Chapter III: Part 3

It has sometimes seemed to me that theatrical road life with a one-night-stand company would be less brutalizing to the finer sensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than the method of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignore the fact that there is a mental as well as a physical prostitution.

Look to it that you do not trail your banner of noble womanhood in the dust, at the demand of any editor or syndicate. Keep your purity of pen, as well as your chastity of body, and believe no man who tells you that you will get on better in the world by selling either. There is room higher up.

To Nanette

_A Former Maid_

Curiously enough, my dear little Nanette, I was thinking about you, and wishing to know something of you, the very day your letter came.

Of many who have been helpers in my employ, you were one of the few who seemed to care more for me than for the wages I paid.

There was between us that ideal condition which I wish might exist between all employers and employees. You wanted the work you were fitted to do, and I wanted such work done. You were glad of the money it brought you, and I was glad to recompense you. You wanted appreciation and sympathy and consideration aside from your earnings, and I wanted a personal interest in my affairs, and a friendly wish to please me, aside from the mere work well done. You never seemed to me less womanly or less refined because you were a wage-earner, and I did not represent to you oppression or monopoly merely because I paid the money and you received it. I took you into my confidence in many ways, and you made me feel I was your friend as well as your employer. We enjoyed cosy chats, and yet you no more desired or wished to be present at my social functions than you desired me to enter into all your merrymakings and pleasures. You were, in fact, one of the most agreeable and sensible women I have ever known in any station in life. And now you write me that you are engaged to be married, and ask me to give you counsel in a very serious matter.

Together with your other excellent qualities, you have possessed economy and prudence.

At the age of twenty-five you have a tidy bank-account, the savings of eleven years. This money is increasing, year by year, and drawing a small interest.

Now comes your lover, a hard-working and sober young man, so you say, but earning only a small salary as a clerk.

He has met with some reverses, and is temporarily embarrassed. He wants you to lend him a few hundred dollars, and he will pay you the same interest you are now receiving, but you fear it would be unwomanly on your part to take this interest money. At the same time you feel a reluctance to break in upon your savings, which you had planned to use in helping establish a home. You want to befriend your lover, and you want to be wise and careful, and so you write to me, your old-time adviser, for counsel. I fear I may hurt your feelings in what I am about to say.

I have seen much of the world, and have studied humanity in many phases and in many classes.

There is one type of man I have never yet known to be strong, reliable, and trustworthy,--a man for a woman to lean upon in times of trouble and sorrow,--a man I would like to see any friend take for a life companion,--_and that is the young man who asks a loan of money from a woman he loves, or one who loves him_. Believe me, there is some lack of real moral fibre in such a man.

A husband and wife many years married, and united by common interests, may become so one in purpose and thought that a common purse would be as natural to them as a common dinner-table.

With mutual interests, planning for their future and the future of their children, there could be no talk of "My money" and "Your money" between them.

But before marriage, or immediately after, the man who begins to ask a woman for the use of her purse, should be distrusted by her. He could not broach such a subject unless he lacked a certain refined strength which makes a manly man a woman's protector by nature. Even where no sentiment exists between a man and a woman, the really strong men of the world never become borrowers from women. If through friendly interest and affection some woman compelled such a man to take a loan, he would know no rest or peace of mind until he had liquidated the debt.

When a man is a woman's lover, and asks her to advance money to him for any reason, she may as well realize at once the reed on which she will lean if she accepts him for a life companion. To deceive herself for a moment with the idea that he will be a staff of strength, is but to delay disillusion. A vital quality is left out of his character.

He is but one step removed from the man who _seeks_ a woman because she has money. And he is the most despicable of the human race.

I have known three women of different social positions to lend money to their lovers.

One man invested it and lost it, and never made an effort to reimburse the lady, who broke her engagement in consequence, after two unhappy years. Another went away owing the money, and was never again heard from. The third married the unwise woman who had loaned him her competence, and continued to look to her for support.

Therefore, my dear Nanette, I would urge you to think twice, and yet a third time, before you lend your fiancé your savings.

Tell him frankly that you will feel more respect for him if he is willing to sacrifice comfort and save from his own income enough to lift the debt he has incurred, and that you are sure he will feel less humiliated as time goes by if he is not financially in debt to you. If he were to fall ill tell him it would be your first impulse to devote your money to his care; but while he is able-bodied and well, you do not like to have him lean on you for aid.

