Part 4
Let us make a little set of rules that can be easily learned and less easily lived by. First, then, that we will seek the peace and the strength that come from Mother Nature—for that is the sort that will make better women of us.
That we will make our lives henceforth more profitable than ever.
That we will begin by doing everything required of us whether it happens to be agreeable or not.
That we will make all days brighter for everybody because of our presence.
That we will seek out the poor, the unacquainted, the shabby and retiring people and make them glad they belong to the same world as we do.
That we will, in everything, be true to ourselves; for then it shall follow, as night follows day, that we cannot be untrue to any other woman.
That we will learn the gentle art of saying nothing uncharitable of any person, no matter how great the provocation.
That the spirit of the right life means a broader charity, a greater tolerance and a more universal, practical love for humanity; and that if we are not learning all these we are missing our opportunity.
We might as well finish up with Saint Paul: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Good for Saint Paul; old bachelor though he was, he had the requisites necessary to make a good all-round woman himself. And were he alive to-day, he wouldn’t say a thing about silence in the churches, either.
VII
ON MENTAL ATTITUDES
The charge is made against American women, and it is too true, that we lack repose of manner. How can we show that in our manner which we lack in our natures? And how can we possess repose of the soul when we never allow ourselves a minute to catch up with ourselves, to commune with the silent forces of nature, to inhale the strength and calmness and courage that we might exhale again in the fragrance which we call, in the rare instances when we behold it in others, repose of manner? Life for the most of us is an insane scramble to catch up with things—and not half the time do we know or care whether they are things worth catching up with; nor are we satisfied if we succeed for a moment in reaching them. Once in a while the futility of the chase comes over us in a brief gleam of reason, but others around us are hurrying through life after the unattainable, and we forget and scramble on, too, in unconscious emulation of the old Scotch saying, “The de’il take the hindmost.”
If our whole existence is made up of excitement—no matter whether we term it that or disguise it under the name of endless activity, how shall we establish that serenity of soul without which the real nature cannot expand, nor the reality of noble womanhood become the guiding principle of life? Those feverish mentalities who demand front seats at the great pageant of life with a constant change of scenes, do not know true serenity. They are infected with the malaria of inefficiency and crave excitement as an ague patient craves a quieting draft. They miss the delight of relaxation and have no conception of the joys of quiet leisure. Self-communion is unknown to them and they are utter strangers to themselves. They are in a whirl that sucks them ever onward and downward. Serenity is an unknown word to them and they know it not, either at home or abroad; while to be alone with their own thoughts is a discomfort they cannot endure.
Emerson says our real life is in the silent moments, and many of us have realized this during the vacation season, when we have stumbled upon serenity in country byways, by the seashore or in the solitude of city homes, when “everybody” has gone away. Stevenson declares that gentleness and cheerfulness are the greatest virtues, and above all other morality. There are thousands of women who do not know how to rest, who cannot enjoy the silent moments. Blessed be she who knows that the inner life does not receive its highest pleasure from the doing of things; who finds definite joy in accessions of serenity, whether these come in the silent hours when the grate fire is dying, or during the mid-day rest or in the pauses in conversation.
What should we do if we were suddenly isolated? Be oppressed with intolerable loneliness at first, no doubt; and then we should begin to think. I sometimes think it would be a blessed thing if every woman were obliged to go into retreat occasionally, as the good Catholics do. The silence of a quiet room where she could be undisturbed and could spend a few days in thinking out the problems of life, even if she were not spiritually inclined enough to seek a higher communion, would be of inestimable benefit to the average woman. There is such a thing as too much of attrition with other human beings. A stone that rolls ever about restlessly in the rushing waters of a strong current becomes polished off to look and feel like every other stone in its neighborhood. So we lose our individuality and come to have no atmosphere of our own.
There are women who can never endure their own company for the space of half an hour. Their one desire is to avoid themselves—to hide from themselves in the company of others. Of such we are not talking, although they are not utterly hopeless; since it would not be impossible that loneliness or isolation from their kind should develop the habit of thinking, even in them. But to the woman who wants to be individual, who wants to be an inspiration and a help to others—if she only had time—I would urge the appropriation of just a little bit of time every day or every night for getting acquainted with her real self, for the cultivation of her power of thought.
