How cautious we ought to be in forming our judgments! Have you never made the mistake of replying carelessly to one whom you thought was stupid, but whom you discovered to be a person of marked ability? The older we grow, the more we are amazed at our lack of good sense in framing an opinion of those whom we meet. We are so frequently surprised at what persons do or become, we feel we can never be sure that any one is common, or of the every-day sort. We almost believe Novalis speaks the truth when he says, "We touch Heaven when we touch a human body." Let us remember then, girls, not to trust our first impressions.
In forming our judgments let us be very sure our knowledge is sufficient to tell which are the sheep and which are the goats, before we begin to separate them.
Just once more let me insist on the necessity of training the observation for enjoyment of the commonplace. We call things stupid, dronish, monotonous, because our faculties are not sufficiently exercised to see any other qualities in them. Do you not suppose an artist sees more in a birch swamp than we do? Is not even he likelier to be successful in painting new wonders in the commonplace than in trying to show objects we seldom see?
Have you never noticed Albrecht Durer"s drawing of Praying Hands? Look at a photograph of it, please. Is it not wonderful? We cannot describe all the feeling those hands suggest. If you had pa.s.sed them on the street, you would not have noticed them, unless to remark that they were grimy, perhaps, or lean. The great German artist saw them folded in prayer, and heard all the language of a despairing soul as it came out in the expression of those hands,--wonderful hands, "instinct with spirit." Look at them again, girls.
We talked about commonplace duties when we spoke of work. Let me repeat here that life is made up of commonplace deeds. We do not have great national disturbances every day; and the surest proof that we have greater need of common events rather than startling ones, ordinary duties rather than extraordinary, is, that the moment we scorn an ordinary occurrence, or omit a daily duty, we find ourselves and every one else miserable, for a while, at least. We are stopping a part of the machinery necessary to human happiness. Let us not despise the lowliest duties. George Macdonald, the writer who has given strength to the souls of so many people, was contented to write, "If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with G.o.d."
Do you begin to think, girls, I would have you always prosaic, plodding, self-satisfied, unambitious? Oh, no! do not understand me so. Why, I believe that even dreaming about doing, and seeing, and having things is sometimes very helpful, and not at all inconsistent with the commonplace. It is almost necessary for some people to build air-castles. They get more real pleasure in them than they would from real castles on the Rhine, the Danube, or along the rivers of sunny France. Have you never read Curtis"s "Prue and I"?
Ah, how beautiful it is to be dreaming about a future, though it may never come true!--to be floating on the sunset tide of Venice; to be journeying over the pa.s.ses of the Alps in summer, and always approaching Mount Blanc; to be resting by the fountain in Alhambra"s Court of Lions; to be gazing at the Sistine Madonna in Dresden, or at the Ascension in the Vatican; to be dosing in an orange grove in southern California; to be awed by the deep canons of the Colorado, or to be filled with the sublimity of the Yosemite!
How glorious to be dreaming of what we will do when we are women with wills and purses all our own!--with long rows of books in our libraries, elegant pictures in our drawing-rooms, and oh! such beautiful boudoirs, all, all of our own; or, at least, a room which shall be a _sanctum sanctorum_, where the fire on the hearth never smoulders, and where loving friends, beautiful mementos, and peaceful thoughts make us always happy. How fine to fancy longings achieved, and present desires gratified!
All dreams, yes; but they do sometimes come out better than true. The only thing wiser than dreaming is doing,--working in such a way as to bring the distant near, and getting out of the veriest commonplaces the joy we fancied lay only in the future, in other lands, or only in dreams.
Build castles and dwellings out of the commonplace, and you shall see them shine with splendor, and glow with beauties which can never be exhausted. She alone is rich who has estates in her soul.
VIII.
MOODS.
Blues, dumps, megrims, odd spells,--do they ever visit you? Drive them out of doors; chase them down the yard, over the fence, up the tree, till they go riding off on their own broomsticks, or vanish in thin air! If ever they come tapping on your window-pane again, don"t open the cas.e.m.e.nt; but turn your backs, stop up your ears, laugh as loud as you can, then seize the first piece of work which waits to be done.
