A Woman of the World by Ella Wheeler WilcoxHer counsel to other people’s sons and daughters (page 3)

life, all these things make motherhood a different ordeal for our women than our grandmothers. Where our grandfathers took their share of the care and guidance of children, and the children came up in a wholesome country fashion, our men to-day are so driven by the money gadfly that they can only whirl around and around and attend “to business,” and all the care of the children falls upon the mother, or else upon the nurses and governesses, who in turn are a care and a worry to the wife.

You assured me Edna had all the assistants in caring for her children she wanted, but you did not realize that every paid employe in a household is, as a rule, just so much more care to the mistress, not less than a tax on the husband’s purse and, consequently, on his time.

What Edna craves is _your_ love, _your_ attention, _your_ sympathy, not the service of paid domestics. She wants you to notice her fading bloom, and to take her in your arms and say, tenderly, “Little girl, we must get those old roses back. And we must go away for a new honeymoon, all alone, and forget every care, even if we forget the babies for a few days.”

One little speech like that, one little outing like that, would do more toward driving away the demon of jealousy than all I could by a thousand sermons and homilies.

I remember at your own board you made me uncomfortable talking about my complexion, which you chose to say was “remarkable for a woman of my age.” And then you proceeded to describe some wonderful beauty you had seen at the Country Club the day previous, and all the time I saw the tears hidden back under the lids of Edna’s tired eyes, and a hurt look on her pale face. Do you imagine she was _jealous_ of your compliment to me? or of your praise of the girl’s beauty at the Country Club?

No, no, my dear Mr. Gordon, I know Edna too well to accuse her of such petty feelings. She was only hurt at your lack of taste in accenting her own lost bloom by needlessly emphasizing another’s possession of what had once been hers.

Yet she called upon the young lady that very day and invited her to luncheon, and even then you indulged in pronounced admiration of the guest’s cheeks, gallantly requesting your wife to have the bouquet of carnation pinks removed from the table, as they were so shamed by the complexions of the ladies.

Of course it was gracefully worded in the plural, but your pallid wife could not claim her share of it, and you should have realized the fact. And the reason she could not was that she had sacrificed her health in your service, in giving your children to you, and in losing her lover.

She adores her splendid babies, but she is still a woman and a wife,–though you seem to ignore that she is anything but a mother.

Right about face, Mr. Gordon, and become the lover you were, and jealousy will be driven from your threshold.

It is your own lack of thoughtfulness, your own tactless and tasteless methods with your wife, which have caused the change in her manner. She is not jealous, she is only lonely, heart-hungry, disillusioned.

You are less noble, less considerate, less tender, less sympathetic than she believed. For the man to whom these adjectives can be applied will guard, love, and cherish the wife of his youth, and the mother of his children, before all other considerations; and he will understand how sensitive a fading wife may be, and not confound that sensitiveness with ignoble jealousy.

It is you, Charles Gordon, who must cure your wife of nerves, hysteria, and incipient jealousy, not I.

To Mrs. Clarence St. Claire

_Concerning Her Husband_

I am sorry that your matrimonial barque meets so many rough winds while hardly out of Honeymoon Bay.

Clarence and you seemed so deeply in love when I last saw you, six months after your wedding, that I had hoped all might go well with you.

I knew the disposition of Clarence to be tainted with jealousy, but hoped you would be able to eradicate it from his nature.

You know his poor mother suffered agonies from the infidelities of his father before Clarence was born. She had married a handsome foreigner with whom she was desperately enamoured, while he cared only for the fortune she brought him.

While still in the full light of the honeymoon he began to indulge in flirtations and amours, and poor Clarence, during the important prenatal period of life, received the mark of suspicion and the tendency to hypersensitiveness which then dominated the mother.

By the time Elise was born she had passed through the whole process, and was passive and indifferent.

I cannot help a sensation of amusement, even in face of the condition you describe (which is little short of tragic), as I recall the letter Clarence wrote begging me to try and prevent, by fair means or foul, his sister’s marriage to old Mr. Volney.

That was two years before you and Clarence were married.

Elise, we all know, wedded for the money and position Mr. Volney gave, in return for her young beauty.

Clarence and you were ideal lovers, seeing nothing in the world outside of your own selves.

Yet Elise is quite contented, and Mr. Volney uses what little brain he has left to exult over his possession of such a beautiful young wife.

Elise upholds his dignity and flatters him into a belief that he is a great philanthropist and a social power, and in this way she has the handling of his millions, which is her idea of happiness. She travels, entertains, and poses for photographs and paintings in imported gowns, and there is no rumour of discontent or divorce.

Meanwhile, Clarence, who was so opposed to her marriage because it was loveless, is making a mess of his own love-match, through his jealousy.

You, who knew him to be insanely jealous as a lover, and who seemed to be flattered with what you thought a proof of his devotion, appeal to me now to know what to do with the husband who is destroying your love and your happiness! Surely, if Elise knew of this she might well say, “He laughs best who laughs last.”

I know that you were absorbed in Clarence for the first year of your married life, and that you gave no least cause for any jealousy, and I know, as you say, that even then he was often morbid and unhappy over nothing at all.

He was jealous even of girl friends and relatives, and if you attended a matinee with one of them, he sulked the whole evening.

This was little more than he did as a lover, and you should have begun in those days to reason him out of such moods.

You imagined then it was his mad love for you which caused his unreasonable jealousy.

But jealousy is self-love, and selfishness lies at the root of such conditions of mind as his.

A woman should say to a man who sulks or goes into tantrums when she pays courteous attentions to relatives or acquaintances, “You are lowering my ideal of you–I cannot love a man who will indulge such unworthy moods. You insult my womanhood and doubt my principles by your suspicions; you intimate that I have neither truth, or judgment, or pride. You must conquer yourself, and learn to trust me and to believe in me, or I must decide I am no woman for you to take as a life companion.” A man should take the same course toward a jealous sweetheart or wife.

A few quiet but firm assertions of this nature, when you were being wooed, would have given Clarence an idea that he could lose you, and that he was making himself ridiculous in your eyes. Instead, you boasted to your friends how wildly infatuated he was, and Clarence took new pride in his own blemish of character.

Now that you have to live day, and night, and week, and month, and year, with this trait, it seems a less romantic phase of devotion, I fancy. But you are not wise to grow reckless and ignore the wishes of your husband in all ways, because he is unreasonable. “Since he is so absolutely impossible to please,” you say, “I may as well please myself. I have decided to take some of the liberties so many of my acquaintances do, and enjoy life outside my home if I cannot enjoy it within.”

Then you proceed to tell me how more than half your associates drive, lunch, and dine with men acquaintances, and how old-fashioned they consider your scruples. And you tell me that, despite your rectitude, Clarence insults you almost daily by his unreasoning jealousy of men, women, and even children.

“I have about made up my mind to be less prudish and enjoy myself, as I am sure Clarence cannot be any more jealous than he is,” you say.

Now since you have asked my advice in the matter, I can only urge you to reconsider this last determination.

So long as you are, according to law and in the eyes of the world, the wife of a man, you cannot escape comment if you are frequently seen in public places alone with another.

Were you to look into the hearts of other men who ask you to dine, drive, or lunch alone with them, you would find a feeling of increased respect when you decline, although they may show only disappointment on the surface. I know that many wives of unblemished reputation accept courtesies of this kind from masculine friends, and I of course understand that circumstances may arise which make an occasional acceptance proper.

But the fewer such occasions, the better and the safer for the married woman. The man who is perfectly willing his wife should appear frequently in public with other men does not fully appreciate the dignity of her position or his own, or else he has lost his love for her.

The fact that your husband is jealous without reason is no excuse for giving him reason. The moment men know that a husband is inclined to jealousy, he falls in their estimation, and they are seized with a desire to aggravate him, while they sympathize with the wife.

The sympathetic friend of the abused wife is a dangerous companion for her. He may mean to be platonic and kind, but almost invariably he becomes sentimental and unsafe.

