The Young Prodigal.
THE YOUNG PRODIGAL.
How marked and how various has been the response of men to the Parable of the Prodigal Son since it first came from the lips of Him whose life so exemplified its mercy. Through all those changing centuries, the home has kept its place in the affections of mankind, and that pathetic domestic picture has never failed to waken regrets and compa.s.sion. The happiest household is not without some errors that cry for forgiveness, and not many are the families whose peace is not troubled by some prodigal. The parable presents at once an example of earthly experience and a lesson of heavenly mercy. Not forgetting the heavenly lesson, we dwell now more upon the earthly example, as we speak of the prodigal in the family, especially of his fall and his recovery.
The prodigal in the family! Far more frequently than the world knows, might this epithet in truth be spoken, for it is not by any means from notorious spendthrifts and open profligates, that wicked waste scatters the goods of a household. If a certain man who had two sons, found in one of them a prodigal under the simple manners of a rustic age, what may the father of a large family antic.i.p.ate in a state of society which makes extravagance almost a necessity, and in a great city which brings the vices and follies of every far country on earth to his very door. Never perhaps since Jesus spoke, have His words found more ample ill.u.s.tration than in this great city, that calls thousands and tens of thousands of young men from rural homes to the fierce scramble for gold, and the feverish chase for pleasure, and which in so many ways offers to drown in dissipation the anguish of remorse.
It is not by any means always the worst boy of the family who takes the road to ruin. It may be base pa.s.sion or reckless selfishness that leads him astray, but it is quite as likely to be too cordial impulses, exposing him to enticing companions, or too sanguine hopes, entailing upon him disappointment and despair. Of the many prodigals whom we have known in our own lifetime, not a few surely have been generous natures, whom it was impossible not to pity, and not hard to love. Sometimes the very temperament that makes a youth amiable, and that should make him n.o.ble, wins to him the most alluring of tempters, and he falls before some Satan who comes to him as an angel of light.
The very tenderness shown to him at home may add to his besetting weakness, by encouraging habits of self-indulgence. In fact, the parable itself allows room for the surmise, that the younger son, from having less care put upon him than the elder, was less schooled in self-reliance, and because every thing was done for him as the pet of the family, he was in danger of doing too little for himself. Certainly indulgence may be as dangerous an extreme as sternness, and as many youths are spoiled by over fondness as are made desperate by unkindness. Sometimes both extremes unite in the same fitful temper, and children, now petted and now cursed, learn indolence and rebellion in the same perverse domestic school. Rare is the wisdom that can adjust the discipline to each temperament, and encourage without over-indulgence, and correct without harshness. Not always, however, is the fault of the child to be traced to error in the parent, for every child has powers and responsibilities of his own, and besides his own perverse will, there is a third party that frequently comes in to make mischief.
At home or abroad this tempter may come, and in forms as many as are the shapes of folly and sin. The son may not have erred simply in desiring to go from home to seek his fortunes. He may have intended to use his portion of the inheritance in a more profitable way than at home, and perhaps return to the quiet old farm-house, rich in treasure and experience, a benefactor to the whole family. Youth is full of dreams, and of not ign.o.ble dreams, and of the thousands of young men who every month go out into the world to seek their fortune, few, if any, mean to throw their hopes away in dissipation. Young blood is ever sanguine, and fair indeed would this earth be, if it could take the hue and shape of the youthful visions that have brooded upon its future. The very fact that a man hopes much, may throw him into a despair as intense as his hope, and the sanguine dreamer may degenerate under disappointment into the reckless prodigal. The portion of the inheritance which was to swell into affluence, being broken by some mischance, seems good for nothing but a brief round of pleasure, and is squandered in riotous living. Or the wanderer may start with the idea that expensive habits will secure to him friends and position, until he finds that these habits are his masters, and these friends go away when his money is gone. Let any sober-minded man who has consistently tried to use well his means and opportunity, remember the perils that have lurked in his own path, and he will make some due allowance for the temptations that now beset young men. We are not called to lower in the least our standard of virtue, but we are to enlarge our views to measure the extent of the danger, and to relax our severity to win the erring to repentance and amendment. Make the ease our own, and as we look upon the many forms of youthful vice and folly around us, see our own youth thus come back to us, and read the sad lessons as so many chapters in the book of our own possible destiny. Such considerations, instead of making us more lax in principle, will make us more strict, by making us feel more deeply the curse of that transgression, which we thus bring home to our own thoughts. Combine all the various sources of temptation, bear in mind the portions that may come severally from the youth, his guardians and the world, and it will not appear proof of utter depravity that there should be some prodigals on earth.
