The Art of Living

Undoubtedly the modern man is at present a rather trying person to woman, for woman would have been glad, now that she is coming into her kingdom, to have him more of a crusader and less of a philosopher. To behold him lacking in picturesqueness and a philosopher addicted to compromise into the bargain is almost irritating to her, and she has certainly some ground for criticism. The man who sits opposite to her at the breakfast-table, even after he has overcome conservative fears of nothing to live on and dawdled into matrimony, is a lovable but not especially exciting person. He eats, works, and sleeps, does most of the things which he ought to do and leaves undone a commendable number of the things which he ought not to do, and is a rather respectable member of society of the machine-made order. He works very hard to supply her with money; he is kind to her and the children; he gives her her head, as he calls it; and he acquiesces pleasantly enough in the social plans which she entertains for herself and him, and ordinarily he is sleepy in the evening. Indeed, in moments of most serious depression she is tempted to think of him as a superior chore-man, a comparison which haunts her even in church. She would like, with one fell swoop of her broom, to clear the world of the social evil, the fruit of the grape, tobacco, and playing cards, to introduce drastic educational reforms which would, by kindergarten methods, familiarize every one on earth with art and culture, and to bring to pass within five, or possibly six years, a golden age of absolute reform inspired and established by woman. Life for her at present means one vast camp of committee meetings, varied only by frequent cups of tea; and that steaming beverage continues prominent in her radiant vision of the coming millennium. No wonder it disconcerts and annoys her to find so comparatively little enthusiastic confidence in the immediate success of her fell swoop, and to have her pathway blocked by grave or lazy ifs and buts and by cold contradictions of fact. No wonder she abhors compromise; no wonder she regards the man who goes on using tobacco and playing cards and drinking things stronger than tea as an inert and soulless creature.

Yet smile as we may at the dull, sorry place the world would be were the golden age of her intention to come upon us over night like a cold wave, is she not justified in regarding the average custom-made man of the day as a highly respectable, well-to-do chore-man who earns fair wages and goes to sleep at night contented with a good meal and a pipe? Is he not machine-made? Sincere and wise as he is, now that his gaze is fixed on the needs of earth, has he not the philosophy of hygienic comfort and easy-going conservative materialism so completely on the brain that he is in danger of becoming ordinary instead of just a little lower than the angels? Let us consider him from this point of view more in detail.

II

The young man of the present era on his twenty-first birthday is apt to find himself in a very prudent and conservative atmosphere. The difficulties of getting on are explained to him; he is properly assured that, though there is plenty of room on the top benches, the occupations and professions are crowded, if not overcrowded, and that he must buckle down if he would succeed. It is obvious to him that the field of adventure and fortune-seeking in foreign or strange places is practically exhausted. It is open to him, to be sure, to go to the North Pole in search of some one already there, or to study in a cage in the jungles of Africa the linguistic value of the howls and chatterings of wild animals; but these are manifestly poor pickings compared with the opportunities of the past when a considerable portion of the globe was still uninvestigated soil, and a reputation or treasure-trove was the tolerably frequent reward of leaving the rut of civilized life. It is plainly pointed out to him, too, that to be florid is regarded as almost a mental weakness in intellectual or progressive circles. He sees the lawyer who makes use of metaphor, bombast, and the other arts of oratory, which used to captivate and convince, distanced in the race for eminence by him who employs a succinct, dispassionate, and almost colloquial form of statement. He recognizes that in every department of human activity, from the investigation of disease-germs to the management of railroads, steady, undemonstrative marshallings of fact, and cautious, unemotional deduction therefrom are considered the scientific and only appropriate method. He knows that the expression of unusual or erratic ideas will expose him to the stigma of being a crank, a reputation which, once acquired, sticks like pitch, and that the betrayal of sentiment will induce conservative people to put him on the suspected list.

All this is imbibed by him as it should be, in the interest of sincerity and sense. Under the sobering restraint of it the young man begins to make his way with enthusiasm and energy, but circumspectly and deliberately. He mistrusts everything that he cannot pick to pieces on the spot and analyze, and though he is willing to be amused, beguiled, or even temporarily inspired by appeals to his imagination or emotions, he puts his doubts or qualms aside next morning at the behest of business. He wishes to get on. He is determined not to allow anything to interfere with that, and he understands that that is to be accomplished partly by hard work and partly by becoming a good fellow and showing common-sense. This is excellent reasoning until one examines too closely what is expected of him as a good fellow, and what is required of him in the name of common-sense.

There have been good fellows in every age, and some of them have been tough specimens. Our good fellow is almost highly respectable. He wishes to live as long as he can, and to let others live as long as they can. His patron saints are his doctor, his bank account, prudence, and general toleration. If he were obliged to specify the vice not covered by the statute law which he most abhors, he would probably name slopping over. He aims to be genial, sympathetic, and knowing, but not obtrusively so, and he is becomingly suspicious and reticent regarding everything which cannot be demonstrated on a chart like an international yacht-race or a medical operation. He is quietly and moderately licentious, and justifies himself satisfactorily but mournfully on hygienic grounds or on the plea of masculine inevitability. He works hard, if he has to, for he wishes to live comfortably by the time he is forty, and comfort means, as it ought to mean, an attractive wife, an attractive establishment, and an attractive income. An imprudent marriage seems to him one of the most egregious forms of slopping over. If he hears that two of his contemporaries are engaged, his first inquiry is, “What have they to live on?” and if the answer is unsatisfactory, they fall a peg or two in his estimation, and he is likely, the next time he feels mellow after dinner, to descant on the impropriety of bringing children into the world who may be left penniless orphans. If he falls in love himself before he feels that his pecuniary position warrants it, he tries to shake out the arrow, and, if that fails, he cuts it out deliberately under antiseptic treatment to avoid blood-poisoning. All our large cities are full of young men who have undergone this operation. To lose one’s vermiform appendix is a perilous yet blessed experience; but this trifling with the human heart, however scientific the excision, can scarcely be regarded as beneficial unless we are to assume that it, like the fashionable sac, has become rudimentary.

We see a great many allusions in our comic and satiric weeklies to marrying for money, but the good fellow of the best type ordinarily disdains such a proceeding. His self-respect is not offended but hugely gratified if the young woman with whom he intends to ally himself would be able immediately or prospectively to contribute a million or so to the domestic purse; but he would regard a deliberate sale of himself for cash as a dirty piece of business. On the other hand, he is very business-like where his heart is engaged, and is careful not to let his emotions or fancy get the better of him until he can see his ship – and a well-freighted one at that – on the near horizon. And what is to become of the young woman in the meantime? To let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on a damask cheek may be more fatal than masculine arrow extraction; for woman, less scientific in her methods than man, is less able to avoid blood-poisoning. She doses herself, probably, with anti-pyrine, burns her Emerson and her Tennyson, and after a period of nervous prostration devotes herself to charity toward the world at large with the exception of all good fellows.