You can judge something of the man's character by the way he receives this statement from you.

And whatever may result, even if it is the end of your engagement, do not grieve your heart away over it. Better far to have the end come now than to marry a dependent and shiftless man, who will humiliate your pride by a thousand and one mean traits. The moment a young wife becomes the financial head of a household, and the man depends upon her to keep the family free from debt, sentiment and romance fly from the windows of the heart, and poor Cupid goes away with his head under his wing. This situation might befall people long married, as I said before, without causing disaster, because the wife would have years of other experiences stored up in memory, to maintain her respect for her husband.

The natural instinct of a manly man is to be the protector and the breadwinner. He loves to shield and support the woman of his choice. If she has any talent or profession which gives her satisfaction to pursue, and which yields her an income, he will, if broad-minded and sympathetic, place no obstacle in her path so long as this vocation is no barrier to their domestic happiness. But he is sensitive to her assuming any of the financial burdens of life.

If circumstances render it necessary for her to do so, he suffers keenly, and the utmost delicacy and consideration on her part alone can save him from utter humiliation.

This is the attitude of the manly man, my dear Nanette, the man who makes the good husband and father.

The unselfish, broad-minded and considerate wife will lead a husband to think of her right to aid in the establishment and maintenance of a home when she is able to do her part. But the man who makes a good husband never suggests it as her duty, or asks her to advance money.

It is commendable in you to wish to aid in making a home. It is unmanly in your lover to ask you to help him pay his debts. Beware of the lover who asks for or accepts a loan.

To The Rev. Wilton Marsh

_Regarding His Son and Daughter_

My dear Cousin Wilton:--You have no idea how your letter took me back to my merry girlhood, when you and I resided in the same neighbourhood, and I was the concern of your precociously serious mind. Yes, indeed, I do realize what a mistake you made in living the repressed life you did all those early boyhood years. What a pity your parents reared one of your sensitive and imaginative nature in the gloomy old doctrines of a depressing religion, which so misrepresented the God of love: and how odd that your father and mine should have been born of the same parents, educated in the same schools, and yet be no more alike in beliefs or methods of life than two people of a different race and era.

And again it is not strange, when we realize that hundreds of generations lie back of both parents, and innumerable ancestors of both father and mother contribute their different mentalities to the children in a family. Back of that is the great philosophy of reincarnation--the truth of which impresses me more and more each year I live.

Do you recall your horror the first time I told you I had read a book on reincarnation, and confessed that it had made me anxious to study the theory?

You said I was a pagan and a heathen, and that I would surely be damned forever unless I turned to the way of salvation.

And do you recall your misery when I seized you one evening at your birthday party (you were twenty), and dragged you about the room in a waltz? That is, I waltzed, while you hobbled about like a lame calf, much to the amusement of most of the company.

There were more who sympathized with my views of life than with yours. You were such a wet blanket on our youthful spirits. Your ever-blazing lake of brimstone did not even serve to warm the blanket.

I have been gratified to watch your growth the last ten years.

You have so changed your point of view, which indicates your real worth and progressive good sense. And when you tell me that you have for years regretted your lost opportunities for natural and moral pleasure, and that you suffered beyond your power to describe in those old days in conquering your desire to dance and play games, it brings the tears of mingled rage and pity to my eyes. Rage at the old theology, and pity for the poor children whose lives were shadowed by it.

And now what you tell me of your son and daughter proves another of my theories true, and shows me how nature revenges its wrongs.

Children, my dear Wilton, especially the offspring of strong characters, _inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents_. They bring into action the unexhausted impulses and the ungratified desires of those parents.

The greatest singers are almost invariably the offspring of mothers or fathers who _were music hungry_, and who were given no complete gratification of this craving.

The poet, you will find, is the voice of an artistic-natured parent, who was forced to be emotionally dumb.

And the proverbial clergyman's son is merely the natural result of the same cause. He is charged with the tendencies and impulses which his father crucified.

That your son loathes study, and hates church-going, and adores a brass band and a circus, and runs away to the races, does not in the least surprise me. Nor that your sixteen-year-old daughter grows hysterical at the sound of dance music, and prefers a theatrical show in your village hall to a Sunday-school picnic, and is mad to become an actress.