The emphasis of the parable turns not upon the fall, but upon the recovery of the erring one, and the portraiture of the various steps in the recovery is so drawn to the life, as to answer with due change of manners and costume for any age. Mark its progress, in the mind of the youth and the parent, and in the final reconciliation of the two.
Mark the change in the feelings of the son. In a short time what a transition in the lot of this reckless roaming boy. His dream of fortune and pleasure has been most rudely broken, and the spendthrift is the penniless outcast. A season of famine, or what in our more commercial age would be called hard times, came on, and the pressure that bears upon all drives him to the very verge of starvation. Where are the gay mansions now that opened their doors so eagerly to the young stranger, so lavish with his wealth? Where are the boon companions that borrowed his money, and rode his horses, and drunk his wine? Where such friends are very likely to be in time of need; ready to cut the acquaintance of the wretch upon whose prosperity they have fattened and fawned. He is in a sad plight, and might have been driven to some desperate crime--to murder or to suicide, did he not learn one of the blessed lessons of G.o.d"s Providence, and use misery as a stern, yet judicious schoolmaster, to lead him to remorse and penitence.
Suffering wakens him from his vain dream, and he sees things now as they are,--takes upon his shoulders the burden of his griefs,--confesses that he has abused the very generosity of his father, and is no longer worthy to be called his son. Remorse, no proof of depravity past redemption, but proof rather that conscience still lives, and is vindicating her holy law, exalted the poor outcast, even in humbling him to the dust, and lifts the wretch into the penitent, with those words, "I will arise, and go to my father."
This penitence crowns the new experience of the prodigal, and brings him into a new sphere of thought and action. He feels the power of a love that he had slighted, and which now pleads with his soul in an eloquence all the mightier from its tone of expostulation and pity. His childhood reappears to him in all its innocence and privilege,--the old homestead, with its familiar walls and trees, haunts him not as a dream, but as the one reality, and seems to eye his wretchedness with wonder and compa.s.sion.
He is a changed man now, and turns his face upon the long journey homeward, not merely as an outcast hungry and miserable, but as a penitent seeking forgiveness of the kindness which he had outraged, and asking to do a servant"s work on the estate whose income he had wasted.
Look to the other side of the picture, and think of what has been going on in the father"s heart. No particulars are given of his feeling during the season of separation, but his heart is a chapter in the book, that life is ever laying open, and what is told of him at the crisis, indicates well his temper during the interval. He had but two boys, and his whole hope and love must have centred in them and their destiny. They may have been dearer to him from being all the memorial left to him of the mother long since taken from the world. The younger may have been the pet of his leisure hours, whilst the elder was busy with the cares of the farm; for there is likely to be a pet child in every family. But the plain facts are enough without laying any tax upon the imagination. He had the common heart of good men, and had shown his willingness to make sacrifices for his children. Many a time in lonely hours he must have thought of the wanderer, and wondered if the boy whom he never forgot, could forget him.