The good fellow after he marries continues to be a good fellow. He adapts himself to the humanitarian necessities of the situation; he becomes fond and domestic, almost oppressively so, and he is eager to indulge the slightest wish or fancy of his mate, provided it be within the bounds of easy-going rationalism. The conjugal pliability of the American husband is a well-recognized original feature of our institutions, nevertheless he is apt to develop kinks unless he be allowed to be indulgent and companionable in his own way. He works harder than ever, and she for whose sake he is ostensibly toiling is encouraged to make herself fetching and him comfortable as progressively as his income will permit. When the toil of the week is over he looks for his reward in the form of a Welsh-rarebit with theatrical celebrities, a little game of poker within his means, or, if he be musical, a small gathering of friends to sing or play, if possible in a so-called Bohemian spirit. It irks him to stand very upright or to converse for long, whether in masculine or feminine society. He likes to sprawl and to be entertained with the latest bit of humor, but he is willing, on a pleasant Sunday or holiday, to take exercise in order to perspire freely, and then to lie at ease under a tree or a bank, pleasantly refreshed with beer and tobacco, and at peace with the world. He prefers to have her with him everywhere, except at the little game of poker, and is conscious of an aching void if she be not at hand to help him recuperate, philosophize, and admire the view. But he expects her to do what he likes, and expects her to like it too.

In no age of the world has the reasoning power of man been in better working order than at present. With all due respect to the statistics which show that the female is beginning to outstrip the male in academic competitive examinations, one has only to keep his ears and eyes open in the workaday world in order to be convinced that man’s purely mental processes suggest a razor and woman’s a corkscrew. The manager of corporate interests, the lawyer, the historian, the physician, the chemist, and the banker seek to-day to probe to the bottom that which they touch, and to expose to the acid of truth every rosy theory and seductive prospectus. This is in the line of progress; but to be satisfied with this alone would speedily reduce human society to the status of a highly organized racing stable. If man is to be merely a jockey, who is to ride as light as he can, there is nothing to be said; but even on that theory is it not possible to train too fine? With eloquence tabooed as savoring of insincerity, with conversation as a fine art starved to death, with melody in music sniffed at as sensational, and fancy in literature condemned as unscientific, with the loosening of all the bonds of conventionality which held civilization to the mark in matters of taste and elegance, and with a general doing away with color and emotion in all the practical affairs of life out of regard to the gospel of common-sense and machine-made utility, the jockey now is riding practically in his own skin.

One has to go back but a little way in order to encounter among the moving spirits of society a radically different attitude. Unquestionably the temper of the present day is the result of a vigorous reaction against false or maudlin sentiment, florid drivel, and hypocritical posturing; but certainly a Welsh-rarebit at midnight, with easy-going companions, is a far remove as a spiritual stimulus from bread eaten in tears at the same hour. As has been intimated, this exaggeration of commonplaceness will probably right itself in time, but man’s lack of susceptibility to influences and impressions which cannot be weighed, fingered, smelt, looked at, or tasted, seems to justify at present the strictures of the modern woman, who, with all her bumptiousness, would fain continue to reverence him. Some in the van of feminine progress would be glad to see the inspiration and direction of all matters – spiritual, artistic, and social – apportioned to woman as her sole rightful prerogative, and consequently to see man become veritably a superior chore-man. Fortunately the world of men and women is likely to agree with Barbara that mutual sympathy and co-operation in these matters between the sexes are indispensable to the healthy development of human society.

But even assuming that women were ready to accept the responsibility and men were willing to renounce it, I, for one, fear that civilization would find itself in a ditch rather speedily. All of us – we men, I mean – recognize the purifying and deterrent influence of woman as a Mentor and sweet critic at our elbows. We have learned to depend upon her to prod us when we lag, and to save us from ourselves when our brains get the better of our hearts. But, after all, woman is a clinging creature. She has been used to playing second fiddle; and it is quite a different affair to lead an orchestra. To point the way to spiritual or artistic progress needs, first of all, a clear intellect and a firm purpose, even though they alone are not sufficient. Woman is essentially yielding and impressionable. At the very moment when the modern Joan of Arc would be doing her best to make the world a better place, would not eleven other women out of the dozen be giving way to the captivating plausibility of some emotional situation?

As an instance of what she is already capable of from a social point of view, now that she has been given her head, may well be cited the feverish eagerness with which some of the most highly cultivated and most subtly evolved American women of our large cities vie with each other for intimacy with artistic foreign lions of their own sex known to be unchaste. They seem to regard it as a privilege to play hostess to, or, at least, to be on familiar terms with, actresses, opera-singers, and other public characters quietly but notoriously erotic, the plea in each case being that they are ready to forgive, to forget, and ignore for the sake of art and the artist. Yes, ignore or forget, if you choose, so far as seeing the artist act or hearing her sing in public is concerned, where there are no social ceremonies or intercourse; but let us please remember at the same time that even those effete nations who believe that the world would be a dull place without courtesans, insist on excluding such persons from their drawing-rooms. Indeed there is reason to believe that some of the artists in question have become hilarious, when out of sight of our hospitable shores, over the wonders of American social usages among the pure and cultivated women. Before our young men will cease to sow wild oats their female relations must cease to run after other men’s mistresses. Decidedly, the modern Joan of Arc to the contrary notwithstanding, man cannot afford to abdicate just yet. But he needs to mend his hedges and to look after his preserves.

The Case of Woman

I

A great many men, who are sane and reasonable in other matters, allow themselves, on the slightest provocation, to be worked up into a fever over the aspirations of woman. They decline to listen to argument, grow red in the face, and saw the air with their hands, if they do not pound on the table, to express their views on the subject – which, by the way, are as out of date and old-fashioned as a pine-tree shilling. They remind one of the ostrich in that they seem to imagine, because they have buried their heads in the sand, nothing has happened or is happening around them. They confront the problem of woman’s emancipation as though it were only just being broached instead of in the throes of delivery.

For instance, my friend, Mr. Julius Cæsar, who though a conservative, cautious man by nature, is agreeably and commendably liberal in other matters, seems to be able to see only one side of this question. And one side seems to be all he wishes to see. “Take my wife,” he said to me the other day; “as women go she is a very clever and sensible woman. She was given the best advantages in the way of school-training open to young ladies of her day; she has accomplishments, domestic virtues, and fine religious instincts, and I adore her. But what does she know of politics? She couldn’t tell you the difference between a senator and an alderman, and her mind is practically a blank on the tariff or the silver question. I tell you, my dear fellow, that if woman is allowed to leave the domestic hearth and play ducks and drakes with the right of suffrage, every political caucus will become a retail drygoods store. If there is one thing which makes a philosopher despair of the future of the race, it is to stand in a crowded drygoods store and watch the jam of women perk and push and sidle and grab and covet and go well-nigh crazy over things to wear. The average woman knows about clothes, the next world, children, and her domestic duties. Let her stick to her sphere. A woman at a caucus? Who would see that my dinner was properly cooked, eh?”

