THE SANDS
It runs—it runs—the hourglass turning;
Dark sands glooming, bright sands burning;
I turn—and turn—with heavy or hopeful hands;
So must I turn as long as the Voice commands;
But I lose all count of the hours for watching the sliding sands.
Or fast—or slow—it ceases turning;
Ceases the flow, or bright or burning—
"What have you done with the hours?" the Voice demands.
What can I say of eager or careless hands?—
I had forgotten the hours in watching the sliding sands.
A MIDDLE-SIZED ARTIST
When Rosamond's brown eyes seemed almost too big for her brilliant little face, and her brown curls danced on her shoulders, she had a passionate enthusiasm for picture books. She loved "the reading," but when the picture made what her young mind was trying to grasp suddenly real before her, the stimulus reaching the brain from two directions at once, she used to laugh with delight and hug the book.
The vague new words describing things she never saw suggested "castle," a thing of gloom and beauty; and then upon the page came The Castle itself, looming dim and huge before her, with drooping heavy banners against the sunset calm.
How she had regretted it, scarce knowing why, when the pictures were less real than the description; when the princess, whose beauty made her the Rose of the World (her name was Rosamond, too!), appeared in visible form no prettier, no, not as pretty, as The Fair One with The Golden Locks in the other book! And what an outcry she made to her indifferent family when first confronted by the unbelievable blasphemy of an illustration that differed from the text!
"But, Mother—see!" she cried. "It says, 'Her beauty was crowned by rich braids of golden hair, wound thrice around her shapely head,' and this girl has black hair—in curls! Did the man forget what he just said?"
Her mother didn't seem to care at all. "They often get them wrong," she said. "Perhaps it was an old plate. Run away, dear, Mama is very busy."
But Rosamond cared.
She asked her father more particularly about this mysterious "old plate," and he, being a publisher, was able to give her much information thereanent. She learned that these wonderful reinforcements of her adored stories did not emanate direct from the brain of the beneficent author, but were a supplementary product by some draughtsman, who cared far less for what was in the author's mind than for what was in his own; who was sometimes lazy, sometimes arrogant, sometimes incompetent; sometimes all three. That to find a real artist, who could make pictures and was willing to make them like the picture the author saw, was very unusual.
"You see, little girl," said Papa, "the big artists are too big to do it—they'd rather make their own pictures; and the little artists are too little—they can't make real ones of their own ideas, nor yet of another's."
"Aren't there any middle-sized artists?" asked the child.
"Sometimes," said her father; and then he showed her some of the perfect illustrations which leave nothing to be desired, as the familiar ones by Teniel and Henry Holiday, which make Alice's Adventures and the Hunting of the Snark so doubly dear, Dore and Retsch and Tony Johannot and others.
"When I grow up," said Rosamond decidedly, "I'm going to be a middle-sized artist!"
Fortunately for her aspirations the line of study required was in no way different at first from that of general education. Her parents explained that a good illustrator ought to know pretty much everything. So she obediently went through school and college, and when the time came for real work at her drawing there was no objection to that.
"It is pretty work," said her mother, "a beautiful accomplishment. It will always be a resource for her."
"A girl is better off to have an interest," said her father, "and not marry the first fool that asks her. When she does fall in love this won't stand in the way; it never does; with a woman. Besides—she may need it sometime."
So her father helped and her mother did not hinder, and when the brown eyes were less disproportionate and the brown curls wreathed high upon her small fine head, she found herself at twenty-one more determined to be a middle-sized artist than she was at ten.
Then love came; in the person of one of her father's readers; a strenuous new-fledged college graduate; big, handsome, domineering, opinionative; who was accepting a salary of four dollars a week for the privilege of working in a publishing house, because he loved books and meant to write them some day.
They saw a good deal of each other, and were pleasantly congenial. She sympathized with his criticisms of modem fiction; he sympathized with her criticisms of modern illustration; and her young imagination began to stir with sweet memories of poetry and romance; and sweet hopes of beautiful reality.
There are cases where the longest way round is the shortest way home; but Mr. Allen G. Goddard chose differently. He had read much about women and about love, beginning with a full foundation from the ancients; but lacked an understanding of the modern woman, such as he had to deal with.
Therefore, finding her evidently favorable, his theories and inclinations suiting, he made hot love to her, breathing, "My Wife!" into her ear before she had scarce dared to think "my darling!" and suddenly wrapping her in his arms with hot kisses, while she was still musing on "The Hugenot Lovers" and the kisses she dared dream of came in slow gradation as in the Sonnets From the Portuguese.
He was in desperate earnest. "O you are so beautiful!" he cried. "So unbelievably beautiful! Come to me, my Sweet!" for she had sprung away and stood panting and looking at him, half reproachful, half angry.
"You love me, Dearest! You cannot deny it!" he cried. "And I love you—Ah! You shall know!"