The prosperity of his business, the plenty of his crops, the number of his flocks and herds, could not satisfy him; even the sight of the son now with him, but reminded him how broken was his family and how divided his heart. Touches of compa.s.sion would mingle with his lonely regrets, and remembering the common weakness of our humanity, he would consider the amount of temptation in wait for every novice, and have misgivings at allowing him to go out alone into the world. Many a time his wistful gaze would rest upon the road taken by the departing wanderer, and he would ask himself if the youth would ever return, and in what condition. One day as he looked, that lonely road had for him a startling apparition. Far in the distance appears a tired, tattered wayfarer, a mere vagrant to the common gaze; but one of the many who seem heir of misery, and for whom compa.s.sion itself has little reasonable hope. But no; the eye of affection is ever sharpsighted, and the father sees under that beggar"s garb the step and air of his long-lost son; and one look tells to him the whole story of his fortunes. He is a poor and broken-down creature, and comes home penitent, to ask mercy of the love that he had so offended. All is told in those simple words of welcome "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compa.s.sion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him."
This was the meeting--such was the reconciliation! Full as it is of absorbing feeling, its moral element is not to be forgotten. Read its lessons, and we note first of all forgiveness of the offence in view of the penitence of the offender; secondly, restoration to favor on the ground of amendment; thirdly, justice to all parties and no injustice to the rights of the elder son, who had not wasted his patrimony, yet, who was moved to look with a jealous eye at the feasting in honor of his prodigal brother"s return. Mercy is triumphant, yet justice is not slighted, and whilst the prodigal is restored to his place in his father"s heart and household, all the consequences of his transgression do not cease; his portion of the substance is not as if he had wasted nothing, and he is not exempt from a long course of self-discipline and correction.
Forgiveness does not end discipline, but rather begins its just action, by bringing the offender into the sphere of moral and spiritual allegiance.
Such is the story of the Prodigal Son in his fall and his recovery--a rich lesson of earthly experience and of heavenly faith. What family is there that is not called at some time, and in some measure, to apply its point to themselves?
Parents and guardians have some trials that the world knows of, and some that escape the public ear. Rare, indeed, the home that has no trace of the prodigal, and makes no demand on the heart of forgiveness. Our prevalent manners seem to set a bounty upon prodigality, and make youth, the true season of control and preparation, the ill-timed season for indulgence and extravagance. Many sons have the spending of a prince"s income without the spur of a prince"s ambition; and probably not a few families in our own community encourage a reckless waste that would be thought wicked in many a palace; whilst the self-will, thus pampered, is not trained to labor for any definite aim or worthy object. In homes less affluent, the case may be still worse, and the sons and daughters of persons in a medium position catch the bad ambition, and launch out into an extravagance as ruinous as it is infatuated. It is wrong--all wrong.
The prodigal, in his craving for pardon, well marked the error of his course, and proved how much he had sinned against a father"s purpose in intrusting him, prematurely, with such means of usefulness and honor, to be squandered in idleness and shame. Happy they who learn the lesson without such bitter experience, and who start from the first with a worthy object in view. Here is the great question that over presses upon us: How check the waste of talent and substance among our youth? how redeem the most susceptible years from frivolity and extravagance? There can be essentially but one answer, however various the forms of its expression.
From the very first, let the young be trained to pursue some worthy object, and let the ideal of dignity be placed not in dainty indolence, but in active usefulness. Let every household cherish this creed in all its spirit and economy; let education be called perversion when it does not foster this purpose; let mercy itself when most tender and forgiving, most earnestly breathe this incentive.
Never was a young generation launched forth upon a more alluring and bewildering sea than that which now wafts its inviting breezes towards our rising youth. Opportunities thicken and dazzle as never before, and dangers multiply with opportunities; the spur is put to self-indulgence, whilst the reins of discipline are slackened, and society is starting upon an untried and adventurous track, that raises in sober minds quite as much fear as hope. But heaven is always above us, and its light need never fail us. Let the blessed Master"s plea for heavenly mercy reveal to us more clearly the way of obedience, and the very tears of penitence water the root of faith and resolution. Youth, so impa.s.sioned, self-willed, sanguine,--be prodigal no more. Look to the mark placed before you by your Father in heaven, and measure your dignity by your fidelity to your work.
Son--daughter--waste your heart and strength no more upon follies and sins. You have the happiness of many in your keeping, and the Infinite Parent above will smile upon your penitence, and bless you in your fidelity.