One would suppose from these remarks that the male American citizen spends his days chiefly at caucuses; whereas, as we all know when we reflect, he goes perhaps twice a year, if he be a punctilious patriot like Julius Cæsar, and if not, probably does not go at all. If the consciousness that his wife could vote at a caucus would act as a spur to the masculine political conscience, the male American citizen could well afford to dine at a restaurant on election-days, or to cook his own food now and then.

Of course, even a man with views like Julius Cæsar would be sorry to have his wife the slavish, dollish, or unenlightened individual which she was apt to be before so-called women’s rights were heard of. As he himself has proclaimed, he adores his wife, and he is, moreover, secretly proud of her æsthetic presentability. Without being an advanced woman, Dolly Cæsar has the interests of the day and hour at her fingers’ ends, can talk intelligently on any subject, whether she knows anything about it or not, and is decidedly in the van, though she is not a leader. Julius does not take into account, when he anathematizes the sex because of its ambitions, the difference between her and her great-grandmother. He believes his wife to be a very charming specimen of what a woman ought to be, and that, barring a few differences of costume and hair arrangement, she is practically her great-grandmother over again. Fatuous Julius! There is where he is desperately in error. Dolly Cæsar’s great-grandmother may have been a radiant beauty and a famous housekeeper, but her brain never harbored one-tenth of the ideas and opinions which make her descendant so attractive.

Those who argue on this matter like Julius Cæsar fail to take into account the gradual, silent results of time; and this is true of the results to come as well as those which have accrued. When the suffrage question is mooted one often hears sober men, more dispassionate men than Julius – Perkins, for instance, the thin, nervous lawyer and father of four girls, and a sober man indeed – ask judicially whether it is possible for female suffrage to be a success when not one woman in a thousand would know what was expected of her, or how to vote. “I tell you,” says Perkins, “they are utterly unfitted for it by training and education. Four-fifths of them wouldn’t vote if they were allowed to, and every one knows that ninety-nine women out of every hundred are profoundly ignorant of the matters in regard to which they would cast their ballots. Take my daughters; fine girls, talented, intelligent women – one of them a student of history; but what do they know of parties, and platforms, and political issues in general?”

Perkins is less violently prejudiced than Julius Cæsar. He neither saws the air nor pounds on the table. Indeed, I have no doubt he believes that he entertains liberal, unbiassed views on the subject. I wonder, then, why it never occurs to him that everything which is new is adopted gradually, and that the world has to get accustomed to all novel situations. I happened to see Mr. Perkins the first time he rode a bicycle on the road, and his performance certainly justified the prediction that he would look like a guy to the end of his days, and yet he glides past me now with the ease and nonchalance of a possible “scorcher.” Similarly, if women were given universal suffrage, there would be a deal of fluttering in the dove-cotes for the first generation or so. Doubtless four-fifths of womankind would refuse or neglect to vote at all, and at least a quarter of those who went to the polls would cast their ballots as tools or blindly. But just so soon as it was understood that it was no less a woman’s duty to vote than it was to attend to her back hair, she would be educated from that point of view, and her present crass ignorance of political matters would be changed into at least a form of enlightenment. Man prides himself on his logic, but there is nothing logical in the argument that because a woman knows nothing about anything now, she can never be taught. If we have been content to have her remain ignorant for so many centuries, does it not savor both of despotism and lack of reasonableness to cast her ignorance in her teeth and to beat her about the head with it now that she is eager to rise? Decidedly it is high time for the man who orates tempestuously or argues dogmatically in the name of conservatism against the cause of woman on such flimsy pleas as these, to cease his gesticulations and wise saws. The modern woman is a potential reality, who is bound to develop and improve, in another generation or two, as far beyond the present interesting type as Mrs. Julius Cæsar is an advance on her great-grandmother.

On the other hand, why do those who have woman’s cause at heart lay such formal stress on the right of the ballot as a factor in her development? There can be no doubt that, if the majority of women wish to vote on questions involving property or political interests, they will be enabled to do so sooner or later. It is chiefly now the conviction in the minds of legislatures that a large number of the intelligent women of their communities do not desire to exercise the right of suffrage which keeps the bars down. Doubtless these bodies will yield one after another to the clamor of even a few, and the experiment will be tried. It may not come this year or the next, but many busy people are so certain that its coming is merely a question of time that they do not allow themselves to be drawn into the fury of the fray. When it comes, however, it will come as a universal privilege, and not with a social or property qualification. I mention this simply for the enlightenment of those amiable members of the sex to be enfranchised who go about sighing and simpering in the interest of drawing the line. That question was settled a century ago. The action taken may have been an error on the part of those who framed the laws, but it has been settled forever. There would be no more chance of the passage by the legislature of one of the United States of a statute giving the right of suffrage to a limited class of women than there would be of one prescribing that only the good-looking members of that sex should be allowed to marry.

Many people, who believe that woman should be denied no privilege enjoyed by man which she really desires to exercise, find much difficulty in regarding the right of suffrage as the vital end which it assumes in the minds of its advocates. One would suppose, by the clamor on the subject, that the ballot would enable her to change her spots in a twinkling, and to become an absolutely different creation. Lively imaginations do not hesitate to compare the proposed act of emancipation with the release of the colored race from bondage. We are appealed to by glowing rhetoric which celebrates the equity of the case and the moral significance of the impending victory. But the orators and triumphants stop short at the passage of the law and fail to tell us what is to come after. We are assured, indeed, that it will be all right, and that woman’s course after the Rubicon is crossed will be one grand march of progress to the music of the spheres; but, barring a pæan of this sort, we are given no light as to what she intends to do and become. She has stretched out her hand for the rattle and is determined to have it, but she does not appear to entertain any very definite ideas as to what she is going to do with it after she has it.