_They are your own wronged and starved emotions personified, and crying out to you for justice._

The very best thing for you to do with the boy is to put him into a gymnasium and a football team as soon as possible. Offer no opposition when he wants to see a good horse-race. Urge him to go, and ask him to tell you all about it when he returns. Begin right now to get close to the heart of your children.

Once you do that, once you convince them you are near enough to their lives to understand their needs and to try and gratify their natural longings, all your worries will take wing and fly away; for your children will cease to hide and cloak their actions and natures, and they will no longer wish to deceive or attempt to defy you.

Send your daughter where she can learn dancing, in company with other refined and well-bred young people. You have so far emancipated yourself from your old superstitions and beliefs that this action on your part will not antagonize the desirable members of your congregation.

Only a remnant of the old bigots and intolerants are to be found in any congregation of intelligent people of to-day.

If that remnant is shaken out of its winding-sheet by being antagonized, you may galvanize it into life.

At all events, do not endanger the peace of your home and the happiness of your children, for fear of antagonizing a few parishioners of arrested spiritual development.

Give your son and daughter an outlet for the youthful vitality which is like steam: a moving power when used, dangerous and destructive when pent up.

Take young Wilton and Rebecca into a room, and talk the whole matter over.

Tell them how deeply you love them, and how you have just come to realize the mistake you have made in trying to eradicate from them the natural desire for wholesome pleasure instead of giving it proper avenues of expression.

Say frankly that you see your error, and that you intend to rectify it.

Ask their coöperation, and appeal to their good taste and affection not to mortify or humiliate you in your position of clergyman, by overstepping the bounds of decorum or discretion.

Lead them to talk of their ambitions and desires, and, as consistently as you can, gratify them.

Let your daughter come to me for a season. I will help to reshape and modify her ideals of enjoyment to some degree.

I am sure if she sees a few of our best spectacular plays, and hears good music, and enjoys beautiful rhythmic dancing, she will not be so carried away with the travelling show.

I will acquaint her with some of the commonplace facts concerning the lives of theatrical people, and show her the frayed tinsel and worn faces by daylight. This will do more for her than all your sermons on the dangers of a theatrical career.

The young heart is fascinated with the thought of danger and temptation.

It is repelled by the commonplace and the ugly.

When you talk to a young mind in a whisper and behind locked doors about a temptation to be avoided, you but give edge to appetite and curiosity.

When you bring the temptation out into the glare of sunlight, and speak of it in presence of the whole world, you dispel the illusion.

I will gather together some data concerning the sporting men of America, and send your son. I will also mail him the sporting papers regularly. Let him talk and read openly about the subject, and it will lose half its weird charm.

He, too, should learn to dance, swim, fence, and ride. His bounding vitality needs directing in wholesome channels. I have never understood the prejudice against dancing.

To me, it is a form of religious praise of the Creator of youth, health, vitality, and grace. I have always loved dancing, and the exercise, besides being eminently beneficial to the health and wonderfully conducive to grace is, to my thinking, highly moral in its effect. Its only danger lies in wrong associations, and these seem to threaten young people who are restricted from the enjoyment in their homes and among their rightful companions.

I cannot help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hall of fame, among the "Immortals," for having given the last century her exquisitely beautiful creations in dancing.

No woman has given us a great epic, or a great painting, or a great musical composition, but she has given us a great dance-poem, which is at the same time a painting and a song. Oh, you poor starved, blind soul, to be deprived of such beautiful spectacles. How I pity you, and how I pray you to give your children the privileges you have missed through a belittling idea of your Creator.

Do you fancy God would punish beautiful young Rebecca for dancing, any sooner than he would blight the willow-tree for waving its graceful arms to the tune the wind-harps play?

Come up out of the jungles of ignorance and bigotry, my dear cousin, and live on the hilltops and bring your children with you. For there you will all find yourself nearer to God and to humanity.

To Mrs. Charles McAllister

_Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne_

I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before you began your course of action.

You wrote me after you entered Vassar and asked me what I thought of your doing so.

You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what I thought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of good wishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and ask me to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you and the doctor.

"He did not take my view of the matter at first," you say, "but he does now. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinion before I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college before finishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to make him wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so I consented."

Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, and that you have the best husband in the world. But you have decided musical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroad to cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition has taken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of your classmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to take a two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with an accomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded.