These demons are afraid of a laugh; and when they have the least suspicion that a smile wreathes the lips of a mortal, they will slink away and coil up in remote corners. They are equally alarmed by work, because it puts an armor of steel all over their opponents. This coat of mail is absolutely impenetrable, though blue imps should hurl their arrows of torture forever.
But, beware! Do not stop to think work and good cheer will put these creatures to flight. Sing your song, laugh your laugh, and make work, if none is at hand. Then only will these poor miserable prowlers shrivel up and crawl under ground.
What are gloomy moods good for? What are they not bad for? Why are we always making excuse for entertaining such company? If we are ashamed of them, let"s send them packing, as we would any disreputable visitors, such as cheats, biting dogs, or poisonous insects.
How weak is our apology for enduring moods, when we blame some person, long since dead, for handing down to us an inheritance of megrims!
We need not accept such a legacy, though of course we must fight very hard to resist its allurements. It may be convenient enough to censure inheritance for this or that oddity. Our grandmothers had strange moods,--spoke to people on some days and did not speak on other days,--so we have diligently doubled our bequest, and have spells odder yet,--find our friends quite delightful for a week or more, and then as distasteful for a still longer time.
The patrimony of evil can be, and will be, shamefully increased with every new generation, if good sense, sound principles, and a cheerful heart do not constantly defend the right and strive to annihilate inheritance. I am not going to discuss this matter of inheritance, girls, for there is much in it not well for us to consider at present.
We are simply to remember to preserve and increase the good left us, and fight to the utmost all evil that may have come from ancestry.
Every girl has peculiar forms of temptation; and what is hard for one to resist is easy for another to repel, because to the latter it is no temptation. If moods, grim moods, are worth any thing to us, they are simply worth conquering,--merely valuable for the strength we get from their defeat.
Plainly, it is our selfishness, our indulgence, our idleness, our vanity, which make us allow such wretched company within our walls.
See what wily creatures the _blues_ are!--full of conceit! They grow powerful while looking at us. They are like those little wood creatures which can take the hue of the tree on which they rest, so that for a long time we do not perceive them. They sit beside us by hundreds when we fancy we are alone; and change their colors and their wheedling tones to suit our inclinations, while they pour into our ears deceitful whisperings that the world is all wrong, and we are all right,--the vile flatterers! They paint all our surroundings with dark colors, make all our pictures Mater Dolorosas or St. Sebastians, turn all our music into requiems, and all our books into Stygian epics.
I cannot think there is any thing much more destructive to human happiness than the _blues_. I wonder how they ever came by their name? It must have arisen from the weirdness of the tempest, from the changing hues of the snake"s skin and the lizard"s back, from the blue of sharp steel, from lighted brimstone, and from driving sleet.
Now, girls, why do you, of all people in the world, allow yourselves to be mastered by freaks? Do you not have troubles? Of course you do,--real troubles, which are full of pain and discouragement. Your feelings are so acute, you are so susceptible, I do not see why a sorrow should not be deep with you. But with your vigor, your pure affection, your generous impulses, with all the future before you in which to keep on trying, I cannot understand why you should hug such a phantom as a mood. Just think again how dangerous gloomy moods are,--how bold!
Why, with the least hint at an invitation, they will come in, not for a call, nor for one meal, but to stay and stay,--the impudent creatures!
And such despoilers as they are while they remain! They eat you out of house and home, they even take away your own appet.i.te,--the harpies!
They make you cross,--yes, ugly. They bring frowns, tears, and age into your faces, and they banish all loveliness to the ends of the earth. Oh, do _not_ let them in!
When you come home tired out, your energy all gone, your patience exhausted, why,--rest. Do not think you are desolate, that everybody has deserted you, and that fate, destiny, grim despair, are all after you. You are tired and need to go to bed, or to engage in some light talk which will rest you but at the same time occupy you. Read the newspaper, build aircastles, hope with all the combined powers of your fancy. If the clouds of misfortune pile up, and it pours bad luck,--mother scolds because you did not sweep your room carefully; father threatens because of an approach to familiarity with the new young man over the way; brother frets because his stockings are not well darned; lessons all went wrong in the morning; your best friend said a careless word to you; you have broken the main-spring of your watch, and spilt coffee on your new dress,--why, these are all trifles! I know a good many bad trifles coming together are worse than a misfortune; but the best way to prevent them from bringing on dejection is to let in such a flood of light and determined cheerfulness as to drown out despair.