Unquestionably, the development of the modern woman is one of the most interesting features of civilization to-day. But is it not true that the cause of woman is one concern, and the question of woman suffrage another? And are they not too often confounded, even deliberately confounded, by those who are willing to have them appear to be identical? Supposing that to-morrow the trumpet should sound and the walls of Jericho fall, and every woman be free to cast her individual ballot without let or hindrance from one confine of the civilized world to another, what would it amount to after all by way of elucidating the question of her future evolution? For it must be remembered that, apart from the question of her development in general, those who are clamoring for the ballot have been superbly vague so far as to the precise part which the gentle sex is to play in the political arena after she gets her rattle. They put their sisters off with the general assertion that things in the world, politically speaking, will be better, but neither their sisters nor their brothers are able to get a distinct notion of the platform on which woman means to stand after she becomes a voter. Is she going to enter into competition with men for the prizes and offices, to argue, manipulate, hustle, and do generally the things which have to be done in the name of political zeal and activity? Is it within the vista of her ambition to become a member of, and seek to control, legislative bodies, to be a police commissioner or a member of Congress? Those in the van decline to answer, or at least they do not answer. It may be, to be sure, the wisdom of the serpent which keeps them non-committal, for they stand, as it were, between the devil and the deep sea in that, though they and their supporters would perhaps like to declare boldly in favor of competition, or at least participation, in the duties and honors, they stand in wholesome awe of the hoarse murmur from the ranks of their sisters, “We don’t wish to be like men, and we have no intention of competing with them on their own lines.” Accordingly, the leaders seek refuge in the safe but indefinite assertion that of course women will never become men, but they have thus far neglected to tell us what they are to become.

It really seems as though it were time for woman, in general congress of the women’s clubs assembled, to make a reasonably full and clear statement of her aims and principles – a declaration of faith which shall give her own sex and men the opportunity to know precisely what she is driving at. Her progress for the last hundred years has been gratifying to the world, with the exception of pig-headed or narrow-minded men, and civilization has been inestimably benefitted by the broadening of her intelligence and her interests. But she has now reached a point where there is a parting of the ways, and the world would very much like to know which she intends to take. The atmosphere of the women’s clubs is mysterious but unsuggestive, and consequently many of us feel inclined to murmur with the poet, “it is clever, but we don’t know what it means.” Unrepressed nervous mental activity easily becomes social affectation or tomfoolery, in the absence of a controlling aim or purpose. To exhaust one’s vitality in papers or literary teas, merely to express or simulate individual culture or freedom, may not land one in an insane asylum, but it is about as valuable to society, as an educating force, as the revolutions of the handle of a freezer, when the crank is off, are valuable to the production of ice-cream. For the benefit of such a congress, if haply it should be called together later, it will not be out of place to offer a few suggestions as to her future evolution. In this connection it seems to me imperative to go back to the original poetic conception of woman as the wife and mother, the domestic helpmate and loving, self-abnegating companion of man. Unedifying as this formula of description may seem to the active-minded modern woman, it is obvious that under existing physiological conditions she must remain the wife and mother, even though she declines to continue domestic, loving, and self-abnegating. And side by side with physiological conditions stands the intangible, ineffable force of sexual love, the poetic, entrancing ecstasy which no scientist has yet been able to reduce to a myth or to explode. Schopenhauer, to be sure, would have us believe that it is merely a delusion by which nature seeks to reproduce herself, but even on this material basis the women’s clubs find themselves face to face with an enemy more determined than any Amazon. A maid deluded becomes the sorriest of club members.

What vision of life is nobler and more exquisite than that of complete and ideal marital happiness? To find it complete and ideal the modern woman, with all her charms and abilities, must figure in it, I grant; the mere domestic drudge; the tame, amiable house-cat; the doting doll, are no longer pleasing parties of the second part. To admit so much as this may seem to offer room for the argument that the modern woman of a hundred years hence will make her of the poet’s dream of to-day appear no less pitiable; but there we men are ready to take issue. We admit our past tyranny, we cry “Peccavi,” yet we claim at the same time that, having taken her to our bosoms as our veritable, loving companion and helpmate, there is no room left, or very little room left, for more progress in that particular direction. Her next steps, if taken, will be on new lines, not by way of making herself an equal. And therefore it is that we suggest the vision of perfect modern marital happiness as the leading consideration to be taken into account in dealing with this question. Even in the past, when woman was made a drudge and encouraged to remain a fool, the poetry and joy and stimulus of life for her, as well as for her despot mate, lay in the mystery of love, its joys and responsibilities. Even then, if her life were robbed of the opportunity to love and be loved, its savor was gone, however free she might be from masculine tyranny and coercion. Similarly, after making due allowance for the hyperbole as to the influence which woman has on man when he has made up his mind to act to the contrary, there is no power which works for righteousness upon him comparable to the influence of woman. There is always the possibility that the woman a man loves may not be consciously working for righteousness, but the fact that he believes so is the essential truth, even though he be the victim of self-delusion. This element of the case is pertinent to the question whether woman would really try to reform the world, if she had the chance, rather than to this particular consideration. The point of the argument is that the dependence of each sex on the other, and the loving sympathy between them, which is born of dissimilarity, is the salt of human life. The eternal feminine is what we prize in woman, and wherever she deflects from this there does her power wane and her usefulness become impaired. And conversely, the more and the higher she advances along the lines of her own nature, the better for the world. Nor does the claim that she has been hampered hitherto, and consequently been unable to show what her attributes really are, seem relevant; for it is only when she develops in directions which threaten to clash with the eternal feminine that she encounters opposition or serious criticism. And here even the excitability and unreasonableness of such men as our friend Julius Cæsar find a certain justification. Their fumes and fury, however unintelligent, proceed from an instinctive repugnance to the departure or deviation from nature which they find, or fear to find, in the modern woman. Once let them realize that there was no danger of anything of the kind, and they would become gentle as doves, if not all smiles and approval.

There is no more beautiful and refining influence in the world than that of an attractive and noble woman. Unselfishness, tenderness, aspiring sentiment, long-suffering devotion, grace, tact, and quickly divining intelligence are her prerogatives, and she stands an ever-watchful guardian angel at the shoulder of man. The leading poetic and elevating associations of life are linked with her name. The lover’s passion, the husband’s worship, the son’s reverential affection are inspired by her. The strong man stays his hand and sides with mercy or honor when his mother speaks within him. In homelier language, she is the keeper of the hearth and home, the protector and trainer of her children, the adviser, consoler, and companion of her husband, father, son, brother, or other masculine associates.

Now, the modern woman, up to this point, has been disposed, on the whole, to regard this as the part which she is to play in the drama of life. At least she has not materially deviated from it. Her progress has been simply in the way of enabling her to play that part more intelligently and worthily, and not toward usurpation, excepting that she claims the right to earn her daily bread. Higher education in its various branches has been the most signal fruit of her struggle for enlightenment and liberty, and this is certainly in entire keeping with the eternal feminine, and to-day seems indispensable to her suitable development. By means of education similar to that lavished upon man she has been enabled, it is true, to obtain employment of various kinds hitherto withheld from her, but the positions of professor, teacher, nurse, artist, and clerk, are amplifications of her natural aptitudes rather than encroachments. She has, however, finally reached the stage where she will soon have to decide whether the hearth and the home or down-town is to be the principal theatre of her activity and influence. Is she or is she not to participate with man in the tangible, obvious management of the affairs of the world?