Once in a thousand times the absolutely happy wife of a husband she respects as well as loves can enjoy a platonic friendship with a man who respects her, and himself, and her husband. But even that situation is liable to prove insecure, if they are much together, owing to the selfishness and weakness of human nature when the barriers of convention are removed.

But the unhappy wife must take no chances with Fate.

She must either decide to accept her lot and bear it with philosophy, or escape from it and begin life over, after the courts have given her the right to reconstruct her destiny.

You know all that entails. It is not a pleasant process.

If your love for your husband is entirely dead, and you feel that he has forfeited all right to your sympathy, pity, or patience, then break the fetters and go free. But if you feel that you are not ready for that ordeal, and that you must still remain living under the same roof with him, and continue to bear his name, then do not join the great army of wives who are to be seen in public restaurants and hotels dining tete-a-tete with “platonic friends” over emptied glasses.

You can but make trouble for yourself and add to the misery of your husband by such a course. In your particular case, I feel that your knowledge of the jealous disposition of the man you married renders it your duty to bear and forbear, and to try every method of reformation before you resort to the very common highway of divorce as an exit from your unhappiness.

A woman has no right to complain of the fault in a husband which she condoned in a lover. And a man has no right to complain of the fault in a wife he condoned in a sweetheart. Yet both may strive to correct that fault.

Insist upon having women and men friends who can be received at your home in presence of your husband. Make Clarence realize how he belittles himself in your estimation by unreasoning jealousy. Give him to understand that you want to love him and respect him, and that you have no intention of lowering your standard of behaviour, because he is constantly expecting you to. Tell him it mortifies you to find greater pleasure away from him than in his presence, yet when he insults you with his suspicions, and destroys your comfort with his moods, you can no longer think of him as your girlhood’s ideal.

Ask him to try, for your sake, to use more common sense and self-control in this matter, and to help you to restore the happiness which seems flying from your wedded lives.

Do nothing to aggravate or irritate him, but do not give up your friends of either sex; this is but to increase his inclination to petty tyranny, while it will in no sense lessen his jealousy.

And when you are alone, endeavour to think of him always as sensible, reasonable, and kind.

By your mental picture you can help to cure him of the blight he received before his birth. It is the task set many a wife, to counteract the errors and neglect of mothers.

Look to the Divine source for help in your work, and remember the lovely qualities Clarence possesses when he is not under the ban of this prenatal mark.

Love him out into the light if you can–and I believe you can if you are not too soon discouraged.

It is a nobler effort to try and create in your husband the ideal you have in your mind, than to go seeking him elsewhere.

Be patient and wait awhile. Such love as you and Clarence felt in your courtship and early marriage cannot so soon have died. It is only sleeping, and suffering from a nightmare. Awaken it to life and reality and happiness.

To Young Mrs. Duncan

_Regarding Mothers-in-Law_

And so the serpent has appeared in your Eden, attired in widow’s weeds, and talking the usual jargon of “devoted mother love.” I do not like to say I told you so, but you must remember our rather spirited discussion of this very serpent, when you announced your engagement and said Mr. Duncan’s mother was to make her home with you after your return from abroad.

I had met Mrs. Duncan, and I knew her type all too well. Alfred is her only child, and she adores him, naturally, but it is adoration so mingled with selfishness and tyranny that it is incapable of considering the welfare of its object.

Mrs. Duncan was always jealous of any happiness which came to her son through another source than herself. That type of mother love is to be encountered every day, and that type of mother believes herself to be the most devoted creature on earth; while the fact is, she sits for ever in the boudoir of her mentality, gazing at her own reflection. She loves her children because they also reflect herself, and is incapable of unselfish pleasure in their happiness apart from her.

You will remember I urged you to wait until you could have a home, however humble, alone with your husband, and even at the cost of that most undesirable condition, a long engagement.

But you assured me with much spirit that you had every confidence in your power to win Mrs. Duncan’s heart, and to crown her declining years with peace and happiness.

As well talk of decking a porcupine with wreaths of flowers, and making it a household pet, to coddle and caress.

When I congratulated Mrs. Duncan on her son’s engagement to such a sweet, bright girl as my cousin, she assumed a martyr expression and said, “She hoped he would be happy, even if her own heart must suffer the pain of losing an only son.”

“But,” I urged, “he really adds to your life by bringing you the companionship of a lovely daughter. My cousin will, I am sure, prove such to you.”

“I have no doubt your cousin is a most estimable girl,” Madame Duncan answered, with dignity, “but I have never yet felt the need of any close companion save my son. You, having no children, are excusable for not understanding my feelings, now when another claims his thoughts.”

“Yet the world is maintained by such occurrences,” I replied. “You took some mother’s son, or you would not have had your own.”

With austere self-righteousness Mrs. Duncan corrected me.

“I married an orphan,” she said.

“How thoughtful of you,” I responded. “But you see it is not lack of thought, only an accident of fate, which has prevented my cousin from marrying an orphan. There are not enough desirable orphans to keep our young women supplied with husbands, you know.”

I think Mrs. Duncan suspected me of covert sarcasm, for she changed the topic of conversation. But I heard her afterward talking to a bevy of women on the sorrow of giving up a child after having reared him to manhood’s estate, and her listeners all seemed duly sympathetic.

Of course, my dear Ruth, there is an element of sadness in the happiest of marriages for the parents of children. I think it is particularly sad when a mother gives up a daughter, whose every thought she has shared, and whose every pleasure she has planned, and sees her embark upon the uncertain ocean of marriage, with a strange pilot at the helm.

The really good and loving mother endears herself to that pilot, and loves him and seeks his affection for her daughter’s sake. She hides her own sorrow in her heart, and does not shadow her daughter’s voyage by her repining.

The man who is worthy of a good girl’s love will understand what it must mean to a mother to give her daughter to him, and he will in every way seek to recompense her for her loss, by bestowing upon her sympathy, courteous attentions, and a son’s devotion.

Just so will the girl, who is worthy of being a good man’s wife, seek to make his mother love her.

I know how you have tried to win Mrs. Duncan’s heart. I know your amiable, sweet disposition, and your unselfishness and tact, and I know how you failed.

I can imagine your feelings when you overheard Mrs. Duncan say to a caller that she was going to leave your house and take rooms elsewhere, as she could not endure your “billing and cooing.”

Do you know, Ruth, that nearly all the trouble between mothers-and daughters-in-law is due to vanity and jealousy.

Fifty mothers are friends to their daughters’ husbands where one is a friend to her son’s wife. That is because, wholly unconsciously to herself, the mother resents another woman sharing the attention of a man she loves. The fact that he is her son, and that the love he gives his wife is a wholly different sentiment, does not prevent blind, unreasoning jealousy from dominating her nature.

Mrs. Duncan wants to stand always in the centre of the stage, with every other woman in the play in the background.

It is a most pathetic situation for a man,–this position between a wife and a jealous mother. My heart always aches for the man in the case even more than for the woman who is misused.

All young men are reared to think mother-love the most unselfish and wonderful devotion on earth, even in the face of facts which so often prove it otherwise; and when a son sees his mother unhappy he is inclined to make every possible excuse for her, because he feels that to take issue against her will put him in a false light before the whole established order of society, and that he will beat his head against traditions wherever he turns.

So, he ofttimes tries to conciliate the wife he has promised to cherish, and to convince her that she may exaggerate matters, and that she may even be the aggressor, and then he finds himself standing between two raging fires, with no escape save through flames, and over hot fagots, which will leave him scarred for life.

Sometimes the wife _is_ in the wrong. Sometimes a man marries a woman who is so narrow and so selfish and so jealous that she begrudges the husband’s mother her son’s affection. But I must affirm that, in my observation of humanity, I have seen but one such wife, where I have seen ten jealous and unreasonable mothers.

And with what pleasure and admiration I recall the few beautiful and noble mothers-in-law I have known! I can count them on the fingers of one hand without including the thumb. I mean mothers of sons.

There are just four whom I can recall. They really loved their sons, and loved whatever and whoever gave those sons happiness.

