THE EARTH'S ENTAIL
No matter how we cultivate the land,
Taming the forest and the prairie free;
No matter how we irrigate the sand,
Making the desert blossom at command,
We must always leave the borders of the sea;
The immeasureable reaches
Of the windy wave-wet beaches,
The million-mile-long margin of the sea.
No matter how the engineers may toil,
Nature's barriers and bulwarks to defy;
No matter how we excavate and spoil,
De-forest and denude and waste the soil,
We must always leave the mountains looming high;
No human effort changes,
The horizon-rolling ranges
Where the high hills heave and shoulder to the sky.
When a child may wander safely, east or west,
When the peaceful nations gossip and agree.
When our homes are set in gardens all at rest,
And happy lives are long in work loved best,
We can leave our labor and go free;
Free to go and stand alone in,
Free for each to find his own in.
In the everlasting mountains and the sea.
THE COTTAGETTE
"Why not?" said Mr. Mathews "It is far too small for a house, too pretty for a hut, too—unusual—for a cottage."
"Cottagette, by all means," said Lois, seating herself on a porch chair.
"But it is larger than it looks, Mr. Mathews. How do you like it,
Malda?"
I was delighted with it. More than delighted. Here this tiny shell of fresh unpainted wood peeped out from under the trees, the only house in sight except the distant white specks on far off farms, and the little wandering village in the river-threaded valley. It sat right on the turf,—no road, no path even, and the dark woods shadowed the back windows.
"How about meals?" asked Lois.
"Not two minutes walk," he assured her, and showed us a little furtive path between the trees to the place where meals were furnished.
We discussed and examined and exclaimed, Lois holding her pongee skirts close about her—she needn't have been so careful, there wasn't a speck of dust,—and presently decided to take it.
Never did I know the real joy and peace of living, before that blessed summer at "High Court." It was a mountain place, easy enough to get to, but strangely big and still and far away when you were there.
The working basis of the establishment was an eccentric woman named Caswell, a sort of musical enthusiast, who had a summer school of music and the "higher things." Malicious persons, not able to obtain accommodations there, called the place "High C."
I liked the music very well, and kept my thoughts to myself, both high and low, but "The Cottagette" I loved unreservedly. It was so little and new and clean, smelling only of its fresh-planed boards—they hadn't even stained it.
There was one big room and two little ones in the tiny thing, though from the outside you wouldn't have believed it, it looked so small; but small as it was it harbored a miracle—a real bathroom with water piped from mountain springs. Our windows opened into the green shadiness, the soft brownness, the bird-inhabited quiet flower-starred woods. But in front we looked across whole counties—over a far-off river-into another state. Off and down and away—it was like sitting on the roof of something—something very big.
The grass swept up to the door-step, to the walls—only it wasn't just grass of course, but such a procession of flowers as I had never imagined could grow in one place.
You had to go quite a way through the meadow, wearing your own narrow faintly marked streak in the grass, to reach the town-connecting road below. But in the woods was a little path, clear and wide, by which we went to meals.
For we ate with the highly thoughtful musicians, and highly musical thinkers, in their central boarding-house nearby. They didn't call it a boarding-house, which is neither high nor musical; they called it "The Calceolaria." There was plenty of that growing about, and I didn't mind what they called it so long as the food was good—which it was, and the prices reasonable—which they were.
The people were extremely interesting—some of them at least; and all of them were better than the average of summer boarders.
But if there hadn't been any interesting ones it didn't matter while Ford Mathews was there. He was a newspaper man, or rather an ex-newspaper man, then becoming a writer for magazines, with books ahead.
He had friends at High Court—he liked music—he liked the place—and he liked us. Lois liked him too, as was quite natural. I'm sure I did.
He used to come up evenings and sit on the porch and talk.
He came daytimes and went on long walks with us. He established his workshop in a most attractive little cave not far beyond far beyond us—the country there is full of rocky ledges and hollows, and sometimes asked us over to an afternoon tea, made on a gipsy fire.
Lois was a good deal older than I, but not really old at all, and she didn't look her thirty-five by ten years. I never blamed her for not mentioning it, and I wouldn't have done so, myself, on any account. But I felt that together we made a safe and reasonable household. She played beautifully, and there was a piano in our big room. There were pianos in several other little cottages about—but too far off for any jar of sound. When the wind was right we caught little wafts of music now and then; but mostly it was still—blessedly still, about us. And yet that Calceolaria was only two minutes off—and with raincoats and rubbers we never minded going to it.