II

The mystic oracles of the women’s clubs do not give a straightforward answer to this question. Yet there are mutterings, mouthings, and signs from them which tend to arouse masculine suspicions. To use a colloquialism, woman fancies herself very much at present, and she spends considerable time in studying the set of her mind in the looking-glass. And her serenity is justified. In spite of ridicule, baiting, and delay for several generations, she has demonstrated her ability and fitness to do a number of things which we had adjudged her incapable of doing. She can almost take care of herself in the street after dark. She has become a most valuable member of committees to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the sick, and the insane. She has become the president and professors of colleges founded in her behalf. The noble and numerous army of teachers, typewriters, salesladies, nurses, and women doctors (including Christian Scientists), stands as ample proof of her intention and capacity to strike out for herself. No wonder, perhaps, that she is a little delirious and mounted in the head, and that she is tempted to exclaim, “Go to, I will do more than this. Why should I not practise law, and sell stocks, wheat, corn, and exchange, control the money markets of the world, administer trusts, manage corporations, sit in Congress, and be President of the United States?”

The only things now done by man which the modern woman has not yet begun to cast sheep’s eyes at are labor requiring much physical strength and endurance, and military service. She is prepared to admit that she can never expect to be so muscular and powerful in body as man. But this has become rather a solace than a source of perplexity to her. Indeed, the women’s clubs are beginning to whisper under their breath, “Man is fitted to build and hew and cut and lift, and to do everything which demands brute force. We are not. We should like to think, plan, and execute. Let him do the heavy work. If he wishes to fight he may. Wars are wicked, and we shall vote against them and refuse to take part in them.”

If woman is going in for this sort of thing, of course she needs the ballot. If she intends to manage corporations and do business generally, she ought to have a voice in the framing of the laws which manifest the policy of the state. But to earn one’s living as a college professor, nurse, typewriter, saleslady, or clerk, or to sit on boards of charity, education, or hygiene, is a far remove from becoming bank presidents, merchants, judges, bankers, or members of Congress. The one affords the means by which single women can earn a decent and independent livelihood, or devote their energies to work useful to society; the other would necessitate an absolute revolution in the habits, tastes, interests, proclivities, and nature of woman. The noble army of teachers, typewriters, nurses, and salesladies are in the heels of their boots hoping to be married some day or other. They have merely thrown an anchor to windward and taken up a calling which will enable them to live reasonably happy if the right man does not appear, or passes by on the other side. Those who sit on boards, and who are more apt to be middle-aged, are but interpreting and fulfilling the true mission of the modern woman, which is to supplement and modify the point of view of man, and to extend the kind of influence which she exercises at home to the conduct of public interests of a certain class.

Now, some one must keep house. Some one must cook, wash, dust, sweep, darn, look after the children, and in general grease the wheels of domestic activity. If women are to become merchants, and manage corporations, who will bring up our families and manage the home? The majority of the noble army referred to are not able to escape from making their own beds and cooking their own breakfasts. If they occupied other than comparatively subordinate positions they would have to call Chinatown to the rescue; for the men would decline with thanks, relying on their brute force to protect them, and the other women would toss their heads and say “Make your own beds, you nasty things. We prefer to go to town too.” In fact the emancipation of women, so far as it relates to usurpation of the work of man, does not mean much in actual practice yet, in spite of the brave show and bustle of the noble army. The salesladies get their meals somehow, and the domestic hearth is still presided over by the mistress of the house and her daughters. But this cannot continue to be the case if women are going to do everything which men do except lift weights and fight. For we all know that our mothers, wives, and sisters, according to their own affidavits, have all they can do already to fulfil the requirements of modern life as mothers, wives, and sisters in the conventional yet modern sense. Many of them tell us that they would not have time to vote, to say nothing of qualifying themselves to vote. Indisputably they cannot become men and yet remain women in the matter of their daily occupations, unless they discover some new panacea against nervous prostration. The professions are open; the laws will allow them to establish banks and control corporate interests; but what is to become of the eternal feminine in the pow-wow, bustle, and materializing rush and competition of active business life? Whatever a few individuals may do, there seems to be no immediate or probably eventual prospect of a throwing off by woman of domestic ties and duties. Her physical and moral nature alike are formidable barriers in the way.

Why, then, if women are not going to usurp or share to any great extent the occupations of men, and become familiar with the practical workings of professional, business, and public affairs, are they ever likely to be able to judge so intelligently as men as to the needs of the state? To hear many people discuss the subject, one would suppose that all the laws passed by legislative bodies were limited to questions of ethics and morality. If all political action were reduced to debates and ballots on the use of liquor, the social evil, and other moral or humanitarian topics, the claim that women ought to be allowed and encouraged to vote would be much stronger – that is, assuming that she herself preferred to use her influence directly instead of indirectly. But the advocates of female suffrage seem to forget that three-fifths of the laws passed relate to matters remotely if at all bearing upon ethics, and involve considerations of public policy from the point of view of what is best for the interests of the state and the various classes of individuals which compose it. We do not always remember in this age of afternoon teas and literary papers that the state is after all an artificial body, a form of compact under which human beings agree to live together for mutual benefit and protection. Before culture, æstheticism, or even ethics can be maintained there must be a readiness and ability to fight, if the necessity arises, and a capacity to do heavy work. Moreover, there must be ploughed fields and ship-yards and grain-elevators and engines and manufactories, and all the divers forms and phases of industrial and commercial endeavor and enterprise by which men earn their daily bread. If woman is going to participate in the material activities of the community she will be fit to deal with the questions which relate thereto, but otherwise she must necessarily remain unable to form a satisfactory judgment as to the merits of more than one-half the measures upon which she would be obliged to vote. Nor is it an argument in point that a large body of men is in the same predicament. Two evils do not make a benefit. There is a sufficient number of men conversant with every separate practical question which arises to insure an intelligent examination of it. The essential consideration is, what would the state gain, if woman suffrage were adopted, except an enlarged constituency of voters? What would woman, by means of the ballot, add to the better or smoother development of the social system under which we live?

