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Title:  The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910)

Author:  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Release Date:  January, 2002  [Etext #3017]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]

Edition:  10

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THE FORERUNNER, A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

by

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN



VOLUME ONE, November 1909-December 1910 (14 issues)




CONTENTS





 Volume 1 No. 1
 November 1909


Then This (poem)
A Small God And a Large Goddess (essay)
Arrears (poem)
Three Thanksgivings (story)
How Doth The Hat (poem)
Introducing the World, the Flesh And the Devil (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Where the Heart Is (sketch)
Thanksgiving (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment And Review
Personal Problems
Thanksong (poem)
Advertisements: Lowney's, Fels-Naptha Soap, Holeproof Hoisery, Moore's
Fountain Pen, The Forerunner, A Toilet Preparation, Calendula



 Volume 1 No. 2
 December 1909


Love (poem)
According To Solomon (story)
An Obvious Blessing (essay)
Steps (poem)
Why We Honestly Fear Socialism (essay)
Child Labor (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Poor Relation (sketch)
His Crutches (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment And Review
Personal Problems
Get Your Work Done (poem)
Advertisements: Lowney's, Soapine, Woman's Era, The Forerunner, Calendula



 Volume 1 No. 3
 January 1910


A Central Sun, a song (poem)
Reasonable Resolutions (essay)
Her Housekeeper (story)
Locked Inside (poem)
Private Morality And Pulic Immorality (essay)
"With God Above" (poem)
The Humanness Of Women (essay)
Here Is The Earth (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The "Anti" And The Fly (poem)
The Barrel (sketch)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Play-Time: The Melancholy Rabbit (poem)
Advertisements: The Forerunner, Confidential Remarks About Our
Advertising, Things we wish to Advertise, Calendula



 Volume 1 No. 4
 February 1910


Two Prayers (poem)
An Offender (story)
Before Warm February Winds (poem)
Kitchen-Mindedness (esssay)
Two Storks (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Little Leafy Brothers (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Play-Time: A Walk Walk Walk (poem)
Ode To a Fool (poem)



 Volume 1 No. 5
 March 1910


The Sands (poem)
A Middle-Sized Artist (story)
The Minor Birds (poem)
Parlor-Mindedness (essay)
Naughty (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Erratum
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Water-Lure (poem)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Play-Time: Aunt Eliza (poem)
The Cripple (poem)



 Volume 1 No. 6
 April 1910


When Thou Gainest Happiness (poem)
Martha's Mother (story)
For Fear (poem)
Nursery-Mindedness (essay)
A Village Of Fools (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
"I gave myself to God" (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
His Agony (poem)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Advertisements: The Forerunner, A Summer Cottage



 Volume 1 No. 7
 May 1910


Brain Service (poem)
When I Was A Witch (story)
Quotation: Eugene Wood
Believing And Knowing (essay)
The Kingdom (poem)
Heaven Forbid! (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The House of Apples (sketch)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Suffrage (editorial)
Advertisements: The Forerunner, A Summer Cottage



 Volume 1 No. 8
 June 1910


The Puritan (poem)
Making a Living (story)
Ten Suggestions (essay)
The Malingerer (poem)
Genius, Domestic and Maternal, part I (essay)
Prisoners (sketch)
May Leaves (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Room At The Top (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Advertisement: The Forerunner



 Volume 1 No. 9
 July 1910


The Bawling World (poem)
A Coincidence (story)
Shares (poem)
Genius, Domestic and Maternal, part II (essay)
Improved Methods of Habit Culture (essay)
O Faithful Clay! (poem)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
We Eat At Home (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Only an Hour (sketch)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Advertisements: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Forerunner



 Volume 1 No. 10
 August 1910


The Earth's Entail (poem)
The Cottagette (story)
Wholesale Hypnotism (essay)
"Sit up and think!" (poem)
The Kitchen Fly (essay)
Alas! (poem)
Her Pets (sketch)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
"The Outer Reef!" (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
The Editor's Problem (editorial)
Advertisements: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Forerunner



 Volume 1 No. 11
 September 1910


To-morrow Night (poem)
Mr. Robert Grey Sr. (story)
What Virtues Are Made Of (essay)
Animals In Cities (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Waiting-Room (poem)
While the King Slept (sketch)
The Housewife (poem)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
The Beauty Women Have Lost (essay)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
The Editor's Problem (editorial)
From Letters Of Subscribers
Advertisements: Some Of Our Exchanges, Books by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, The Forerunner


 Volume 1 No. 12
 October 1910


Only Mine (poem)
The Boys and the Butter (story)
A Question (poem)
Is It Wrong To Take Life? (essay)
The World and the Three Artists (sketch)
In How Little Time (poem)
Woman and the State (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
The Socialist and the Suffragist (poem)
Comment and Review
Personal Problems
Our Bound Volume As A Christmas Present (editorial)
To Those Specially Interested... (editorial)
If You Renew (editorial)
If You Discontinue (editorial)
Advertisements: The Woman's Journal, Some Of Our Exchanges, Books
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux


 Volume 1 No. 13
 November 1910


Worship (poem)
My Astonishing Dodo (story)
Why Texts? (essay)
The Little White Animals (poem)
Women Teachers, Married and Unmarried (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
The Good Man (sketch)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
A Frequent Question (sketch)
Boys Will Be Boys (poem)
Many Windows (poem)
Comment and Review
From Letters Of Subscribers
A Friendly Response (editorial)
Our Bound Volume As A Christmas Present (editorial)
To Those Specially Interested... (editorial)
If You Renew (editorial)
If You Discontinue (editorial)
Advertisements: The Woman's Journal, Some Of Our Exchanges, Books by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux


 Volume 1 No. 14
 December 1910


In As Much (poem)
A Word In Season (story)
Christmas Love (essay)
What Diantha Did (serial fiction)
Our Overworked Instincts (essay)
Love's Highest (poem)
The Permanent Child (sketch)
The New Motherhood (essay)
How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money (essay)
Our Androcentric Culture; or, The Man-Made World (serial non-fiction)
The Nun In The Kitchen (essay)
Letters From Subscribers (editorial)
Comment and Review
Advertisements: Success Magazine, The Co-Operative Press, Woman
and Socialism, The Woman's Journal, Some Of Our Exchanges
From Letters of Forerunner Subscribers
Advertisements: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux




INDEX



 SERIALS AND COLUMNS

Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man-Made World, non-fiction (1:1 - 1:14)
What Diantha Did, novel (1:1 - 1:14)
Comment and Review (1:1 - 1:14)
Personal Problems (1:1 - 1:12)
Play-Time (1:3 - 1:5)


 STORIES

According To Solomon (1:2)
The Boys and the Butter (1:12)
A Coincidence (1:9)
The Cottagette (1:10)
Her Housekeeper (1:3)
Making a Living (1:8)
Martha's Mother (1:6)
A Middle-Sized Artist (1:5)
Mr. Robert Grey Sr. (1:11)
My Astonishing Dodo (1:13)
An Offender (1:4)
Three Thanksgivings (1:1)
When I Was A Witch (1:7)
A Word In Season (1:14)


 ESSAYS AND SKETCHES

Animals In Cities (1:11)
The Barrel (1:3)
The Beauty Women Have Lost (1:11)
Believing And Knowing (1:7)
Christmas Love (1:14)
A Frequent Question (1:13)
Genius, Domestic and Maternal (1:8, 1:9)
The Good Man (1:13)
Her Pets (1:10)
The House of Apples (1:7)
How We Waste Three-Fourths Of Our Money (1:14)
The Humanness Of Women (1:3)
Improved Methods of Habit Culture (1:9)
Introducing the World, the Flesh And the Devil (1:1)
Is It Wrong To Take Life? (1:12)
The Kitchen Fly (1:10)
Kitchen-Mindedness (1:4)
Naughty (1:5)
The New Motherhood (1:14)
The Nun In The Kitchen (1:14)
Nursery-Mindedness (1:6)
An Obvious Blessing (1:2)
Only an Hour (1:9)
Our Overworked Instincts (1:14)
Parlor-Mindedness (1:5)
The Permanent Child (1:14)
The Poor Relation (1:2)
Prisoners (1:8)
Private Morality And Pulic Immorality (1:3)
Reasonable Resolutions (1:3)
A Small God And a Large Goddess (1:1)
Ten Suggestions (1:8)
A Village Of Fools (1:6)
What Virtues Are Made Of (1:11)
Where the Heart Is (1:1)
Wholesale Hypnotism (1:10)
While the King Slept (1:11)
Why Texts? (1:13)
Why We Honestly Fear Socialism (1:2)
Woman and the State (1:12)
Women Teachers, Married and Unmarried (1:13)
The World and the Three Artists (1:12)

 POEMS

Alas! (1:10)
The "Anti" And The Fly (1:3)
Arrears (1:1)
Aunt Eliza (1:5)
The Bawling World, a sestina (1:9)
Before Warm February Winds (1:4)
Boys Will Be Boys (1:13)
Brain Service (1:7)
A Central Sun, a song (1:3)
Child Labor (1:2)
The Cripple (1:5)
The Earth's Entail (1:10)
For Fear (1:6)
Get Your Work Done (1:2)
Heaven Forbid! (1:7)
His Agony (1:6)
His Crutches (1:2)
Here Is The Earth (1:3)
The Housewife (1:11)
How Doth The Hat (1:1)
"I gave myself to God" (1:6)
In As Much (1:14)
In How Little Time (1:12)
The Kingdom (1:7)
Little Leafy Brothers (1:4)
The Little White Animals (1:13)
Locked Inside (1:3)
Love (1:2)
Love's Highest (1:14)
The Malingerer (1:8)
Many Windows (1:13)
May Leaves (1:8)
The Melancholy Rabbit (1:3)
The Minor Birds (1:5)
O Faithful Clay! (1:9)
Ode To a Fool (1:4)
Only Mine (1:12)
"The Outer Reef!" (1:10)
Play-Time: Aunt Eliza (1:5)
Play-Time: The Melancholy Rabbit (1:3)
Play-Time: A Walk Walk Walk (1:4)
The Puritan (1:8)
A Question (1:12)
The Room At The Top (1:8)
The Sands (1:5)
Shares (1:9)
"Sit up and think!" (1:10)
The Socialist and the Suffragist (1:12)
Steps (1:2)
Thanksgiving (1:1)
Thanksong (1:1)
Then This (1:1)
To-morrow Night (1:11)
Two Prayers (1:4)
The Waiting-Room (1:11)
A Walk Walk Walk (1:5)
Water-Lure (1:5)
We Eat At Home (1:9)
When Thou Gainest Happiness (1:6)
"With God Above" (1:3)
Worship (1:13)

 ADVERTISEMENTS AND MISC.

Editorial: The Editor's Problem (1:10, 1:11)
Editorial: A Friendly Response (1:13)
Editorial: If You Discontinue (1:12, 1:13)
Editorial: If You Renew (1:12, 1:13)
Editorial: Letters From Subscribers (1:14)
Editorial: Our Bound Volume As A Christmas Present (1:12, 1:13)
Editorial: Suffrage (1:7)
Editorial: To Those Specially Interested... (1:12, 1:13)
Erratum (1:5)
From Letters Of Subscribers (1:11, 1:13, 1:14)
Masthead tags (1:1, 1:3 - 1:7)
Quotation: Eugene Wood (1:7)
Advertisement: Books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1:9 - 1:14)
Advertisement: Calendula (1:1 - 1:3)
Advertisement: Confidential Remarks About Our Advertising (1:3)
Advertisement: The Co-Operative Press (1:14)
Advertisement: The Crux (1:12 - 1:14)
Advertisement: Fels-Naptha Soap (1:1)
Advertisement: The Forerunner (1:1 - 1:3, 1:6 - 1:11)
Advertisement: Holeproof Hoisery (1:1)
Advertisement: Lowney's (1:1: 1:2)
Advertisement: Moore's Fountain Pen (1:1)
Advertisement: Soapine (1:2)
Advertisement: Some Of Our Exchanges (1:11 - 1:14)
Advertisement: Success Magazine (1:14)
Advertisement: A Summer Cottage (1:6, 1:7)
Advertisement: Things we wish to Advertise (1:3)
Advertisement: A Toilet Preparation (1:1)
Advertisement: Woman's Era (1:2)
Advertisement: Woman and Socialism (1:14)
Advertisement: The Woman's Journal (1:12 - 1:14)

 WORKS REVIEWED

"The American Magazine", illustrations (1:1)
Jessie H. Childs, "The Sea of Matrimony" (1:3)
Stanton Coit, "Woman in Church and State" (1:9)
"The Common Cause," magazine (1:11)
Lavinia L. Dock, "Hygiene and Morality" (1:13)
"The Englishwoman," magazine (1:10)
"The Ethical World", magazine (1:9)
Cicely Hamilton, "Marriage as a Trade" (1:13)
Alexander Irvine, "From The Bottom Up" (1:11)
Mary Jonston, "The Wise Housekeeper" (1:13)
Ellen Key, "The Century of the Child" (1:14)
Ingraham Lovell, "Margharita's Soul" (1:2)
"Philemon's Verses" (author unknown) (1:5)
Sarah Harvey Porter, "The Life and Times of Anne Royall" (1:2)
"The Progressive Woman," magazine (1:11)
Gerald Stanley Lee, "Inspired Millionaires" (1:7)
Prince Morrow, "Social Diseases and Marriage" (1:6)
Meredith Nicholson, "The Lords of High Decision" (1:5)
William Robinson, "Never Told Tales" (1:6)
Thomas W. Salmon, "Two Preventable Causes of Insanity" (1:10)
Nancy Musselman Schoonmaker, "The Eternal Fires" (1:9)
Molly Elliot Sewell, "The Ladies' Battle" (1:14)
Ida Tarbell, "The American Woman" (1:8)
"To-day's Problems," various authors (1:13)
"The Union Labor Advocate," magazine (1:11)
"Votes for Women," magazine (1:11)
Lester F. Ward, "Pure Sociology" (1:12)
H. G. Wells, "Ann Veronica" (1:3)
Harvey White, "A Ship Of Souls" (1:12)
"The Woman's Journal" (1:3, 1:10)






THE FORERUNNER, VOLUME ONE





THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
OWNER AND PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 1
NOVEMBER, 1909
The Charlton Company, 67 Wall Street, New York
Copyright for 1909, C. P. Gilman

Said the New Minister: "I shall not give you a text this morning.  If
you listen closely, you will discover what the sermon is about by what I
say."




THEN THIS


The news-stands bloom with magazines,
 They flame, they blaze indeed;
So bright the cover-colors glow,
So clear the startling stories show,
So vivid their pictorial scenes,
 That he who runs may read.

Then This: It strives in prose and verse,
 Thought, fancy, fact and fun,
To tell the things we ought to know,
To point the way we ought to go,
So audibly to bless and curse,
 That he who reads may run.



A SMALL GOD AND A LARGE GODDESS


The ancient iconoclast pursued his idol-smashing with an ax.  He did not
regard the feelings of the worshippers, and they, with similar
indifference to his, promptly destroyed him.

The modern iconoclast, wiser from long experience, practices the
kindergarten art of substitution; enters without noise, and dexterously
replaces the old image with a new one.

Often the worshippers do not notice the change. They never spend their
time in discriminating study of their idol, being exclusively occupied
in worshipping it.

The task herein undertaken is not so easy.  We can hardly expect to
remove the particular pet deity of millions of people for thousands of
years--an especially conspicuous little image at that, differing from
other gods and goddesses; and substitute another figure, three times his
size, of the opposite sex, and thirty years older--without somebody's
noticing it.

Yet this is precisely what is required of us, by the new knowledge of
to-day.  We are called upon to dislodge what is easily the most popular
god in the calendar, albeit the littlest; that fat fluttering small boy,
congenitally blind, with his haphazard archery playthings; that
undignified conception, type of folly change and irresponsible mischief,
which so amazingly usurps the name and place of love.  Never was there a
more absurd misrepresentation.

Suppose we worshipped Fire, the great sun for our over-lord, all lesser
lights in varying majesty, each hearth-fire as the genius and guardian
of the home.  So worshipping, suppose we chose, as ever present image of
the great idea, to be pictured and sculptured far and wide, to fill all
literature, to be accepted even by science as type and symbol of the
Fire Divine--a match-box!

So slight, so transient, so comparatively negligible in importance, is
the flickering chance-sown spark typified in this pretty chimera of
flying immaturity, compared with the majestic quenchless flame of life
and love we ought to worship.

We have taken the assistant for the principal, a tributary for the main
stream; we have exalted Eros, the god of man's desire, and paid no heed
to that great goddess of mother love to whom young Eros is but a running
footman.

We are right to worship love, in all its wide, diverging branches; the
love that is gratitude, love that is sympathy. love that is admiration,
love that is gift and service; even the love that is but hunger--mere
desire.

But when we talk of the Life Force, the strong stream of physical
immortality, which has replaced form with form and kept the stream
unbroken through the ages, we ought to understand whereof we speak.

That force is predominant. Under its ceaseless, upward pressure have all
creatures risen from the first beginning.  Resistlessly it pushes
through the ages; stronger than pain or fear or anger, stronger than
selfishness or pride, stronger than death.  It rises like a mighty tree,
branching and spreading through the changing seasons.

Death gnaws at it in vain.  Death destroys the individual, not the race;
death plucks the leaves, the tree lives on.  That tree is motherhood.

The life process replaces one generation with another, each equal to,
yes, if possible, superior to, the last.  This mighty process has
enlarged and improved throughout the ages, until it has grown from a
mere division of the cell--its first step still--to the whole range of
education by which the generations are replenished socially as well as
physically. From that vague impulse which sets afloat a myriad oyster
germs, to the long patience of a brooding bird; from the sun-warmed eggs
of a reptile to the nursed and guarded young of the higher mammals; so
runs the process and the power through lengthening years of love and
service, lives by service, grows with service.  The longer the period of
infancy, the greater the improvement of species.

The fish or insect, rapidly matured, reaches an early limit. He must be
competent to Iive as soon as he begins, and is no more competent at his
early ending.  The higher life form, less perfect at beginning, spending
more time dependent on its mother, receives from her more power.  First
from her body's shelter, the full, long upbuilding; safety while she is
safe; the circling guard of wise, mature, strong life, of conscious
care, besides the unconscious bulwark of self-interest.  Contrast this
with the floating chances of the spawn!

Then the rich, sure food of mother-milk, the absolute adaptation, the
whole great living creature an alembic to gather from without, and
distil to sweet perfection, what the child needs.  Contrast this with
the chances of new-born fish or fly, or even those of the bird baby,
whose mother must search wide for the food she brings.  The mammal has
it with her.

Then comes the highest stage of all, where the psychic gain of the race
is transmitted to the child as well as the physical.  This last and
noblest step in the life process we call education.  education is
differentiated motherhood. It is social motherhood.  It is the
application to the replenishment and development of the race of the same
great force of ever-growing life which made the mother's milk.

Here are the three governing laws of life: To Be; To Re-Be; To Be
Better.  The life force demands Existence.  And we strain every nerve to
keep ourselves alive.  The life force demands Reproduction.  And our
physical machinery is shifted and rearranged repeatedly, with arrayed
impulses to suit--to keep the race alive.  Then, most imperative of all,
the life force demands Improvement.  And all creation groaneth and
travaileth in this one vast endeavor.  Not merely this
thing--permanently; not merely more of this thing--continuously; but
better things, ever better and better types, has been the demand of life
upon us, and we have fulfilled it.

Under this last and highest law, as the main factor in securing to the
race its due improvement, comes that supreme officer of the life
process, the Mother.  Her functions are complex, subtle, powerful, of
measureless value.

Her first duty is to grow nobly for her mighty purpose.  Her next is to
select, with inexorable high standard, the fit assistant for her work.
The third--to fitly bear, bring forth, and nurse the child.  Following
these, last and highest of all, comes our great race-process of social
parentage, which transmits to each new generation the gathered
knowledge, the accumulated advantages of the past.

When mother and father labor and save for years to give their children
the "advantages" of civilization; when a whole state taxes itself to
teach its children; that is the Life Force even more than the direct
impulse of personal passion.  The pressure of progress, the resistless
demand of better conditions for our children, is life's largest
imperative, the fullest expression of motherhood.

But even if we confine ourselves for the time being to the plane of mere
replenishment, to that general law under which animals continue in
existence upon earth, even here the brief period of pre-paternal
excitement is but a passing hour compared to the weeks and months, yes,
years, in the higher species, of maternal service, love and care.  The
human father, too, toils for his family; but the love, the power, the
pride of fatherhood are not symbolized by the mischievous butterfly baby
we have elected to worship.

Cupid has nothing to do with either motherhood or fatherhood in the
large human sense.  His range is far short of the mark, he suggests
nothing of the great work to which he is but the pleasing preliminary.
Even for marriage we must bring in another god little heard of--Master
Hymen.  This personage has made but small impression upon literature and
art; we have concentrated our interest on the God of First Sensation,
leaving none for ultimate results.

It is as if we were impressed by the intricate and indispensible process
of nutrition (upon which, as anyone can see, all life continuously
depends) and then had fixed our attention upon the palate, as chief
functionary.  The palate is useful, even necessary.  Without that eager
guide and servant we might be indifferent to the duty of eating, or
might eat what was useless or injurious, or at best eat mechanically and
without pleasure.

In the admirable economy of nature we are led to perform necessary acts
by the pleasure which accompanies them; so the "pleasures of the palate"
 rightly precede the uses of the stomach; but we should not mistake them
for the chief end.  In point of fact, this is precisely what we have
done.  It not an analogy, it is a real truth.  In nutrition as in
reproduction we have been quite taken up with accompaniments and
assistants, and have ignored the real business in hand.  That is why the
whole world is so unwisely fed.  It considers only the taste of things,
the pleasure of eating them, and ignores the real necessities of the
process.

And why, if this standard of doorstep satisfaction does not really
measure values in food, should we continue to set the same standard for
the mighty work of love?  Love is mighty, but little Master Cupid is not
Love.  The love that warms and lights and builds the world is
Motherlove.  It is aided and paralleled by Fatherlove (that new
development distinctive of our race, that ennobling of the father by his
taking up so large a share of what was once all motherwork).

But why, so recognizing and reverencing this august Power, why should we
any longer be content to accept as its symbol this godlet of transient
sensation?  No man who has ever loved a woman fully, as only human
beings can love, through years of mutual care and labor, through
sickness, age, and death, can honestly accept, as type of that long,
strong, enduring Love, this small blind fly-by-night.

There is, unquestionably, a stage of feeling which he fitly represents.
There is an inflammable emotionality in youth and its dreary continuance
into middle life, when as the farcial old governor in the play exclaims,
"Every day is ladies' day to me."  Such a state of mind--or body,
rather--is common enough, harmless enough, perhaps, for a few light,
ineffectual years; but it is a poor compliment to call it Love, to let
this state of shuffling indecision, this weather-cock period, this
blindfold chance-shot game of hit or miss, hold such high place in our
hearts.

The explanation of it all is plain.  In those slow, ignorant ages when
the spark of life was supposed to be transmitted by the male, he
naturally was taken to typify the life force.  As this force was most
imperious in youth, so youth was taken to represent it.  And as, even in
the eyes of the supposed chief actor, his feelings were changeable and
fleeting and his behavior erratic and foolish in the extreme--therefore
Cupid!

Therefore, seeing the continuous unreason of the love-driven male, we
say, "Love is blind"; seeing his light-mindedness, we say, "Love has
wings"; seeing his evident lack of intelligence and purpose, we make him
a mere child; seeing the evil results of his wide license, we
euphemistically indicate some pain by that bunch of baby arrows.

It is easy to see the origin of this deification of the doorstep.  It is
not so easy to justify its persistence now that long years of knowledge
show us the great Door.

The Door of Life is Motherhood. She is the gate of entrance.  Her work
is the great work as moulder and builder.  She carries in her the Life
Power which this absurd infant is supposed to typify; and her love is
greater than his, even as a wise, strong mother is greater than a little
child.

Consider the imperative law that demands motherhood, that gives
motherhood, that holds motherhood to its great continuing task; where
short pleasure is followed by long discomfort crowned with pain; where
even the rich achievement of new-made life is but the beginning of years
of labor and care.  Here is the life force.  Here is power and passion.
Not the irritable, transient impulse, however mighty, but the staying
power, the passion that endures, the spirit which masters weakness,
slays selfishness, holds its ministrant to a lifelong task.

This is not appetite, hunger, desire.  Desire may lead to it, and
usefully.  Desire is the torchbearer, Motherhood is the Way.

Give Baby Love his due.  He is not evil; he is good.  He is a joy
forever.  He is vitally necessary in the scheme of things.  Happy are
they who in the real great work of life can carry with them this angel
visitant, fluttering free along their path, now close and sweet, now
smiling mischievously at a distance, yet returning ever.

But with all that can be said of him he is out of place as chief deity
in this high temple.  Let a little shrine be made at the gate outside
the door.  Let him smile there and take his tribute of red roses.  But
when we put the shoes from off our feet and enter, we should see before
us, tall and grave, glorious in strong beauty, majestic in her amplitude
of power, the Goddess Motherhood.

Such love should shine from her deep eyes that children would crowd to
that temple and feel at home; learning to understand a little of what
had brought them there. Such beauty in this body of great womanhood that
men would worship as for long they have worshipped her of Melos.  Such
high pride that girls, gazing, would feel strong to meet and bear their
splendid task.  And such power--such living, overmastering power that
man, woman and child alike should bow in honor and rise in strength.

Then will Love be truly worshipped.



ARREARS


Our gratitude goes up in smoke,
 In incense smoke of prayer;
We thank the Underlying Love,
 The Overarching Care--
We do not thank the living men
 Who make our lives so fair.

For long insolvent centuries
 We have been clothed and fed,
By the spared captive, spared for once,
 By inches slain instead;
He gave his service and is gone;
 Unthanked, unpaid, and dead.

His labor built the world we love;
 Our highest flights to-day
Rest on the service of the past,
 Which we can never pay;
A long repudiated debt
 Blackens our upward way.

Our fingers owed his fathers dead--
 Disgrace beyond repair!
No late remorse, no new-found shame
 Can save our honor there:
But we can now begin to pay
 The starved and stunted heir!

We thank the Power above for all--
 Gladly we do, and should.
But might we not save out a part
 Of our large gratitude,
And give it to the power on earth--
 Where it will do some good?



THREE THANKSGIVINGS


Andrew's letter and Jean's letter were in Mrs. Morrison's lap.  She had
read them both, and sat looking at them with a varying sort of smile,
now motherly and now unmotherly.

"You belong with me," Andrew wrote.  "It is not right that Jean's
husband should support my mother.  I can do it easily now.  You shall
have a good room and every comfort.  The old house will let for enough
to give you quite a little income of your own, or it can be sold and I
will invest the money where you'll get a deal more out of it.  It is not
right that you should live alone there.  Sally is old and liable to
accident.  I am anxious about you.  Come on for Thanksgiving--and come
to stay.  Here is the money to come with.  You know I want you.  Annie
joins me in sending love.  ANDREW."

Mrs. Morrison read it all through again, and laid it down with her
quiet, twinkling smile.  Then she read Jean's.

"Now, mother, you've got to come to us for Thanksgiving this year.  Just
think!  You haven't seen baby since he was three months old!  And have
never seen the twins.  You won't know him--he's such a splendid big boy
now.  Joe says for you to come, of course.  And, mother, why won't you
come and live with us?  Joe wants you, too. There's the little room
upstairs; it's not very big, but we can put in a Franklin stove for you
and make you pretty comfortable.  Joe says he should think you ought to
sell that white elephant of a place.  He says he could put the money
into his store and pay you good interest.  I wish you would, mother.
We'd just love to have you here.  You'd be such a comfort to me, and
such a help with the babies.  And Joe just loves you.  Do come now, and
stay with us.  Here is the money for the trip.--Your affectionate
daughter, JEANNIE."

Mrs. Morrison laid this beside the other, folded both, and placed them
in their respective envelopes, then in their several well-filled
pigeon-holes in her big, old-fashioned desk.  She turned and paced
slowly up and down the long parlor, a tall woman, commanding of aspect,
yet of a winningly attractive manner, erect and light-footed, still
imposingly handsome.

It was now November, the last lingering boarder was long since gone, and
a quiet winter lay before her.  She was alone, but for Sally; and she
smiled at Andrew's cautious expression, "liable to accident."  He could
not say "feeble" or "ailing," Sally being a colored lady of changeless
aspect and incessant activity.

Mrs. Morrison was alone, and while living in the Welcome House she was
never unhappy.  Her father had built it, she was born there, she grew up
playing on the broad green lawns in front, and in the acre of garden
behind.  It was the finest house in the village, and she then thought it
the finest in the world.

Even after living with her father at Washington and abroad, after
visiting hall, castle and palace, she still found the Welcome House
beautiful and impressive.

If she kept on taking boarders she could live the year through, and pay
interest, but not principal, on her little mortgage. This had been the
one possible and necessary thing while the children were there, though
it was a business she hated.

But her youthful experience in diplomatic circles, and the years of
practical management in church affairs, enabled her to bear it with
patience and success.  The boarders often confided to one another, as
they chatted and tatted on the long piazza, that Mrs. Morrison was
"certainly very refined."

Now Sally whisked in cheerfully, announcing supper, and Mrs. Morrison
went out to her great silver tea-tray at the lit end of the long, dark
mahogany table, with as much dignity as if twenty titled guests were
before her.

Afterward Mr. Butts called.  He came early in the evening, with his
usual air of determination and a somewhat unusual spruceness.  Mr. Peter
Butts was a florid, blonde person, a little stout, a little pompous,
sturdy and immovable in the attitude of a self-made man.  He had been a
poor boy when she was a rich girl; and it gratified him much to
realize--and to call upon her to realize--that their positions had
changed.  He meant no unkindness, his pride was honest and unveiled.
Tact he had none.

She had refused Mr. Butts, almost with laughter, when he proposed to her
in her gay girlhood.  She had refused him, more gently, when he proposed
to her in her early widowhood.  He had always been her friend, and her
husband's friend, a solid member of the church, and had taken the small
mortgage of the house.  She refused to allow him at first, but he was
convincingly frank about it.

"This has nothing to do with my wanting you, Delia Morrison," he said.
"I've always wanted you--and I've always wanted this house, too.  You
won't sell, but you've got to mortgage.  By and by you can't pay up, and
I'll get it--see?  Then maybe you'll take me--to keep the house.  Don't
be a fool, Delia. It's a perfectly good investment."

She had taken the loan.  She had paid the interest.  She would pay the
interest if she had to take boarders all her life.  And she would not,
at any price, marry Peter Butts.

He broached the subject again that evening, cheerful and undismayed.
"You might as well come to it, Delia," he said.  "Then we could live
right here just the same. You aren't so young as you were, to be sure;
I'm not, either.  But you are as good a housekeeper as
ever--better--you've had more experience."

"You are extremely kind, Mr. Butts," said the lady, "but I do not wish
to marry you."

"I know you don't," he said.  "You've made that clear.  You don't, but I
do.  You've had your way and married the minister.  He was a good man,
but he's dead.  Now you might as well marry me."

"I do not wish to marry again, Mr. Butts; neither you nor anyone."

"Very proper, very proper, Delia," he replied.  "It wouldn't look well
if you did--at any rate, if you showed it.  But why shouldn't you?  The
children are gone now--you can't hold them up against me any more."

"Yes, the children are both settled now, and doing nicely," she
admitted.

"You don't want to go and live with them--either one of them--do you?"
he asked.

"I should prefer to stay here," she answered.

"Exactly!  And you can't!  You'd rather live here and be a grandee--but
you can't do it.  Keepin' house for boarders isn't any better than
keepin' house for me, as I see.  You'd much better marry me."

"I should prefer to keep the house without you, Mr. Butts."

"I know you would.  But you can't, I tell you. I'd like to know what a
woman of your age can do with a house like this--and no money?  You
can't live eternally on hens' eggs and garden truck. That won't pay the
mortgage."

Mrs. Morrison looked at him with her cordial smile, calm and
non-committal.  "Perhaps I can manage it," she said.

"That mortgage falls due two years from Thanksgiving, you know."

"Yes--I have not forgotten."

"Well, then, you might just as well marry me now, and save two years of
interest.  It'll be my house, either way--but you'll be keepin' it just
the same."

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Butts.  I must decline the offer none the
less. I can pay the interest, I am sure.  And perhaps--in two years'
time--I can pay the principal.  It's not a large sum."

"That depends on how you look at it," said he. "Two thousand dollars is
considerable money for a single woman to raise in two years--_and_
interest."

He went away, as cheerful and determined as ever; and Mrs. Morrison saw
him go with a keen, light in her fine eyes, a more definite line to that
steady, pleasant smile.

Then she went to spend Thanksgiving with Andrew.  He was glad to see
her.  Annie was glad to see her.  They proudly installed her in "her
room," and said she must call it "home" now.

This affectionately offered home was twelve by fifteen, and eight feet
high.  It had two windows, one looking at some pale gray clapboards
within reach of a broom, the other giving a view of several small fenced
yards occupied by cats, clothes and children. There was an ailanthus
tree under the window, a lady ailanthus tree.  Annie told her how
profusely it bloomed.  Mrs. Morrison particularly disliked the smell of
ailanthus flowers.  "It doesn't bloom in November," said she to herself.
 "I can be thankful for that!"

Andrew's church was very like the church of his father, and Mrs. Andrew
was doing her best to fill the position of minister's wife--doing it
well, too--there was no vacancy for a minister's mother.

Besides, the work she had done so cheerfully to help her husband was not
what she most cared for, after all.  She liked the people, she liked to
manage, but she was not strong on doctrine.  Even her husband had never
known how far her views differed from his.  Mrs. Morrison had never
mentioned what they were.

Andrew's people were very polite to her.  She was invited out with them,
waited upon and watched over and set down among the old ladies and
gentlemen--she had never realized so keenly that she was no longer
young.  Here nothing recalled her youth, every careful provision
anticipated age.  Annie brought her a hot-water bag at night, tucking it
in at the foot of the bed with affectionate care.  Mrs. Morrison thanked
her, and subsequently took it out--airing the bed a little before she
got into it.  The house seemed very hot to her, after the big, windy
halls at home.

The little dining-room, the little round table with the little round
fern-dish in the middle, the little turkey and the little
carving-set--game-set she would have called it--all made her feel as if
she was looking through the wrong end of an opera-glass.

In Annie's precise efficiency she saw no room for her assistance; no
room in the church, no room in the small, busy town, prosperous and
progressive, and no room in the house.  "Not enough to turn round in!"
she said to herself.  Annie, who had grown up in a city flat, thought
their little parsonage palatial.  Mrs. Morrison grew up in the Welcome
House.

She stayed a week, pleasant and polite, conversational, interested in
all that went on.

"I think your mother is just lovely," said Annie to Andrew.

"Charming woman, your mother," said the leading church member.

"What a delightful old lady your mother is!" said the pretty soprano.

And Andrew was deeply hurt and disappointed when she announced her
determination to stay on for the present in her old home.  "Dear boy,"
she said, "you mustn't take it to heart.  I love to be with you, of
course, but I love my home, and want to keep it is long as I can.  It is
a great pleasure to see you and Annie so well settled, and so happy
together.  I am most truly thankful for you."

"My home is open to you whenever you wish to come, mother," said Andrew.
 But he was a little angry.

Mrs. Morrison came home as eager as a girl, and opened her own door with
her own key, in spite of Sally's haste.

Two years were before her in which she must find some way to keep
herself and Sally, and to pay two thousand dollars and the interest to
Peter Butts.  She considered her assets.  There was the house--the white
elephant.  It _was_ big--very big.  It was profusely furnished.  Her
father had entertained lavishly like the Southern-born, hospitable
gentleman he was; and the bedrooms ran in suites--somewhat deteriorated
by the use of boarders, but still numerous and habitable.  Boarders--she
abhorred them.  They were people from afar, strangers and interlopers.
She went over the place from garret to cellar, from front gate to
backyard fence.

The garden had great possibilities.  She was fond of gardening. and
understood it well.  She measured and estimated.

"This garden," she finally decided, "with the hens, will feed us two
women and sell enough to pay Sally.  If we make plenty of jelly, it may
cover the coal bill, too.  As to clothes--I don't need any.  They last
admirably.  I can manage.  I can _live_--but two thousand dollars--_and_
interest!"

In the great attic was more furniture, discarded sets put there when her
extravagant young mother had ordered new ones.  And chairs--uncounted
chairs.  Senator Welcome used to invite numbers to meet his political
friends--and they had delivered glowing orations in the wide, double
parlors, the impassioned speakers standing on a temporary dais, now in
the cellar; and the enthusiastic listeners disposed more or less
comfortably on these serried rows of "folding chairs," which folded
sometimes, and let down the visitor in scarlet confusion to the floor.

She sighed as she remembered those vivid days and glittering nights.
She used to steal downstairs in her little pink wrapper and listen to
the eloquence.  It delighted her young soul to see her father rising on
his toes, coming down sharply on his heels, hammering one hand upon the
other; and then to hear the fusilade of applause.

Here were the chairs, often borrowed for weddings, funerals, and church
affairs, somewhat worn and depleted, but still numerous.  She mused upon
them.  Chairs--hundreds of chairs.  They would sell for very little.

She went through her linen room.  A splendid stock in the old days;
always carefully washed by Sally; surviving even the boarders.  Plenty
of bedding, plenty of towels, plenty of napkins and tablecloths.  "It
would make a good hotel--but I _can't_ have it so--I _can't!_  Besides,
there's no need of another hotel here.  The poor little Haskins House is
never full."

The stock in the china closet was more damaged than some other things,
naturally; but she inventoried it with care.  The countless cups of
crowded church receptions were especially prominent.  Later additions
these, not very costly cups, but numerous, appallingly.

When she had her long list of assets all in order, she sat and studied
it with a clear and daring mind.  Hotel--boarding-house--she could think
of nothing else.  School!  A girls' school!  A boarding school!  There
was money to be made at that, and fine work done.  It was a brilliant
thought at first, and she gave several hours, and much paper and ink, to
its full consideration.  But she would need some capital for
advertising; she must engage teachers--adding to her definite
obligation; and to establish it, well, it would require time.

Mr. Butts, obstinate, pertinacious, oppressively affectionate, would
give her no time.  He meant to force her to marry him for her own
good--and his.  She shrugged her fine shoulders with a little shiver.
Marry Peter Butts!  Never!  Mrs. Morrison still loved her husband.  Some
day she meant to see him again--God willing--and she did not wish to
have to tell him that at fifty she had been driven into marrying Peter
Butts.

Better live with Andrew.  Yet when she thought of living with Andrew,
she shivered again.  Pushing back her sheets of figures and lists of
personal property, she rose to her full graceful height and began to
walk the floor.  There was plenty of floor to walk.  She considered,
with a set deep thoughtfulness, the town and the townspeople, the
surrounding country, the hundreds upon hundreds of women whom she
knew--and liked, and who liked her.

It used to be said of Senator Welcome that he had no enemies; and some
people, strangers, maliciously disposed, thought it no credit to his
character.  His daughter had no enemies, but no one had ever blamed her
for her unlimited friendliness.  In her father's wholesale
entertainments the whole town knew and admired his daughter; in her
husband's popular church she had come to know the women of the
countryside about them.  Her mind strayed off to these women, farmers'
wives, comfortably off in a plain way, but starving for companionship,
for occasional stimulus and pleasure.  It was one of her joys in her
husband's time to bring together these women--to teach and entertain
them.

Suddenly she stopped short in the middle of the great high-ceiled room,
and drew her head up proudly like a victorious queen.  One wide,
triumphant, sweeping glance she cast at the well-loved walls--and went
back to her desk, working swiftly, excitedly, well into the hours of the
night.

*

Presently the little town began to buzz, and the murmur ran far out into
the surrounding country. Sunbonnets wagged over fences; butcher carts
and pedlar's wagon carried the news farther; and ladies visiting found
one topic in a thousand houses.

Mrs. Morrison was going to entertain.  Mrs. Morrison had invited the
whole feminine population, it would appear, to meet Mrs. Isabelle Carter
Blake, of Chicago.  Even Haddleton had heard of Mrs. Isabelle Carter
Blake.  And even Haddleton had nothing but admiration for her.

She was known the world over for her splendid work for children--for the
school children and the working children of the country.  Yet she was
known also to have lovingly and wisely reared six children of her
own--and made her husband happy in his home.  On top of that she had
lately written a novel, a popular novel, of which everyone was talking;
and on top of that she was an intimate friend of a certain conspicuous
Countess--an Italian.

It was even rumored, by some who knew Mrs. Morrison better than
others--or thought they did--that the Countess was coming, too!  No one
had known before that Delia Welcome was a school-mate of Isabel Carter,
and a lifelong friend; and that was ground for talk in itself.

The day arrived, and the guests arrived.  They came in hundreds upon
hundreds, and found ample room in the great white house.

The highest dream of the guests was realized--the Countess had come,
too.  With excited joy they met her, receiving impressions that would
last them for all their lives, for those large widening waves of
reminiscence which delight us the more as years pass.  It was an
incredible glory--Mrs. Isabelle Carter Blake, _and_ a Countess!

Some were moved to note that Mrs. Morrison looked the easy peer of these
eminent ladies, and treated the foreign nobility precisely as she did
her other friends.

She spoke, her clear quiet voice reaching across the murmuring din, and
silencing it.

"Shall we go into the east room?  If you will all take chairs in the
east room, Mrs. Blake is going to be so kind as to address us.  Also
perhaps her friend--"

They crowded in, sitting somewhat timorously on the unfolded chairs.

Then the great Mrs. Blake made them an address of memorable power and
beauty, which received vivid sanction from that imposing presence in
Parisian garments on the platform by her side.  Mrs. Blake spoke to them
of the work she was interested in, and how it was aided everywhere by
the women's clubs.  She gave them the number of these clubs, and
described with contagious enthusiasm the inspiration of their great
meetings.  She spoke of the women's club houses, going up in city after
city, where many associations meet and help one another.  She was
winning and convincing and most entertaining--an extremely attractive
speaker.

Had they a women's club there?  They had not.

Not _yet,_ she suggested, adding that it took no time at all to make
one.

They were delighted and impressed with Mrs. Blake's speech, but its
effect was greatly intensified by the address of the Countess.

"I, too, am American," she told them; "born here, reared in England,
married in Italy."  And she stirred their hearts with a vivid account of
the women's clubs and associations all over Europe, and what they were
accomplishing.  She was going back soon, she said, the wiser and happier
for this visit to her native land, and she should remember particularly
this beautiful, quiet town, trusting that if she came to it again it
would have joined the great sisterhood of women, "whose hands were
touching around the world for the common good."

It was a great occasion.

The Countess left next day, but Mrs. Blake remained, and spoke in some
of the church meetings, to an ever widening circle of admirers.  Her
suggestions were practical.

"What you need here is a 'Rest and Improvement Club,'" she said.  "Here
are all you women coming in from the country to do your shopping--and no
place to go to.  No place to lie down if you're tired, to meet a friend,
to eat your lunch in peace, to do your hair.  All you have to do is
organize, pay some small regular due, and provide yourselves with what
you want."

There was a volume of questions and suggestions, a little opposition,
much random activity.

Who was to do it?  Where was there a suitable place?  They would have to
hire someone to take charge of it.  It would only be used once a week.
It would cost too much.

Mrs. Blake, still practical, made another suggestion.  Why not combine
business with pleasure, and make use of the best place in town, if you
can get it?  I _think_ Mrs. Morrison could be persuaded to let you use
part of her house; it's quite too big for one woman."

Then Mrs. Morrison, simple and cordial as ever, greeted with warm
enthusiasm by her wide circle of friends.

"I have been thinking this over," she said.  "Mrs. Blake has been
discussing it with me.  My house is certainly big enough for all of you,
and there am I, with nothing to do but entertain you.  Suppose you
formed such a club as you speak of--for Rest and Improvement.  My
parlors are big enough for all manner of meetings; there are bedrooms in
plenty for resting.  If you form such a club I shall be glad to help
with my great, cumbersome house, shall be delighted to see so many
friends there so often; and I think I could furnish accommodations more
cheaply than you could manage in any other way.

Then Mrs. Blake gave them facts and figures, showing how much clubhouses
cost--and how little this arrangement would cost.  "Most women have very
little money, I know," she said, "and they hate to spend it on
themselves when they have; but even a little money from each goes a long
way when it is put together.  I fancy there are none of us so poor we
could not squeeze out, say ten cents a week.  For a hundred women that
would be ten dollars.  Could you feed a hundred tired women for ten
dollars, Mrs. Morrison?"

Mrs. Morrison smiled cordially.  "Not on chicken pie," she said, "But I
could give them tea and coffee, crackers and cheese for that, I think.
And a quiet place to rest, and a reading room, and a place to hold
meetings."

Then Mrs. Blake quite swept them off their feet by her wit and
eloquence.  She gave them to understand that if a share in the palatial
accommodation of the Welcome House, and as good tea and coffee as old
Sally made, with a place to meet, a place to rest, a place to talk, a
place to lie down, could be had for ten cents a week each, she advised
them to clinch the arrangement at once before Mrs. Morrison's natural
good sense had overcome her enthusiasm.

Before Mrs. Isabelle Carter Blake had left, Haddleton had a large and
eager women's club, whose entire expenses, outside of stationary and
postage, consisted of ten cents a week _per capita,_ paid to Mrs.
Morrison.  Everybody belonged.  It was open at once for charter members,
and all pressed forward to claim that privileged place.

They joined by hundreds, and from each member came this tiny sum to Mrs.
Morrison each week. It was very little money, taken separately.  But it
added up with silent speed.  Tea and coffee, purchased in bulk, crackers
by the barrel, and whole cheeses--these are not expensive luxuries.  The
town was full of Mrs. Morrison's ex-Sunday-school boys, who furnished
her with the best they had--at cost.  There was a good deal of work, a
good deal of care, and room for the whole supply of Mrs. Morrison's
diplomatic talent and experience.  Saturdays found the Welcome House as
full as it could hold, and Sundays found Mrs. Morrison in bed.  But she
liked it.

A busy, hopeful year flew by, and then she went to Jean's for
Thanksgiving.

The room Jean gave her was about the same size as her haven in Andrew's
home, but one flight higher up, and with a sloping ceiling.  Mrs.
Morrison whitened her dark hair upon it, and rubbed her head confusedly.
 Then she shook it with renewed determination.

The house was full of babies.  There was little Joe, able to get about,
and into everything.  There were the twins, and there was the new baby.
There was one servant, over-worked and cross.  There was a small, cheap,
totally inadequate nursemaid.  There was Jean, happy but tired, full of
joy, anxiety and affection, proud of her children, proud of her husband,
and delighted to unfold her heart to her mother.

By the hour she babbled of their cares and hopes, while Mrs. Morrison,
tall and elegant in her well-kept old black silk, sat holding the baby
or trying to hold the twins.  The old silk was pretty well finished by
the week's end.  Joseph talked to her also, telling her how well he was
getting on, and how much he needed capital, urging her to come and stay
with them; it was such a help to Jeannie; asking questions about the
house.

There was no going visiting here.  Jeannie could not leave the babies.
And few visitors; all the little suburb being full of similarly
overburdened mothers.  Such as called found Mrs. Morrison charming.
What she found them, she did not say.  She bade her daughter an
affectionate good-bye when the week was up, smiling at their mutual
contentment.

"Good-bye, my dear children," she said.  "I am so glad for all your
happiness.  I am thankful for both of you."

But she was more thankful to get home.

Mr. Butts did not have to call for his interest this time, but he called
none the less.

"How on earth'd you get it, Delia?" he demanded.  "Screwed it out o'
these club-women?"

"Your interest is so moderate, Mr. Butts, that it is easier to meet than
you imagine," was her answer.  "Do you know the average interest they
charge in Colorado?  The women vote there, you know."

He went away with no more personal information than that; and no nearer
approach to the twin goals of his desire than the passing of the year.

"One more year, Delia," he said; "then you'll have to give in."

"One more year!" she said to herself, and took up her chosen task with
renewed energy.

The financial basis of the undertaking was very simple, but it would
never have worked so well under less skilful management.  Five dollars a
year these country women could not have faced, but ten cents a week was
possible to the poorest.  There was no difficulty in collecting, for
they brought it themselves; no unpleasantness in receiving, for old
Sally stood at the receipt of custom and presented the covered cash box
when they came for their tea.

On the crowded Saturdays the great urns were set going, the mighty array
of cups arranged in easy reach, the ladies filed by, each taking her
refection and leaving her dime.  Where the effort came was in enlarging
the membership and keeping up the attendance, and this effort was
precisely in the line of Mrs. Morrison's splendid talents.

Serene, cheerful, inconspicuously active, planning like the born
statesman she was, executing like a practical politician, Mrs. Morrison
gave her mind to the work, and thrived upon it.  Circle within circle,
and group within group, she set small classes and departments at work,
having a boys' club by and by in the big room over the woodshed, girls'
clubs, reading clubs, study clubs, little meetings of every sort that
were not held in churches, and some that were--previously.

For each and all there was, if wanted, tea and coffee, crackers and
cheese; simple fare, of unvarying excellence, and from each and all,
into the little cashbox, ten cents for these refreshments.  From the
club members this came weekly; and the club members, kept up by a
constant variety of interests, came every week.  As to numbers, before
the first six months was over The Haddleton Rest and Improvement Club
numbered five hundred women.

Now, five hundred times ten cents a week is twenty-six hundred dollars a
year.  Twenty-six hundred dollars a year would not be very much to build
or rent a large house, to furnish five hundred people with chairs,
lounges, books, and magazines, dishes and service; and with food and
drink even of the simplest.  But if you are miraculously supplied with a
club-house, furnished, with a manager and servant on the spot, then that
amount of money goes a long way.

On Saturdays Mrs. Morrison hired two helpers for half a day, for half a
dollar each.  She stocked the library with many magazines for fifty
dollars a year.  She covered fuel, light, and small miscellanies with
another hundred.  And she fed her multitude with the plain viands agreed
upon, at about four cents apiece.