We saw a good deal of Ford and I got interested in him, I couldn't help it. He was big. Not extra big in pounds and inches, but a man with big view and a grip—with purpose and real power. He was going to do things. I thought he was doing them now, but he didn't—this was all like cutting steps in the ice-wall, he said. It had to be done, but the road was long ahead. And he took an interest in my work too, which is unusual for a literary man.
Mine wasn't much. I did embroidery and made designs.
It is such pretty work! I like to draw from flowers and leaves and things about me; conventionalize them sometimes, and sometimes paint them just as they are,—in soft silk stitches.
All about up here were the lovely small things I needed; and not only these, but the lovely big things that make one feel so strong and able to do beautiful work.
Here was the friend I lived so happily with, and all this fairy land of sun and shadow, the free immensity of our view, and the dainty comfort of the Cottagette. We never had to think of ordinary things till the soft musical thrill of the Japanese gong stole through the trees, and we trotted off to the Calceolaria.
I think Lois knew before I did.
We were old friends and trusted each other, and she had had experience too.
"Malda," she said, "let us face this thing and be rational." It was a strange thing that Lois should be so rational and yet so musical—but she was, and that was one reason I liked her so much.
"You are beginning to love Ford Mathews—do you know it?"
I said yes, I thought I was.
"Does he love you?"
That I couldn't say. "It is early yet," I told her. "He is a man, he is about thirty I believe, he has seen more of life and probably loved before—it may be nothing more than friendliness with him."
"Do you think it would be a good marriage?" she asked. We had often talked of love and marriage, and Lois had helped me to form my views—hers were very clear and strong.
"Why yes—if he loves me," I said. "He has told me quite a bit about his family, good western farming people, real Americans. He is strong and well—you can read clean living in his eyes and mouth." Ford's eyes were as clear as a girl's, the whites of them were clear. Most men's eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.
I liked his looks, but I liked him better.
So I told her that as far as I knew it would be a good marriage—if it was one.
"How much do you love him?" she asked.
That I couldn't quite tell,—it was a good deal,—but I didn't think it would kill me to lose him.
"Do you love him enough to do something to win him—to really put yourself out somewhat for that purpose?"
"Why—yes—I think I do. If it was something I approved of. What do you mean?"
Then Lois unfolded her plan. She had been married,—unhappily married, in her youth; that was all over and done with years ago; she had told me about it long since; and she said she did not regret the pain and loss because it had given her experience. She had her maiden name again—and freedom. She was so fond of me she wanted to give me the benefit of her experience—without the pain.
"Men like music," said Lois; "they like sensible talk; they like beauty of course, and all that,—"
"Then they ought to like you!" I interrupted, and, as a matter of fact they did. I knew several who wanted to marry her, but she said "once was enough." I don't think they were "good marriages" though.
"Don't be foolish, child," said Lois, "this is serious. What they care for most after all is domesticity. Of course they'll fall in love with anything; but what they want to marry is a homemaker. Now we are living here in an idyllic sort of way, quite conducive to falling in love, but no temptation to marriage. If I were you—if I really loved this man and wished to marry him, I would make a home of this place."
"Make a home?—why it is a home. I never was so happy anywhere in my life. What on earth do you mean, Lois?"
"A person might be happy in a balloon, I suppose," she replied, "but it wouldn't be a home. He comes here and sits talking with us, and it's quiet and feminine and attractive—and then we hear that big gong at the Calceolaria, and off we go stopping through the wet woods—and the spell is broken. Now you can cook." I could cook. I could cook excellently. My esteemed Mama had rigorously taught me every branch of what is now called "domestic science;" and I had no objection to the work, except that it prevented my doing anything else. And one's hands are not so nice when one cooks and washes dishes,—I need nice hands for my needlework. But if it was a question of pleasing Ford Mathews—
Lois went on calmly. "Miss Caswell would put on a kitchen for us in a minute, she said she would, you know, when we took the cottage. Plenty of people keep house up here,—we, can if we want to."
"But we don't want to," I said, "we never have wanted to. The very beauty of the place is that it never had any house-keeping about it. Still, as you say, it would be cosy on a wet night, we could have delicious little suppers, and have him stay—"
"He told me he had never known a home since he was eighteen," said Lois.