In this way we may minister to the inner needs of the soul, develop love and patience and the helpful instinct which makes of women what God meant them to be: His messengers to humankind. Just as the observance of the Sabbath is a wise thing from a physiological point of view, so is self-communion and its breathing-spaces a blessing to the intellectual world.
Not that we should cease our activities utterly, or take time for morbid contemplation of our own peculiarities or tendencies. There is a great deal of work to be done, and work that seems to be meant for our own hands and no other. Only we must learn to discriminate between actual service and aimless work that accomplishes nothing, even for ourselves. And service should enrich the giver before all others, should it not?
Again, serenity is not idleness. The most effective workers are those who are never flurried and hurried, who do not lose their balance in the turmoil of every-day living, nor rush about in fussy excitement. We must be sure to do something—much, for others, and we shall find our days crowded full as they grow shorter by the almanac; but it is our own fault if we get flustered and worried, if we allow our activities to destroy our serenity of soul or hamper the inner life.
This atmosphere of poise in which the nicely adjusted balance of our powers may be maintained is a habit—a mode of life. It is often a matter of temperament, but it may be acquired and nobody needs it more than she who is born without it. Some are blessed by the fairy godmother with happier dispositions than others. Still there is no despair for any of us; if we have not the temperament which makes for happiness, it is our first business to acquire it. Why go through this world perpetually disgruntled when the world will concede so much to a smile?
Let us then develop this sort of spiritual capital as the main necessity of life. Let us not toil unprofitably nor become engulfed in activity for its own sake. Let us measure out for ourselves only just so much of play as we can do well without losing our balance or frittering ourselves away uselessly. It will take more self-denial for some of us than to go the other way. It is always easier drifting with the tide than resisting it—even though it be towards the whirlpool.
A woman with no atmosphere is one of the most uninteresting objects in the world. A woman should be an individual; more than that, she should possess a distinct individuality. She should suggest to those with whom she comes most in contact something bright and beautiful or soft and restful. How can she, if she be uneasy, restless and strenuous? Certain women come into a room or a house like an inspiration; they suggest an exhilarating breath of June air, or the great calmness of a starry night. Such women are worthy to be called God’s beneficences. They are like the beautiful rose tree, scenting the atmosphere with fragrance and making all the world aware of June and summer and all bright things. And unless we do sometimes “chant in thoughts and paint in words,” even though it be in our secret soul of souls, we can never hope to be numbered with such. We forget that a wise prophet once said there is a time to think, as well as a time to work and a time to sing and a time to dance. And we need to stop and think more than we need to do any of these other things.
Ruskin’s words should be emblazoned on a card and hung before the eyes of every restless woman. “And to get peace, if you do want it, make for yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea, indeed, but safe beyond all others. Do you know what fairy palaces you may build of beautiful thoughts, proof against all adversity? Bright fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, treasure houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away from us; houses built without hands for our souls to live in.” Why not take this for our rule, and devote some little time every day, say a half hour at dusk or even at night after the house is still, to building ourselves nests of pleasant thoughts? Surely it would pay.
It rests with the individual woman whether she will be like a rose tree full of brightness and fragrance, a help and an inspiration; or whether she will waste herself in a mad endeavor to keep up with the pell-mell, hop, skip and jump of modern life. Shall we stop occasionally long enough to plant the seed germs that will blossom later into flower and fruit? Or shall we degenerate into mere replicas of other women who wear good clothes, do and say the conventional, commonplace thing, and are as uninteresting as a sunset without a flush of color?
No; let us give ourselves pause. Let us take stock of ourselves and see if we are making the most of our talents, “building for ourselves fairy palaces, proof against all adversity.” And let us not do it for ourselves alone, but that we may give others that “which care may not disturb nor pain take away.”
And let me whisper a way to keep in the attitude of serenity. Commit to memory some helpful verse and say it over to yourselves whenever you have time, or, more important even, whenever you get cross. If you cannot pin it to your memory, pin it to your mirror, or on your pin-cushion, if you are so old-fashioned as to use one.