For her collateral entertainments, her many visits, the various new
expenses entailed, she paid as well; and yet at the end of the first
year she had not only her interest, but a solid thousand dollars of
clear profit.  With a calm smile she surveyed it, heaped in neat stacks
of bills in the small safe in the wall behind her bed.  Even Sally did
not know it was there.

The second season was better than the first.  There were difficulties,
excitements, even some opposition, but she rounded out the year
triumphantly.  "After that," she said to herself, "they may have the
deluge if they like."

She made all expenses, made her interest, made a little extra cash,
clearly her own, all over and above the second thousand dollars.

Then did she write to son and daughter, inviting them and their families
to come home to Thanksgiving, and closing each letter with joyous pride:
"Here is the money to come with."

They all came, with all the children and two nurses.  There was plenty
of room in the Welcome House, and plenty of food on the long mahogany
table.  Sally was as brisk as a bee, brilliant in scarlet and purple;
Mrs. Morrison carved her big turkey with queenly grace.

"I don't see that you're over-run with club women, mother," said
Jeannie.

"It's Thanksgiving, you know; they're all at home.  I hope they are all
as happy, as thankful for their homes as I am for mine," said Mrs.
Morrison.

Afterward Mr. Butts called.  With dignity and calm unruffled, Mrs.
Morrison handed him his interest--and principal.

Mr. Butts was almost loath to receive it, though his hand automatically
grasped the crisp blue check.

"I didn't know you had a bank account," he protested, somewhat
dubiously.

"Oh, yes; you'll find the check will be honored, Mr. Butts."

"I'd like to know how you got this money.  You _can't_ 'a' skinned it
out o' that club of yours."

"I appreciate your friendly interest, Mr. Butts; you have been most
kind."

"I believe some of these great friends of yours have lent it to you.
You won't be any better off, I can tell you."

"Come, come, Mr. Butts!  Don't quarrel with good money.  Let us part
friends."

And they parted.



HOW DOTH THE HAT


How doth the hat loom large upon her head!
Furred like a busby; plumed as hearses are;
Armed with eye-spearing quills; bewebbed and hung
With lacy, silky, downy draperies;
With spread, wide-waggling feathers fronded high
In bosky thickets of Cimmerian gloom.

How doth the hat with colors dare the eye!
Arrest--attract--allure--affront--appall!
Vivid and varied as are paroquets;
Dove-dull; one mass of white; all solid red;
Black with the blackness of a mourning world--
Compounded type of "Chaos and Old Night"!

How doth the hat expand: wax wide, and swell!
Such is its size that none can predicate
Or hair, or head, or shoulders of the frame
Below thIs bulk, this beauty-burying bulk;
Trespassing rude on all who walk beside,
Brutally blinding all who sit behind.

How doth the hat's mere mass more monstrous grow
Into a riot of repugnant shapes!
Shapes ignominious, extreme, bizarre,
Bulbous, distorted, unsymmetrical--
Of no relation to the human head--
To beauty, comfort, dignity or grace.

Shape of a dishpan!  Of a pail!  A tub!
Of an inverted wastebasket wherein
The head finds lodgment most appropriate!
Shape of a wide-spread wilted griddlecake!
Shape of the body of an octopus
Set sideways on a fireman's misplaced brim!

How doth the hat show callous cruelty
In decoration costing countless deaths;
Carrying corpses for its ornaments;
Wreath of dead humming-birds, dismembered gulls,
The mother heron's breastknot, stiffened wings;
Torn fragments of a world of wasted life.

How doth the hat effect the minds of men?
Patient bill-payers, chivalrously dumb!
What does it indicate of woman's growth;
Her sense of beauty, her intelligence,
Her thought for others measured with herself,
Her place and grade in human life to-day?



INTRODUCING THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL


"O, no--Please don't--I'd rather not meet them!"

I'm sorry but you have to meet them, constantly.

"But I don't have to know them, surely!"

You will find it safer and easier if you do.

"But they are not proper persons to meet--I've heard awful things about
them."

Those stories come from people who never really knew them.  They have
been much maligned I assure you.  Let me tell you a little about them
before they come up.

The World yonder is really an excellent fellow, but sulky and erratic
because he's not well used.  Think of a beautiful, fruitful, home garden
used for nothing but to play ball and fight in--and then blamed for its
condition.  That's the way he feels.

Then there's the Flesh.  Never was a good fellow more abused!  He's been
brought up wrong, from babyhood--but he's all right inside.

As to the Devil--we really ought to be ashamed of treating him so.  He'd
have died centuries ago, but we will keep him going--and then blame him
because his behavior's out of date!

Here they come.  Allow me to present:

The World--Just Us; We and our Workshop.

The Flesh--Just Us; Our Natural Vehicle and Servant.

The Devil--Just Us; but an Anachronism--an artificially preserved
Extinct Ancestor!



WHAT DIANTHA DID


CHAPTER I.

HANDICAPPED


One may use the Old Man of the Sea,
 For a partner or patron,
But helpless and hapless is he
Who is ridden, inextricably,
 By a fond old mer-matron.


The Warden house was more impressive in appearance than its neighbors.
It had "grounds," instead of a yard or garden; it had wide pillared
porches and "galleries," showing southern antecedents; moreover, it had
a cupola, giving date to the building, and proof of the continuing
ambitions of the builders.

The stately mansion was covered with heavy flowering vines, also with
heavy mortgages.  Mrs. Roscoe Warden and her four daughters reposed
peacefully under the vines, while Roscoe Warden, Jr., struggled
desperately under the mortgages.

A slender, languid lady was Mrs. Warden, wearing her thin but still
brown hair in "water-waves" over a pale high forehead. She was sitting
on a couch on the broad, rose-shaded porch, surrounded by billowing
masses of vari-colored worsted.  It was her delight to purchase skein on
skein of soft, bright-hued wool, cut it all up into short lengths, tie
them together again in contrasting colors, and then crochet this hashed
rainbow into afghans of startling aspect.  California does not call for
afghans to any great extent, but "they make such acceptable presents,"
Mrs. Warden declared, to those who questioned the purpose of her work;
and she continued to send them off, on Christmases, birthdays, and minor
weddings, in a stream of pillowy bundles.  As they were accepted, they
must have been acceptable, and the stream flowed on.

Around her, among the gay blossoms and gayer wools, sat her four
daughters, variously intent.  The mother, a poetic soul, had named them
musically and with dulcet rhymes: Madeline and Adeline were the two
eldest, Coraline and Doraline the two youngest.  It had not occurred to
her until too late that those melodious terminations made it impossible
to call one daughter without calling two, and that "Lina" called them
all.

"Mis' Immerjin," said a soft voice in the doorway, "dere pos'tively
ain't no butter in de house fer supper."

"No butter?" said Mrs. Warden, incredulously.  "Why, Sukey, I'm sure we
had a tub sent up last--last Tuesday!"

"A week ago Tuesday, more likely, mother," suggested Dora.

"Nonsense, Dora!  It was this week, wasn't it, girls?"  The mother
appealed to them quite earnestly, as if the date of that tub's delivery
would furnish forth the supper-table; but none of the young ladies save
Dora had even a contradiction to offer.

"You know I never notice things," said the artistic Cora; and "the
de-lines," as their younger sisters called them, said nothing.

"I might borrow some o' Mis' Bell?" suggested Sukey; "dat's nearer 'n'
de sto'."

"Yes, do, Sukey," her mistress agreed.  "It is so hot.  But what have
you done with that tubful?"

"Why, some I tuk back to Mis' Bell for what I borrered befo'--I'm always
most careful to make return for what I borrers--and yo' know, Mis'
Warden, dat waffles and sweet potaters and cohn bread dey do take
butter; to say nothin' o' them little cakes you all likes so well--_an'_
de fried chicken, _an'_--"

"Never mind, Sukey; you go and present my compliments to Mrs. Bell, and
ask her for some; and be sure you return it promptly.  Now, girls, don't
let me forget to tell Ross to send up another tub."

"We can't seem to remember any better than you can, mother," said
Adeline, dreamily.  "Those details are so utterly uninteresting."

"I should think it was Sukey's business to tell him," said Madeline with
decision; while the "a-lines" kept silence this time.

"There!  Sukey's gone!" Mrs. Warden suddenly remarked, watching the
stout figure moving heavily away under the pepper trees.  "And I meant
to have asked her to make me a glass of shrub!  Dora, dear, you run and
get it for mother."

Dora laid down her work, not too regretfully, and started off.

"That child is the most practical of any of you," said her mother; which
statement was tacitly accepted.  It was not extravagant praise.

Dora poked about in the refrigerator for a bit of ice.  She ho no idea
of the high cost of ice in that region--it came from "the store," like
all their provisions.  It did not occur to her that fish and milk and
melons made a poor combination in flavor; or that the clammy,
sub-offensive smell was not the natural and necessary odor of
refrigerators.  Neither did she think that a sunny corner of the back
porch near the chimney, though convenient, was an ill-selected spot for
a refrigerator.  She couldn't find the ice-pick, so put a big piece of
ice in a towel and broke it on the edge of the sink; replaced the
largest fragment, used what she wanted, and left the rest to filter
slowly down through a mass of grease and tea-leaves; found the raspberry
vinegar, and made a very satisfactory beverage which her mother received
with grateful affection.

"Thank you, my darling," she said. "I wish you'd made a pitcherful."

"Why didn't you, Do?" her sisters demanded.

"You're too late," said Dora, hunting for her needle and then for her
thimble, and then for her twist; "but there's more in the kitchen."

"I'd rather go without than go into the kitchen," said Adeline; "I do
despise a kitchen."  And this seemed to be the general sentiment; for no
one moved.

"My mother always liked raspberry shrub," said Mrs. Warden; "and your
Aunt Leicester, and your Raymond cousins."

Mrs. Warden had a wide family circle, many beloved relatives,
"connections" of whom she was duly proud and "kin" in such widening
ramifications that even her carefully reared daughters lost track of
them.

"You young people don't seem to care about your cousins at all!" pursued
their mother, somewhat severely, setting her glass on the railing, from
whence it was presently knocked off and broken.

"That's the fifth!" remarked Dora, under breath.

"Why should we, Ma?" inquired Cora.  "We've never seen one of
them--except Madam Weatherstone!"

"We'll never forget _her!"_ said Madeline, with delicate decision,
laying down the silk necktie she was knitting for Roscoe.  "What
_beautiful_ manners she had!"

"How rich is she, mother?  Do you know?" asked Dora.

"Rich enough to do something for Roscoe, I'm sure, if she had a proper
family spirit," replied Mrs. Warden.  "Her mother was own cousin to my
grandmother--one of the Virginia Paddingtons.  Or she might do something
for you girls."

"I wish she would!" Adeline murmured, softly, her large eyes turned to
the horizon, her hands in her lap over the handkerchief she was marking
for Roscoe.

"Don't be ungrateful, Adeline," said her mother, firmly.  "You have a
good home and a good brother; no girl ever had a better."

"But there is never anything going on," broke in Coraline, in a tone of
complaint; "no parties, no going away for vacations, no anything."

"Now, Cora, don't be discontented!  You must not add a straw to dear
Roscoe's burdens," said her mother.

"Of course not, mother; I wouldn't for the world.  I never saw her but
that once; and she wasn't very cordial.  But, as you say, she might do
_something._  She might invite us to visit her."

"If she ever comes back again, I'm going to recite for her," said, Dora,
firmly.

Her mother gazed fondly on her youngest.  "I wish you could, dear," she
agreed.  "I'm sure you have talent; and Madam Weatherstone would
recognize it.  And Adeline's music too.  And Cora's art.  I am very
proud of my girls."

Cora sat where the light fell well upon her work.  She was illuminating
a volume of poems, painting flowers on the margins, in appropriate
places--for Roscoe.

"I wonder if he'll care for it?" she said, laying down her brush and
holding the book at arm's length to get the effect.

"Of course he will!" answered her mother, warmly.  "It is not only the
beauty of it, but the affection!  How are you getting on, Dora?"

Dora was laboring at a task almost beyond her fourteen years, consisting
of a negligee shirt of outing flannel, upon the breast of which she was
embroidering a large, intricate design--for Roscoe.  She was an
ambitious child, but apt to tire in the execution of her large projects.

"I guess it'll be done," she said, a little wearily. "What are you going
to give him, mother?"

"Another bath-robe; his old one is so worn.  And nothing is too good for
my boy."

"He's coming," said Adeline, who was still looking down the road; and
they all concealed their birthday work in haste.

A tall, straight young fellow, with an air of suddenly-faced maturity
upon him, opened the gate under the pepper trees and came toward them.

He had the finely molded features we see in portraits of handsome
ancestors, seeming to call for curling hair a little longish, and a rich
profusion of ruffled shirt.  But his hair was sternly short, his shirt
severely plain, his proudly carried head spoke of effort rather than of
ease in its attitude.

Dora skipped to meet him, Cora descended a decorous step or two.
Madeline and Adeline, arm in arm, met him at the piazza edge, his mother
lifted her face.

"Well, mother, dear!"  Affectionately he stooped and kissed her, and she
held his hand and stroked it lovingly. The sisters gathered about with
teasing affection, Dora poking in his coat-pocket for the stick candy
her father always used to bring her, and her brother still remembered.

"Aren't you home early, dear?" asked Mrs. Warden.

"Yes; I had a little headache"--he passed his hand over his
forehead--"and Joe can run the store till after supper, anyhow."  They
flew to get him camphor, cologne, a menthol-pencil.  Dora dragged forth
the wicker lounge.  He was laid out carefully and fanned and fussed over
till his mother drove them all away.

"Now, just rest," she said. "It's an hour to supper time yet!"  And she
covered him with her latest completed afghan, gathering up and carrying
away the incomplete one and its tumultuous constituents.

He was glad of the quiet, the fresh, sweet air, the smell of flowers
instead of the smell of molasses and cheese, soap and sulphur matches.
But the headache did not stop, nor the worry that caused it.  He loved
his mother, he loved his sisters, he loved their home, but he did not
love the grocery business which had fallen so unexpectedly upon him at
his father's death, nor the load of debt which fell with it.

That they need never have had so large a "place" to "keep up" did not
occur to him.  He had lived there most of his life, and it was home.
That the expenses of running the household were three times what they
needed to be, he did not know.  His father had not questioned their
style of living, nor did he.  That a family of five women might, between
them, do the work of the house, he did not even consider.

Mrs. Warden's health was never good, and since her husband's death she
had made daily use of many afghans on the many lounges of the house.
Madeline was "delicate," and Adeline was "frail"; Cora was "nervous,"
Dora was "only a child."  So black Sukey and her husband Jonah did the
work of the place, so far as it was done; and Mrs. Warden held it a
miracle of management that she could "do with one servant," and the
height of womanly devotion on her daughters' part that they dusted the
parlor and arranged the flowers.

Roscoe shut his eyes and tried to rest, but his problem beset him
ruthlessly.  There was the store--their one and only source of income.
There was the house, a steady, large expense.  There were five women to
clothe and keep contented, beside himself.  There was the unappeasable
demand of the mortgage--and there was Diantha.

When Mr. Warden died, some four years previously, Roscoe was a lad of
about twenty, just home from college, full of dreams of great service to
the world in science, expecting to go back for his doctor's degree next
year.  Instead of which the older man had suddenly dropped beneath the
burden he had carried with such visible happiness and pride, such
unknown anxiety and straining effort; and the younger one had to step
into the harness on the spot.

He was brave, capable, wholly loyal to his mother and sisters, reared in
the traditions of older days as to a man's duty toward women.  In his
first grief for his father, and the ready pride with which he undertook
to fill his place, he had not in the least estimated the weight of care
he was to carry, nor the time that he must carry it.  A year, a year or
two, a few years, he told himself, as they passed, and he would make
more money; the girls, of course, would marry; he could "retire" in time
and take up his scientific work again.  Then--there was Diantha.

When he found he loved this young neighbor of theirs, and that she loved
him, the first flush of happiness made all life look easier.  They had
been engaged six months--and it was beginning to dawn upon the young man
that it might be six years--or sixteen years--before he could marry.

He could not sell the business--and if he could, he knew of no better
way to take care of his family.  The girls did not marry, and even when
they did, he had figured this out to a dreary certainty, he would still
not be free.  To pay the mortgages off, and keep up the house, even
without his sisters, would require all the money the store would bring
in for some six years ahead.  The young man set his teeth hard and
turned his head sharply toward the road.

And there was Diantha.

She stood at the gate and smiled at him.  He sprang to his feet,
headacheless for the moment, and joined her.  Mrs. Warden, from the
lounge by her bedroom window, saw them move off together, and sighed.

"Poor Roscoe!" she said to herself.  "It is very hard for him.  But he
carries his difficulties nobly.  He is a son to be proud of."  And she
wept a little.

Diantha slipped her hand in his offered arm--he clasped it warmly with
his, and they walked along together.

"You won't come in and see mother and the girls?"

"No, thank you; not this time.  I must get home and get supper.
Besides, I'd rather see just you."

He felt it a pity that there were so many houses along the road here,
but squeezed her hand, anyhow.

She looked at him keenly.  "Headache?" she asked.

"Yes; it's nothing; it's gone already."

"Worry?" she asked.

"Yes, I suppose it is," he answered.  "But I ought not to worry.  I've
got a good home, a good mother, good sisters, and--you!"  And he took
advantage of a high hedge and an empty lot on either side of them.

Diantha returned his kiss affectionately enough, but seemed preoccupied,
and walked in silence till he asked her what she was thinking about.

"About you, of course," she answered, brightly. "There are things I want
to say; and yet--I ought not to."

"You can say anything on earth to me," he answered.

"You are twenty-four," she began, musingly.

"Admitted at once."

"And I'm twenty-one and a half."

"That's no such awful revelation, surely!"

"And we've been engaged ever since my birthday," the girl pursued.

"All these are facts, dearest."

"Now, Ross, will you be perfectly frank with me?  May I ask you an--an
impertinent question?"

"You may ask me any question you like; it couldn't be impertinent."

"You'll be scandalised, I know--but--well, here goes.  What would you
think if Madeline--or any of the girls--should go away to work?"

He looked at her lovingly, but with a little smile on his firm mouth.

"I shouldn't allow it," he said.

"O--allow it?  I asked you what you'd think."

"I should think it was a disgrace to the family, and a direct reproach
to me," be answered.  "But it's no use talking about that.  None of the
girls have any such foolish notion.  And I wouldn't permit it if they
had."

Diantha smiled.  "I suppose you never would permit your wife to work?"

"My widow might have to--not my wife."  He held his fine head a trifle
higher, and her hand ached for a moment.

"Wouldn't you let me work--to help you, Ross?"

"My dearest girl, you've got something far harder than that to do for
me, and that's wait."

His face darkened again, and he passed his hand over his forehead.
"Sometimes I feel as if I ought not to hold you at all!" he burst out,
bitterly.  "You ought to be free to marry a better man."

"There aren't any!" said Diantha, shaking her head slowly from side to
side.  "And if there were--millions--I wouldn't marry any of 'em.  I
love _you,"_ she firmly concluded.

"Then we'll just _wait,"_ said he, setting his teeth on the word, as if
he would crush it.  "It won't be hard with you to help.  You're better
worth it than Rachael and Leah together."  They walked a few steps
silently.

"But how about science?" she asked him.

"I don't let myself think of it.  I'll take that up later.  We're young
enough, both of us, to wait for our happiness."

"And have you any idea--we might as well face the worst--how many years
do you think that will be, dearest?"

He was a little annoyed at her persistence.  Also, though he would not
admit the thought, it did not seem quite the thing for her to ask.  A
woman should not seek too definite a period of waiting.  She ought to
trust--to just wait on general principles.

"I can face a thing better if I know just what I'm facing," said the
girl, quietly, "and I'd wait for you, if I had to, all my life.  Will it
be twenty years, do you think?"

He looked relieved.  "Why, no, indeed, darling.  It oughtn't to be at
the outside more than five.  Or six," he added, honest though reluctant.

"You see, father had no time to settle anything; there were outstanding
accounts, and the funeral expenses, and the mortgages.  But the business
is good; and I can carry it; I can build it up."  He shook his broad
shoulders determinedly.  "I should think it might be within five,
perhaps even less. Good things happen sometimes--such as you, my heart's
delight."

They were at her gate now, and she stood a little while to say
good-night.  A step inside there was a seat, walled in by evergreen,
roofed over by the wide acacia boughs.  Many a long good-night had they
exchanged there, under the large, brilliant California moon.  They sat
there, silent, now.

Diantha's heart was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in
him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom.
His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear.  To her
mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family
lived in careless wastefulness.  That five women--for Dora was older
than she had been when she began to do housework--should require
servants, seemed to this New England-born girl mere laziness and pride.
That two voting women over twenty should prefer being supported by their
brother to supporting themselves, she condemned even more sharply.
Moreover, she felt well assured that with a different family to
"support," Mr. Warden would never have broken down so suddenly and
irrecoverably.  Even that funeral--her face hardened as she thought of
the conspicuous "lot," the continual flowers, the monument (not wholly
paid for yet, that monument, though this she did not know)--all that
expenditure to do honor to the man they had worked to death (thus
brutally Diantha put it) was probably enough to put off their happiness
for a whole year.

She rose at last, her hand still held in his.  "I'm sorry, but I've got
to get supper, dear," she said, "and you must go.  Good-night for the
present; you'll be round by and by?"

"Yes, for a little while, after we close up," said he, and took himself
off, not too suddenly, walking straight and proud while her eves were on
him, throwing her a kiss from the corner; but his step lagging and his
headache settling down upon him again as he neared the large house with
the cupola.

Diantha watched him out of sight, turned and marched up the path to her
own door, her lips set tight, her well-shaped head as straightly held as
his.  "It's a shame, a cruel, burning shame!" she told herself
rebelliously.  "A man of his ability.  Why, he could do anything, in his
own work!  And he loved it so!

"To keep a grocery store--

""And nothing to show for all that splendid effort!

"They don't do a thing?  They just _live_--and 'keep house!'  All those
women!

"Six years?  Likely to be sixty!  But I'm not going to wait!"



WHERE THE HEART IS


I.

A small stone city, very old, built upon rock, rock-paved, rock-bound
with twenty centuries of walls.

A Ghetto, an age-old Ghetto, crowded into a stony corner of the crowded
stony city; its steep and narrow confines not more a boundary than the
iron prejudices that built them.

In the Ghetto--life, human life; close-pressed, kept to its elemental
forms, with a vitality purchased at nature's awful price--by surviving
slow extinction.

This life, denied all larger grouping, finds its sole joy in fierce deep
love of family and home.  This home a room, a low and narrow room,
unwholesome, dark, incredibly filled up, yet overflowing most with love.

Here was peace.  Here was Honor wherewith to face the outer Scorn.  Here
was Safety--the only safety known.  Here, most of all was Love, Love,
wound and interwound with the blood-tie, deepened by religion,
intensified by centuries of relentless pressure, strengthened a
thousandfold by the unbroken cruelty of the environment.  Love, one with
the family; the family one with the home; the home, for generation after
generation--one room!

*

A miracle!  Some daughter of this house, strayed as a child, found by
eccentric travellers, taken to England, reared with love and care to
strange exotic beauty, marrying a great landowner so lost in passionate
devotion that he gave her all he had, and, dying, left her heir to vast
estates.

She following, her family inherit the estate, and come to take
possession.

They enter the tall pillared gates; they wander up the shaded avenue, a
little group, huddled and silent, timid, ill at ease.  They mount the
wide, white marble-terraced steps, the children crowding close, the
mother frightened, the father striving to hold up this new strange pride
under his time-swollen burden of humility and fear.

These towering halls, these broad-curved stairways, these lofty
chambers, even the great kitchens and their clustering offices, are to
this timid group as wide and desolate as deserts or the sea.

They seek a room, a room that shall be small enough and low enough and
dark enough; they reach at last one friendly sheltering little
room--crowd into it with tumultuous affection, and find a home!

*

It is home where the heart is!


II.

A new age where new power has conquered a new element, and sky-sailors
seek for large discoveries compared to which the old "new world" was but
a dooryard venture.  Our little world now known from coast to coast and
pole to pole; its problems solved, its full powers mastered; its sweet
serviceableness and unfailing comfort the common joy of all.

Later science, piling wonder upon wonder, handling radiant energy,
packing compressed air for long excursions into outer space, sends out
some skyship on tremendous errands of interstellar search.  Days, weeks,
they flit, with speed incredible, our earth a speck, our moon invisible,
our sun a star among the others now; then having done their work, turn
the sharp prow and study their vast charts for the return.

Out of that blackness, wider than our minds, back from the awful
strangeness of new stars, they turn and fly.  All know their charts, all
have their telescopes, all see that old familiar system swinging nearer.
 They greet the sun as we Fire Island--the moon like Sandy Hook.

But that small star, bigger and bigger now, its heavenly radiance fading
softly down to the warm glow of earthly beauty, coming out round and
full at last--ah! how they choke, how they cry out to see it!

Nearer--the blue skin of the all-enclosing sea, the green of
interrupting continents; now they can recognize the hemisphere--the
tears come--this is home!

*

It is home where the heart is.



THANKSGIVING


I never thought much of the folks who pray
 The Lord to make them thankful for a meal
Expecting Him to furnish all the food
And then provide them with the gratitude
 They haven't grace to feel.

I never thought much of this yearly thanks,
 Either for what once happened long ago,
Or for "our constant mercies."  To my mind
If we're to thank a Power that's daily kind,
 Our annual's too slow.

Suppose we spread Thanksgiving--hand it round--
 Give God an honest heartful every day;
And, while we're being thankful, why not give
Some gratitude to those by whom we live--
 As well as stingy pay?



OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE, or THE MAN-MADE WORLD


I.

AS TO HUMANNESS.


Let us begin, inoffensively, with sheep.  The sheep is a beast with
which we are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the
common stock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main
sources of clothing; and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and
stupidity.

In some grazing regions the sheep is an object of terror, destroying
grass, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains,
sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness of
the shepherd, and the monotonous appearance and behavior of the sheep.

By the poet, young sheep are preferred, the lamb gambolling gaily;
unless it be in hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeatedly
described, and much stress is laid upon the straying propensities of the
animal.

To the scientific mind there is special interest in the sequacity of
sheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation.
This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowded
racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spurs
and corners, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump.  If
those behind jumped exactly as he did, they lived.  If they stopped to
exercise independent judgment, they were pushed off and perished; they
and their judgment with them.

All these things, and many that are similar, occur to us when we think
of sheep.  They are also ewes and rams.  Yes, truly; but what of it?
All that has been said was said of sheep, _genus ovis,_ that bland
beast, compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness. so widely known.  If
we think of the sheep-dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and
shepherd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird of New Zealand, the
Kea (and Kea-ess), all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both rams
and ewes alike.  In regard to mutton, to wool, to general character, we
think only of their sheepishness, not at all of their ramishness or
eweishness. That which is ovine or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is
easily recognized as distinguishing that particular species of animal,
and has no relation whatever to the sex thereof.

Returning to our muttons, let us consider the ram, and wherein his
character differs from the sheep.  We find he has a more quarrelsome
disposition.  He paws the earth and makes a noise.  He has a tendency to
butt.  So has a goat--Mr. Goat.  So has Mr. Buffalo, and Mr. Moose, and
Mr. Antelope.  This tendency to plunge head foremost at an
adversary--and to find any other gentleman an adversary on
sight--evidently does not pertain to sheep, to _genus ovis;_ but to any
male creature with horns.

As "function comes before organ," we may even give a reminiscent glance
down the long path of evolution, and see how the mere act of
butting--passionately and perpetually repeated--born of the beliggerent
spirit of the male--produced horns!

The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love and care for her little ones,
gives them milk and tries to guard them.  But so does a goat--Mrs. Goat.
 So does Mrs. Buffalo and the rest.  Evidently this mother instinct is
no peculiarity of _genus ovis,_ but of any female creature.

Even the bird, though not a mammal, shows the same mother-love and
mother-care, while the father bird, though not a butter, fights with
beak and wing and spur.  His competition is more effective through
display.  The wish to please, the need to please, the overmastering
necessity upon him that he secure the favor of the female, has made the
male bird blossom like a butterfly.  He blazes in gorgeous plumage,
rears haughty crests and combs, shows drooping wattles and dangling
blobs such as the turkey-cock affords; long splendid feathers for pure
ornament appear upon him; what in her is a mere tail-effect becomes in
him a mass of glittering drapery.

Partridge-cock, farmyard-cock, peacock, from sparrow to ostrich, observe
his mien!  To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteous lure; to
sacrifice ease, comfort, speed, everything--to beauty--for her
sake--this is the nature of the he-bird of any species; the
characteristic, not of the turkey, but of the cock!  With drumming of
loud wings, with crow and quack and bursts of glorious song, he woos his
mate; displays his splendors before her; fights fiercely with his
rivals.  To butt--to strut--to make a noise--all for love's sake; these
acts are common to the male.

We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs
to the male--to any or all males, irrespective of species.  That is
feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females,
irrespective of species.  That is ovine, bovine, feline, canine, equine
or asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective of sex.

In our own species all this is changed.  We have been so taken up with
the phenomena of masculinity and femininity, that our common humanity
has largely escaped notice.  We know we are human, naturally, and are
very proud of it; but we do not consider in what our humanness consists;
nor how men and women may fall short of it, or overstep its bounds, in
continual insistence upon their special differences.  It is "manly" to
do this; it is "womanly" to do that; but what a human being should do
under the circumstances is not thought of.

The only time when we do recognize what we call "common humanity" is in
extreme cases, matters of life and death; when either man or woman is
expected to behave as if they were also human creatures.  Since the
range of feeling and action proper to humanity, as such, is far wider
than that proper to either sex, it seems at first somewhat remarkable
that we have given it so little recognition.

A little classification will help us here.  We have certain qualities in
common with inanimate matter, such as weight, opacity, resilience.  It
is clear that these are not human.  We have other qualities in common
with all forms of life; cellular construction, for instance, the
reproduction of cells and the need of nutrition.  These again are not
human.  We have others, many others, common to the higher mammals; which
are not exclusively ours--are not distinctively "human."  What then are
true human characteristics?  In what way is the human species
distinguished from all other species?

Our human-ness is seen most clearly in three main lines: it is
mechanical, psychical and social.  Our power to make and use things is
essentially human; we alone have extra-physical tools.  We have added to
our teeth the knife, sword, scissors, mowing machine; to our claws the
spade, harrow, plough, drill, dredge.  We are a protean creature, using
the larger brain power through a wide variety of changing weapons.  This
is one of our main and vital distinctions.  Ancient animal races are
traced and known by mere bones and shells, ancient human races by their
buildings, tools and utensils.

That degree of development which gives us the human mind is a clear
distinction of race.  The savage who can count a hundred is more human
than the savage who can count ten.

More prominent than either of these is the social nature of humanity.
We are by no means the only group-animal; that ancient type of industry
the ant, and even the well-worn bee, are social creatures.  But insects
of their kind are found living alone.  Human beings never.  Our
human-ness begins with some low form of social relation and increases as
that relation develops.

Human life of any sort is dependent upon what Kropotkin calls "mutual
aid," and human progress keeps step absolutely with that interchange of
specialized services which makes society organic.  The nomad, living on
cattle as ants live on theirs, is less human than the farmer, raising
food by intelligently applied labor; and the extension of trade and
commerce, from mere village market-places to the world-exchanges of
to-day, is extension of human-ness as well.

Humanity, thus considered, is not a thing made at once and unchangeable,
but a stage of development; and is still, as Wells describes it, "in the
making."  Our human-ness is seen to lie not so much in what we are
individually, as in our relations to one another; and even that
individuality is but the result of our relations to one another.  It is
in what we do and how we do it, rather than in what we are.  Some,
philosophically inclined, exalt "being" over "doing."  To them this
question may be put: "Can you mention any form of life that merely 'is,'
without doing anything?"

Taken separately and physically, we are animals, _genus homo_; taken
socially and psychically, we are, in varying degree, human; and our real
history lies in the development of this human-ness.

Our historic period is not very long.  Real written history only goes
back a few thousand years, beginning with the stone records of ancient
Egypt.  During this period we have had almost universally what is here
called an Androcentric Culture.  The history, such as it was, was made
and written by men.

The mental, the mechanical, the social development, was almost wholly
theirs.  We have, so far, lived and suffered and died in a man-made
world.  So general, so unbroken, has been this condition, that to
mention it arouses no more remark than the statement of a natural law.
We have taken it for granted, since the dawn of civilization, that
"mankind" meant men-kind, and the world was theirs.

Women we have sharply delimited.  Women were a sex, "the sex," according
to chivalrous toasts; they were set apart for special services peculiar
to femininity.  As one English scientist put it, in 1888, "Women are not
only not the race--they are not even half the race, but a subspecies
told off for reproduction only."

This mental attitude toward women is even more clearly expressed by Mr.
H. B. Marriot-Watson in his article on "The American Woman" in the
"Nineteenth Century" for June, 1904, where he says: "Her constitutional
restlessness has caused her to abdicate those functions which alone
excuse or explain her existence."  This is a peculiarly happy and
condensed expression of the relative position of women during our
androcentric culture.  The man was accepted as the race type without one
dissentient voice; and the woman--a strange, diverse creature, quite
disharmonious in the accepted scheme of things--was excused and
explained only as a female.

She has needed volumes of such excuse and explanation; also, apparently,
volumes of abuse and condemnation.  In any library catalogue we may find
books upon books about women: physiological, sentimental, didactic,
religious--all manner of books about women, as such.  Even to-day in the
works of Marholm--poor young Weininger, Moebius, and others, we find the
same perpetual discussion of women--as such.

This is a book about men--as such.  It differentiates between the human
nature and the sex nature.  It will not go so far as to allege man's
masculine traits to be all that excuse, or explain his existence: but it
will point out what are masculine traits as distinct from human ones,
and what has been the effect on our human life of the unbridled
dominance of one sex.

We can see at once, glaringly, what would have been the result of giving
all human affairs into female hands.  Such an extraordinary and
deplorable situation would have "feminized" the world.  We should have
all become "effeminate."

See how in our use of language the case is clearly shown.  The
adjectives and derivatives based on woman's distinctions are alien and
derogatory when applied to human affairs; "effeminate"--too female,
connotes contempt, but has no masculine analogue; whereas
"emasculate"--not enough male, is a term of reproach, and has no
feminine analogue.  "Virile"--manly, we oppose to "puerile"--childish,
and the very word "virtue" is derived from "vir"--a man.

Even in the naming of other animals we have taken the male as the race
type, and put on a special termination to indicate "his female," as in
lion, lioness; leopard, leopardess; while all our human scheme of things
rests on the same tacit assumption; man being held the human type; woman
a sort of accompaniment aud subordinate assistant, merely essential to
the making of people.

She has held always the place of a preposition in relation to man.  She
has been considered above him or below him, before him, behind him,
beside him, a wholly relative existence--"Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's
mother"--but never by any chance Sydney or Pembroke herself.

Acting on this assumption, all human standards have been based on male
characteristics, and when we wish to praise the work of a woman, we say
she has "a masculine mind."

It is no easy matter to deny or reverse a universal assumption.  The
human mind has had a good many jolts since it began to think, but after
each upheaval it settles down as peacefully as the vine-growers on
Vesuvius, accepting the last lava crust as permanent ground.

What we see immediately around us, what we are born into and grow up
with, be it mental furniture or physical, we assume to be the order of
nature.

If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, as
almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effort
to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of
the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those
who seek to change it.

Nevertheless, if the matter is one of importance, if the previous idea
was a palpable error, of large and evil effect, and if the new one is
true and widely important, the effort is worth making.

The task here undertaken is of this sort.  It seeks to show that what we
have all this time called "human nature" and deprecated, was in great
part only male nature, and good enough in its place; that what we have
called "masculine" and admired as such, was in large part human, and
should be applied to both sexes: that what we have called "feminine" and
condemned, was also largely human and applicable to both.  Our
androcentric culture is so shown to have been, and still to be, a
masculine culture in excess, and therefore undesirable.

In the preliminary work of approaching these facts it will be well to
explain how it can be that so wide and serious an error should have been
made by practically all men.  The reason is simply that they were men.
They were males, avid saw women as females--and not otherwise.

So absolute is this conviction that the man who reads will say, "Of
course!  How else are we to look at women except as females?  They are
females, aren't they?"  Yes, they are, as men are males unquestionably;
but there is possible the frame of mind of the old marquise who was
asked by an English friend how she could bear to have the footman serve
her breakfast in bed--to have a man in her bed-chamber--and replied
sincerely, "Call you that thing there a man?"

The world is full of men, but their principal occupation is human work
of some sort; and women see in them the human distinction
preponderantly.  Occasionally some unhappy lady marries her
coachman--long contemplation of broad shoulders having an effect,
apparently; but in general women see the human creature most; the male
creature only when they love.

To the man, the whole world was his world; his because he was male; and
the whole world of woman was the home; because she was female.  She had
her prescribed sphere, strictly limited to her feminine occupations and
interests; he had all the rest of life; and not only so, but, having it,
insisted on calling it male.

This accounts for the general attitude of men toward the now rapid
humanization of women.  From her first faint struggles toward freedom
and justice, to her present valiant efforts toward full economic and
political equality, each step has been termed "unfeminine" and resented
as an intrusion upon man's place and power.  Here shows the need of our
new classification, of the three distinct fields of life--masculine,
feminine and human.

As a matter of fact, there is a "woman's sphere," sharply defined and
quite different from his; there is also a "man's sphere," as sharply
defined and even more limited; but there remains a common sphere--that
of humanity, which belongs to both alike.

In the earlier part of what is known as "the woman's movement," it was
sharply opposed on the ground that women would become "unsexed."  Let us
note in passing that they have become unsexed in one particular, most
glaringly so, and that no one has noticed or objected to it.

As part of our androcentric culture we may point to the peculiar
reversal of sex characteristics which make the human female carry the
burden of ornament.  She alone, of all human creatures, has adopted the
essentially masculine attribute of special sex-decoration; she does not
fight for her mate as yet, but she blooms forth as the peacock and bird
of paradise, in poignant reversal of nature's laws, even wearing
masculine feathers to further her feminine ends.

Woman's natural work as a female is that of the mother; man's natural
work as a male is that of the father; their mutual relation to this end
being a source of joy and well-being when rightly held: but human work
covers all our life outside of these specialties.  Every handicraft,
every profession, every science, every art, all normal amusements and
recreations, all government, education, religion; the whole living world
of human achievement: all this is human.

That one sex should have monopolized all human activities, called them
"man's work," and managed them as such, is what is meant by the phrase
"Androcentric Culture."



COMMENT AND REVIEW


Why criticize?

Why does anybody criticize anything?  And why does THE FORERUNNER
criticize--the things herein treated?

On examination, we find several sources of criticism.  The earliest and
commonest is the mere expression of personal opinion, as is heard where
young persons are becoming acquainted, the voluble "I like this!" and
"Don't you like that?" and "Isn't such a thing horrid?"  For hours do
the impressionable young exchange their ardent sentiments; and the same
may be heard from older persons in everyday discussion.

This form of criticism has its value.  It serves to show, even
relentlessly to expose, the qualities and deficiencies of the critic.
What one "likes" merely shows what one is like.

The vitality dies out of it, however, when one learns two things; first,
that likings change with growth of character and new experience, and,
second, that few people are interested in an inventory of limitations.

Following this comes another painfully common source of criticism--the
desire to exhibit superiority.  The aged are prone to this fault in
discussion of the young and their achievements.  The elect in general
show it, seeking to prove to common people that these are not as they
are; the conservative rests his objection to anything new and different
on the same broad base; and the critic, the real, professional critic,
can hardly trust himself to approve warmly of anything, lest it weaken
his reputation.  If he does, it must be something which is caviar to the
general.

Then comes that amiable desire to instruct and assist, born of parental
instinct, fostered by pedagogy, intrusted by St. Paul to the "husband at
home."  Moved by this feeling, we point out the errors of our friends
and mark examination papers; and thus does the teacher of painting move
among his pupils and leave them in ranks of glimmering hope or dark
despair.

Another fruitful source of criticism is a natural wish to free one's
mind; as the hapless public sputters on the street, or in letters to the
papers, protesting against the stupidity and cruelty of its many
aggressors.  Under this impulse bursts forth the chattering flood of
discussion after play or lecture, merely to relieve the pressure.

Then comes a very evil cause--the desire to give pain, to injure.
Certain persons, and publications, use their critical ability with great
effect to this end.  In England it seems to be a sort of game, great
literary personages rush out into the open and belabor each other
mercilessly; while the public rejoices as at a prize-fight.  We
sometimes see a newspaper offering its readers a form of entertainment
which is not even a fight, nor yet a prompt and needed execution, but a
sort of torture-chamber exhibition, where the dumb victim is vilified
and ridiculed, grilled and "roasted," to make an American holiday.

There is one more cause of criticism--the need of money.  Some people
are hired to criticize others, the nature of their attentions wholly
dictated by the employer.  A shadowy bridge is opened here, connecting
criticism with advertisement.  Many cross it.

*

For any criticism to have value it must rest clearly and honestly upon a
definite point of view.


"The Toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth point goes.
The Butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that Toad."


If one elects, for instance, to criticize an illustration in
particular--or a particular illustration--or the present status of
popular illustration in general--the position of the critic must be
frankly chosen and firmly held.  If it is that of the technician, either
the original artist or the reproducer or even the publisher, then a
given picture in a magazine may be discussed merely as a picture, as a
half-tone, or as a page effect, intelligently and competently.  If the
purely aesthetic viewpoint is chosen, all the above considerations may
be waived and the given picture judged as frankly ugly, or as beautiful,
quite apart from its technique.  If, again, the base of judgment is that
of the reader, in whose eyes an illustration should illustrate--i.e.,
give light, make clear the meaning of the text--then we look at a given
picture to see if it carries out the ideas expressed in the tale or
article, and value it by that.

On this base also stands the author, only one person, to be sure, as
compared with the multitude of readers, but not a dog, for all that.
The author, foaming at the mouth, remote and helpless, here makes common
ground with the reader and expects an illustration to illustrate.
Perhaps, we should say, "the intelligent reader"--leaving out such as
the young lady in the tale, who said they might read her anything, "if
it was illustrated by Christie."*

[*--This does not by any means deny intelligence to all appreciators of
Mr. Christie's work, but merely to such as select literature for the
pictures attached.]

THE FORERUNNER believes that it may voice the feelings of many writers
and more readers; almost all readers, in fact, if it here and now
records a protest against an all too frequent illustrative sin: where
the gentleman, or lady, who is engaged and paid to illustrate a story,
prefers to insert pictures of varying attractiveness which bear no
relation to the text.  This is not illustration.  It is not even honest
business.  It does not deliver the goods paid for.  It takes advantage
of author, publisher and public, and foists upon them all an art
exhibition which was not ordered.

To select a recent popular, easily obtainable, instance of vice and
virtue in illustration, let us take up the "American Magazine" for
August.  Excellent work among the advertisements--there the artist is
compelled to "follow copy"; his employer will take no nonsense.  That's
one reason why people like to look at them--the pictures are
intelligible.  Admirable pictures by Worth Brehm to Stewart White's
story--perfect.  You see the people, Mr. White's people, see them on the
page as you saw them in your mind, and better.  Good drawing, and
_personal character_--those special people and not others.  The insight
and appreciation shown in the frontispiece alone makes as fine an
instance of what illustration ought to be as need be given.

Those light sketches to the airy G. G. Letters are good, too--anything
more definite would not belong to that couple.

But Mr. Cyrus Cuneo shows small grasp of what Mr. Locke was writing
about in his "Moonlight Effect."  The tailpiece, by somebody else, is
the best picture of the lot.

Mr. Leone Brackner does better in Jack London's story, though falling
far short of the extreme loathsomeness Mr. London heaps so thickly.  J.
Scott Williams follows "Margherita's Soul" with a running accompaniment
and variations, in pleasant accord with the spirit of that compelling
tale.  He gives more than the scene represented, gives it differently,
and yet gives it.

Mr. McCutcheon and George Fitch are also harmonious in clever fooling of
pen and pencil, and Thomas Fogarty, though by no means convincing, goes
well enough with Mr. O'Higgins' story, which is not convincing, either.
The hat and dress pictures are photographs, and do artificial justice to
their artificial subjects in Mrs. Woodrow's arraignment of the Fantastic
Feminine.

But--.  Go to your library after, or send your ten cents for, or look up
on your own shelves, that August number, and turn to Lincoln Colcord's
story of "Anjer," to see what an illustrator dare do.  Here's a story,
the merits of which need not be discussed, but in which great stress is
laid on a certain Malay Princess, the free nobility of whose savage love
healed the sick heart of an exhausted man.  "I saw how beautiful she
was," says the narrator: "her breast was bare in a long slit, and
shadowed like the face of the pool."  "The most glorious native woman of
the East I've ever seen."  "She walked like a tiger, with a crouching
step of absolute grace."  "Her eyes called as if they'd spoken words of
love: the beauty of her face was beyond speech--almost beyond thought."
Thus Mr. Colcord.

And how Mr. Townshend?  It is on Page 334, Mr. Townshend's
"illustration."  ("Whit way do we ca' it the Zoo?"  "If it wasna' ca'd
the Zoo, what would we ca' it?")  A bit of railing and a pillar is the
only concession to the scene described; that and the fact that there is
a man and a woman there.  One more detail is granted--a forehead
ornament, as alleged.  For the rest?

Since the picture is so unjust to the words of the author, can the words
of the critic do any justice to the picture?  The man will do, as well
one man as another, apparently.  The big blob of an object that seems to
have been suggested by a Gargantuan ginger jar, and to be put in for
tropical effect, as also a set of wooden bananas, may be forgiven.

But the Princess--the tigress--the free, graceful, passionate woman--the
beauty beyond speech.  Look at it.

A crooked, crouching, awkward negroid type, a dress of absurd volume and
impossible outlines, the upper part a swathed bath towel, one stiff,
ugly arm hung helpless, one lifted and ending in a _hoof,_ a plain pig's
hoof; the head bent, chin sunk on chest like a hunchback's; and the
face--!  One could forgive the gross, unusual ugliness; but why no hint
of interest in her lover?  Why this expression as of a third generation
London pauper in a hospital?  What explanation is there of this meagre,
morbid, deformed female in the midst of that story?

Frank incapacity on the part of an artist is possible.  To try and try
and try again and utterly fail is possible.  To write to the author and
say, "I cannot visualize your character, or express it, and must decline
to undertake the order," or to the editor and refuse the job, is
possible.  But to take the order, to read the story (if he did read it),
to send in and accept pay for a picture like that--"Whit way would ye
ca' it?"



PERSONAL PROBLEMS


A passionate interest is shown by many persons in consulting anonymous
advisers through the columns of various publications.  Their inquiries
are mainly as to small matters of etiquette, and the care of the
complexion.

In one of the current women's papers we find such questions as these:
"When one is introduced, how does one acknowledge the introduction?
Must it be by a mention of the weather?  How should one receive a small
gift?" (x)  All these by one breathless inquirer.

Another asks pathetically: "Will you tell me how soon after a husband's
death it is permitted to a widow to return formal calls?  What is the
present form of visiting cards for a widow?" (y)

Another rudderless ship, in a somewhat less recent issue of a very
popular woman's paper, writes: "I am wearing mourning.  In the hot
weather I find the veil very heavy and close, and wish to throw it back.
 What shall I do?" (z)

These are apparently bona fide questions, but in most cases they are
answered in a style too palpably oracular.  If the questioners are
genuine and want help they get precious little.  If it is merely a game,
it seems rather a flat one.  But the popularity of the pastime
continues.

The Forerunner will give no answers to foolish questions; unless at
peril of the asker.  But to sincere inquirers, who are interested in
some moot point of conduct, some balance of conflicting duties, honest
attention will be given, and their questions answered as sincerely.

The intention is to promote discussion of the real problems of life, and
to apply to them the new standards afforded by the larger knowledge and
deeper religious sense of to-day.

If any of the above questions were sent to this office they would be
thus dismissed:

(x) Read "How To Do It," by E. E. Hale.  Learn to be sincere; have real
feelings and express them honestly.

(y) If you are truly prostrated by grief you cannot return calls.  If
you are able--and like to do it--what are you afraid of?  Whose
"permission" are you asking?  See answer to x.

(z) Mourning is a relic of barbarism, kept up by women because of their
retarded social development.  But if you must wear a heavy veil and wish
to throw it back--why don't you?

These persons would be displeased and not write again.  Truly.  Such
questions are not wanted by The Forerunner.  They would discontinue
their subscription.  Doubtless.  But this is a waste of anxiety, for
such would never have subscribed for The Forerunner in the first place.

Suppose, however, that a question like this is sent in:

"I am a girl of twenty.  My mother is an invalid.  My father is in
business difficulties.  They want me to marry an old friend of
father's--a good man, but forty years older then I am.  Is it my duty to
marry him--for their sake?" (B)

Answer.  (B)  Marriage is not an institution for the support of parents,
or the settling of business difficulties.  If you loved that old man you
would not be asking advice.  To marry a man you do not love is immoral.
Marriage is to serve the best interests of children and to give
happiness to the contracting parties.  If your parents need your
financial aid go to work and give them your earnings, but do not make a
business of matrimony.

Or again: Query.  "My mother is a widow living on a moderate income.
She has two married children, but does not like to live with them.  I am
a college graduate and wish to work at a profession.  She says it is not
necessary for me to work, and wants me to live with her--says she needs
me, claims my filial duty.  Is this right?"  (F)

Answer.  (F)  No, it is dead wrong.  Parental duty is a natural
obligation--not a loan.  Filial duty is the same from son and daughter.
You owe your mother care and service if needed, just as your brother
would.  She has no more right to prevent your going to work than if you
were a son.  By all means live with her if you both like it, but live
your own life.  You have a duty of citizenship as well as of
daughtership.

Or again: Query.  "My wife is spending more of my income on dress than I
can afford.  How can I stop her?"  (G)

There is not room to answer this in this issue.



