Yet do not feel that you must never indicate any trouble of your own, for it is conducive to selfishness when a wife hides all her worries and indispositions to listen to those of her husband. But since the work-a-day world, outside the home, is usually filled with irritations for a busy man, it should be a wife"s desire to make his home-coming a season of antic.i.p.ation and joy.
Do not expect a husband to be happy and contented with a continuous diet of love and sentiment and romance. He needs also much that is practical and commonplace mingled with his mental food.
I have known an adoring young wife to irritate Cupid so he went out and sat on the door-step, contemplating flight, by continual neglect of small duties.
There were never any matches in the receivers; when the husband wanted one he was obliged to search the house. The newspaper he had folded and left ready to read at leisure was used to light the fire, although an overfilled waste-basket stood near. The towel-rack was empty just when he wanted his bath, and his bedroom slippers were always kicked so far under the bed that he was obliged to crawl on all fours to reach them.
Then his loving spouse was sure to want to be "cuddled" when he was smoking his cigar and reading,--a triple occupation only possible to a human freak, with three arms, four eyes, and two mouths.
Therefore I would urge you, my dear Edna, to mingle the practical with the ideal, and common sense with sentiment, and tact with affection, in your domestic life.
These general rules are all I can give to guide your barque into the smooth, sea of marital happiness.
It is a wide sea, with many harbours and ports, and no two ships start from exactly the same point or take exactly the same course. You will encounter rocks and reefs, perhaps, which my boat escaped, and I have no chart to guide you away from those rocks.
If I knew you better, and knew your husband at all, I might steer you a little farther out of Honeymoon Bay into calm waters, and tell you how to reef your sails, and how to tack at certain junctures of the voyage, and with the wind in certain directions.
But if you keep your heart full of love, your mind clear of distrust, and your lips free from faultfinding, and if you pray for guidance and light upon your way, I am sure you cannot miss the course.
To Miss Gladys Weston
_Who Faces the Necessity to Earn a Living_
It is indeed a problem, my dear Gladys, to face stern-visaged Necessity after walking with laughing-lipped Pleasure for twenty-two years.
What an unforeseen event that your father should sink his fortune in a rash venture and die of remorse and discouragement scarcely six months after you were travelling through Europe with me, and laughing at my vain attempts to make you economize.
You have acted the n.o.ble and womanly part, in using the last dollar of your father"s property to pay his debts, and I could imagine you doing no other way.
But now comes the need of earning a livelihood for yourself, and your delicate mother.
I know you have gone over the list of your accomplishments and taken stock of all your inherited and acquired qualities. You play the piano well, but in these days of Paderewskies and pianolas, no one wants to employ a young girl music-teacher. You do not sing, and if you did, that would not afford you a means of support. The best of natural voices need a fortune spent before half a fortune can be earned.
You dance like a fairy, and swim like a mermaid, and ride like an Indian princess, but these accomplishments are not lucrative, save in a Midway Plaisance or a Wild West show. You are well educated and your memory is remarkable. You have a facility in mathematics, and your knowledge of grammar and rhetoric will, as you say, enable you to pa.s.s the examination for a teacher in the public schools after a little brushing up and study. Then, with the political influence of your father"s old friends, you will no doubt be able to obtain a position.
I recollect you as surpa.s.singly skilful with the needle. I know you once saw a charming morning gown in Paris which I persuaded you not to buy at the absurd price asked for it, after the merchant understood we were Americans. And I remember how you pa.s.sed to another department, purchased materials, went home to our hotel, and cut and made a surprising imitation of the gown at one-tenth the cost.
Why have you not considered turning this talent to account? Though the world goes to war and ruin, yet women will dress, and the need of good seamstresses ever exists.
Go to some enterprising half-grown Western or interior Eastern town, announce yourself in possession of all the Paris styles (as you are), and launch out. Increase your prices gradually, and go abroad on your savings at the end of a year, then come back with new ideas, a larger stock, and higher prices.
You will be on the road to fortune, and can retire with a competence before you are middle-aged. A little skill with the scissors and needle, lots of courage and audacity, and original methods will make a woman succeed in this line of endeavour.
But why do I not approve of the profession upon which you have almost decided--that of teaching--you ask.
I will tell you why.
Next to motherhood, the profession of teacher in public or private schools is the most important one on earth.
It is, in a certain sense, more responsible than that of motherhood, since the work of poor and bad mothers must be undone by the teacher, and where the mother has three or four children for a period of years to influence, the teacher has hundreds continually. There are very few perfect teachers. There are too few excellent ones. There are too many poor ones. I do not believe you possess the requisites for the calling.
A teacher should first of all love children as a cla.s.s. Their dependence, their ignorance, their helplessness, and their unformed characters should appeal to a woman"s mind, and make her forget their many and varied faults and irritating qualities. You like lovable, well-bred, and interesting children, but you are utterly indifferent to all others. You adore beauty, and an ugly child offends your taste. A stupid child irritates you.