One mother objected to her son’s choice before marriage, and tried vainly to convince him that he had made a mistake. But after his marriage she took the girl into her heart, made her a companion and friend, and when the son began to discover her glaring faults, she told him to be patient and wait, and that all would be well. Instead of saying, “I told you so,” she said, “Your wife is young, and has had no wise hand to guide her. You married her for love, and if you exercise the love-spirit, and are patient and self-controlled in your treatment of her, she will overcome these faults which annoy you.”

And day by day she called his attention to the pleasing qualities the girl possessed, and by praise, tact, love, and sympathy bridged over the threatened chasm.

The couple live happily together to-day, thanks to the mother-in-law. Oh, that there were more such mothers of sons!

Be as patient and sweet as you can, dear Ruth, toward Mrs. Duncan; think how difficult the situation is for your husband, and say or do nothing to make it harder for him. But allow Mrs. Duncan to live by herself, and, if need be, bear many privations cheerfully that she may do so, and that you may have your own home in peace. Every wife is entitled to that, and if she has made every possible effort which love and tact can make to cast the seven devils of jealousy out of her mother-in-law, and they still remain, it is for the general welfare that two separate households exist.

When a son has done all he can in reason to make his mother happy, save to turn against the wife he has promised to cherish, he is a cad and a weakling if he does the latter. He must learn that it is a larger duty to be a just man than to be an obedient son.

I am sure Mr. Duncan will have the character and judgment to do what is right in this matter.

To a Young Man

_Ambitious for Literary Honours_

Your achievements in college, where you distinguished yourself in rhetoric and literature, would justify you in thinking seriously of a career as an author.

And the fact that your father wishes you to take charge of his brokerage business, and to relinquish your literary aspirations, should not deter you from carrying out your ambitions.

Prom your mother you inherit a mind and temperament which wholly unfit you for the pursuits your father follows and enjoys. You are no more suited to make a successful broker than he is fitted to write an Iliad.

Try and make him understand this, and try and convince him that to yield to his wishes in this matter, means the sacrifice of your tastes, the waste of your talents, and the destruction of your happiness.

If he cannot be convinced by your consistent and respectful arguments, then you must quietly, but firmly, refuse to accept a career distasteful to you.

No parent has a right to drive a child into so undesirable a path for life as this would prove to one of your nature.

Your father would think the horticulturist insane, who took a delicate fern and planted it in arid soil, on a hilltop, far from shade, and expected it to thrive and bear blossoms like the cactus.

Yet this would be no more unreasonable, than to expect a son of your temperament and inclinations to be happy and successful in Wall Street.

It is a curious study to watch parents, and to observe their utter lack of knowledge regarding a child’s nature and capabilities; and to find them not only ignorant in those important matters, but unwilling to be enlightened.

You say it makes your father angry to have any one refer to your literary talents.

I remember when your father bred race-horses, and how proud he was that a two-year-old colt showed traits and points noticeably like its high-priced dam.

He chose for your mother, a woman of rare mind, and of poetic taste, and why should he not be proud and glad that his son resembles her? When will fathers learn that sons are more frequently like their mothers, and daughters like their fathers, than otherwise?

The temporary dissatisfaction of your father is not so sad to contemplate as your own lifelong disappointment if you accede to his wishes in this matter.

Each individual has a right to choose his own career in life, so long as that career is respectable and bodes no evil to humanity.

If, as your father threatens, he refuses to give you support while you are exploring the field of literature, you should feel grateful to him for this unintentional incentive to success.

I do not agree with those who consider the necessity to earn money a misfortune to genius.

I believe the greatest works of art given to the world have been brought to light through necessity.

The artistic temperament is almost invariably combined with a propensity to dream, and to float upon the clouds of imagination.

The ranks of wealth and comfort are full of talented and accomplished people who “never are, but always to be” great.

One great man in a score may have been reared in affluence, but I doubt if the statistics would show so large a percentage.

There are many hills which contain valuable ore, but if the owner sits in ease upon these elevations, and gazes at the sunsets, he does not find the ore. If he is a poor man, and takes his pick and _digs_, he finds his fortune.

At first he may cast out only loose earth and stones, but by this very necessity to find valuables, he continues to search until the ore is reached.

Were you to remain at home and enjoy all the benefits of your father’s wealth, I doubt if you would have the persistence to dig down into the mine you possess within you.

You would sit on the hilltop and dream.

If you are forced to write to live, you may cast up some rubbish from the surface; yet by the continual digging you will reveal all that lies below.

Regarding the style you speak of adopting, let your feeling come _first_, your style of expressing that feeling _second_. Say nothing merely to exhibit your style–and hold back some strong feelings until you can give them the best expression.

As to the methods of getting your work before the public and the “influence” you need, I can only assure you that unless you write with purpose, and power, and passionate enjoyment of your art, forgetful of all things save your desire to express yourself, no influence on earth can do more than give you a page in a magazine, or a column in a newspaper for an occasion or two. And if you do write under those conditions, you will need no influence: for it is just such writing the world wants; and the editors and publishers will be forced to read you, whether they are inclined to or not.

Christopher Columbus found his continent because he was so determined, so persistent, so certain that unknown lands awaited him.

It made no difference who told him that all the earth had been discovered, and that he would never be able to succeed in his wild venture. His purpose was too strong to be influenced by the doubts of others.

It has always seemed to me that God would have made a continent to reward such a search, had it not already existed.

Unless you set forth on the sea of literature, with the spirit of a Columbus in your soul, you may as well give up the idea of finding the Port of Glory. If you do set forth with that spirit, you need ask no mortal influence.

God is the only influence genius needs.

Perseverance the only method.

To find the way to success alone, is the test of talent.

Some influential author might give you the entree once to a magazine. But editors and publishers are men of purely business instincts, and they will not accept work on the recommendation of any third party, which they think their public will not like. Their constant effort is to find what that public _does like_, and the unknown author has an equal advantage with the genius, if he sends such material.

An author once told me that he “trapped” twenty manuscripts and sent them out to editors, and all came back unread, as his “trap” proved.

Since he sent them forth with such doubts in his mind, it is no wonder his trap succeeded and his manuscripts failed.

No great literary fire of purpose could be in the mind of a man who spent thought and time on such a plot to trick an editor. And because there was no great flame, the inanimate manuscripts were returned unread. For even a package of paper sends out its “aura,” and invites or repels attention.

If you are discouraged by the people who tell you that “everything has been written,” and that you can only be a faint echo of greater souls, then you do not deserve success. I have no doubt the croakers of that day told Shakespeare the same.

It seems that Shakespeare did take many old themes and other people’s plots and ideas to re-create in his own way. And what a way! Surely he who best uses an idea is most entitled to the credit.

There is nothing new under the sun, but there is always the new audience. For the majestic old poem of Spring, bound over in new covers of green, God creates fresh, eager young eyes and hearts each year. And not yet has he said to the year, “Do not attempt another spring–there have been so many before, you can but repeat their beauties.” Then why should any mortal say to the poet or the author, “Do not try to write–it has all been said before.”

Proceed, my young friend, and write what is in your heart. Nothing quite the same was ever in any heart before, and yet the greater part of it has been in all hearts, and will be in all hearts, so long as the world lasts.

Remember that when you write from the heart, it will go to the hearts of your readers: and when you write from your head it will go no lower than the head.

And if the critics score or ridicule you, consider yourself on the path to success.

If you have a message for the world, nothing and nobody can prevent you from delivering it.

He only fails who has nothing to say.

To Mrs. McAllister

_Concerning Her Little Girl_

How strange it seems that your daughter is ten years old.

It is such a brief hour since you wrote me you were eighteen and had entered Vassar. Having no children of my own to stand as milestones on life’s highway, and keeping a very young heart in my breast all these years, it seems at times little less than impertinent in the children I have known to develop so rapidly into matrons and fathers.

I am glad for you that the doctor has reached the desirable goal where he can rest from his laborious profession for two years, and take that journey abroad you have so long contemplated. And I am glad that you feel the satisfaction you say you do, in never having left him alone for a whole season as you once thought of doing.

A satisfied conscience is a better comrade to journey along beside, than a remembered pleasure.

But now about Genevieve.