THANKSONG


Thankful are we for life
 And the joy of living.
Baby-pleasure of taking;
 Mother-glory of giving.

Thankful are we for light
 And the joy of seeing.
Stir of emotion strong,
 And the peace of being.

Thankful are we for power,
 And the pride ensuing;
Baby-pleasure of having,
 Father-glory of doing.



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LOWNEY'S


I speak as one who has cared little for candy of any kind and less for
chocolate candy.

I don't like chocolate cake, nor chocolate _blanc mange,_ nor chocolate
pudding, nor chocolate to drink--unless it is cocoa, very hot, not too
sweet, and strained carefully.

Nevertheless I fell in with friends, who feasted upon Lowney's; they
beguiled me into feasting upon Lowney's, and since then my attitude has
changed as to candy.

I had a box of Lowney's, a particularly well-made, attractive box, that
is still kept to put small treasures in, and brought it home for my
family to eat.

Always before, I had looked on with the unselfishness of a pelican, to
see others eat candy; but now I strove with them, like a frigate bird,
and made them give up some of it.  I wanted it myself.

Furthermore, I bought a small box of Lowney's chocolate almonds in
Portland, Oregon, on the fourteenth of June, and with severe
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Then it was eaten, largely by me, and every single one of those
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I can state further, on the evidence of personal friends, that all the
Lowney preparations are pure and honest and perfectly reliable.

They are as good as the best in the world.

As to the candy,--That's better.


C. P. G.


Walter M.  Lowney Co.

BOSTON, MASS.


Please mention THE FORERUNNER when purchasing



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FELS-NAPTHA SOAP


I took a trolley trip in New England, one Summer, carrying for my only
baggage a neat thin German "mappe"--about 15 by 12 by 2.

"But what do you do for clean underwear?" inquired my friends.

Then I produced from one corner of that restricted space, a neat small
box, and a piece of a cake of Fels-Naptha.

"Wash 'em over night, they are dry in the morning," said I.

"But are they clean?"

"Of course, they are clean, chemically clean,--if you use Fels-Naptha."

Suppose you are camping, and hot water is hard to come by; or travelling
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This soap has been a solid comfort my kitchen for years.  It is a steady
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before now.


C. P. G.


Fels & Co., Philadelphia, Pa.


Please mention THE FORERUNNER when purchasing



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HOLEPROOF HOISERY


Few women like to darn stockings, but most women have to.

They have to darn their own,--not many; their husband's--more; and their
childrens'--most.

The amount of time they waste in this Sisyphean task would, even at
charwoman's wages, buy socks and stockings for a dozen families.

Spent in reading, it would improve their minds--darning doesn't.  Spent
in rest, it would improve their health--darning doesn't.  Darning
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Buy new ones.

"But they wear out so fast!"

That is where you are wrong; they do not wear out fast--if you buy the
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I bought some once.  Did they wear out?  They did not wear out.  I wore
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Seriously, the Holeproof Hosiery does what it promises.  I have used it,
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stockings.

If you don't believe it, try it--but be sure and get the real thing; of
your dealer or


The Holeproof Hoisery Co., Milwaulkee, Wis.


Please mention THE FORERUNNER when purchasing


C. P. G.



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MOORE'S FOUNTAIN PEN


I have had, and lost, perhaps a dozen fountain pens, of various kinds.
Never one of them that didn't distribute ink where--and when--it wasn't
wanted, till I happened on Moore's.

1 didn't notice the name of it till after considerable use, with perfect
satisfaction; and then I looked to see who was responsible for this
wonder.

It is all very well for men, with vest pockets, to carry a sort of
leather socket, or a metal clip that holds the pen to that pocket
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But women haven't vest pockets--and do not remain continuously erect.

A woman stoops over to look in the oven--to pick up her thimble--to take
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If the woman carries it about in a little black bag, it is horizontal,
and the ink ebbs slowly from the pen into the cap, afterwards swiftly to
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I use it with joy, with comfort, with clean hands.  It is a constant
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American Fountain Pen Co.

168 Devonshire St., Boston, Mass.


Please mention THE FORERUNNER when purchasing


C. P. G.



[Advertisement]


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 fantasy, 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

_____ 19__

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

__________

 __________

  __________



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A TOILET PREPARATION


I cannot give the name of this article, because they have not given me
the advertisement--yet.

But I hope to get it later on; for it is supremely good.  It is
scientifically and honestly made, by good people in a good place; a
place comfortable and pretty enough to live in.

It claims a good deal as to what it is good for, and as far as I have
tried it, in several capacities, it does the things it claims to do,
does them well.

It is clean and sweet to use, isn't sticky or greasy, is reasonable in
price, smells good and is nice to look at.

You can get it anywhere--it is an old standby.

I have used it exclusively for years and years, and my mother used it
before me.

And I cannot recommend any other--for I don't use any other!



[Advertisement]


 C A L E N D U L A


CHILDREN CEASE TO CRY FOR IT.


This is a gratuitous advertisement, benefitting

a) The Child; whose pain stops;

b) The Mother; who doesn't have to hear him cry;

c) The Nearest Druggist--a little.


CALENDULA is a good standard old drug--made of marigolds--in the
_materia medica._  You buy a little bottle of tincture of calendula, and
keep it on the shelf.  Nobody will drink it by mistake--it doesn't taste
good.

Presently Johnny falls down hard--he was running--he fell on a gritty
place--his poor little knee is scraped raw.  And he howls, how he howls!
square-mouthed and inconsolable.

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have it, and put in a few drops of calendula.  Wet a soft clean rag in
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Many many times has this quieted my infant anguish; also have I used it
as a grown up.  The effect is the same.


 C A L E N D U L A
TAKES THE PAIN FROM
A  R A W  W O U N D





THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
OWNER AND PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 2
DECEMBER, 1909
The Charlton Company, 67 Wall Street, New York
Copyright for 1909, C. P. Gilman




LOVE


Not the child-god of our most childish past,
 Nor sympathy, nor worship, passionless;
 Nor gratitude, nor tenderest caress:
Nor the post-mortal glamor priests have cast
With "This to hope!  Surrender what thou hast!"
 These are but parts and can but partly bless;
 We in our new-born common consciousness
Are learning Law and Life and Love at last.

The age-old secret of the sphinx's holding,
 Incarnate triumph, infinitely strong;
 The mother's majesty, grown wide and long,
In the full power and fire of life's unfolding;
The conscious splendor and ripe joy thereof--
 Glad world-wide, life-long service--this is Love!



ACCORDING TO SOLOMON


"'He that rebuketh a man afterwards shall find more favor than he that
flattereth with his tongue,'" said Mr. Solomon Bankside to his wife
Mary.

"Its the other way with a woman, I think;" she answered him, "you might
put that in."

"Tut, tut, Molly," said he; "'Add not unto his words,'--do not speak
lightly of the wisdom of the great king."

"I don't mean to, dear, but--when you hear it all the time"--

"'He that turneth away his ear from the law, even his prayer shall be an
abomination,'" answered Mr. Bankside.

"I believe you know every one of those old Proverbs by heart," said his
wife with some heat.  "Now that's not disrespectful!--they _are_
old!--and I do wish you'd forget some of them!"

He smiled at her quizzically, tossing back his heavy silver-gray hair
with the gesture she had always loved.  His eyes were deep blue and
bright under their bushy brows; and the mouth was kind--in its iron way.
 "I can think of at least three to squelch you with, Molly," said he,
"but I won't."

"O I know the one you want!  'A continual dropping in a very rainy day
and a contentions woman are alike!'  I'm _not_ contentious, Solomon!"

"No, you are not," he frankly admitted.  "What I really had in mind was
this--'A prudent wife is from the Lord,' and 'He that findeth a wife
findeth a good thing; and obtaineth favor of the Lord.'"

She ran around the table in the impulsive way years did not alter, and
kissed him warmly.

"I'm not scolding you, my dear," he continued: "but if you had all the
money you'd like to give away--there wouldn't be much left!"

"But look at what you spend on me!" she urged.

"That's a wise investment--as well as a deserved reward," her husband
answered calmly.  "'There is that scattereth and yet increaseth,' you
know, my dear; 'And there is that withholdeth more than is meet--and it
tendeth to poverty!'  Take all you get my dear--its none too good for
you."

He gave her his goodby kiss with special fondness, put on his heavy
satin-lined overcoat and went to the office.

Mr. Solomon Bankside was not a Jew; though his last name suggested and
his first seemed to prove it; also his proficiency in the Old Testament
gave color to the idea.  No, he came from Vermont; of generations of
unbroken New England and old English Puritan ancestry, where the
Solomons and Isaacs and Zedekiahs were only mitigated by the Standfasts
and Praise-the-Lords.  Pious, persistent pigheaded folk were they, down
all the line.

His wife had no such simple pedigree.  A streak of Huguenot blood she
had (some of the best in France, though neither of them knew that), a
grandmother from Albany with a Van to her name; a great grandmother with
a Mac; and another with an O'; even a German cross came in somewhere.
Mr. Bankside was devoted to genealogy, and had been at some pains to dig
up these facts--the more he found the worse he felt, and the lower ran
his opinion of Mrs. Bankside's ancestry.

She had been a fascinating girl; pretty, with the dash and piquancy of
an oriole in a May apple-tree; clever and efficient in everything her
swift hands touched; quite a spectacular housekeeper; and the sober,
long-faced young downeasterner had married her with a sudden decision
that he often wondered about in later years.  So did she.

What he had not sufficiently weighed at the time, was her spirit of
incorrigible independence, and a light-mindedness which, on maturer
judgment, he could almost term irreligious.  His conduct was based on
principle, all of it; built firmly into habit and buttressed by
scriptural quotations.  Hers seemed to him as inconsequent as the flight
of a moth.  Studying it, in his solemn conscientious way, in the light
of his genealogical researches, he felt that all her uncertainties were
accounted for, and that the error was his--in having married too many
kinds of people at once.

They had been, and were, very happy together none the less: though
sometimes their happiness was a little tottery.  This was one of the
times.  It was the day after Christmas, and Mrs. Bankside entered the
big drawing room, redolent of popcorn and evergreen, and walked slowly
to the corner where the fruits of yesterday were lovingly arranged; so
few that she had been able to give--so many that she had received.

There were the numerous pretty interchangeable things given her by her
many friends; "presents," suitable to any lady.  There were the few
perfectly selected ones given by the few who knew her best.  There was
the rather perplexing gift of Mrs. MacAvelly.  There was her brother's
stiff white envelope enclosing a check.  There were the loving gifts of
children and grand-children.

Finally there was Solomon's.

It was his custom to bestow upon her one solemn and expensive object, a
boon as it were, carefully selected, after much thought and balancing of
merits; but the consideration was spent on the nature of the gift---not
on the desires of the recipient.  There was the piano she could not
play, the statue she did not admire, the set of Dante she never read,
the heavy gold bracelet, the stiff diamond brooch--and all the others.
This time it was a set of sables, costing even more than she imagined.

Christmas after Christmas had these things come to her; and she stood
there now, thinking of that procession of unvalued valuables, with an
expression so mixed and changeful it resembled a kaleidoscope.  Love for
Solomon, pride in Solomon, respect for Solomon's judgment and power to
pay, gratitude for his unfailing kindness and generosity, impatience
with his always giving her this one big valuable permanent thing, when
he knew so well that she much preferred small renewable cheap ones; her
personal dislike of furs, the painful conviction that brown was not
becoming to her--all these and more filled the little woman with what
used to be called "conflicting emotions."

She smoothed out her brother's check, wishing as she always did that it
had come before Christmas, so that she might buy more presents for her
beloved people.  Solomon liked to spend money on her--in his own way;
but he did not like to have her spend money on him--or on anyone for
that matter.  She had asked her brother once, if he would mind sending
her his Christmas present beforehand.

"Not on your life, Polly!" he said.  "You'd never see a cent of it!  You
can't buy 'em many things right on top of Christmas, and it'll be gone
long before the next one."

She put the check away and turned to examine her queerest gift.  Upon
which scrutiny presently entered the donor.

"I'm ever so much obliged, Benigna," said Mrs. Bankside.  "You know how
I love to do things.  It's a loom, isn't it?  Can you show me how it
works?"

"Of course I can, my dear; that's just what I ran in for--I was afraid
you wouldn't know.  But you are so clever with your hands that I'm sure
you'll enjoy it.  I do."

Whereat Mrs. MacAvelly taught Mrs. Bankside the time-honored art of
weaving.  And Mrs. Bankside enjoyed it more than any previous handicraft
she had essayed.

She did it well, beginning with rather coarse and simple weaves; and
gradually learning the finer grades of work.  Despising as she did the
more modern woolens, she bought real wool yarn of a lovely red--and made
some light warm flannelly stuff in which she proceeded to rapturously
enclose her little grandchildren.

Mr. Bankside warmly approved, murmuring affectionately, "'She seeketh
wool and flax--she worketh willingly with her hands.'"

He watched little Bob and Polly strenuously "helping" the furnace man to
clear the sidewalk, hopping about like red-birds in their new caps and
coats; and his face beamed with the appositeness of his quotation, as he
remarked, "She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her
household are clothed with scarlet!" and he proffered an extra, wholly
spontaneous kiss, which pleased her mightily.

"You dear man!" she said with a hug; "I believe you'd rather find a
proverb to fit than a gold mine!"

To which he triumphantly responded: "'Wisdom is better than rubies; and
all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.'"

She laughed sweetly at him.  "And do you think wisdom stopped with that
string of proverbs?"

"You can't get much beyond it," he answered calmly.  "If we lived up to
all there is in that list we shouldn't be far out, my dear!"

Whereat she laughed again smoothed his gray mane, and kissed him in the
back of his neck.  "You _dear_ thing!" said Mrs. Bankside.

She kept herself busy with the new plaything as he called it.  Hands
that had been rather empty were now smoothly full.  Her health was
better, and any hint of occasional querulousness disappeared entirely;
so that her husband was moved to fresh admiration of her sunny temper,
and quoted for the hundredth time, "'She openeth her mouth with wisdom,
and in her tongue is the law of kindness.'"

Mrs. MacAvelly taught her to make towels.  But Mrs. Bankside's skill
outstripped hers; she showed inventive genius and designed patterns of
her own.  The fineness and quality of the work increased; and she
joyfully replenished her linen chest with her own handiwork.

"I tell you, my dear," said Mrs. MacAvelly, "if you'd be willing to sell
them you could get almost any price for those towels.  With the initials
woven in.  I know I could get you orders--through the Woman's Exchange,
you know!"

Mrs. Bankside was delighted.  "What fun!" she said.  "And I needn't
appear at all?"

"No, you needn't appear at all--do let me try."

So Mrs. Bankside made towels of price, soft, fine, and splendid, till
she was weary of them; and in the opulence of constructive genius fell
to devising woven belts of elaborate design.

These were admired excessively.  All her women friends wanted one, or
more; the Exchange got hold of it, there was a distinct demand; and
finally Mrs. MacAvelly came in one day with a very important air and a
special order.

"I don't know what you'll think, my dear," she said, "but I happen to
know the Percy's very well--the big store people, you know; and Mr.
Percy was talking about those belts of yours to me;--of course he didn't
know they are yours; but he said (the Exchange people told him I knew,
you see) he said, 'If you can place an order with that woman, I can take
all she'll make and pay her full price for them.  Is she poor?' he
asked.  'Is she dependent on her work?'  And I told him, 'Not
altogether.'  And I think he thinks it an interesting case!  Anyhow,
there's the order.  Will you do it?'

Mrs. Bankside was much excited.  She wanted to very much, but dreaded
offending her husband.  So far she had not told him of her quiet trade
in towels; but hid and saved this precious money--the first she had ever
earned.

The two friends discussed the pros and cons at considerable length; and
finally with some perturbation, she decided to accept the order.

"You'll never tell, Benigna!" she urged.  "Solomon would never forgive
me, I'm afraid."

"Why of course I won't--you needn't have a moment's fear of it.  You
give them to me--I'll stop with the carriage you see; and I take them to
the Exchange--and he gets them from there."

"It seems like smuggling!" said Mrs. Bankside delightedly.  "I always
did love to smuggle!"

"They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs.
MacAvelly suggested.

"Why should we?" answered her friend.  "We don't make 'em--nor God--nor
nature.  Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by
some men one day and changed by some more the next?"

"Bless us, Polly!  Do you talk to Mr. Bankside like that?"

"Indeed I don't!" answered her hostess, holding out a particularly
beautiful star-patterned belt to show to advantage.  "There are lots of
things I don't say to Mr. Bankside--'A man of understanding holdeth his
peace' you know--or a woman."

She was a pretty creature, her hair like that of a powdered marchioness,
her rosy checks and firm slight figure suggesting a charmer in Dresden
china.

Mrs. MacAvelly regarded her admiringly.  "'Where there is no wood the
fire goeth out; so where there is no tale bearer the strife ceaseth,'"
she proudly offered, "I can quote that much myself."

But Mrs. Bankside had many misgivings as she pursued her audacious way;
the busy hours flying away from her, and the always astonishing checks
flying toward her in gratifying accumulation.  She came down to her
well-planned dinners gracious and sweet; always effectively dressed;
spent the cosy quiet evenings with her husband, or went out with him,
with a manner of such increased tenderness and charm that his heart
warmed anew to the wife of his youth; and he even relented a little
toward her miscellaneous ancestors.

As the days shortened and darkened she sparkled more and more; with
little snatches of song now and then; gay ineffectual strumming on the
big piano; sudden affectionate darts at him, with quaintly distributed
caresses.

"Molly!" said he, "I don't believe you're a day over twenty!  What makes
you act so?"

"Don't you like it, So?" she asked him.  That was the nearest she ever
would approximate to his name.

He did like it, naturally, and even gave her an extra ten dollars to buy
Christmas presents with; while he meditated giving her an electric
runabout;--to her!--who was afraid of a wheelbarrow!

When the day arrived and the family were gathered together, Mrs.
Bankside, wearing the diamond brooch, the gold bracelet, the point lace
handkerchief--everything she could carry of his accumulated
generosity--and such an air of triumphant mystery that the tree itself
was dim beside her; handed out to her astonished relatives such an
assortment of desirable articles that they found no words to express
their gratitude.

"Why, _Mother!"_ said Jessie, whose husband was a minister and salaried
as such, "Why, _Mother_--how did you know we wanted just that kind of a
rug!--and a sewing-machine _too!_  And this lovely suit--and--and--why
_Mother!"_

But her son-in-law took her aside and kissed her solemnly.  He had
wanted that particular set of sociological books for years--and never
hoped to get them; or that bunch of magazines either.

Nellie had "married rich;" she was less ostentatiously favored; but she
had shown her thankfulness a week ago--when her mother had handed her a
check.

"Sh, sh! my dear!" her mother had said, "Not one word.  I know!  What
pleasant weather we're having."

This son-in-law was agreeably surprised, too; and the other relatives,
married and single; while the children rioted among their tools and
toys, taking this Christmas like any other, as a season of unmitigated
joy.

Mr. Solomon Bankside looked on with growing amazement, making
computations in his practiced mind; saying nothing whatever.  Should he
criticize his wife before others?

But when his turn came--when gifts upon gifts were offered to him--sets
of silken handkerchiefs (he couldn't bear the touch of a silk
handkerchief!), a cabinet of cards and chips and counters of all sorts
(he never played cards), an inlaid chess-table and ivory men (the game
was unknown to him), a gorgeous scarf-pin (he abominated jewelery), a
five pound box of candy (he never ate it), his feelings so mounted
within him, that since he would not express, and could not repress them,
he summarily went up stairs to his room.

She found him there later, coming in blushing, smiling, crying a little
too--like a naughty but charming child.

He swallowed hard as he looked at her; and his voice was a little
strained.

"I can take a joke as well as any man, Molly.  I guess we're square on
that.  But--my dear!--where did you get it?"

"Earned it," said she, looking down, and fingering her lace
handkerchief.

"Earned it!  My wife, earning money!  How--if I may ask?"

"By my weaving, dear--the towels and the belts--I sold 'em.  Don't be
angry--nobody knows--my name didn't appear at all!  Please don't be
angry!--It isn't wicked, and it was such fun!"

"No--it's not wicked, I suppose," said he rather grimly.  "But it is
certainly a most mortifying and painful thing to me--most
unprecedented."

"Not so unprecedented, Dear," she urged, "Even the woman you think most
of did it!  Don't you remember 'She maketh fine linen and selleth
it--and delivereth girdles unto the merchants!'"

Mr. Bankside came down handsomely.

He got used to it after a while, and then he became proud of it.  If a
friend ventured to suggest a criticism, or to sympathize, he would
calmly respond, "'The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so
that he shall have no need of spoil.  Give her of the fruit of her
hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.'"



AN OBVIOUS BLESSING


We are told, on the authority of the Greatest Sociologist, that it is
more blessed to give than to receive.

So patent and commonplace a fact as this ought to meet with general
acceptance.  Anyone can see that it is so, by a little study or by less
practice.  To give implies having.  You must be in possession before you
can give.  To receive implies wanting, at its best--to receive what you
do not want is distinctly unpleasant.  To have is more blessed than to
want.  Of course it is.

To give gratifies several natural feelings; the mother-instinct of
supplying needs, the pride of superior power and the generosity; and, if
you are a sordid soul, the desire to "lay up treasure in heaven" or, as
the Buddhists frankly put it--to "acquire merit."

None of these pleasures pertain to receiving.  There is a certain
humiliation about it always, a childish sense of dependence and
inferiority.  Only children can continuously receive without
degradation; and as soon as they begin to realize life at all they
delight to give as we all do.  "Let me help!" says the child, and plans
birthday presents for mama as eagerly as he hopes for them himself.

The instinct of giving is the pressure of the surplus; the natural outgo
of humanity, its fruit.  We are not mere receptacles, we are productive
engines, of immense capacity; and, having produced, we must distribute
the product.  To give, naturally, is to shed, to bear fruit; a healthy
and pleasurable process.

What has confused us so long on this subject?  Why have we been so blind
to this glaring truth that we have stultified our giving instinct and
made of it an abnormal process called "Charity," or a much restricted
pleasure only used in families or at Christmas time?

Two things have combined to prevent our easy acceptance of this visible
truth; one the time-honored custom of "sacrifice," and the other our
ignorance of social economics.

Sacrificing is not giving.  That black remnant of lowest savagery dates
back to the time when a pursuing beast was placated by the surrender of
something, or somebody; and a conqueror bought off by tribute.  The
medicine man made play with this race habit, and gross idols were
soothed and placated by sacrifices--on which the medicine man lived.
Always the best and finest were taken naturally by the hungry beast; as
naturally by the greedy conqueror; and not unnaturally by the dependent
priesthood.  Sacrificing is a forced surrender with personal hope as the
reason.  It is not giving.

Our economic ignorance and confusion is partly based on this same old
period of cruelty and darkness.  Labor was extorted as the price of
life; and the fruits of labor taken by force through warring centuries.
A guarded and grudging system of exchange gradually developed; the
robbing instinct slowly simmering down to legally limited extortion; but
each party surrendering his goods reluctantly, and only with the purpose
of gaining more than he lost.  Here also is the basic spirit of
sacrifice--to get something now or in the far future--always the trading
spirit at the bottom.  Selling is not giving.

The real basis of giving is motherhood; and that is merely the orderly
expression of life's progressive force.  Living forms must
increase--spread--grow--improve.  The biological channel for this force
is through mother-love; and, later, father-love.  The sociological
channel is in the pouring flood of productive activity, which fills the
world with human fruit--the million things we make and do.

This ceaseless output is not dragged out of us as a sacrifice, it is not
produced by want and hunger and the grasping spirit of exchange.  It is
the natural expression of social energy; blossoming in every form of
art, stirring the brain to ceaseless action, filling the world with the
rich fruit of human handiwork.

Having produced, we must distribute--we must discharge, we must _give._

To be human is to be a producer, to make, to do, to have some output
either in goods or services whereby the sum of welfare is increased.  To
have this productive energy and to use it normally, is to give.  Not to
have it, not to use it, is not to be human--to be a minus quantity; to
live parasitically on the labor of others--to receive.

It is more blessed to give than to receive.



STEPS


I was a slave, because I could not see
That work for one another is our law;
I hated law.  I work?  I would be free!
Therefore the heavy law laid hands on me
And I was forced to work in slavery--
 Until I saw.

I was a hireling, for I could not see
That work was natural as the breath I drew,
Natural?  I would not work without the fee!
So nature laid her heavy hands on me
And I was forced by fear of poverty--
 Until I knew.

Now I am free.  Life is new-seen, recast
To work is to enjoy, to love, to live!
The shame and pain of slavery are past,
Dishonor and extortion follow fast,
I am not owned, nor hired, full-born at last,
 My power I give.



WHY WE HONESTLY FEAR SOCIALISM


A peaceable elderly Englishman of a bald and scholarly aspect, inquired,
following a lecture on Socialism, "Will the speaker state in one
sentence what Socialism is?"  He wore an air of mild gentlemanly
triumph; apparently imagining that he had demanded the impossible.

But the speaker, seeming unconscious of any difficulty replied,
"Certainly; Socialism is the public ownership of all natural monopolies
and the means of production."

This simple definition is advanced to start with, that we may know what
we are talking about.  This is the essence of Socialism--public
ownership of public things; the real point at issue being "What things
are public?"

The vast majority of us do not yet understand this easy and clear
definition; and no wonder; for the Socialists themselves are for the
most part so lost in grief over the sufferings of the poor and in rage
over the misbehavior of the rich, that they find it hard to speak
gently.  Most of us, having but vague ideas of Socialism, fear it on
several grounds, some of them easily removable as mere mistakes; others
requiring careful treatment.

The mistakes are these:

ERROR I.  "Socialism will abolish private property."

ANSWER.  Quite wrong.  It will do no such thing.  You are thinking of
Communism.  The early Communists, like the early Christians, held all
things in common, but Socialism urges no such doctrine.  It does,
however, restrict our definition of what is private property; just as
was done when human slavery was abolished.

Slavery was once universal, and still exists In many countries.  It was
held legal and honest to personally own human beings--they were
property.  In our great civil contest of half a century since, the
north--from a southern point of view--confiscated property when the
slaves were freed.  But from the northern point of view the slave was
not property at all.  This is a very vivid instance of change of opinion
on property rights.  Such "rights" are wholly of our own making; and
change from age to age.

Parents once held property rights in children and men "owned" their
wives; they could be punished, imprisoned, sold--even killed, at will of
the owner.  The larger public sense has long since said, "Women and
children are not private property."

Laws about property are not God's laws; not Nature's laws; they are just
rules and regulations people make from time to time according to their
standards of justice.  There is nothing novel in proposing to change
them--they have often been changed.  There is nothing immoral or
dangerous in changing them; it is constantly done in all legislatures,
in varying degree, as when private estates are "condemned" for public
use.

Socialism advances the idea that private property rights do not
legitimately apply to public necessities like coal, water, oil and land.
 As a matter of fact we do not really "own" land now--we only rent it of
the government, calling our rent "taxes."  If we do not pay our rent the
government gets it again, like any other owner.

The utmost restriction of private property under Socialism leaves us
still every article of personal use and pleasure.  One may still "own"
land by paying the government for it as now; with such taxation,
however, as would make it very expensive to own too much!  One may own
one's house and all that is in it; one's clothes and tools and
decorations; one's horses, carriages and automobiles; one's flying
machines--presently.  All "personal property" remains in our personal
hands.

But no man or group of men could own the country's coal and decide how
much the public can have, and what we must pay for it.  Private holding
of public property would be abolished.

ERROR 2.  Socialism would reduce us all to a dead level.

ANSWER.  Quite wrong.  Eating at the same table in the same family does
not reduce brothers and sisters to the same level; some remain far
smarter and stronger than others.  By a wiser system of education we may
greatly increase the difference in people--Socialism would not hinder
it.  A higher average level of income--which is what Socialism ensures,
will give people a chance to differ more than they do now.  Our
machine-like educational system, long hours of labor, specialized
monotony of mill work, and "the iron law of wages" do tend to reduce us
to a dead level.  Socialism does not.

ERROR 3.  Socialists are atheists.

ANSWER.  How anyone can say this when they know of the immense
organization of Christian Socialists is amazing; but then it is always
amazing to see how queerly people think.  Some Socialists are atheists.
So are some monarchists and some republicans.  A Socialist may be an
atheist, or a homeopathist, or a Holy Roller--it has nothing to do with
Socialism.

ERROR 4.  Socialists are immoral.

ANSWER.  Again--some are; but so are some other people.  The immorality
of which we hear most in the papers is by no means that of Socialists;
but of most prominent capitalists.

ERROR 5.  Socialism is unnatural--you must "alter human nature" before
it would be possible.

ANSWER.  This is a very common position, based like most of the
foregoing, on lack of understanding.  It assumes that Socialism requires
a state of sublime unselfishness and mutual deference, in which all men
are willing to work for nothing.  But why assume this?  It is no product
of Socialism.  Our socialistic public parks and libraries do not
presuppose that people shall be angels.  They may tend to make them
such, but the progress is not rapid enough to alarm us.  In regard to
this particular error we should learn that Socialism is not a totally
new and different scheme of things; but a gradual and legitimate
extension of previous tendencies.  Human nature is socialistic--and is
progressively extending socialism.

ERROR 5.  Socialism will pay every one alike and so destroy the
incentive of personal ambition.

ANSWER.  This idea of equal payment is not Socialism.  Some socialists
hold it--more do not.  The essential idea of public ownership and
management of public property does not include this notion of equal
payment.

ERROR 7.  Socialism will destroy competition.  Competition, most of us
believe, "is the life of trade;" in other words we are supposed to work,
not merely to get something for ourselves, but to get ahead of other
people.

ANSWER.  Admitting that we do; admitting that such an incentive is
useful; the simple answer is that Socialism would not destroy
competition.

Even in financial reward some would still be paid more than others; and
far beyond this lies the larger competition for fame and glory and
public esteem, which has always moved men more strongly than the love of
money.  This remains always open.

MAIN ERROR.  Passing over all these minor objections, due to mere
ignorance and easily understood, we come to the one major objection,
honestly held by intelligent people; that under Socialism people would
not work.  This is why so many good and intelligent persons do honestly
distrust and fear it.  Their position is this:

PREMISE A.  Work must be done to keep civilization going.  Work is done
by individuals in order to get something they want.  Work would not be
done by anyone without the immediate stimulus of personal desire.

PREMISE B.  Socialism, in some mysterious way will supply the needs of
the people gratuitously.

CONCLUSION.  The people being so provided for would not work.  Then
follows the downfall of civilization.

This is the honest opinion of the individualist, the older economist,
and is entitled to respect and fair answer.

If the premises were correct the terrible conclusion would be correct,
and the Socialist position visionary and dangerous.  Of course people
are afraid of anything that controverts the laws of economics and human
nature--they ought to be.  But are those premises correct?

To remove the easiest one first let us observe the absurdity of the
idea, that Socialism will provide for people without their working.
Provide them with what, pray?  All wealth is produced by human
labor--there is no socialist patent for drawing bread and circuses from
the sky.  People must always and forever work for what they have, and
have in proportion to the quantity and quality of their work.

So thoroughly is this true that the socialist grieves to see so many
people living to-day without working; receiving wealth out of all
proportion to their usefulness.  If this was common to all of us it
would mean the downfall of civilization.  As we live now a great many
people work too hard, too long, under unsanitary conditions, a sort of
living sacrifice to the rest of the world; and a few people do visibly
and ostentatiously consume and waste the very things the workers so
painfully lack.

Socialism claims to ensure decent payment for all labor, and see that we
all receive it--all of us; not the same for everyone; but enough for
everyone.  Further, Socialism claims that by such procedure the quantity
and quality of human work would be improved; that more wealth would be
produced--far more.

By thus removing Premise B, Premise A becomes a _non sequitur._  We
will, however, remove this also, to make a clean sweep.

It is not true that work is only done in order to get something.  Some
work is done that way by some people.  But it is not the only kind of
work--and they are not the only kind of people.  Even the savage, having
exerted himself to get his dinner, and having had his dinner, and being,
in a small way, human, begins to exert himself further to decorate his
tools and weapons, his canoes and totem poles--because he likes to.
Nobody pays him for it.  He enjoys the act of doing it, and the results.

The reason any ordinary man prefers any one kind of work to another is
that he experiences a certain pleasure in the performance of certain
actions--more than others.  He is beginning to specialize.

The reason the highly specialized social servant, artist, teacher,
preacher, scientific student, true physician, inventor, chooses his
work, follows it often under disadvantages; and in the case of the
enthusiast, even under conditions of danger, pain and death--is that he
likes that kind of work, enjoys doing it, indeed _has to do it_--is
uncomfortable if prevented.

This is a social instinct which our earlier economists have not
recognized.  It is proven an instinct by the fact that children have
it--all normal children.  They like any kind of ordinary work, want to
learn how, want to help, long before they attach any idea of gain to the
labor.

The little girl in the kitchen wants to make cookies--as well as eat
them; longs to print little figures around the pies, and then hold the
plate on poised spread fingers and trim off that long broken ribbon of
superfluous pastry--wants to do things, as well as to have things.  The
one instinct is as natural as the other.

The reasons so many of us to-day hate and despise work, avoid it, give
it up as soon as possible, are simple and clear.  First because of the
cruel difficulties with which we have loaded what should be a
pleasure--the monotony, the long hours, the disagreeable surroundings,
the danger and early death, and the grossly insufficient pay.  Any
normal boy enjoys working with carpenter's tools, or blacksmith's tools;
enjoys running a machine; but when such work is saddled with the above
conditions, he does not like it.  Of course.  It is not the work we are
averse to, it is what goes with it;--difficulties of our own making.

Further; besides the physical disadvantages, we have loaded this great
natural process of human labor with a mass of superstitions and
degrading lies.  The lazy old orientals called it a curse!  Work, a
curse!  Work; which is the essential process of human life; man's
natural function and means of growth!

We have despised it because women did it.  Glory to the women--without
them we should have had no industry.  We have despised it because slaves
did it.  Glory to the slaves!  They built the pyramids--not Cheops.
They built every one of the marvelous relics and ruins of the past--the
slaves built Athens!

We despise it now because the low and ignorant do it.  If there was ever
an instance of consummate folly, of churlish ingratitude, it is our
general attitude toward work and the workers.  Here are three millions
of laboring benefactors; feeding us; clothing us; building our houses;
spinning and weaving and sewing for us;--hewing wood and drawing
water;--keeping the world alive and moving; and we look down on the work
and the workers.  As we are not really brutes and fools, how is this
absurd position to be accounted for?

By that old fallacy of Premise A.  "They are only doing it for
themselves," we say.  "They are paid for what they do.  They wouldn't do
it if they weren't paid for it!"  That is the vital core of the real
opposition to Socialism, this erroneous economic idea about work.

If that can ever be changed, if we can look at work with new eyes, then
we can look at Socialism with new eyes too; and not be afraid.  Then
cautiously and rationally, we shall say:

"So this new system of yours proposes to increase human wealth, does it?
 To promote and develop all kinds of legitimate work and to distribute
the product so as to improve the people?  That sounds pretty good to me.
 But how do you know you can do it?  I'm from Missouri myself--you'll
have to show me."

And then perhaps our wiser Socialists will appeal to the people as a
whole, of every grade and class; and teach the natural orderly
development of this simple and practical system of economics; teach its
splendid benefits to all classes; and the methods of its legitimate and
gradual introduction; by careful massing of the facts; by visible proof
of things already accomplished.  They must show us that we are not
facing a great leap in the dark, but clear straight steps in the light,
in the orderly progress of social evolution.



CHILD LABOR


The children in the Poor House
 May die of many an ill,
But the Poor House does not profit
 By their labor in the mill!

The children in the Orphanage
 Wear raiment far from fine,
But no Orphanage is financed
 By child labor in a mine.

The Cruel Law may send them
 To Reform School's iron sway,
But it does not set small children
 To hard labor by the day.

Only the Loving Family,
 Which we so much admire,
Is willing to support itself
 On little children's hire.

Only the Human Father,
 A man, with power to think,
Will take from little children
 The price of food and drink.

Only the Human Mother--
 Degraded, helpless thing!
Will make her little children work
 And live on what they bring!

No fledgling feeds the father-bird!
 No chicken feeds the hen!
No kitten mouses for the cat--
 This glory is for men.

We are the Wisest, Strongest Race--
 Loud my our praise be sung!--
The only animal alive
 That lives upon its young!

We make the poverty that takes
 The lives of babies so.
We can awake! rebuild! remake!--
 And let our children grow!



WHAT DIANTHA DID


CHAPTER II.

AN UNNATURAL DAUGHTER


The brooding bird fulfills her task,
 Or she-bear lean and brown;
All parent beasts see duty true,
All parent beasts their duty do,
We are the only kind that asks
 For duty upside down.


The stiff-rayed windmill stood like a tall mechanical flower, turning
slowly in the light afternoon wind; its faint regular metallic squeak
pricked the dry silence wearingly.  Rampant fuchsias, red-jewelled,
heavy, ran up its framework, with crowding heliotrope and nasturtiums.
Thick straggling roses hung over the kitchen windows, and a row of dusty
eucalyptus trees rustled their stiff leaves, and gave an ineffectual
shade to the house.

It was one of those small frame houses common to the northeastern
states, which must be dear to the hearts of their dwellers.  For no
other reason, surely, would the cold grey steep-roofed little boxes be
repeated so faithfully in the broad glow of a semi-tropical landscape.
There was an attempt at a "lawn," the pet ambition of the transplanted
easterner; and a further attempt at "flower-beds," which merely served
as a sort of springboard to their far-reaching products.

The parlor, behind the closed blinds, was as New England parlors are;
minus the hint of cosiness given by even a fireless stove; the little
bedrooms baked under the roof; only the kitchen spoke of human living,
and the living it portrayed was not, to say the least, joyous.  It was
clean, clean with a cleanness that spoke of conscientious labor and
unremitting care.  The zinc mat under the big cook-stove was scoured to
a dull glimmer, while that swart altar itself shone darkly from its
daily rubbing.

There was no dust nor smell of dust; no grease spots, no litter
anywhere.  But the place bore no atmosphere of contented pride, as does
a Dutch, German or French kitchen, it spoke of Labor, Economy and
Duty--under restriction.

In the dead quiet of the afternoon Diantha and her mother sat there
sewing.  The sun poured down through the dangling eucalyptus leaves.
The dry air, rich with flower odors, flowed softly in, pushing the white
sash curtains a steady inch or two.  Ee-errr!--Ee-errr!--came the faint
whine of the windmill.

To the older woman rocking in her small splint chair by the rose-draped
window, her thoughts dwelling on long dark green grass, the shade of
elms, and cows knee-deep in river-shallows; this was California--hot,
arid, tedious in endless sunlight--a place of exile.

To the younger, the long seam of the turned sheet pinned tightly to her
knee, her needle flying firmly and steadily, and her thoughts full of
pouring moonlight through acacia boughs and Ross's murmured words, it
was California--rich, warm, full of sweet bloom and fruit, of boundless
vitality, promise, and power--home!

Mrs. Bell drew a long weary sigh, and laid down her work for a moment.

"Why don't you stop it Mother dear?  There's surely no hurry about these
things."

"No--not particularly," her mother answered, "but there's plenty else to
do."  And she went on with the long neat hemming.  Diantha did the "over
and over seam" up the middle.

"What _do_ you do it for anyway, Mother--I always hated this job--and
you don't seem to like it."

"They wear almost twice as long, child, you know.  The middle gets worn
and the edges don't.  Now they're reversed.  As to liking it--"  She
gave a little smile, a smile that was too tired to be sarcastic, but
which certainly did not indicate pleasure.

"What kind of work do you like best--really?" her daughter inquired
suddenly, after a silent moment or two.

"Why--I don't know," said her mother.  "I never thought of it.  I never
tried any but teaching.  I didn't like that.  Neither did your Aunt
Esther, but she's still teaching."

"Didn't you like any of it?" pursued Diantha.

"I liked arithmetic best.  I always loved arithmetic, when I went to
school--used to stand highest in that."

"And what part of housework do you like best?" the girl persisted.

Mrs. Bell smiled again, wanly.  "Seems to me sometimes as if I couldn't
tell sometimes what part I like least!" she answered.  Then with sudden
heat--"O my Child!  Don't you marry till Ross can afford at least one
girl for you!"

Diantha put her small, strong hands behind her head and leaned back in
her chair.  "We'll have to wait some time for that I fancy," she said.
"But, Mother, there is one part you like--keeping accounts!  I never saw
anything like the way you manage the money, and I believe you've got
every bill since yon were married."

"Yes--I do love accounts," Mrs. Bell admitted.  "And I can keep run of
things.  I've often thought your Father'd have done better if he'd let
me run that end of his business."

Diantha gave a fierce little laugh.  She admired her father in some
ways, enjoyed him in some ways, loved him as a child does if not
ill-treated; but she loved her mother with a sort of passionate pity
mixed with pride; feeling always nobler power in her than had ever had a
fair chance to grow.  It seemed to her an interminable dull tragedy;
this graceful, eager, black-eyed woman, spending what to the girl was
literally a lifetime, in the conscientious performance of duties she did
not love.

She knew her mother's idea of duty, knew the clear head, the steady
will, the active intelligence holding her relentlessly to the task; the
chafe and fret of seeing her husband constantly attempting against her
judgment, and failing for lack of the help he scorned.  Young as she
was, she realized that the nervous breakdown of these later years was
wholly due to that common misery of "the square man in the round hole."

She folded her finished sheet in accurate lines and laid it away--taking
her mother's also.  "Now you sit still for once, Mother dear, read or
lie down.  Don't you stir till supper's ready."

And from pantry to table she stepped, swiftly and lightly, setting out
what was needed, greased her pans and set them before her, and proceeded
to make biscuit.

Her mother watched her admiringly.  "How easy you do it!" she said.  "I
never could make bread without getting flour all over me.  You don't
spill a speck!"

Diantha smiled.  "I ought to do it easily by this time.  Father's got to
have hot bread for supper--or thinks he has!--and I've made 'em--every
night when I was at home for this ten years back!"

"I guess you have," said Mrs. Bell proudly.  "You were only eleven when
you made your first batch.  I can remember just as well!  I had one of
my bad headaches that night--and it did seem as if I couldn't sit up!
But your Father's got to have his biscuit whether or no.  And you said,
'Now Mother you lie right still on that sofa and let me do it!  I can!'
And you could!--you did!  They were bettern' mine that first time--and
your Father praised 'em--and you've been at it ever since."

"Yes," said Diantha, with a deeper note of feeling than her mother
caught, "I've been at it ever since!"

"Except when you were teaching school," pursued her mother.

"Except when I taught school at Medville," Diantha corrected.  "When I
taught here I made 'em just the same."

"So you did," agreed her mother.  "So you did!  No matter how tired you
were--you wouldn't admit it.  You always were the best child!"

"If I was tired it was not of making biscuits anyhow.  I was tired
enough of teaching school though.  I've got something to tell you,
presently, Mother."

She covered the biscuits with a light cloth and set them on the shelf
over the stove; then poked among the greasewood roots to find what she
wanted and started a fire.  "Why _don't_ you get an oil stove?  Or a
gasoline?  It would be a lot easier."

"Yes," her mother agreed.  "I've wanted one for twenty years; but you
know your Father won't have one in the house.  He says they're
dangerous.  What are you going to tell me, dear?  I do hope you and Ross
haven't quarrelled."

"No indeed we haven't, Mother.  Ross is splendid.  Only--"

"Only what, Dinah?"

"Only he's so tied up!" said the girl, brushing every chip from the
hearth.  "He's perfectly helpless there, with that mother of his--and
those four sisters."

"Ross is a good son," said Mrs. Bell, "and a good brother.  I never saw
a better.  He's certainly doing his duty.  Now if his father'd lived you
two could have got married by this time maybe, though you're too young
yet."

Diantha washed and put away the dishes she had used, saw that the pantry
was in its usual delicate order, and proceeded to set the table, with
light steps and no clatter of dishes.

"I'm twenty-one," she said.

"Yes, you're twenty-one," her mother allowed.  "It don't seem possible,
but you are.  My first baby!" she looked at her proudly

"If Ross has to wait for all those girls to marry--and to pay his
father's debts--I'll be old enough," said Diantha grimly.

Her mother watched her quick assured movements with admiration, and
listened with keen sympathy.  "I know it's hard, dear child.  You've
only been engaged six months--and it looks as if it might be some years
before Ross'll be able to marry.  He's got an awful load for a boy to
carry alone."

"I should say he had!" Diantha burst forth.  "Five helpless women!--or
three women, and two girls.  Though Cora's as old as I was when I began
to teach.  And not one of 'em will lift a finger to earn her own
living."

"They weren't brought up that way," said Mrs. Bell.  "Their mother don't
approve of it.  She thinks the home is the place for a woman--and so
does Ross--and so do I," she added rather faintly.

Diantha put her pan of white puff-balls into the oven, sliced a quantity
of smoked beef in thin shavings, and made white sauce for it, talking
the while as if these acts were automatic.  "I don't agree with Mrs.
Warden on that point, nor with Ross, nor with you, Mother," she said,
"What I've got to tell you is this--I'm going away from home.  To work."

Mrs. Bell stopped rocking, stopped fanning, and regarded her daughter
with wide frightened eyes.

"Why Diantha!" she said.  "Why Diantha!  You wouldn't go and leave your
Mother!"

Diantha drew a deep breath and stood for a moment looking at the feeble
little woman in the chair.  Then she went to her, knelt down and hugged
her close--close.

"It's not because I don't love you, Mother.  It's because I do.  And
it's not because I don't love Ross either:--it's because I _do._  I want
to take care of you, Mother, and make life easier for you as long as you
live.  I want to help him--to help carry that awful load--and I'm
going--to--do--it!"

She stood up hastily, for a step sounded on the back porch.  It was only
her sister, who hurried in, put a dish on the table, kissed her mother
and took another rocking-chair.

"I just ran in," said she, "to bring those berries.  Aren't they
beauties?  The baby's asleep.  Gerald hasn't got in yet.  Supper's all
ready, and I can see him coming time enough to run back.  Why, Mother!
What's the matter?  You're crying!"

"Am I?" asked Mrs. Bell weakly; wiping her eyes in a dazed way.

"What are you doing to Mother, Diantha?" demanded young Mrs. Peters.
"Bless me! I thought you and she never had any differences! I was always
the black sheep, when I was at home.  Maybe that's why I left so early!"

She looked very pretty and complacent, this young matron and mother of
nineteen; and patted the older woman's hand affectionately, demanding,
"Come--what's the trouble?"

"You might as well know now as later," said her sister.  "I have decided
to leave home, that's all."

"To leave home!"  Mrs. Peters sat up straight and stared at her.  "To
leave home!--And Mother!"

"Well?" said Diantha, while the tears rose and ran over from her
mother's eyes.  "Well, why not?  You left home--and Mother--before you
were eighteen."

"That's different!" said her sister sharply.  "I left to be married,--to
have a home of my own.  And besides I haven't gone far!  I can see
Mother every day."

"That's one reason I can go now better than later on," Diantha said.
"You are close by in case of any trouble."

"What on earth are you going for?  Ross isn't ready to marry yet, is
he?"

"No--nor likely to be for years.  That's another reason I'm going."

"But what _for,_ for goodness sake."

"To earn money--for one thing."

"Can't you earn money enough by teaching?" the Mother broke in eagerly.
"I know you haven't got the same place this fall--but you can get
another easy enough."

Diantha shook her head.  "No, Mother, I've had enough of that.  I've
taught for four years.  I don't like it, I don't do well, and it
exhausts me horribly.  And I should never get beyond a thousand or
fifteen hundred dollars a year if I taught for a lifetime."

"Well, I declare!" said her sister.  "What do you _expect_ to get?  I
should think fifteen hundred dollars a year was enough for any woman!"

Diantha peered into the oven and turned her biscuit pan around.

"And you're meaning to leave home just to make money, are you?"

"Why not?" said Diantha firmly.  "Henderson did--when he was eighteen.
None of you blamed him."

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," her mother ventured.
"Henderson's a boy, and boys have to go, of course.  A mother expects
that.  But a girl--Why, Diantha! How can I get along without you! With
my health!"

"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself to think of such a thing!"
said young Mrs. Peters.

A slow step sounded outside, and an elderly man, tall, slouching,
carelessly dressed, entered, stumbling a little over the rag-mat at the
door.

"Father hasn't got used to that rug in fourteen years!" said his
youngest daughter laughingly.  "And Mother will straighten it out after
him!  I'm bringing Gerald up on better principles.  You should just see
him wait on me!"

"A man should be master in his own household," Mr. Bell proclaimed,
raising a dripping face from the basin and looking around for the
towel--which his wife handed him.

"You won't have much household to be master of presently," said Mrs.
Peters provokingly.  "Half of it's going to leave."

Mr. Bell came out of his towel and looked from one to the other for some
explanation of this attempted joke, "What nonsense are you talking?" he
demanded.

"I think it's nonsense myself," said the pretty young woman--her hand on
the doorknob.  "But you'd better enjoy those biscuits of Di's while you
can--you won't get many more!  There's Gerald--good night!"  And off she
ran.

Diantha set the plateful on the table, puffy, brown, and crisply
crusted.  "Supper's ready," she said.  "Do sit down, Mother," and she
held the chair for her.  "Minnie's quite right, Father, though I meant
not to tell you till you'd had supper.  I am going away to work."

Mr. Bell regarded his daughter with a stern, slow stare; not so much
surprised as annoyed by an untimely jesting.  He ate a hot biscuit in
two un-Fletcherized mouthfuls, and put more sugar in his large cup of
tea.  "You've got your Mother all worked up with your nonsense," said
he.  "What are you talking about anyway?"

Diantha met his eyes unflinchingly.  He was a tall old man, still
handsome and impressive in appearance, had been the head of his own
household beyond question, ever since he was left the only son of an
idolizing mother.  But he had never succeeded in being the head of
anything else.  Repeated failures in the old New England home had
resulted in his ruthlessly selling all the property there; and bringing
his delicate wife and three young children to California.  Vain were her
protests and objections.  It would do her good--best place in the world
for children--good for nervous complaints too.  A wife's duty was to
follow her husband, of course.  She had followed, willy nilly; and it
was good for the children--there was no doubt of that.