He was single-hearted, sincere; stirred by a very genuine overwhelming emotion. She on the contrary was moved by many emotions at once;—a pleasure she was half ashamed of; a disappointment she could not clearly define; as if some one had told her the whole plot of a promising new novel; a sense of fear of the new hopes she had been holding, and of startled loyalty to her long-held purposes.
"Stop!" she said—for he evidently mistook her agitation, and thought her silence was consent. "I suppose I do—love you—a little; but you've no right to kiss me like that!"
His eyes shone. "You Darling! My Darling!" he said. "You will give me the right, won't you? Now, Dearest—see! I am waiting!" And he held out his arms to her.
But Rosamond was more and more displeased. "You will have to wait. I'm sorry; but I'm not ready to be engaged, yet! You know my plans. Why I'm going to Paris this year! I'm going to work! It will be ever so long before I'm ready to—to settle down."
"As to that," he said more calmly, "I cannot of course offer immediate marriage, but we can wait for that—together! You surely will not leave me—if you love me!"
"I think I love you," she said conscientiously, "at least I did think so. You've upset it all, somehow—you hurry me so!—no—I can't bind myself yet."
"Do you tell me to wait for you?" he asked; his deep voice still strong to touch her heart. "How long, Dearest?"
"I'm not asking you to wait for me—I don't want to promise anything—nor to have you. But when I have made a place—am really doing something—perhaps then—"
He laughed harshly. "Do not deceive yourself, child, nor me! If you loved me there would be none of this poor wish for freedom—for a career. You don't love me—that's all!"
He waited for her to deny this. She said nothing. He did not know how hard it was for her to keep from crying—and from running to his arms.
"Very well," said he. "Goodby!"—And he was gone.
All that happened three years ago.
Allen Goddard took it very hard; and added to his earlier ideas about women another, that "the new woman" was a selfish heartless creature, indifferent to her own true nature.
He had to stay where he was and work, owing to the pressure of circumstances, which made it harder; so he became something of a mysogynyst; which is not a bad thing when a young man has to live on very little and build a place for himself.
In spite of this cynicism he could not remove from his mind those softly brilliant dark eyes; the earnest thoughtful lines of the pure young face; and the changing lights and shadows in that silky hair. Also, in the course of his work, he was continually reminded of her; for her characteristic drawings appeared more and frequently in the magazines, and grew better, stronger, more convincing from year to year.
Stories of adventure she illustrated admirably; children's stories to perfection; fairy stories—she was the delight of thousands of children, who never once thought that the tiny quaint rose in a circle that was to be found in all those charming pictures meant a name. But he noticed that she never illustrated love stories; and smiled bitterly, to himself.
And Rosamond?
There were moments when she was inclined to forfeit her passage money and throw herself unreservedly into those strong arms which had held her so tightly for a little while. But a bud picked open does not bloom naturally; and her tumultuous feelings were thoroughly dissipated by a long strong attack of mal de mer. She derived two advantages from her experience: one a period of safe indifference to all advances from eager fellow students and more cautious older admirers; the other a facility she had not before aspired to in the making of pictures of love and lovers.
She made pictures of him from memory—so good, so moving, that she put them religiously away in a portfolio by themselves; and only took them out—sometimes. She illustrated, solely for her own enjoyment some of her girlhood's best loved poems and stories. "The Rhyme of the Duchess May," "The Letter L," "In a Balcony," "In a Gondola." And hid them from herself even—they rather frightened her.
After three years of work abroad she came home with an established reputation, plenty of orders, and an interest that would not be stifled in the present state of mind of Mr. Allen Goddard.
She found him still at work, promoted to fifteen dollars a week by this time, and adding to his income by writing political and statistical articles for the magazines. He talked, when they met, of this work, with little enthusiasm, and asked her politely about hers.
"Anybody can see mine!" she told him lightly. "And judge it easily."
"Mine too," he answered. "It to-day is—and to-morrow is cast into the waste-basket. He who runs may read—if he runs fast enough."
He told himself he was glad he was not bound to this hard, bright creature, so unnaturally self-sufficient, and successful.
She told herself that he had never cared for her, really, that was evident.
Then an English publisher who liked her work sent her a new novel by a new writer, "A. Gage." "I know this is out of your usual line," he said, "but I want a woman to do it, and I want you to be the woman, if possible. Read it and see what you think. Any terms you like."
The novel was called "Two and One;" and she began it with languid interest, because she liked that publisher and wished to give full reasons for refusing. It opened with two young people who were much in love with one another; the girl a talented young sculptor with a vivid desire for fame; and another girl, a cousin of the man, ordinary enough, but pretty and sweet, and with no desires save those of romance and domesticity. The first couple broke off a happy engagement because she insisted on studying in Paris, and her lover, who could neither go with her, nor immediately marry her, naturally objected.