That was how we came to install a kitchen in the Cottagette. The men put it up in a few days, just a lean-to with a window, a sink and two doors. I did the cooking. We had nice things, there is no denying that; good fresh milk and vegetables particularly, fruit is hard to get in the country, and meat too, still we managed nicely; the less you have the more you have to manage—it takes time and brains, that's all.
Lois likes to do housework, but it spoils her hands for practicing, so she can't; and I was perfectly willing to do it—it was all in the interest of my own heart. Ford certainly enjoyed it. He dropped in often, and ate things with undeniable relish. So I was pleased, though it did interfere with my work a good deal. I always work best in the morning; but of course housework has to be done in the morning too; and it is astonishing how much work there is in the littlest kitchen. You go in for a minute, and you see this thing and that thing and the other thing to be done, and your minute is an hour before you know it.
When I was ready to sit down the freshness of the morning was gone somehow. Before, when I woke up, there was only the clean wood smell of the house, and then the blessed out-of-doors: now I always felt the call of the kitchen as soon as I woke. An oil stove will smell a little, either in or out of the house; and soap, and—well you know if you cook in a bedroom how it makes the room feel differently? Our house had been only bedroom and parlor before.
We baked too—the baker's bread was really pretty poor, and Ford did enjoy my whole wheat, and brown, and especially hot rolls and gems. it was a pleasure to feed him, but it did heat up the house, and me. I never could work much—at my work—baking days. Then, when I did get to work, the people would come with things,—milk or meat or vegetables, or children with berries; and what distressed me most was the wheelmarks on our meadow. They soon made quite a road—they had to of course, but I hated it—I lost that lovely sense of being on the last edge and looking over—we were just a bead on a string like other houses. But it was quite true that I loved this man, and would do more than this to please him. We couldn't go off so freely on excursions as we used, either; when meals are to be prepared someone has to be there, and to take in things when they come. Sometimes Lois stayed in, she always asked to, but mostly I did. I couldn't let her spoil her summer on my account. And Ford certainly liked it.
He came so often that Lois said she thought it would look better if we had an older person with us; and that her mother could come if I wanted her, and she could help with the work of course. That seemed reasonable, and she came. I wasn't very fond of Lois's mother, Mrs. Fowler, but it did seem a little conspicuous, Mr. Mathews eating with us more than he did at the Calceolaria.
There were others of course, plenty of them dropping in, but I didn't encourage it much, it made so much more work. They would come in to supper, and then we would have musical evenings. They offered to help me wash dishes, some of them, but a new hand in the kitchen is not much help, I preferred to do it myself; then I knew where the dishes were.
Ford never seemed to want to wipe dishes; though I often wished he would.
So Mrs. Fowler came. She and Lois had one room, they had to,—and she really did a lot of the work, she was a very practical old lady.
Then the house began to be noisy. You hear another person in a kitchen more than you hear yourself, I think,—and the walls were only boards. She swept more than we did too. I don't think much sweeping is needed in a clean place like that; and she dusted all the time; which I know is unnecessary. I still did most of the cooking, but I could get off more to draw, out-of-doors; and to walk. Ford was in and out continually, and, it seemed to me, was really coming nearer. What was one summer of interrupted work, of noise and dirt and smell and constant meditation on what to eat next, compared to a lifetime of love? Besides—if he married me—I should have to do it always, and might as well get used to it.
Lois kept me contented, too, telling me nice things that Ford said about my cooking. "He does appreciate it so," she said.
One day he came around early and asked me to go up Hugh's Peak with him.
It was a lovely climb and took all day. I demurred a little, it was
Monday, Mrs. Fowler thought it was cheaper to have a woman come and
wash, and we did, but it certainly made more work.
"Never mind," he said, "what's washing day or ironing day or any of that old foolishness to us? This is walking day—that's what it is." It was really, cool and sweet and fresh,—it had rained in the night,—and brilliantly clear.
"Come along!" he said. "We can see as far as Patch Mountain I'm sure.
There'll never be a better day."
"Is anyone else going?" I asked.
"Not a soul. It's just us. Come."
I came gladly, only suggesting—"Wait, let me put up a lunch."
"I'll wait just long enough for you to put on knickers and a short skirt," said he. "The lunch is all in the basket on my back. I know how long it takes for you women to 'put up' sandwiches and things."