Mr. Bell had profited little by his venture.  They had the ranch, the
flowers and fruit and ample living of that rich soil; but he had failed
in oranges, failed in raisins, failed in prunes, and was now failing in
wealth-promising hens.

But Mrs. Bell, though an ineffectual housekeeper, did not fail in the
children.  They had grown up big and vigorous, sturdy, handsome
creatures, especially the two younger ones.  Diantha was good-looking
enough.  Roscoe Warden thought her divinely beautiful.  But her young
strength had been heavily taxed from childhood in that complex process
known as "helping mother."  As a little child she had been of constant
service in caring for the babies; and early developed such competence in
the various arts of house work as filled her mother with fond pride, and
even wrung from her father some grudging recognition.  That he did not
value it more was because he expected such competence in women, all
women; it was their natural field of ability, their duty as wives and
mothers.  Also as daughters.  If they failed in it that was by illness
or perversity.  If they succeeded--that was a matter of course.

He ate another of Diantha's excellent biscuits, his greyish-red whiskers
slowly wagging; and continued to eye her disapprovingly.  She said
nothing, but tried to eat; and tried still harder to make her heart go
quietly, her cheeks keep cool, and her eyes dry.  Mrs. Bell also strove
to keep a cheerful countenance; urged food upon her family; even tried
to open some topic of conversation; but her gentle words trailed off
into unnoticed silence.

Mr. Bell ate until he was satisfied and betook himself to a comfortable
chair by the lamp, where he unfolded the smart local paper and lit his
pipe.  "When you've got through with the dishes, Diantha," he said
coldly, "I'll hear about this proposition of yours."

Diantha cleared the table, lowered the leaves, set it back against the
wall, spreading the turkey-red cloth upon it.  She washed the
dishes,--her kettle long since boiling, scalded them, wiped them, set
them in their places; washed out the towels, wiped the pan and hung it
up, swiftly, accurately, and with a quietness that would have seemed
incredible to any mistress of heavy-footed servants.  Then with
heightened color and firm-set mouth, she took her place by the lamplit
table and sat still.

Her mother was patiently darning large socks with many holes--a kind of
work she specially disliked.  "You'll have to get some new socks,
Father," she ventured, "these are pretty well gone."

"O they'll do a good while yet," he replied, not looking at them.  "I
like your embroidery, my dear."

That pleased her.  She did not like to embroider, but she did like to be
praised.

Diantha took some socks and set to work, red-checked and excited, but
silent yet.  Her mother's needle trembled irregularly under and over,
and a tear or two slid down her cheeks.

Finally Mr. Bell laid down his finished paper and his emptied pipe and
said, "Now then.  Out with it."

This was not a felicitious opening.  It is really astonishing how little
diplomacy parents exhibit, how difficult they make it for the young to
introduce a proposition.  There was nothing for it but a bald statement,
so Diantha made it baldly.

"I have decided to leave home and go to work," she said.

"Don't you have work enough to do at home?" he inquired, with the same
air of quizzical superiority which had always annoyed her so intensely,
even as a little child.

She would cut short this form of discussion: "I am going away to earn my
living.  I have given up school-teaching--I don't like it, and, there
isn't money enough in it.  I have plans--which will speak for themselves
later."

"So," said Mr. Bell, "Plans all made, eh?  I suppose you've considered
your Mother in these plans?"

"I have," said his daughter.  "It is largely on her account that I'm
going."

"You think it'll be good for your Mother's health to lose your
assistance, do you?"

"I know she'll miss me; but I haven't left the work on her shoulders.  I
am going to pay for a girl--to do the work I've done.  It won't cost you
any more, Father; and you'll save some--for she'll do the washing too.
You didn't object to Henderson's going--at eighteen.  You didn't object
to Minnie's going--at seventeen.  Why should you object to my going--at
twenty-one."

"I haven't objected--so far," replied her father.  "Have your plans also
allowed for the affection and duty you owe your parents?"

"I have done my duty--as well as I know how," she answered.  "Now I am
twenty-one, and self-supporting--and have a right to go."

"O yes.  You have a right--a legal right--if that's what you base your
idea of a child's duty on!  And while you're talking of rights--how
about a parent's rights?  How about common gratitude!  How about what
you owe to me--for all the care and pains and cost it's been to bring
you up.  A child's a rather expensive investment these days."

Diantha flushed.  she had expected this, and yet it struck her like a
blow.  It was not the first time she had heard it--this claim of filial
obligation.

"I have considered that position, Father.  I know you feel that
way--you've often made me feel it.  So I've been at some pains to work
it out--on a money basis.  Here is an account--as full as I could make
it."  She handed him a paper covered with neat figures.  The totals read
as follows:

Miss Diantha Bell,
To Mr. Henderson R. Bell, Dr.

To medical and dental expenses . . . $110.00
To school expenses . . . $76.00
To clothing, in full . . . $1,130.00
To board and lodging at $3.00 a week . . . $2,184.00
To incidentals . . . $100.00
 --------
 $3.600.00

He studied the various items carefully, stroking his beard, half in
anger, half in unavoidable amusement.  Perhaps there was a tender
feeling too, as he remembered that doctor's bill--the first he ever
paid, with the other, when she had scarlet fever; and saw the exact
price of the high chair which had served all three of the children, but
of which she magnanimously shouldered the whole expense.

The clothing total was so large that it made him whistle--he knew he had
never spent $1,130.00 on one girl's clothes.  But the items explained
it.

Materials, three years at an average of $10 a year . . . $30.00
Five years averaging $20 each year . . . $100.00
Five years averaging $30 each year . . . $50.00
Five years averaging $50 each year . . . $250.00
-------
$530.00

The rest was "Mother's labor, averaging twenty full days a year at $2 a
day, $40 a year.  For fifteen years, $600.00.  Mother's labor--on one
child's, clothes--footing up to $600.00.  It looked strange to see cash
value attached to that unfailing source of family comfort and advantage.

The school expenses puzzled him a bit, for she had only gone to public
schools; but she was counting books and slates and even pencils--it
brought up evenings long passed by, the sewing wife, the studying
children, the "Say, Father, I've got to have a new slate--mine's broke!"

"Broken, Dina," her Mother would gently correct, while he demanded, "How
did you break it?" and scolded her for her careless tomboy ways.
Slates--three, $1.50--they were all down.  And slates didn't cost so
much come to think of it, even the red-edged ones, wound with black,
that she always wanted.

Board and lodging was put low, at $3.00 per week, but the items had a
footnote as to house-rent in the country, and food raised on the farm.
Yes, he guessed that was a full rate for the plain food and bare little
bedroom they always had.

"It's what Aunt Esther paid the winter she was here," said Diantha.

Circuses--three . . . $1.50
Share in melodeon . . . $50.00

Yes, she was one of five to use and enjoy it.

Music lessons . . . $30.00

And quite a large margin left here, called miscellaneous, which he
smiled to observe made just an even figure, and suspected she had put in
for that purpose as well as from generosity.

"This board account looks kind of funny," he said--"only fourteen years
of it!"

"I didn't take table-board--nor a room--the first year--nor much the
second.  I've allowed $1.00 a week for that, and $2.00 for the
third--that takes out two, you see.  Then it's $156 a year till I was
fourteen and earned board and wages, two more years at $156--and I've
paid since I was seventeen, you know."

"Well--I guess you did--I guess you did."  He grinned genially.  "Yes,"
he continued slowly, "I guess that's a fair enough account.  'Cording to
this, you owe me $3,600.00, young woman!  I didn't think it cost that
much to raise a girl."

"I know it," said she.  "But here's the other side."

It was the other side.  He had never once thought of such a side to the
case.  This account was as clear and honest as the first and full of
exasperating detail.  She laid before him the second sheet of figures
and watched while he read, explaining hurriedly:

"It was a clear expense for ten years--not counting help with the
babies.  Then I began to do housework regularly--when I was ten or
eleven, two hours a day; three when I was twelve and thirteen--real work
you'd have had to pay for, and I've only put it at ten cents an hour.
When Mother was sick the year I was fourteen, and I did it all but the
washing--all a servant would have done for $3.00 a week.  Ever since
then I have done three hours a day outside of school, full grown work
now, at twenty cents an hour.  That's what we have to pay here, you
know."

Thus it mounted up:

Mr. Henderson R. Bell,
To Miss Diantha Bell, Dr.

For labor and services--

Two years, two hours a day at 10c. an hour . . . $146.00
Two years, three hours a day at 10c. an hour . . . $219.00
One year, full wages at $5.00 a week . . . $260.00
Six years and a half, three hours a day at 20c . . . $1423.50
--------
$2048.50

Mr. Bell meditated carefully on these figures.  To think of that child's
labor footing up to two thousand dollars and over!  It was lucky a man
had a wife and daughters to do this work, or he could never support a
family.

Then came her school-teaching years.  She had always been a fine scholar
and he had felt very proud of his girl when she got a good school
position in her eighteenth year.

California salaries were higher than eastern ones, and times had changed
too; the year he taught school he remembered the salary was only
$300.00--and he was a man.  This girl got $600, next year $700, $800,
$900; why it made $3,000 she had earned in four years.  Astonishing.
Out of this she had a balance in the bank of $550.00.  He was pleased to
see that she had been so saving.  And her clothing account--little
enough he admitted for four years and six months, $300.00.  All
incidentals for the whole time, $50.00--this with her balance made just
$900.  That left $2,100.00.

"Twenty-one hundred dollars unaccounted for, young lady!--besides this
nest egg in the bank--I'd no idea you were so wealthy.  What have you
done with all that?"

"Given it to you, Father," said she quietly, and handed him the third
sheet of figures.

Board and lodging at $4.00 a week for 4 1/2 years made $936.00, that he
could realize; but "cash advance" $1,164 more--he could not believe it.
That time her mother was so sick and Diantha had paid both the doctor
and the nurse--yes--he had been much cramped that year--and nurses come
high.  For Henderson, Jr.'s, expenses to San Francisco, and again for
Henderson when he was out of a job--Mr. Bell remembered the boy's
writing for the money, and his not having it, and Mrs. Bell saying she
could arrange with Diantha.

Arrange!  And that girl had kept this niggardly account of it!  For
Minnie's trip to the Yosemite--and what was this?--for his raisin
experiment--for the new horse they simply had to have for the drying
apparatus that year he lost so much money in apricots--and for the
spraying materials--yes, he could not deny the items, and they covered
that $1,164.00 exactly.

Then came the deadly balance, of the account between them:

Her labor . . . $2,047.00
Her board . . . $936.00
Her "cash advanced" . . . $1,164.00
---------
$4,147.00
His expense for her . . . $3,600
---------
Due her from him . . . $547.00

Diantha revolved her pencil between firm palms, and looked at him rather
quizzically; while her mother rocked and darned and wiped away an
occasional tear.  She almost wished she had not kept accounts so well.

Mr. Bell pushed the papers away and started to his feet.

"This is the most shameful piece of calculation I ever saw in my life,"
said he.  "I never heard of such a thing!  You go and count up in cold
dollars the work that every decent girl does for her family and is glad
to!  I wonder you haven't charged your mother for nursing her?"

"You notice I haven't," said Diantha coldly.

"And to think," said he, gripping the back of a chair and looking down
at her fiercely, "to think that a girl who can earn nine hundred dollars
a year teaching school, and stay at home and do her duty by her family
besides, should plan to desert her mother outright--now she's old and
sick!  Of course I can't stop you!  You're of age, and children nowadays
have no sense of natural obligation after they're grown up.  You can go,
of course, and disgrace the family as you propose--but you needn't
expect to have me consent to it or approve of it--or of you.  It's a
shameful thing--and you are an unnatural daughter--that's all I've got
to say!"

Mr. Bell took his hat and went out--a conclusive form of punctuation
much used by men in discussions of this sort.



THE POOR RELATION


A certain man had a Poor Relation, who was only kept in the family as a
Servant, who was certainly open to criticism, and who got it.

"He is so dirty!" said the Head of the Family, "That is why we make him
sleep over the stable."

"He is careless and clumsy--he soils, breaks and loses things--that is
why his furniture and clothing are so poor."

"He is a stupid fellow--not to be trusted with any important
business--that is why he does the scullery work!"

"He is a sickly wretch too--it costs us a deal of money to have him
cared for in the hospital and his defects attended to."

"Worst of all he has criminal tendencies--he is a disgrace and an
expense to the Family on this account alone."

"Why do you keep him at all?" I asked.

"We have to--he is after all a relation.  Besides--someone must do the
scullery work."

"What do you pay him?" I asked.

"We don't really pay him anything; we just keep him alive--and
clothed--so that he can do his work."

"Was he born defective?" I asked.

"No--I've heard my mother say he was as good a baby as I."

"And what relation did you say he was?"

"I rather hate to own it--but he's my brother!"



HIS CRUTCHES


Why should the Stronger Sex require,
 To hold him to his tasks,
Two medicines of varied fire?
 The Weaker Vessel asks.

Hobbling between the rosy cup
 And dry narcotic brown,--
One daily drug to stir him up
 And one to soothe him down.



OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD


II.

THE MAN-MADE FAMILY.


The family is older than humanity, and therefore cannot be called a
human institution.  A post office, now, is wholly human; no other
creature has a post office, but there are families in plenty among birds
and beasts; all kinds permanent and transient; monogamous, polygamous
and polyandrous.

We are now to consider the growth of the family in humanity; what is its
rational development in humanness; in mechanical, mental and social
lines; in the extension of love and service; and the effect upon it of
this strange new arrangement--a masculine proprietor.

Like all natural institutions the family has a purpose; and is to be
measured primarily as it serves that purpose; which is, the care and
nurture of the young.  To protect the helpless little ones, to feed and
shelter them, to ensure them the benefits of an ever longer period of
immaturity, and so to improve the race--this is the original purpose of
the family.

When a natural institution becomes human it enters the plane of
consciousness.  We think about it; and, in our strange new power of
voluntary action do things to it.  We have done strange things to the
family; or, more specifically, men have.

Balsac, at his bitterest, observed, "Women's virtue is man's best
invention." Balsac was wrong.  Virtue--the unswerving devotion to one
mate--is common among birds and some of the higher mammals.  If Balsac
meant celibacy when he said virtue, why that is one of man's
inventions--though hardly his best.

What man has done to the family, speaking broadly, is to change it from
an institution for the best service of the child to one modified to his
own service, the vehicle of his comfort, power and pride.

Among the heavy millions of the stirred East, a child--necessarily a
male child--is desired for the credit and glory of the father, and his
fathers; in place of seeing that all a parent is for is the best service
of the child.  Ancestor worship, that gross reversal of all natural law,
is of wholly androcentric origin.  It is strongest among old patriarchal
races; lingers on in feudal Europe; is to be traced even in America
today in a few sporadic efforts to magnify the deeds of our ancestors.

The best thing any of us can do for our ancestors is to be better than
they were; and we ought to give our minds to it.  When we use our past
merely as a guide-book, and concentrate our noble emotions on the
present and future, we shall improve more rapidly.

The peculiar changes brought about in family life by the predominance of
the male are easily traced.  In these studies we must keep clearly in
mind the basic masculine characteristics: desire, combat,
self-expression--all legitimate and right in proper use; only
mischievous when excessive or out of place.  Through them the male is
led to strenuous competition for the favor of the female; in the
overflowing ardours of song, as in nightingale and tomcat; in wasteful
splendor of personal decoration, from the pheasant's breast to an
embroidered waistcoat; and in direct struggle for the prize, from the
stag's locked horns to the clashing spears of the tournament.

It is earnestly hoped that no reader will take offence at the
necessarily frequent, reference to these essential features of maleness.
 In the many books about women it is, naturally, their femaleness that
has been studied and enlarged upon.  And though women, after thousands
of years of such discussion, have become a little restive under the
constant use of the word female: men, as rational beings, should not
object to an analogous study--at least not for some time--a few
centuries or so.

How, then, do we find these masculine tendencies, desire, combat and
self-expression, affect the home and family when given too much power?

First comes the effect in the preliminary work of selection.  One of the
most uplifting forces of nature is that of sex selection.  The males,
numerous, varied, pouring a flood of energy into wide modifications,
compete for the female, and she selects the victor, this securing to the
race the new improvements.

In forming the proprietary family there is no such competition, no such
selection.  The man, by violence or by purchase, does the choosing--he
selects the kind of woman that pleases him.  Nature did not intend him
to select; he is not good at it.  Neither was the female intended to
compete--she is not good at it.

If there is a race between males for a mate--the swiftest gets her
first; but if one male is chasing a number of females he gets the
slowest first.  The one method improves our speed: the other does not.
If males struggle and fight with one another for a mate, the strongest
secures her; if the male struggles and fights with the female--(a
peculiar and unnatural horror, known only among human beings) he most
readily secures the weakest.  The one method improves our strength--the
other does not.

When women became the property of men; sold and bartered; "given away"
by their paternal owner to their marital owner; they lost this
prerogative of the female, this primal duty of selection.  The males
were no longer improved by their natural competition for the female; and
the females were not improved; because the male did not select for
points of racial superiority, but for such qualities as pleased him.

There is a locality in northern Africa, where young girls are
deliberately fed with a certain oily seed, to make them fat,--that they
may be the more readily married,--as the men like fat wives.  Among
certain more savage African tribes the chief's wives are prepared for
him by being kept in small dark huts and fed on "mealies' and molasses;
precisely as a Strasbourg goose is fattened for the gourmand.  Now
fatness is not a desirable race characteristic; it does not add to the
woman's happiness or efficiency; or to the child's; it is merely an
accessory pleasant to the master; his attitude being much as the amorous
monad ecstatically puts it, in Sill's quaint poem, "Five Lives,"


"O the little female monad's lips!
O the little female monad's eyes!
O the little, little, female, female monad!"


This ultra littleness and ultra femaleness has been demanded and
produced by our Androcentric Culture.

Following this, and part of it, comes the effect on motherhood.  This
function was the original and legitimate base of family life; and its
ample sustaining power throughout the long early period of "the
mother-right;" or as we call it, the matriarchate; the father being her
assistant in the great work.  The patriarchate, with its proprietary
family, changed this altogether; the woman, as the property of the man
was considered first and foremost as a means of pleasure to him; and
while she was still valued as a mother, it was in a tributary capacity.
Her children were now his; his property, as she was; the whole enginery
of the family was turned from its true use to this new one, hitherto
unknown, the service of the adult male.

To this day we are living under the influence of the proprietary family.
 The duty of the wife is held to involve man-service as well as
child-service, and indeed far more; as the duty of the wife to the
husband quite transcends the duty of the mother to the child.

See for instance the English wife staying with her husband in India and
sending the children home to be brought up; because India is bad for
children.  See our common law that the man decides the place of
residence; if the wife refuses to go with him to howsoever unfit a place
for her and for the little ones, such refusal on her part constitutes
"desertion" and is ground for divorce.

See again the idea that the wife must remain with the husband though a
drunkard, or diseased; regardless of the sin against the child involved
in such a relation.  Public feeling on these matters is indeed changing;
but as a whole the ideals of the man-made family still obtain.

The effect of this on the woman has been inevitably to weaken and
overshadow her sense of the real purpose of the family; of the
relentless responsibilities of her duty as a mother.  She is first
taught duty to her parents, with heavy religious sanction; and then duty
to her husband, similarly buttressed; but her duty to her children has
been left to instinct.  She is not taught in girlhood as to her
preeminent power and duty as a mother; her young ideals are all of
devotion to the lover and husband: with only the vaguest sense of
results.

The young girl is reared in what we call "innocence;" poetically
described as "bloom;" and this condition is held one of her chief
"charms."  The requisite is wholly androcentric.  This "innocence" does
not enable her to choose a husband wisely; she does not even know the
dangers that possibly confront her.  We vaguely imagine that her father
or brother, who do know, will protect her.  Unfortunately the father and
brother, under our current "double standard" of morality do not judge
the applicants as she would if she knew the nature of their offenses.

Furthermore, if her heart is set on one of them, no amount of general
advice and opposition serves to prevent her marrying him.  "I love him!"
she says, sublimely.  "I do not care what he has done.  I will forgive
him.  I will save him!"

This state of mind serves to forward the interests of the lover, but is
of no advantage to the children.  We have magnified the duties of the
wife, and minified the duties of the mother; and this is inevitable in a
family relation every law and custom of which is arranged from the
masculine viewpoint.

From this same viewpoint, equally essential to the proprietary family,
comes the requirement that the woman shall serve the man.  Her service
is not that of the associate and equal, as when she joins him in his
business.  It is not that of a beneficial combination, as when she
practices another business and they share the profits; it is not even
that of the specialist, as the service of a tailor or barber; it is
personal service--the work of a servant.

In large generalization, the women of the world cook and wash, sweep and
dust, sew and mend, for the men.

We are so accustomed to this relation; have held it for so long to be
the "natural" relation, that it is difficult indeed to show that it is
distinctly unnatural and injurious.  The father expects to be served by
the daughter, a service quite different from what he expects of the son.
 This shows at once that such service is no integral part of motherhood,
or even of marriage; but is supposed to be the proper industrial
position of women, as such.

Why is this so?  Why, on the face of it, given a daughter and a son,
should a form of service be expected of the one, which would be
considered ignominious by the other?

The underlying reason is this.  Industry, at its base, is a feminine
function.  The surplus energy of the mother does not manifest itself in
noise, or combat, or display, but in productive industry.  Because of
her mother-power she became the first inventor and laborer; being in
truth the mother of all industry as well as all people.

Man's entrance upon industry is late and reluctant; as will be shown
later in treating his effect on economics.  In this field of family
life, his effect was as follows:

Establishing the proprietary family at an age when the industry was
primitive and domestic; and thereafter confining the woman solely to the
domestic area, he thereby confined her to primitive industry.  The
domestic industries, in the hands of women, constitute a survival of our
remotest past.  Such work was "woman's work" as was all the work then
known; such work is still considered woman's work because they have been
prevented from doing any other.

The term "domestic industry" does not define a certain kind of labor,
but a certain grade of labor.  Architecture was a domestic industry
once--when every savage mother set up her own tepee.  To be confined to
domestic industry is no proper distinction of womanhood; it is an
historic distinction, an economic distinction, it sets a date and limit
to woman's industrial progress.

In this respect the man-made family has resulted in arresting the
development of half the field.  We have a world wherein men,
industrially, live in the twentieth century; and women, industrially,
live in the first--and back of it.

To the same source we trace the social and educational limitations set
about women.  The dominant male, holding his women as property, and
fiercely jealous of them, considering them always as _his,_ not
belonging to themselves, their children, or the world; has hedged them
in with restrictions of a thousand sorts; physical, as in the crippled
Chinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque; moral, as in the oppressive
doctrines of submission taught by all our androcentric religions;
mental, as in the enforced ignorance from which women are now so swiftly
emerging.

This abnormal restriction of women has necessarily injured motherhood.
The man, free, growing in the world's growth, has mounted with the
centuries, filling an ever wider range of world activities.  The woman,
bound, has not so grown; and the child is born to a progressive
fatherhood and a stationary motherhood.  Thus the man-made family reacts
unfavorably upon the child.  We rob our children of half their social
heredity by keeping the mother in an inferior position; however
legalized, hallowed, or ossified by time, the position of a domestic
servant is inferior.

It is for this reason that child culture is at so low a level, and for
the most part utterly unknown.  Today, when the forces of education are
steadily working nearer to the cradle, a new sense is wakening of the
importance of the period of infancy, and its wiser treatment; yet those
who know of such a movement are few, and of them some are content to
earn easy praise--and pay--by belittling right progress to gratify the
prejudices of the ignorant.

The whole position is simple and clear; and easily traceable to its
root.  Given a proprietary family, where the man holds the woman
primarily for his satisfaction and service--then necessarily he shuts
her up and keeps her for these purposes.  Being so kept, she cannot
develop humanly, as he has, through social contact, social service, true
social life.  (We may note in passing, her passionate fondness for the
child-game called "society" she has been allowed to entertain herself
withal; that poor simiacrum of real social life, in which people
decorate themselves and madly crowd together, chattering, for what is
called "entertainment.")  Thus checked in social development, we have
but a low grade motherhood to offer our children; and the children,
reared in the primitive conditions thus artificially maintained, enter
life with a false perspective, not only toward men and women, but toward
life as a whole.

The child should receive in the family, full preparation for his
relation to the world at large.  His whole life must be spent in the
world, serving it well or ill; and youth is the time to learn how.  But
the androcentric home cannot teach him.  We live to-day in a
democracy-the man-made family is a despotism.  It may be a weak one; the
despot may be dethroned and overmastered by his little harem of one; but
in that case she becomes the despot--that is all.  The male is esteemed
"the head of the family;" it belongs to him; he maintains it; and the
rest of the world is a wide hunting ground and battlefield wherein he
competes with other males as of old.

The girl-child, peering out, sees this forbidden field as belonging
wholly to men-kind; and her relation to it is to secure one for
herself--not only that she may love, but that she may live.  He will
feed, clothe and adorn her--she will serve him; from the subjection of
the daughter to that of the wife she steps; from one home to the other,
and never enters the world at all--man's world.

The boy, on the other hand, considers the home as a place of women, an
inferior place, and longs to grow up and leave it--for the real world.
He is quite right.  The error is that this great social instinct,
calling for full social exercise, exchange, service, is considered
masculine, whereas it is human, and belongs to boy and girl alike.

The child is affected first through the retarded development of his
mother, then through the arrested condition of home industry; and
further through the wrong ideals which have arisen from these
conditions.  A normal home, where there was human equality between
mother and father, would have a better influence.

We must not overlook the effect of the proprietary family on the
proprietor himself.  He, too, has been held back somewhat by this
reactionary force.  In the process of becoming human we must learn to
recognize justice, freedom, human rights; we must learn self-control and
to think of others; have minds that grow and broaden rationally; we must
learn the broad mutual interservice and unbounded joy of social
intercourse and service.  The petty despot of the man-made home is
hindered in his humanness by too much manness.

For each man to have one whole woman to cook for and wait upon him is a
poor education for democracy.  The boy with a servile mother, the man
with a servile wife, cannot reach the sense of equal rights we need
to-day.  Too constant consideration of the master's tastes makes the
master selfish; and the assault upon his heart direct, or through that
proverbial side-avenue, the stomach, which the dependent woman needs
must make when she wants anything, is bad for the man, as well as for
her.

We are slowly forming a nobler type of family; the union of two, based
on love and recognized by law, maintained because of its happiness and
use.  We are even now approaching a tenderness and permanence of love,
high pure enduring love; combined with the broad deep-rooted
friendliness and comradeship of equals; which promises us more happiness
in marriage than we have yet known.  It will be good for all the parties
concerned--man, woman and child: and promote our general social progress
admirably.

If it needs "a head" it will elect a chairman pro tem.  Friendship does
not need "a head."  Love does dot need "a head."  Why should a family?



COMMENT AND REVIEW


I watched and waited for Margharita's Soul through eleven glittering
chapters of fair words; and when it appeared at last, in the twelfth
chapter, it was the funniest little by-product, born of imminent peril
and ice-water.

A beautiful great body had Margharita and a beautiful great voice; but
her long-delayed soul was the size of a small island and one family.
Funny notion of a soul!  A hen might have it.  No, not a hen--she is a
light-minded promiscuous creature; but a stork, let us say; she is
monogamous and quite bound up in her family.  No--not a stork
either--storks migrate; no island would satisfy her.  Apparently it
takes a human creature to be proud of a soul that size.

It is a very pretty story.

Thesis: the only thing a woman is for is matrimony and much
childbearing!  If she don't like it--no soul.

To develop thesis: Some unusual conditions; and a weird feminine
product, of such sort that her lover's sudden surrender and frantic
marriage is as it were involuntary.  It is of the kind that requires no
soul in the beloved object, a soul might have been a little in the way
in that violent attack.

Then--to sharply accent and enforce the thesis, our soulless
charmer--(her overwhelming allure for the men about her, during this
period, casts a sharp sidelight on the value of Soul as an Attraction!)
is given a Golden Voice.

This Voice is evidently one to give measureless pleasure to thousands;
not only so, but is shown to have such power as to touch hard hearts and
lead them heavenward; she with no soul assisting the souls of others;
long careful chapters are given to this voice; evidently as one decks
out a sacrifice; for the world comforting voice is only given her that
she may give it up--for Roger!

It seems a pity--with all this arranged, to ruin that voice by the shock
and exposure which aroused her Soul, She herself regretted it--having so
much less to give up--for Roger.  She meant to give it up anyway, she
said.  Perhaps the author didn't trust that new Soul completely--knowing
her previous character.  Anyway there she is, plus a soul and minus a
voice; living on the island and populating it as rapidly as possible,
perfectly happy, and a lesson for us all.

But is there not also Madam Schumann-Heinck?  A great sweet voice and a
great sweet mother too?  Has she not a Soul?

*

This Duty of Childbearing is evidently weighing on the minds of men, in
these days.  The thing must be done--they cant do it themselves, and
they are mightily afraid we won't, if we have half a chance to do
anything else.  If a woman was by way of being a Dante or a Darwin, she
had better give it up--for Roger--and take to replenishing the earth.
She can't do both--that is the main assumption; and if she chooses to
serve the world outside of the home that is sheer loss.

Says this wise Searcher of Feminine Souls: "For if all the wisdom and
experience and training that the wonderful sex is to gain by its exodus
from the home does not get back into it ultimately, I can't (in my
masculine stupidity) quite see how it's going to get back into the race
at all!  And then what good has it done?"

The gentleman does not see any way of advancing the human race except by
physical heredity--or by domestic influence.

What Shakespeare wrought into the constitution and character of his
daughter Judy is all that matters of his life and work.  Keats, having
no children, contributed nothing to the world.  George Washington,
childless, was of no social service.  Lincoln is to be measured by the
number and quality of his offspring.  Florence Nightingale, in lifting
the grade of nursing for the world, accomplished nothing.  Uncle Tom's
Cabin was of no service except as it might in some mysterious way "get
back into the home."  What mortal perversity is it that cannot see
Humanity in women as well as Sex; see that Social Service is something
in itself, quite over and above all the domestic and personal relations.

This getting back into the race means only the boys.  It would do no
good for generations of Margaritas to inherit that Golden Voice--each
and all must give it up--for Roger.  The race gets no music till the
bass, barytone or tenor appear.

Books like this are pathetic in their little efforts to check social
progress.

We suspect the author's name to be Mr. Partington.

*

(The Life and Times of Anne Royall.  By Sarah Harvey Porter, M.A.  12mo.
 Cloth, 209 pp.  $1.50 net; postage 12 cents.)

Biography has never been a favorite study with me; but I was interested
in this book because the woman whose life it described seemed worth
while.  Reading it, I found not only the life of Anne Royall, but the
life of America in the early part of the nineteenth century, in our
young, crude, dangerous days of national formation.  A novel has been
defined as "a corner of life seen through a temperament."  If that is a
true definition, then this is a novel, for Anne Royall had "temperament"
if ever anyone had, and she saw a large corner of life through it.

Who was Anne Royall?  An American woman, pioneer born and bred, familiar
with the life-and-death struggle of the frontier, and full of the spirit
of '76.  She was born in 1769, and lived through the War of the
Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and almost up to the Civil
War, dying in 1854.  In 1797 she was married to Captain William Royall,
an exceptional man, a Virginian, cultivated, liberal, singularly
broad-minded and public-spirited, and life with him added years of
genuine culture to the energy of a naturally bright mind.  Left a widow
at the age of forty-four, and, after ten years of travel and experience,
defrauded of the property left to her by her husband, she began to live
a brave self-supporting independent life at an age when most of the
women of her years were white-capped grandmothers.

Instead of sinking into the position of a dependent female relative, she
insisted on earning her own living.  This she did as so many women do
to-day, by the use of her pen, a rarer profession in those times.  The
more remarkable thing is that in the face of overwhelming odds she stood
for a religion, at a period when old-fashioned Calvinism was still a
dominant power.  The most remarkable, is her absolute devotion to the
public interests, to social service as she saw it.

There were a good many women writers even at that time, some of high
merit, but there were few publicists among them.  Some espoused this or
that "Cause" and gave to it the passionate devotion so natural to a
woman's heart.  But Anne Royall, while she also was passionately devoted
to several well-defined "Causes," was unique in that she kept in view
the general situation of her country, political, economic, geographic,
and educational, and wrote steadily for thirty-one years on matters of
national importance.

It is not a question of whether she was right or wrong--though she was
mostly right, as history has proved; but the impressive thing is that
this old woman, with "troubles of her own," was overwhelmingly
interested in her country and its service.  There are not so many,
either men or women, of this mind, that we can afford to overlook this
sturdy pioneer "new woman."  She had virtues, too, good solid Christian
virtues of the rarer sort; she visited the sick and afflicted, gave to
him that asked, and from him that would borrow turned not away.  Even to
her own weaker sisters she was a strength and comfort, greatly injuring
her own position by this unusual charity.  Also she was brave, honest,
truthful, persevering, industrious--"manly" virtues these.

But--and here we have the reason why Anne Royall made no greater mark,
why she was "unsuccessful," why most of us never heard of her--she
attacked great powers, and she fought unwisely.  Her abusive writing
sounds abominably to-day, but must be judged, of course, by the standard
of her time.  The worst things she said were not as bad as things
Shelley said--as the bitter invective and scurrilous attacks common to
pamphleteers of the time.  If our newspapers are yellow, theirs were
orange in the matter of personalities.

But even then this woman had a keen-cutting weapon, and used it
unsparingly.  Being alone, with no male relative to defend her; being
poor, and so further defenceless; being old, thus lacking weak woman's
usual protection of beauty, she had absolutely nothing to fall back on
when her enemies retaliated.

This picture of one lone woman defying and blackguarding what was almost
an established church, is much like Jack the Giantkiller--with a
different result.  It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung
so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of
America, a court of men tried--and convicted--this solitary woman of
sixty as a Common Scold.  They raked up obsolete laws, studied and
strove to wrest their meanings to apply to this case, got together some
justification, or what seemed to them justification for their deeds, and
succeeded in irretrievably damaging her reputation.

She was not to be extinguished, however.  In 1831 she started a
newspaper, with the ill-chosen name of PAUL PRY.  In 1836 another took
its place, called THE HUNTRESS.  And on the sale of these newspapers and
her books, the indomitable old lady lived to fight and fought to live
till she was eighty-five.

She is well worth reading about.  The history of her times rises and
lives around her.  In her vivid description we see the new rugged
country, over which she travelled from end to end; in her accounts of
current literature we pick up stray bits of information as to new
authors and new words.  "Playfulness," for instance, is one which she
stigmatizes as "silly in sound and significance," and declares that she
does not read the new novels "with the exception of Walter Scott's."
More interesting still to most of us is to study over the long lists of
her pen-portraits and see our ancestors as the others saw them.  Few
Americans of three generations but can find some grandfather or great
uncle halo-ed or pilloried by this clear-eyed observer.

Miss Porter has done her work well.  It is clear, strong and
entertaining--this biography.  If the writer seems more enthusiastic
about Anne Royall than the reader becomes, that is clearly due to an
unusual perception of life-values; a recognition of the noble devotion
and high courage of her subject, and an intense sympathy with such
characteristics.

*

The discussion as to whether we should or should not teach children the
Santa Claus myth pops up anew with Christmas time; and puzzles anew
anyone who regards this festival from a religious viewpoint.

If it was a choice between Santa Claus and nothing, we might prefer
Santa Claus; but here we have before us three things: first, the basis
of fact, the world old festival of the turn of the year, the coming of
the sun; second, a history of rejoicing peoples throughout all the ages,
keeping up the celebration under changing gods and dogmas; and third,
the story of beauty and wonder about the birth of Jesus.

Any child could be taught the meaning of the Coming of the Sun.  The
growing light, the longer days, the beautiful future of flowers and
birds and playing in the grass; the joy of the young year.  If we want
legends and stories, every religion behind us is full of them; stories
of sun-gods and their splendid triumph; stories of the great earth
mother and her bounty; stories of elves and gnomes and druids and all
manner of fairy tales.

But why avoid our own religion--the first which has emphatically taught
Love as the Law of Life--peace on earth and good-will to men.  Are we
ashamed of our religion or don't we believe it any more?  If we do
accept it in all the long-told tales of miracle and wonder, then we have
stories enough to tell our children; stories of simple human beauty,
stories of heavenly glory, stories of mystery and magic and delight.

If we do not wish to tell them these things as literally true; or even
as beautiful legends, there remains enough historic foundation to begin
with; and enough of the enduring glory of human love to last us a
lifetime.

"What is Christmas, Mama?"

"Christmas is a festival as old as the world, dear child--as old as our
human world; historic people have feasted and danced and sung for
thousands upon thousands of years, at this time of the year; and offered
gifts."

"Why do they give things at Christmas, Mama?"

"Because they are happy, dear; because they feel rich and glad and
loving now that the sun is coming back.  As if Mama had been away--and
you could just see her--a long, long way off.  You had seen her go--and
go--and go--farther and farther; and then she stopped a while--with her
back to you--and then all of a sudden she turned round and came toward
you!  Wouldn't you be glad?"

Then if the child wants to know about the tree and the candles and all
the details of ceremony, there are facts and fancies to account for them
all.

But if he says, "Why do they call it Christmas, Mama?"--then you must
tell him the secret of Christianity--which is love.

Now, can anyone explain--or defend, in face of all this, our preference
for a shallow local myth about St. Nicholas, and the corruption of that
into a mere comic supplement character; a bulbous benevolent goblin,
red-nosed and gross, doing impossible tricks with reindeers and
chimneys, and half the time degraded to a mere adjunct of nursery
government?  Why do we think it beautiful?  Or interesting?  Or
beneficial?  The children like it, we say.

Children like what they are used to, generally.  Also, like older
people, they are prone to like what isn't good for them.  They like
brandy-drops among sweetmeats, but that is no reason we should supply
them.

*

This brings us to a strange characteristic of most of us; we seem to
prefer small cheap shallow outside things to the deep glowing beauty of
life.  We seem afraid to take life at its splendid best; choosing rather
to live in a litter of petty ideas and feelings, and save the big ones
for Sundays--or annual holidays.

*

Yet in our hearts we all love great sweeps of emotion; and children
especially.  Prof. Thomas, of Chicago, has given us a sidelight on this
in his clever book about women, "Sex and Society."  He shows how in our
long pre-social period we were accustomed to strong excitement, long
hours of quivering suspense, mad rushes of blind fear, and orgies of
wild triumph.  Our nerve channels were like the beds of mountain
streams, in dry warm lands; lying shallow or even empty at times; and
again roaring torrents.  So that nowadays, on the paved levels of our
civilized life, the well-graduated dribble of small steady feelings, the
organism itself cries out for a change in the pressure.

Children and young people feel this more than older ones; the very old,
indeed, resent an unusual emotion.  Yet when the young grow restless and
fretfully "wish something would happen!" we rebuke them; from the
heights of our enforced contentment; and call this natural and healthy
feeling a mere "thirst for excitement."

*

We need excitement.  We have a vast capacity for it.  It is a most
useful thing--this excitement; and we ought to have more of it, much
more.  These young people are perfectly right in their uneasy feeling
that it would be nice to have something happen!

With all this to bank on, why so overlook the splendid possibilities of
Christmas?  Why continue to make our helpless children's minds the
submissive channels for poor worn-out thin old stories?  Are there no
gorgeous glowing truths in life--real life--now?

Then we tired aged people--born and reared in this atmosphere of cold
weariness; shake our heads and say--

"No.  Life is hard.  Life is dreary.  Life is one long grind!"

That is where we are wrong, and the children are right.  They come in
new every time.  The earth is as young to them as it was to Adam.

If we would but once face the dignity and beauty of childhood instead of
looking down on it as we do--then we could take advantage of that
constant influx of force, instead of doing our best to crush it down.

This brings us sharply back to our Christmas--the festival of the Child.

It is.  If celebrates the real new year; the new-born year, the opening
of another season of Life.

Dimly, very dimly, we have glimpsed this now and then, in the old triune
godhead of Isis, Osiris and Horus; and in our modern worship of the
Madonna and Child.

The time is coming very near when we shall see the meaning of The Child
more fully; and make our worship wiser.

What we see in all our thousand homes is "my child."  What the
doll-taught mother sees is a sweet pretty dressable object; far more
time and effort being given--even before its birth--to the making of
clothing, than to the making of its constitution or character.

Then we see children as "a care," and a care they are to our worldwide
incompetence.  How pathetic is the inadequacy of the young mother!  She
would never dare to undertake to run a racing stable with no more
knowledge and experience than she brings to run a family.

She loves them--?

Yes, she loves them.  And Mother love is so mighty a power that we all
love and honor Motherhood--in spite of its obvious deficiencies.  But
none of these feelings; not even the deepest mother-love, is all that we
should give the child.

He needs Understanding--and Honor.

He needs to be recognized as the forefront of the world--the world of
to-morrow--the world we are making.

As we bear and rear him--and her!--as we guide and teach them both, so
stand the Men and Women who follow us.

*

Of course we do the best we can for our own little ones.  That goes
without saying.

So does a monkey.

It is far more than that the child needs.

This Young Life, celebrated in our Christian Festival; this New Life,
Better Life, Life to Come, deserves more respect.

And the first meed of honor which we owe to our Successor, is to tell
him the truth!

*

That ought to put an end to our paltry old story of the Benign Chimney
Climber.

What we are here for, all of us, is to make the world better and the
people better.  It is an easy and a pleasant game, if we would but give
our minds to it.  The whole swiftly spreading enchantment of our varied
arts and industries is making a garden out of a wilderness; and even the
limited and defective education we now offer to our children, makes
better people than we used to have.

But what we have done for them is nothing to what we may do!  The best
brains in the world should proudly serve the child.  We should consider
him as a nation does its crown Prince--not a mere pet and darling--but a
coming Ruler.

*

Christmas will have a rejuvenation when it is recognized in this sense
as the Child's Festival.  Every beautiful myth of the past remains to
decorate it; every beautiful truth to vivify it.  It should be a
domestic, religious, civic, national and international festival.

It should mean Joy--and Hope--and Love; and teach them.

*

And Gifts?

Yes, gifts.  There could be no more appropriate testimony to Joy and
Hope and Love than these visible fruits.  Gifts to the happy child to
make him happier.  Gifts _from_ the happy child--and the new joy of
giving.  Gifts everywhere--from each to each--as showing the rich
overflow of Love and joy.

And more than that--Gifts from Each to All!  There is a custom worth
initiating!  Not charity nor anything of that sort.  Not the mere
visiting of the sick and the prisoner.  But a yearly practice of giving
something to the Community--to show you love it!

*

And suppose you don't?

If you had been properly taught as a child you would.  If you teach our
children properly they will.  Should we not gratefully recognize the
care and service that gives as everything we have?  It is the most
glaring lesson in life--this universal help of each to all.

Every day of our lives we are served and guarded and generally blessed
by--the Community.

*

It is perfectly easy to teach this to a child.  Everything that he sees
about him--that is not "a natural object," some of us dead or alive have
made.  The accumulated services of all the people gone have given us the
world as it is; those now here keep it up for us; and we--and our
children may build it better.

Not love the people who have given you the world?  How ungrateful!

*

At which you will remark disgustedly, "Given!  Not much?  They were paid
for it."

That is our mistake.

In the first place they never were paid for it--and are not now--not by
a long way.  And further--if we had outgrown this temporary custom of
paying for this--we should still have to serve each other--to live.

If we were all multi-millionaires--and so perfectly "independent"--why
we'd have to have some millionaire sailors and house-builders and
blacksmiths--that's all.  Their money would build no houses and sail no
ships.

Service is what counts--giving--the outpouring of strength and
good-will.

That is what Christmas means.  It is the Festival of Life.  Love and
Service--Loving and Giving--for the Coming Race.



PERSONAL PROBLEMS


We have one, a mere sample, left over from last time.

Query: "My wife is spending more of my income on dress than I can
afford.  How can I stop her?  G.

Answer: G. "By letting her earn her own income and spend it as she
pleases."

G. would never be content with that.  G. would get back at us and say--

Query: "How can a woman do her duty as a mother and earn her own
living?"

Answer: "If your wife was doing her duty as a mother she wouldn't be
spending so much money on dress!"

Answer further: Motherhood is "piecework"--it is not done by the hour.
The value of a mother to her children is not to be measured by quantity,
but by quality.  If a mother understood any business thoroughly, she
would begin to understand her mother-work better than she does now.

Query: "But how can a mother leave her children and go to work?"

Answer: "She does not have to.  She could be a milliner or dressmaker at
home just as well as a cook."


But these problems are general rather than personal.  Here is a personal
one.

Query: "I am about thirty--a woman.  I wish very much to be married.
All the nice men in our town have left it--or are married.  There are
thirty or forty more unmarried women than men.  What shall I do?  X."

Answer: "Leave that town and go to some place where there are more men.
Go as a matter of business, earning your own living.  Keep well, be as
good as you know how, and trust in Providence."



GET YOUR WORK DONE


Get your work DONE, to remember,--
 Nothing can take it away,
Then shall the sun of December
 Shine brighter than goldenest May.

What is the Spring-time of flowers for?
 Why does the sunshine come down?
What are the harvest-day hours for
 But fruit?  In the fruit is the crown.

Why should we grieve over losses?
 Why should we fret over sin?
Death is the smallest of crosses
 To the worker whose harvest is in.



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BOSTON, MASS.


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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 fantasy, 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

_____ 19__

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

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THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 3
JANUARY, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

Forgive the Past--and forget it!--don't carry a grudge against
graveyards.
Accept the Present--you have to--here it is.
Concentrate on the Future--still yours to make--and get busy!




A CENTRAL SUN

A Song


Given a central sun--and a rolling world;
 Into the light we whirl--and call it day;
 Into the dark we turn--and call it night;
Glow of the dawn--glory of midday light--
Shadow of eve--rest of the fragrant night
 And the dawn again!

Given a constant Power--and a passing frame;
 Into the light we grow--and call it life;
 Into the dark we go--and call It death;
Glory of youth--beauty and pride and power--
Shadow of age--rest of the final hour--
 And are born again!



REASONABLE RESOLUTIONS


The trouble with our "New Year Resolutions" is that they are too
personal.  We are always fussing about our little individual tempers and
weaknesses and bad habits.

While we, Socially, behave as badly as we do, we individually can
accomplish little.

Says the wiseacre--"Ah! but if each of us was individually perfect
Society would be perfect!"

Not at all!  You can amass any number of perfect parts of a
mechanism--or organism--but if they do not _work together right_ the
thing is no good.

And you can't learn to work together by trying to be perfect separately.
 Can you?

We need collective aims, collective efforts, collective attainments.

Let us collectively resolve:

That we will stop wasting our soil and our forests and our labor!

*

That we will stop poisoning and clogging our rivers and harbors.

*

That we will stop building combustible houses.

*

That we will _now_--_this year_--begin in good earnest to prevent all
preventable diseases.

*

That we will do our duty by our children and young people, as a wise
Society should, and cut off the crop of criminals by not making them.

*

That--; no; here are quite enough resolutions for one year.



HER HOUSEKEEPER


On the top floor of a New York boarding-house lived a particularly
attractive woman who was an actress.  She was also a widow, not
divorcee, but just plain widow; and she persisted in acting under her
real name, which was Mrs. Leland.  The manager objected, but her
reputation was good enough to carry the point.

"It will cost you a great deal of money, Mrs. Leland," said the manager.

"I make money enough," she answered.

"You will not attract so many--admirers," said the manager.

"I have admirers enough," she answered; which was visibly true.

She was well under thirty, even by daylight--and about eighteen on the
stage; and as for admirers--they apparently thought Mrs. Leland was a
carefully selected stage name.

Besides being a widow, she was a mother, having a small boy of about
five years; and this small boy did not look in the least like a "stage
child," but was a brown-skinned, healthy little rascal of the ordinary
sort.

With this boy, an excellent nursery governess, and a maid, Mrs. Leland
occupied the top floor above mentioned, and enjoyed it.  She had a big
room in front, to receive in; and a small room with a skylight, to sleep
in.  The boy's room and the governess' rooms were at the back, with
sunny south windows, and the maid slept on a couch in the parlor.  She
was a colored lady, named Alice, and did not seem to care where she
slept, or if she slept at all.

"I never was so comfortable in my life," said Mrs. Leland to her
friends.  "I've been here three years and mean to stay.  It is not like
any boarding-house I ever saw, and it is not like any home I ever had.
I have the privacy, the detachment, the carelessness of a
boarding-house, and 'all the comforts of a home.'  Up I go to my little
top flat as private as you like.  My Alice takes care of it--the
housemaids only come in when I'm out.  I can eat with the others
downstairs if I please; but mostly I don't please; and up come my little
meals on the dumbwaiter--hot and good."

"But--having to flock with a lot of promiscuous boarders!" said her
friends.

"I don't flock, you see; that's just it.  And besides, they are not
promiscuous--there isn't a person in the house now who isn't some sort
of a friend of mine.  As fast as a room was vacated I'd suggest
somebody--and here we all are.  It's great."

"But do you _like_ a skylight room?" Mrs. Leland's friends further
inquired of her?"

"By no means!" she promptly replied.  "I hate it.  I feel like a mouse
in a pitcher!"

"Then why in the name of reason--?"

"Because I can sleep there!  _Sleep_!--It's the only way to be quiet in
New York, and I have to sleep late if I sleep at all.  I've fixed the
skylight so that I'm drenched with air--and not drenched with rain!--and
there I am.  Johnny is gagged and muffled as it were, and carried
downstairs as early as possible.  He gets his breakfast, and the
unfortunate Miss Merton has to go out and play with him--in all
weathers--except kindergarten time.  Then Alice sits on the stairs and
keeps everybody away till I ring."

Possibly it was owing to the stillness and the air and the sleep till
near lunchtime that Mrs. Leland kept her engaging youth, her vivid
uncertain beauty.  At times you said of her, "She has a keen intelligent
face, but she's not pretty."  Which was true.  She was not pretty.  But
at times again she overcame you with her sudden loveliness.

