truths, whatsoever religious doctrines were current at the time; and renewed this process with every generation until this very day--and are still at it. Many of the most pronounced free-thinkers not only prefer to have their women still "devout," but insist on putting their children through the old course of instruction.

So, in the course of these unbroken ages; under a combined treatment of rigid "natural selection"--the elimination of the unfit, who were burned or beheaded--and of the heaviest social pressure, in both education and imitation; we have developed in the race mind a special area for "believing" as distinct front knowing. This area is abnormally sensitive because in those long ages behind us, it was the very vital base of life itself. If your Belief was steady and intact, you were permitted to live. If it was in the least degree wavering you were in danger. Is it any wonder we object so automatically to anyone's trying to "shake our faith?"

The change of the last century in this regard has been not only in the sudden opening up of new fields of knowledge; not only in the adoption of entire new methods in the acquisition of knowledge; not only in the rapid popularization of knowledge; but most of all in a new relation of ideas. We are beginning dimly to grasp something of the real scheme of life; to get our sense of the basic verities from observation of facts. That underlying scheme of life which the brain as an organ hungers for, is now opening to us in the field of ascertained fact.

A broad deep satisfying conception of life may now be gathered from the open book of natural law, both the perception of and the inspiration to right living are to be found there; all matters of calm clear easily held knowledge. When one knows enough to build a working religion on established facts, one does not have so much need of that extra capacity of believing.

You may also believe what you know--but it isn't necessary.

It will be a wonderful thing for the world when in every mind the beautiful truths of life shall be common knowledge. You may believe in an alleged father you have never seen; but when you live with your father you know him.

THE KINGDOM

"Where is Heaven?" asked the Person. "I want Heaven--to enjoy it; I want Heaven, recompensing For the evils I have suffered-- All the terrible injustice, All the foolish waste and hunger-- Where is Heaven? Can I get there?"

Then the Priest expounded Heaven: "Heaven is a place for dead men; After you are dead you'll find it, If"--and here the Priest was earnest-- "If you do the things I tell you-- Do exactly what is ordered! It will cost you quite a little-- You must pay a price for Heaven-- You must pay before you enter."

"Am I sure of what I'm getting?" Asked the mean, suspicious Person. "What you urge is disagreeable; What you ask is quite expensive; Am I sure of getting Heaven?"

Then the Priest prepared a potion, Made of Concentrated Ages, Made of Many Mingled Feelings-- Highest Hope and Deepest Terror-- Mixed our best and worst together, Reverence and Love and Service, Coward Fear and rank Self-Interest-- Gave him this when he was little, Pumped it in before the Person Could examine his prescription. So the Person, thus instructed, Now believed the things he told him; Paid the price as he was able, Died--the Priest said, went to Heaven-- None came back to contradict him!

*

"We want Heaven," said the People; We believe in God and Heaven; Where God is, there must be Heaven; God is Here--and this is Heaven."

Then they saw the earth was lovely; Life was sweet, and love eternal; Then they learned the joy of living, Caught a glimpse of what Life might be, What it could be--should be--would be-- When the People chose to have it!

Then they bought no further tickets Of the sidewalk speculators; They no longer gave their children The "spring medicine" of Grandma. They said, "We will take no chances Of what happens after dying; We perceive that Human Beings, Wise, and sweet, and brave, and tender, Strong, and beautiful, and noble, Living peaceably together, In a universal garden, With the Sciences for Soldiers, With the Allied Arts for Angels, With the Crafts and Trades for Servants, With all Nature for the Teacher, And all People for the Students, Make a very pleasant Heaven. We can see and understand it, We believe we'd really like some; Now we'll set to work and make it!

So they set to work, together, In the Faith that rests on Knowledge, In the Hope that's born of Wisdom. In the Love that grows with Practise And proceeded to make Heaven.

*

And God smiled. He had been tired Of the everlasting dead men, Of the hungry, grasping dead men; He had always wanted live ones-- Wanted them to build the Kingdom!

PRIZE CHILDREN

A prosperous farmer, driving a valuable horse, will exhibit with pride the "points" of his swift roadster--the fine action, the speed and endurance. He himself sits stoop-shouldered and muscle-bound; strong, it may be, but slow and awkward, with bad teeth and poor digestion; by no means a model human being either in "points" or "action."

He never thinks of these things.

A virtuous housewife, running a comfortable house, has a justifiable pride in the cleanliness, comfort and convenience of the place, in its beautiful appointments and conveniences, and in her own. fine clothes! She herself is stout, short-legged, incapable of any swift agility of action; a brief run leaves her panting; she would be grotesque as a statue; and her internal housekeeping is by no means as efficient as a doctor would approve.

She never thinks of these things.

The same farmer will show you his stock--sheep, swine, fowls, cattle; point out their superiority and talk learnedly of the best methods of improvement. The same housewife will show you her fine needlework, her fine cooking, and discuss patterns and recipes with gusto. Both the farmer and his wife took prizes at the county fair--he for pigs and poultry, she for pies.

Now look at their children.

