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

prefer Mrs. Browning to Milton, and George Eliot to Lord Bacon.

At first sight there seems some plausibility in the assertion that woman's physical inferiority will always render her unfit to do men's work. But all physical excellence is a matter of cultivation; and it would be very easy to prove that women are not naturally physically weaker than men. In all savage nations they do the hardest work, and Mr. Livingstone acknowledged that all his ideas as to their physical inferiority had been completely overturned.

In China they do the work of men, with the addition of an infant tied to their back. In Calcutta and Bombay, they act as masons, carry mortar, and there are thousands of them in the mountain passes bearing up the rocky heights baskets of stone and earth on their heads. The women in Germany and the Low Countries toil equally with the men. During the late war I saw American women in Texas keep the saddle all day, driving cattle or superintending the operations in the cotton-patch or the sugar-field. Nay, I have known them to plough, sow, reap, and get wood from the cedar brake with their own hands.

Woman's physical strength has degenerated for want of exercise and use; but it would be as unfair to condemn her to an inferior position on this account as it was for the slave master to urge the necessity of slavery because of the very vices slavery had produced. However, if women are really to succeed they must give to their preparation for a profession the freshest years of life. If it is only taken up because marriage has been a failure, or if it is pursued with a divided mind, they will always be behind-hand and inferior. But the compensation is worth the sacrifice. A profession once acquired, they have home, happiness, and independence in their hands; the future, as far as possible, is secure, the serenity and calmness of assurance strengthens the mind and sweetens the character, and from the standpoint of a self-sustaining celibacy marriage itself assumes its loftiest position; it is no longer the aim, but the crown and completion of her life; for _she need not_, so she _will not_, marry for anything but love, and thus her wifehood will lose nothing of the grace and glory that belongs to it of right.



Little Children

The teachers of a people have need of a far greater wisdom than its priests. The latter are but the mouthpiece of an oracle so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, may understand it. The former are the interpreters in the mysterious communings of ignorance with knowledge.

"Only a few little children," says the self-sufficient and the inefficient teacher. Twenty-five years' experience among little children has taught me that in spiritual and moral perceptiveness, and intuitive knowledge of character, they are far nearer to the angels than we are.

Consider well what a mystery they are! Who ever saw two children mentally alike? More fresh from the hands of the Maker, they still retain the infinite variety which is one of the marks of his boundless wealth of creation. In a few years, alas! they will take on the stereotyped forms of the class to which they belong; but for a little space heaven lies about them, and they dwell among us--so much of _this_ world, and so much of _that_.

Twenty years ago I thought I understood little children; _to-day_ I am sure I do not: for now I know that every one has a hidden life of its own, which it knows instinctively is foolishness to the world, and which therefore it never reveals. Now, if you can humble yourself, can become as a little child, can win a welcome to this inner life, let me tell you that you have come very near to the kingdom of heaven. Better than the writings of schoolmen, better than the lives of the saints, will such an experience be for you; therefore treat it with reverence and tenderness; for it is an epistle written by the finger of God on an innocent and guileless heart.

Consider, too, what sublimity of faith these little ones possess! The angels believe; for they know and see; men believe--upon "good security" and indisputable "evidences;" a little child believes in God and loves its Saviour simply on your representation. O cold and doubting hearts!--asking science and philosophy, height and depth, to explain; terrified but not instructed by the eternal silence of the infinite spaces above you!--humble yourselves, that you may be exalted; become fools, that you may become wise! The human intellect is a blind guide, but if you seek God through the _heart_, then "a little child can lead you."

In your intercourse with young children, try and estimate rightly _their delicate fancy_; for they are the true poets.


"Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter darkness,
But trailing clouds of glory do they come."


And I think it was of them God thought when he made the flowers and butterflies. Their little voices are the natural key of music, their graceful carriage and sprightly abandon the very poetry of motion. As Michael Angelo's imprisoned angel pleaded out of dumb marble, so the divinity within them pleads in the beauty of their forms, the clear heaven of their eyes, the white purity of their souls, for knowledge and enlargement.

"Only a little child!" O mother! saved by thy child-bearing in faith and holiness; peradventure thou nursest an angel! O teacher! made honorable by thine office, how knowest thou but what thy class is a veritable school of the prophets, and that children "set for the rise and the fall of many in Israel" are under thy hand?