We were off in ten minutes, light-footed and happy, and the day was all that could be asked. He brought a perfect lunch, too, and had made it all himself. I confess it tasted better to me than my own cooking; but perhaps that was the climb.
When we were nearly down we stopped by a spring on a broad ledge, and supped, making tea as he liked to do out-of-doors. We saw the round sun setting at one end of a world view, and the round moon rising at the other; calmly shining each on each.
And then he asked me to be his wife.—
We were very happy.
"But there's a condition!" said he all at once, sitting up straight and looking very fierce. "You mustn't cook!"
"What!" said I. "Mustn't cook?"
"No," said he, "you must give it up—for my sake."
I stared at him dumbly.
"Yes, I know all about it," he went on, "Lois told me. I've seen a good deal of Lois—since you've taken to cooking. And since I would talk about you, naturally I learned a lot. She told me how you were brought up, and how strong your domestic instincts were—but bless your artist soul dear girl, you have some others!" Then he smiled rather queerly and murmured, "surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird."
"I've watched you, dear, all summer;" he went on, "it doesn't agree with you.
"Of course the things taste good—but so do my things! I'm a good cook myself. My father was a cook, for years—at good wages. I'm used to it you see.
"One summer when I was hard up I cooked for a living—and saved money instead of starving."
"O ho!" said I, "that accounts for the tea—and the lunch!"
"And lots of other things," said he. "But you haven't done half as much of your lovely work since you started this kitchen business, and—you'll forgive me, dear—it hasn't been as good. Your work is quite too good to lose; it is a beautiful and distinctive art, and I don't want you to let it go. What would you think of me if I gave up my hard long years of writing for the easy competence of a well-paid cook!"
I was still too happy to think very clearly. I just sat and looked at him. "But you want to marry me?" I said.
"I want to marry you, Malda,—because I love you—because you are young and strong and beautiful—because you are wild and sweet and—fragrant, and—elusive, like the wild flowers you love. Because you are so truly an artist in your special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others. I love you because of all this, because you are rational and highminded and capable of friendship,—and in spite of your cooking!"
"But—how do you want to live?"
"As we did here—at first," he said. "There was peace, exquisite silence. There was beauty—nothing but beauty. There were the clean wood odors and flowers and fragrances and sweet wild wind. And there was you—your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then. When you took to cooking it jarred on me. I have been a cook, I tell you, and I know what it is. I hated it—to see my wood-flower in a kitchen. But Lois told me about how you were brought up to it and loved it—and I said to myself, 'I love this woman; I will wait and see if I love her even as a cook.' And I do, Darling: I withdraw the condition. I will love you always, even if you insist on being my cook for life!"
"O I don't insist!" I cried. "I don't want to cook—I want to draw!
But I thought—Lois said—How she has misunderstood you!"
"It is not true, always, my dear," said he, "that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach; at least it's not the only way. Lois doesn't know everything, she is young yet! And perhaps for my sake you can give it up. Can you sweet?"
Could I? Could I? Was there ever a man like this?
WHOLESALE HYPNOTISM
We are beginning to see some glimmering of new truth concerning the art of suggestion.
Here is some one with a strong will who imposes upon you a definite idea—"This napkin is a peach; a luscious, ripe peach," insists the hypnotizer; and the hypnotized bites at the napkin with every appearance of delight.
It is said that those once thoroughly hypnotized, surrendering their own observation and judgement and submitting absolutely to the ideas impressed upon their minds by others, become thereafter less able to think and act for themselves, and more and more open to suggestion.
We begin to see this of the individual mind, but we have not yet seen its application to the race mind.
Suggestion is a force acting upon us all, as is well known to the politician and the advertiser, but it acts most strongly upon the weak and those unaccustomed to using their own minds, as is completely shown in children.
It is the susceptibility to suggestion which makes children so easily swayed by the influence of their companions; so ready to follow the leader who says "let's play" this or that: nearly all join in, and a group of children used to such leadership will stand about rather helplessly if deprived of it.
It is that extreme susceptibility which makes the church say "Give us the first five years of a child's life, and he will never outgrow our influence!" Children, of all people, are most open to the power of suggestion.
Now observe the cumulative action of this power, applied to the youth of humanity, and in each generation further applied to each individual youth. Certain ideas first grasped in ages of dark savagery, or even previous to that, and then believed to be of supreme importance, were forcibly impressed upon the minds of children, all children, generation after generation. To select one simple instance, observe the use of the fear-motive in controlling the young.