Mr. Emerson, in an essay on "Behavior," tells a capital story about a man who was so bent on being cheerful he put to shame the torments of h.e.l.l itself. "It is related of the monk Basle, that, being excommunicated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in h.e.l.l; but, such was the eloquence and good humor of the monk, that wherever he went he was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil angels; and, when he came to discourse with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his manners, and even good angels came from far to see him, and take up their abode with him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, that he found something to praise in every place and company, though in h.e.l.l, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying that no phlegethon could be found that would burn him; for that, in whatever condition, Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint."
Do not give away one day to despair: better lose it in idleness. When friends seem careless of you, when poverty encroaches, when suffering ensues from wrongs others have done, when sickness or any kind of calamity besets you, and when you are hunted to the verge of gloom, cling to the ropes which hope suspends about you, and they will surely pull you back from the abyss. These trials all have their uses.
And, pray, be mindful of the way you look at things. Do not try to see evil: have on your kind eyes, magnify every dot of goodness. "In all things throughout the world, the men who, look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight will see the straight." [Footnote: Ruskin.] Try especially to see what is good in your own lot. If you have not fine carpets, luxurious chairs, fresh bouquets every morning, remember you can better appreciate a cane- seated rocker when you are tired, a well-swept floor which has a rug or two, and a single flower purchased with well-earned money.
As I suggested in the beginning, work is as sure a cure for dejection as cheerfulness is. Why, I have seen one hour"s solid labor eat up all the blue tribe which had been hatching and hatching by millions.
Sometime will you read from Carlyle"s "Past and Present" his chapters on work, particularly that on "Labor and Reward"? Mr. Carlyle has written much that is unintelligible to most readers. He has a very grotesque, volcanic style not good to imitate. He is often sad and hopeless about the human race, but he knew from hard experience what work could do against despair. So, in spite of his ravings, notwithstanding his eruptive style, and his sorrow for what is, he has given us, in a masterly piece of prose, this n.o.ble "Gospel of Work."
His sentences, alive with enthusiasm, and terrible in their seriousness, contain great reaches of thought, poetry, prophecy, like that of the ancients; and all are full of the praises and rewards of labor.
"Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like h.e.l.l-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man; but he bends himself with free valor against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of labor in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright, blessed flame!" "Doubt of any kind can be ended by action alone."
What makes us blame the weather so much for our moods, girls? The day is gray everywhere,--in the skies, on the trees, in the air, on the ground,--and gray in us therefore. Ah! but these gray colors are beautiful, even in November and December. In their variety they are soft and shimmering on the tree branches, a slightly ruddy gray on the branchlets, and a serener gray on the tree trunks. Overhead, even when a storm is gathering in the sky, there are the colors of the moonstone tinting into silver, and shading into pearl and blue. On the ground are delicate wood-colors,--umbers, siennas, greens toned down to gray. The atmosphere, from its lack of sunlight, only sets off the more visibly beautiful forms of trees and branches.
No, the day is not moody: we are. We are not in harmony with her, but have arrayed our-selves against her. "When we are at one with Nature we have great peace; when fretted and unmindful of her presence, we are irritated, and out of our true element." In our megrims we have found something whose defenceless condition we think ought to bear the burden of our misery.
Well for you the weather affords a chance for an excuse; for a moody girl on a bright June morning, when all Nature is radiant with beauty, is the veriest parody on life,--worse than that, a sad mockery.
If you are very sensitive, do not censure yourselves too severely, nor foster distrust; for the latter is worse for you than self-conceit.
Be sure to make the _blues_ as dangerous as possible; be always mindful of their direful attacks.
Some one asks me, just here, if she is never to feel serious? Of course she is to have very thoughtful hours! The merely gay, happy-go-lucky kind of a girl is not the most helpful, nor the most valuable. There is very deep happiness sometimes in thoughtfulness,--do you not know it? What makes you quiet when you row in and out of the shadow-filled coves along the river-border, or when you drift among the islands purple with sunset light? What makes you want to shut your eyes, and to throw away the mask of seeming, when some one sings the song you love? and what makes you feel a kind of dead, low, dreadful pause, when the reader"s voice ceases, and the story conies to an end? Are you moody?