I will tell you a secret. On my mirror is hung a ribbon banner with the following printed thereon:
MY SYMPHONY
To live content with small means; To seek elegance rather than luxury, And refinement rather than fashion; To be worthy, not respectable; And wealthy, not rich; To study hard, think quietly, Talk gently, act frankly; To listen to stars and birds, To babes and sages With open heart. To bear all cheerfully, Do all bravely, await occasions, Hurry never; In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, Grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
—_William Ellery Channing._
VIII
ON THE ESSENTIALS OF HAPPINESS
“That’s a pleasant cemetery, isn’t it?” asked somebody of an old lady on a railroad train one day.
“I don’t know,” was the answer, “I am not looking for cemeteries. I am looking for flower-gardens; I find lots of beautiful ones, too.”
There was a whole sermon in the old lady’s remark. How often we go through life watching out for cemeteries, forgetting that flower-gardens are much more numerous as well as far saner, pleasanter and healthier. We get into such a habit of noticing the uncomfortable conditions of life and ignoring the other kind that are always so much more plenty, that we forget our mercies. A teacher once told me of a school-boy who was so optimistic in his attitude toward life that he never saw the unpleasant side of things. If he is given ten problems, and after laboring patiently all the morning over them, seven are incorrect, he smiles triumphantly and says, “Well, I got three of ’em right, anyhow.” Would that there were more of him!
It all depends on our view of life. Happiness is a condition of the mind; we are happy if we train ourselves to think so; not to expect too much of life or of other people, and to keep the sun shining in our heaven. On the contrary, if we allow ourselves to worry and fret, to miss the joy of little things, to lose sight of all the greatness and nobleness that come into every-day life (if only we train our eyes to see), we can easily lose the best happiness in the world, that of realizing the beauty of humility, unselfishness, good temper, right living, high standards and purity of heart that lies all around us. There are plenty of mental and moral flower-gardens on every side, if only we are not blind, if only we do not look for cemeteries.
Now, let us make up our minds whether we care to be happy all the time or not. “Why, of course we do; how foolish such a question!” Then let us see how small a matter happiness is, and then decide whether it is worth having. If your definition of happiness is an ecstasy, a delirium of joy, a flood of emotion that shall engulf you in an occasional paroxysm, you might as well give up asking for a steady diet of happiness. But after we arrive at years of discretion we generally know that waves of delirium do not constitute pure happiness. It is not until we cease looking for impossible sustained attitudes of mind that we come to realize what happiness is. Not until we have lived long enough to accept the possibilities and let go of the impractical.
The clouds are a blessed place for our heads, but the earth is the only legitimate place in this incarnation for our feet. Antæus, you remember, who had such victory in wrestling with Hercules, was the son of earth, and it was not until Hercules succeeded in getting him off the earth and into the air that he was able to throttle him. It is very important that woman should pay a good deal of attention to her circulation to prevent her feet going to sleep or her head getting giddy.
We talk altogether too much. Hundreds of women (to estimate it modestly) chatter from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they close them after everybody else is tired out for the night. They cannot bear to be alone for a moment, facing the emptiness of their own hearts and brains, and so they talk, talk, talk the precious hours away, without ever saying anything. Oh, what would I give for the hours these women waste in talk that amounts to nothing but fruitless sound?
Again, we read too much. Every new volume of history, essay, science (in easy doses), bibliography, and especially of fiction, filters through our minds like water through a sieve. We take in an enormous amount of fuel, but it all goes up the intellectual chimney in smoke. Reading does no good unless it teaches us to think and gives us something new to think about. If we read so much that our intellectual powers become inoperative, to what end is it? We need to think more; and to think to any purpose we must learn to face ourselves alone. And it is only by seeking and finding our true selves that we can come into a full comprehension of what a full, wide every-day sort of thing true happiness is, and how easily it may be obtained, after all. We may have flower-gardens in our own souls, an’ we will.
Said the Rev. Dr. Burns: “To simply perpetuate low aims, frivolous characters, mammon-worshipping beings, is to curse rather than to bless. This is not the end nor kingdom to which woman has been called. A message has gone forth—not to a favored one, but to every woman, whatever may be her position. Some are faithfully and heroically striving to obey the command; others are indifferent. They are asleep. But sleep must give place to work, indifference to interest, selfish ease to self-sacrifice. Littleness, worldliness, must all give way to the execution of the command.
