Maids Wives and Bachelors - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (good book club books .txt) 📗

of her careful concealment of them, tell upon her physique. She sees the waning of her power, and the approaches of that winter of discontent which wasted opportunities are sure to bring.

Spurred with a sense of haste by some unhappy slight, she perhaps unadvisedly marries a man who ten years previously would not have ventured to clasp her shoe-buckle. If he happens to possess a firm will and a strong character, he will try to pull her sharply up to his mark, and there will be endless frictions and reprisals, with all their possible results. If he is some old lover, weak in purpose, fatuous and brainless in his admiration, then the foolish flirting virgin will likely become a foolish flirting wife; and a miserable complaisance will bring forth its natural outgrowth of contempt and dislike, and perhaps culminate in some flagrant social misdemeanor.

To be a favorite with men is not, then, a desirable honor for any woman. They will admire her loveliness, sun themselves in her smiles, and catch a little ephemeral pleasure and glory in her favor; but they will not marry her. And the reason, though not very evident to a thoughtless girl, is at least a very real and powerful one. It is because such a girl _never touches them on their best side_, and never reveals in herself that womanly nature which a man knows instinctively is the foundation of wifely value,--that nature which expresses itself in service for love's sake, as a very necessity of its being.

On the contrary, a "favorite" leans all to one side, and that side is herself. She is overbearing and exacting in the most trivial matters of outward homage. She will be served on the bended knee, and her service is a hard and ungrateful one. And this is the truth about such homage: men may be compelled to kneel to a woman's whims for a short time, but when they do find courage to rise to their feet they go away forever.

So that, after all, the estimate of women for those of their own sex who are favorites of a great number of men is a very just one. It is neither unfair nor untrue in its essentials, for in this world we can only judge actions by their consequences; and the consequences of a long career of general admiration do not justify honorable mention of the belle of many seasons. She can hardly escape the results of her social experience. She must of necessity become false and artificial. She cannot avoid a morbid jealousy of her own rights, and a painful jealousy of the successes of those who have passed her in the matrimonial career.

Nor can she, as these qualities strengthen, by any means conceal their presence. Every attribute of our nature has its distinctive atmosphere; it is subtle and invisible as the perfume of a plant, but it makes itself distinctly present,--even when we are careful to permit no translation of the feeling into action. Men are not analyzers or inquirers into character, as a general rule, but the bright ways and witty conversation of their favorite does not deceive them. Sooner or later they are sensitive to the restlessness, disappointment, envy, and hatred, which couches beneath the smiles and sparkle. They may put the knowledge away at the time, but when they are alone they will eventually admit and understand it all.

And the saddest part of this situation is that they are not at all astonished at what their hearts reveal to them. They know that they have expected nothing better, nothing more permanently valuable. They tell themselves frankly that in this woman's society they never looked for imperishable virtues; she was only a pretty _passe-temps_--a woman suitable for life's laughter, but not for its noblest duties and discipline.

For when good men want to marry, they seek a woman for what _she is_, not for what she looks. They want a gentlewoman of blameless honor, who will love her husband, and neither be reluctant to have children nor to bring them up at her knees; who will care for her house duties and her husband's comfort and welfare as if these things were an Eleventh Commandment. And such women, fair and cultured enough to make any home happy, are not difficult to find. However peculiar and individual a man may be, there are very few in a generation who cannot convince some good woman that their peculiarities are abnormal genius, or refined moral sensitiveness, or some other great and rare excellency.

Therefore, before a girl commits herself to a course of frivolity and time-pleasing, which will fasten on her such a misnomer as a "favorite" of men, let her carefully ponder the close of such a career. For, having once obtained this reputation, she will find it very hard to rid herself of its consequences. And it is, alas, very likely that many girls enter this career thoughtlessly, and not until they are entangled in it find out that they have made a mistake with their life. Then they are wretched in the conditions they have surrounded themselves with, and yet are afraid to leave them. Their popularity is odious to them. They stretch out their hands to their wasted youth, and their future appalls them. They weep, for they think it is too late to retrieve their errors.

No! It is never too late to lift up the head and the heart! It is always the right hour to become noble and truthful and courageous once more! In short, there is yet a Divine help for those who seek it; and in that strength all may turn back and recapture their best selves. While life lasts there is no such time as "too late!" And oh, the good that fact does one!