We are accustomed to speak of the "simplicity" of a child, _I know_ that mysteries are revealed unto babes, hid from the men full of years and high on the staff of worldly wisdom. And I remember that case in old Jerusalem. He who spake as never man spake "took a little child and set him in the midst" for an example. So, then, while given to our charge they are also set for our instruction. Like them, we are to receive the kingdom of God, believing without a cavil or a doubt in our Father's declarations. Like them, we are to depend on our Father in Heaven for our daily bread, being careful for nothing. Like them, we are to retain no resentments, and if angry, to be easily pacified. Like them, we are to be free from ambition and avarice, from pride and disdain. These things are not natural to us, else Jesus had not said, "Ye must _become_ as little children," and that except we do so _we shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven_.

And that we might not err, God has set these visiting angels at our firesides, and at our tables; he has made them bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; nay, he has placed them in the heavens like a star,--


"To beacon us to the abode
Where the eternal are."


Pass by the Learned, the Mighty, and the Wise, for they are dust; but let us reverence the "Little Children," for they are God's messengers to us.



On Naming Children

There is a kind of physiognomy in the names of men and women as well as in their faces; our Christian name is ourself in our thoughts and in the thoughts of those who know us, and nothing can separate it from our existence. Unquestionably, also, there is a luck in names, and a certain success in satisfying the public ear. To select fortunate names, the _bona nomina_ of Cicero, was anciently a matter of such solicitude that it became a popular axiom, "A good name is a good fortune." From a good name arises a good anticipation, a fact novelists and dramatists readily recognize; indeed, Shakespeare makes Falstaff consider that "the purchase of a commodity of good names" was all that was necessary to propitiate good fortune.

Imagine two persons starting in life as rivals in any profession, and without doubt he who had the more forcible name would become the more familiar with the public, and would therefore, in a business sense, be likely to be the more successful. We all know that there are names that circulate among us instantly, and make us friends with their owners, though we have never seen them. They are lucky people whose sponsors thus cast their names in pleasant and fortunate places.

It is a matter, then, of surprise that among civilized nations the generality, even of educated people, are so careless on this subject. Now evil is as often wrought for want of thought as for want of knowledge, and as a stimulant to thought in parents the following suggestions are offered.

It is not well to call the eldest son after the father, and the eldest daughter after the mother. The object of names is to prevent confusion, and this is not attained when the child's name is the same as the parent's. Nor does the addition of "junior" or "senior" rectify the fault; besides, the custom provokes the disrespectful addition of "old" to the father. There is another very subtle danger in calling children after parents. Such children are very apt to be regarded with an undue partiality. This is a feeling never acknowledged, perhaps, but which nevertheless makes its way into the hearts of the best of men and women. It is easier to keep out evil than to put it out.

If the surname is common, the Christian name should be peculiar. Almost any prefix is pardonable to "Smith." John Smith has no individuality left, but Godolphin Smith really reads aristocratically. James Brown is no one, but Sequard Brown and Ignatius Brown are lifted out of the crowd. Some people get out of this difficulty by iterating the name so as to compel respect. Thus, Jones Jones, of Jones's Hall, has a moral swagger about it that would be sure to carry it through.

It is often a great advantage to have a very odd name, a little difficult to remember at first, but which when once learned bites itself into the memory. For instance, there was Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy; we have to make a hurdle-race over it, but once in the mind it is never forgot.

Remember in giving names that the children when grown up may be in situations where they will have frequently to sign their initials, and do not give names that might in this situation provoke contemptuous remark. For instance, David Oliver Green,--the initials make "dog;" Clara Ann Thompson,--the initials spell "cat." Neither should a name be given whose initial taken in conjunction with the surname suggests a foolish idea, as Mr. P. Cox, or Mrs. T. Potts.

If the child is a boy, it may be equally uncomfortable for him to have a long string of names. Suppose that in adult life he be comes a merchant or banker, with plenty of business to do, then he will not be well pleased to write "George Henry Talbot Robinson" two or three hundred times a day.

It is not a bad plan to give girls only one baptismal name, so that if they marry they can retain their maiden surname: as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Beecher Stowe. This is the practice among the Society of Friends, and is worthy of more general adoption, for we should then know at once on seeing the name of a lady whether she was married, and if so, what her family name was. In Geneva and many provinces