All of which was observed by her friend from the second floor who wanted
to marry her.  In this he was not alone; either as a friend, of whom she
had many, or as a lover, of whom she had more.  His distinction lay
first in his opportunities, as a co-resident, for which he was heartily
hated by all the more and some of the many; and second in that he
remained a friend in spite of being a lover, and remained a lover in
spite of being flatly refused.

His name in the telephone book was given "Arthur Olmstead, real estate;"
office this and residence that--she looked him up therein after their
first meeting.  He was rather a short man, heavily built, with a quiet
kind face, and a somewhat quizzical smile.  He seemed to make all the
money he needed, occupied the two rooms and plentiful closet space of
his floor in great contentment, and manifested most improper domesticity
of taste by inviting friends to tea.  "Just like a woman!" Mrs. Leland
told him.

"And why not?  Women have so many attractive ways--why not imitate
them?" he asked her.

"A man doesn't want to be feminine, I'm sure," struck in a pallid,
overdressed youth, with openwork socks on his slim feet, and perfumed
handkerchief.

Mr. Olmstead smiled a broad friendly smile.  He was standing near the
young man, a little behind him, and at this point he put his hands just
beneath the youth's arms, lifted and set him aside as if he were an
umbrella-stand.  "Excuse me, Mr. Masters," he said gravely, but you were
standing on Mrs. Leland's gown."

Mr. Masters was too much absorbed in apologizing to the lady to take
umbrage at the method of his removal; but she was not so oblivious.  She
tried doing it to her little boy afterwards, and found him very heavy.

When she came home from her walk or drive in the early winter dusk, this
large quietly furnished room, the glowing fire, the excellent tea and
delicate thin bread and butter were most restful.  "It is two more
stories up before I can get my own;" she would say--"I must stop a
minute."

When he began to propose to her the first time she tried to stop him.
"O please don't!" she cried.  _"Please_ don't!  There are no end of
reasons why I will not marry anybody again.  Why can't some of you men
be nice to me and not--that!  Now I can't come in to tea any more!"

"I'd like to know why not," said he calmly.  "You don't have to marry me
if you don't want to; but that's no reason for cutting my acquaintance,
is it?"

She gazed at him in amazement.

"I'm not threatening to kill myself, am I?  I don't intend going to the
devil.  I'd like to be your husband, but if I can't--mayn't I be a
brother to you?"

She was inclined to think he was making fun of her, but no--his proposal
had had the real ring in it.  "And you're not--you're not going to--?"
it seemed the baldest assumption to think that he was going to, he
looked so strong and calm and friendly.

"Not going to annoy you?  Not going to force an undesired affection on
you and rob myself of a most agreeable friendship?  Of course not.  Your
tea is cold, Mrs. Leland--let me give you another cup.  And do you think
Miss Rose is going to do well as 'Angelina?'"

So presently Mrs. Leland was quite relieved in her mind, and free to
enjoy the exceeding comfortableness of this relation.  Little Johnny was
extremely fond of Mr Olmstead; who always treated him with respect, and
who could listen to his tales of strife and glory more intelligently
than either mother or governess.  Mr. Olmstead kept on hand a changing
supply of interesting things; not toys--never, but real things not
intended for little boys to play with.  No little boy would want to play
with dolls for instance; but what little boy would not be fascinated by
a small wooden lay figure, capable of unheard-of contortions.  Tin
soldiers were common, but the flags of all nations--real flags, and true
stories about them, were interesting.  Noah's arks were cheap and
unreliable scientifically; but Barye lions, ivory elephants, and
Japanese monkeys in didactic groups of three, had unfailing attraction.
And the books this man had--great solid books that could be opened wide
on the floor, and a little boy lie down to in peace and comfort!


Mrs. Leland stirred her tea and watched them until Johnny was taken
upstairs.

"Why don't you smoke?" she asked suddenly.  "Doctor's orders?"

"No--mine," he answered.  "I never consulted a doctor in my life."

"Nor a dentist, I judge," said she.

"Nor a dentist."

"You'd better knock on wood!" she told him.

"And cry 'Uncle Reuben?' he asked smilingly.

"You haven't told me why you don't smoke!" said she suddenly.

"Haven't I?" he said.  "That was very rude of me.  But look here.
There's a thing I wanted to ask you.  Now I'm not pressing any sort of
inquiry as to myself; but as a brother, would you mind telling me some
of those numerous reasons why you will not marry anybody?"

She eyed him suspiciously, but he was as solid and calm as usual,
regarding her pleasantly and with no hint of ulterior purpose.  "Why--I
don't mind," she began slowly.  "First--I have been married--and was
very unhappy.  That's reason enough."

He did not contradict her; but merely said, "That's one," and set it
down in his notebook.

"Dear me, Mr. Olmstead!  You're not a reporter, are you!"

"O no--but I wanted to have them clear and think about them," he
explained.  "Do you mind?"  And he made as if to shut his little book
again.

"I don't know as I mind," she said slowly.  "But it looks
so--businesslike."

"This is a very serious business, Mrs. Leland, as you must know.  Quite
aside from any personal desire of my own, I am truly 'your sincere
friend and well-wisher,' as the Complete Letter Writer has it, and there
are so many men wanting to marry you."

This she knew full well, and gazed pensively at the toe of her small
flexible slipper, poised on a stool before the fire.

Mr. Olmstead also gazed at the slipper toe with appreciation.

"What's the next one?" he said cheerfully.

"Do you know you are a real comfort," she told him suddenly.  "I never
knew a man before who could--well leave off being a man for a moment and
just be a human creature."

"Thank you, Mrs. Leland," he said in tones of pleasant sincerity.  "I
want to be a comfort to you if I can.  Incidentally wouldn't you be more
comfortable on this side of the fire--the light falls better--don't
move."  And before she realized what he was doing he picked her up,
chair and all, and put her down softly on the other side, setting the
footstool as before, and even daring to place her little feet upon
it--but with so businesslike an air that she saw no opening for rebuke.
It is a difficult matter to object to a man's doing things like that
when he doesn't look as if he was doing them.

"That's better," said he cheerfully, taking the place where she had
been.  "Now, what's the next one?"

"The next one is my boy."

"Second--Boy," he said, putting it down.  "But I should think he'd be a
reason the other way.  Excuse me--I wasn't going to criticize--yet!  And
the third?"

"Why should you criticize at all, Mr. Olmstead?"

"I shouldn't--on my own account.  But there may come a man you love."
He had a fine baritone voice.  When she heard him sing Mrs. Leland
always wished he were taller, handsomer, more distinguished looking; his
voice sounded as if he were.  And I should hate to see these reasons
standing in the way of your happiness," he continued.

"Perhaps they wouldn't," said she in a revery.

"Perhaps they wouldn't--and in that case it is no possible harm that you
tell me the rest of them.  I won't cast it up at you.  Third?"

"Third, I won't give up my profession for any man alive."

"Any man alive would be a fool to want you to," said he setting down,
"Third--Profession."

"Fourth--I like _Freedom!"_ she said with sudden intensity.  "You don't
know!--they kept me so tight!--so _tight_--when I was a girl!  Then--I
was left alone, with a very little money, and I began to study for the
stage--that was like heaven!  And then--O what _idiots_ women are!"  She
said the word not tragically, but with such hard-pointed intensity that
it sounded like a gimlet.  "Then I married, you see--I gave up all my
new-won freedom to _marry!_--and he kept me tighter than ever."  She
shut her expressive mouth in level lines--stood up suddenly and
stretched her arms wide and high.  "I'm free again, free--I can do
exactly as I please!"  The words were individually relished.  "I have
the work I love.  I can earn all I need--am saving something for the
boy.  I'm perfectly independent!"

"And perfectly happy!" he cordially endorsed her.  "I don't blame you
for not wanting to give it up."

"O well--happy!" she hesitated.  "There are times, of course, when one
isn't happy.  But then--the other way I was unhappy all the time."

"He's dead--unfortunately," mused Mr. Olmstead.

"Unfortunately?--Why?"

He looked at her with his straightforward, pleasant smile.  "I'd have
liked the pleasure of killing him," he said regretfully.

She was startled, and watched him with dawning alarm.  But he was quite
quiet--even cheerful.  "Fourth--Freedom," he wrote.  "Is that all?"

"No--there are two more.  Neither of them will please you.  You won't
think so much of me any more.  The worst one is this.  I like--lovers!
I'm very much ashamed of it, but I do!  I try not to be unfair to
them--some I really try to keep away from me--but honestly I like
admiration and lots of it."

"What's the harm of that?" he asked easily, setting down,
"Fifth--Lovers."

"No harm, so long as I'm my own mistress," said she defiantly.  "I take
care of my boy, I take care of myself--let them take care of themselves!
 Don't blame me too much!"

"You're not a very good psychologist, I'm afraid," said he.

"What do you mean?" she asked rather nervously.

"You surely don't expect a man to blame you for being a woman, do you?"

"All women are not like that," she hastily asserted.  "They are too
conscientious.  Lots of my friends blame me severely."

"Women friends," he ventured.

"Men, too.  Some men have said very hard things of me."

"Because you turned 'em down.  That's natural."

"You don't!"

"No, I don't.  I'm different.".

"How different?" she asked.

He looked at her steadily.  His eyes were hazel, flecked with changing
bits of color, deep, steady, with a sort of inner light that grew as she
watched till presently she thought it well to consider her slipper
again; and continued, "The sixth is as bad as the other almost.  I
hate--I'd like to write a dozen tragic plays to show how much I
hate--Housekeeping!  There!  That's all!"

"Sixth--Housekeeping," he wrote down, quite unmoved.  "But why should
anyone blame you for that--it's not your business."

"No--thank goodness, it's not!  And never will be!  I'm _free,_ I tell
you and I stay free!--But look at the clock!"  And she whisked away to
dress for dinner.

He was not at table that night--not at home that night--not at home for
some days--the landlady said he had gone out of town; and Mrs. Leland
missed her afternoon tea.

She had it upstairs, of course, and people came in--both friends and
lovers; but she missed the quiet and cosiness of the green and brown
room downstairs.

Johnny missed his big friend still more.  "Mama, where's Mr. Olmstead?
Mama, why don't Mr. Olmstead come back?  Mama!  When is Mr. Olmstead
coming back?  Mama!  Why don't you write to Mr. Olmstead and tell him to
come back?  Mama!--can't we go in there and play with his things?"

As if in answer to this last wish she got a little note from him saying
simply, "Don't let Johnny miss the lions and monkeys--he and Miss Merton
and you, of course, are quite welcome to the whole floor.  Go in at any
time."

Just to keep the child quiet she took advantage of this offer, and
Johnnie introduced her to all the ins and outs of the place.  In a
corner of the bedroom was a zinc-lined tray with clay in it, where
Johnnie played rapturously at making "making country."  While he played
his mother noted the quiet good taste and individuality of the place.

"It smells so clean!" she said to herself.  "There! he hasn't told me
yet why he doesn't smoke.  I never told him I didn't like it."

Johnnie tugged at a bureau drawer.  "He keeps the water in here!" he
said, and before she could stop him he had out a little box with bits of
looking-glass in it, which soon became lakes and rivers in his clay
continent.

Mrs. Leland put them back afterward, admiring the fine quality and
goodly number of garments in that drawer, and their perfect order.  Her
husband had been a man who made a chowder of his bureau drawers, and who
expected her to find all his studs and put them in for him.

"A man like this would be no trouble at all," she thought for a
moment--but then she remembered other things and set her mouth hard.
"Not for mine!" she said determinedly.

By and by he came back, serene as ever, friendly and unpresuming.

"Aren't you going to tell me why you don't smoke?" she suddenly demanded
of him on another quiet dusky afternoon when tea was before them.

He seemed so impersonal, almost remote, though nicer than ever to
Johnny; and Mrs. Leland rather preferred the personal note in
conservation.

"Why of course I am," he replied cordially.  "That's easy," and he
fumbled in his inner pocket.

"Is that where you keep your reasons?" she mischievously inquired.

"It's where I keep yours," he promptly answered, producing the little
notebook.  "Now look here--I've got these all answered--you won't be
able to hold to one of 'em after this.  May I sit by you and explain?"

She made room for him on the sofa amiably enough, but defied him to
convince her.  "Go ahead," she said cheerfully.

"First," he read off, "Previous Marriage.  This is not a sufficient
objection.  Because you have been married you now know what to choose
and what to avoid.  A girl is comparatively helpless in this matter; you
are armed.   That your first marriage was unhappy is a reason for trying
it again.  It is not only that you are better able to choose, but that
by the law of chances you stand to win next time.  Do you admit the
justice of this reasoning?"

"I don't admit anything," she said.  "I'm waiting to ask you a
question."

"Ask it now."

"No--I'll wait till you are all through.  Do go on."

"'Second--The Boy,'" he continued.  "Now Mrs. Leland, solely on the
boy's account I should advise you to marry again.  While he is a baby a
mother is enough, but the older he grows the more he will need a father.
 Of course you should select a man the child could love--a man who could
love the child."

"I begin to suspect you of deep double-dyed surreptitious designs, Mr.
Olmstead.  You know Johnnie loves you dearly.  And you know I won't
marry you," she hastily added.

"I'm not asking you to--now, Mrs. Leland.  I did, in good faith, and I
would again if I thought I had the shadow of a chance--but I'm not at
present.  Still, I'm quite willing to stand as an instance.  Now, we
might resume, on that basis.  Objection one does not really hold against
me--now does it?"

He looked at her cheerily, warmly, openly; and in his clean, solid
strength and tactful kindness he was so unspeakably different from the
dark, fascinating slender man who had become a nightmare to her youth,
that she felt in her heart he was right--so far.  "I won't admit a
thing," she said sweetly.  "But, pray go on."

He went on, unabashed.  "'Second--Boy,' Now if you married me I should
consider the boy as an added attraction.  Indeed--if you do marry
again--someone who doesn't want the boy--I wish you'd give him to me.  I
mean it.  I think he loves me, and I think I could be of real service to
the child."

He seemed almost to have forgotten her, and she watched him curiously.

"Now, to go on," he continued.  "'Third-Profession.'  As to your
profession," said he slowly, clasping his hands over one knee and gazing
at the dark soft-colored rug, "if you married me, and gave up your
profession I should find it a distinct loss, I should lose my favorite
actress."

She gave a little start of surprise.

"Didn't you know how much I admire your work?" he said.  "I don't hang
around the stage entrance--there are plenty of chappies to do that; and
I don't always occupy a box and throw bouquets--I don't like a box
anyhow.  But I haven't missed seeing you in any part you've played
yet--some of 'em I've seen a dozen times.  And you're growing--you'll do
better work still.  It is sometimes a little weak in the love
parts--seems as if you couldn't quite take it seriously--couldn't let
yourself go--but you'll grow.  You'll do better--I really think--after
you're married "

She was rather impressed by this, but found it rather difficult to say
anything; for he was not looking at her at all.  He took up his notebook
again with a smile.

"So--if you married me, you would be more than welcome to go on with
your profession.  I wouldn't stand in your way any more than I do now.
'Fourth--Freedom,'" he read slowly.  "That is easy in one way--hard in
another.  If you married me,"--She stirred resentfully at this constant
reference to their marriage; but he seemed purely hypothetical in tone;
"_I_ wouldn't interfere with your freedom any.  Not of my own will.  But
if you ever grew to love me--or if there were children--it would make
_some_ difference.  Not much.  There mightn't be any children, and it
isn't likely you'd ever love me enough to have that stand in your way.
Otherwise than that you'd have freedom--as much as now.  A little more;
because if you wanted to make a foreign tour, or anything like that, I'd
take care of Johnnie.  'Fifth--Lovers.'"  Here he paused leaning forward
with his chin in his hands, his eyes bent down.  She could see the broad
heavy shoulders, the smooth fit of the well-made, coat, the spotless
collar, and the fine, strong, clean-cut neck.  As it happened she
particularly disliked the neck of the average man--either the cordy, the
beefy or the adipose, and particularly liked this kind, firm and round
like a Roman's, with the hair coming to a clean-cut edge and stopping
there.

"As to lovers," he went on--"I hesitate a little as to what to say about
that.  I'm afraid I shall shock you.  Perhaps I'd better leave out that
one."

"As insuperable?" she mischievously asked.

"No, as too easy," he answered.

"You'd better explain," she said.

"Well then--it's simply this: as a man--I myself admire you more because
so many other men admire you.  I don't sympathize with them, any!--Not
for a minute.  Of course, if you loved any one of them you wouldn't be
my wife.  But if you were my wife--"

"Well?" said she, a little breathlessly.  "You're very irritating!  What
would you do?  Kill 'em all?  Come--If I were your wife?--"

"If you were my wife--" he turned and faced her squarely, his deep eyes
blazing steadily into hers, "In the first place the more lovers you had
that you didn't love the better I'd be pleased."

"And if I did?" she dared him.

"If you were my wife," he purused with perfect quietness, "you would
never love anyone else."

There was a throbbing silence.

"'Sixth--Housekeeping,'" he read.

At this she rose to her feet as if released.  "Sixth and last and
all-sufficient!" she burst out, giving herself a little shake as if to
waken.  "Final and conclusive and admitting no reply!"--I will not keep
house for any man.  Never!  Never!!  Never!!!"

"Why should you?" he said, as he had said it before; "Why not board?"

"I wouldn't board on any account!"

"But you are boarding now.  Aren't you comfortable here?"

"O yes, perfectly comfortable.  But this is the only boarding-house I
ever saw that was comfortable."

"Why not go on as we are--if you married me?"

She laughed shrilly.  "With the other boarders round them and a whole
floor laid between," she parodied gaily.  "No, sir!  _If_ I ever married
again--and I wont--I'd want a home of my own--a whole house--and have it
run as smoothly and perfectly as this does.  With no more care than I
have now!"

"If I could give you a whole house, like this, and run it for you as
smoothly and perfectly as this one--then would you marry me?" he asked.

"O, I dare say I would," she said mockingly.

"My dear," said he, "I have kept this house--for you--for three years."

"What do you mean?" she demanded, flushingly.

"I mean that it is my business,"  he answered serenely.  "Some men run
hotels and some restaurants: I keep a number of boarding houses and make
a handsome income from them.  All the people are comfortable--I see to
that.  I planned to have you use these rooms, had the dumbwaiter run to
the top so you could have meals comfortably there.  You didn't much like
the first housekeeper.  I got one you liked better; cooks to please you,
maids to please you.  I have most seriously tried to make you
comfortable.  When you didn't like a boarder I got rid of him--or
her--they are mostly all your friends now.  Of course if we were
married, we'd fire 'em all."  His tone was perfectly calm and business
like.  "You should keep your special apartments on top; you should also
have the floor above this, a larger bedroom, drawing-room, and bath and
private parlor for you;--I'd stay right here as I am now--and when you
wanted me--I'd be here."

She stiffened a little at this rather tame ending.  She was stirred,
uneasy, dissatisfied.  She felt as if something had been offered and
withdrawn; something was lacking.

"It seems such a funny business--for a man," she said.

"Any funnier than Delmonico's?" he asked.  "It's a business that takes
some ability--witness the many failures.  It is certainly useful.  And
it pays--amazingly."

"I thought it was real estate," she insisted.

"It is.  I'm in a real estate office.  I buy and sell houses--that's how
I came to take this up!"

He rose up, calmly and methodically, walked over to the fire, and laid
his notebook on it.  "There wasn't any strength in any of those
objections, my dear," said he.  "Especially the first one.  Previous
marriage, indeed!  You have never been married before.  You are going to
be--now."


It was some weeks after that marriage that she suddenly turned upon
him--as suddenly as one can turn upon a person whose arms are about
one--demanding.

"And why don't you smoke?--You never told me!"

"I shouldn't like to kiss you so well if you smoked!"--said he.


"I never had any idea," she ventured after a while, "that it could
be--like this."



LOCKED INSIDE


She beats upon her bolted door,
 With faint weak hands;
Drearily walks the narrow floor;
Sullenly sits, blank walls before;
 Despairing stands.

Life calls her, Duty, Pleasure, Gain--
 Her dreams respond;
But the blank daylights wax and wane,
Dull peace, sharp agony, slow pain--
 No hope beyond.

Till she comes a thought!  She lifts her head,
 The world grows wide!
A voice--as if clear words were said--
"Your door, o long imprisoned,
 Is locked inside!"



PRIVATE MORALITY AND PUBLIC IMMORALITY


There is more sense in that convenient trick of blaming "the old Adam"
for our misbehavior than some of us have thought.  That most culpable
sinner we no longer see as a white-souled adult baby, living on uncooked
food in a newmade garden, but as a husky, hairy, highly carnivorous and
bloodthirsty biped, just learning his giant strength, and exercising it
like a giant.

Growing self-conscious and intelligent, he developed an ethical sense,
and built up system after system of morals, all closely calculated to
advance his interests in this world or the next.  The morals of the
early Hebrews, for instance, with which we are most familiar, were
strictly adjusted to their personal profit; their conception of Diety
definitely engaging to furnish protection and reward in return for
specified virtuous conduct.

This is all reasonable and right in its way.  If good conduct were not
ultimately advantageous it would not be good.  The difficulty with the
ancient scheme of morality lies in its narrow range.  "The soul that
sinneth it shall die," is the definite statement; the individual is the
one taken to task, threatened, promised, exhorted and punished.  Our
whole race-habit of thought on questions of morality is personal.  When
goodness is considered it is "my" goodness or "your" goodness--not ours;
and sins are supposed to be promptly traceable to sinners; visible,
catchable, hangable sinners in the flesh.  We have no mental machinery
capable of grasping the commonest instances of collective sin; large,
public continuing sin, to which thousands contribute, for generations
upon generations; and under the consequences of which more thousands
suffer for succeeding centuries.  Yet public evils are what society
suffer from most to-day, and must suffer from most in increasing ratio,
as years pass.

In concrete instance, we are most definitely clear as to the verb "to
steal."  This is wrong.  It says so in the Bible.  It if a very simple
commandment.  If a man steals he is a thief.  And our law following
slowly along after our moral sense, punishes stealing.  But it is one
man stealing from one other man who is a thief.  It is the personal
attack upon personal property, done all at once, which we can see, feel,
and understand.  Let a number of men in combination gradually alienate
the property of a number of other men--a very large number of other men,
and our moral sense makes no remark.  This is not intended in any ironic
sense--it is a plain fact, a physiological, or psychological fact.

The racial mind, long accustomed to attach moral values to personal acts
only, cannot, without definite effort, learn to attach them to
collective acts.  We can do it, in crude instances, when mere numbers
are in question and the offence is a plain one.  If a number of men in a
visible moving group commit murder or arson before our eyes, we had as
lief hang a dozen as one: but when it comes to tracing complicity and
responsibility in the deaths of a few screaming tenants of firetrap
tenements, a death unnecessary perhaps, but for the bursting of the fire
hose--then we are at fault.  The cringing wretch who lit the oilsoaked
rags in the cellar we seize in triumph.  He did it.  Him we can hang.
"The soul that sinneth it shall die."  But if the fire is "an accident,"
owing to "a defective flue," if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give
away under a little extra weight, or ill-built walls crumble
prematurely--who can we lay hands on?  Where is the soul that sinneth?

Our brains are not trained to follow a complex moral relation; we travel
in the deep ruts of mental habit as old as Adam aforesaid.  Our sense of
duty, of obligation, of blame or praise is all hopelessly egotistic.
"Who is to blame?" we continue to say; when we should say, "Who are to
blame?"  One heavy dose of poison resulting in one corpse shows us
murder.  A thousand tiny doses of poison, concealed in parcels of food,
resulting in the lowered vitality, increased illness and decreased
efficiency of thousands of persons, shows us nothing.  There is need
to-day for very honest mental effort in readjusting our moral sense so
that we may recognize social evils, social offenders and social
responsibility.

Here we are all together, rising and falling in masses under the
influence of other person's conduct, with no possibility of tracing the
death of this particular baby to the dirty hands of that particular
milker of far-off cows.  It wasn't murder--he never saw the baby.  You
can't hang a man for not washing his hands.  We see babies die, look in
vain for the soul that sinneth, and do nothing.

We should have a poor opinion of any state where there was no moral
sense ai all, no weight of public opinion to uphold standards, no
measures to protect innocence and punish crime.  This we should call
barbarism or savagery, and feel proud of our Christian civilization,
where we legislate so profusely and punish so severely--when we can lay
hands on individual offenders, whose crimes, though small, are at least
whole ones.  But we are in precisely that state of barbarism in regard
to the fractional crimes of our complex social life.

If seven doctors in succession refuse to answer a poor man's call and he
dies for lack of medical aid--who has killed him?  Has he seven
murderers--or is each doctor one-seventh of a murderer?  Or is it not
murder at all just to let a man die?

If again,  the doctor does his duty and the man dies because the
medicine given him was different from what the doctor ordered--a
cheaper, weaker drug, an adulteration or substitute--then who killed
him?  The druggist who sold--the clerk who put up the prescription--the
advertiser of the stuff--the manufacturer of it--or those who live on
money invested in the manufacturing company?  "The clerk!" we cry,
delightedly.  "He put up the poison!  He knew it was not what was
ordered!  He did it with his hands!"  "The soul that sinneth _it_ shall
die."  And perhaps it does--or at least the body of it.  Yet the same
drug goes on poisoning.

We might perhaps pass on from that shaggy Adam of our remote past and
his necessary limitations, and begin to study the real relation of human
beings in modern life, learning at last that human conduct changes as
society develops, that morality is no longer a mere matter of "thou
shalt" and "thou shalt not," but a vast complex of mutually interactive
conduct in which personal responsibility has small place.

Take an evil like our railroad management with its yearly tale of
bloodshed and dismemberment, its hundreds and thousands of killed and
wounded.  We cannot pick out and hang a director or president when the
dead brakeman is dragged out from between the cars that did not have
automatic couplers.  The man is dead, is killed, is murdered--but we
cannot fix responsibility.  Can we arrest for murder the poor mother who
is caring for her boy sick with typhoid fever; just because she empties
slops on a watershed that feeds a little brook, that feeds a river, that
feeds a city--and thousands die of that widespread disease?  She is not
personally guilty of murder.  There are others in plenty between her and
the victim and many back of her to blame for her ignorance.  Who can
untangle the responsibility for the ruin of a girl who was utterly
untaught, underpaid, improperly dressed, ill-fed, influenced by every
gorgeously dressed idle woman who stood before her counter, and tempted
by many men in turn?  There is the one "sin"--but is she the only
"sinner"?

Consider the two awful instances of recent date--the Iroquois Theatre
fire in Chicago, the Slocum disaster in New York.  Even if it were
possible to "fix responsibility," to find the one person, or more than
one whom we could prove to blame for these holocausts, what could we do
to these persons as fit punishment for such an injury to society?  If we
could devise tortures prolonged and painful enough to make such
criminals feel as felt their dying victims, what good would that do?  It
would raise no dead, restore no health, prevent no repetition of similar
horrors.  That much has been established by the history of our primitive
systems--punishment does not prevent.

What does?

Here is the real question for society to ask--Adam did not know enough.
The age of personal morals is the age of personal punishment.  The age
of recognized public evils is the age of prevention.  This we are
beginning to see, beginning to do.  After the Iroquois fire we were more
stringent in guarding our theatres.  After the Slocum disaster the
inspection of steamships was more thorough.  After the slaughter of the
innocents in the burning schoolhouse, many other school buildings were
condemned and more were safeguarded.

But this is only a beginning--a feeble, temporary, ineffectual effort.
Social morality does not consist in spasmodic attempts to be good,
following upon some terrible catastrophe.  A mother's duty to a child is
not mere passionate protection after it has fallen through the ice; the
soldier's duty is not confined to wild efforts to recover the flag after
it has been lost.  We have a constant definite active duty to society,
each one of us; there lies our responsibility and failing therein is our
fault.

When men or women fail in full honest efficient performance of their
social service, which means their special kind of work, they sin--if we
must call it sin--against society.  Better drop the very name and
thought of "sin" and say merely, "Why are we to-day so inefficient and
unreliable in our social duty?"  For reason good.  We are not taught
social duty.  For further reason that we are taught much that militates
against it.  Our social instinct is not yet strong enough to push and
pull us into perfect relation with one another without conscious effort.
 We need to be taught from infancy, which way our duty lies--the most
imperative duty of a human creature--to give his life's best service to
humanity.

This would call for new standards in the nursery, the school and the
shop, as well as the platform, press and pulpit.  That is our crying
need; a truer standard of duty, and the proper development of it.  The
School City is a step this way, a long one; as is the George Junior
Republic and other specific instances of effort to bring out the social
sense.

But it is in our work that we need it most.  From babyhood we should be
taught that we are here dependent on one another, beautifully
specialized that we may serve one another; owing to the State, our great
centralized body, the whole service of our lives.  What every common
soldier knows and most of them practice is surely not too difficult for
a common business man.  Our public duty is most simple and clear--to do
our best work for the service of the world.  And our personal sin--the
one sin against humanity--is to let that miserable puny outgrown
Ego--our exaggerated sense of personality--divert us from that service.



[Untitled]


With God Above--Beneath--Beside--
 Without--Within--and Everywhere;
Rising with the resistless tide
 Of life, and Sure of Getting There.

Patient with Nature's long delay,
 Proud of our conscious upward swing;
Not sorry for a single day,
 And Not Afraid of Anything!

With Motherhood at last awake--
 With Power to Do and Light to See--
Women may now begin to Make
 The People we are Meant to Be!



THE HUMANNESS OF WOMEN


A woman by the river's brim,
A wife and servant is to him--
And she is nothing more.


We have made mistakes, as old as humanity, about the world, and about
women.

First, as to the world:

This we have assumed to be a general battlefield for men to struggle in;
a place for free competition; full of innumerable persons whose natural
mode of life was to struggle, for existence, with one another.

This is the individualist view, and is distinctly masculine.

Males are essentially individualistic--born to vary and compete; and an
exclusively masculine world must be individualistic and competitive.

We have been wrong.  The new Social Philosophy recognizes Society as an
orderly life-form, having its own laws of growth; and that we, as
individuals, live only as active parts of Society.  Instead of accepting
this world of warfare, disease, and crime, of shameful, unnecessary
poverty and pain, as natural and right, we now see that all these evils
may be removed, and we propose to remove them.  Humanity is waking up,
is beginning to understand its own nature, is beginning to face a new
and a possible problem, instead of the dark enigma of the past.

Second, as to the woman:

Our mistake about her was a very strange one.  No one knows yet how or
why it was made; yet there it stands; one of the most colossal blunders
ever made by mankind.  In the face of all creation, where the female is
sometimes found quite self-sufficient, often superior, and always equal
to the male, our human race set up the "andro-centric theory," holding
that man alone is the race type; and that woman was "his female."  In
what "Mr. Venus" described as "the vicious pride of his youth," our
budding humanity distinguished itself by discrediting its mother.  "You
are a female," said Ancient Man, "and that's all.  We are the People!"

This is the alpha and omega of the old idea about woman.  It saw in her
only sex--not Humanity.

The New Woman is Human first, last and always.  Incidentally she is
female; as man is male.  As a male he has done his small share in the
old physical process of reproduction; but as a Human Creature he has
done practically all in the new Social processes which make
civilization.

He has been Male--and Human:--She has been Female--and nothing
else;--that is, in our old idea.

Holding this idea; absurd, erroneous, and mischievous to a terrible
degree; we strove to carry it out in our behavior; and human history so
far is the history of a wholly masculine world, competing and fighting
as males must, forever seeking and serving the female as males must, yet
building this our world as best they could alone.

Theirs is the credit--and the shame--of the world behind us, the world
around us; but the world before us has a new element--the Humanness of
Woman.

For a little over a century we have become increasingly conscious of a
stir, an uprising, and protest among women.  The long-suppressed "better
half" of humanity has begun to move and push and lift herself.  This
Woman's movement is as natural, as beneficial, as irresistible as the
coming of spring; but it has been misunderstood and opposed from the
first by the glacial moraine of old ideas, the inert force of sheer
blank ignorance, and prejudice as old as Adam.

At first the women strove for a little liberty, for education; then for
some equality before the law, for common justice; then, with larger
insight, for full equal rights with men in every human field; and as
essential base of these, for the right of suffrage.

Woman suffrage is but one feature of the movement, but it is a most
important one.  The opposition to it is wholly one of sex-prejudice, of
feeling, not of reason; the opposition of a masculine world; and of an
individualism also masculine.  The male is physiologically an
individualist.  It is his place in nature to vary, to introduce new
characteristics, and to strive mightily with his rivals for the favor of
the females.  A world of males must fight.

With the whole of history of this combative sort; with masculinity and
humanity identical, in the average mind; there is something alien,
unnatural, even revolting, in the claim of woman to her share in the
work and management of the world.  Against it he brings up one constant
cry--that woman's progress will injure womanhood.  All that he sees in
woman is her sex; and he opposes her advance on the ground that "as a
woman" she is unfit to take part in "a man's world"--and that if she
did, it would mysteriously but inevitably injure her "as a woman."

Suggest that she might be able to take part in "a woman's world,"--and
has as much right to a world made her way as he has to his man-made
world!  Suggest that without any such extreme reversal, she has a right
to half the world; half the work, half the pay, half the care, half the
glory!

To all this replies the Male-individualist:

"The World has to be as it is.  It is a place to fight in; fight for
life, fight for money.  Work is for slaves and poor people generally.
Nobody would work unless they had to.  You are females and no part of
the world at all.  Your place is at home: to bear and rear children--and
to cook."

Now what is the position toward women of this new philosophy that sees
Society as one thing, and the main thing to be considered; that sees the
world as a place open to ceaseless change and improvement; that sees the
way so to change and improve it that the major part of our poor silly
sins and sorrows will disappear utterly for lack of cause?

From this viewpoint male and female fall into two lower positions, both
right and proper; useful, beautiful, essential for the replenishment of
the race on earth.  From this viewpoint men and women rise, together,
from that lower relation, to the far higher one of Humanness, that
common Humanness which is hers as much as his.  Seeing Society as the
real life-form; and our individual lives as growing in glory and power
as we serve and develop Society; the movement of women becomes of
majestic importance.  It is the advance of an entire half the race, from
a position of arrested development, into full humanness.

The world is no longer seen as a battlefield, where it is true, women do
not belong; but as a garden--a school--a church--a home, where they
visibly do belong.  In the great task of cultivating the earth they have
an equal interest and an equal power.  Equality is not identity.  There
is work of all kinds and sizes--and half of it is woman's.

In that vast labor of educating humanity, till all of us understand one
another; till the thoughts and feelings necessary to our progress can
flow smooth and clear through the world-mind, women have preeminent
part.  They are the born teachers, by virtue of their motherhood, as
well as in the human joy of it.

In the power of organization which is essential to our progress we have
special need of women, and their rapid and universal movement in this
direction is one of the most satisfactory proofs of our advance.  In
every art, craft and profession they have the same interests, the same
power.  We rob the world of half its service when we deny women their
share in it.

In direct political action there is every reason for women's voting that
there is for men's; and every reason for a spreading universal suffrage
that there is for democracy.  As far as any special power in government
is called for, the mother is the natural ruler, the natural
administrator and executive.  The functions of democratic government may
be wisely and safely shared between men and women.

Here we have our great position fairly before us:--the improvement of
the world is ours to make; women are coming forward to help make it;
women are human with every human power; democracy is the highest form of
government--so far; and the use of the ballot is essential to democracy;
therefore women should vote!

Against this rises the tottering fortress of the ultra-masculine,
abetted by a petty handful of witless traitors--those petticoated
creatures who also see in women nothing but their sex.  They may be, in
some cases, honest in their belief; but their honesty does no credit to
their intelligence.  They are obsessed by this dominant idea of sex; due
clearly enough to the long period of male dominance--to our androcentric
culture.  The male naturally sees in the female, sex; first, last and
always.  For all these centuries she has been restricted to the exercise
of feminine duties only, with the one addition of house-service.

The wife-and-mother sex, the servant sex, she is to him; and nothing
more.  The woman does not look at men in this light.  She has to
consider them as human creatures, because they monopolize the human
functions.  She does not consider the motorman and conductor as males,
but as promotors of travel; she does not chuck the bellboy under the
chin and kiss the waiter!

Inextricably mingled with the masculine view is the individualist view,
seeing the world forever and ever as a place of struggle.

Then comes this great change of our time, the dawning of the Social
consciousness.  Here is a world of combination, of ordered grouping and
inter-service.  Here is a world now wasting its wealth like water--all
this waste may be saved.  Here is a world of worse than unnecessary war.
 We will stop this warfare.  Here is a world of hideous diseases.  We
will exterminate them.  Here is a world of what we call "Sin"--almost
all of which is due to Ignorance, Ill-health, Unhappiness, Injustice.

When the world learns how to take care of itself decently; when there
are no dirty evil places upon it, with innocent children born daily and
hourly into conditions which inevitably produce a certain percentage of
criminality; when the intelligence and good breeding which now
distinguish some of us are common to all of us--we shan't hear so much
about sin!

A socially conscious world, intelligent, courageous, earnest to improve
itself, seeking to establish a custom of peaceful helpful
interservice--such a world has no fear of woman, and no feeling that she
is unfit to participate in its happy labors.  The new social philosophy
welcomes woman suffrage.

*

But suppose you are not in any sense Socialistically inclined.  Suppose
you are still an Individualist, albeit a believer in votes for women.
Even so, merely from the woman's point of view, enough can be said to
justify the promise of a New World.

What makes the peace and beauty of the Home--its
order--comfort--happiness?--the Woman.

Her service is given, not hired.  Her attitude is of one seeking to
administer a common fund for the common good.  She does not set her
children to compete for their dinner--does not give most to the
strongest and leave the weakest to go to the wall.  It is only in her
lowest helplessness; under the degrading influence of utter poverty,
that she is willing to exploit her children and let them work before
their time.

If she, merely as Woman, merely as wife and mother, comes forward to
give the world the same service she has given the home, it will be
wholly to its advantage.

Go and look at the legislation initiated or supported by women in every
country where women vote--and you will see one unbroken line of social
service.  Not self-interest--not mercenary profit--not competition; but
one steady upward pressure; the visible purpose to uplift and help the
world.

This world is ours as much as man's.  We have not only a right to half
its management but a duty to half its service.  It is our duty as human
beings to help make the world better--quickly!  It is our duty as Women
to bring our Motherhood to comfort and help humanity--our children every
one!



HERE IS THE EARTH


Here is the earth: As big, as fresh, as clean,
 As when it first grew green;
Our little spots of dirt walled in,
As easy to outgrow as sin,
In the swift, sweet, triumphal hour
 Of nature's power.

We have not hurt the world: Still safe we rest
 On that great loving breast.
Proud, patient mother!  Strong and still!
Our little years of doing ill
Lost in her smooth, unmeasured time
 Of life sublime.

We need not grieve, nor kneel our faults to own;
 She has not even known
That we offended!  Our misdeeds
She covers with one summer's weeds:
Her love we thought so long away--
 Is ours to-day.

And here are we.  Our bodies are as new
 As ever Adam grew:
Replenished still with daily touch,
By the fair mother, loving much.
Glad living things!  Still conscious part
 Of earth's rich heart!

And for the soul which these fair bodies give
 Increasing room to live--?
It is the same soul that was born
In the dim, lovely, unknown morn
Of Nature's waking--the same soul--
 Still here, and whole!

Strong? `Tis the force that governs ring on ring
 Where quiet planets swing.
Glad?  `Tis the joy of riotous flowers
And meadow-larks in May, now ours,
Ours endlessly--to have--to give--
 To all who live!

No grief behind have we, no fear before
 But only more and more
The splendid passion of the soul
In new creation to unroll:
All life, poured new in all the lands,
 Through our glad hands!



WHAT DIANTHA DID


CHAPTER III.

BREAKERS


Duck! Dive! Here comes another one!
Wait till the crest-ruffles show!
Beyond is smooth water in beauty and wonder--
Shut your mouth!  Hold your breath!  Dip your head under!
Dive through the weight and the wash, and the thunder--
Look out for the undertow!


If Diantha imagined that her arithmetical victory over a too-sordid
presentation of the parental claim was a final one, she soon found
herself mistaken.

It is easy to say--putting an epic in an epigram--"She seen her duty and
she done it!" but the space and time covered are generally as far beyond
our plans as the estimates of an amateur mountain climber exceed his
achievements.

Her determination was not concealed by her outraged family.  Possibly
they thought that if the matter was well aired, and generally discussed,
the daring offender might reconsider.  Well-aired it certainly was, and
widely discussed by the parents of the little town before young people
who sat in dumbness, or made faint defense.  It was also discussed by
the young people, but not before their parents.

She had told Ross, first of all, meaning to have a quiet talk with him
to clear the ground before arousing her own family; but he was suddenly
away just as she opened the subject, by a man on a wheel--some wretched
business about the store of course--and sent word that night that he
could not come up again.  Couldn't come up the next night either.  Two
long days--two long evenings without seeing him.  Well--if she went away
she'd have to get used to that.

But she had so many things to explain, so much to say to make it right
with him; she knew well what a blow it was.  Now it was all over
town--and she had had no chance to defend her position.

The neighbors called.  Tall bony Mrs. Delafield who lived nearest to
them and had known Diantha for some years, felt it her duty to make a
special appeal--or attack rather; and brought with her stout Mrs.
Schlosster, whose ancestors and traditions were evidently of German
extraction.

Diantha retired to her room when she saw these two bearing down upon the
house; but her mother called her to make a pitcher of lemonade for
them--and having entered there was no escape.  They harried her with
questions, were increasingly offended by her reticence, and expressed
disapproval with a fullness that overmastered the girl's self-control.

"I have as much right to go into business as any other citizen, Mrs.
Delafield," she said with repressed intensity.  "I am of age and live in
a free country.  What you say of children no longer applies to me."

"And what is this mysterious business you're goin' into--if one may
inquire?  Nothin you're ashamed to mention, I hope?" asked Mrs.
Delafield.

"If a woman refuses to mention her age is it because she's ashamed of
it?" the girl retorted, and Mrs. Delafield flushed darkly.

"Never have I heard such talk from a maiden to her elders," said Mrs.
Schlosster.  "In my country the young have more respect, as is right."

Mrs. Bell objected inwardly to any reprimand of her child by others; but
she agreed to the principle advanced and made no comment.

Diantha listened to quite a volume of detailed criticism, inquiry and
condemnation, and finally rose to her feet with the stiff courtesy of
the young.

"You must excuse me now," she said with set lips.  "I have some
necessary work to do."

She marched upstairs, shut her bedroom door and locked it, raging
inwardly.  "Its none of their business!  Not a shadow!  Why should
Mother sit there and let them talk to me like that!  One would think
childhood had no limit--unless it's matrimony!"

This reminded her of her younger sister's airs of superior wisdom, and
did not conduce to a pleasanter frame of mind.  "With all their
miserable little conventions and idiocies!  And what 'they'll say,' and
'they'll think'!  As if I cared!  Minnie'll be just such another!"

She heard the ladies going out, still talking continuously, a faint
response from her mother now and then, a growing quiet as their steps
receded toward the gate; and then another deeper voice took up the theme
and heavily approached.

It was the minister!  Diantha dropped into her rocker and held the arms
tight.  "Now I'll have to take it again I suppose.  But he ought to know
me well enough to understand."

"Diantha!" called her mother, "Here's Dr. Major;" and the girl washed
her face and came down again.

Dr. Major was a heavy elderly man with a strong mouth and a warm hand
clasp.  "What's all this I hear about you, young lady?" he demanded,
holding her hand and looking her straight in the eye.  "Is this a new
kind of Prodigal Daughter we're encountering?"

He did not look nor sound condemnatory, and as she faced him she caught
a twinkle in the wise old eyes.

"You can call it that if you want to," she said, "Only I thought the
Prodigal Son just spent his money--I'm going to earn some."

"I want you to talk to Diantha, Doctor Major," Mrs. Bell struck in.
"I'm going to ask you to excuse me, and go and lie down for a little.  I
do believe she'll listen to you more than to anybody."

The mother retired, feeling sure that the good man who had known her
daughter for over fifteen years would have a restraining influence now;
and Diantha braced herself for the attack.

It came, heavy and solid, based on reason, religion, tradition, the
custom of ages, the pastoral habit of control and protection, the
father's instinct, the man's objection to a girl's adventure.  But it
was courteous, kind, and rationally put, and she met it point by point
with the whole-souled arguments of a new position, the passionate
enthusiasm of her years.

They called a truce.

"I can see that you _think_ its your duty, young, woman--that's the main
thing.  I think you're wrong.  But what you believe to be right you have
to do.  That's the way we learn my dear, that's the way we learn!
Well--you've been a good child ever since I've known you.  A remarkably
good child.  If you have to sow this kind of wild oats--" they both
smiled at this, "I guess we can't stop you.  I'll keep your secret--"

"Its not a secret really," the girl explained, "I'll tell them as soon
as I'm settled.  Then they can tell--if they want to."  And they both
smiled again.

"Well--I won't tell till I hear of it then.  And--yes, I guess I can
furnish that document with a clean conscience."

She gave him paper and pen and he wrote, with a grin, handing her the
result.

She read it, a girlish giggle lightening the atmosphere.  "Thank you!"
she said earnestly.  "Thank you ever so much.  I knew you would help
me."

"If you get stuck anywhere just let me know," he said rising.  "This
Proddy Gal may want a return ticket yet!"

"I'll walk first!" said Diantha.

"O Dr. Major," cried her mother from the window, "Don't go!  We want you
to stay to supper of course!"

But he had other calls to make, he said, and went away, his big hands
clasped behind him; his head bent, smiling one minute and shaking his
head the next.

Diantha leaned against a pearly eucalyptus trunk and watched him.  She
would miss Dr. Major.  But who was this approaching?  Her heart sank
miserably.  Mrs. Warden--and _all_ the girls.

She went to meet them--perforce.  Mrs. Warden had always been kind and
courteous to her; the girls she had not seen very much of, but they had
the sweet Southern manner, were always polite.  Ross's mother she must
love.  Ross's sisters too--if she could.  Why did the bottom drop out of
her courage at sight of them?

"You dear child!" said Mrs. Warden, kissing her.  "I know just how you
feel!  You want to help my boy!  That's your secret!  But this won't do
it, my dear!"

"You've no idea how badly Ross feels!" said Madeline.  "Mrs. Delafield
dropped in just now and told us.  You ought to have seen him!"

"He didn't believe it of course," Adeline put in.  "And he wouldn't say
a thing--not a thing to blame you."

"We said we'd come over right off--and tried to bring him--but he said
he'd got to go back to the store," Coraline explained.

"He was mad though!" said Dora--"_I_ know."

Diantha looked from one to the other helplessly.

"Come in!  Come in!" said Mrs. Bell hospitably.  "Have this rocker, Mrs.
Warden--wouldn't you like some cool drink?  Diantha?"

"No indeed!" Mrs. Warden protested.  "Don't get a thing.  We're going
right back, it's near supper time.  No, we can't think of staying, of
course not, no indeed!--But we had to come over and hear about this dear
child's idea!--Now tell us all about it, Diantha!"

There they sat--five pairs of curious eyes--and her mother's sad
ones--all kind--all utterly incapable of understanding.

She moistened her lips and plunged desperately.  "It is nothing
dreadful, Mrs. Warden.  Plenty of girls go away to earn their livings
nowadays.  That is all I'm doing."

"But why go away?"

"I thought you were earning your living before!"

"Isn't teaching earning your living?"

"What _are_ you going to do?" the girls protested variously, and Mrs.
Warden, with a motherly smile, suggested--

"That doesn't explain your wanting to leave Ross, my dear--and your
mother!"

"I don't want to leave them," protested Diantha, trying to keep her
voice steady.  "It is simply that I have made up my mind I can do better
elsewhere."

"Do what better?" asked Mrs. Warden with sweet patience, which reduced
Diantha to the bald statement, "Earn more money in less time."

"And is that better than staying with your mother and your lover?"
pursued the gentle inquisitor; while the girls tried, "What do you want
to earn more money for?" and "I thought you earned a lot before."

Now Diantha did not wish to state in so many words that she wanted more
money in order to marry sooner--she had hardly put it to herself that
way.  She could not make them see in a few moments that her plan was to
do far more for her mother than she would otherwise ever be able to.
And as to making them understand the larger principles at stake--the
range and depth of her full purpose--that would be physically
impossible.

"I am sorry!" she said with trembling lips.  "I am extremely sorry.
But--I cannot explain!"

Mrs. Warden drew herself up a little.  "Cannot explain to me?--Your
mother, of course, knows?"

"Diantha is naturally more frank with me than with--anyone," said Mrs.
Bell proudly, "But she does not wish her--business--plans--made public
at present!"

Her daughter looked at her with vivid gratitude, but the words "made
public" were a little unfortunate perhaps.

"Of course," Mrs. Warden agreed, with her charming smile, "that we can
quite understand.  I'm sure I should always wish my girls to feel so.
Madeline--just show Mrs. Bell that necktie you're making--she was asking
about the stitch, you remember."

The necktie was produced and admired, while the other girls asked
Diantha if she had her fall dressmaking done yet--and whether she found
wash ribbon satisfactory.  And presently the whole graceful family
withdrew, only Dora holding her head with visible stiffness.

Diantha sat on the floor by her mother, put her head in her lap and
cried.  "How splendid of you, Mother!" she sobbed.  "How simply
splendid!  I will tell you now--if--if--you won't tell even
Father--yet."

"Dear child" said her Mother, "I'd rather not know in that case.  It
is--easier."

"That's what I kept still for!" said the girl.  "It's hard enough,
goodness knows--as it is!  Its nothing wicked, or even risky, Mother
dear--and as far as I can see it is right!"

Her mother smiled through her tears.  "If you say that, my dear child, I
know there's no stopping you.  And I hate to argue with you--even for
your own sake, because it is so much to my advantage to have you here.
I--shall miss you--Diantha!"

"Don't, Mother!" sobbed the girl.