You tell me she is to be left with your sister, and that she will, for the first time, attend the public school.

You are right in thinking this will make her more American in spirit than an education gained through home teaching or private schools.

The girl who attends private schools only, is almost invariably inoculated with the serum of aristocracy.

She believes herself a little higher order of being than the children who attend public schools, and it requires continual association with people of broad common sense to counteract this influence. I know you and the doctor have exerted this influence, but your sister might not realize the necessity of making a special effort in that direction.

Then, too, since the fathers or grandfathers of our most conspicuous social leaders were self-made and self-taught, and since our American society is composed of so many varied types of humanity, it is well for a young girl to come in contact with all classes while she is yet a child, that she may understand humanity as she is sure to encounter it later. Yet, as you say, it is indeed a serious thought to know your little rosebud of a child is to be tossed into the dust of the public schoolroom.

“I do not want the delicate leaves forced into premature blossom or blight,” you say, and I feel for you, as I read the words.

You remember your own experience as a school-child in the country, and you tell me you would fain guard your daughter from hearing or seeing much that came to your ears and eyes as a school-child.

But now, my dear Winifred, listen.

It is utterly and absolutely impossible for you to keep Genevieve ignorant of _life_, or of the great fundamental principles of life. It is utterly useless to undertake to ignore the set impulse in all nature. Since God did not ignore it in constructing the universe, parents cannot afford to in educating children. The one thing to do is to teach your child early to respect and revere the subject, and to regard all things pertaining to birth as sacred, never to be lightly discussed. Wherever the eyes of an observing child turn, they see something to arouse curiosity upon this subject.

All literature (the Bible particularly) contains some reference to sex and birth. Unless you stuff the ears of children with cotton, they must hear expressions, suggestions, and references, which necessitate explanations of the same vital subject. From insects to man, through all the various kingdoms, sex laws are the foundation of life.

Why parents have chosen to taboo this important subject, and why they surround it with falsehood and subterfuge, and suggest that it is unclean or vulgar, has always puzzled me.

Inconceivable harm, lifelong disaster, has befallen many a girl and many a boy through this mistaken attitude of parents to God’s basic law of the universe.

Genevieve is only ten. But she is a child with a most inquiring mind, and she already indicates a tendency to coquetry. She prefers boys to dolls, and evidently finds them more interesting than girls.

The things you would guard her from knowing, she is sure to learn in some undesirable and unfortunate manner, unless you prepare her for them with loving delicacy and refinement.

My suggestion is that you take a plant, and talk to her about its growth. Tell her how it springs from a seed, and hides in the bosom of the earth, expanding until it bursts through, and becomes the baby of mother earth.

Tell her, too, of the bird life in the egg, and make her realize the mother-impulse in all nature. Then say to her that she is a part of it all and that she came into life by the same divine law, and that when she is older you will explain whatever puzzles her young mind.

Tell her that she was carried under your heart, as the sprout was carried in the bosom of mother earth, and that it is a very holy and beautiful thing; so holy and so beautiful that the refined and sweet people of the world do not talk freely of the subject, but keep it like a religion, for those very near to them.

Then say, You will hear other children, who have not been told this by their mothers, speak rudely and even jest on this subject. They are to be pitied, for not knowing such jests are vulgar, but you must walk away from them, and refuse to listen, after telling them your mother has explained all you need to know. Impress upon her that she is never to discuss the topic with any one else, unless you advise her to do so.

I have known only two mothers who took this method with their children, but both succeeded in rearing beautiful and remarkable daughters and sons. For the sons were included in the talk by one mother, and they were ideal boys and gentlemen–popular with, and respected by their comrades, in spite of their delicacy and reserve on subjects jested over by other boys.

I am sure that you can protect Genevieve from the soil and shock you fear for her, by making her your confidante at this early age, and by convincing her of your loving companionship in the future. Under no other conditions would I for one day allow a little girl (or a little boy for that matter) to attend a public school. Not one parent in a thousand realizes the moral dangers surrounding small children who go to and from school in country or city places.

Many remember their own precocious education on forbidden topics, yet seem to imagine their children will be immune from such experiences.

But until the Creator produces life by some new process, children will never be exempt from curiosity regarding the present method, and parents may as well realize the fact and become their children’s reverent instructors, instead of leaving them to be taught God’s holiest truths by vulgar chance or dreadful design.

Do not imagine that innocence necessitates ignorance.

Your child will be far more innocent minded, if you give her the instruction I suggest, than if you leave her to ungoverned imagination and unenlightened observation.

Deep in each human entity the sex impulse is planted, and will assert itself sooner or later.

Ignorance and curiosity lead often to precocious development of the impulse. By proper care on your part, your child’s mind may be kept normal, innocent, and wholesome.

See to it that you give this important care before you leave.

To Mr. Ray Gilbert

_Attorney at Law, Aged Thirty_

My dear Mr. Gilbert:–Your letter followed me across the ocean, and chanced to be the first one opened and read in my weighty home mail to-day. I have lost all trace of you during the last six years, in that wonderful way people can lose sight of one another in a large city. Once or twice I heard you had just left some social function as I arrived, or was expected just as I was leaving, and once, recently, I saw you across the house at a first night, with a very pretty girl at your side. I fancy this is the “one woman in the world for you,” of whom you speak in the letter before me–the letter written the evening before your marriage. How good you are to carry out my request made seven years ago, and to write me this beautiful letter, after reading over and burning your former boyish epistle, returning to me my reply.

It is every man’s duty to himself, his bride, and the other woman, to destroy all evidences of past infatuations and affections, before he enters the new life. It is every woman’s duty to do the same–_with a reservation_. Since men demand so much more of a wife than a wife demands of a husband, a woman is wise to retain any proof in her possession that some man has been an honourable suitor for her hand. She should make no use of such evidence, unless the unaccepted lover indulges in disrespectful comments or revengeful libels, as some men are inclined to when the fruit for which they reached is picked by another hand.

And it is when the grapes are called sour that the evidence may prove effective of their having been thought sweet and desirable.

It is a curious fact that no woman thinks less of a man for his having had his vain infatuations, and that all men think less of a woman if she has loved without response.

Therefore, it behoves her to destroy no evidence that the other man, not herself, was the discarded party.

But woe unto the man who retains old love-letters, or other tokens of dead loves and perished desires.

Few men could be guilty of showing or repeating the contents of another man’s love-letters. Women who are models of virtue and goodness have been known to make public the letters written a man in earlier years by another object of his affections. I have to my personal knowledge known a woman to place before the eyes of a third person, lines written evidently in the very heart’s blood of a former sweetheart of her husband–words the man believed he had destroyed with other letters, more than a score of years before. Imagine what the feelings of that early sweetheart, now a happy and beloved wife, would be, did she know the words written so long ago were spread before cold and critical eyes, and discussed by two people who could have no comprehension of the conditions and circumstances which led to their expression.

Because I know otherwise tender-hearted and good women are capable of such acts, I am glad you have obeyed my wish of seven years ago, and that all proofs of your boyish infatuation for an older woman are destroyed. You say you have told the girl you love that you once were foolishly fond of me, and that I helped you to higher ideals of womanhood and life.

That is wise and well, since you found her to be broad and sensible enough to share such a confidence. But had she seen your written words to me and my reply, it would have been less agreeable to her than to hear your own calm recital of the now dead passion.

Words written in a state of high-wrought intensity retain a sort of phosphoric luminosity, like certain decaying substances, and even after the passage of years, and when the emotions which gave them expression are dead and for-gotten, they seem to emit life and feeling.

_Burn your bridges as you walk along the highways of romance to St. Benedict’s land_.

Since you compliment me by saying I have helped you to higher ideals of life, will you allow me to give you a little advice regarding your treatment of your wife?

You have every reason to know that I have been a happy and well-loved wife of the man of my choice. You know that I have neither sought nor accepted the attentions of other men when they crossed the danger-line lying between friendship and love.

Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time you temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young and talented man with so sincere a feeling.

A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult, since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtation with a married woman means. But your ingenuousness, and your romantic, boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, and made me lenient toward you.