No; only resting. Your being is suspended in thought,--thought so serious yet so delicate, so subtle, you cannot weave it into words.
Sometimes, to be sure, a girl who is determined to be morbid will distort such serene feelings into moodiness; but, then, these sudden spells of dejection are only distantly related to the real blue urchins.
Perhaps, girls, it will be better for you if you make up your minds early in life that your lot will probably be about like that of the average girl,--that trouble must come, and even a skeleton must hang and gibber behind your door; but that, be the skeleton what it may, you will nail the door back on the unsightly thing, clothe it in some decent garments, and make it as respectable as possible in its niche, since it must stay with you. Events, decrees, circ.u.mstances, will not change for just you and me; but we can change ourselves, and so defeat them. Do not mind untoward circ.u.mstances. "Seize hold of G.o.d"s hand, and look full in the face of His creation, and there is nothing He will not enable you to achieve." A crust with contentment is better than a pudding with the bitter sauce of discontent.
Oh, I know, girls, it sounds very much like dull preaching. But, really, do we enjoy moods? Do we have any respect for ourselves while in them?
Aren"t we always trying to blame some one else? Shocking business, hunting up scape-goats!
Just see how you look when you have given place to these evils. You respect beauty: you would resent any criticism on your personal appearance at a party; but if one should truly describe how careless, how unmindful of beauty in looks or beauty in disposition, how ugly you are, when in this deplorably moody state, you would shun your very self, and want to get out of your body somehow. You watch a girl who has an attack of the megrims. She seems to hang from her shoulders, or thereabouts; her nimbleness is gone; her muscles seem flabby; she reels more than she walks; she picks up a book to let it fall down; she will not look her neighbor in the face; the meaning has all gone out of her eyes; her mouth is the only expressive feature; her lips are either tightly pressed or curled in scorn; there is a don"t-care look all over her, and it lurks in the folds of her dress, in her slouching hat, her unb.u.t.toned coat, and in her shambling gait.
Sometimes the picture is quite the reverse. The muscles seem tense and powerful. The eye is set and firm, ferocious in fullness. The step is quick and heavy. The strength is doubled, and every object has to yield to the ugliness which attacks it. The form appears to gather pa.s.sion more and more with each hour, till, at last, full of violence, the human frame sways, heaves, and the girl breaks her mood into a flood of scalding tears. The contest is fierce while it lasts. It is dreadful to see beauty put on such deformity, but let us be thankful it is soon over. If the lightning does not strike anywhere, perhaps all will be clearer after the storm.
These violent squalls are not to be compared with those periods of long, low mutterings, nor with those seasons of painful silence, hours of uncertainty, which at times cloud so many girls. Why, the moods of some persons are like yellow days, dark days, and judgment days.
A girl shuts herself up for an afternoon, for a day, for two days A stone sepulchre is all about her, and she only reaches out of it when she wants bread and water. She, herself, does not seem to be in her body: she is a ghost. When we pa.s.s by her tomb-like body, perhaps a head will nod to us, or lips will mutter monosyllables. If our dress touches her garments we feel like begging pardon, A kind of horror and at the same time a sort of pity invade us, yet we are paralyzed and cannot help her. I hardly think the word is employed by lexicographers with this meaning, and I apologize for using the expression; but this kind of an odd spell is what I call _smudging_.
It seems so strange that a girl can use her will so powerfully about controlling others, and yet remain herself the dupe of an unkind mood.
To be sure, there are causes for ill-humor arising nearly every day,-- ill-health, poverty, sorrow, cares that haunt and harrow, unaccomplished desires, ungratified longings; but the indulgence of dejection, the lack of resistance to a mood, only increase hardship. How is the doctor to help your body, if you do not help your spirits? How are your surroundings to be improved, if you do not go to work? How are you to get work, if you do not seek it, and try with all your might to find it? How is trouble to be lessened or endured, if from it we do not reach to higher, n.o.bler living? The way out of trouble is not through despair. Hope unlocks the temple doors, Despair rusts the keys.
Each must know her own anxieties best; but the trials of all, we shall sometime see, are but bitter on the outside, sweet and nourishing within. Believe in the _sometime_.