"Its natural for the young to go.  We expect it--in time.  But you are
so young yet--and--well, I had hoped the teaching would satisfy you till
Ross was ready."

Diantha sat up straight.

"Mother! can't you see Ross'll never be ready!  Look at that family!
And the way they live!  And those mortgages!  I could wait and teach and
save a little even with Father always losing money; but I can't see Ross
wearing himself out for years and years--I just _can't_ bear it!"

Her mother stroked her fair hair softly, not surprised that her own plea
was so lost in thought of the brave young lover.

"And besides," the girl went on "If I waited--and saved--and married
Ross--what becomes of _you,_ I'd like to know?  What I can't stand is to
have you grow older and sicker--and never have any good time in all your
life!"

Mrs. Bell smiled tenderly.  "You dear child!" she said; as if an
affectionate five-year old had offered to get her a rainbow, "I know you
mean it all for the best.  But, O my _dearest_!  I'd rather have
you--here--at home with me---than any other 'good time' you can
imagine!"

She could not see the suffering in her daughter's face; but she felt she
had made an impression, and followed it up with heart-breaking
sincerity.  She caught the girl to her breast and held her like a little
child.  "O my baby! my baby!  Don't leave your mother.  I can't bear
it!"

A familiar step outside, heavy, yet uncertain, and they both looked at
each other with frightened eyes.

They had forgotten the biscuit.


"Supper ready?" asked Mr. Bell, with grim humor.

"It will be in a moment, Father," cried Diantha springing to her feet.
"At least--in a few moments."

"Don't fret the child, Father," said Mrs. Henderson softly.  "She's
feeling bad enough."

"Sh'd think she would," replied her husband.  "Moreover--to my mind--she
ought to."

He got out the small damp local paper and his pipe, and composed himself
in obvious patience: yet somehow this patience seemed to fill the
kitchen, and to act like a ball and chain to Diantha's feet.

She got supper ready, at last, making griddle-cakes instead of biscuit,
and no comment was made of the change: but the tension in the atmosphere
was sharply felt by the two women; and possibly by the tall old man, who
ate less than usual, and said absolutely nothing.

"I'm going over to see Edwards about that new incubator," he said when
the meal was over, and departed; and Mrs. Bell, after trying in vain to
do her mending, wiped her clouded glasses and went to bed.

Diantha made all neat and tidy; washed her own wet eyes again, and went
out under the moon.  In that broad tender mellow light she drew a deep
breath and stretched her strong young arms toward the sky in dumb
appeal.

"I knew it would be hard," she murmured to herself, "That is I knew the
facts--but I didn't know the feeling!"

She stood at the gate between the cypresses, sat waiting under the
acacia boughs, walked restlessly up and down the path outside, the dry
pepper berries crush softly under foot; bracing herself for one more
struggle--and the hardest of all.

"He will understand!" he told herself, over and over, but at the bottom
of her heart she knew he wouldn't.

He came at last; a slower, wearier step than usual; came and took both
her hands in his and stood holding them, looking at her questioningly.
Then he held her face between his palms and made her look at him.  Her
eyes were brave and steady, but the mouth trembled in spite of her.

He stilled it with a kiss, and drew her to a seat on the bench beside
him.  "My poor Little Girl!  You haven't had a chance yet to really tell
me about this thing, and I want you to right now.  Then I'm going to
kill about forty people in this town!  _Somebody_ has been mighty
foolish."

She squeezed his hand, but found it very difficult to speak.  His love,
his sympathy, his tenderness, were so delicious after this day's
trials--and before those further ones she could so well anticipate.  She
didn't wish to cry any more, that would by no means strengthen her
position, and she found she couldn't seem to speak without crying.

"One would think to hear the good people of this town that you were
about to leave home and mother for--well, for a trip to the moon!" he
added.  "There isn't any agreement as to what you're going to do, but
they're unanimous as to its being entirely wrong.  Now suppose you tell
me about it."

"I will," said Diantha.  "I began to the other night, you know, you
first of course--it was too bad! your having to go off at that exact
moment.  Then I had to tell mother--because--well you'll see presently.
Now dear--just let me say it _all_--before you--do anything."

"Say away, my darling.  I trust you perfectly."

She flashed a grateful look at him.  "It is this way, my dear.  I have
two, three, yes four, things to consider:--My own personal problem--my
family's--yours--and a social one."

"My family's?" he asked, with a faint shade of offence in his tone.

"No no dear--your own," she explained.

"Better cut mine out, Little Girl," he said.  "I'll consider that
myself."

"Well--I won't talk about it if you don't want me to.  There are the
other three."

"I won't question your second, nor your imposing third, but isn't the
first one--your own personal problem--a good deal answered?" he
suggested, holding her close for a moment.

"Don't!" she said.  "I can't talk straight when you put it that way."

She rose hurriedly and took a step or two up and down.  "I don't
suppose--in spite of your loving me, that I can make you see it as I do.
 But I'll be just as clear as I can.  There are some years before us
before we can be together.  In that time I intend to go away and
undertake a business I am interested in.  My purpose is to--develop the
work, to earn money, to help my family, and to--well, not to hinder
you."

"I don't understand, I confess," he said.  "Don't you propose to tell me
what this 'work' is?"

"Yes--I will--certainly.  But not yet dear!  Let me try to show you how
I feel about it."

"Wait," said he.  "One thing I want to be sure of.  Are you doing this
with any quixotic notion of helping me--in _my_ business?  Helping me to
take care of my family?  Helping me to--" he stood up now, looking very
tall and rather forbidding, "No, I won't say that to you."

"Would there be anything wrong in my meaning exactly that?" she asked,
holding her own head a little higher; "both what you said and what you
didn't?"

"It would be absolutely wrong, all of it," he answered.  "I cannot
believe that the woman I love would--could take such a position."

"Look here, Ross!" said the girl earnestly.  "Suppose you knew where
there was a gold mine--_knew it_--and by going away for a few years you
could get a real fortune--wouldn't you do it?"

"Naturally I should," he agreed.

"Well, suppose it wasn't a gold mine, but a business, a new system like
those cigar stores--or--some patent amusement specialty--or
_anything_--that you knew was better than what you're doing--wouldn't
you have a right to try it?"

"Of course I should--but what has that to do with this case?"

"Why it's the same thing!  Don't you see?  I have plans that will be of
real benefit to all of us, something worth while to _do_--and not only
for us but for _everybody_--a real piece of progress--and I'm going to
leave my people--and even you!--for a little while--to make us all
happier later on."

He smiled lovingly at her but shook his head slowly.  "You dear, brave,
foolish child!" he said.  "I don't for one moment doubt your noble
purposes.  But you don't get the man's point of view--naturally.  What's
more you don't seem to get the woman's."

"Can you see no other point of view than those?" she asked.

"There are no others," he answered.  "Come! come! my darling, don't add
this new difficulty to what we've got to carry!  I know you have a hard
time of it at home.  Some day, please God, you shall have an easier one!
 And I'm having a hard time too--I don't deny it.  But you are the
greatest joy and comfort I have, dear--you know that.  If you go
away--it will be harder and slower and longer--that's all.  I shall have
you to worry about too.  Let somebody else do the gold-mine, dear--you
stay here and comfort your Mother as long as you can--and me.  How can I
get along without you?"

He tried to put his arm around her again, but she drew back.  "Dear,"
she said.  "If I deliberately do what I think is right--against your
wishes--what will you do?"

"Do?" The laughed bitterly.  "What can I do?  I'm tied by the leg
here--l can't go after you.  I've nothing to pull you out of a scrape
with if you get in one.  I couldn't do anything but--stand it."

"And if I go ahead, and do what you don't like--and make
you--suffer--would you--would you rather be free?"  Her voice was very
low and shaken, but he heard her well enough.

"Free of you?  Free of _you_?"  He caught her and held her and kissed
her over and over.

"You are mine!" he said.  "You have given yourself to me!  You cannot
leave me.  Neither of us is free--ever again."  But she struggled away
from him.

"Both of us are free--to do what we think right, _always_ Ross!  I
wouldn't try to stop you if you thought it was your duty to go to the
North Pole!"  She held him a little way off.  "Let me tell you, dear.
Sit down--let me tell you all about it."  But he wouldn't sit down.

"I don't think I want to know the details," he said.  "It doesn't much
matter what you're going to do--if you really go away.  I can't stop
you--I see that.  If you think this thing is your 'duty' you'll do it if
it kills us all--and you too!  If you have to go--I shall do
nothing--can do nothing--but wait till you come back to me!  Whatever
happens, darling--no matter how you fail--don't ever be afraid to come
back to me."

He folded his arms now--did not attempt to hold her--gave her the
freedom she asked and promised her the love she had almost feared to
lose--and her whole carefully constructed plan seemed like a child's
sand castle for a moment; her heroic decision the wildest folly.

He was not even looking at her; she saw his strong, clean-cut profile
dark against the moonlit house, a settled patience in its lines.  Duty!
Here was duty, surely, with tenderest happiness.  She was leaning toward
him--her hand was seeking his, when she heard through the fragrant
silence a sound from her mother's room--the faint creak of her light
rocking chair.  She could not sleep--she was sitting up with her
trouble, bearing it quietly as she had so many others.

The quiet everyday tragedy of that distasteful life--the slow withering
away of youth and hope and ambition into a gray waste of ineffectual
submissive labor--not only of her life, but of thousands upon thousands
like her--it all rose up like a flood in the girl's hot young heart.

Ross had turned to her--was holding out his arms to her.  "You won't go,
my darling!" he said.

"I am going Wednesday on the 7.10," said Diantha.



THE "ANTI" AND THE FLY


The fly upon the Cartwheel
 Thought he made all the Sound;
He thought he made the Cart go on--
 And made the wheels go round.

The Fly upon the Cartwheel
 Has won undying fame
For Conceit that was colossal,
 And Ignorance the same.

But to-day he has a Rival
 As we roll down History's Track--
For the "Anti" on the Cartwheel
 Thinks she makes the Wheels go back!



THE BARREL


I was walking, peacefully enough, along a plain ordinary road, when I
lifted my head and observed an impressive gateway.  The pillars were of
stone, high, carven, massive; mighty gates of wrought iron hung between
them, the gray wall stretched away on either side.

As the gates were open and there was no prohibitory sign, I entered, and
for easy miles walked on; under the springing arches of tall elms, flat
roofs of beech, and level fans of fir and pine; through woodland, park
and meadow, with glimpses of starred lily-ponds, blue lakelets, and
bright brooks; seeing the dappled deer, the swans and pheasants--a
glorious place indeed.

Then a smooth turn, and across velvet lawns and statued gardens I saw a
towering palace, so nobly beautiful, so majestic, I took off my hat
involuntarily.  Approaching it I was met by courteous servingmen; told
that it was open to visitors; and shown from hall to hall, from floor to
floor; where every object was a work of art; where line, color and
proportion, perfect architecture and fitting decoration made an
overwhelming beauty.

"Whose it is?" I inquired.  "Some Duke?--King?--Emperor?  Who owns this
palace?--this glorious estate?"

They bowed and offered to lead me to him.

Downward and toward the back; through servants' apartments; through
workroom, scullery and stable; out to the last and least and meanest
little yard; narrow and dark, stone-paved, stone-walled, shadowed by
caves of barns; there, huddled in a barrel, they pointed out a man.

They bowed to him, they called him master.  They told me he was the
owner of this vast estate.

I could not believe it--but they stood bowing--and he ordered them away.

"What!" I cried.  "_You!_--you are the owner--the master of all this
wealth of beauty--this beauty of wealth!  You own these miles of breezy
upland and rich valley--still forests and bright lakes!  You own these
noble trees--those overflowing flowers--those glades of browsing deer!
You own this palace--a joy to the eye and uplift to the soul!  This
majesty and splendor--this comfort, beauty, form, you own all this--and
are living--_here._"

He regarded me superciliously, with a weary expression.

"Young man," he said, "you are a dreamer--a visionary--a Utopian!--an
idealist!  You should consider Facts, my young sir; fix your mind on
Facts!  The _Fact_ is that I live in this Barrel."


It was a fact;--he did visibly live in the Barrel.

It was also a fact that he owned that vast estate.

And there was no lid on the Barrel.



OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD


III.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY.


NOTE--The word "Androcentric" we owe to Prof. Lester F. Ward.  In his
book, "Pure Sociology," Chap. 14, he describes the Androcentric Theory
of life, hitherto universally accepted; and introduces his own
"Gyneacocentric Theory."  All who are interested in the deeper
scientific aspects of this question are urged to read that chapter.
Prof. Ward's theory is to my mind the most important that has been
offered the world since the Theory of Evolution; and without exception
the most important that has ever been put forward concerning women.


Among the many paradoxes which we find in human life is our low average
standard of health and beauty, compared with our power and knowledge.
All creatures suffer from conflict with the elements; from enemies
without and within--the prowling devourers of the forest, and "the
terror that walketh in darkness" and attacks the body from inside, in
hidden millions.

Among wild animals generally, there is a certain standard of excellence;
if you shoot a bear or a bird, it is a fair sample of the species; you
do not say, "O what an ugly one!" or "This must have been an invalid!"

Where we have domesticated any animal, and interfered with its natural
habits, illness has followed; the dog is said to have the most diseases
second to man; the horse comes next; but the wild ones put us to shame
by their superior health and the beauty that belongs to right
development.

In our long ages of blind infancy we assume that sickness was a
visitation frown the gods; some still believe this, holding it to be a
special prerogative of divinity to afflict us in this way.  We speak of
"the ills that flesh is heir to" as if the inheritance was entailed and
inalienable.  Only of late years, after much study and long struggle
with this old belief which made us submit to sickness as a blow from the
hand of God, we are beginning to learn something of the many causes of
our many diseases, and how to remove some of them.

It is still true, however, that almost every one of us is to some degree
abnormal; the features asymmetrical, the vision defective, the digestion
unreliable, the nervous system erratic--we are but a job lot even in
what we call "good health"; and are subject to a burden of pain and
premature death that would make life hideous if it were not so
ridiculously unnecessary.

As to beauty--we do not think of expecting it save in the rarely
exceptional case.  Look at the faces--the figures--in any crowd you
meet; compare the average man or the average woman with the normal type
of human beauty as given us in picture and statue; and consider if there
is not some general cause for so general a condition of ugliness.

Moreover, leaving our defective bodies concealed by garments; what are
those garments, as conducive to health and beauty?  Is the practical
ugliness of our men's attire, and the impractical absurdity of our
women's, any contribution to human beauty?  Look at our houses--are they
beautiful?  Even the houses of the rich?

We do not even know that we ought to live in a world of overflowing
loveliness; and that our contribution to it should be the loveliest of
all.  We are so sodden in the dull ugliness of our interiors, so used to
calling a tame weary low-toned color scheme "good taste," that only
children dare frankly yearn for Beauty--and they are speedily educated
out of it.

The reasons specially given for our low standards of health and beauty
are ignorance, poverty, and the evil effects of special trades.  The Man
with the Hoe becomes brother to the ox because of over-much hoeing; the
housepainter is lead-poisoned because of his painting; books have been
written to show the injurious influence of nearly all our industries
upon workers.

These causes are sound as far as they go; but do not cover the whole
ground.

The farmer may be muscle-bound and stooping from his labor; but that
does not account for his dyspepsia or his rheumatism.

Then we allege poverty as covering all.  Poverty does cover a good deal.
 But when we find even a half-fed savage better developed than a well
paid cashier; and a poor peasant woman a more vigorous mother than the
idle wife of a rich man, poverty is not enough.

Then we say ignorance explains it.  But there are most learned
professors who are ugly and asthmathic; there are even doctors who can
boast no beauty and but moderate health; there are some of the petted
children of the wealthy, upon whom every care is lavished from birth,
and who still are ill to look at and worse to marry.

All these special causes are admitted, given their due share in lowering
our standards, but there is another far more universal in its
application and its effects.  Let us look back on our little ancestors
the beasts, and see what keeps them so true to type.

The type itself set by that balance of conditions and forces we call
"natural selection."  As the environment changes they must be adapted to
it, if they cannot so adapt themselves they die.  Those who live are, by
living, proven capable of maintaining themselves.  Every creature which
has remained on earth, while so many less effective kinds died out,
remains as a conqueror.  The speed of the deer--the constant use of
speed--is what keeps it alive and makes it healthy and beautiful.  The
varied activities of the life of a leopard are what have developed the
sinuous gracile strength we so admire.  It is what the creature does for
its living, its daily life-long exercise which makes it what it is.

But there is another great natural force which works steadily to keep
all animals up to the race standard; that is sexual selection.
Throughout nature the male is the variant, as we have already noted.
His energy finds vent not only in that profuse output of decorative
appendages Ward defines as "masculine efflorescence" but in variations
not decorative, not useful or desirable at all.

The female, on the other hand, varies much less, remaining nearer the
race type; and her function is to select among these varying males the
specimens most valuable to the race.  In the intense masculine
competition the victor must necessarily be stronger than his fellows; he
is first proven equal to his environment by having lived to grow up,
then more than equal to his fellows by overcoming them.  This higher
grade of selection also develops not only the characteristics necessary
to make a living; but secondary ones, often of a purely aesthetic
nature, which make much of what we call beauty.  Between the two, all
who live must be up to a certain grade, and those who become parents
must be above it; a masterly arrangement surely!

Here is where, during the period of our human history, we in our newborn
consciousness and imperfect knowledge, have grieviously interfered with
the laws of nature.  The ancient proprietary family, treating the woman
as a slave, keeping her a prisoner and subject to the will of her
master, cut her off at once from the exercise of those activities which
alone develop and maintain the race type.

Take the one simple quality of speed.  We are a creature built for
speed, a free swift graceful animal; and among savages this is still
seen--the capacity for running, mile after mile, hour after hour.
Running is as natural a gait for _genus homo_ as for _genus cervus._
Now suppose among deer, the doe was prohibited from running; the stag
continuing free on the mountain; the doe living in caves and pens,
unequal to any exercise.  The effect on the species would be,
inevitably, to reduce its speed.

In this way, by keeping women to one small range of duties, and in most
cases housebound, we have interfered with natural selection and its
resultant health and beauty.  It can easily be seen what the effect on
the race would have been if all men had been veiled and swathed, hidden
in harems, kept to the tent or house, and confined to the activities of
a house-servant.  Our stalwart laborers, our proud soldiers, our
athletes, would never have appeared under such circumstances.  The
confinement to the house alone, cutting women off from sunshine and air,
is by itself an injury; and the range of occupation allowed them is not
such as to develop a high standard of either health or beauty.  Thus we
have cut off half the race from the strengthening influence of natural
selection, and so lowered our race-standards in large degree.

This alone, however, would not have hid such mischievous effects but for
our further blunder in completely reversing nature's order of sexual
selection.  It is quite possible that even under confinement and
restriction women could have kept up the race level, passably, through
this great function of selection; but here is the great fundamental
error of the Androcentric Culture.  Assuming to be the possessor of
women, their owner and master, able at will to give, buy and sell, or do
with as he pleases, man became the selector.

It seems a simple change; and in those early days, wholly ignorant of
natural laws, there was no suspicion that any mischief would result.  In
the light of modern knowledge, however, the case is clear.  The woman
was deprived of the beneficent action of natural selection, and the man
was then, by his own act, freed from the stern but elevating effect of
sexual selection.  Nothing was required of the woman by natural
selection save such capacity as should please her master; nothing was
required of the man by sexual selection save power to take by force, or
buy, a woman.

It does not take a very high standard of feminine intelligence,
strength, skill, health, or beauty to be a houseservant, or even a
housekeeper; witness the average.

It does not take a very high standard of masculine, intelligence,
strength, skill, health or beauty to maintain a woman in that
capacity--witness average.

Here at the very root of our physiological process, at the beginning of
life, we have perverted the order of nature, and are suffering the
consequences.

It has been held by some that man as the selector has developed beauty,
more beauty than we had before; and we point to the charms of our women
as compared with those of the squaw.  The answer to this is that the
squaw belongs to a decadent race; that she too is subject to the man,
that the comparison to have weight should be made between our women and
the women of the matriarchate--an obvious impossibility.  We have not on
earth women in a state of normal freedom and full development; but we
have enough difference in their placing to learn that human strength and
beauty grows with woman's freedom and activity.

The second answer is that much of what man calls beauty in woman is not
human beauty at all, but gross overdevelopment of certain points which
appeal to him as a male.  The excessive fatness, previously referred to,
is a case in point; that being considered beauty in a woman which is in
reality an element of weakness, inefficiency and ill-health.  The
relatively small size of women, deliberately preferred, steadfastly
chosen, and so built into the race, is a blow at real human progress in
every particular.  In our upward journey we should and do grow larger,
leaving far behind us our dwarfish progenitors.  Yet the male, in his
unnatural position as selector, preferring for reasons both practical
and sentimental, to have "his woman" smaller than himself, has
deliberately striven to lower the standard of size in the race.  We used
to read in the novels of the last generation, "He was a magnificent
specimen of manhood"--"Her golden head reached scarcely to his
shoulder"--"She was a fairy creature--the tiniest of her sex."  Thus we
have mated, and yet expected that by some hocus pocus the boys would all
"take after their father," and the girls, their mother.  In his efforts
to improve the breed of other animals, man has never tried to
deliberately cross the large and small and expect to keep up the
standard of size.

As a male he is appealed to by the ultra-feminine, and has given small
thought to effects on the race.  He was not designed to do the
selecting.  Under his fostering care we have bred a race of women who
are physically weak enough to be handed about like invalids; or mentally
weak enough to pretend they are--and to like it.  We have made women who
respond so perfectly to the force which made them, that they attach all
their idea of beauty to those characteristics which attract men;
sometimes humanly ugly without even knowing it.

For instance, our long restriction to house-limits, the heavy
limitations of our clothing, and the heavier ones of traditional
decorum, have made women disproportionately short-legged.  This is a
particularly undignified and injurious characteristic, bred in women and
inherited by men, most seen among those races which keep their women
most closely.  Yet when one woman escapes the tendency and appears with
a normal length of femur and tibia, a normal height of hip and shoulder,
she is criticized and called awkward by her squatty sisters!

The most convenient proof of the inferiority of women in human beauty is
shown by those composite statues prepared by Mr. Sargent for the World's
Fair of '93.  These were made from gymnasium measurements of thousands
of young collegians of both sexes all over America.  The statue of the
girl has a pretty face, small hands and feet, rather nice arms, though
weak; but the legs are too thick and short; the chest and shoulders
poor; and the trunk is quite pitiful in its weakness.  The figure of the
man is much better proportioned.

Thus the effect on human beauty of masculine selection.

Beyond this positive deteriorative effect on women through man's
arbitrary choice comes the negative effect of woman's lack of choice.
Bought or stolen or given by her father, she was deprived of the
innately feminine right and duty of choosing.  "Who giveth this woman?"
we still inquire in our archaic marriage service, and one man steps
forward and gives her to another man.

Free, the female chose the victor, and the vanquished went unmated--and
without progeny.  Dependent, having to be fed and cared for by some man,
the victors take their pick perhaps, but the vanquished take what is
left; and the poor women, "marrying for a home," take anything.  As a
consequence the inferior male is as free to transmit his inferiority as
the superior to give better qualities, and does so--beyond computation.
In modern days, women are freer, in some countries freer than in others;
here in modern America freest of all; and the result is seen in our
improving standards of health and beauty.

Still there remains the field of inter-masculine competition, does there
not?  Do not the males still struggle together?  Is not that as of old,
a source of race advantage?

To some degree it is.  When life was simple and our activities consisted
mainly in fighting and hard work; the male who could vanquish the others
was bigger and stronger.  But inter-masculine competition ceases to be
of such advantage when we enter the field of social service.  What is
required in organized society is the specialization of the individual,
the development of special talents, not always of immediate benefit to
the man himself, but of ultimate benefit to society.  The best social
servant, progressive, meeting future needs, is almost always at a
disadvantage besides the well-established lower types.  We need, for
social service, qualities quite different from the simple masculine
characteristics--desire, combat, self-expression.

By keeping what we call "the outside world" so wholly male, we keep up
masculine standards at the expense of human ones.  This may be broadly
seen in the slow and painful development of industry and science as
compared to the easy dominance of warfare throughout all history until
our own times.

The effect of all this ultra masculine competition upon health and
beauty is but too plainly to be seen.  Among men the male idea of what
is good looking is accentuated beyond reason.  Read about any "hero" you
please; or study the products of the illustrator and note the broad
shoulders, the rugged features, the strong, square, determined jaw.
That jaw is in evidence if everything else fails.  He may be cross-eyed,
wide-eared, thick-necked, bandy-legged--what you please; but he must
have a more or less prognathous jaw.

Meanwhile any anthropologist will show you that the line of human
development is away from that feature of the bulldog and the alligator,
and toward the measured dignity of the Greek type.  The possessor of
that kind of jaw may enable male to conquer male, but does not make him
of any more service to society; of any better health or higher beauty.

Further, in the external decoration of our bodies, what is the influence
here of masculine dominance.

We have before spoken of the peculiar position of our race in that the
woman is the only female creature who carries the burden of sex
ornament.  This amazing reversal of the order of nature results at its
mildest in a perversion of the natural feminine instincts of love and
service, and an appearance of the masculine instincts of self-expression
and display.  Alone among all female things do women decorate and preen
themselves and exhibit their borrowed plumage (literally!) to attract
the favor of the male.  This ignominy is forced upon them by their
position of economic dependence; and their general helplessness.  As all
broader life is made to depend, for them, on whom they marry, indeed as
even the necessities of life so often depend on their marrying someone,
they have been driven into this form of competition, so alien to the
true female attitude.

The result is enough to make angels weep--and laugh.  Perhaps no step in
the evolution of beauty went farther than our human power of making a
continuous fabric; soft and mobile, showing any color and texture
desired.  The beauty of the human body is supreme, and when we add to it
the flow of color, the ripple of fluent motion, that comes of a soft,
light garment over free limbs--it is a new field of loveliness and
delight.  Naturally this should have filled the whole world with a new
pleasure.  Our garments, first under right natural selection developing
perfect use, under right sex selection developing beauty; and further,
as our human aesthetic sense progresses, showing a noble symbolism,
would have been an added strength and glory, a ceaseless joy.

What is the case?

Men, under a too strictly inter-masculine environment, have evolved the
mainly useful but beautiless costume common to-day; and women--?

Women wear beautiful garments when they happen to be the fashion; and
ugly garments when they are the fashion, and show no signs of knowing
the difference.  They show no added pride in the beautiful, no hint of
mortification in the hideous, and are not even sensitive under
criticism, or open to any persuasion or argument.  Why should they be?

Their condition, physical and mental, is largely abnormal, their whole
passionate absorption in dress and decoration is abnormal, and they have
never looked, from a frankly human standpoint, at their position and its
peculiarities, until the present age.

In the effect of our wrong relation on the world's health, we have
spoken of the check to vigor and growth due to the housebound state of
women and their burdensome clothes.  There follow other influences,
similar in origin, even more evil in result.  To roughly and briefly
classify we may distinguish the diseases due to bad air, to bad food,
and that field of cruel mischief we are only now beginning to
discuss--the diseases directly due to the erroneous relation between men
and women.

We are the only race where the female depends on the male for a
livelihood.  We are the only race that practices prostitution.  From the
first harmless-looking but abnormal general relation follows the well
recognized evil of the second, so long called "a social necessity," and
from it, in deadly sequence, comes the "wages of sin;" death not only of
the guilty, but of the innocent.  It is no light part of our criticism
of the Androcentric Culture that a society based on masculine desires
alone, has willingly sacrificed such an army of women; and has repaid
the sacrifice by the heaviest punishments.

That the unfortunate woman should sicken and die was held to be her just
punishment; that man too should bear part penalty was found unavoidable,
though much legislation and medical effort has been spent to shield him;
but to the further consequences society is but now waking up.



COMMENT AND REVIEW


Mr. H. G. Wells is an author whose work I have followed with delight,
interest and respect for years--since first I read that sinister vision
of dead worlds, "The Time Machine."  He is a successful craftsman, an
artist of power; and has that requisite so often missing in our literary
craftsmen and artists--something to say.  In his mighty work of
electrifying the world's slow mind to the splendid possibilities of life
as it might be, may be, will be, as soon as we wake up, he has my
admiring sympathy.

But alas! and alas!  Like many another great man, Mr. Wells loses his
perspective and clear vision when he considers women.  He sees women as
females--and does not see that they are human; the universal mistake of
the world behind us; but one unworthy of a mind that sees the world
before us so vividly.

He has knowledge, the scientific habit of mind, an enormous imagination
and the courage to use it; he is not, usually, afraid of facts, even
when an admission carries reproach.  But in this field he shows simply
the old race-mind, that attitude which considers women as mothers,
potential, active, and in retrospect; and as nothing else.  He likes
them as mothers.  He honors them as mothers.  He wants to have them
salaried, as mothers.  But he thinks it quite beyond reason that they
should appear as regular members of the working world; their motherhood,
to his mind, would prevent it.

In this attitude he has produced a vivid novel called Ann Veronica; a
book of keen analysis and delicate observation, full of amusing darts
and flashes; seeing and showing much that is absurd in our modern
uneasiness and wavering discussion; and thus explained by himself in The
Spectator (which had denounced the work as "poisonous").

"My book was written primarily to express the resentment and distress
which many women feel nowadays at their unavoidable practical dependence
upon some individual man not of their deliberate choice"; and he further
says he sympathizes with the woman who lives with a man she does not
love; and respects her natural desire to prefer some one man as her
husband and father of her children--a harmless position surely.

To carry out these feelings he has described a girl, vigorous and
handsome, a nice, normal girl, who is crushed and stultified in her home
life and wants to get out of it; as is the case with so many girls
today.  She wants freedom--room to grow--more knowledge and power--again
as is so common nowadays.  We read with sympathy, admiring his keen sure
touch, hoping much for this brave woman in her dash for freedom.

Then he makes this girl, so strong and intelligent, deliberately refuse
various kinds of work she might have done because they did not please
her; and borrow money from a man in preference to earning her living.
She exposes herself to insult and even danger with an idiocy that even a
novel-reared child of sixteen would have scorned.  She falls in love,
healthfully enough, with a fine strong man; and sees no reason for
avoiding him when she learns he is married.  She cheerfully elopes with
him--quite forgetting the money she had borrowed, and when she remembers
about that abhorrent debt, expects her companion to pay it, without a
qualm apparently.

The ex-wife must have conveniently died after a while; and the man
develops a sudden new talent as a playwright; for they wind up very
respectably in a nice flat, having Ann Veronica's father and aunt to
dinner, and regarding them as a pair of walking mummies.  Nothing more
is said of any desire on the part of the heroine for freedom, knowledge,
independence; having attained her man she has attained all; indeed Mr.
Wells goes to the pains to fully express his idea of the case, by
describing her early struggle and outburst as like "the nuptial flight
of an ant."

It is hard to see why Mr. Wells, in seeking "to express the resentment
and distress which many women feel nowadays" at their dependence; and in
showing sympathy with their natural right of choice, should have
burdened himself with all this unnecessary complication of special
foolishness on the part of his heroine which alienates our sympathy; and
special illegality on the man's position.  Perhaps this is to add
heroism to her effort to secure the right mate, to indicate how small
are any other considerations in comparison to this primary demand of
life.

Waiving all objections to this framework of the story, there remains the
painful exhibition of Mr. Wells's misapprehension of the larger causes
of the present unrest among women.  What later historians will point out
as the most distinguishing feature of our time, its importance shared
only by the movement towards economic democracy, is the sudden and
irresistible outburst of human powers, human feeling, human activities,
and in that half the world hitherto denied such experiences.

Ann Veronica, as at first portrayed, shared in this world impulse.  She
wanted to be human, and tried to be.  Her masculine interpreter, seeing
no possible interests in the woman's life except those of sex, dismisses
all that passionate outgoing as comparable to the mating impulse of
insects.  He overestimates the weight of this department of life, a
mistake common to most men and some women.

When opposed, the protagonists of this position cry that their opponent
wishes to unsex women; to repudiate motherhood; and see in all the
natural development of the modern woman only a threat of decreased
population.

Cannot Mr. Wells, as one acquainted with zoology, see that both male and
female of a species are alike in the special qualities of that species,
although differing in sex?  Can he not see that the area of human life,
the social development of humanity, is one quite common to both men and
women; and that a woman, however amply occupied in wife and mother-hood,
suffers from lack of human relation, if denied it, even as a man would,
whose activities were absolutely limited to husband- and father-hood?

*

If you are a believer in women's voting why don't you take the best
equal suffrage paper in the country?  Not the Forerunner--which is only
a suffrage paper because of its interest in women, and only a woman's
paper because of its interest in humanity, but this one:


Vol. XL.
The Woman's Journal

FOUNDED BY
LUCY STONE AND HENRY B. BLACKWELL

A weekly newspaper published every Saturday in Boston, devoted to the
interests of women--to their educational, industrial, legal and
political equality, and especially to their right of suffrage

Entered at the Post Office, Boston, Mass., as second-class mail matter

EDITOR:
ALICE STONE BLACKWELL

ASSOCIATE EDITORS:
FLORENCE M. ADKINSON, CATHARINE WILDE

OFFICE: NO. 6 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
ROOM 1018


The love and faith, the hope and courage, the steady unflinching
devotion of forty years of solid work, and the quality of brain power,
which have fed this lamp of liberty, make a Iight that is worth
following.

Two noble lives have been given to it, and the daughter of one of those
two is carrying it on superbly.  It is a paper that will broaden, live
and grow, and carry on its larger work long after this one political
question is rightly settled.

It carries news--the kind of news progressive women want.  It is broad
and bright, and interesting; full of short and memorable bits that prick
the mind to understanding.

I have read this paper, myself, many years, and know its merits well.

Try it.

*

The Sea of Matrimony.  By Jessie H. Childs.  Broadway Pub. Co., New York
and Baltimore.

Here is quite another kind of a novel.  Earnest, thoughtful, sincere,
lacking in humor and in technical finish, yet holding one's attention by
the complete preoccupation of the author in her theme, and by the common
interests of the discussion.

It reminds one vaguely of "Together," giving pair after pair of
ill-mated persons, but one happy marriage in the lot, and that a
childless one, and offering no solution to the problem raised save in
that searching philosophy we seek to cover by the term New Thought.

There is much keen observation in this book; and so intimate an analysis
of character that one wonders who this person and that may be; and the
courage shown in giving spades their names is worthy of respect

The author shows a power of keen appreciation of the daily problems of
life.  The description of the woman who tried to change even her
husband's cigars to the brand her father used to smoke is particularly
good.

Many men and women may see their troubles reflected in this study of the
intricate difficulties of married life; and some will find strength and
hope in its conclusions.



PERSONAL PROBLEMS


Here is a question of financial ethics sent by one of our readers: "A
woman is sent out on a trip of inspection for her State School, or for
her Club.  She is told to keep accurate accounts of her expenditures,
and is expected to send in an itemized account.  Shall she send in the
regular two or three dollars a day account?  Or shall she itemize each
street carfare and meal?  Shall she not be justified in using a dollar
to-day which she did not spend on yesterday's dinner, in livening up her
mind by a visit to the theatre?  Or shall she eat, whether hungry or
not, and pay all her own minor expenses?"

This is a good long question, and seems open to some discussion.  The
simplest answer seems to be, "If the woman is required to send in an
itemized account, she should do so, accurately.  If her expenses are
within the usual amount allowed it should make no difference to the
employer whether the money is spent on a dinner or a theatre.

She visibly could not suppress the theatre expense and yet have an
accurate account; nor could she call it a dinner--and be truthful.

If it is simply a matter of having such and such an allowance for
expenses, then it is no one's business how she spends it; but if she has
agreed to itemize she ought to do so.



PLAY-TIME


THE MELANCHOLY RABBIT

(A Pantoum.)


A melancholy rabbit in distress,
 Was heard complaining on the moonlit mead,
And neither we, nor anyone, could guess
 If he were ill at ease, or ill indeed

We heard complaining on the moonlit mead,
 We sought the lonely wanderer to relieve;
If he were ill at ease or ill indeed
 We did not ask--sufficient he should grieve.

We sought the lonely wanderer to relieve
 With sundry bundles of electric hay;
We did not ask--sufficient he should grieve--
 If he were used to dieting that way.

With sundry bundles of electric hay
 The suffering hare was speedily supplied;
If he were used to dieting that way
 It could not be the reason that he died.

The suffering hare was speedily supplied--
 A melancholy rabbit in distress;
It could not be the reason that he died--
 And neither we, nor anyone, could guess.



[Advertisement]


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 fantasy, 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

_____ 19__

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

__________

 __________

  __________



[Advertisement]


Confidential Remarks About Our Advertising


This magazine was planned to carry twenty-four pages of reading matter
and eight of advertising matter.

A careful list was made of about twenty first class articles, personally
known and used by the editor; and the offer was made to write absolutely
true descriptions and recommendations of them.

The value of this form of advertisement was not in the extent of the
circulation, but in

a.  The unique and attractive method.

b.  The select class of goods.

c.  The select class of readers.

d.  The weight of a personal authority specially known to these select
readers.

Our readers as far as heard from have almost without exception spoken
highly of our advertisements and declared they would purchase the goods.

If, however, the amount of sales secured does not equal the price of the
advertisement, there is no reason whatever why any dealer should use our
pages.

*

There is a tooth-paste, specially recommended by physicians, well used
and found of marked value, noticeably checking decay of the teeth and
improving mouth and throat conditions.

Now, suppose the makers take one page in one issue of The Forerunner at
$25.00.  Then suppose that only one thousand of our readers spend 25
cents each to try that tooth-paste.  That makes $250.00; and the makers
ought to get at least half of it.

if only two hundred did it, the makers would still get their money
back--to say nothing of the additional advertising given by each new
purchaser who likes it.

*

Here is an experiment The Forerunner would like to try.

If all the readers who did purchase goods on the strength of these
recommendations would waste a cent in sending me a post card saying they
had done so, it would definitely show whether this small experiment in
honesty has any practical value.

Meanwhile The Forerunner will continue to run one or two as samples; put
in real ones when it gets them; and may find it necessary to take out
the eight pages which would have been so useful if properly filled.

Best of all; if enough subscriptions come in, we can get along without
any advertising whatever--and furnish more reading matter.

For this ideal state we look forward hopefully.



[Advertisement]


Things we wish to Advertise


This is the list of articles the editor wishes to secure, having known
and used them for from two to forty years; some were used by her mother
before her.  They are things you can buy anywhere or order by mail.

A TOILET PREPARATION: Used by mother and self.
A COURTPLASTER: Used from infancy, perfect.
SOMETHING SIMILAR TO ABOVE, Most excellent.
A SILVER CLEANER: Very satisfactory.
SEVEN KINDS OF SOAP--and such like--all good.
A BREAKFAST FOOD: Used unvaryingly for nine years.
SIX OTHER BREAKFAST FOODS: All first-rate.
ONE VARIETY OF SOUPS: Absolutely good.
FOUR OTHER FOOD-MAKERS: Safe to recommend.
FOUR KINDS OF COCOA: All very good.
A HAIRBRUSH: A real delight--if you have hair.
MY TYPEWRITER: I _would_ have this kind.
A PEN: All my books were written with this pen.
A VOICE TABLOID: A blessing to a speaker.
A TOOTHPASTE: The best out of many.
PERFECTION IN HAIRPINS.
TWO KINDS OF UNDERWEAR: Good ones.
TWO KINDS OF HOSIERY: They wear well.
A HOUSEHOLD COMFORT AND TIME-SAVER.
A MATTRESS: Continuously satisfactory.
BOOKCASES: The kind you want.
A MUSIC MACHINE: Or how to keep the boys at home.
FIVE FOOD ARTICLES: Long valued.
A DRESS SHIELD: That can be trusted.
SOMETHING BETTER THAN WHALEBONE.
TWO KINDS OF SKIRT-BINDING: Always reliable.
THE BEST OF CRACKERS.
FOUNTAIN PEN THAT NEVER LEAKS.

These are "preferred stock."  More may be tried and found worthy; but
these have been used long and continuously--just because they were good.

If this list could be filled out at reasonable rates, it would form a
very useful little collection, to seller and buyer.  And to

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



[Advertisement]


 C A L E N D U L A


CHILDREN CEASE TO CRY FOR IT.


This is a gratuitous advertisement, benefitting

a) The Child; whose pain stops;

b) The Mother; who doesn't have to hear him cry;

c) The Nearest Druggist--a little.


CALENDULA is a good standard old drug--made of marigolds--in the
_materia medica._  You buy a little bottle of tincture of calendula, and
keep it on the shelf.  Nobody will drink it by mistake--it doesn't taste
good.

Presently Johnny falls down hard--he was running--he fell on a gritty
place--his poor little knee is scraped raw.  And he howls, how he howls!
square-mouthed and inconsolable.

Then you hastily get a half a tea-cupful of water, a little warm if you
have it, and put in a few drops of calendula.  Wet a soft clean rag in
it, bind it softly on the wound, keep it wet--and the pain stops.

Many many times has this quieted my infant anguish; also have I used it
as a grown up.  The effect is the same.


 C A L E N D U L A
TAKES THE PAIN FROM
A  R A W  W O U N D





THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 4
FEBRUARY, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

There is one large obstacle to woman suffrage which has nothing to do
with sex.
Men, the governing class, hesitate in extending equal political
responsibility and power to their domestic servants.  Do you wonder?




TWO PRAYERS

Only for these I pray,
 Pray with assurance strong:
Light to discover the way,
 Power to follow it long.

Let me have light to see,
 Light to be sure and know,
When the road is clear to me
 Willingly I go.

Let me have Power to do,
 Power of the brain and nerve,
Though the task is heavy and new
 Willingly I will serve.

My prayers are lesser than three,
 Nothing I pray but two;
Let me have light to see,
 Let me have power to do.



AN OFFENDER


"Where's Harry?" was Mr. Gortlandt's first question.

"He's gone to the country, to mother.  It was so hot this last day or
two, I've sent him out, with Miss Colton.  I'm going Saturday.  Sit
down."

"I miss him," said her visitor, "more than I thought I could.  I've
learned more in these seven years than I thought there was to know.  Or
in the last two perhaps, since I've found you again."

She looked at him with a little still smile, but there was a puzzled
expression behind it, as of one whose mind was not made up.

They sat in the wide window of a top floor apartment, awning-shaded.  A
fresh breeze blew in upon them, and the city dust blew in upon them
also, lying sandy on the broad sill.

She made little wavy lines in it with one finger--

"These windows ought to be shut tight, I suppose, and the blinds, and
the curtains.  Then we should be cleaner."

"As to furniture," he agreed, "but not as to our lungs."

"I don't know about that," she said; "we get plenty of air--but see
what's in it."

"A city is a dirty place at the best; but Mary--I didn't come to
consider the ethics of the dust--how much longer must I wait?" he asked,
after a little pause.  "Isn't two years courting, re-courting--enough?
Haven't I learned my lesson yet?"

"Some of it, I think," she admitted, "but not all."

"What more do you ask?" he pursued earnestly.  "Can't we come to a
definite understanding?  You'll be chasing off again in a few days; it's
blessed luck that brought you to town just now, and that I happened to
be here too."

"I don't how about the luck," said she.  "It was business that brought
me.  I never was in town before when it was so hot."

"Why don't you go to a hotel?  This apartment is right under the roof,
gets the sun all day."

"It gets the breeze too, and sunlight is good.  No, I'm better off in
the apartment, with Harry.  It was very convenient of the Grants to be
away, and let me have it."

"How does Hal stand the weather?"

"Pretty well.  But he was getting rather fretful, so I sent him off two
hours ago.  I do hope he won't run away from Miss Colton again.  She's
as nervous as I am about him."

"Don't you think he is fond of me?" asked the man.  "I've got to catch
up, you see.  He can't help being mine--half mine," he hastily added,
seeing a hint of denial in her look.

"Why yes, he seems fond of you, he is fond of you," she conceded.  "I
hope he always will be, and I believe you are beginning to love him."

"A pretty strong beginning, Mary," said the man.  "Of course I don't
pretend to have cared much at first, but now!--why he's so handsome, and
quick, and such a good little duffer; and so affectionate!  When he
gives a jump and gets his arms around my neck and his legs around my
waist and 'hugs me all over' as he calls it, I almost feel as if I was a
mother!  I can't say more than that, can I?"

"No, you certainly can't say more than that.  I believe you, I'm not
questioning," for he looked up sharply at her tone.

"I've never had much to do with children, you see," he went on slowly,
"no little brothers or sisters, and then only-- What astonishes me is
how good they feel in your arms!  The little fellow's body is so firm
and sinewy--he wriggles like a fish--a big fish that you're trying to
hold with both hands."

The mother smiled tenderly.  She knew the feel of the little body so
well!  From the soft pink helplessness, the little head falling so
naturally into the hollow of the arm or neck, the fumbling little hands;
then the gradual gain in size and strength, till now she held that eager
bounding little body, almost strong enough to get away from her--but not
wanting to.  He still loved to nestle up to "Muzz," and was but newly
and partially won by this unaccustomed father.

"It's seven years Mary!  That makes a man all over, they say.  I'm sure
it has made me over.  I'm an older man--and I think, wiser.  I've
repented, I've outgrown my folly and seen the justice of my punishment.
I don't blame you an atom for divorcing me--I think you did right, and I
respect you for it.  The biggest lesson I've learned is to love you!  I
can see--now--that I didn't before.

Her face hardened as she looked at him.  "No, you didn't, Harry, you
certainly didn't, nor the child-- When I think of what I was when you
married me!  Of my proud health!--"

"_You_ are not hurt!" he cried.  "I don't mean that you haven't been
hurt, I could kill myself when I think of how I made you suffer!  But
you are a finer woman now than you were then; sweeter, stronger, wiser,
and more beautiful.  When I found you again in Liverpool two years ago
it was a revelation.  Now see--I don't even ask you to forgive me!  I
ask you to try me again and let me prove I can make it up to you and the
boy!"

"It's not easy for me to forgive," she answered slowly-- "I'm not of the
forgiving nature.  But there is a good deal of reason in your position.
You were my husband, you are Hal's father, there's no escaping that."

"Perhaps, if you will let the rest of my life make up for that time of
my Godforsaken meanness, you won't want to escape it, Mary!  See--I have
followed you about for two years.  I accepted your terms, you did not
promise me anything, but for the child's sake I might try once more, try
only as one of many, to see if I could win you--again.  And I love you
now a hundred times better than I did when I married you!"

She fanned herself slowly with a large soft fan, and looked out across
the flickering roofs.  Below them lay the highly respectable street on
which the house technically fronted, and the broad, crowded, roaring
avenue which it really overlooked.

The rattle of many drays and more delivery wagons rose up to them.  An
unusual jangle drowned his words just then and she smilingly interpreted
"that's railroad iron--or girders, I can tell lots of them now.  About
four A. M. there is a string of huge milk wagons.  But the worst is the
cars.  Hear that now--that's a flat wheel.  How do you like it?"

"Mary--why do you bring up these cars again when I'm trying my best to
show you my whole heart?  Don't put things like that between us!"

"But they are between us, Henry, all the time.  I hear you tell me you
love me, and I don't doubt you do in a way; yes, as well as you can,
very much indeed!--I know.  But when it comes to this car question; when
I talk to you of these juggernauts of yours; you are no more willing to
do the right thing than you were when I first knew you."

Mr. Cortlandt's face hardened.  He drew himself up from the eager
position in which he had leaned forward, and evidently hesitated for a
moment as to his words.

In spite of his love for this woman, who, as he justly said, was far
more beautiful and winsome than the strong, angular, over-conscientious
girl he had married, neglected and shamed, his feelings as a business
man were strong within him.

"My dear--I am not personally responsible for the condition of these
cars."

"You are President of the Company.  You hold controlling shares of the
stock.  It was your vote that turned down the last improvement
proposition."

He looked at her sharply.

"I'm afraid someone has been prejudicing you against me Mary.  You have
more technical information than seems likely to have reached you by
accident."

"It's not prejudice, but it is information; and Mr. Graham did tell me,
if that's what you mean.  But he cares.  You know how hard the
Settlement has worked to get the Company to make the streets safer for
children--and you wouldn't do a thing."

Mr. Cortlandt hesitated.  It would never do to pile business details on
his suit for a love once lost and not yet regained.

"You make it hard for me Mary," he said.  "Hard because it is difficult
to explain large business questions to a--to anyone not accustomed to
them.  I cannot swing the affairs of a great corporation for personal
ends, even to please you."

"That is not the point," she said quickly.

He flushed, and hastily substituted "Even to suit the noblest
humanitarian feelings."

"Why not?" said she.

"Because that is not what street cars are run for," he pursued
patiently.  "But why must we talk of this?  It seems to put you so far
away.  And you have given me no answer."

"I am sorry, but I am not ready yet."

"Is it Hugh Graham?" he demanded.  The hot color leaped to her face, but
she met his eyes steadily.  "I am much interested in Mr. Graham," she
said, "and in the noble work he is doing.  I think I should really be
happier with him than with you.  We care for the same things, he calls
out the best in me.  But I have made no decision in his favor yet, nor
in yours.  Both of you have a certain appeal to my heart, both to my
duty.  With you the personal need, with him the hope of greater service.
 But--you are the father of the child, and that gives you a great claim.
 I have not decided."

The man looked relieved, and again drew his chair a little closer.  The
sharp clangor of the cars rose between the,.

"You think I dragged in this car question," she said.  "Really, I did it
because it is that sort of thing which does most to keep us apart,
and--I would like to remove it."

He leaned forward, playing with her big fan.  "Let's remove it by all
means!" he said.

She looked at his bent head, the dark hair growing somewhat thin on top,
almost tenderly.

"If I could feel that you were truly on the right side, that you
considered your work as social service, that you tried to run your cars
to carry people--not to kill them!--If you could change your ground here
I think--almost--" she stopped, smiling up at him, her fan in her lap,
her firm delicate white hands eagerly clasped; then went on,

"Don't you care at all for the lives lost every day in this great
city--under your cars?"