My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment of feminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it led me to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman’s weakness and folly.

As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misused wife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for the recognition of an affinity.

Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, how acceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me.

And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning that we were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions.

There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man’s unruly love for her, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard a lawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, and neglected, and hungry for affection.

See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs no romance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment.

Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget to pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover.

Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures and interests when it is possible.

Not that you should always be together, for separate enjoyments and occupations sometimes lend an added zest to life for husband and wife, but do not drift apart in all your ideas and interests, as have so many married people.

You are the husband of a bright and lovely girl, and if you forget this fact after a time, remember there are other Ray Gilberts who may realize it, and seek to awaken such an interest in her heart as you sought to arouse in mine.

You found the room occupied by its rightful host.

See it that no man finds the room vacant in your wife’s heart.

Study the art of keeping your wife interested and interesting.

A woman thrives on love and appreciation. I know a beautiful bride of eighty years, who has been the daily adoration of her husband for more than half a century.

She has been “infinite in her variety,” and he has never failed to appreciate and admire.

Devote a portion of each day to talking to your wife about herself.

Then she will not find it a novelty when other men attempt the same method of entertainment.

Whatever other matters engross your time and attention, let your wife realize that she stands first and foremost in your thoughts and in your heart.

Do not forget the delicacies of life, manner, speech, and deportment in the intimacy of daily companionship.

Never descend to the vulgar or the commonplace.

One characteristic of men has always puzzled me. No matter how wide has been a bachelor’s experience with the wives and daughters of other men, when he marries it never occurs to him that his wife or daughters could meet temptation or know human weakness.

It must be the egotism of the sex.

Each man excuses the susceptibility of the women with whom he has had romantic episodes, on the ground of his especial power or charm. And when he marries, he believes his society renders all the women of his family immune from other attractions.

Do not rely upon the fact that your wife is legally bound to you, and therefore need not be wooed by you hereafter.

There are women who are born anew with each dawn, and who must be won anew with each day, or the lover loses some precious quality than can never be regained.

It will pay you to study your wife as the years pass.

Do not take for granted that you know her to-day, because you knew her thoroughly last year.

This is a long letter, but when one writes only once in seven years, brevity is not to be expected.

My greeting to you, and may the years be weaver’s hands, which shall interlace and bind two lives into one complete pattern.

To the Sister of a Great Beauty

I am far from laughing, my dear girl, at your assertion that your position is little short of tragic.

To be the ordinary sister of an extraordinary beauty, is a position which calls for the exercise of all the great virtues in order to be borne with dignity, good taste, and serenity.

I remember seeing you and Pansy when you were ten and she twelve years of age. I foresaw what lay before you then, and have often wondered how you would meet the occasion when you were both “finished,” and at home under the same roof, and socially launched. It was wise for your mother to separate you so early in life, and place you under different teachers, and in different schools.

It is difficult for a girl in her late childhood and early teens to use philosophy and religion to support her, when she is made a Cinderella by unthinking associates and friends, and forgotten and neglected while a more attractive sister is lionized.

Had you always walked in the shadow of your handsome sister until to-day, I fancy your disposition would have become warped with resentment and envy.

And perhaps your feelings for Pansy would have been less affectionate than now.

I am glad to have you tell me that Pansy is so modest and unassuming and so genuinely solicitous for your happiness.

She must have been particularly fortunate in her environment while at school to possess such qualities after knowing as she has known for twenty-two years that her beauty is dazzling to the eye of even the chance beholder.

There is no greater obstacle to the development of the best qualities in a young woman than the possession of such unusual beauty. From her cradle she is made to realize its power, and men and women teach her in a thousand unconscious ways to be selfish and self-centred. She receives attentions, and her acquaintance is sought, with no effort on her part, while more gifted and deserving companions are unnoticed. She is made to realize that she is one to be served, where less attractive girls are taught to “stand and wait.”

The love nature of each human being is either developed or stunted by neglect during the early years of life, and, as a rule, the beautiful woman is incapable of a deep, absorbing, and unselfish love, because she has grown up the receiver instead of the giver.

Were you, my dear Sallie, to know the number of great beauties who have failed to find happiness in marriage, you would be amazed. But the explanation is simple; for man is a being who, however he may worship beauty before marriage, worships his own comfort more deeply afterward. And it is rare indeed when a famous beauty troubles herself to plan for the comfort or happiness of the man she marries. It is the natural result of her education to think man made to adore and serve her.

I hope Pansy may keep her loving and lovable qualities, and that she may marry before the adoration and admiration of many men become necessary to her life. For the beauties’ matrimonial barque most often founders on the reef of plural lovers.

As for yourself, I can only suggest that you acquire many accomplishments, and perfect yourself in music and languages, and that you seek for the attainment of all the subtle graces, which are, in the long run, more lasting as sources of happiness for a woman than mere beauty. It is a peculiarly significant fact that the great passions of history have not been inspired by very young or startlingly beautiful women, but by those of maturity and mental charms.

Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Aspasia, Petrarch’s Laura, had all crossed the line between youth and middle life, and there are no authentic proofs that any one of the number was a dazzling beauty. Some of the world’s most alluring women have been absolutely plain.

You are not plain. It is only by comparison that you so regard yourself.

There is much you can do to make yourself more attractive personally. You know what Rochefoucauld said: “No woman is in fault for not being beautiful at sixteen; any woman is in fault if she is not beautiful at forty.”

However much it may sound like a platitude, it is a great and eternal truth that your mental activities are chiselling your features. By keeping yourself concerned with good, gracious, and great thoughts, you are shaping your face into a noble beauty minute by minute, and hour by hour.

Avoid as much as possible looking at repulsive and ugly objects.

Look at whatever is beautiful and seek for it.

Search for whatever is admirable in nature and human nature, and muse upon those things in your moments of solitude.

Cultivate love-thoughts for humanity at large.

Avoid severe criticisms, and develop sympathy and pity in your soul. Study the comfort and pleasure of strangers in public places, and friends and associates in nearer relations.

Remember always how brief a thing, and ofttimes sad, life is to many, and seek to brighten and better it as you pass along.

Meanwhile, take care of your person, study your lines and your features, and learn how to dress and how to carry yourself; how to obtain “presence,” that indescribable charm in woman.

Take daily care of your complexion, which to a woman is of prime importance.

Call in the skill of the specialist to help you preserve and beautify your skin and hair, just as the dentist and the oculist are to be consulted to help you preserve teeth and eyes. Think beauty for mind, soul, and body; live it, and believe it is your right.

And just as surely as you pursue this line of conduct for ten years, just so surely will you find yourself at thirty far more attractive than at twenty, and at forty more lovely than at thirty. Learn to be a linguist, and acquire skill upon some one instrument, that you may entertain those who care to converse, and give pleasure to those who wish to be silent.

You are young, and life with its splendid possibilities is before you. There is nothing a woman with youth, will-power, and _love_ may not accomplish–even to the convincing of the world that she is beautiful, when her mirror may say otherwise.

For enduring and all-encompassing beauty is a composite thing, and unless a woman possesses the spiritual and mental portions, the physical phase soon loses its attractions for the cultivated eye; while with the development of the first two, the third is certain to come.

Begin to-day, my dear girl, to _grow beauty_ which shall make you a power and an influence in the world where you move, and which shall invite, rather than fear, the approach of time.

To Mrs. White Peak

_One of the Pillars of Respectable Society_

Ever since your call and our conversation regarding Sybyl Marchmont, I have felt a rising tide of indignation. It has reached the perigee mark and must overflow. If it reaches you and gives you a thorough soaking, I shall feel satisfied.

I have always known you were only half-developed. There are many such people in the world. They serve their purpose and often do much good. They miss a great deal of life, but as they rarely know that they miss anything, it is a waste of sentiment to pity them.

I have pitied you, nevertheless. I have often wished I could give you the vital qualities you lack.

My pity turned to indignation when I heard you express yourself in such unqualified terms of condemnation regarding other women who happened to be unlike you in temperament.

You say there is a certain line which no well-born and womanly woman can pass in thought or feeling or action.