Unless the eternal feminine is to be sacrificed or to suffer, it seems to me that her sole influence would be an ethical or moral one. There are certainly strong grounds for the assumption that she would point the way to, or at least champion, the cause of reforms which man has perpetually dilly-dallied with and failed to do battle for. To be sure, many of her most virtuous endeavors would be likely to be focussed on matters where indulgences and weaknesses chiefly masculine were concerned – such as the liquor problem; but an alliance between her vote and that of the minority of men would probably be a blessing to the world, even though she showed herself somewhat a tyrant or a fanatic. Her advocacy of measures calculated to relieve society of abuses and curses, which have continued to afflict it because men have been only moderately in earnest for a change, could scarcely fail to produce valuable results. Perhaps this is enough in itself to outweigh the ignorance which she would bring to bear on matters which did not involve ethical or humanitarian principles; and it is indisputably the most legitimate argument in favor of woman suffrage. The notion that women ought to vote simply because men do is childish and born of vanity. On the other hand, if the state is to be a gainer by her participation in the perplexities of voting, the case takes on a very different aspect.

I have been assuming that the influence of woman would be in behalf of ethics, but my wife Barbara assures me that I am thereby begging the question. She informs me that I have too exalted an idea of woman and her aims. She has confided to me that, though there is a number of noble and forceful women in every community, the general average, though prolific of moral and religious advice to men by way of fulfilling a sort of traditional feminine duty, is at heart rather flighty and less deeply interested in social progress than my sex. This testimony, taken in connection with the reference of Julius Cæsar to the disillusioning effect of a crowd of women in a drygoods store, introduces a new element into the discussion. Frankly, my estimate of women has always been high, and possibly unduly exalted. It may be I have been deceived by the moral and religious advice offered into believing that women are more serious than they really are. Reflection certainly does cause one to recollect that comparatively few women like to dwell on or to discuss for more than a few minutes any serious subject which requires earnest thought. They prefer to skim from one thing to another like swallows and to avoid dry depths. Those in the van will doubtless answer that this is due to the unfortunate training which woman has been subjected to for so many generations. True, in a measure; but ought she not, before she is allowed to vote, on the plea of bringing benefit to the state as an ethical adviser, to demonstrate by more than words her ethical superiority?

We all know that women drink less intoxicating liquor than men, and are less addicted to fleshly excesses. Yet the whole mental temper and make-up of each sex ought to be taken into account in comparing them together; and with all the predisposition of a gallant and susceptible man to say the complimentary thing, I find myself asking the question whether the average woman does not prefer to jog along on a worsted-work-domestic-trusting-religious-advice-giving basis, rather than to grapple in a serious way with the formidable problems of living. At any rate I, for one, before the right of suffrage is bestowed upon her, would like to be convinced that she as a sex is really earnest-minded. If one stops to think, it is not easy to show that, excepting where liquor, other women, and rigid attendance at church are concerned, she has been wont to show any very decided bent for, or interest in, the great reforms of civilization – that is, nothing to distinguish her from a well-equipped and thoughtful man. It is significant, too, that where women in this country have been given the power to vote in local affairs, they have in several instances shown themselves to be more solicitous for the triumph of a religious creed or faction than to promote the public welfare.

It is extremely probable, if not certain, that the laws of all civilized states will eventually be amended so as to give women the same voice in the affairs of government as men. But taking all the factors of the case into consideration, there seems to be no pressing haste for action. Even admitting for the sake of argument that woman’s apparent lack of seriousness is due to her past training, and that she is really the admirably earnest spirit which one is lured into believing her until he reflects, there can assuredly be no question that the temper and proclivities of the very large mass of women are not calculated at present to convict man of a lack of purpose by virtue of shining superiority in persevering mental and moral aggressiveness. Not merely the drygoods counter and the milliner’s store with their engaging seductions, but the ball-room, the fancy-work pattern, the sensational novel, nervous prostration, the school-girl’s giggle, the tea-pot without food, and a host of other tell-tale symptoms, suggest that there is a good deal of the old Eve left in the woman of to-day. And bless her sweet heart, Adam is in no haste to have it otherwise. Indeed, the eternal feminine seems to have staying qualities which bid fair to outlast the ages.

The Conduct of Life

I

Now that more than a century has elapsed since our independence as a nation was accomplished, and we are sixty million strong, what do we stand for in the world? What is meant by the word American, and what are our salient qualities as a people? What is the contribution which we have made or are making to the progress of society and the advancement of civilization?

There certainly used to be, and probably there is, no such egregiously patriotic individual in the world as an indiscriminately patriotic American, and there is no more familiar bit of rhetoric extant than that this is the greatest nation on earth. The type of citizen who gave obtrusive vent to this sentiment, both at home and abroad, is less common than formerly; nevertheless his clarion tones are still invariably to be heard in legislative assemblies when any opportunity is afforded to draw a comparison between ourselves and other nations. His extravagant and highfalutin boastings have undoubtedly been the occasion of a certain amount of seemingly lukewarm patriotism on the part of the educated and more intelligent portion of the American public, an attitude which has given foreigners the opportunity to declare that the best Americans are ashamed of their own institutions. But that apparent disposition to apologize already belongs to a past time. No American, unless a fool, denies to-day the force of the national character, whatever he or she may think of the behavior of individuals; and on the other hand, is it not true that every State in the Union has a rising population of young and middle-aged people who have discovered, Congress and the public schools to the contrary notwithstanding, that we do not know everything, and that the pathway of national progress is more full of perplexities than our forests were of trees when Daniel Boone built his log cabin in the wilds of Kentucky? In short, the period of unintelligent jubilation on one side, and carping cynicism on the other, have given place to a soberer self-satisfaction. We cannot – why should we? – forget that our territory is enormous, and that we soon shall be, if we are not already, the richest nation on earth; that the United States is the professed asylum and Mecca of hope for the despondent and oppressed of other countries; and that we are the cynosure of the universe, as being the most important exemplification of popular government which the world has ever seen. At the same time, the claims put forth by our progenitors, that American society is vastly superior to any other, and that the effete world of Europe is put to the blush by the civic virtues of the land of the free and the home of the brave, are no longer urged except for the purposes of rodomontade. The average American of fifty years ago – especially the frontiersman and pioneer, who swung his axe to clear a homestead, and squirted tobacco-juice while he tilled the prairie – really believed that our customs, opinions, and manner of living, whether viewed from the moral, artistic, or intellectual standpoint, were a vast improvement on those of any other nation.

But though most of us to-day recognize the absurdity of such a view, we are most of us at the same time conscious of the belief that there is a difference between us and the European which is not imaginary, and which is the secret of our national force and originality. International intercourse has served to open our eyes until they have become as wide as saucers, with the consequence that, in hundreds of branches of industry and art, we are studying Old World methods; moreover, the pioneer strain of blood has been diluted by hordes of immigrants of the scum of the earth. In spite of both these circumstances, our faith in our originality and in the value of it remains unshaken, and we are no less sure at heart that our salient traits are noble ones, than the American of fifty years ago was sure that we had the monopoly of all the virtues and all the arts. He really meant only what we mean, but he had an unfortunate way of expressing himself. We have learned better taste, and we do not hesitate nowadays to devote our native humor to hitting hard the head of bunkum, which used to be as sacred as a Hindoo god, and as rife as apple-blossoms in this our beloved country.

