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

garland and a rose for their wine cup. They would never have danced and feasted and wedded themselves in a charnel-house of dying flowers.

Our dressing and dining is done on the same immense scale. Lucullus might preside at our feasts, and queens envy the jewels and costumes of our women. Perhaps the size of the country and its transcendent possibilities in every direction instinctively incite those who have the means to lavishness of outlay. People who live under bright high skies, and whose horizons are wide and far-reaching, imbibe a largeness of expression which is not satisfied with mere words; and if we look at our extravagance in this way, we may regard it as a national trait, developed from our natural position and advantages.

Of course, it is easy to say that Americans are lavish because, as Dr. Watts puts it, "it is their nature to" be, but the real reason for the overgrown luxury of the last two or three decades is to be found in the rapid increase of the vulgar rich, the very last class worthy of our imitation. Are not the absurd blunders of the poor man who strikes oil a common subject for witticisms and stories?

Profuse display will probably be the only social grace the newly rich can dispense. So, then, if wealth increases more rapidly than culture, it is sure, in the very nature of things, to be squandered ostentatiously; for the men whose minds are in a stunted state, being fit for nothing else, will throw their money away on cards or horses or any other fashionable form of dissipation; and the women in the same mental incompleteness, knowing nothing but how to dress and dance, when they have wealth thrust upon them will be able to find no better use for it than to dress and dance all the more conspicuously.

This senseless love of display, once inaugurated in a city set or in a small town, is apt to take the lead: first, because all the snobs will cater to it; second, because sensible people know that they cannot start a reform movement without making themselves unpopular, and going to a great deal of trouble and expense.

For, however extravagant the machinery of society is, it has the enormous advantage of being there, and few people can afford to live against it. For to do as every one else does, and to go with the stream, is much easier than to set good examples that no one wants to follow. Indeed it takes a tremendous exercise of pluck, thought, trouble, time, and energy to reduce an establishment that has been an extravagant one to a more economical footing.

The justification of private extravagant expenditure is found in the necessity of a class who will have leisure to encourage the intellectual tastes and ambitions of the nation. And this end might be accomplished if only matters could be so arranged that a shower of gold should descend on the right people in the right place at the right time.

But wealth is no more to the worthy than the race is to the strong, and so it often finds outlets for dispersion for which there is no justification, and whose sole object is that sensual life pictured in "Lothair,"--fine houses, great retinues, costly clothing, clubs, yachts, conservatories, etc., etc.,--in fact, an existence without a crumpled rose-leaf, that would make a man a mixture of the sybarite and satyr. Such specimens of humanity may occasionally be found in America, but they are not yet a distinct class, nor are they likely to become one in our pushing, up-and-down, constantly changing society. Indeed, amid the earnest strivings, the intellectual aspirings and the mechanical wonders of steam and electricity which environ us, a semi-monster of the Lothair type would be as incongruous as a faun on the Avenue or a Pagan temple on mid-Broadway.

If we would only take the trouble to examine the facts before our eyes we have constantly in our university towns the proof that high culture and moderation in dress and living go together. Take Cambridge, Mass., for instance; its very best society is singularly unostentatious, and the wives and daughters of its educated dignitaries entertain without extravagance, and look for respect and admiration from some loftier standpoint than their dress trimmings.



Ought we to Wear Mourning?

This is a question that from the earliest days of Christianity has at times agitated the Church. It was specially dominant in the first centuries, when every divergence from Jewish or Pagan rites was almost an act of faith. Now the Jews, after the death of their relatives, wore sackcloth during their time of mourning, which lasted from seven to forty days. They sat on the ground, and ate their food off the earth; they neither dressed themselves, nor made their beds, nor went into the bath, nor saluted any one. This excess of grief rarely lasted long; then a great feast was made for the surviving friends of the dead; or the bread and meat were placed upon his grave for the benefit of the poor. (Tobit iv. 17; Eccles. xxx. 18; and Baruch vi. 27.)

It was natural for the Christian, with the hope set before him, to oppose this despairing sorrow, and we find Saint Jerome praising those who partially abandoned it; while Cyprian declares he was "ordered by Divine revelation to preach that Christians should not lament their brethren delivered from the world, nor wear any mourning habits for them, seeing that they were gone to put on white raiment, nor give occasion for unbelievers by lamenting those as lost whom we affirm to be with God."