Among animals there are two main modifiers of conduct, desire and fear.
They act either to gratify a desire or to avoid a danger.
The young animal does not know his dangers, and it is imperative that he should know them. In those higher species where parental education is developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the grass; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied bugaboos to terrorize the young; through ancient and modern races; through the warrior mothers and nurses using "Napoleon" or "The Black Douglas" as the impending danger, to the same primitive, ignorant custom to-day—"The Goberlins 'll git yer, if you don't watch out"!
The "pain economy" and "fear economy" of the beast and savage are long left behind, but we preserve and artificially enforce the fear instinct—by suggestion. We hypnotize our children generation after generation, with disciplinary dread, and rely so wholly upon it to enforce good behavior that our citizens see no preventive of crime except fear of punishment.
Similarly we impress on the helplessly receptive minds of our children, whose earliest years are passed under the influence of uneducated house-servants, the ancient, foolish prejudices and misconceptions of our dark past. If the expanding mind of the little child could be surrounded by the influences of our highest culture, instead of our lowest; and above all things be taught to use its own power—to observe, deduce, and act accordingly, and be carefully shielded from the cumulative force of age-old falsehood and folly, we should have a set of people who would look at life with new eyes. We could see things as they are, and judge for ourselves what conduct was needed, whereas now we see things as we have been taught they are; and believe, because we have been told so, that we cannot alter conditions.
It is not lack of mental capacity which blinds us; not lack of power which chains us; but we are hypnotized—and have been for a thousand thousand years—with carefully invented lies.
"You can't alter human nature." Who says so? Is it true? Is there no difference between the nature of the modern American and the nature of a Fiji Islander? Do they respond alike under the same conditions? Are their impulses and governing tendencies the same?
Human nature has altered from its dim beginnings, under the action of changed conditions, just as dog-nature has altered from fierce wolf and slinking jackal to the dear loved companion of mankind.
There are some properties common to all natures; some common to each race and species; some common to special strains and families; but of all "natures" human nature, the broadest, most complex, most recent, is most easily alterable.
Let that sink in. Be hypnotized the other way for awhile!
You Can Alter Human Nature!
We are naturally displeased with human nature as we see it about us. It so inert—so subservient—so incredibly dull.
Put yourself in the place of a bright youngster, two hundred years hence, looking back at these suffering times. Suppose he is studying "ancient history," and has been given pictures and books describing the life of our day. "But why did they live so?" he will ask. "Weren't they people like us? Couldn't they see—hear—feel? Hadn't they arms and hands and brains? Here's this—this—what do you call it? 'Overcrowding in cities.' What made them overcrowd?" Then the professor will have to explain. "It was their belief that governed them. They believed that economic laws necessitated all that kind of thing. Everybody believed it."
"But how could they believe it? They had intelligence; look at the things they invented, the scientific discoveries they made, the big businesses they managed! What made them believe it?" And unless the professor understands the peculiar effect of race-hypnotism he will be pushed for an answer.
What indeed makes us believe that so many human beings have to remain inferior to so few; that this kind of animal cannot be improved and elevated like any other kind? What makes us believe that because one man is inferior to another, therefore the other must take advantage of him? What makes us believe that while the wide earth responds submissively to our modifying hand; while we master arts and sciences, develop industries, probe mysteries, achieve marvels; we are, and must ourselves remain a set of helpless, changeless undesirables?
"But," the professor will say to the child, "they felt thus and so, you see." "Felt!" that sturdy son of the future will say, "Didn't they know that feeling could be changed as easy as anything?"
It will be hard indeed, when human nature is altered a little more, to make it patient with the besotted conviction of unalterableness that paralyzes it now.
A baby's opening mind should be placed among the most beautiful and rational conditions, specially arranged for easy observation and deduction. It should be surrounded by persons of the best wisdom now ours; and whatever it may lack of what we do not yet know to be true, it should be religiously guarded from what we do know to be false.
Every college should have its course in Humaniculture, and the most earnest minds should be at work to steadily raise the standard of that new science.
New concepts, broad and beautiful, should be implanted in each young mind; this mighty power of suggestion being used by the highest, to lift us up, instead of by the lowest, to keep us down.