"It cannot be helped, my dear.  Our men are as careful as men can be.
But these swarming children will play in the streets--"

"Where else can they play!" she interjected.

"And they get right in front of the cars.  We are very sorry; we pay out
thousands of dollars in damages: but it cannot be helped!"

She leaned back in her chair and her face grew cold.

"You speak as if you never heard of such things as fenders," she said.

"We have fenders!--almost every car--"

"Fenders!  Do you call that piece of rat-trap a fender!  Henry
Cortlandt!  We were in Liverpool when this subject first came up between
us!  They have fenders there that _fend_ and no murder list!"

"Conditions are different there," said he with an enforced quiet.  "Our
pavement is different."

"Our children are not so different, are they?" she demanded.  "Our
mothers are made of the same stuff I suppose?"

"You speak at if I wanted to kill them!  As if I liked to!"

"I thought at first it would hurt you as it did me," she said warmly.
"I turned to you with real hope when we met in Liverpool.  I was glad to
think I knew you, and I had not been glad of that for long!  I thought
you would care, would do things."

Do what he would, his mouth set hard in its accustomed lines.  "Those
English fender are not practicable in this country, Mary.  They have
been tried."

"When?  Where?  By whom?" she threw at him.  "I have read about it, and
heard about it.  I know there was an effort to get them adopted, and
that they were refused.  They cost more than this kind!" and she pointed
disdainfully at the rattling bit of stub-toed slat-work in front of a
passing car.

"Do you expect me to make a revolution in the street car system of
America--to please you?  Do you make it a condition?  Perhaps I can
accomplish it.  Is it a bargain?  Come--"

"No," she said slowly.  "I'm not making bargains.  I'm only wishing, as
I have wished so often in years past--that you were a different kind of
man--"

"What kind do you want me to be?"

"I want you to be--I wish you were--a man who cared to give perfect
service to his country, in his business."

"Perhaps I can be yet.  I can try.  If I had you to help me, with your
pure ideals, and the boy to keep my heart open for the children.  I
don't know much about these things, but I can learn.  I can read, you
can tell me what to read.  We could study together.  And in my position
perhaps, I could really be of some service after all."

"Perhaps?"  She watched him, the strong rather heavy face, the
attractive smile, the eyes that interested and compelled.  He was an
able, masterful man.  He surely loved her now.  She could feel a power
over him that her short miserable marriage had never given her; and her
girlhood's attraction toward him reasserted itself.

A new noise rose about them, a dissonant mingled merry outcry, made into
a level roaring sound by their height above the street.

"That's when the school up here lets out," she said.  "We hear it every
day.  Just see the crowds of them!"

They leaned on the broad sill and watched the many-colored torrent of
juveniles pouring past.

"One day it was different," she said.  "A strange jarring shrillness in
it, a peculiar sound.  I looked out, and there was a fight going on; two
boys tumbling about from one side of the street to the other, with a
moving ring around them, a big crowd, all roaring in one key."

"You get a birdseye view of life in these streets, don't you.  Can you
make out that little chap with the red hair down there?"

"No--we are both near-sighted, you know.  I can't distinguish faces at
this distance.  Can you?"

"Not very clearly," he said.  "But what a swarm they are!"

"Come away," said she, "I can't bear to look at them.  So many children
in that stony street, and those cars going up and down like roaring
lions!"

They drew back into the big sunny room, and she seated herself at the
piano and turned over loose sheets of music.

He watched her with a look of intensest admiration, she was so tall, so
nobly formed, her soft rich gown flowed and followed as she walked, her
white throat rose round and royal from broad smooth shoulders.

He was beside her; he took away the music, laid it out of reach,
possessed himself of her hands.

"Give them back to me, Mary," he pleaded.  "Come to me and help me to be
a better man!  Help me to be a good father.  I need you!"

She looked at him almost pleadingly.  His eyes, his voice, his
hands,--they had their old-time charm for her.  Yet he had only said
"Perhaps"--and he _might_ study, _might_ learn.

He asked her to help him, but he did not say "I will do this"--only "I
may."

In the steady bright June sunshine, in the sifting dust of a city
corner, in the dissonant, confused noise of the traffic below, they
stood and looked at one another.

His eyes brightened and deepened as he watched her changing color.
Softly he drew her towards him.  "Even if you do not love me now, you
shall in time, you shall, my darling!"

But she drew back from him with a frightened start, a look of terror.

"What has happened!" she cried.  "It's so still!"

They both rushed to the window.  The avenue immediately below them was
as empty as midnight, and as silent.  A great stillness widened and
spread for the moment around one vacant motionless open car.  Without
passenger, driver, or conductor, it stood alone in the glaring space;
and then, with a gasp of horror, they both saw.

Right under their eyes, headed towards them, under the middle of the
long car--a little child.

He was quite still, lying face downward, dirty and tumbled, with
helpless arms thrown wide, the great car holding him down like a mouse
in a trap.

Then people came rushing.

She turned away, choking, her hands to her eyes.

"Oh!" she cried, "Oh!  It's a child, a little child!"

"Steady, Mary, steady!" said he, "the child's dead.  It's all over.
He's quite dead.  He never knew what hit him."  But his own voice
trembled.

She made a mighty effort to control herself, and he tried to take her in
his arms, to comfort her, but she sprang away from him with fierce
energy.

"Very well!" she said.  "You are right!  The child is dead.  We can not
save him.  No one can save him.  Now come back--come here to the
window--and see what follows.  I want to see with my own eyes--and have
you see--what is done when your cars commit murder!  Child murder!"

She held up her watch.  "It's 12:10 now," she said.

She dragged him back to the window, and so evident was the struggle with
which she controlled herself, so intense her agonized excitement, that
he dared not leave her.

"Look!" she cried.  "Look!  See the them crowd now!"

The first horrified rush away from the instrument of death was followed
by the usual surging multitude.

From every direction people gathered thickly in astonishing numbers,
hustling and pushing about the quiet form upon the ground; held so flat
between iron rails and iron wheels, so great a weight on so small a
body!  The car, still empty, rose like an island from the pushing sea of
heads.  Men and women cried excited directions.  They tried with
swarming impotent hands to lift the huge mass of wood and iron off the
small broken thing beneath it, so small that it did not raise the
crushing weight from the ground.

A whole line of excited men seized the side rail and strove to lift the
car by it, lifting only the rail.

The crowd grew momently, women weeping, children struggling to see, men
pushing each other, policemen's helmets rising among them.  And still
the great car stood there, on the body of the child.

"Is there no means of lifting these monsters?" she demanded.  "After
they have done it, can't they even get off."

He moistened his lips to answer.

"There is a jacking crew," he said.  "They will be here presently."

"Presently!" she cried.  "Presently!  Couldn't these monsters use their
own power to lift themselves somehow? not even that?"

He said nothing.

More policemen came, and made a scant space around the little body,
covering it with a dark cloth.  The motorman was rescued from many would
be avengers, and carried off under guard.

"Ten minutes," said she looking at her watch.  "Ten minutes and it isn't
even off him yet!" and she caught her breath in a great sob.

Then she turned on the man at her side: "Suppose his mother is in that
crowd!  She may be!  Their children go to this school, they live all
about below here, she can't even get in to see!  And if she could, if
she knew it was her child, she can't _get him out_!"

Her voice rose to a cry.

"Don't, Mary," said he, hoarsely.  "It's--it's horrible!  Don't make it
worse!"

She kept her eyes on her watch-face, counting the minutes She looked
down at the crowd shudderingly, and said over and over, under breath, "A
little child!  A little soft child!"

It was twelve minutes and a-half before the jacking crew drove up, with
their tools.  It was a long time yet before they did their work, and
that crushed and soiled little body was borne to a near-by area grating
and laid there, wrapped in its dingy shroud, and guarded by a policeman.

It was a full half hour before the ambulance arrived to take it away.

She drew back then and crouched sobbing by the sofa.  "O the poor
mother!  God help his mother!"

He sat tense and white for a while; and when she grew quieter he spoke.

"You were right, Mary.  I--naturally, I never--visualized it!  It is
horrible!  I am going to have those fenders on every car of the four
systems!"

She said nothing.  He spoke again.

"I hate to leave you feeling so, Dear.  Must I go?"

She raised a face that was years older, but did not look at him.

"You must go.  And you must never come back.  I cannot bear to see your
face again!"

And she turned from him, shuddering.



BEFORE WARM FEBRUARY WINDS


Before warm February winds
 Arouse an April dream--
Or sudden rifts of azure sky
 Suggest the bluebird's gleam;

Before the reddening woods awake,
 Before the brooks are free--
Here where all things are sold and hired,
 The driven months we see.

Wither along our snow-soiled streets,
 Or under glass endure,
Fruits of the days that have not come,
 Exotic--premature.

I hear in raw, unwelcome dawns
 The sordid sparrows sing,
And in the florist's windows watch
 The forced and purchased spring.



KITCHEN-MINDEDNESS


It is physically possible to see through a knot-hole.  If the eye be
near enough, and the board be movable, one can, with patient rotation,
see the universe in spots, through a knot-hole.  Such a purview is
limited of necessity, and while suitable to the microscope, is not
congenial to the study of life in general.

When those who would save the forests of America began their work, the
burden of effort lay in so stimulating and stretching the mental vision
of our people, that they could see wider than their own immediate
acreage, deeper than their own immediate profit, further than their own
immediate time.  Some such struggle was no doubt gone through, when that
far-seeing iconoclast of early times strove to prove to the greedy
hunter that more food was to be attained by breeding cattle than by
killing them all at once; that meat kept better when alive.  What mental
labor, what arduous conflict between that prehistoric ant and
grasshopper!

Steadily up the ages the mind of man has had to stretch, and sturdily
has he resisted the process.  That protoplasmic substance of the brain,
used so much and understood so little, astonishes us no less by its
infinite capacity for new extension, for endless fluent combination,
than by its leaden immobility.  Here are some, open-minded, sensitive
and hospitable to new impressions; and here are others, an innumerable
majority, preferring always to know only what they have known, to think
only what they have thought before.  The distinction does not seem
innate.  A normal child provided with proper stimulus, responds with
ever fresh interest as field after field of new fact and new idea opens
before him.

Twenty years later that same child has lost this capacity, has become
dull, inert, conventional, conservative, contented.  Upon his growing
mind have been imposed in long succeeding years, the iron limitations of
his "elders and betters"; only in the rarest of cases has he the mental
strength to resist these influences and "think new," think for himself.

Here we all are, living together in relations as complex as the pattern
of some mighty tapestry; each of us, seeing only his own part in it,
considering the pattern from the point of view of a stitch.  This
attitude is exquisitely expressed by the reply of a dull student to the
earnest teacher who strove to arouse in him some spontaneous opinion on
human conduct.  With enthusiasm and dramatic force, this instructor
exhibited the career of Nero,--showed his list of crimes natural and
unnatural, personal and political; his indecency, and cruelty, demanding
what should be said of the monster.  The student, spurred by questions,
some-what fretfully responded, "He never did anything to me!"

Consciousness is of varying range.  We know its gradual development, its
narrow field in childhood, its permanent restriction in idiocy.  We know
how it may be developed, even in animals, how we have added to the dog's
field of consciousness a deep and passionate interest in his master's
life; how a well-befriended cat becomes desperately uneasy, when the
family begins to pack for a journey.  We know personally the difference
between our range of thought at one age, and at another; how one's
consciousness may include wider and wider fields of knowledge, longer
ranges of time, deeper causal relations; and how the same object, viewed
by different minds, may arouse in one as it were, a square inch, and in
the other a square mile of consciousness.  Those of us, who have the
larger area under cultivation,--who are accustomed to think of human
life as age-long, world-wide, and in motion, learn to see human conduct,
not as something in neat detachable strata, like a pile of plates, but
as having long roots and longer branches, and requiring careful handling
to alter.

To these, studying the world's affairs, clear lines of causal sequence
present themselves.  Is it a thousand cases of typhoid?  They trace the
fever to its lair as one would hunt a tiger; they point out every step
of its course; they call on the citizens to rise and fight the enemy, to
save their lives.  Do the citizens do it?  Not they.  Individually they
suffer and die.  Individually they grieve and mourn, bury,their dead
(when they should cremate them), and pay the doctor and the undertaker.
Hundreds of dollars they pay as individuals to nurses, doctors,
graveyard men, and monument makers.  If, collectively they would put up
a tenth of the sum to ensure a pure water and milk supply, they would
save not only hundreds for themselves, but thousands and millions for
those after them.--to say nothing of grief!

But they look at life through a knot-hole.  They see their own personal
affairs as things of sky-shadowing importance, and those same affairs,
taken collectively, become as remote and uninteresting as the Milky Way.

Now in the mere labor of intellectual comprehension our average citizen
of common-school education is able to see that where so much tuberculous
milk is fed into so many babies, that such a proportion will surely die.
 He sees, but it does interest him.  Show him tubercular bacilli from
the autopsy of his dead baby, show him the same in the bottle of milk
reposing in his refrigerator, and show him the man who put them
there--and you may get results.

He could see the larger facts, but only feel the smaller ones.  It is a
limitation of consciousness.

All workers for human advance know this.  Whatever the cause upheld,
those who work for it find everywhere the same difficulty; they have to
stretch the minds, to stimulate the consciousness, to arouse the
interest of their hearers, so that they will take action for the common
good.

In one field it is easy, that of public danger from war.  The reason is
clear.  Wars are carried on by men, and men have reacted to conflict
stimuli collectively, for so many ages, that it is a race habit with
them.  Only in the last extreme of terror is this habit broken, and the
battle turns to rout, with every man for himself.  Then comes the
officer and strives to rekindle that common consciousness without which
is no human victory.

In the economic world our habits of organization are not so old.  We
have fought in company since we fought at all, as humans; but we have
worked, for the most part alone.  The comradeship of shop and factory is
of yesterday, compared to the solitary spindle, loom and forge of
earlier centuries.  Yet in that comradeship wherever found, comes the
new consciousness, that recognizes common danger or common gain, and
substitutes the army for the mob, the victory for the rout.

This effect is so strong, so clear, so quick in appearance, that even
with one poor century or two of economic combination, we ought to find
much better results than we do.  Where the common interest is as clear
as day, where the common strength is so irresistible, where the loss and
the danger lie so wholly in isolation, one wonders over and over at the
lack of comprehension which keeps us so helplessly apart.

We can see the immense activities of the nation, the multiplication of
national wealth, power, and progress,--the saving of life, the
elimination of disease, the development of art and science, of beauty
and of health and glorious living that we might have, but we cannot feel
these things.  Therefore we do not act.

Can there be still among us some general cause, acting on everyone,
which mysteriously checks out progress, which makes us "penny-wise and
pound-foolish," makes us "save at the spigot and spend at the
bung-hole," which continually intensifies our consciousness of personal
interest and continually prevents the recognition of social interests?

It may seem  almost grotesque to make so heavy a complaint as this, and
then to put forward as chief offender our old companion the kitchen.

Briefly the charge is this: that in the private kitchen, we maintain in
our civilization an economic institution as old as house-building,
almost as old as the use of fire.  The results of this surviving
rudiment of a remote past are many.  The one presented here is the
effect of the kitchen on the mind.

The condition is practically universal.  For each house a kitchen.  Be
it the merest hut, the smallest tenement, one room; wherever the family
is found, there is the kitchen.  For each man there is a cook.  In the
great majority of cases the man's wife is his cook, and as she must
spend most of her time in the kitchen, there must be her little ones
also.  In fifteen-sixteenths of American families, the children are thus
reared,--by cooks in kitchens.

We, in our fatuous acceptance of race habits, have ceaselessly
perpetuated this kitchen-bred population, and even defended it as an
educational influence of no mean importance.  "Children brought up by
their mothers in the kitchen," we say, "early acquire knowledge and
skill in various occupations; they see things done, and learn how to do
them themselves."

This seems to the superficial listener like good sense.  He never looks
below the allegation for the evidence.  He sees that daily observation,
and practice should develop knowledge and skill, and fails to inquire
further to see if it does.

Surely if all children were brought up in blacksmith shops, it would
make them good blacksmiths; if they were brought up in dental parlors
they would become good dentists!

Waiving the desirability of a form of training calculated to turn out an
unvarying population of cooks, let us see if this daily association with
the maternal house-servant in her workshop does educate as stated.  On
this point one clear comment has been made: "If kitchen life is such
good training to mind and hand, why is it that so few of us are willing
to follow the kitchen trades when we are grown? and why is it that
competence in the kitchen is so rare?"  This is a most practical
observation.  If fifteen-sixteenths of our women followed incessantly
the occupation of shoemaking, and brought up their children in the shoe
shop, we should hardly claim great educational advantages for that
arrangement.  If we did, would it not be disappointing to find that the
trade of shoemaking was universally disliked and despised, and that good
shoemakers were hard to find at any price?

Yet this is precisely the case in hand.  Our kitchen-bred children, boy
and girl alike, prefer almost any other trade, and when we wish to
secure competent workers in the kitchen we find them extremely scarce.

Moreover, in its own special activities, the private kitchen makes no
advance.  Advance comes to it from outside; from the wider and more
progressive professionalism of its various industries; specialized and
socialized one by one.  But, left to itself, domestic cook hands down to
domestic cook the recipes of female ancestors, occasionally added to by
obliging friends.  It is endless repetition, but not progress.

The purpose of this discussion, however, is not to show the inefficacy
of this ancient workshop, as a means of carrying on that great art,
science, handicraft, and business--the preparation of food; but to point
out the effect of the kitchen on the human mind.

The one dominant note of kitchen work is personality.  Its products are
all prepared for home consumption only.  Its provisions are all secured
and its processes directed with a view to pleasing a small group.  It
does not and cannot consider the general questions of hygiene, of
nutrition, of the chemistry of improved processes of preparation, and
the immense and pressing problems of pure food.

The kitchen mind, focussed continually upon close personal concerns,
limited in time, in means, in capacity, and in mechanical convenience,
can consider only; a, what the family likes; b, what the family can
afford; and, c, what the cook can accomplish.

The most perfect type of organization we have is the military.  Military
success depends most absolutely on the commissary and sanitary
departments.  "An army travels on its belly," is the famous dictum.

Is there any difference in this respect between soldiers and other
people?  Are we not all gasteropods whether singly or in regiments?  Is
not the health and strength of the productive workers of the world, at
least as valuable as that of the cumbrous forces of destruction?

In our last little war, and in the big one before that, disease killed
more than sword and steel.  We lament this--in armies.  We prefer to
keep our soldiers healthy that they may fight more strongly, and die
more efficaciously, and this sick list is pure waste.

Is it any less waste in private life?  Can we easily afford the loss in
money--annual billions; the loss in strength, the loss in intellect, the
loss in love, that falls on us so heavily from year to year?  Study the
record of man's fight with disease.  See how the specialists devoting
not only lifetimes, but the accumulating succession of lifetimes to the
study of causes, cures and preventions, announce to us at last, "thus
and thus are you made sick.  Thus may you be cured, and thus may you so
live as to be well."

See then the sanitary work of an aroused public; a truth is discovered;
a truth is announced; a law is made; the law is enforced--a disease is
conquered.

This is vividly shown in the work of our Government against
pleuro-pneumonia--in cattle.  The Federal Government, furnishing
information and funds, and cooperating with the various States, attacked
that disease, and stamped it out completely.

There is an effort now to rouse our government to fight the White
Plague, in people as well as in cattle.  And, as always, the difficulty
is to stir and stretch and rouse our kitchen minds, to make us see
things in common instead of individually.  The men whose cattle had
pleuro-pneumonia, kept them in herds, and lost them in herds, losing
much money thereby.  Many men were so afflicted.  Therefore these many
men got together, and, using the machinery of the State, they together
destroyed their enemy.  Cattle-raising is a business, a social industry.

But child-raising, husband-feeding, the care of the lives and health of
all our families, is a domestic industry, in the management of the
kitchen mind.

it has been shown recently that 72 per cent. of the cattle in New York
State are tuberculous.  This does not kill them quickly like
pleuro-pneumonia.  They live and may be sold.  They live and may give
milk.  It has been shown recently (as stated in our unimpeachable daily
press), that in some of the milk sold in New York City, there were more
germs to the cubic millimeter, than in the same amount of sewage!

This milk, and most of the milk in all our cities, goes into the
kitchen; the blind, brainless, family-feeding kitchen, and from there is
given us to drink.

What protest rises from the kitchens of New York, or Chicago, or any
city?  What mass-meeting of angry women, presenting to their legislators
the horrible facts of strong men poisoned and babies slain by this or
any other abomination in the food supply?

A young man writes a novel exhibiting the badness of our meat supply.
Men become excited.  Men take action.  Men legislate.  The great meat
industries stagger under the shock, recover, and go on smiling.  Before
this meanwhile, and afterwards, the meat went into out kitchens and we
ate it.

Being kitchen-minded we cannot see that health is a public concern; that
the feeding of our people is one of the most vital factors in their
health, and that the private kitchen with its private cook is not able
to keep the public well.

Ask the physician, the sanitary expert.  He will tell you that the great
advance in sanitary science is in its battle with the filth diseases;
and that we die worse than ever from food diseases.

In fighting the filth diseases we have the public forces to work with;
compulsory systems of sewage and drainage, quarantine, isolation
hospitals, and all the other maneuvers by which an enlightened public
protects itself.

But who shall say what a child shall eat, or a man or woman?  Is it not
wholly their own affair?

We cry out upon our women for the falling birth rate;--why not say
something about the death rate of their babies?  The average family must
have four, merely to maintain a stationary population, said Grant Allen;
"two to replace themselves and two to die."  The doctor will tell you
that they die mostly of what are called "preventable diseases" and that
those diseases are mainly of the alimentary canal.

Kitchen-fed are we all, and those of us who survive it, who become
immune to it, cry loudly of its excellence!  If we could once see
outside of these ancient limits, once figure to ourselves the vision of
a healthy world, and the noble duty of making it,--then we should no
longer be kitchen-minded.

Our narrowness of vision, our petty self-interest, does not end its
injuries with our bodily health.  Its leaden limitation is felt in all
the economic field.

Not a business have we in the world but needs to be considered as a
matter of public service; needs to be studied, helped, restricted,
generally managed for the public good.  Not a business in the world but
is crippled and distorted by the childish self-interest of its
promoters.  Kitchen-bred men born of kitchen-bred mothers are we, and
inevitably must we consider the main duty of life to be the service of
our own body.  What else does the child see his mother do, but work,
work, work to cover the family table with food three times a day, and
clear up afterward?  What else can he grow up to do but work, work,
work, to provide the wherewithal for another woman to do the same?

A million women are making bread as their mothers made it.  How many
women are trying to lift the standard of bread-making for their country?
 How many even know the difference in nutriment and digestibility
between one bread and another?

They do not think "bread," but only "my bread."  Their view of the staff
of life is kitchen-minded.  When our kitchen trades become world trades,
when we are fed, not by the most ignorant, but by the wisest; when
personal whims and painfully acquired habits give place to the light of
science, and the fruit of wide experience; when, instead of dragging
duty or sordid compulsion, we have wisdom and art to feed us; the change
will be far greater than that of improved health.  It will be a great
and valuable advance even there.  We shall become healthy, clean-fleshed
people, intelligent eaters, each generation improving in strength and
beauty, but we shall be helped in wider ways than that.  We shall have
the enlarged mental capacity that comes of a wider area of work and
responsibility.  We shall have in each man and woman the habitual power
of organization, the daily recognition of mutual service and world-duty.

When the world comes out of the kitchen for good and all, and for that
primitive little shop is substituted the cool glittering laboratory,
wherein the needs of bodily replenishment are fully and beautifully met,
it will give to the growing child a different background for his thought
processes.  At last we shall mark the great division between production,
which is the social function, and consumption which is personal.

As we now emerge from the warm and greasy confines of our ancient
cookshop, we begin to see with new eyes its true place as an economic
factor.  We are learning the unbridled waste of it; how it costs
struggling humanity about forty-three per cent. of its productive labor,
and two-thirds of its living expenses; how it does not conserve the very
end for which we uphold it,--the health of the family; how it leaves us
helpless before the adulterators of food, the purveyors of impure milk,
diseased meat, and all unpleasantness.  We are beginning to see how,
most dangerous of all, it works against our economic progress, by
perpetuating a primitive selfishness.

Public interest grows in public service.  Self-interest is maintained by
self-service.  We can neither rightly estimate social gain, nor rightly
condemn social evil, because we are so soddenly habituated to consider
only personal gain, personal good and personal evil; because we are
kitchen-minded.



TWO STORKS


Two storks were nesting.

He was a young stork--and narrow-minded.  Before he married he had
consorted mainly with striplings of his own kind, and had given no
thought to the ladies, either maid or matron.

After he married his attention was concentrated upon his All-Satisfying
Wife; upon that Triumph of Art, Labor, and Love--their Nest, and upon
those Special Creations--their Children.  Deeply was he moved by the
marvellous instincts and processes of motherhood.  Love, reverence,
intense admiration, rose in his heart for Her of the Well-built Nest;
Her of the Gleaming Treasure of Smooth Eggs; Her of the Patient Brooding
Breast, the Warming Wings, the downy wide-mouthed Group of Little Ones.

Assiduously he labored to help her build the nest, to help her feed the
young; proud of his impassioned activity in her and their behalf;
devoutly he performed his share of the brooding, while she hunted in her
turn.  When he was o-wing he thought continually of Her as one with the
Brood--His Brood.  When he was on the nest he thought all the more of
Her, who sat there so long, so lovingly, to such noble ends.

The happy days flew by, fair Spring--sweet Summer--gentle Autumn.  The
young ones grew larger and larger; it was more and more work to keep
their lengthening, widening beaks shut in contentment.  Both parents
flew far afield to feed them.

Then the days grew shorter, the sky greyer, the wind colder; there was
less hunting and small success.  In his dreams he began to see sunshine,
broad, burning sunshine day after day; skies of limitless blue; dark,
deep, yet full of fire; and stretches of bright water, shallow, warm,
fringed with tall reeds and rushes, teeming with fat frogs.

They were in her dreams too, but he did not know that.

He stretched his wings and flew farther every day; but his wings were
not satisfied.  In his dreams came a sense of vast heights and boundless
spaces of the earth streaming away beneath him; black water and white
land, grey water and brown land, blue water and green land, all flowing
backward from day to day, while the cold lessened and the warmth grew.

He felt the empty sparkling nights, stars far above, quivering, burning;
stars far below, quivering more in the dark water; and felt his great
wings wide, strong, all sufficient, carrying him on and on!

This was in her dreams too, but he did not know that.

"It is time to Go!" he cried one day.  "They are coming!  It is upon us!
 Yes--I must Go!  Goodbye my wife!  Goodbye my children!"  For the
Passion of Wings was upon him.

She too was stirred to the heart.  "Yes!  It is time to Go!  To Go!" she
cried.  "I am ready!  Come!"

He was shocked; grieved; astonished.  "Why, my Dear!" he said.  "How
preposterous!  You cannot go on the Great Flight!  Your wings are for
brooding tender little ones!  Your body is for the Wonder of the
Gleaming Treasure!--not for days and nights of ceaseless soaring!  You
cannot go!"

She did not heed him.  She spread her wide wings and swept and circled
far and high above--as, in truth, she had been doing for many days,
though he had not noticed it.

She dropped to the ridge-pole beside him where he was still muttering
objections.  "Is it not glorious!" she cried.  "Come!  They are nearly
ready!"

"You unnatural Mother!" he burst forth.  "You have forgotten the Order
of Nature!  You have forgotten your Children!  Your lovely precious
tender helpless Little Ones!"  And he wept--for his highest ideals were
shattered.

But the Precious Little Ones stood in a row on the ridge-pole and
flapped their strong young wings in high derision.  They were as big as
he was, nearly; for as a matter of fact he was but a Young Stork
himself.

Then the air was beaten white with a thousand wings, it was like snow
and silver and seafoam, there was a flashing whirlwind, a hurricane of
wild joy and then the Army of the Sky spread wide in due array and
streamed Southward.

Full of remembered joy and more joyous hope, finding the high sunlight
better than her dreams, she swept away to the far summerland; and her
children, mad with the happiness of the First Flight, swept beside her.

"But you are a Mother!" he panted, as he caught up with them.

"Yes!" she cried, joyously, "but I was a Stork before I was A Mother!
and afterward!--and All the Time!"

And the Storks were Flying.



WHAT DIANTHA DID


CHAPTER IV.

A CRYING NEED


"Lovest thou me?" said the Fair Ladye;
 And the Lover he said, "Yea!"
"Then climb this tree--for my sake," said she,
 "And climb it every day!"
So from dawn till dark he abrazed the bark
 And wore his clothes away;
Till, "What has this tree to do with thee?"
 The Lover at last did say.


It was a poor dinner.  Cold in the first place, because Isabel would
wait to thoroughly wash her long artistic hands; and put on another
dress.  She hated the smell of cooking in her garments; hated it worse
on her white fingers; and now to look at the graceful erect figure, the
round throat with the silver necklace about it, the soft smooth hair,
silver-filletted, the negative beauty of the dove-colored gown,
specially designed for home evenings, one would never dream she had set
the table so well--and cooked the steak so abominably.


Isabel was never a cook.  In the many servantless gaps of domestic life
in Orchardina, there was always a strained atmosphere in the Porne
household.

"Dear," said Mr. Porne, "might I petition to have the steak less cooked?
 I know you don't like to do it, so why not shorten the process?"

"I'm sorry," she answered, "I always forget about the steak from one
time to the next."

"Yet we've had it three times this week, my dear."

"I thought you liked it better than anything," she with marked
gentleness.  "I'll get you other things--oftener."

"It's a shame you should have this to do, Isabel.  I never meant you
should cook for me.  Indeed I didn't dream you cared so little about
it."

"And I never dreamed you cared so much about it," she replied, still
with repression.  "I'm not complaining, am I?  I'm only sorry you should
be disappointed in me."

"It's not _you,_ dear girl!  You're all right!  It's just this
everlasting bother.  Can't you get _anybody_ that will stay?"

I can't seem to get anybody on any terms, so far.  I'm going again,
to-morrow.  Cheer up, dear--the baby keeps well--that's the main thing."

He sat on the rose-bowered porch and smoked while she cleared the table.
 At first he had tried to help her on these occasions, but their methods
were dissimilar and she frankly told him she preferred to do it alone.

So she slipped off the silk and put on the gingham again, washed the
dishes with the labored accuracy of a trained mind doing unfamiliar
work, made the bread, redressed at last, and joined him about nine
o'clock.

"It's too late to go anywhere, I suppose?" he ventured.

"Yes--and I'm too tired.  Besides--we can't leave Eddie alone."

"O yes--I forget.  Of course we can't."

His hand stole out to take hers.  "I _am_ sorry, dear.  It's awfully
rough on you women out here.  How do they all stand it?"

"Most of them stand it much better than I do, Ned.  You see they don't
want to be doing anything else."

"Yes.  That's the mischief of it!" he agreed; and she looked at him in
the clear moonlight, wondering exactly what he thought the mischief was.

"Shall we go in and read a bit?" he offered; but she thought not.

"I'm too tired, I'm afraid.  And Eddie'll wake up as soon as we begin."

So they sat awhile enjoying the soft silence, and the rich flower scents
about them, till Eddie did wake presently, and Isabel went upstairs.

She slept little that night, lying quite still, listening to her
husband's regular breathing so near her, and the lighter sound from the
crib.  "I am a very happy woman," she told herself resolutely; but there
was no outpouring sense of love and joy.  She knew she was happy, but by
no means felt it.  So she stared at the moon shadows and thought it
over.

She had planned the little house herself, with such love, such hope,
such tender happy care!  Not her first work, which won high praise in
the school in Paris, not the prize-winning plan for the library, now
gracing Orchardina's prettiest square, was as dear to her as this most
womanly task--the making of a home.

It was the library success which brought her here, fresh from her
foreign studies, and Orchardina accepted with western cordiality the
youth and beauty of the young architect, though a bit surprised at first
that "I. H. Wright" was an Isabel.  In her further work of overseeing
the construction of that library, she had met Edgar Porne, one of the
numerous eager young real estate men of that region, who showed a
liberal enthusiasm for the general capacity of women in the professions,
and a much warmer feeling for the personal attractions of this one.

Together they chose the lot on pepper-shaded Inez Avenue; together they
watched the rising of the concrete walls and planned the garden walks
and seats, and the tiny precious pool in the far corner.  He was so
sympathetic! so admiring!  He took as much pride in the big "drawing
room" on the third floor as she did herself.  "Architecture is such fine
work to do at home!" they had both agreed.  "Here you have your north
light--your big table--plenty of room for work!  You will grow famouser
and famouser," he had lovingly insisted.  And she had answered, "I fear
I shall be too contented, dear, to want to be famous."

That was only some year and a-half ago,--but Isabel, lying there by her
sleeping husband and sleeping child, was stark awake and only by
assertion happy.  She was thinking, persistently, of dust.  She loved a
delicate cleanliness.  Her art was a precise one, her studio a workshop
of white paper and fine pointed hard pencils, her painting the
mechanical perfection of an even wash of color.  And she saw, through
the floors and walls and the darkness, the dust in the little shaded
parlor--two days' dust at least, and Orchardina is very dusty!--dust in
the dining-room gathered since yesterday--the dust in the kitchen--she
would not count time there, and the dust--here she counted it
inexorably--the dust of eight days in her great, light workroom
upstairs.  Eight days since she had found time to go up there.

Lying there, wide-eyed and motionless, she stood outside in thought and
looked at the house--as she used to look at it with him, before they
were married.  Then, it had roused every blessed hope and dream of
wedded joy--it seemed a casket of uncounted treasures.  Now, in this
dreary mood, it seemed not only a mere workshop, but one of alien tasks,
continuous, impossible, like those set for the Imprisoned Princess by
bad fairies in the old tales.  In thought she entered the
well-proportioned door--the Gate of Happiness--and a musty smell greeted
her--she had forgotten to throw out those flowers!  She turned to the
parlor--no, the piano keys were gritty, one had to clean them twice a
day to keep that room as she liked it.

From room to room she flitted, in her mind, trying to recall the
exquisite things they meant to her when she had planned them; and each
one now opened glaring and blank, as a place to work in--and the work
undone.

"If I were an abler woman!" she breathed.  And then her common sense and
common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough--in my own
work!  Nobody can do everything.  I don't believe Edgar'd do it any
better than I do.--He don't have to!--and then such a wave of bitterness
rushed over her that she was afraid, and reached out one hand to touch
the crib--the other to her husband.

He awakened instantly.  "What is it, Dear?" he asked.  "Too tired to
sleep, you poor darling?  But you do love me a little, don't you?"

"O _yes_!" she answered.  "I do.  Of _course_ I do!  I'm just tired, I
guess.  Goodnight, Sweetheart."


She was late in getting to sleep and late in waking.

When he finally sat down to the hurriedly spread breakfast-table, Mr.
Porne, long coffeeless, found it a bit difficult to keep his temper.
Isabel was a little stiff, bringing in dishes and cups, and paying no
attention to the sounds of wailing from above.

"Well if you won't I will!" burst forth the father at last, and ran
upstairs, returning presently with a fine boy of some eleven months, who
ceased to bawl in these familiar arms, and contented himself, for the
moment, with a teaspoon.

"Aren't you going to feed him?" asked Mr. Porne, with forced patience.

"It isn't time yet," she announced wearily.  "He has to have his bath
first."

"Well," with a patience evidently forced farther, "isn't it time to feed
me?"

"I'm very sorry," she said.  "The oatmeal is burned again.  You'll have
to eat cornflakes.  And--the cream is sour--the ice didn't come--or at
least, perhaps I was out when it came--and then I forgot it. . . . . I
had to go to the employment agency in the morning! . . . . I'm sorry I'm
so--so incompetent."

"So am I," he commented drily.  "Are there any crackers for instance?
And how about coffee?"

She brought the coffee, such as it was, and a can of condensed milk.
Also crackers, and fruit.  She took the baby and sat silent.

"Shall I come home to lunch?" he asked.

"Perhaps you'd better not," she replied coldly.

"Is there to be any dinner?"

"Dinner will be ready at six-thirty, if I have to get it myself."

"If you have to get it yourself I'll allow for seven-thirty," said he,
trying to be cheerful, though she seemed little pleased by it.  "Now
don't take it so hard, Ellie.  You are a first-class architect,
anyhow--one can't be everything.  We'll get another girl in time.  This
is just the common lot out here.  All the women have the same trouble."

"Most women seem better able to meet it!" she burst forth.  "It's not my
trade!  I'm willing to work, I like to work, but I can't _bear_
housework!  I can't seem to learn it at all!  And the servants will not
do it properly!"

"Perhaps they know your limitations, and take advantage of them!  But
cheer up, dear.  It's no killing matter.  Order by phone, don't forget
the ice, and I'll try to get home early and help.  Don't cry, dear girl,
I love you, even if you aren't a good cook!  And you love me, don't
you?"

He kissed her till she had to smile back at him and give him a loving
hug; but after he had gone, the gloom settled upon her spirits once
more.  She bathed the baby, fed him, put him to sleep; and came back to
the table.  The screen door had been left ajar and the house was buzzing
with flies, hot, with a week's accumulating disorder.  The bread she
made last night in fear and trembling, was hanging fatly over the pans;
perhaps sour already.  She clapped it into the oven and turned on the
heat.

Then she stood, undetermined, looking about that messy kitchen while the
big flies bumped and buzzed on the windows, settled on every dish, and
swung in giddy circles in the middle of the room.  Turning  swiftly she
shut the door on them.  The dining-room was nearly as bad.  She began to
put the cups and plates together for removal; but set her tray down
suddenly and went into the comparative coolness of the parlor, closing
the dining-room door behind her.

She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest
and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising
anger kept the tears back.

"Of course I love him!" she said to herself aloud but softly,
remembering the baby,  "And no doubt he loves me!  I'm glad to be his
wife!  I'm glad to be a mother to his child!  I'm glad I married him!
But--_this_ is not what he offered!  And it's not what I undertook!  He
hasn't had to change his business!"

She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and
laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.

"'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and
you get married--and after that it's Housework!"

"They don't say, 'Will you be my Cook?'  'Will you be my Chamber maid?'
'Will you give up a good clean well-paid business that you love--that
has big hope and power and beauty in it--and come and keep house for
me?'"

"Love him?  I'd be in Paris this minute if I didn't!  What has 'love' to
do with dust and grease and flies!"

Then she did drop on the small sofa and cry tempestuously for a little
while; but soon arose, fiercely ashamed of her weakness, and faced the
day; thinking of the old lady who had so much to do she couldn't think
what to first--so she sat down and made a pincushion.

Then--where to begin!

"Eddie will sleep till half-past ten--if I'm lucky.  It's now nearly
half-past nine," she meditated aloud.  "If I do the upstairs work I
might wake him.  I mustn't forget the bread, the dishes, the parlor--O
those flies!  Well--I'll clear the table first!"

Stepping softly, and handling the dishes with slow care, she cleaned the
breakfast table and darkened the dining-room, flapping out some of the
flies with a towel.  Then she essayed the parlor, dusting and arranging
with undecided steps.  "It _ought_ to be swept," she admitted to
herself; "I can't do it--there isn't time.  I'll make it dark--"

"I'd rather plan a dozen houses!" she fiercely muttered, as she fussed
about.  "Yes--I'd rather build 'em--than to keep one clean!"

Then were her hopes dashed by a rising wail from above.  She sat quite
still awhile, hoping against hope that he would sleep again; but he
wouldn't.  So she brought him down in full cry.

In her low chair by the window she held him and produced bright and
jingling objects from the tall workbasket that stood near by, sighing
again as she glanced at its accumulated mending.

Master Eddy grew calm and happy in her arms, but showed a growing
interest in the pleasing materials produced for his amusement, and a
desire for closer acquaintance.  Then a penetrating odor filled the air,
and with a sudden "O dear!" she rose, put the baby on the sofa, and
started toward the kitchen.

At this moment the doorbell rang.

Mrs. Porne stopped in her tracks and looked at the door.  It remained
opaque and immovable.  She looked at the baby--who jiggled his spools
and crowed.  Then she flew to the oven and dragged forth the bread, not
much burned after all.  Then she opened the door.

A nice looking young woman stood before her, in a plain travelling suit,
holding a cheap dress-suit case in one hand and a denim "roll-bag" in
the other, who met her with a cheerful inquiring smile.

"Are you Mrs. Edgar Porne?" she asked.

"I am," answered that lady, somewhat shortly, her hand on the doorknob,
her ear on the baby, her nose still remorsefully in the kitchen, her
eyes fixed sternly on her visitor the while; as she wondered whether it
was literature, cosmetics, or medicine.

She was about to add that she didn't want anything, when the young lady
produced a card from the Rev. Benjamin A. Miner, Mrs. Porne's
particularly revered minister, and stated that she had heard there was a
vacancy in her kitchen and she would like the place.

"Introducing Mrs. D. Bell, well known to friends of mine."

"I don't know--" said Mrs. Porne, reading the card without in the least
grasping what it said.  "I--"

Just then there was a dull falling sound followed by a sharp rising one,
and she rushed into the parlor without more words.

When she could hear and be heard again, she found Mrs. Bell seated in
the shadowy little hall, serene and cool.  "I called on Mr. Miner
yesterday when I arrived," said she, "with letters of introduction from
my former minister, told him what I wanted to do, and asked him if he
could suggest anyone in immediate need of help in this line.  He said he
had called here recently, and believed you were looking for someone.
Here is the letter I showed him," and she handed Mrs. Porne a most
friendly and appreciative recommendation of Miss D. Bell by a minister
in Jopalez, Inca Co., stating that the bearer was fully qualified to do
all kinds of housework, experienced, honest, kind, had worked seven
years in one place, and only left it hoping to do better in Southern
California.

Backed by her own pastor's approval this seemed to Mrs. Porne fully
sufficient.  The look of the girl pleased her, though suspiciously above
her station in manner; service of any sort was scarce and high in
Orchardina, and she had been an agelong week without any.  "When can you
come?" she asked.

"I can stop now if you like," said the stranger.  "This is my baggage.
But we must arrange terms first.  If you like to try me I will come this
week from noon to-day to noon next Friday, for seven dollars, and then
if you are satisfied with my work we can make further arrangements.  I
do not do laundry work, of course, and don't undertake to have any care
of the baby."

"I take care of my baby myself!" said Mrs. Porne, thinking the new girl
was presuming, though her manner was most gently respectful.  But a week
was not long, she was well recommended, and the immediate pressure in
that kitchen where the harvest was so ripe and the laborers so
few--"Well--you may try the week," she said.  "I'll show you your room.
And what is your name?"

"Miss Bell."



LITTLE LEAFY BROTHERS


Little, leafy brothers!  You can feel
  Warmth o' the sun,
  Cool sap-streams run,
 The slow, soft, nuzzling creep
 Of roots sent deep,
  And a close-anchored flowing
  In winds smooth-blowing.
 And in the Spring! the Spring!
 When the stars sing--
  The world's love in you grows
  Into the rose!

Little hairy brothers!  You can feel
 The kind sun too;
 Winds play with you,
  Water is live delight;
  In your swift flight
 Of wings or leaping feet
 Life rushes sweet--
  And in the Spring! the Spring!
  When the stars sing--
 The world's love stirs you first
 To wild, sweet thirst,
  Mad combat glorious, and so
  To what you know
 Of love in living.  Yes, to you first came
 The joy past name
  Of interchange--the small mouth pressed
  To the warm, willing breast.

But O! the human brothers!  We can feel
 All, all below
 These small ones know;
  Earth fair and good,
  The bubbling flood
 Of life a-growing--in us multiplied
 As man spreads wide;
  Not into leaves alone,
  Nor flesh and bone,
 But roof and wall and wheel
 Of stone and steel;
  Soft foliage and gorgeous bloom
  Of humming loom;
 And fruit of joy o'er-burdened heart
 Poured forth in Art!
  We can not only leap in the sun,
  Wrestle and run,
 But know the music-measured beat
 Of dancing feet,
  The interplay of hands--we hold
  Delight of doing, myriad-fold.
 Joy of the rose, we know--
 To bloom--to grow!--
  Joy of the beast we prove--
  To strive--to move!
 And in the Spring! the Spring!
 When the stars sing,
  Wide gladness of all living men
  Comes back again,
 A conscious universe at rest
 In one's own breast!
  The world's love!  Wholly ours;
  Through breathing flowers,
 Through all the living tumult of the wood,
 In us made good;
  Through centuries that rise and fall--
  We hold it all!
 The world's love!  Given music, fit
 To carry it.
  The world's love!  Given words at last, to speak,
  Though yet so weak.
 The world's love!  Given hands that hold so much,
 Lips that may touch!
  The worlds's love!  Sweet!--it lies
  In your dear eyes!



OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD


IV.

MEN AND ART.


Among the many counts in which women have been proven inferior to men in
human development is the oft-heard charge that there are no great women
artists.  Where one or two are proudly exhibited in evidence, they are
either pooh-poohed as not very great, or held to be the trifling
exceptions which do but prove the rule.

Defenders of women generally make the mistake of over-estimating their
performances, instead of accepting, and explaining, the visible facts.
What are the facts as to the relation of men and women to art?  And
what, in especial, has been the effect upon art of a solely masculine
expression?

When we look for the beginnings of art, we find ourselves in a period of
crude decoration of the person and of personal belongings.  Tattooing,
for instance, is an early form of decorative art, still in practice
among certain classes, even in advanced people.  Most boys, if they are
in contact with this early art, admire it, and wish to adorn themselves
therewith; some do so--to later mortification.  Early personal
decoration consisted largely in direct mutilation of the body, and the
hanging upon it, or fastening to it, of decorative objects.  This we see
among savages still, in its gross and primitive forms monopolized by
men, then shared by women, and, in our time, left almost wholly to them.
 In personal decoration today, women are still near the savage.  The
"artists" developed in this field of art are the tonsorial, the
sartorial, and all those specialized adorners of the body commonly known
as "beauty doctors."

Here, as in other cases, the greatest artists are men.  The greatest
milliners, the greatest dressmakers and tailors, the greatest
hairdressers, and the masters and designers in all our decorative
toilettes and accessories, are men.  Women, in this as in so many other
lines, consume rather than produce.  They carry the major part of
personal decoration today; but the decorator is the man.  In the
decoration of objects, woman, as the originator of primitive industry,
originated also the primitive arts; and in the pottery, basketry,
leatherwork, needlework, weaving, with all beadwork, dyeing and
embroideries of ancient peoples we see the work of the woman decorator.
Much of this is strong and beautiful, but its time is long past.  The
art which is part of industry, natural, simple, spontaneous, making
beauty in every object of use, adding pleasure to labor and to life, is
not Art with a large A, the Art which requires Artists, among whom are
so few women of note.

Art as a profession, and the Artist as a professional, came later; and
by that time women had left the freedom and power of the matriarchate
and become slaves in varying degree.  The women who were idle pets in
harems, or the women who worked hard as servants, were alike cut off
from the joy of making things.  Where constructive work remained to
them, art remained, in its early decorative form.  Men, in the
proprietary family, restricting the natural industry of women to
personal service, cut off their art with their industry, and by so much
impoverished the world.

There is no more conspicuously pathetic proof of the aborted development
of women than this commonplace--their lack of a civilized art sense.
Not only in the childish and savage display upon their bodies, but in
the pitiful products they hang upon the walls of the home, is seen the
arrest in normal growth.

After ages of culture, in which men have developed Architecture,
Sculpture, Painting, Music and the Drama, we find women in their
primitive environment making flowers of wax, and hair, and worsted;
doing mottoes of perforated cardboard, making crazy quilts and mats and
"tidies"--as if they lived in a long past age, or belonged to a lower
race.

This, as part of the general injury to women dating from the beginning
of our androcentric culture, reacts heavily upon the world at large.
Men, specializing, giving their lives to the continuous pursuit of one
line of service, have lifted our standard in aesthetic culture, as they
have in other matters; but by refusing the same growth to women, they
have not only weakened and reduced the output, but ruined the market as
it were, hopelessly and permanently kept down the level of taste.

Among the many sides of this great question, some so terrible, some so
pathetic, some so utterly absurd, this particular phase of life is
especially easy to study and understand, and has its own elements of
amusement.  Men, holding women at the level of domestic service, going
on themselves to lonely heights of achievement, have found their efforts
hampered and their attainments rendered barren and unsatisfactory by the
amazing indifference of the world at large.  As the world at large
consists half of women, and wholly of their children, it would seem
patent to the meanest understanding that the women must be allowed to
rise in order to lift the world.  But such has not been the
method--heretofore.

We have spoken so far in this chapter of the effect of men on art
through their interference with the art of women.  There are other sides
to the question.  Let us consider once more the essential
characteristics of maleness, and see how they have affected art, keeping
always in mind the triune distinction between masculine, feminine and
human.  Perhaps we shall best see this difference by considering what
the development of art might have been on purely human terms.

The human creature, as such, naturally delights in construction, and
adds decoration to construction as naturally.  The cook, making little
regular patterns around the edge of the pie, does so from a purely human
instinct, the innate eye-pleasure in regularity, symmetry, repetition,
and alternation.  Had this natural social instinct grown unchecked in
us, it would have manifested itself in a certain proportion of
specialists--artists of all sorts--and an accompanying development of
appreciation on the part of the rest of us.  Such is the case in
primitive art; the maker of beauty is upheld and rewarded by a popular
appreciation of her work--or his.

Had this condition remained, we should find a general level of artistic
expression and appreciation far higher than we see now.  Take the one
field of textile art, for instance: that wide and fluent medium of
expression, the making of varied fabrics, the fashioning of garments and
the decoration of them--all this is human work and human pleasure.  It
should have led us to a condition where every human being was a pleasure
to the eye, appropriately and beautifully clothed.

Our real condition in this field is too patent to need emphasis; the
stiff, black ugliness of our men's attire; the irritating variegated
folly of our women's; the way in which we spoil the beauty and shame the
dignity of childhood by modes of dress.

In normal human growth, our houses would be a pleasure to the eye; our
furniture and utensils, all our social products, would blossom into
beauty as naturally as they still do in those low stages of social
evolution where our major errors have not yet borne full fruit.