You regard the true women of earth as a higher and rarer order of creation than the best of men, and any woman who by action or word confesses herself to be quite human in her temperament, you feel is, to a certain extent, “unclean and unsexed.” You believe the really good women of earth are always on a plane above and beyond the physical. When any woman falls from her pedestal you despise her.

How dare you, madam, sitting in your cold, white chastity, lay down laws of what you consider purity, morality, and cleanliness, for other human souls?

How dare you condemn those who do not reach your standard?

What do you know of life, great, palpitating, throbbing, vital life, terrible and beautiful life, terrible while passing through the valleys of temptation, beautiful upon the heights of self-control?

How dare you assume greater virtue, greater respectability, greater fineness of sentiment, than the tempest-tossed, passion-beaten souls, about you?

What do you know of real virtue, real strength?

You have been poor, you tell me, in worldly riches, and you have been lonely, yet you have never once degraded your womanhood by an “unworthy ” impulse. Never known a temptation of the senses. Those things disgusted you.

You have preferred toil to taking favours from inferiors, and you have kept yourself clean in thought, word, and deed, and now you have the reward of such virtues–a good home, a husband, and children.

You are a more devoted mother than wife, as you have always dwelt upon a lofty white peak of chaste womanhood, from which any descent into the earthly realms of life and love was repugnant–so rarely “pure” and high your nature.

Yet you have been a dutiful, loyal wife, and you are a devoted mother.

You despise all carnal-minded women, and cannot understand how women fall–save that they lack good birth and breeding.

You will aid in a benefit for their reformation, but you do not want to see them or to come near them. It makes you ill.

You are to be congratulated on never having added to the evil in the world.

But permit me, madam, to tell you some truths about yourself–and the large army of “respectable women” you represent.

However “well born” you may be, you are only half-born. The complete human being has three sides to his nature–spiritual, mental, physical.

The men and women who are evenly developed on the three sides are few. This is sometimes their fault–sometimes their misfortune.

We all pity the human being who is mentally dwarfed. We are sorry for the one whose spiritual nature is undeveloped.

But why should the many women who are devoid of the physical qualities of human nature presume to lay claim to perfection and to regard the normal woman as a suspicious character?

You have a fine, active mind, a highly spiritual nature, but you are stunted in strong, physical emotion. You are incapable of it, and pride yourself upon the fact.

If that pleases you, well and good.

But how dare you criticize God’s _complete human_ beings, who feel the great vibrations of the universe, who glow and thrill with that divine creative force, who live a thousand lives and die a thousand deaths before they learn the glory of self-conquest.

How dare you shrink even from those who fall by the wayside, and call your shrinking “purity”!

Let me ask you another question:

How dare you turn away from that girl who went through the door of the Magdalene Home you helped establish, with her fatherless child in her arms?

She fell from woman’s holy estate!

Yes, through mad love for a man–she loved him with her soul, her mind, her body. She lacked knowledge, balance, and wisdom; she had only love and passion.

And you, madam, how about _your_ children?

They were born of a “dutiful” wife. You descended from your lofty altitude unwillingly–only at duty’s call. You are so “refined,” yet you are a loving mother and pose as the highest type of woman.

_God never made in his whole universe of worlds such a “duty” as unwilling motherhood_. Motherhood without the call of sex for sex is indecent–criminal. You, too, madam, _fell_.

That girl in yonder “home” your “charity” helped establish, who loved unwisely, fell. Her fall was through love–yours through a legal ceremony.

All the churches, all the religions and the laws of earth, cannot make motherhood holy and right without the mutual mental, spiritual, and physical union of two beings.

Heaven and earth _both_ must sanction a child’s conception to produce a “well-born” soul.

There is no greater sin on earth than the creation of a human life without complete accord of the creators.

No wonder the world is full of miserable half-born beings, when mothers like _you_ claim to be the Madonnas of earth.

No wonder natural, complete, striving souls hide their true natures under a false exterior, when women like _you_ rule church and society.

What shame or degradation is there, pray, in being animate with the all-pervading impulse which underlies the entire universe? Every planet, every tree, every flower, every insect, is the result of sex seeking sex, atom calling atom.

The universe _is_ because of the law of sex attraction.

And you, poor, puny, pallid woman, dare decry and despise that law, and dare insult God’s animate creature!

Know this, madam, there is no strength worth boasting that has not conquered weakness. No virtue worth the name that has not conquered temptation. No greatness of character that has not overcome unworthy impulses.

Enjoy your negative goodness and be glad you are “good.”

Morality is acceptable to the world, however it conies; but dare not sit in judgment on other human beings fighting battles whose smoke never reaches your nostrils, striving for heights of which you never even dream, and who meanwhile have missed certain degradations which you seem to consider creditable achievements.

Madam, I bid you adieu. That word means “I commend you to God,” the God who made the two sexes, and intended love to unite them.

May He enlighten you in other lives, if not in this.

To Maria Owens

_A New Woman Contemplating Marriage_

Surprise, I am free to confess, was my dominant emotion on reading your letter. Marriage and Maria had never associated themselves in my mind, fond as I am of alliteration.

Never in the ten years I have known you have I heard you devote ten minutes to the subject of any man’s good qualities. You always have discoursed upon men’s faults and vices, and upon their tendency, since the beginning of time, to tyrannize over woman. I was unable to disprove many of your statements, for I know the weight of argument is upon your side, even while I boldly confess my admiration and regard for men, as a class, is greater than that for women.

The fact that the world has allowed men such latitude, and such license, and made them pay such very small penalties, comparatively speaking, for very large offences, causes me to admire their wonderful achievements in noble living all the more: and to place the man of unblemished reputation and unquestioned probity on a pedestal higher than any I could yet ask builded for woman.

It is more difficult to be great before the extended tentacles of the self-indulgence octopus than in the face of oppression and danger. When the laws of the land and the sentiment of the people permit a man to be selfish, licentious, tyrannical, and yet call him great if he accomplishes heroic deeds, it proves what intrinsic worth must lie in the nature of those who attain the heights of unselfishness and benevolence, and martyrdom, asking no reward and often receiving none until posterity bestows it.

Those who can take the broad road of selfishness unmolested, and choose the narrow path of high endeavour instead, seem to me greater than those who overcome mere externals.

Many such men have existed, and the steady, slow, but certain progress of the world from barbarism to civilization, from accepted cannibalism and slavery to ideals of brotherhood, we owe to them. All new discoveries, all greatest achievements are due to men. Woman, I know, has been handicapped and oppressed for centuries by superstitions, and traditions, and unjust laws; but it is unfair to ignore the bright, and see only the dark side of the picture, which the centuries have painted for us, on the background of time.

This letter is only a resume of many conversations between you and me, and it leads up to the explanation of why I am somewhat dazed and stunned by your announcement that marriage is a possible event in your near future.

My self-conceit in regard to my knowledge of human nature every now and then receives a blow. So soon as I have arrived at a positive conviction that I understand any human being thoroughly, and feel that I can safely predict what that person will or will not do, I usually meet some such bewildering experience as this.

I would have laughed at any one who suggested the possibility of your considering a proposition of marriage.

You tell me you are thirty-five years old, and say you have never before met the man to whom your thoughts reverted, no matter how you endeavoured to occupy yourself with other subjects. You also tell me “he is not like other men.” These two statements are wonderfully familiar to me, indeed they have been confided to me in precisely the same words by at least a score of women, young and not so young, who met the compelling man. _Maria, I believe you are in love_. Your heart is awakened from its stupor, caused by an overdose of intellect. For too much intellect is often a drug which deadens the consciousness of a woman’s heart. But you have been drugged so long that you are still under a hazy spell, to judge from that portion of your letter which took the form of an inquiry.