"One never knows what the future holds," you say, "and it is the duty of every woman to make the most of herself." Both remarks are as true as they are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original in expressing herself.

But there is another duty a woman should not forget--the duty to stand by her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems the doctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad he did not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has an ailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfully seconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home.

When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season, there is something wrong with his heart.

Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going so far, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. You evidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel that he is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. The American husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now," you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the talents God gave her just as a man does, and that it is a wrong against her 'higher self' to crush down these ambitions. He realizes, too, that this separation means greater powers of usefulness for me in the future, and greater opportunities for pleasure. It will be a long and lonely time for both of us, as I shall only come home once or twice and the doctor may not be able to go over at all, though I hope he will. But the expense of my studies will of course be great, and we shall both need to economize. It is my intention to start a little conservatory after I return and take a few high-priced pupils. In that way I can reimburse our expenditure."

But can you, my dear Winifred, _reimburse your mutual losses in other ways_? You do not seem to realize what such a separation may mean. You are both young and both attractive. I know now that you are beginning to be angry at my suggestion, but, fortunately, you cannot interrupt me, and you must hear what I have to say.

Of course you are not a frivolous flirt, or a silly-headed creature with no ideals or principles. You have nothing of the adventuress in your composition, but you are a young woman, with personal charms and talents, and life will be unutterably desolate for you if you make a recluse of yourself. You will be surrounded by people of artistic temperaments and tastes, and I know, if you do not, that many of these people do lack ideals, and some of them lack principles and take pride in the fact. "Art for art's sake, life for pleasure's sake," is their motto. The entire situation will be full of danger for you. But far more danger will surround your husband. A man's temptations are always greater than a woman's. That is, there are _more_ temptations in his pathway, from the fact that he is by nature and environment less guarded and protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe. And of all men, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed to temptation. He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer of domestic secrets. Many a woman believes she is ill only because she desires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herself disturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society of her minister.

Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise his reputation or disgrace his calling readily. I hear Doctor McAllister spoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows a well-balanced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a' that," my dear Winifred.

We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine creatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from the wife he loves for months and years.

Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying and pleasure-seeking wives.

I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true--_gambling-houses and dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave town for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when crops are ripe._ I do not suppose your husband will seek the companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake of any possible attainment.

You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his comfort secondary to your ambitions.

If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not loyal to you, it would be different.

But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted marrying him.

Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband can accompany you before you go abroad to study.

The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been "abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Do not be one of them.

There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy, united married life is one.

To Mrs. Charles Gordon

_Concerning Maternity_

I have tried to imagine myself in your place, as you requested, before answering your letter.

To be the mother of two children, and to know that a third may be added before the fifth anniversary of your wedding, is for the most maternal of women a situation requiring rare patience and much philosophy.

I know that your strength is depleted, that you are nervously unstrung, and I can understand your despondent state of mind.

It seems to you that all romance and sentiment in life is being sacrificed to breeding the species. You feel that you have some personal privileges as a wife and a woman, not less than a mother.

Like yourself, I do not believe woman's only mission in life to be the production of offspring, yet I consider motherhood the highest privilege accorded her who has for it the right physical and moral qualities.

Only strong, sensible, and healthy women should become mothers, and it is a mistake for even such as they to be kept constantly in that occupation.

You possess all the requisites, and you ought to bring fine children into the world, since you married the man you loved, and have been happy with him.

But I can understand your reluctance to pass through the ordeal which modern motherhood in civilized races means, for a third time, in so short a period. But try and take another view of the situation.

Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child of a poor tallow chandler. It is altogether probable that his coming seemed a misfortune to his mother, taxed with the care of such a brood. Think what the world would have missed had he not come to earth.

Then think of this unborn child as something wonderful and divine, given to you to perfect. Believe it is to be the greatest blessing to you and to the whole world.

Cultivate love and protection in your heart for it.

Tell yourself every hour of the day that the God of love will not desert you or deprive you of strength and courage for your ordeal. That he will be ever near, and sustain and comfort you.

Desire all beautiful and good qualities to be given your child, and resolutely turn away from the contemplation of anything that is hideous, or unwholesome, or depressing.

Look for pleasing objects, read cheerful and uplifting books, and from infinite space call to you all ministering influences.