Applied art in all its forms is a human function, common to every one to
some degree, either in production or appreciation, or both.  "Pure art,"
as an ideal, is also human; and the single-hearted devotion of the true
artist to this ideal is one of the highest forms of the social
sacrifice.  Of all the thousand ways by which humanity is specialized
for inter-service, none is more exquisite than this; the evolution of
the social Eye, or Ear, or Voice, the development of those whose work is
wholly for others, and to whom the appreciation of others is as the
bread of life.  This we should have in a properly developed community;
the pleasure of applied art in the making and using of everything we
have; and then the high joy of the Great Artist, and the noble work
thereof, spread far and wide.

What do we find?

Applied art at a very low level; small joy either for the maker or the
user.  Pure art, a fine-spun specialty, a process carried on by an elect
few who openly despise the unappreciative many.  Art has become an
occult profession requiring a long special education even to enjoy, and
evolving a jargon of criticism which becomes more esoteric yearly.

Let us now see what part in this undesirable outcome is due to our
Androcentric Culture.

As soon as the male of our species assumed the exclusive right to
perform all social functions, he necessarily brought to that performance
the advantages--and disadvantages--of maleness, of those dominant
characteristics, desire, combat, self-expression.

Desire has overweighted art in many visible forms; it is prominent in
painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully
degraded dancing.

Combat is not so easily expressed in art, where even competition is on a
high plane; but the last element is the main evil, self-expression.
This impulse is inherently and ineradicably masculine.  It rests on that
most basic of distinctions between the sexes, the centripetal and
centrifugal forces of the universe.  In the very nature of the
sperm-cell and the germ-cell we find this difference: the one attracts,
gathers, draws in; the other repels, scatters, pushes out.  That
projective impulse is seen in the male nature everywhere; the constant
urge toward expression, to all boasting and display.  This spirit, like
all things masculine, is perfectly right and admirable in its place.

It is the duty of the male, as a male, to vary; bursting forth in a
thousand changing modifications--the female, selecting, may so
incorporate beneficial changes in the race.  It is his duty to thus
express himself--an essentially masculine duty; but masculinity is one
thing, and art is another.  Neither the masculine nor the feminine has
any place in art--Art is Human.

It is not in any faintest degree allied to the personal processes of
reproduction; but is a social process, a most distinctive social
process, quite above the plane of sex.  The true artist transcends his
sex, or her sex.  If this is not the case, the art suffers.

Dancing is an early, and a beautiful art; direct expression of emotion
through the body; beginning in subhuman type, among male birds, as the
bower-bird of New Guinea, and the dancing crane, who swing and caper
before their mates.  Among early peoples we find it a common form of
social expression in tribal dances of all sorts, religious, military,
and other.  Later it becomes a more explicit form of celebration, as
among the Greeks; in whose exquisite personal culture dancing and music
held high place.

But under the progressive effects of purely masculine dominance we find
the broader human elements of dancing left out, and the sex-element more
and more emphasized.  As practiced by men alone dancing has become a
mere display of physical agility, a form of exhibition common to all
males.  As practiced by men and women together we have our social
dances, so lacking in all the varied beauty of posture and expression,
so steadily becoming a pleasant form of dalliance.

As practiced by women alone we have one of the clearest proofs of the
degrading effect of masculine dominance:--the dancing girl.  In the
frank sensualism of the Orient, this personage is admired and enjoyed on
her merits.  We, more sophisticated in this matter, joke shamefacedly
about "the bald-headed row," and occasionally burst forth in shrill
scandal over some dinner party where ladies clad in a veil and a
bracelet dance on the table.  Nowhere else in the whole range of life on
earth, is this degradation found--the female capering and prancing
before the male.  It is absolutely and essentially his function, not
hers.  That we, as a race, present this pitiful spectacle, a natural art
wrested to unnatural ends, a noble art degraded to ignoble ends, has one
clear cause.

Architecture, in its own nature, is least affected by that same cause.
The human needs secured by it, are so human, so unescapably human, that
we find less trace of excessive masculinity than in other arts.  It
meets our social demands, it expresses in lasting form our social
feeling, up to the highest; and it has been injured not so much by an
excess of masculinity as by a lack of femininity.

The most universal architectural expression is in the home; the home is
essentially a place for the woman and the child; yet the needs of woman
and child are not expressed in our domestic architecture.  The home is
built on lines of ancient precedent, mainly as an industrial form; the
kitchen is its working centre rather than the nursery.

Each man wishes his home to preserve and seclude his woman, his little
harem of one; and in it she is to labor for his comfort or to manifest
his ability to maintain her in idleness.  The house is the physical
expression of the limitations of women; and as such it fills the world
with a small drab ugliness.  A dwelling house is rarely a beautiful
object.  In order to be such, it should truly express simple and natural
relations; or grow in larger beauty as our lives develop.

The deadlock for architectural progress, the low level of our general
taste, the everlasting predominance of the commonplace in buildings, is
the natural result of the proprietary family and its expression in this
form.

In sculpture we have a noble art forcing itself into some service
through many limitations.  Its check, as far as it comes under this line
of study, has been indicated in our last chapter; the degradation of the
human body, the vicious standards of sex-consciousness enforced under
the name of modesty, the covered ugliness, which we do not recognize,
all this is a deadly injury to free high work in sculpture.

With a nobly equal womanhood, stalwart and athletic; with the high
standards of beauty and of decorum which we can never have without free
womanhood; we should show a different product in this great art.

An interesting note in passing is this: when we seek to express socially
our noblest, ideas, Truth; Justice; Liberty; we use the woman's body as
the highest human type.  But in doing this, the artist, true to humanity
and not biassed by sex, gives us a strong, grand figure, beautiful
indeed, but never _decorated_.  Fancy Liberty in ruffles and frills,
with rings in her ears--or nose.

Music is injured by a one-sided handling, partly in the excess of the
one dominant masculine passion, partly by the general presence of
egoism; that tendency to self-expression instead of social expression,
which so disfigures our art; and this is true also of poetry.

Miles and miles of poetry consist of the ceaseless outcry of the male
for the female, which is by no means so overwhelming as a feature of
human life as he imagines it; and other miles express his other
feelings, with that ingenuous lack of reticence which is at its base
essentially masculine.  Having a pain, the poet must needs pour it
forth, that his woe be shared and sympathized with.

As more and more women writers flock into the field there is room for
fine historic study of the difference in sex feeling, and the gradual
emergence of the human note.

Literature, and in especial the art of fiction, is so large a field for
this study that it will have a chapter to itself; this one but touching
on these various forms; and indicating lines of observation.

That best known form of art which to my mind needs no qualifying
description--painting--is also a wide field; and cannot be done full
justice to within these limits.  The effect upon it of too much
masculinity is not so much in choice of subject as in method and spirit.
 The artist sees beauty of form and color where the ordinary observer
does not; and paints the old and ugly with as much enthusiasm as the
young and beautiful--sometimes.  If there is in some an over-emphasis of
feminine attractions it is counterbalanced in others by a far broader
line of work.

But the main evils of a too masculine art lie in the emphasis laid on
self-expression.  The artist, passionately conscious of how he feels,
strives to make other people aware of these sensations.  This is now so
generally accepted by critics, so seriously advanced by painters, that
what is called "the art world" accepts it as established.

If a man paints the sea, it is not to make you see and feel as a sight
of that same ocean would, but to make you see and feel how he,
personally, was affected by it; a matter surely of the narrowest
importance.  The ultra-masculine artist, extremely sensitive,
necessarily, and full of the natural urge to expression of the sex, uses
the medium of art as ingenuously as the partridge-cock uses his wings in
drumming on the log; or the bull moose stamps and bellows; not narrowly
as a mate call, but as a form of expression of his personal sensations.

The higher the artist the more human he is, the broader his vision, the
more he sees for humanity, and expresses for humanity, and the less
personal, the less ultra-masculine, is his expression.



COMMENT AND REVIEW


The literary output of the ancient Hebrews must have been great, since
we are told by their critical philosopher, "Of the making of many books
there is no end."

There must have been some limit, however, because their books were hand
made, and not everyone could do it.  Since the printing press relieved
this mechanical restriction, and educational facilities made reading and
writing come, if not by nature, at least with general compulsion, the
making of books has increased to the present output--which would have
made the ancient philosopher blush for his premature complaint.

In this, as in all social functions, we have the normal and the abnormal
growth before us; but so far we have not learned to divide them.  There
is no harm at all in having anybody and everybody write books if they
choose, any more than in having anybody and everybody talk if they
choose.  Literature is only preserved speech.

Freedom of speech is dear to our hearts; it is an easy privilege, and
costs little--to the speaker.  People are free to talk, privately and
publicly, and free to write, privately and publicly.

The harm comes, in this as in other processes, by the door of economic
interest.  It is not the desire to write which crowds our market so
disadvantageously; it is the desire to sell.

Though a fair capacity in the art of literature were even more general
than to-day, if our social conditions were normal only a certain
proportion of us would naturally prefer that form of expression.  Our
literary output is abnormally increased by two influences; the
hereditary and inculcated idea of superiority in this profession, and
the emoluments thereof.  These last are greatly over-estimated, as, in
truth, is the first also.

There is nothing essentially more worthy in the art of saying things
than in the art of doing things.  The basic merit in literature, as in
speech, lies in the thing said.  This the makers of many books have
utterly forgotten.  "She's a beautiful talker!" we might say of someone.
 "It's perfectly lovely!  Such language!  Such expression!  It's a joy
to hear her!"

Then an unenthusiastic person might rudely inquire, "Yes--but what does
she say?"

Talking is not fancy-work.  It is not an exhibition of skill in the use
of the vocal chords, in knowledge of grammar and rhetoric.  Speech is
developed in our race as a medium of transmission of thought and
feelings.  The greater or less ease and proficiency with which we
elaborate the function should always be held subordinate to the real
use.  Literature is to be similarly judged by its initial purpose, the
preservation and transmission of ideas and feelings.  Even the
picture-work of fiction must carry a certain content of ideas, else it
cannot be read; it does not, as the children say, "make sense."

Now take up your current magazine--the largest medium of literary
expression to-day--and consider it from this point of view.

The modern magazine is a distinctly new product.  When the slow, thick
stream of book-making first began to spread and filter out through the
new channels of periodic publication, a magazine was a serious literary
production.  The word "magazine" implies an armory, a storehouse, a
collection of valuable pieces of literature.  Now we need a new word for
the thing.  It has become a more and more fluent and varied mouthpiece
of popular expression.  It is a halfway-house between the newspaper and
the book.  The older, higher-priced, more impressive of them, keep up,
or try to keep up, the standards of the past; but the world of to-day is
by no means so much interested in "beautiful letters" as in the fresh
current of knowledge and feeling belonging to our times.

Articles about flying machines may or may not be "literature" but they
are small doses of information highly desirable to persons who have not
time enough, nor money enough, to read books.

If you have time, you can go to the libraries.  If you have money, you
can order from your dealer.

If you have only ten cents--no, fifteen, it takes in these days of
prosperity--you can with that purchase a deal of valuable and
interesting matter, coming on fresh every month--or week.

Sweeping aside all the "instructive" articles as hopelessly without the
lofty pale of literature, we have left an overwhelming mass of fiction.
This, too, is ruthlessly condemned by the austere upholder of high
standards.  This, too, is not literature.

What is literature?

Literature, in the esoteric sense of lofty criticism, is a form of
writing which, like the higher mathematics, must be free from any taint
of utility.  Pure literature must perforce be a form of expression, but
must not condescend to express anything.

To write with the narrow and vulgar purpose of saying something, is to
be cut off hopelessly from the elect few who produce literature.  This
attitude of sublime superiority as an art is responsible for our general
scorn of what we call,

"The Novel With a Purpose."

Have any of us fairly faced the alternative?  Are we content to accept
delightedly the "Novel Without a Purpose"?

Do you remember the Peterkin Papers?  How Solomon John, the second son,
thought he would like to write a book?  How Agammemnon, the oldest son,
and Elizabeth Eliza, the sister, and the Little Boys, in their beloved
rubber boots, as also the parents, were all mightily impressed with the
ambition of Solomon John?  How a table was secured, and placed in the
proper light?  How a chair was brought, paper was procured, and pens and
ink?  How finally all was ready, and the entire family stood about in
rapt admiration to see Solomon John begin?

He drew the paper before him; he selected a pen; he dipped it in the ink
and poised it before him.

Then he looked from one to another, and an expression of pained surprise
spread over his features.

"Why," said Solomon John, "I have nothing to say!"

(I quote from memory, not having the classics at hand.)

There was great disappointment in the Peterkin family, and the project
was given up.  But why so?  Solomon John need not have been so easily
discouraged.  He was in the exact position to produce literature--pure,
high, legitimate literature--the Novel Without a Purpose.

In the effort to preserve the purity of the Pierian Springs, those
guardians of this noble art, who arbitrate in the "standard magazines,"
condemn and exclude what they define as "controversial literature."

Suppose someone comes along with a story advocating euthanasia, showing
with all the force of the art of fiction the slow, hideous suffering of
some helpless cancer patient or the like, the blessed release that might
be humanly given; showing it so as to make an indelible impression--this
story is refused as "controversial," as being written with a purpose.

Yet the same magazine will print a story no better written, showing the
magnificent heroism of the man who slowly dies in year-long torment,
helpless himself and steady drain on everyone about him, virtuously
refusing to shorten his torments--and theirs.

What is a controversy?  A discussion, surely.  It has two sides.

Why isn't a story upholding one side of a controversy as controversial
as a story upholding the other side?

Is it only a coincidence that magazines of large circulation and
established reputation so consistently maintain that side of the
controversy already popularly held as right?

Time passes.  Minds develop.  New knowledge comes.  People's ideas and
feelings change--some people's.  These new ideas and feelings seek
expression ion the natural forms--speech and literature, as is
legitimate and right.

But the canons of taste and judgement say No.

The ideas and feelings of the peoples of past times found expression in
this way, and are preserved in literature.  But our ideas and feelings,
so seeking expression, do not make literature.

It is not the first time that the canons were wrong.  Straight down the
road of historic progress, from the dim old days we can hardly see, into
the increasing glare of the calcium-lighted present, there have always
stood the Priesthood of the Past, making human progress into an obstacle
race.



PERSONAL PROBLEMS


QUERY: "I am a woman of about forty; my children are pretty well grown
up; my home does not take all my time.  I could do some work in the
world, but I do not know what to do.  Can you advise me?"

QUERY: "I appreciate the need of women's working, and am free to do so,
but cannot make up my mind what work to undertake.  It is very easy for
you people with 'a mission' and talents, but what is an ordinary woman
to do?"

ANSWER: These two questions belong together, and may be answered
together.  Neither of the questioners seem to be driven by necessity,
which simplifies matters a good deal.

Work has to be done for two real reasons.  One is the service of
humanity, of society, which cannot exist without our functional
activity.  Work is social service.

The other is personal development.  One cannot be fully human without
this functional social activity.

In choosing work, there are two governing factors always, and generally
the third one of pressing necessity.  Of the two, one is personal
fitness--the instinctive choice of those who are highly specialized in
some one line.  This makes decision easy, but does not always make it
easy to get the work.  You may be divinely ordained to fiddle--but if no
one wants to hear you, you are badly off.  The other is far more
general; it is the social demand--the call of the work that _needs
doing._

If you are able to work, free to work, and not hampered by a rigid
personal bent, just look about and see what other people need.  Study
your country, town, village, your environment, near or distant; and take
hold of some social need, whether it is a better school board or the
preservation of our forests.  So long as the earth or the people on it
need service, there is work for all of us.



PLAY-TIME


A WALK WALK WALK

I.

I once went out for a walk, walk, walk,
 For a walk beside the sea;
And all I carried for to eat, eat, eat,
Was a jar of ginger snaps so sweet,
 And a jug of ginger tea.

For I am fond of cinnamon pie,
 And peppermint pudding, too;
And I dearly love to bake, bake, bake,
A mighty mass of mustard cake,
 And nutmeg beer to brew.


II.

And all I carried for drink, drink, drink,
 That long and weary way,
Was a dozen little glasses
Of boiled molasses
 On a Cochin China tray.

For I am fond of the sugar of the grape,
 And the sugar of the maple tree;
But I always eat
The sugar of the beet
 When I'm in company.


III.

And all I carried for to read, read, read,
 For a half an hour or so,
Was Milman's Rome, and Grote on Greece,
And the works of Dumas, pere et fils,
 And the poems of Longfellow.

For I am fond of the Hunting of the Snark,
And the Romaunt of the Rose;
And I never go to bed
Without Webster at my head
And Worcester at my toes.



ODE TO A FOOL


"Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his
folly."--Prov. 17th, 12th.


Singular insect!  Here I watch thee spin
 Upon my pin;
And know that thou hast not the least idea
 I have thee here.
Strange is thy nature!  For thou mayst be slain
 Once and again;
Dismembered, tortured, torn with tortures hot--
 Yet know it not!
As well pour hate and scorn upon the dead
 As on thy head.
While I discuss thee here I plainly see
 Thee sneer at me.

Marvellous creature!  What mysterious power
 In idle hour
Arranged the mighty elements whence came
 Thy iron frame!
In every item of thy outward plan
 So like a man!
But men are mortal, dying every day,
 And thou dost stay.
The nations rise and die with passing rule,
 But thou, O Fool!
Livedst when drunken Noah asleeping lay,
 Livest to-day.

Invulnerable Fool!  Thy mind
 Is deaf and blind;
Impervious to sense of taste and smell
 And touch as well.
Thought from without may vainly seek to press
 Thy consciousness;
Man's hard-won knowledge which the ages pile
 But makes thee smile;
Thy vast sagacity and blatant din
 Come from within;
Thy voice doth fill the world from year to year,
 Helpless we hear.

Wisdom and wit 'gainst thee have no avail;
 O Fool--All Hail!





THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR
.10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 5
MARCH, 1910
Copyright for 1910
C. P. Gilman

How many a useless stone we find
Swallowed in that capacious, blind,
Faith-swollen gullet, our ancestral mind!




THE SANDS


 It runs--it runs--the hourglass turning;
 Dark sands glooming, bright sands burning;
I turn--and turn--with heavy or hopeful hands;
So must I turn as long as the Voice commands;
But I lose all count of the hours for watching the sliding sands.

 Or fast--or slow--it ceases turning;
 Ceases the flow, or bright or burning--
"What have you done with the hours?" the Voice demands.
What can I say of eager or careless hands?--
I had forgotten the hours in watching the sliding sands.



A MIDDLE-SIZED ARTIST


When Rosamond's brown eyes seemed almost too big for her brilliant
little face, and her brown curls danced on her shoulders, she had a
passionate enthusiasm for picture books.  She loved "the reading," but
when the picture made what her young mind was trying to grasp suddenly
real before her, the stimulus reaching the brain from two directions at
once, she used to laugh with delight and hug the book.

The vague new words describing things she never saw suggested "castle,"
a thing of gloom and beauty; and then upon the page came The Castle
itself, looming dim and huge before her, with drooping heavy banners
against the sunset calm.

How she had regretted it, scarce knowing why, when the pictures were
less real than the description; when the princess, whose beauty made her
the Rose of the World (her name was Rosamond, too!), appeared in visible
form no prettier, no, not as pretty, as The Fair One with The Golden
Locks in the other book!  And what an outcry she made to her indifferent
family when first confronted by the unbelievable blasphemy of an
illustration that differed from the text!

"But, Mother--see!" she cried.  "It says, 'Her beauty was crowned by
rich braids of golden hair, wound thrice around her shapely head,' and
this girl has black hair--in curls!  Did the man forget what he just
said?"

Her mother didn't seem to care at all.  "They often get them wrong," she
said.  "Perhaps it was an old plate.  Run away, dear, Mama is very
busy."

But Rosamond cared.

She asked her father more particularly about this mysterious "old
plate," and he, being a publisher, was able to give her much information
thereanent.  She learned that these wonderful reinforcements of her
adored stories did not emanate direct from the brain of the beneficent
author, but were a supplementary product by some draughtsman, who cared
far less for what was in the author's mind than for what was in his own;
who was sometimes lazy, sometimes arrogant, sometimes incompetent;
sometimes all three.  That to find a real artist, who could make
pictures and was willing to make them like the picture the author saw,
was very unusual.

"You see, little girl," said Papa, "the big artists are too big to do
it--they'd rather make their own pictures; and the little artists are
too little--they can't make real ones of their own ideas, nor yet of
another's."

"Aren't there any middle-sized artists?" asked the child.

"Sometimes," said her father; and then he showed her some of the perfect
illustrations which leave nothing to be desired, as the familiar ones by
Teniel and Henry Holiday, which make Alice's Adventures and the Hunting
of the Snark so doubly dear, Dore and Retsch and Tony Johannot and
others.

"When I grow up," said Rosamond decidedly, "I'm going to be a
middle-sized artist!"

Fortunately for her aspirations the line of study required was in no way
different at first from that of general education.  Her parents
explained that a good illustrator ought to know pretty much everything.
So she obediently went through school and college, and when the time
came for real work at her drawing there was no objection to that.

"It is pretty work," said her mother, "a beautiful accomplishment.  It
will always be a resource for her."

"A girl is better off to have an interest," said her father, "and not
marry the first fool that asks her.  When she does fall in love this
won't stand in the way; it never does; with a woman.  Besides--she may
need it sometime."

So her father helped and her mother did not hinder, and when the brown
eyes were less disproportionate and the brown curls wreathed high upon
her small fine head, she found herself at twenty-one more determined to
be a middle-sized artist than she was at ten.

Then love came; in the person of one of her father's readers; a
strenuous new-fledged college graduate; big, handsome, domineering,
opinionative; who was accepting a salary of four dollars a week for the
privilege of working in a publishing house, because he loved books and
meant to write them some day.

They saw a good deal of each other, and were pleasantly congenial.  She
sympathized with his criticisms of modem fiction; he sympathized with
her criticisms of modern illustration; and her young imagination began
to stir with sweet memories of poetry and romance; and sweet hopes of
beautiful reality.

There are cases where the longest way round is the shortest way home;
but Mr. Allen G. Goddard chose differently.  He had read much about
women and about love, beginning with a full foundation from the
ancients; but lacked an understanding of the modern woman, such as he
had to deal with.

Therefore, finding her evidently favorable, his theories and
inclinations suiting, he made hot love to her, breathing, "My Wife!"
into her ear before she had scarce dared to think "my darling!" and
suddenly wrapping her in his arms with hot kisses, while she was still
musing on "The Hugenot Lovers" and the kisses she dared dream of came in
slow gradation as in the Sonnets From the Portuguese.

He was in desperate earnest.  "O you are so beautiful!" he cried.  "So
unbelievably beautiful!  Come to me, my Sweet!" for she had sprung away
and stood panting and looking at him, half reproachful, half angry.

"You love me, Dearest!  You cannot deny it!" he cried.  "And I love
you--Ah!  You shall know!"

He was single-hearted, sincere; stirred by a very genuine overwhelming
emotion.  She on the contrary was moved by many emotions at once;--a
pleasure she was half ashamed of; a disappointment she could not clearly
define; as if some one had told her the whole plot of a promising new
novel; a sense of fear of the new hopes she had been holding, and of
startled loyalty to her long-held purposes.

"Stop!" she said--for he evidently mistook her agitation, and thought
her silence was consent.  "I suppose I do--love you--a little; but
you've no right to kiss me like that!"

His eyes shone.  "You Darling!  _My_ Darling!" he said.  "You will give
me the right, won't you?  Now, Dearest--see! I am waiting!"  And he held
out his arms to her.

But Rosamond was more and more displeased.  "You will have to wait.  I'm
sorry; but I'm not ready to be engaged, yet!  You know my plans.  Why
I'm going to Paris this year!  I'm going to work!  It will be ever so
long before I'm ready to--to settle down."

"As to that," he said more calmly, "I cannot of course offer immediate
marriage, but we can wait for that--together!  You surely will not leave
me--if you love me!"

"I think I love you," she said conscientiously, "at least I did think
so.  You've upset it all, somehow--you hurry me so!--no--I can't bind
myself yet."

"Do you tell me to wait for you?" he asked; his deep voice still strong
to touch her heart.  "How long, Dearest?"

"I'm not asking you to wait for me--I don't want to promise
anything--nor to have you.  But when I have made a place--am really
doing something--perhaps then--"

He laughed harshly.  "Do not deceive yourself, child, nor me!  If you
loved me there would be none of this poor wish for freedom--for a
career.  You don't love me--that's all!"

He waited for her to deny this.  She said nothing.  He did not know how
hard it was for her to keep from crying--and from running to his arms.

"Very well," said he.  "Goodby!"--And he was gone.

All that happened three years ago.

Allen Goddard took it very hard; and added to his earlier ideas about
women another, that "the new woman" was a selfish heartless creature,
indifferent to her own true nature.

He had to stay where he was and work, owing to the pressure of
circumstances, which made it harder; so he became something of a
mysogynyst; which is not a bad thing when a young man has to live on
very little and build a place for himself.

In spite of this cynicism he could not remove from his mind those softly
brilliant dark eyes; the earnest thoughtful lines of the pure young
face; and the changing lights and shadows in that silky hair.  Also, in
the course of his work, he was continually reminded of her; for her
characteristic drawings appeared more and frequently in the magazines,
and grew better, stronger, more convincing from year to year.

Stories of adventure she illustrated admirably; children's stories to
perfection; fairy stories--she was the delight of thousands of children,
who never once thought that the tiny quaint rose in a circle that was to
be found in all those charming pictures meant a name.  But he noticed
that she never illustrated love stories; and smiled bitterly, to
himself.

And Rosamond?

There were moments when she was inclined to forfeit her passage money
and throw herself unreservedly into those strong arms which had held her
so tightly for a little while.  But a bud picked open does not bloom
naturally; and her tumultuous feelings were thoroughly dissipated by a
long strong attack of _mal de mer._  She derived two advantages from her
experience: one a period of safe indifference to all advances from eager
fellow students and more cautious older admirers; the other a facility
she had not before aspired to in the making of pictures of love and
lovers.

She made pictures of him from memory--so good, so moving, that she put
them religiously away in a portfolio by themselves; and only took them
out--sometimes.  She illustrated, solely for her own enjoyment some of
her girlhood's best loved poems and stories.  "The Rhyme of the Duchess
May," "The Letter L," "In a Balcony," "In a Gondola."  And hid them from
herself even--they rather frightened her.

After three years of work abroad she came home with an established
reputation, plenty of orders, and an interest that would not be stifled
in the present state of mind of Mr. Allen Goddard.

She found him still at work, promoted to fifteen dollars a week by this
time, and adding to his income by writing political and statistical
articles for the magazines.  He talked, when they met, of this work,
with little enthusiasm, and asked her politely about hers.

"Anybody can see mine!" she told him lightly.  "And judge it easily."

"Mine too," he answered.  "It to-day is--and to-morrow is cast into the
waste-basket.  He who runs may read--if he runs fast enough."

He told himself he was glad he was not bound to this hard, bright
creature, so unnaturally self-sufficient, and successful.

She told herself that he had never cared for her, really, that was
evident.

Then an English publisher who liked her work sent her a new novel by a
new writer, "A. Gage."  "I know this is out of your usual line," he
said, "but I want a woman to do it, and I want you to be the woman, if
possible.  Read it and see what you think.  Any terms you like."

The novel was called "Two and One;" and she began it with languid
interest, because she liked that publisher and wished to give full
reasons for refusing.  It opened with two young people who were much in
love with one another; the girl a talented young sculptor with a vivid
desire for fame; and another girl, a cousin of the man, ordinary enough,
but pretty and sweet, and with no desires save those of romance and
domesticity.  The first couple broke off a happy engagement because she
insisted on studying in Paris, and her lover, who could neither go with
her, nor immediately marry her, naturally objected.

Rosamond sat up in bed; pulled a shawl round her, swung the electric
light nearer, and went on.

The man was broken-hearted; he suffered tortures of loneliness,
disappointment, doubt, self-depreciation.  He waited, held at his work
by a dependent widowed mother; hoping against hope that his lost one
would come back.  The girl meanwhile made good in her art work; she was
not a great sculptor but a popular portraitist and maker of little genre
groups.  She had other offers, but refused them, being hardened in her
ambitions, and, possibly, still withheld by her early love.

The man after two or three years of empty misery and hard grinding work,
falls desperately ill; the pretty cousin helps the mother nurse him, and
shows her own affection.  He offers the broken remnants of his heart,
which she eagerly undertakes to patch up; and they become tolerably
happy, at least she is.

But the young sculptor in Paris!  Rosamond hurried through the pages to
the last chapter.  There was the haughty and triumphant heroine in her
studio.  She had been given a medal--she had plenty of orders--she had
just refused a Count.  Everyone had gone, and she sat alone in her fine
studio, self-satisfied and triumphant.

Then she picks up an old American paper which was lying about; reads it
idly as she smokes her cigarette--and then both paper and cigarette drop
to the floor, and she sits staring.

Then she starts up--her arms out--vainly.  "Wait!  O Wait!" she
cries--"I was coining back,"--and drops into her chair again.  The fire
is out.  She is alone.

Rosamond shut the book and leaned back upon her pillow.  Her eyes were
shut tight; but a little gleaming line showed on either cheek under the
near light.  She put the light out and lay quite still.

*

Allen G. Goddard, in his capacity as "reader" was looking over some
popular English novels which his firm wished to arrange about publishing
in America.  He left "Two and One" to the last.  It was the second
edition, the illustrated one which he had not seen yet; the first he had
read before.  He regarded it from time to time with a peculiar
expression.

"Well," he said to himself, "I suppose I can stand it if the others do."
 And he opened the book.

The drawing was strong work certainly, in a style he did not know.  They
were striking pictures, vivid, real, carrying out in last detail the
descriptions given, and the very spirit of the book, showing it more
perfectly than the words.  There was the tender happiness of the lovers,
the courage, the firmness, the fixed purpose in the young sculptor
insisting on her freedom, and the gay pride of the successful artist in
her work.

There was beauty and charm in this character, yet the face was always
turned away, and there was a haunting suggestion of familiarity in the
figure.  The other girl was beautiful, and docile in expression;
well-dressed and graceful; yet somehow unattractive, even at her best,
as nurse; and the man was extremely well drawn, both in his happy ardor
as a lover, and his grinding misery when rejected.  He was very
good-looking; and here too was this strong sense of resemblance.

"Why he looks like _me_!" suddenly cried the reader--springing to his
feet.  "Confound his impudence!" he cried.  "How in thunder!"  Then he
looked at the picture again, more carefully, a growing suspicion in his
face; and turned hurriedly to the title page,--seeing a name unknown to
him.

This subtle, powerful convincing work; this man who undeniably suggested
him; this girl whose eyes he could not see; he turned from one to
another and hurried to the back of the book.

"The fire was out--she was alone."  And there, in the remorseless light
of a big lamp before her fireless hearth, the crumpled newspaper beside
her, and all hope gone from a limp, crouching little figure, sat--why,
he would know her among a thousand--even if her face was buried in her
hands, and sunk on the arm of the chair--it was Rosamond!

*

She was in her little downtown room and hard at work when he entered;
but she had time to conceal a new book quickly.

He came straight to her; he had a book in his hand, open--he held it
out.

"Did you do this?" he demanded.  "Tell me--tell me!"  His voice was very
unreliable.

She lifted her eyes slowly to his; large, soft, full of dancing lights,
and the rich color swept to the gold-lighted borders of her hair.

"Did you?" she asked.

He was taken aback.  "I!" said he.  "Why it's by--" he showed her the
title-page.  "By A. Gage," he read.

"Yes," said she, "Go on," and he went on, 'Illustrated by A. N. Other.'"

"It's a splendid novel," she said seriously.  "Real work--great work.  I
always knew you'd do it, Allen.  I'm so proud of you!"  And she held out
her hand in the sincere intelligent appreciation of a fellow craftsman.

He took it, still bewildered.

"Thank you," he said.  "I value your opinion--honestly I do!  And--with
a sudden sweep of recognition.  "And yours is great work!  Superb!  Why
you've put more into that story than I knew was there!  You make the
thing live and breathe!  You've put a shadow of remorse in that lonely
ruffian there that I was too proud to admit!  And you've shown
the--unconvincingness of that Other Girl; marvellously.  But see
here--no more fooling!"

He took her face between his hands, hands that quivered strongly, and
forced her to look at him.  "Tell me about that last picture!  Is
it--true?"

Her eyes met his, with the look he longed for.  "It is true," she said.

*

After some time, really it was a long time, but they had not noticed it,
he suddenly burst forth.  "But how did you _know_?"

She lifted a flushed and smiling face: and pointed to the title page
again.

"'A. Gage.'--You threw it down."

"And you--" He threw back his head and laughed delightedly.  "You threw
down A-N-Other!  O you witch!  You immeasurably clever darling!  How
well our work fits.  By Jove!  What good times we'll have!"

And they did.



THE MINOR BIRDS


Shall no bird sing except the nightingale?
 Must all the lesser voices cease?
 Lark, thrush and blackbird hold their peace?
  The woods wait dumb
  Until he come?

Must we forego the voices of the field?
 The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing,
 All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing,
  Where each reveals
  What joy he feels?

Should we know how to praise the nightingale,
 Master of music, ecstacy and pain,
 If he alone sang in the springtime rain?
  If no one heard
  A minor bird?



PARLOR-MINDEDNESS


"Won't you step in?"

You step in.

"She will be down in a moment.  Won't you sit down?"

You sit down.  You wait.  You are in the parlor.

What is this room?  What is it for?

It is not to sleep in, the first need of the home.  Not to eat in, the
second.  Not to shelter young in, the third.  Not to cook and wash in,
to sew and mend in, to nurse and tend in; not for any of the trades
which we still practice in the home.

It is a place for social intercourse.  If the family is sufficiently
intelligent they use it for this purpose, gathering there in peace and
decorum, for rest and pleasure.  Whether the family is of that order or
not, they use the parlor, if they have one, for the entertainment of
visitors.  Our ancient Webster gives first: "The apartment in monastery
or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with
each other, or with visitors and friends from without," and second, "A
room in a house which the family usually occupy for society and
conversation; the reception room for visitors."  It is, as the
derivation declares, "a talking room."

While you wait in the parlor you study it.

It is the best room.  It has the best carpet, the best furniture, the
pictures and decorations considered most worthy.  It is adorned as a
shrine for the service of what we feel rather than think to be a noble
purpose--to promote social intercourse.

In the interchange of thought and feeling that form so large and
essential a part of human life, these parlors are the vehicles provided.
 Are they all the vehicles provided?  Is it in parlors that the sea of
human thought ebbs and flows most freely?  That mind meets mind, ideas
are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind?  Is it in
parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new
lights in science? the moving thoughts of the world?

If you could hide in a thousand parlors and listen to the talk therein
what would you hear?  When "she" has come down, greeted her friend with
effusion or her caller with ample cordiality, and the talk begins, the
interchange of thought, what does the parlor bring forth?

Alas and alas!  It brings forth the kitchen, the nursery, and the
dressmaker's shop.  It furnishes shop-talk mostly, gossip of the daily
concerns of the speakers.

Are there no men then in the parlors?  Yes, frequently.  The man of the
house is there with his family in the evening; other men call with their
wives; young men call on young women to court them; but in all these
cases the men, talking to the women, must needs confine the conversation
to their lines of work and thought.  When men talk with men it is not in
parlors.  The women may be ignorant, knowing only household affairs; or
they may be "cultivated," more highly educated than the men, talking
glibly of books they have read, lectures they have heard, plays they
have seen; while the men can talk well only of the work they have done.

When men wish to talk with men of world-business of any sort, they do
not seek the parlor.  The street, the barroom, the postoffice, some
public place they want where they may meet freely on broader ground.
For the parlor is the women's meeting ground--has been for long their
only meeting ground except the church steps.

Its limits are sharp and clear.  Only suitable persons may enter the
parlor; only one's acquaintances and friends.  Thus the social
intercourse of women, for long years has been rigidly confined to parlor
limits; they have conversed only with their own class and kind, forever
rediscussing the same topics, the threadbare theme of their common
trade; and the men who come to their parlor, talk politely to them there
within prescribed lines.

It is interesting and pathetic to see the woman, when means allow,
enlarge the size of her parlor, the number of her guests, seeking
continually for that social intercourse for which the soul hungers, and
which the parlor so meagerly provides.  As we see the fakir;

"Eating with famished patience grain by grain,
A thousand grains of millet-seed a day,"--

So the woman talks incessantly with as many as she can--neither giving
nor getting what is needed.

When we find an institution so common as the parlor, exerting a constant
influence upon us from childhood up, carrying with it a code of manners,
a system of conduct, a scheme of decoration, a steady prohibitive
pressure upon progressive thought, we shall be wise to study that
institution and in especial its effect upon the mind.

First, we may observe as in the kitchen the dominant note of
personality.

In the parlor more than elsewhere are to be found the "traces of a
woman's hand."  It is her room, the Lady of the House and other Ladies
of other Houses, having each their own to exhibit, all politely praise
one another's display.

When a knowledge of art, a sense of beauty, grows in the world, and
slowly affects the decorators and furnishers, then does it through the
blandishments of the merchants filter slowly into a thousand parlors.
But as easily when there is neither art nor beauty in such furnishings,
are they foisted upon the purchasing housewife.  Such as it is, provided
through the limitations of the housewife's mind and the husband's purse,
this "best room" becomes a canon of taste to the growing child.

"The parlor set" he must needs see held up as beautiful; the "reception
chairs," the carefully shadowed carpet,--these and the "best dress" to
go with them and the "company manners" added, are unescapable aesthetic
influences.

Few children like the parlor, few children are wanted or allowed in the
parlor, yet it has a steady influence as a sort of social shrine.

Most rigidly it teaches the child exclusiveness, the narrow limits of
one's "social acquaintances."  As rigidly and most evilly it teaches him
falsehood.  Scarcely a child but hears the mother's fretful protest
against the visitor, followed by the lightning change to cordial
greeting.  The white lie, the smiling fib, the steady concealment of the
undesirable topic, the mutual steering off from all but a set allowance
of themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable
repetition--all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed
to stay if quiet, hears and remembers.  See the little girl's "playing
house."  See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after
health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and
servants,--these they have well learned are proper subjects for parlor
talk.

The foolish and false ideas of beauty held up to them as "best," they
seek to perpetuate.  The arbitrary "best dress" system, develops into a
vast convention, a wearing of apparel not for beauty, and not for use,
not for warmth, protection nor modesty (often quite the opposite of all
these), but as a conventional symbol of respectability.

So interwoven with our inner consciousness are these purely arbitrary
codes of propriety in costume, that we have such extremes as Kipling
shows us in his remote Himalayan forests,--a white man thousands of
miles from his kind, who "dressed for dinner every night to preserve his
self-respect."  No doubt a perfectly sincere conviction, and one sunk
deep in the highbred British breast, but even so of a most shallow and
ephemeral nature, based on nothing whatever but a temporary caprice of
our parlor-mindedness.

Being reared in that state of mind, and half of us confined to it
professionally, we are inevitably affected thereby, and react upon
life--the real moving world-life, under its pitiful limitations.

If one's sense of beauty must be first, last and always personal, and
confined to one's parlor,--for of course we cannot dictate as to other
women's parlors,--then how is it to be expected that we should in any
way notice, feel or see the ugliness of our town or city, schoolhouse or
street-car?

See the woman who has had "an education," who has even "studied art,"
perhaps, and whose husband can pay for what she wants.  Her parlor may
become a drawing-room, or two, or more, but she does not grow to care
that a public school-room is decorated in white plaster trimmed with a
broad strip of blackboard.

The bald, cruel, wearing ugliness of the most of our schools, is worthy
of penal institutions, yet we with cheerful unconcern submit growing
children to such influences without ever giving it a thought.

"My parlor" must be beautiful, but "our school" is no business of mine.
Is there any real reason, by the way, why blackboards must be black?  A
deep dull red or somber green would be restful and pleasant to the eye,
and show chalk just as well.  As is being now slowly discovered.  There
are no blackboards in our parlors.  Our children leave home to go to
school, and their mother's thoughts do not.  In the small measure of
parlor decoration grows no sense of public art.

Great art must be largely conceived, largely executed.  For the temple
and palace and forum rose the columns and statues of the past; for the
church and castle the "frozen music" of mediaeval architecture; for
church and palace again, the blazing outburst of pictorial art in the
great re-birth.  Now the struggling artist must cater to the tastes of
parlor-bred patrons; must paint what suits the uses of that carpeted
sanctuary, portraits of young ladies most successful!  Or he must do for
public buildings, if by chance he gets the opportunity, what meets the
tastes of our universal parlor-mindedness.

With this parlor-mindedness, we repudiate and condemn in painting,
literature, music, drama and the dance, whatever does not conform to the
decorum of this shrine, whatsoever is not suitable to ladylike
conversation.  Be the book bad, it is unsuited to the parlor table.  Be
the book good--too good, or be it great, then it is equally unsuited.
Controversy has no place in parlors, hence no controversial literature.
Pleasant if possible, or sweetly sad, and not provocative of
argument--this is the demeanor of the parlor table, and to this the
editor conforms.  To the editorial dictum the "reader" must submit; to
the "readers" decisions the writer must submit; to the _menu_ furnished
by the magazines, the public must submit, and so grows up among us a
canon of literary judgment, best described as "parlor-minded."  This is
by no means so damaging as kitchen-mindedness, for those who escape the
influence of the parlor are many, and those who escape the influence of
the kitchen are few; but it is quite damaging enough.

One of the main elements of beauty in our lives is the human body.  Some
keep swans, some peacocks, and some deer, that they may delight their
eyes with the beauty thereof.  We ourselves are more beautiful than any
beast or bird, we are the inspiration of poet, painter, and sculptor;
yet we have deliberately foregone all this constant world of beauty and
substituted for it a fluctuating nightmare.

In what sordid or discordant colors do we move about!  What desolate
blurring of outline and action, by our dragging masses of cloth,
stiffened and padded like Chinese armor!  What strange figures,
conventionalized as a lotus pattern, instead of the moving glory of the
human form!

Why do we do it?  Having done it why do we bear it longer?  Why not fill
our streets with beauty, gladden our eyes and uplift our souls with the
loveliness that is ours by nature, plus the added loveliness of the
textile art?  We have pictures of our beauty, we have statues of our
beauty--why go without the real thing?  Suppose our swans could show us
in paint and marble the slow white grace of their plumed sailing, but in
person paddled about in a costume of stovepipes.  Suppose deer and
hound,--but wait!--this we have seen, this extreme of human folly forced
upon the helpless beast,--dogs dressed to suit the taste of their
parlor-minded owners!  Not men's dogs,--women's dogs.

To cover--at any cost, with anything, that is a major ideal of the
parlor.  There is an exception made, when, at any cost of health, beauty
and decency, we uncover--but this too, is to meet one of the parlor
purposes.  In it and its larger spread of drawing and assembly rooms, we
provide not only for "social intercourse"--but for that necessary
meeting of men and women that shall lead to marriage.

A right and wholesome purpose, but not a right and wholesome place.  Men
and women should meet and meet freely in the places where they live, but
they should not live in parlors.  They should meet and know one another
in their working clothes, in the actual character and habit of their
daily lives.

Marriages may be "made in heaven," but they are mainly--shall we say
"retailed"? in parlors.  What can the parlor-loved young woman know of
the parlor-bound young man?  Parlor manners only are produced, parlor
topics, parlor ideas.  He had better court her in the kitchen, if she is
one of the "fifteen sixteenths" of our families who keep no servants, to
know what he is going to live with.  She never knows what she is going
to live with; for the nature of man is not truly exhibited either in
kitchen or parlor.  A co-educational college does much, a studio or
business office or work-shop does more, to show men and women to each
other as they are.  Neither does enough, for the blurring shadow of our
parlor-mindedness still lies between.  It has so habituated us to the
soft wavelets and glassy shallows of polite conversation, that we refuse
to face and discuss the realities of life.  With gifts of roses and
bonbons, suppers and theatres that cost more than the cows of the Kaffir
lover, and ought to make the girl feel like a Kaffir bride, the man woos
the woman.  With elaborate toilettes and all the delicate trickery of
her unnatural craft, the woman woos the man.  And the trail of the
parlor is over it all.

Gaily to the gate of marriage they go, and through it--and never have
they asked or answered the questions on which the whole truth of their
union depends.  Our standards of decorum forbid,--parlor standards all.
We have woven and embroidered a veil over the facts of life; an
incense-clouded atmosphere blinds us; low music and murmured litanies
dull the mind, but not the senses.  We drift and dream.  In the girl's
mind floats a cloud of literary ideals.  He is like a "Greek god," a
"Galahad," a "Knight of old."  He is in some mystic way a Hero, a
Master, a Protector.  She pictures herself as fulfilling exquisite
ideals of wifely devotion, "all in all" to him, and he to her.

She does not once prefigure to herself the plain common facts of the
experience that lies before her.  She does not known them.  In parlors
such things are not discussed,--no naked truths can be admitted there.

We live a marvellous life at home.  Visibly we have the care and labor
of housekeeping, the strain and anxiety of childbearing as it is
practised, the elaborate convention of "receiving" and "entertaining."
Under these goes on life.  Our bodies are tired, overtaxed, ill-fed,
grossly ill-treated.  Our minds are hungry, unsatisfied, or drugged and
calm.  We live, we suffer and we die,--and never once do we face the
facts.  Birth and death are salient enough, one would think, but birth
and death we particularly cover and hide, concealing from our friends
with conventional phrases, lying about to our children.  Over the strong
ever-lasting life-processes, we spin veil on veil; drape and smother
them till they become sufficiently remote and symbolic for the parlor to
recognize.

In older nations than ours, we can see this web of convention thickened
and hardened till life runs low within.  Think what can be the state of
mind in India which allows child-marriage--the mother concurrent!  Think
of the slow torture of little girls in foot-bound China, the mother
concurrent!  Then turning quickly, think of our own state of mind, which
allows young girls to marry old reprobates,--the mother concurrent!

That mental attitude which maintains ancient conventions, which prefers
symbol to fact, which prescribes limits to our conversation, and draws
them narrowly down to what can be understood by anybody, and can
instruct, interest and inspire nobody, is parlor-mindedness.  It does
harm enough both in its low ideals of beauty and art, manners and
morals, to its placid inmates and its complaisant visitors; it does more
harm in its fallacious shallows as a promoter of marriage; it does most
in its failure to promote the one thing it is for--social intercourse.

To meet freely; to talk, discuss, exchange and compare ideas, is a
general human need.  Those who do not know they need it, need it most.

Each of us alone, taps the reservoir of world-force, in some degree, and
pours it forth in some expression.  Often the intake seems to fail, the
output is unsatisfying.  Then we need one another, now this one and now
that one, now several, now a crowd.  In combination we receive new
power.  The human soul calls for contact and exchange with its kind.
This contact should be fluent and free, spontaneous, natural; that we
may go as we are drawn to those who feed us best.

Men need men and women women; men and women need one another; it is a
general human condition.  From such natural meeting arises personal
relief, rest, pleasure, stimulus, and social gain beyond counting, in
the growth of thought.  The social battery is continually replenished by
contact and exchange.  Some friends draw out the best that is in us,
some, though perhaps near and dear to us, do not.

No matter how "happily married," or how unhappily unmarried, we need
social interchange.  To quench this thirst, to meet this need, wide as
the world and deep as life, we provide--the parlor.

Is it any wonder that our talk is mainly personality?  That we love
gossip, even when it bites and sours to scandal?  Is it any wonder that
women talk so much of their kitchen and nurseries, of their diseases,
and their clothes, yet learn so little about better feeding, better
dressing, better health and better child-culture?  Is it any wonder that
to our parlor-mindedness the daily press descends, gives us the pap we
are used to, and then artfully peppers our pap, insinuating some sparkle
of alcohol, some solace of insidious drug, that we may "get the habit"
more firmly?  Is it any wonder that we, parlor-bred and newspaper-fed,
continue to cry out fiercely against personal, primitive, parlor sins,
and remain calm and unshocked by world-sins that should rouse us to
horror, shame and action?

In these small shrines, adorned with what, in our doll-house taste, we
fondly imagine to be beautiful, we seek to keep ourselves, "unspotted
from the world," but by no saving grace of a thousand parlors, do we
succeed in keeping the world unspotted from ourselves!  We make the
world.  We are the world.  It might be a place of noble freedom, of
ever-growing beauty, of a fluent, truthful radiant art, of broadening
education, wide peace and culture, universal wealth and progress.  And
we miss even seeing this, living sedately, curtained, carpeted, well
content, in our ancestral parlor-mindedness.



NAUGHTY


The young brain was awake and hungry.  It was a vigorous young brain,
well-organized; eager, receiving impressions with keen joy and storing
them rapidly away in due relation.

Such a wonder world!

Sweetness and light were the first impressions--light which made his
eyes laugh; and Sweetness Incarnate--that great soft Presence which was
Food and Warmth and Rest and Comfort and something better still; for all
of which he had no name as yet except "Ma-ma!"

He was growing, growing fast.  He was satisfied with food.  He was
satisfied with sleep.  But his brain was not satisfied.  So the brain's
first servant went forth to minister to it; small, soft, uncertain,
searching for all knowledge--the little hand.

Something to hold!  Ancestral reflexes awoke as the fingers closed upon
it.  Something to pull!  The soft arm flexors tightened with a sense of
pleasure.  Sensations came flowing to the hungry brain--welcomed
eagerly.

Then suddenly, a new sensation--Pain!  He drew back his hand as a
touched anemone draws in its tentacles, scarce softer than those pink
fingers; but he did not know quite where the pain was--much less where
it came from, or what it meant.

"More!" said the hungry brain.  "More!" and the little hand went out
again.

It was sharply spatted.  "No, No!" said a strange voice--he had never
heard that kind of tone before.  "No! No! Naughty! Don't touch!"  He
lifted his face unbelievingly.  Yes--it was Food and Warmth and Comfort
who was doing this to him.

The small moist mouth quivered grievingly