You ask my opinion in regard to the point of disagreement between you and your semi-fiance. To much that you say I agree. You have carved a name and a place for yourself in the world. Your lectures, and your books, have made your name familiar to many people. Your lover is unknown to the public, a man in the private walks of life. Therefore you think if he loves you as he should to become your husband, he ought to give up his own name and take yours, or at least add yours to his own. You assure me it is merely a matter of habit, that women have obliterated themselves on the altar of marriage, and that it is time a new order was instituted. You think the hour calls for pioneers to establish new boundaries, in a new world where woman will be allowed to keep her individuality after marriage. Meantime your lover does not feel that you really love him, when you ask him to take this somewhat radical step for your sake, or for the sake of all women, as you put it.

And there you both stand, with only this ridiculous barrier between you and happiness.

You are still influenced by the intellectual drug, and it hinders your heart from following out its best impulses. You have not yet learned more than the A B C of love, or you would know that the greatest happiness in loving lies in sacrifice. To take and not give, to gain something and give up nothing, is not loving. Now I think I hear you saying, “But why should not my lover give this proof of devotion as well as I? Why should not he be ready to sacrifice a tradition, and a name, to please me? Why am I more unloving, or selfish, than he, to refuse to give up my name?”

My answer follows.

Any woman who asks a man to give up his name and take hers (unless some great legal matter which involves the property rights of others hangs on so doing) asks him to make himself ridiculous in the eyes of the world. She indicates, also, that her family name and her own achievements are dearer to her than his. No woman loves a man enough to be happy as his wife, if he is not dearer to her than any mere personal success, however great.

The man who asks a woman to take his name obeys a tradition and a custom, to be sure, and the woman who accepts it does not display any especially heroic trait. Therefore, what you demand of your lover is a far greater proof of devotion than what he asks of you. No woman who fully understood the meaning of love could ask this of her future husband. If he occupied the place in her life which a husband should, no matter what were her personal attainments, she would glory in adding his name to her own, and in having its shelter to hide under at times from the glare of publicity.

Should you choose to keep your name Maria Owens with no addition, for your lectures and your books, it is quite probable your husband would not object. And again, if your achievements are worth the thought you give them in this matter, they are great enough to endure even should you add the name of Chester to that of Owens. But certainly, if you love the man you think of marrying, you will be happy in the thought of wearing his name legally and socially in every-day life, and the sight of a card engraved, “Mrs. Rupert Chester,” will give your heart a sweeter thrill than it has ever known in connection with the newspaper notices of Maria Owens.

Unless you can arouse your heart to such an understanding of love, you are not yet acquainted with the little god. If your lover consents to the sacrifice you have demanded, he will indicate a weakness of character which augurs ill for the future: and if you insist upon the sacrifice, you will establish a selfish precedent which can only make you a tyrant in your own domain, and at the same time belittle your husband in the public eye.

However proud and happy you may be in the thought of noble achievements of your own, you must realize that there are many brutal and painful phases to a public career for a woman. These phases do not exist to any such degree for a man. I do not believe it is the result of tradition or habit, but of sex and temperament, that this difference exists, and that the shelter of a man’s name means more to woman than any shelter to be found in her own, and that the sacrifice of her own name means less to her than the sacrifice of his means to him. Unless you can reach this same conclusion, do not marry–for you do not love.

To Mrs. St. Claire

_The Young Divorcee_

And so you have joined the increasing army of the divorcees.

It is worse than useless to discuss again the causes which led to this situation, and now that the law of the land has made you a free woman, the one thing for you to consider is your future, and to formulate to some degree a code of conduct for your guidance.

You are in the prime of beautiful womanhood, pleasing to the eye, and agreeable to the mind. Women will regard you with more or less mental reservation, and men will seek you at every opportunity.

Some witty creature has said, “A little widow is a dangerous thing.”

It might be added, “A grass widow whets the appetites of bovines”.

You will find yourself at a loss to choose when an escort is needed, so many and persistent will be the applicants for the position.

After having passed through the black waters of an unhappy marriage, this sudden freedom and return to the privileges of girlhood will be liable to affect you like the glare of sunlight after confinement in a dark room.

You will be blinded for a time. It would be well for you to walk slowly, and to use a cane of common sense, and even to feel your way with the outstretched hands of discretion, until you become accustomed to the light.

To fall and scar yourself now, would be a disaster.

It is a curious fact that a woman who has been unhappy with one man usually finds many others ready to give her the opportunity for a repetition of her experience. And it is equally curious that one unhappy marriage frequently leads to another.

A disastrous rencontre with Hymen seems to destroy a woman’s finer intuitions. If you feel that you must marry again, go slowly, and wait until the bruised tendrils of your heart have healed and are rooted in healthy soil. Do not let them twine about any sort of a dead tree or frail reed. Run no chance of a second sorrow.

One divorce always contains elements of tragedy. A second becomes a farce.

You tell me that you and your former husband entertain the kindest feeling for each other. You have seen him and talked with him on several occasions, and you regard him as a friend. You say all love and sentiment perished long before your separation, and that to continue as his wife was to die a thousand deaths daily.

You tell me that your own higher development demanded this separation. I know such situations do exist in the world of men and women, and that to submit to them is a crime. Yet I also know that this idea of “development” is used often as a cloak for all sorts of selfish impulses and moods.

Many men and women to-day seem to forget that certain other objects besides happiness enter into self-development.

It is not only the pilot who deserts the ship and swims ashore who saves his life. The one who keeps his hand on the wheel, and his eye on the lighthouse, he, too, sometimes saves his own life, as well as saves the ship.

But since to jump overboard was the only way to save your own life, now that you are ashore, and dry, and comfortable, your first consideration should be to avoid falling into mires and pits as you go along.

Though romance died out of your marriage, do not let it die out of your heart. It is commendable that you feel no bitterness or resentment toward your husband. But do not carry your kindly feelings toward him to the extent of frequent association and comradeship.

Outside of criminal situations, life offers no more ghastly and unpleasant picture than that of dead passion galvanized into a semblance of friendship, and going about the world devoid of the strong elements of either sentiment.

There is something radically wrong with a woman’s ideals when she does not feel an instinctive unwillingness to be thrown with the man from whom she has been divorced.

There is something akin to degeneracy in the man or woman who can contemplate without shrinking the intimate encounter of legally parted husbands or wives.

The softening of the human brain is a terrible malady.

Quite as terrible is the hardening of the human heart.

The loss of happiness is deemed a tragedy. But far greater is the tragedy when the illusive charm of romance departs, and love and marriage are reduced to the commonplace. Unless you find the man who carries your whole nature by storm, and who makes you feel that life without him will be insupportable, do not be led again to the altar of marriage.

Life has many avenues for a bright and charming woman which lead to satisfaction and peace, if not to happiness.

If you desire to be a picturesque figure in the world, remember that the divorced woman who never marries again is far more so than she who has taken the names of two living men.

And remember how much there is in life to do for other people, how much there is to achieve, and how much there is to enjoy, for the woman who has eyes wherewith to see, and ears with which to hear.

Life is a privilege, even to the unhappy. It allows them the opportunity to display the great qualities which God implanted in every soul, and to give the world higher examples of character.

He who leaves such an example to the world earns happiness for eternity.

To Miss Jessie Harcourt

_Regarding Her Marriage with a Poor Young Man_

And so there is trouble in the house of Harcourt, my dear Jessie. You want to marry your intellectual young lover, who has only his pen between him and poverty, and your cruel father, who owns the town, says it is an act of madness on your part, and of presumption on his.

And you are thinking of going to the nearest clergyman and defying parental authority.

You have even looked at rooms where you believe you and Ernest could be ideally happy. And you want me to act as matron-of-honour at that very informal little wedding.

Now, my dear girl, before you take this important step, give the matter careful study.

Your impulses are beautiful, and your ideal natural and lovely. God intended men and women to choose their mates in this very way, with no consideration of a worldly nature to mar their happiness.

But civilized young ladies are a far call from God’s primitive woman. You have lived for twenty-three years in the lap of modern luxury. Your father prides himself upon the fact that, although your mother died when you were very young, he has carefully shielded you from everything which could cast a shadow upon your name or nature. Your lover is fascinated with your absolute purity and innocence. Yet he does not realize that a young woman who has so long “sat in the lap of Luxury,” is unfit to be a poor man’s wife.