Consider how short a time, when compared to the span of human life, expectant motherhood occupies, and realize the vastness of its influence upon the nature of the child, and through that nature upon all humanity.

Once you grasp that consciousness, you will feel your closeness to the Creator of all things.

Indeed, there is no other being on earth so nearly Godlike in power as the mother who realizes what her influence over her unborn child may be.

The hard and painful path for you to walk is but a short one compared to the long roadway to eternity for your child.

Perhaps some great statesman, or some great artist, or some great scientist or philosopher is lying under your heart, and it is in your power to make or mar his development. Perhaps a Joan of Arc, or a Rosa Bonheur, or a Martha Washington will crown you with pride.

Such genius and influence for good as the world has never before known, from mortal sources, may be given to it through your unborn child. How wonderful your privilege, how vast your power!

Only a few short months, and then the growing wonder of a child's unfolding mind, to beautify your days.

Think of it in this way, dear little tired and nervous woman, and God and all his angels will hover over you, I know, and all will be well with you.

My prayers are with you.

To Mr. Alfred Duncan

_Concerning the Ministry_

And so you have changed your plan of life and, instead of becoming an experimenter with the flesh, are going to be a healer of souls.

And what do I think about it? I am glad you are not to be an M.D. There is an era coming when the doctor will be a prehistoric creature. Oh, it is far, far away, but already the most progressive minds have ceased to regard the family physician as an infallible being.

Medicine has made the least progress of any of the sciences in the last few centuries.

Credulity has cured more people than pills.

Were you to study medicine, I should advise you to take up surgery, osteopathy, electricity, the Kneippe Cure, milk diet, and all the various methods of stimulating circulation; for the people who patronize these treatments are increasing, as the powder and pill patrons are on the decrease.

Then, too, I should urge you to make a careful study of mental and spiritual methods of cure, that you might be wholly equipped for the dawn of the new age. You are a young man, and you will probably live to see a wonderful change in the treatment of disease, and to find the physician of the old school relegated to the historian.

But just as carefully you should now survey the religious horizon, before beginning your studies for the ministry.

It is utterly useless to stand with lifted eyes and say, "The faith of my parents is good enough for me--good enough for all mankind."

Had the children of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother of the opposite creed.

The narrow, intolerant old dogmas have been forced into elasticity by the later generations, and the broadening work still goes on.

It makes no difference how satisfied you may be with a prospective lake of fire for your enemies, the congregations you are to address will not listen to that style of sermon as did your grandparents.

Only the ignorant minds to-day harbour ideas of cruelty and revenge in connection with a Creator.

Thinkers find such theories inconsistent with religious belief. Individual thought is leading to individual faith.

Where once I believed in a universal church for all the world, I now believe in a separate creed for each soul, one fashioned to suit his own particular need, with the underlying basis of love for all created things as its foundation.

Let each man worship in his own way, and follow his own ideal of duty to God and humanity.

If it is the pleasure of one to give up all his worldly goods, and to go and live and labour among the poor, wish him Godspeed; but if another keeps his place among men of affairs, makes money honestly, and uses it unselfishly, let him, too, have your blessing, since he is setting a good example for the worldly-minded. If one man finds himself nearer to God on Sunday by going out and peacefully enjoying the beauties of nature and the association of his kind, do not try to convince him that he is on the highway to perdition because he does not sit in a pew and listen to depressing sermons.

The day is over for that type of clergyman to succeed.

Make a study of the needs of men _to-day_, and suit your sermons to those needs.

Men need to know more of the wonders of God's universe. Talk to them in a brief, concise, interesting manner of the recent discoveries of science, and their frequent remarkable corroboration of the old religious theories. Thousands of years ago, in Egypt and India, wise men said that metals and all created things possessed life, and were a part of one great immortal whole, of which man was the highest expression.

Science is "discovering" and proving the truth of many statements made by those old seers and savants. Call the attention of the men of to-day to this fact, and set them thinking on the wonders of the immortal soul.

The man of to-day is an egotist regarding his scientific achievements. He has grown to think of himself as a giant before whose material success all other things must give way. He believes that he has discovered, invented, photographed and made profitable all the "facts" of the universe, and is inclined to regard with intolerance any idea beyond his own mechanical domain.

Tell him how much was divined thousands of years ago, and lead him to realize the mighty depths of the unsounded ocean of his own being.