What a simple process! What a blessed change! At present the child mind is entrusted to the most ignorant, and taught the oldest lies. Soon we shall entrust it only to the most wise and teach it the newest truths.
[Untitled]
Sit up and think!
The life in you is Life—unlimited!
You rose—you'll sink—
But Life goes on—that isn't dead.
THE KITCHEN FLY
The ills that flesh is heir to are not all entailed.
We used to think that diseases were special afflictions sent by God, to be borne with meek endurance. Now we have learned that some of them grow in us like plants in a garden, that some we give to one another as presents, and some we keep as pets.
Many little go-betweens we have discovered, with legs and wings, who operate as continual mischief-makers, and among these at last looms large and deadly, that most widespread and intimate of pests—the Common Fly.
The House Fly is his most familiar name, but that should be changed. He is not of his own nature a parlor fly, nor a library fly, nor a bedroom fly; an attic fly nor a hall and stair fly; but he is par excellence the Kitchen Fly.
Flies are not perennial bloomers. They have to be born—hatched from eggs, and the resultant larva have to have a Congenial Medium to be born in. The careful mother fly does not leave her little flock on a mahogany center table. Flies have to eat; they eat all the things we do, and many that we don't!
There are two main nurseries for the Common Fly in all our cities, yes, and in our country homes as well—the Stable and the Kitchen.
Unless stables are kept with the most absolute cleanliness flies are bred there.
Unless kitchens are kept in the most absolute cleanliness flies are bred there—or therefrom! Moreover the smell of hot food draws flies from afar; a kitchen even though spotless and screened is a constant bait for flies.
I was once visiting in a fine clean summer camp in the Adirondacks, where friends in combination did the work. In the main room of this place was a wide long window—one great picture, framing the purple hills. It was a good deal of work to clean that window, and we took turns at it. One day this window was laboriously polished inside and out by an earnest gentleman of high ideals. Then—in the kitchen—some one cooked a cabbage. Forthwith that front-room window was black with flies—big, bumping, buzzing, blue-bottle flies. To slay them was a carnage—and they were carried out by the dustpanful.
In the country, by screening every window and door, by constant watch upon each article of food to keep it covered, one may keep one's own flies bumping vainly on the outside of one's own house—except when people go in and out, and the ever-ready buzzer darts in before the swing-door shuts.
But in the city, where a million homes maintain their million fly-baiting kitchens, and each kitchen maintains its garbage pail, the problem becomes more serious.
Let us face this fact. In the residence part of a city the kitchen is almost the only source of dirt.
The kitchen-stove furnishes its quota of coal-dust, coal-gas and coal ashes. But for the kitchen a heating plant could warm many blocks of houses, and keep that source of dirt at a minimum, thus clearing our streets of the ash-can and ash-cart nuisances.
The kitchen is wholly responsible for the garbage pail; each area or alley gate offering for inspection and infection its unsavory receptacle; and beyond that, the kitchen is in large measure responsible for the stable. In the quiet streets where people live, the horses which defile those streets, which break the quiet, wear the pavement, and wring the hearts of lovers of animals, are almost all kitchen horses.
At early dawn the milkman's horse—many milkmen's horses. Then the baker's horse—many bakers' horses. Then the iceman's horse, the fishman's horse, the market man's horse, the vegetable man's horse, the grocer's horse, the confectioner's horse; with, of course, the ashman's horse, the garbage man's horse, and the coal man's horse. All these horses and their various stables, help to maintain the breeding of flies; and the kitchen maintains them.
Nobody ever liked flies. The rigorous housewife has long pursued them with waving towel and flapping paper; dark plates of fly poison are set on high places where the children can only occasionally get it; and the dreadful "tanglefoot" hangs here and there, agonizing our ears with the frantic buzzing of its slow-dying victims.
The housewife objected to the fly because he made work for her, speckling all things offensively; and the house-husband objected to him because he walked on his face, or his bald spot, and woke him from needed slumber.
Also no one likes flies floating dankly in the soup, disguised as currants, or sacrificing their legs to the butter. But these distastes are as nothing to the new Terror of the Fly. He is now seen to be a purveyor of disease—we might say the purveyor of disease.
The cat and the dog, the rat and the mouse and their small parasites are responsible for some diseases. The deadly Anopheles only brings malaria, even the Stegonyia has but one fever in his gift, albeit a yellow one; but Musca Domestica deposits on our food, on our clothing, on our pillows, on our very faces, according to the N. Y. Medical Journal, the germs of "tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, summer diarrhea of children, plague, carbuncle, yaws, tapeworm, swine-plague and typhoid fever."