Some girl who might know much more than you of the dark and vulgar side of life, would make him a better companion if he could love her enough to ask her hand in marriage.

The girl who has received the addresses of this fascinating old fellow “Luxury,” never quite forgets him, or ceases to bemoan him if she throws him over for a poor man.

To _look_ at two rooms and a bath is one thing, to _live_ in them another, after having all your life occupied a suite which a queen might envy, with retinues of servitors at call.

You tell me you could die for your lover.

But can you bathe from a wash-bowl and pitcher, and can you take your meals at cheap restaurants, and make coffee and toast on an oil-stove or a chafing-dish?

Can you wear cheap clothing and ride in trolleys, and economize on laundry bills to prove your love for this man?

You never have known one single hardship in your life; you never have faced poverty, or even experienced the ordinary economies of well-to-do people.

You are an only daughter of wealth–_American wealth_. That sentence conveys a world of meaning. _It means that you are spoiled for anything but comfort in this life_.

For a few weeks you might believe yourself in a fairy-land of romance if you married your lover and went to live in the two rooms. But at the end of that period you would begin to realize that you were in a very actual land of poverty and discomfort.

Discomfort is relative. Those rooms to the shop-girl who had toiled for years, and lived in a fourth-flight-back tenement, would represent luxury. To you, after a few months, they would mean absolute penury.

You would begin to miss your beautiful home, and your maids, and your carriages. Your husband would know you were missing them, and he would be miserable. Unless your father came to your rescue, your dream of romantic love would end in a nightmare of regret and sorrow.

Your father knows you,–the creature of refined tastes and luxurious habits that he has made you,–and your lover does not. Neither do you know yourself.

It requires a woman in ten thousand, one possessed of absolute heroism, like the old martyrs who sang at the stake while dying, to do what you contemplate, and to be happy in the doing.

Nothing like a life of self-indulgence disintegrates great qualities. You are romantically and feverishly in love with a handsome and gifted young man. But do not rush into a marriage with him until you can bring your father to settle a competence upon you, or until your lover has spanned the abyss of poverty with a bridge of comfort. You have had no training in self-denial or self-dependence. The altar is a bad place to begin your first lesson.

Wait awhile. I know my advice seems worldly and cold, but it is the result of wide observation.

If you cannot sit in your gold and white boudoir, and be true to Ernest while he battles a few more years with destiny, then you could not remain loyal in thought while you held your numb fingers over a chilly radiator in an uncomfortable flat, or omitted dessert from your dinner menu to cut down expenses.

Your brain-cells have been developed in opulence.

You could not train your mind to inexorable economy, even at the command of Cupid.

Take the advice of a woman of the world, my dear girl, and do not attempt the impossible and so spoil two lives.

Again I say, wait awhile.

There are girls who could be perfectly happy in the position you picture for yourself with Ernest, but not you.

Better hide your ideal in your heart than shatter it on the unswept hearthstone of the commonplace.

Better be in your lover’s life the unattained joy, than ruin his happiness by discontent.

It is less of a tragedy for a man to hear a woman say “I cannot go with you,” than to hear her say “I cannot stay with you.”

To Miss Jane Carter

_Of the W.C.T.U._

And so, my dear Jane, I have fallen from my pedestal, in your estimation. Yet, having carefully regarded myself in the mirror, and finding no discolorations, and feeling no wounds or contusions, I think my pedestal must have been very near the earth, else I would be conscious of some bruises.

And now, Jane, to be frank, I am very glad to be off my perch.

I do not want to dwell upon a pedestal.

It necessitates a monotonous life, and it is an unsocial position.

I prefer to walk on the earth, among my fellow creatures.

You were greatly shocked, I saw, when I told my little Russian guest that she might light her cigarette in my boudoir. Your sudden departure told its own story, and your letter was no surprise. But I am glad you wrote me so frankly, as it gives me the opportunity to be equally frank.

There is nothing more beneficial, in true friendship, than a free exchange of honest criticisms.

You tell me that I lowered my standard by lending countenance to a pernicious and unladylike habit. You felt I owed it to myself, as a good woman, and to my home, as a respectable house, to show my unswerving principles in this matter, and to indicate my disapproval of a disgusting vice, which is growing in our midst.

Life is too short, my dear Jane, in which to achieve all our ideals, and to arrive at all our goals.

I have learned the futility of attempting to reform the whole world in one day. And I have also learned that there are more roads than one, to all destinations.

Miss Ordosky is the daughter of a dear old friend of my youth, who married a Russian nobleman with more titles than dollars.

Her parents are dead, and Wanda has come to her mother’s native land, to teach her father’s language. She has come with all her Russian habits and ideas accented by her mother’s American indifference to public opinion. The girl is young, lovely, and wholly dependent upon herself for a livelihood. I invited her to be my guest for two months, before establishing herself in her business, with the hope of helping her to adapt herself somewhat to American ideas and customs.

I could never hope for such a result, had I antagonized her the first day under my roof by an austere attitude toward a habit which I knew she had been reared to think proper.

I do not like to see a woman smoke, and I regret as much as you do the increasing prevalence of the vice in America.

Like almost every schoolgirl, I had my day of thinking a surreptitious, cigarette was wonderfully cunning.

That day passed, like the measles and the whooping-cough, and left me immune. I have never seen a woman so beautiful and alluring that she was not less charming when she put a cigarette to her lips. I am confident the habit vitiates the blood, injures the digestion, and renders the breath offensive. I have known many American men who taught their wives to smoke; and I do not know _one_ who has not lived to regret it, when the cigarette he fancied would be an occasional luxury became a necessity.

A woman who expects ever to bring children into the world, is little better than a criminal to form such a habit: for, argue as we may for one moral code for both sexes, we cannot change nature’s law, which imposes the greater responsibility upon the mother of the unborn child; the child she carries so many months beneath her heart, giving it hour by hour the impression of her mental and physical conditions.

Fathers ought not to smoke or indulge in other bad habits.

_Mothers must not_.

I hope in time to discuss these topics with Wanda, and to make an impression upon her mind by my arguments.

But your methods and mine, dear Jane, differ widely. And, begging your pardon, I believe mine accomplish more good for a larger number of human beings than yours.

And, added to that fact, I get more happiness for myself out of life.

Miss Ordosky would have managed to smoke her cigarette, however rigid had I been in expressing my principles. And she would have found some excuse to shorten her visit under my roof, and then where would be my opportunity to influence her?

As it is, she puffs her cigarette in my company, listens to my opinions, seems to respect my ideas, and is interested in my views of life. We are becoming excellent comrades, and this is far more gratifying to me than to know that I had antagonized her into a formal acquaintance by my aggressive morality. I have an idea that, before my pretty guest reaches the time when she will consider wifehood and motherhood as life professions, I may convince her from a scientific standpoint that she better abandon her cigarettes. And to convince one’s mind is far better than to drive one to submission.

And now, Jane, has it never occurred to you that you have made some mistakes in life by the very methods you are so sorry I did not pursue with Miss Ordosky?

Years ago, I recall your surrounding a certain young man with an aureole of idealism. Then you were obliged to dethrone him from his pedestal because he, too, forsooth, smoked a cigar.

That young man married a woman quite as worthy and good as yourself, and he has made the best of husbands and citizens. I know of no man who does more good in the world in a quiet way than this same unpedestaled old admirer of yours. Whether he still smokes his cigar or not I could not say. But as a man, it seems to me, he is quite as worthy and noble a citizen, as you are a woman.

I know that you are doing all you can, to spread the gospel of clean living abroad in the land, and that your influence is all for a higher standard of morality.

But if you live on too high an altitude, in this world, and refuse to associate with any one who will not climb up to your plane, you are destined to a lonely life, and your sphere of influence is limited. You will do far more good by taking your place with other human beings, and by gradual, sane efforts leading the thoughts of your associates to turn to your wholesome ideas of life. You are making morality unpopular by your present aggressive methods. And you are missing many sweet friendships and experiences by your insistence that all your friends must follow the narrow path you have decided is the only road to good behaviour.

Come down from your pedestal, my dear Jane–come and dwell on the earth.

THE END.