Who can look upon the number of youths without high aims and faithful purposes, who are growing up in our cities with opportunities so unparalleled, and not find himself haunted with that ever-recurring question, "What shall we do with our sons?" A state of society that is based upon wealth as the chief good, may offer especial danger to the sons, from the very fact that it gave such incentives to the energy of the fathers, and the wealth gained in hardship may be wasted in dissipation.
Some sons, indeed, catch the thrift of their laborious parents, and from love of money, or from family pride, or some better ambition, try to keep or increase their inheritance. But even these are too rarely trained to know the highest uses of property, or the true art of employing the leisure which it offers for recreations, that refresh instead of dissipating the powers. How many there are far below their level, who seem to lose every earnest motive in being free from the necessity of exertion, and who give the infection of their corrupt idleness and false honor to companions who can ill afford any dainty self-indulgence. The commercial spirit that places business energy at the top of the scale of talents and dignities, may do something to check such prodigality; but only a thoroughgoing, manly purpose, looking devoutly to G.o.d"s will and the solemn work of life, can lay the axe to the root of the evil.
Consider, seriously, young man, that you have a work to do in the world, whilst it is still called to-day. The charm of life, as well as its true honor, lies in the earnest pursuit of a worthy object. Beware of adding by your presence to the number of young men about town, who are all sail and no ballast, and whose wreck sooner or later is produced by the very surface spread to the fickle winds of pa.s.sion. Balance yourself by the weight of conscious responsibility; guide yourself with a single eye to the mark of true living. Be something--a genuine reality--not an empty sham--something in power and in position, not one of the nothings who parrot the reigning follies and vices. Be yourself--yourself as G.o.d has called you to be by the gift of your powers and opportunities, instead of trying vainly to be somebody else, by affecting ways and honors never intended for you; yes, be yourself, even if your genius bids you work at the mechanic"s bench or at the machinist"s lathe, instead of trying to be somebody else in a profession for which you are not adapted, or in aping a lazy gentility which is a disgrace to any rational creature of G.o.d. Be thus something--be thus yourself--and you cannot be false to man or G.o.d. A true master purpose will quicken and energize the whole being. No longer a prodigal yourself, your spirit so free and devoted, so blending hearty manliness with earnest faith, will lead many a wanderer home.
Education of Daughters.
EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS.
"Nothing is more neglected than the education of daughters," said Fenelon, in the first sentence of his noted work on the subject. This cannot be said with truth now, when so much time, thought and money, are given to their instruction in the most opposite quarters. Whilst thinking upon this topic, it seems to me as if every one of its leading aspects had sent a representation of itself to help our judgment. This month, even the stranger in our city must have had his attention attracted by the costume and speech-making of the somewhat brave champions of the Woman"s Rights"
party, who have been holding their conventions; and, as if to show up one extreme by another, the debates of radicalism have run parallel with the rites of superst.i.tion; and, on his way to the hall that rings with feminine voices that claim masculine honors, he may as he pa.s.ses many churches catch the strains of those vesper hymns to the Virgin Mother, by which Romanism strives to make this beautiful Mary confirm its daughters in the faith, by that ideal of womanhood so deified in its own loveliness without need of any borrowed grace of man"s.
In his next morning"s walk, he will see in the many processions of boarding-school girls promenading with no very elastic step, quite another aspect of woman"s destiny, and one that may give him mingled feelings as he meditates upon the future of American mothers and their posterity. If the stranger comes from a foreign country, he will be interested less in these three aspects of the subject, than in a fourth of far less a.s.suming air. He will be more impressed with the looks of the daughters of the people, with cheery step on their way to the public schools, than with the champions of reform, the pupils of fashion, or the devotees of the ancient ritual. Surely the education of girls is not neglected among us; yet, whether it is wisely attended to, is one of the most serious and pressing questions of our day,--a question in which every family is vitally concerned. There are few readers who are not ready to give some thought to the true idea and method of female education.
We must look for the true idea reverently, as under religious guidance, not according to our own caprices or opinions. Nothing surely should awe our wilful conceits into docile attention, more than the effort to find the calling and the place of the being beyond all others dependent upon our care. Where but in the school of the Creator and Preserver himself, shall we learn what our daughters are called to be under his Providence?