What is the recipe for Americanism – that condition of the system and blood, as it were, which even the immigrant without an ideal to his own soul, seems often to acquire to some extent as soon as he breathes the air of Castle Garden? It is difficult to define it in set speech, for it seems almost an illusive and intangible quality of being when fingered and held up to the light. It seems to me to be, first of all, a consciousness of unfettered individuality coupled with a determination to make the most of self. One great force of the American character is its naturalness, which proceeds from a total lack of traditional or inherited disposition to crook the knee to any one. It never occurs to a good American to be obsequious. In vulgar or ignorant personalities this point of view has sometimes manifested itself, and continues to manifest itself, in swagger or insolence, but in the finer form of nature appears as simplicity of an unassertive yet dignified type. Gracious politeness, without condescension on the one hand, or fawning on the other, is noticeably a trait of the best element of American society, both among men and women. Indeed, so valuable to character and ennobling is this native freedom from servility, that it has in many cases in the past made odd and unconventional manner and behavior seem attractive rather than a blemish. Unconventionality is getting to be a thing of the past in this country, and the representative American is at a disadvantage now, both at home and abroad, if he lacks the ways of the best social world; he can no longer afford to ignore cosmopolitan usages, and to rely solely on a forceful or imposing personality; the world of London and Paris, of New York and Washington and Chicago, has ceased to thrill, and is scarcely amused, if he shows himself merely in the guise of a splendid intellectual buffalo. But the best Americanism of to-day reveals itself no less distinctly and unequivocally in simplicity bred of a lack of self-consciousness and a lack of servility of mind. It seems to carry with it a birthright of self-respect, which, if fitly worn, ennobles the humblest citizen.

This national quality of self-respect is apt to be associated with the desire for self-improvement or success. Indeed, it must engender it, for it provides hope, and hope is the touchstone of energy. The great energy of Americans is ascribed by some to the climate, and it is probably true that the nervous temperaments of our people are stimulated by the atmospheric conditions which surround us; but is it not much more true that, just as it never occurs to the good American to be servile, so he feels that his outlook upon the possibilities of life is not limited or qualified, and that the world is really his oyster? To be sure, this faith has been fostered by the almost Aladdin-like opportunities which this great and rich new country of ours has afforded. But whatever the reason for our native energy and self-reliance, it indisputably exists, and is signally typical of the American character. We are distinctly an ambitious, earnest people, eager to make the most of ourselves individually, and we have attracted the attention of the world by force of our independent activity of thought and action. The extraordinary personality of Abraham Lincoln is undoubtedly the best apotheosis yet presented of unadulterated Americanism. In him the native stock was free from the foreign influences and suggestions which affected, more or less, the people of the East. His origin was of the humblest sort, and yet he presented most saliently in his character the naturalness, nobility, and aspiring energy of the nation. He made the most of himself by virtue of unusual abilities, yet the key-note of their influence and force was a noble simplicity and farsighted independence. In him the quintessence of the Americanism of thirty years ago was summed up and expressed. In many ways he was a riddle at first to the people of the cities of the East in that, though their soul was his soul, his ways had almost ceased to be their ways; but he stands before the world to-day as the foremost interpreter of American ideas and American temper of thought as they then existed.

In the thirty years since the death of Abraham Lincoln the country has been inundated with foreign blood. Irish, Germans, English, Poles, and Scandinavians, mainly of the pauper or peasant class, have landed in large numbers, settled in one State or another, and become a part of the population. The West, at the time of the Civil War, was chiefly occupied by settlers of New England or Eastern stock – pioneers from the older cities and towns who had sought fortune and a freer life in the new territory of prairies and unappropriated domain. The population of the whole country to-day bears many different strains of blood in its veins. The original settlers have chiefly prospered. The sons of those who split rails or followed kindred occupations in the fifties, and listened to the debates between Lincoln and Douglas, are the proprietors of Chicago, Denver, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Topeka. Johann Heintz now follows the plough and in turn squirts tobacco-juice while he tills the prairie; and Louis Levinsky, Paul Petrinoff, and Michael O’Neil forge the plough-shares, dig in the mine, or work in the factory side by side with John Smith and any descendant of Paul Revere who has failed to prosper in life’s battle. But this is not all. Not merely are the plain people in the dilemma of being unable to pronounce the names of their neighbors, but the same is getting to be true of the well-to-do merchants and tradespeople of many of our cities. The argus-eyed commercial foreigner has marked us for his own, and his kith and kin are to-day coming into possession of our drygoods establishments, our restaurants, our cigar stores, our hotels, our old furniture haunts, our theatres, our jewelry shops, and what not. One has merely to open a directory in order to find the names in any leading branch of trade plentifully larded with Adolph Stein, Simon Levi, Gustave Cohen, or something ending in berger. They sell our wool; they float our loans; they manufacture our sugar, our whiskey, and our beer; they influence Congress. They are here for what they can make, and they do not waste their time in sentiment. They did not come in time to reap the original harvest, but they have blown across the ocean to help the free-born American spend his money in the process of trying to out-civilize Paris and London. As a consequence, the leading wholesale and retail ornamental industries of New York and of some of our Western cities are in the grip of individuals whose surnames have a foreign twang. Of course, they have a right to be here; it is a free country, and no one can say them nay. But we must take them and their wives and daughters, their customs and their opinions, into consideration in making an estimate of who are the Americans of the present. They have not come here for their health, as the phrase is, but they have come to stay. We at present, in our social hunger and thirst, supply the grandest and dearest market of the world for the disposal of everything beautiful and costly and artistic which the Old World possesses, and all the shopkeepers of Europe, with the knowledge of generations on the tips of their tongues and in the corners of their brains, have come over to coin dowries for their daughters in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Many of them have already made large fortunes in the process, and are beginning to con the pages of the late Ward McAllister’s book on etiquette with a view to social aggressiveness.

Despite this infusion of foreign blood, the native stock and the Anglo-Saxon nomenclature are still, of course, predominant in numbers. There are some portions of the country where the late immigrant is scarcely to be found. True also is it that these late-comers, like the immigrants of fifty years ago, have generally been prompt in appropriating the independent and energetic spirit typical of our people. But there is a significant distinction to be borne in mind in this connexion: The independent energy of the Americans of fifty years ago, whether in the East or among the pioneers of the Western frontier, was not, however crude its manifestations, mere bombastic assertiveness, but the expression of a faith and the expression of strong character. They were often ignorant, conceited, narrow, hard, and signally inartistic; but they stood for principle and right as they saw and believed it; they cherished ideals; they were firm as adamant in their convictions; and God talked with them whether in the store or workshop, or at the plough. This was essentially true of the rank and file of the people, no less true and perhaps more true of the humblest citizens than of the well-to-do and prominent.