Now that is a nice beast to have in the house! And more especially that is a nice beast to breed in the house, to maintain, feed, shelter, and encourage.
When shall we be willing to face the simple fact that the preparation of food is not a suitable process for the home?
The vegetarian will say that if we eliminate meat all will be well; let him read again my tale of the Cabbage and the Bluebottle. But meat is unquestionably the worst of our food supply as far as flies are concerned. The fly delights in the voluminous cow, even while alive; thrives in her stable, makes free with her milk, and follows her from steak to soup with ceaseless interest. If we had no meat, no fish, no milk, no cheese, no butter, no eggs, we should reduce our bait a little; but there would still remain plenty of fly provender, and also the horses to bring it to our myriad doors.
Why not keep the food and leave out the fly?
Let us for once fairly face the possibility of a home without a kitchen.
Look at it—a real house, in no way different from any other house in front. But it does differ in the back—for it has no back! Its back is another front, just as pretty, just as dignified, just as clean. There is a dining-room in this house, cool, sweet, well-screened from passing, vagrant winged things, but that is all; no kitchen, no kitchen-sink, no raw meat coming in and garbage going out, no grease, no smell of frying.
But how shall we get our food into our dining-rooms?
It will be delivered, cooked, in shining aluminium receptacles hot and steaming, cold and fresh—all this has been done. And it and its dishes, will go away again, tight-closed, leaving you to brush up the crumbs and fold the tablecloth. If you want your own elaborate sets of china enough to wash dishes, that is quite permissible, a butler's pantry will take care of that.
There is no more reason why a civilized family should cook its own food in its own kitchen than kill its own pig in its own backyard.
Then rises the pathetic cry about not liking it. Of course some people won't like it. Some people never like any new way of doing things. Food habits are proverbially hard to change.
But I can tell you who will like it—that is the woman who is tired of planning meals, tired of ordering meals, tired of managing servants, or tired—deadly tired—of her own cooking.
And one generation of children, growIng up in kitchenless homes, eating food that is prepared by trained experts and not by "greenhorns," used to science and art in the food supply instead of affection and ignorance—they will like it.
We like what we are used to, and if we have been used to it for a thousand years we like it more intensely. But that proves nothing at all except that we are used to it. It does not prove the thing is good for us—nor that we can not get used to something better and like that, in course of time, just as devotedly. One would think, observing the attitude of most of us toward any proposed change, that so far we had never changed at all.
But with all history behind us; with that long, long flight of little steps we took so many centuries to climb, and then, closer, the swiftly heightening large steps we have been taking in these later years ever more swiftly; what then accounts for our always clinging so desperately to the one behind, and resisting so furiously being forced up one more!
It is like the old story of the liberal-minded Grandma and the combination suit. She visited her daughter in New York, resolved to keep up with Progress.
They took her to hear Ignatius Donnelly with his Baconian theory;
Ingersoll hammering at Moses, and Jenness-Miller with her Reformed
Clothes for Women.
Then the old lady broke away and returned to her rural home. "They took away my Shakespeare, and they took away my God," said she; "but when they took away my chemise I couldn't stand it."
We have seen the home robbed and depleted as years have passed; with struggle and objection, no doubt, but inevitably shrinking. Out went the shears and the carders, out went the dye tub and the spinning-wheels; big wool wheel, little flax wheel, all gone. Out went the clattering loom; out went the quilting-frame, the candle-mould, the little mallet to break up the tall blue-papered "sugar loaves."
Some of us have seen all these. In long remote places they are still to be found. In the neighborhood of Chicago's Hull House was found a woman to whom the spinning-wheel was a wonderful modern invention! She spun with a spindle—like Clotho.
Now why do reasoning people, seeing all this behind them, so dread and resist the next step before them—the eliminating of the kitchen? Shall we never learn, that as a means of feeding the world it is not a success? It does not bring health and happiness. Every competent woman is not a competent cook and never will be; any more than every man is a competent carpenter. The preparation of food is too important a task to be left to a private servant—whether hired or married.
There are reasons, many, and good, why the kitchen must go; reasons of health, of economy, of happiness; but this last reason is a good accelerator—the Horror of the Fly.