Where but therein shall we learn to decipher that fair and wonderful hieroglyph which G.o.d himself carved out in the person of Eve, and which remains to this day the most expressive cipher of heaven"s grace and care.
The language of the Psalmist, so often quoted, is sufficient to define the idea of female education when freely interpreted. If our daughters, according to his prayer, should be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace, it is clear that their education is to have accomplishment and solidity such as to fit them for their place as the main supports of social life. They are to be polished stones. Does not this expression bring the sanction of Holy Writ against the too frequent notion that woman is made only to be the servant of man, and that her chief destiny is to be the drudging underling of his will; not like the polished stone of a palace wall, but the rough rock at the foundation,--useful, indeed, but buried under the dust. This idea exists not merely in savage countries, where woman is actually man"s slave, and reared to be such from childhood, so that a thoughtful mother mourns when a daughter is born; but our own Christendom reads its own darkest chapter in the condition of woman, so often forced to drudge for scanty bread and raiment, perhaps abused by the very man upon whose bidding she waits, and who dements himself in drunkenness whilst she plies her thankless tasks.
In many quarters where such abominations would be condemned, views radically the same are held, and an idea of woman"s destiny prevails which takes her from her rightful place as the equal of man, which sinks her into his drudge, without time for intellectual and spiritual culture, with little of the leisure and conversation that beguile care of its sting, and toil of its weariness. Nay, how often is this destiny unconsciously entailed upon daughters by thoughtless, yet not consciously unkind, parents, who train up their girls without high aims and enlarged views, sending them into new homes so poorly endowed with commanding motives and practical knowledge, as to sink down into the dull monotony of domestic drudgery. Though the hands may not be overtasked, if the soul is weighed down to a servile routine, without sentiment or spirituality, woman is the slave of man,--the neglected rock beneath his dwelling, and not the polished stone of his home.
But this is not the chief danger now, but an opposite extreme equally degrading. The danger is not that the daughter shall lack polish, but that she will have but little else; and, instead of being a polished stone, shall be a polished vanity with no substance at all. Nothing can be more false and fatal than the notion that a daughter is to be educated for show, whilst the son is to be trained for usefulness. In her own way, the sister has quite as much strength of character as the brother has in his way, and she is cruelly treated when regarded only as a graceful toy.
Sometimes this extreme meets the other, and she who in her girlhood was a dainty plaything, becomes in womanhood a plodding drudge, without a particle of worthy spirit or elevated thought to retain the love won by her beauty, or to replace the fervor lost with her youth. It is very wrong to make accomplishments the main thing in female education.
Accomplishments are poor tricks, unless their polish is but the smoothness of substantial knowledge and judgment. A showy girl who can dance, sing, and prattle two or three foreign languages, without being able to speak and write sensibly in her own tongue, is one of the most lamentable of counterfeits, and may chance to blight the peace and dignity of more hearts than one by her shams. She is the product of that flashy system of training, which is doing more mischief in America than any where else, and making society a tawdry Vanity Fair instead of a companionship of hearts and homes. Not a few of our daughters seem taught to think that distinction in society is graduated by clothes and confectionery, and to measure their social honor or obscurity by their ability to follow the silly code of extravagance. If the folly were confined to those who have such affluence as craves prodigality in expense to reduce the overplus, it might be comparatively harmless, but it bears most severely upon families of limited means, where mothers and daughters are in a fever to ape the extravagance that they ought to pity. Why all this infatuated excess in dress? What do our daughters, in their tender years, need for their grace and dignity beyond the simplest costume that good taste dictates as the fit robing of girlish innocence? Even a pure French taste, which, in other respects favors such excess, teaches an almost Christian simplicity in this respect; and the spectacle, so common with us, of school girls bedizened with costly dresses of all colors, and loaded with jewels, would be ludicrous in a Parisian drawing-room, as a walking, jingling toy-shop attached to a human creature. It is a fine remark of Fenelon in rebuking the foolish pa.s.sion for dress, that if daughters were educated in a purer cla.s.sic taste, and would study the beautiful in the schools of painting and sculpture, they would shun many excesses in costume on account of their deformity, as well as their extravagance. What judgment the good archbishop would have pa.s.sed upon our present mode of sweeping the dusty sidewalks with costly robes of silk and velvet, we have no means of judging, for this folly seems a recent invention. What a recent French moralist, who claims to walk in the path of Fenelon, says of France, is doubly true of America: "The great care," says L"Aime Martin, "is to please the world, rather than to resist it: the wish is to shine, to reign:--vanity, that is the end to which tender mothers do not cease to point their daughters, and upon which the world that pushes them on sees them wrecked with indifference! Vanity in accomplishments! vanity in dress! vanity in learning! This show covers all: to seem, not to be, makes the sum and substance of education." These strong words must have cost the bland French moralist some pain; but does not their strength come from their truth? Do they not apply, with fearful truth, to American society?