There can be little doubt that the foreign element which is now a part of the American people represents neither a faith nor the expression of ideals or convictions. The one, and the largest portion of it, is the overflow and riff-raff of the so-called proletariat of Europe; the other is the evidence of a hyena-like excursion for the purposes of plunder. In order to be a good American it is not enough to become independent and energetic. The desire to make the most of one’s self is a relative term; it must proceed from principle and be nourished by worthy, ethical aims; otherwise it satisfies itself with paltry conditions, or with easy-going florid materialism. The thieving and venality in municipal political affairs of the Irish-American, the dull squalor and brutish contentment of the Russian-Pole, and the commercial obliquity of vision and earthy ambitions of the German Jew, are factors in our national life which are totally foreign to the Americanism for which Abraham Lincoln stood. We have opened our gates to a horde of economic ruffians and malcontents, ethical bankrupts and social thugs, and we must needs be on our guard lest their aims and point of view be so engrafted on the public conscience as to sap the vital principles which are the foundation of our strength as a people. The danger from this source is all the greater from the fact that the point of view of the American people has been changed so radically during the last thirty years as a secondary result of our material prosperity. We have ceased to be the austere nation we once were, and we have sensibly let down the bars in the manner of our living; we have recognized the value of, and we enjoy, many things which our fathers put from them as inimical to republican virtue and demoralizing to society. Contact with older civilizations has made us wiser and more appreciative, and with this growth of perspective and the acquirement of an eye for color has come a liberality of sentiment which threatens to debauch us unless we are careful. There are many, especially among the wealthy and fashionable, who in their ecstasy over our emancipation are disposed to throw overboard everything which suggests the old régime, and to introduce any custom which will tend to make life more easy-going and spectacular. And in this they are supported by the immigrant foreigner, who would be only too glad to see the land of his adoption made to conform in all its usages to the land of his birth.

The conduct of life here has necessarily and beneficially been affected by the almost general recognition that we have not a monopoly of all the virtues, and by the adoption of many customs and points of view recommended by cosmopolitan experience. The American people still believe, however, that our civilization is not merely a repetition of the older ones, and a duplication on new soil of the old social tread-mill. That it must be so in a measure every one will admit, but we still insist, and most of us believe, that we are to point the way to a new dispensation. We believe, but at the same time when we stop to think we find some difficulty in specifying exactly what we are doing to justify the faith. It is easy enough to get tangled up in the stars and stripes and cry “hurrah!” and to thrust the American eagle down the throats of a weary universe, but it is quite another to command the admiration of the world by behavior commensurate with our ambition and self-confidence. Our forefathers could point to their own nakedness as a proof of their greatness, but there seems to be some danger that we, now that we have clothed ourselves – and clothed ourselves as expensively as possible and not always in the best taste – will forget the ideas and ideals for which those fathers stood, and let ourselves be seduced by the specious doctrine that human nature is always human nature, and that all civilizations are alike. To be sure, an American now is apt to look and act like any other rational mortal, and there is no denying that the Atlantic cable and ocean greyhound have brought the nations of the world much closer together than they ever were before; but this merely proves that we can become just like the others, only worse, in case we choose to. But we intend to improve upon them.

To those who believe that we are going to improve upon them it must be rather an edifying spectacle to observe the doings and sayings of that body of people in the city of New York who figure in the newspapers of the day as “the four hundred,” “the smart set,” or “the fashionable world.” After taking into full account the claims of the sensitive city of Chicago, it may be truthfully stated that the city of New York is the Paris of America. There are other municipalities which are doing their best in their several ways to rival her, but it is toward New York that all the eyes in the country are turned, and from which they take suggestion as a cat laps milk. The rest of us are in a measure provincial. Many of us profess not to approve of New York, but, though we cross ourselves piously, we take or read a New York daily paper. New York gives the cue alike to the Secretary of the Treasury and (by way of London) to the social swell. The ablest men in the country seek New York as a market for their brains, and the wealthiest people of the country move to New York to spend the patrimony which their rail-splitting fathers or grandfathers accumulated. Therefore it is perfectly just to refer to the social life of New York as representative of that element of the American people which has been most blessed with brains or fortune, and as representative of our most highly evolved civilization. It ought to be our best. The men and women who contribute to its movement and influence ought to be the pick of the country. But what do we find? We find as the ostensible leaders of New York society a set of shallow worldlings whose whole existence is given up to emulating one another in elaborate and splendid inane social fripperies. They dine and wine and dance and entertain from January to December. Their houses, whether in town or at the fashionable watering-places to which they move in summer, are as sumptuous, if not more so, than those of the French nobility in its palmiest days, and their energies are devoted to the discovery of new expensive luxuries and fresh titillating creature comforts. That such a body of people should exist in this country after little more than a century of democratic institutions is extraordinary, but much more extraordinary is the absorbing interest which a large portion of the American public takes in the doings and sayings of this fashionable rump. There is the disturbing feature of the case. Whatever these worldlings do is flashed over the entire country, and is copied into a thousand newspapers as being of vital concern to the health and home of the nation. The editors print it because it is demanded; because they have found that the free-born American citizen is keenly solicitous to know “what is going on in society,” and that he or she follows with almost feverish interest and with open-mouthed absorption the spangled and jewelled annual social circus parade which goes on in the Paris of America. The public is indifferently conscious that underneath this frothy upper-crust in New York there is a large number of the ablest men and women of the country by whose activities the great educational, philanthropic, and artistic enterprises of the day have been fostered, promoted, and made successful; but this consciousness pales into secondary importance in the democratic mind as compared with realistic details concerning this ball and that dinner-party where thousands of dollars are poured out in vulgar extravagance, or concerning the cost of the wedding-presents, the names and toilettes of the guests, and the number of bottles of champagne opened at the marriage of some millionaire’s daughter.

No wonder that this aristocracy of ours plumes itself on its importance, and takes itself seriously when it finds its slightest doings telegraphed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It feels itself called to new efforts, for it understands with native shrewdness that the American people requires novelty and fresh entertainment, or it looks elsewhere. Accordingly it is beginning to be unfaithful to its marriage vows. Until within a recent period the husbands and wives of this vapid society have, much to the bewilderment of warm-blooded students of manners and morals, been satisfied to flirt and produce the appearance of infidelity, and yet only pretend. Now the divorce court and the whispered or public scandal bear frequent testimony to the fact that it is not so fashionable or “smart” as it used to be merely to make believe.