To know your own triple self, body, mind, and spirit, and to make yourself a complete man, with the body beautiful, the mind clear, the spirit radiant, is better than to have all the Bibles of the ages, in all their ancient languages, at your tongue's tip.

Help men to the building of character, which shall enable them to be honest in street and mart, unselfish in home and society, and sympathetic to their fellow pilgrims.

Salvation is gained as a house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction of that effort in the remaining six.

And each man must be his own mason, and select and lay his own bricks. All the clergyman can do is to act the part of overseer.

The man who goes to another, and expects his prayers to save him, is like the mason who expects the "boss" to do his work, while he draws the pay. Do no man's task--physical, mental, or spiritual. That is not friendship or religion. Your work is to stimulate others to do their own work, think their own thoughts, and live their own lives.

The world to-day demands facts to sustain faith.

_Spiritual facts are to be obtained_.

Find them: for once convinced of the continuation of life beyond the grave, and of the necessity to earn its privileges, by self-conquest and character-building, humanity will rise "from the lowly earth to the vaulted skies," and will realize that this earth is but the anteroom to larger spheres of usefulness.

Go forth and find--go forth and find, and do not be afraid to strike out of beaten paths and avoid ruts. Cultivate spiritual courage. It is what few clergymen possess, and it will give you individuality at least.

Preach the religion of happy harmonious homes. Make men and women realize that heaven must begin here, in order to continue farther on, and that the angelic qualities, of love, sympathy, goodness, appreciation, must be rehearsed in the body, before they can be successfully enacted in full-dress angel costume with wings.

God will not care for the eternal praises sung about his throne by a man who swears at his wife on earth, or a wife who nags her husband and children. It is no use expecting a rôle in a continuous performance of happiness in heaven, if you do not learn one line of the part on earth.

Make your congregations think of the necessity to _live_ their religion in earth's commonplace daily situations.

That is the religion the world needs.

To Mr. Charles Gray

_Concerning Polygamy_

All that you say, regarding the excitement over the seating of your Salt Lake Senator, is quite true.

I have visited your city, and have made the acquaintance of many of your people, and I know the private life of the gentleman you sent to represent you in Washington is beyond reproach.

He is a good husband, a good father, a good citizen. He was born of a polygamous father and mother, and his childhood's home was a happy one. He was educated in the belief that it was wrong for a man to cohabit with any woman not his wife, but right for him to marry many wives.

He has not married many wives, however, and does not intend to. His private life, his domestic life and his financial record are all clean and clear of stain.

So much cannot be said of many other Senators and Representatives at our capitol.

Good women are horrified when seeking government positions to find how the sacrifice of virtue is demanded as payment for influence.

These statements cannot be evaded or denied. Let one who questions them investigate the conditions existing in Washington in the past and to-day.

What a record it would be were every girl and woman who had been led into the path of folly by married Senators and Representatives to come forth and tell her story!

There are clean, decent, high-minded men in both houses. There are good citizens, good patriots, good men there.

But so long as one married seducer and misleader of women retains a seat in either house unmolested, so long as one man stays who is unfaithful to his marriage vows, the opposers of the Senator from Utah should base their objections on other than moral grounds.

But despite the facts you bring to bear on your argument, that polygamy leads to more morality in the homes of the land than our present conditions illustrate, I must disagree with you.

I am opposed to polygamy. Any social arrangement which licenses men to possess several women, to give full rein to their desires, is a block to the wheels of progress.

Not until man learns the lesson of self-control, as woman has learned it, will humanity reach its highest development.

Not until man ceases to place himself on a par with the unreasoning male animal, when he argues on the subject of the sexual relations, will he become the master of circumstance he is meant to be.

One man and one woman living sexually true to each other is the ideal domestic life. Better strive toward that ideal, and fail and strive again, than to lower it and accept license and self-indulgence as the standard, under some religious name.

Polyandry and polygamy are both evidences of a crude and half-evolved humanity.

They belong to a society which has not learned the law of self-control as a part of its religious creed and the march of progress. The light of science makes havoc of all such primitive conditions.

You tell me that your father was the husband of three wives, and that all lived under one roof in sisterly love, and that you never heard an unkind word spoken in your home, and that all three wives loved you as a son. You tell me your father held high ideals of womankind, and that the existence of a fallen woman was impossible in your community.