Does not the prevalent code of feminine ostentation bear with cruel weight upon our domestic life, making almost a social necessity of the merest conventional artificiality, and raising up a generation of listless imbeciles, who measure their social salvation by the magnitude of their exactions and the littleness of their achievements? in short, setting up a code of dignity, in which utter uselessness not seldom bears the highest honor. It would be, probably, a somewhat peculiar revelation, if the young women who go from boarding-schools into our gay society were to submit to a thorough catechizing as to what they expect to receive in the world, and what they expect to do in return. The statistics thus gathered might shed some light upon our social and political economy, and disclose a standard of empty extravagance, not very common among the t.i.tled n.o.bility of the Old World. Away with the error upon which the whole mischief rests,--the error that our daughters are not rational creatures, and that the very strength of their character is not the best reason and rule of their accomplishment. Let them be polished stones, not tinsel, with a refinement and solidity worthy their endowments.
a.s.sociating thus the attribute of polish with that of solidity, in our idea of the education of daughters, we complete the definition by maintaining, that the two qualities should be so combined as best to fit the daughter for her providential position as the equal of man; not his rival, nor his slave, nor his toy. We claim for the daughter entire mental, moral, and religious equality with the son, yet find in the law alike of nature and revelation a distinction between their gifts and spheres. It would be merely beating the air to argue either point,--to try to prove that woman has all the faculties of human nature, and if, in her case, they are otherwise adjusted than with man, the difference is such as to forbid boasting on either side, and to favor mutual help instead of selfish rivalry. Nor need we couch our lance against the reform school that claims for woman a masculine position, and asks to have all offices open to her ambition or zeal. We are little in danger of such extravagances, and our daughters are more likely to slight the high moral influence now within their sphere, than to hanker after the notoriety of professional life or anniversary platforms. Our current modes of society are so lenient towards those who uns.e.x themselves on the stage, or in the ball-room, that the moralist need trouble himself very little with the loquacious sisterhood, that seems determined to have the public ear upon most exciting questions. The most discouraging thing in their prospect is in the indifference of their own s.e.x to their appeals. Men prefer to hear women talk in a less obtrusive manner; and women seem likely to follow their time-hallowed precedent, and to have men for their orators, leaders, physicians, and preachers. The freest system will not alter the divine order, and whatever worthy reforms may come, the end will be the reconsecration of woman in her true sphere--as the equal, not the rival, of man. Hers will still be full half the world, and the best half of it too. To be the polished corner-stone in the palace which the ruling heart makes royal, is honor and responsibility enough. To carry out this idea of the education of daughters by a just method, is a work second to none other to be done or meditated in this world.
What have we to say of such a method? Nothing but simply to appeal to G.o.d"s own will as shown in the daughter"s faculties and in the spheres in which she is called to move. Let the method be such as best developes her powers and fits her for her position.