“Knowest thou, O woman, that thou art come for such a time and work as this? If indifferent, thou wilt sink into insignificance and another will take up the crown and sceptre which might have been thine.” Donald Mitchell says: “Man without some sort of religion is at best a poor reprobate, a football of destiny.” But a woman without religion is worse. She is a flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower without perfume. That sweet trustfulness, that abiding love, that endearing hope which man needs in every scheme of life, is not then hers to give. But let the love of Christ take full possession of a woman’s heart, and under its inspiration let her grow in purity, in character, till at last she come to a perfect woman, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”; then from all human lips, and from Him who sitteth upon the throne, will come the benediction, “Blessed art thou among women.”
Man hunts after God with his understanding and fails, often, to find Him; science reaches after God with its lenses, and its face seems like a blind man trying to help his sight by using a glass eye; logic tries to soar toward God, and waves its wooden crutches in mimicry to witness; woman sees Him, feels Him within, discerns Him above, sees Him in Christ. She feels Him in the deepest experiences of life, and then she sees Him in all the providential history of the world, in all creation. It is by the heart of woman filled with the Divine power and beauty that the world is to have everywhere and retain immortally the vision of God. One of the most foolish questions ever asked is: “What is going to be the sphere of woman when she is so educated?” The sphere? If she don’t make her own we may stop prophesying. You see the little ridge among the mountains, a thread of water, and you see it arrested by rocks, and you see more and more as it fills the chasm behind them till it cuts its way across the rock, and through the rock, and at last you go into the gorges and see the mighty chasms that have been cloven through the rocky hills, and there is the power that has done it. That little stream has made its sphere.
If we were all thoughtful, high-minded, serious, charitable, broad-minded, loving, tender, patient, self-sacrificing, forgiving and Christ-like; if we lived the best of which we are capable every day of our lives, “you in your small corner and I in mine,” what a power for good would we be!—not possibility, but power. Whose fault is it if we do not accomplish all we might?
Again, we put such false estimates on life. Lady Henry Somerset once said: “It would be interesting to analyze how much real happiness comes to the man who has made or inherited a large fortune, and feels it necessary to live in what is called ‘adequate style.’ He builds himself a palace, engages a troop of servants, begins to collect pictures, furniture and objects of art, and he little knows that he is heaping upon himself a world of trouble. A man with a moderate income, who has no requirements beyond those which he can well supply, who lives in a house where his things give him no anxiety, but in refined, tasteful and simple surroundings, who can afford to see his own friends because he cares for them, and not a host of people who have to be asked because it is the right thing that they should be seen at his house, is the really happy man.” When shall we learn that it is not the things we possess, but the thing we are that makes or unmakes our life?
It is only in the last hundred years that we have come to judge men and women in proportion to their personal contribution to humanity. Now we see that our aim must be to live, not to make a living; that we must get our culture out of our work, instead of leaving it till we grow too old or too rich to work; that we must make our work a medium for self-expression, and finally that we must make it an opportunity for serving others. Vocations tend to become matters of such routine that it is often hard to see any ideal or inspiration in them, and this holds true of much more of women’s work than of men’s. There’s so little inspiration, so little of the outlook into the bigger world.
Again, it is so much easier to see the deadness in your own life than in other people’s. We see their brilliant achievements; we don’t know anything about the drudgery that has gone to produce them.
This life is no lottery. Nothing worth while comes without work. What comes easily goes easily. That which seems to be done most easily is bought with the hardest work. There is no royal road to anything worth while. We have to do many things that seem like the merest drudgery; but to do any blind, dead work loyally and faithfully without protesting is to build character and to get culture. For what is culture but patience, fidelity, quiet wisdom, loyalty to trust—those simple, primitive qualities on which human life is based? And when trouble comes on us, to whom do we go? Sometimes to our physician. Sometimes to our minister. But often we go to some woman who has lived quietly and brought up her children, but is able to give us the help that comes from a hand-grip with life.
Here’s a verse for you:
“Somebody did a golden deed; Somebody proved a friend in need; Somebody sang a beautiful song; Somebody smiled the whole day long. Somebody thought, ‘’Tis sweet to live’; Somebody said ‘I’m glad to give’; Somebody fought a valiant fight; Somebody lived to shield the right; Was that somebody you?”