Now I contend that any woman who accepts less than the full loyalty of the man to whom she gives herself for life _has fallen from woman's highest estate_. She lowers not only herself, but the whole sex.

To take a third of a man's love, and to share his physical and mental and spiritual comradeship with two other wives, is far more immoral, to my thinking, than to take the whole of a man without legal authority.

It drags down and belittles woman in the eyes of man. It is useless to contend that such conditions lead to respect.

There is too much of the big male I, and the little female you, in the arrangement. There is too much of the old idea that God made man, and accident made woman, for man's use. There is too much of self-indulgence for the man, and repression for the woman,--a condition which has blocked the highest development of the race for centuries.

Meanwhile, I think it a great pity that society does not hold the expectant mother in the same reverence as in your community. That is certainly a lesson we can learn from the Mormons. And that explains why your children, born of polygamous mothers, are stronger physically, and more universally endowed mentally, than the average children in the world at large.

Mothers were guarded and protected and revered, and children were made welcome, and no such crime as darkens our own social world--the crime of destroying embryo life--was known in your midst.

It is a glorious heritage to give a child this parental love and welcome. It lasts through eternity.

But it does not seem to me that it is necessary to have polygamy prevail in order to produce right conditions for the propagation of offspring. In time the world will realize the importance of teaching men and women how to become good parents.

It will learn, too, the magnificent results to be obtained from one moral code for both sexes, and this result could never be obtained in a polygamous community.

To Walter Smeed

_Concerning Creeds and Marriage_

Before you left us, I realized that you and my pretty secretary were finding matters of mutual interest.

Therefore, I am not surprised that you are thinking seriously of her as a future companion.

Rosalie is a charming, intelligent, warm-hearted, excellent girl, and there is no reason why she would not make you a good wife, save the one you mention--the difference in your creeds.

You are a Roman Catholic, Rosalie is a devout Protestant.

Were the cases reversed, and were you the Protestant and Rosalie the Catholic, I should say the chances of happiness were greater than as conditions now stand.

As a rule, the most religious man is more liberal than the religious woman. And when marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant is the question, there is need of greater liberality on the part of the Protestant than on that of the Catholic.

Why? Because with the Protestant there is no consideration to be thought of outside of his or her own convictions and feelings.

With the Catholic, the power of the Church and the law regarding the rearing of the children in its faith walks beside the contracting party, sits at the table, and sleeps on the marital couch.

There is no happiness for the husband or wife who has entered into such a marriage, after the arrival of children, unless the laws of the Church are obeyed.

When the wife is a Catholic, the fact that she is a good woman and true wife satisfies the Protestant husband, as a rule, and he makes no objection to her carrying out the contract with her Church regarding the education of the children.

If they are as moral and good as their mother, he does not care what faith occupies their hearts or in what way they worship God.

But to the mother this is a matter of vital importance.

Woman is by nature more devout than man.

Woman is by nature more tyrannical than man.

Take those two characteristics, and add to them the tendency of many women to bigotry and intolerance, and it makes the matter of creeds vital in marriage.

Rosalie is broader-minded than many women, yet she is devoted to the Congregational Church, and rarely misses attendance.

It will be an easy matter for her to accept your faith for yourself and to allow you to attend your own church, and she is, I am sure, broad enough to go with you occasionally, if you request it.

But when she becomes a mother, and the children's minds are unfolding, I doubt her willingness to have them brought up in any faith save her own.

To an unwedded girl in love, a child is a very indistinct creature.

To a mother, it is a very real being.

I have seen men as deeply in love as you are, with women as liberal-minded as Rosalie, become very unhappy after marriage through the opposite ideas of the wife regarding the education of children.

You must remember how much more closely a mother's life is entwined about her children, and how much more of their association usually falls to her than to the father.

This is especially true of daughters, and is true of sons up to a certain age.

You can understand, I am sure, how much more companionship a mother would find in children who accepted her faith and attended her church than in those whose spiritual paths led in another direction.

I know Rosalie realizes that a good life, not a certain creed, leads to the goal she seeks, after this phase of existence closes, and she does not ask you to change your faith. But while she would also believe her children were on the road to that goal, she would want them to walk through her path and by her side.

It will be hard to relinquish the woman you love, to-day, for the children who might not come to-morrow.