Mothers of Great and Good Men

Women are apt to complain that their lot is without influence. On the contrary, their lot is full of dignity and importance. If they do not lead armies, if they are not state officers, or Congressional orators, they mould the souls and minds of men who do, and are; and give the initial touch that lasts through life. The conviction of the mother's influence over the fate of her children is old as the race itself; ancient history abounds with examples; and even the destinies of the gods are represented as in its power. It was the mothers of ancient Rome that made ancient Rome great; it was the Spartan mothers that made the Spartan heroes. Those sons went out conquerors whose mothers armed them with the command, "With your shield, or on it, my son!"

The power of the mother in forming the character of the child is beyond calculation. Can any time separate the name of Monica from that of her son Augustine? Never despairing, even when her son was deep sunk in profligacy, watching, pleading, praying with such tears and fervor that the Bishop of Carthage cried out in admiration, "Go thy way; it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish!" And she lived to see the child of her love all that her heart desired. Nor are there in all literature more noble passages than those which St. Augustine consecrates to the memory of a parent whom all ages have crowned with the loftiest graces of motherhood.

Bishop Hall says of his mother, "She was a woman of rare sanctity." And from her he derived that devoted spirit and prayerful dignity which gave him such unbounded influence in the church to which his life was consecrated. The "divine George Herbert" owed to his mother a still greater debt, and the famous John Newton proposes himself as "an example for the encouragement of mothers to do their duty faithfully to their children." Every one is familiar with the picture which represents Dr. Doddridge's mother teaching him, before he could read, the Old and New Testament history from the painted tiles in the chimney corner. Crowley, Thomson, Campbell, Goethe, Victor Hugo, Schiller and the Schlegels, Canning, Lord Brougham, Curran, and hundreds of our great men may say with Pierre Vidal:


"If aught of goodness or of grace
Be mine, hers be the glory;
She led me on in wisdom's path
And set the light before me."


Perhaps there was never a more wonderful example of maternal influence than that of the Wesleys' mother. To use her own words, she cared for her children as "one who works together with God in the saving of a soul." She never considered herself absolved from this care, and her letters to her sons when they were men are the wonder of all who read them. Another prominent instance is that of Madame Bonaparte over her son Napoleon. This is what he says of her: "She suffered nothing but what was grand and elevated to take root in our souls. She abhorred lying, and passed over none of our faults." How large a part the mother of Washington played in the formation of her son's character, we have only to turn to Irving's "Life of Washington" to see. And it was her greatest honor and reward when the world was echoing with his renown, to listen and calmly reply, "He has been a good son, and he has done his duty as a man."

John Quincy Adams owed everything to his mother. The cradle hymns of his childhood were songs of liberty, and as soon as he could lisp his prayers she taught him to say Collins' noble lines, "How sleep the brave who sink to rest." No finer late instance of the influence of a mother in the formation of character can be adduced than that of Gerald Massey. His mother roused in him his hatred of wrong, his love of liberty, his pride in honest, hard-working poverty; and Massey, in his later days of honor and comfort, often spoke with pride of those years when his mother taught her children to live in honest independence on rather less than a dollar and a half a week. The similar instance of President Garfield and his mother is too well known to need more than mention.

There can be no doubt of the illimitable influence of the mother in the formation of her child's character. The stern, passionate piety of Mrs. Wesley made saints and preachers of her children; the ambition and bravery of Madame Bonaparte moulded her son into a soldier, and the beautiful union of these qualities helped to form the hero beloved of all lands,--George Washington. I do not say that mothers can give genius to their sons; but all mothers can do for their children what Monica did for Augustine, what Madame Bonaparte did for Napoleon, what Mrs. Washington did for her son George, what Gerald Massey's mother did for him, what ten thousands of good mothers all over the world are doing this day,--patiently moulding, hour by hour, year by year, that cumulative force which we call character. And if mothers do this duty honestly, whether their sons are private citizens or public men, they will "rise up and call them blessed."



Domestic Work for Women

To that class of women who toil not, neither spin, and who, like contented ravens, are fed they know not how nor whence, it is superfluous to speak of domestic service; for their housekeeping consists in "giving orders," and their marketing is represented by tradesmen's wagons and buff-colored pass-books. Yet I am far from inferring that, because they can financially afford to be idle, they have a right to be so. They surely owe to the world some free gift of labor, else it would be hard to see