How great a thing it is to understand a soul, said Theresa of Spain, in view of the young hearts committed to her care after all her own trials of faith. How great a thing it is to understand a daughter"s mind in which sensibility, that demands sympathy, has so much larger a place than logic, that needs only to be reasoned out. We believe that there is s.e.x in mind, and that the essential type of womanhood appears equally in the example of the highest culture and genius, as in the average standard. Every page shows the woman"s guiding pen, no matter whether a De Stael or a G.o.dwin ranges into the bolder realms of thought, or an Edgeworth or Hemans walks among the daily affections and cares of life. A true culture must be based upon this fact, and the mind must be trained in accordance. Little may be gained by persisting in making a dry logician of a school girl, for abstract reasoning is rarely a woman"s forte, but precisely on that account, the reason must be appealed to by the living truth, which will find a ready response from perceptions so quick and intuitive as often to see at a glance what the logical understanding will with difficulty argue out.
It is a great mistake to try to train a girl to be a man in cast of mind or way of life. We can never slight the hint of nature without bringing down her retribution, and temporary success but delays the evil day. What better instance of this error have we than in the memoirs of that gifted woman so well known to most of our readers, and probably a personal friend to not a few of them, Margaret Fuller Ossoli? Her mental career is now made public property by able and congenial biographers; and who of us does not see the unconscious cruelty of the stern discipline which sought to mould her mind after the masculine standard, and which so repressed the springs of feminine power, until Providence took the n.o.ble woman into its own school, and the wife and mother learned a wisdom and a peace that cla.s.sic letters and metaphysical theories never taught her; nay, far beyond the stature of the "Muse," and the "Minerva," that were once her chosen types of female dignity? Honor to her name, alike for the mistakes and the excellencies ill.u.s.trated by her eventful life?
Truly trained, the girl will have as much _reason_ as the boy; and hers will be more intuitive, whilst his may be more formal and severe in its _reasoning_. Strength of character will be hers, not, perhaps, so much the stern sense of justice that most marks the masculine conscience, as the full and earnest affection that adds mercy to justice and love to duty.
Force of will shall be hers, not perhaps the iron will of man, but what is quite as well, and in its place better, the heroic patience that conquers evil by enduring it. The result shall be a disciplined, sagacious intellect without masculine hardness, delicate sensibility without imbecile listlessness, active energy without moping drudgery, a combination of powers and graces that wins homage from every heart.
I would not adopt any definition of woman"s powers less generous than the hint of nature and the will of G.o.d. Rather allow the largest scope to the development of every gift, and trust the feminine instinct to vindicate its own prerogative, whatever be the talent called into requisition.
Marked cases show that the feminine mind may sometimes have the faculty for the severest mathematical reasoning, and England and America have been taught this fact by the philosophical achievements of women who are an honor alike to the delicacy and the intellect of their s.e.x. Full well do I remember a visit to William Mitch.e.l.l the Nantucket astronomer, years ago, when I saw that the father and the daughter had each a station and a set of instruments for taking simultaneous observations of the heavens. Since that day a gold medal from the king of Denmark has marked the daughter"s triumph as the discoverer of a new comet. I am not ashamed to say, that at the time of the visit I had been several days puzzling over a difficult sum in algebra, and that, with a few touches of her pencil, the young lady made clear as day what I had but suspected, that the difficulty was in an error of the text-book. She evidently understood Arbogast"s polynomial theorem better than I did.
But the great difficulty in this whole matter is not so much in a proper definition of characteristics to be cherished, as in the application of proper motives to bring out those characteristics. With boys the motive is near at hand, for the world speaks to them with its imperious voice and bids them prepare for some specific post of profit or ambition. Without such practical spur, our sons would be a languid generation, since self-culture merely for its own sake, as an amateur pursuit without any specific object, is a dull affair, that very feebly goes. Even those young men who have had a thorough collegiate education are very apt to forget their learning, and to lose their literary gift unless they carry out the work of education in actual affairs and keep their attainments by using them. What shall take the place of such motive in the education of our daughters? What aim shall we place before them in their early studies and keep before them in after years? Serious indeed is the question, and too frivolously answered by the hosts of bright girls who go from school into a career of folly and dissipation.