Yet I can give you the counsel you asked on this matter only from my personal observation of similar unions.

I should advise you to try an absence of some duration, and to forget Rosalie if you can, since you have not yet declared yourself.

Better a little temporary sorrow than a life of discord.

As you grow older your religion will, in all probability, gain a stronger ascendency over your nature, and the church to which you belong is very tenacious in its hold upon its members.

Rosalie is not of a yielding nature, and as I said before, she is more devoted to her church than most young women of the day.

The physical phases of your love blind you now. But these phases are only a part of the tie which must bind husband and wife to make love enduring through all of life's vicissitudes.

There must be mental companionship, and to be a complete union there must be sympathy in spiritual ideas.

The very young do not realize this fact, but it is forced upon the mature.

Marital love is like a tree. It first roots in the soil of earth, and then lifts its branches to the heavens. Unless it does so lift its branches it is stunted and deformed, and is not a tree. Unless it roots in earth it is not a tree, but an air-plant or a cobweb.

You want to be sure the tree you are thinking to make a shelter for your whole life, will have far-reaching and uplifting branches, and will not be merely an earth-bound twig.

Since your church permits no second marriage save by the door of death, do not make a mistake in your first.

Take a year, at least, of absence and separation, and think the matter over.

To Sybyl Marchmont

_Concerning Her Determination to Remain Single_

It is with genuine regret that I learn of your determination to send my nephew out of your life. Wilfred is a royal fellow, as that term is employed by us. He is what a man of royal descent in monarchies rarely proves to be,--self-reliant, enterprising, industrious, clean, and with high ideals of woman.

Eight years ago I declined a request of his for a loan, and told him my reasons--that I believed loans were an injury to our friends or relatives. My letter seemed to arouse all the strength latent in his nature, and he has made a remarkable record for himself since that time. I have known that he was deeply in love with you for the last two years, and I had hoped you would listen to his plea. He tells me that you imparted your history to him, and that you say it is your intention to remain single, as you would not like to bring children into the world to suffer from the stigma upon your name. He has shown me your letter wherein you say, "I am not in fault for having to blush for the sins of my parents; but I would be in fault if my children had to blush for the blemish upon the name of their grandparents. I do not feel I could meet their questioning eyes when they asked me about my parents. I can better bear the loss of the personal happiness of a home and a husband's love."

Wilfred is just the man to protect you and to keep the world at a distance, where it could not affect your life by its comments. He regards your birth in the same light that I do, and would rather transmit your lovely qualities of soul and mind to his descendants than the traits of many proudly born girls who are ready to take him at the first asking: for you must know how popular he is with our sex.

I can not believe you are insensible to his magnetic and lovable qualities, but, as you say, you have been so saddened by the sudden knowledge of your history that it has blunted your emotions in other directions. I can only hope this will wear away and that you will reconsider your resolve and consent to make Wilfred the happy and proud man you could, by becoming his wife.

_Never forget that God created love and man created marriage_.

And to be born of a loveless union is a darker blight than to be born in love without union.

But what I want to talk about now, is your determination to live a single life and to devote yourself to reclaiming weak and erring women. You are young to enter this field of work, yet at twenty-four you are older than many women of thirty-five, because you have had the prematurely ripening rain of sorrow on your life. I know you will go into the work you mention with the sympathy and understanding which alone can make any reformatory work successful. Yet you are going to encounter experiences which will shock and pain you, in ways you do not imagine now.

You are starting out with the idea of most sympathetic good women, that all erring souls of their own sex fall through betrayed trust, and broken promises, and misplaced love. Such cases you will encounter, and they will most readily respond to your efforts for their reformation. But many of those you seek to aid will have gone on the road to folly through mercenary motives, and this will prove a vast obstacle.

When a woman sells to Mammon, under any stress of circumstance, that which belongs to Cupid, there is something left out of her nature and character which renders the efforts of the reformers almost useless. You know all real, lasting reform must come from within. The woman who has once decided that fine apparel, and comfort, and leisure, are of more value to her than her virtue usually reaches old age or disease before the reformer can even gain her attention. You will find many such among your protégées, and you may as well leave them to work out their own reformation, and turn your energies to those who long for a better life.

It is that longing which means real reformation. To paraphrase an old couplet--

The soul reformed against its will
Clings to the same old vices still.