Here he is by millions and millions: Here She is, by trillions. Their hairy feet, their whiskered probosces, slop and paddle in every foul and nauseous thing. They sit twiddling their paws on the pauper's sickbed; and then twiddle those same paws on our warm chocolate-cake.
And every home that keeps a kitchen, with its attendant stables, helps to maintain and disseminate this scourge of humanity, this universal purveyor of infectious disease—The Kitchen Fly.
ALAS!
Have those in monstrous hats no glimmering dream
Of the high beauty of the human head,
House of the brain: seat of the sentient soul;
Haloed for sainthood; crowned for royalty;
Bright-ringed with roses, wreathed with noble bays,
Most beautifully bound with shining hair.
Alas for the soft glory they have lost!
Alas for the Ashantee wigs they wear!
Nor plait nor coil nor ringlet, but a mass
Of shorn dead hair from poorer women's heads.
Of bulging wire and hard, stiff, glittering bands.
A heap no loving hand would long to touch.
This body is the glory of the world;
The head the body's crown; but we on this
Plant like a fool's-cap these preposterous forms.
Alas for women's folly; and alas
For man, who likes his women to be fools,
And carefully has bred them to this end.
HER PETS
She saw the pleasant living creatures; bright birds, scattering music in the air, fish like darting lights in the dark water; beasts with soft eyes and softer fur. Therefore to her house she brought them, in chains and cages and glaring jails of glass she kept them, prisoners and exiles all.
Out of the plenteous, pure water, freshened by free air, darkened by shadowing leaves and hidden ledges; away from pleasant chase of food desired; come the gold-red fish she loves; come to foul airless water, scant and warm, where they gasp faintly to and fro, in dim distress; come to the stale monotonous food that falls to them inert; come with their lidless eyes to the round high-placed globe of glass, set in a window in the sun, reflecting and refracting the fierce light from every side;—even as the Carthaginians tortured their prisoners she tortures the gold-red fish she loves.
Out of the billowing green boughs of the forest, the endless oceans of bright air, the refreshing rain, the winds that lift and rush and fill with wild rejoicing; out of the whispering darkness of deep leaves, the wide sweet light of sunlit hill and valley; away from pleasant chase of food desired; come the yellow song birds which she loves; come over land and sea in small tight wicker cells; come to prisons of gilded wires scarce larger; come to the smothering house air, the dull constant dreary walls, the sick heat, the smell of coal gas and the smoke of oil; to such stale monotonous food as falls to them inert; to hop and hop and hop, to sing madly to no end, and dream of flight,—to this come the birds she loves.
Out of his long wild past; lifted to be assistant in the chase, house guardian, brother shepherd; comes the friend of man to be the pet of woman. Down, down, he sinks; no shepherd, no hunter, no guardian now; far from the pleasant chase of food desired; only a pet, her pet. Dwarfed, distorted, feeble; a snub-nosed monsterling; ears cropped, tail cut, hair shaved in ludicrous patches; collared and chained; basketed, blanketed, braceleted, dressed,—O last and utter ignominy!—stuffed on unnatural food till he waddles grossly, panting and diseased; so comes the dog she loves.
Of bird and beast and fish, her pets, what sacrifice is asked? They must first lose freedom, the essential joy of every life; fresh air, fresh water, the daily need of every life. They must lose the search and chase of natural food, the major occupation of every animal, deprived of which they are deprived of function; nerve, muscle, brain,—all must deteriorate, disused. They must lose the joy of long adaptation to environment; no few generations in houses can overcome the longings bred in countless ages for sky and river, forest and plain and hill.
They must lose—and has the mother of the world no pity?—the free use of nature's overwhelming instincts, they must be denied the strongest desire of life. The sorrowful mother of drowned kittens mourns under the caressing hand that robbed her; the tumbling puppies are gone and their mother finds no comfort, the little hen bird frets over a scattered thread or feather, vainly striving to build a useless nest; the little yellow-feathered lover shrills his heart out for the mate he never sees.
The piercing clamor of bachelorhood enforced makes our nights hideous with voices of sufferers free on roof and fence, or chained in yard and kennel; and even—exquisite outrage! we surgically prepare for their high position the pets we love.
Men, too, have pets, sometimes; men who are invalids, prisoners, dwellers in lonely cabins; but not free human beings, working gladly in a free human world.