She gathers little Johnny into her motherly arms. "Johnny was always delicate!" she says tenderly. "He's a little backward because he's delicate. Mother's boy!" And she kisses his smooth head as he nestles up to her. "Adelaide had better go and lie down. Adelaide's not strong. They work her too hard in school."

Jim looks sturdy enough, and makes noise enough, but the expert perceives that Jimmy has adenoids, breathes through his mouth, is really undersized.

Here is the oldest boy, a tall, heavy fellow; but what a complexion! "Quite natural for boys of that age; yes, he's real sensitive about it."

*

Well? They are "good children." When properly dressed, they compare favorably with other people's children.

None of them would take any prizes in an exhibition of Human Stock. There are no such prizes. As to the exhibition--that is continuous. We are so used to the exhibition, and to its pitiful average, that we have no ideals left.

Neither the farmer nor his wife ever thought of a Human Standard; whether they came up to it, or if their children did, or of how they might improve the breed.

We take humanity as we find it. We admire "beauty," or what we call beauty; but we don't care enough for it to try to increase it. We are concerned about our health after we lose it, but give small thought to lifting the average. Young men vie with one another in athletic sports, and have certain ideals, perhaps, of "military bearing," and the kind of chest and chin a man should have; but all their ideals put together do not make us as beautiful and strong as we have a right to be.

Then arise those who come to us talking largely of eugenics; wanting us to breed super-men and super-women; talk[ing of improving] the race by right selection. There is a lot of sense in this; we could do wonders that way; of course, if we would. Certain obstacles arise, however. Men and women seem to love each other on other grounds than physical superiority. Those physically superior do not always have the most superior children. Then, again, the physically superior children do not always hold out through life, somehow.

This method of breeding and selection is nature's way. It works well--give it a chance; but it has to be accompanied by a ruthless slaughter of the unfit, and takes thousands upon thousands of years. We have a method worth two of that.

We can improve the species after it is born.

That's the great human power, the conscious ability to improve ourselves and our children. We have the power. We have the knowledge, too--some of us have it, and all of us can get it.

The trouble is, speaking generally, that we haven't the standards.

Here is where our mothers need new ideals, and new information. A person who is going to raise cattle ought to know something about cattle; know what to expect of cattle, and how to produce it. Suppose we had a course in Humaniculture to study. We have Agricultural colleges; we study Horticulture, and Floriculture, and Apiculture and Arboriculture. Why not have a Humanicultural College, and learn something about how to raise people?

Such a course of study would begin with the theory, illustrating by picture and model; and later should have practical illustration from the living model, in nursery and school. The graduate from such a course would have quite a different idea of human standards.

She would know the true proportions of the human body, and not call a No. 2 foot "beautiful" on a No. 10 body. She would know what the real shape of the human body is, and that to alter it arbitrarily is a habit of the lowest savagery. The shape of the body is the result of its natural activities, and cannot be altered without injury to them. She would learn that to interfere with the human shape, moulding it to lines that have nothing to do with the living structure and its complex functions, is as offensive and ridiculous as it would be to alter the shape of a horse.

Should we not laugh to see a horse in corsets? The time is coming when we shall so laugh to see a woman.

She would learn to measure beauty, human beauty, by full health and vigor first of all, right proportion, full possession of all natural power, and that the human animal is by nature swift, agile, active to a high degree, and should remain so throughout life. So trained, she would regard being "put on a car" by the elbow as an insult, not a compliment.

Then at last we should begin to have some notion of what to expect in children, and how to get it. The girl would look forward not merely to some vague little ones to love and care for, but to having finer children than anyone else--if she could! And she would naturally have a new standard of fatherhood, and sternly refuse to accept disease and the vice which makes disease.

Then, when the children came, she would know the size and weight that was normal, the way to feed and clothe the little body so as to promote the best growth; the kind of exercise and training essential to develop that legitimate human beauty and power which ought to belong to all of us.

We have our vulgar "Baby Shows," where fat-cheeked, over-fed younglings are proudly exhibited. A time is coming when, without public exhibitions, without prize-money or clamorous vote, we shall raise a new standard in child culture--and live up to it.

HEAVEN FORBID!

When I was seventeen, you'd find No youth so brash as I; Things must be settled to my mind, Or I'd know why!

I knew it all, and somewhat more, What I believed was true; The future held no task in store I could not do!

If I had died in my youthful pride-- And no man can say when-- Should I have been immortal As I was then? (Heaven forbid!)

When I was forty-two I stood Successful, proud and strong; Little I cared for bad or good-- My purse was long.

My breakfast, newspaper and train,-- My office,--the Exchange-- My work, my pleasure, and my gain-- A narrow range.

If I had died in my business pride-- And no man can say when-- Should I have been immortal As I was then? (Heaven forbid!)

Now I am old, and yet I keep Intelligent content; I wake and sleep in the quiet deep Of disillusionment.

I don't believe, nor disbelieve-- I simply do not know. I fear no grave--no heaven crave-- Am quite prepared to go.

But when I die--and I would not stay, Though a friend should show me how, Shall I become immortal, As I am now? (Heaven forbid!)

WHAT DIANTHA DID

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