You have a wonderful power of acquiring and remembering information, but you do not possess the knack of readily imparting it. You expect others to grasp ideas in the same way you do. This will make you unsympathetic and impatient as a teacher. You have no conception of the influence a teacher exerts upon children in public schools. You were educated in private schools and at home, I know. I attended the country public school, and to this day I can recall the benefits and misfortunes which resulted to me from a.s.sociation with different teachers. Children are keenly alive to the moods of teachers and are often adepts in mind-reading.
A teacher should be able to enter into the hearts and souls of the children under her charge, and she should find as great pleasure in watching their minds develop as the musical genius in watching a composition grow under his touch.
An infinite number of things not included in the school routine should be taught by teachers. Courtesy, kindness to dependents and weaker creatures, a horror of cruelty in all forms, a love of nature, politeness to a.s.sociates, low speaking and light walking, cleanliness and refinement of manner,--all these may be imparted by a teacher who loves to teach, without extra time or fatigue. I fear a proud disdain, and a scarcely hidden disgust, would be plainly visible in your demeanour toward the majority of the untrained little savages given to your charge in a public school. You have not the love of humanity at large in your heart, nor the patience and perseverance to make you take an optimistic view in the colossal work of developing the minds of children. Therefore it seems to me almost a sin for you to undertake the profession merely because you need to earn a living. There are other things to be considered besides your necessities. Fond as I am of you, I have the betterment of humanity at my heart, too, and cannot feel it is right for you to place yourself in a position where you will not be doing the best for those dependent upon you that could be done.
I have given up hope of seeing mothers made to realize their responsibilities. But I still have hope of the teachers. On them and their full understanding of all it is in their power to do, lies the hope of the world.
Therefore, my dear girl, I urge you to take up dressmaking or millinery instead of school-teaching.
If you ruin a piece of goods in the making, you can replace it and profit by your error. But if you mar a child"s nature in your attempt to teach him, you have done an irreparable injury not only to him but to humanity.
If you saw a design started by a lace-maker, you would not think of taking the work and attempting to complete it until you had learned the art of lace-making.
Just so you ought not to think of developing the wonderful intricacies of a child"s mind until you have learned how.
It is all right to deliberately choose a vocation which gives us contact only with inanimate things, but we have no right to take the handling of human souls unless we are specially fitted for the task.
To Clarence St. Claire
_Regarding His Sister"s Betrothal_
Your request, my dear Clarence, that I try to influence your sister to change her determination in this matter, calls for some very plain statements from me.
I have known you and Elise since you were playing with marbles and rattles, and your mother and I have been very good acquaintances (scarcely intimate enough to be called friends) for more than a score of years. You are very much like your mother, both in exterior appearance and in mind. Elise is the image of her father at the time he captured your mother"s romantic fancy, and as I recollect him when he died.
You were five years old, Elise three, at that time. Your mother lived with your father six years in months, an eternity in experience. You know that she was unhappy, and that he disillusioned her with love, and almost with life. He married your mother solely for her fortune. She was a sweet and beautiful girl, of excellent family, but your father had no qualities of mind or soul which enabled him to appreciate or care for any woman, save as she could be of use to him, socially and financially.
In six years he managed to dispose of all but a mere pittance of her fortune, and humiliated her in a thousand ways besides. His only decent act was to die and leave her undisturbed for the remainder of her life.
Your uncle a.s.sisted in her support and saved the remnant of her property, so that she has, by careful and rigorous economy, been able to educate you and Elise, and keep up a respectable appearance in a quiet way.
Of course it was impossible to retain her place among the a.s.sociates of her better days, and you know how bitter this fact has always made Elise. Your sister has the physical beauty and the overwhelming love of money and power which characterized your father. She has a modic.u.m of your mother"s sense of honour, but has been reared in a way not calculated to develop much strength of character. Your mother has been a slave to your sister. Elise is incapable of a deep, intense love for any man, and your mother"s pessimistic ideas of love and marriage have still further acted upon her brain cells and atrophied whatever impulses may have been latent in her nature, to love and be loved. These qualities might have been developed had Elise been under the tutelage of some one versed in the science of brain building, but your mother, like most mothers, was not aware of the tremendous possibilities within her grasp, or of the effect of the ideas she expressed in the hearing of her children. Neither did she seem to recognize the father"s traits in Elise, and undertake the work of eliminating them, as she might have done. She has been an unselfish and devoted mother, and has made too many sacrifices for Elise. At the same time, she has awakened the mind of your sister to ideals of principle and honour which will help her to be a better woman than her inheritance from your father would otherwise permit. But now, at the age of twenty-one, it is impossible to hope that she will develop into a self-sacrificing, loving, womanly woman, whose happiness can be found in a peaceful domestic life. She has seen your mother sad and despondent, under the yoke of genteel poverty, and heard her bemoan her lost privileges of wealth and station. This, added to her natural craving for money and place, renders a wealthy marriage her only hope of happiness on earth.
Mr. Volney has an enormous fortune. He is, as you say, a senile old man in his dotage. As you say again, such a marriage is a travesty. But Elise is incapable of feeling the love which alone renders marriage a holy inst.i.tution. She has undesirable qualities which ought not to be transmitted to children, and she is absolutely devoid of maternal instincts.
I have heard her say she would consider motherhood the greatest disaster which could befall her. But she is unfitted for a self-supporting career, and she wants a home and position.