As the Church lapsed from its simplicity into forms and ceremonies, vestments of all kinds, and for every purpose and occasion, gained importance; and the first serious protestation against mourning garments came from the Quakers. To these spiritual men and women it seemed absurd to wear black garments for those whom they believed had put on everlasting white. The majority of the early Methodists held the same opinion, though in a less positive form. It is remarkable, however, that Christians alone assume the woeful, despairing black garments which seem to denote not only the loss of life, but the end of hope. Ancient Egypt wore yellow in memory of departed friends; the Greeks and Romans used white garments for mourning; the Chinese also consecrate white to the services of death, and the Mohammedans wear blue, because it is the color of the visible heavens.

Therefore I ask, if we must wear a distinct dress to typify our sorrow, why black? Black has now become objectionable from having lost all the sacred meaning it once possessed. It is no longer the livery of grief. The blonde belle wears it because it sets off her fine complexion; the brunette, because it admits of the vivid contrasts so suitable to her brilliant beauty. The prudent wear it because it is economical and ladylike; and all women know that it imparts grace and dignity, and drapes beautifully; so, for these and many other reasons, it has within the last fifty years become an every-day dress, one just as likely to express vanity as grief.

The reasons set forth by the Quakers for its abandonment cover the ground, and are at least worthy of our consideration. They are: First, that mourning had its origin in a state of barbarism, and prior to the revelation of "life eternal through Jesus Christ," and is therefore not to be observed in civilized and Christianized countries. Second, that the trappings of grief are childish where the grief is real, and mockery where it is not. Third, that mourning garments are absolutely useless: for if they are intended to remind us of our affliction, true grief needs no such reminder; if to point out our grief to others, they are an impertinence, for true sorrow courts seclusion; and if as a consolation, they are only powerful to remind of an irrevocable past. Fourth, their inconvenience: too often the house of death is turned by them into a busy work-shop; and the souls bowed down with grief are made to trouble themselves about mourning ornaments and becoming weeds. Fifth, their bad moral influence: the gracefulness of the costume stills the grief that ought to be stilled by religion; and as in a large family there must be many mourners in form only, the equivocation of dress is a sort of moral equivocation. Sixth, their expense. This is really a great item in the resources of the poor, and often straitens for years; besides causing them, in the hour of their desolation, to be so worried and anxious about the robing of the body as to miss all the lessons God intended for the soul.

The advocates for mourning plead the veiling of the heavens in black at the death of Christ; and the universality and continuance of the custom, in all ages, all countries, and all faiths. I am aware that the subject is one in which strangers cannot intermeddle; the question when it arises must be settled by every heart individually. But, at least, if mourning garments are to be worn, let us not defeat every argument in their favor by fashioning them of the richest stuffs, and in the most stylish manner. This is to ticket them as the thinnest of mockeries. And after all, if we approve mourning, and wish our friends to hold us in remembrance after death, can we not find a better way than by crape and bombazine? Yes, crape and bombazine wear out, and must finally be cast off; but the "memorial of virtue is immortal. When it is present, men take example of it, and when it is gone, they desire it: it weareth a crown, and triumpheth forever."



How To Have One's Portrait Taken

Having one's portrait taken is no longer an isolated event in one's life. It has become a kind of domestic and social duty, to which even though personally opposed, one must gracefully submit, unless he would incur the odium of neglecting the wishes of his family circle and the complimentary requests of his acquaintances.

It would seem at first sight that nothing is easier than to go to a photographer's and get a good likeness. Nothing is really more uncertain and disappointing. In turning over the albums of our friends, how often we pass the faces of acquaintances and don't know them at all! How is this? Simply because, at the moment when the picture was taken, the original was unlike herself. She was nervous, her head was screwed in a vise, her position had been selected for her, and she had been ordered to look at an indicated spot, and keep still. Such a position was like nothing in her real life, and the expression on the face was just as foreign. The features might be perfectly correct, but that inscrutable something which individualizes the face was lacking.

Now if the amenities of social life require us to have our pictures done, "it were as well they were well done," and much toward this end lies within the sitter's choice and power.

First as to the selection of the artist. It is a great mistake to imagine that photography is a mere mechanical trade. There is as much difference between two photographers as between two engravers. Nor will a fine lens alone produce a good picture. The pose of the sitter, the disposition of lights and shadows, the arrangement of drapery, are of the greatest consequence. A good artist has almost unlimited power in this direction. He can render certain parts thinner by plunging them into half-tone or by burying their outline in the shade, and he can deepen and augment