Rosamond sat up in bed; pulled a shawl round her, swung the electric light nearer, and went on.
The man was broken-hearted; he suffered tortures of loneliness, disappointment, doubt, self-depreciation. He waited, held at his work by a dependent widowed mother; hoping against hope that his lost one would come back. The girl meanwhile made good in her art work; she was not a great sculptor but a popular portraitist and maker of little genre groups. She had other offers, but refused them, being hardened in her ambitions, and, possibly, still withheld by her early love.
The man after two or three years of empty misery and hard grinding work, falls desperately ill; the pretty cousin helps the mother nurse him, and shows her own affection. He offers the broken remnants of his heart, which she eagerly undertakes to patch up; and they become tolerably happy, at least she is.
But the young sculptor in Paris! Rosamond hurried through the pages to the last chapter. There was the haughty and triumphant heroine in her studio. She had been given a medal—she had plenty of orders—she had just refused a Count. Everyone had gone, and she sat alone in her fine studio, self-satisfied and triumphant.
Then she picks up an old American paper which was lying about; reads it idly as she smokes her cigarette—and then both paper and cigarette drop to the floor, and she sits staring.
Then she starts up—her arms out—vainly. "Wait! O Wait!" she cries—"I was coining back,"—and drops into her chair again. The fire is out. She is alone.
Rosamond shut the book and leaned back upon her pillow. Her eyes were shut tight; but a little gleaming line showed on either cheek under the near light. She put the light out and lay quite still.
*
Allen G. Goddard, in his capacity as "reader" was looking over some popular English novels which his firm wished to arrange about publishing in America. He left "Two and One" to the last. It was the second edition, the illustrated one which he had not seen yet; the first he had read before. He regarded it from time to time with a peculiar expression.
"Well," he said to himself, "I suppose I can stand it if the others do."
And he opened the book.
The drawing was strong work certainly, in a style he did not know. They were striking pictures, vivid, real, carrying out in last detail the descriptions given, and the very spirit of the book, showing it more perfectly than the words. There was the tender happiness of the lovers, the courage, the firmness, the fixed purpose in the young sculptor insisting on her freedom, and the gay pride of the successful artist in her work.
There was beauty and charm in this character, yet the face was always turned away, and there was a haunting suggestion of familiarity in the figure. The other girl was beautiful, and docile in expression; well-dressed and graceful; yet somehow unattractive, even at her best, as nurse; and the man was extremely well drawn, both in his happy ardor as a lover, and his grinding misery when rejected. He was very good-looking; and here too was this strong sense of resemblance.
"Why he looks like me!" suddenly cried the reader—springing to his feet. "Confound his impudence!" he cried. "How in thunder!" Then he looked at the picture again, more carefully, a growing suspicion in his face; and turned hurriedly to the title page,—seeing a name unknown to him.
This subtle, powerful convincing work; this man who undeniably suggested him; this girl whose eyes he could not see; he turned from one to another and hurried to the back of the book.
"The fire was out—she was alone." And there, in the remorseless light of a big lamp before her fireless hearth, the crumpled newspaper beside her, and all hope gone from a limp, crouching little figure, sat—why, he would know her among a thousand—even if her face was buried in her hands, and sunk on the arm of the chair—it was Rosamond!
*
She was in her little downtown room and hard at work when he entered; but she had time to conceal a new book quickly.
He came straight to her; he had a book in his hand, open—he held it out.
"Did you do this?" he demanded. "Tell me—tell me!" His voice was very unreliable.
She lifted her eyes slowly to his; large, soft, full of dancing lights, and the rich color swept to the gold-lighted borders of her hair.
"Did you?" she asked.
He was taken aback. "I!" said he. "Why it's by—" he showed her the title-page. "By A. Gage," he read.
"Yes," said she, "Go on," and he went on, 'Illustrated by A. N. Other.'"
"It's a splendid novel," she said seriously. "Real work—great work. I always knew you'd do it, Allen. I'm so proud of you!" And she held out her hand in the sincere intelligent appreciation of a fellow craftsman.
He took it, still bewildered.
"Thank you," he said. "I value your opinion—honestly I do! And—with a sudden sweep of recognition. "And yours is great work! Superb! Why you've put more into that story than I knew was there! You make the thing live and breathe! You've put a shadow of remorse in that lonely ruffian there that I was too proud to admit! And you've shown the—unconvincingness of that Other Girl; marvellously. But see here—no more fooling!"
He took her face between his hands, hands that quivered strongly, and forced her to look at him. "Tell me about that last picture! Is it—true?"
Her eyes met his, with the look he longed for. "It is true," she said.
*
After some time, really it was a long time, but they had not noticed it, he suddenly burst forth. "But how did you know?"
She lifted a flushed and smiling face: and pointed to the title page again.
"'A. Gage.'—You threw it down."
"And you—" He threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "You threw down A-N-Other! O you witch! You immeasurably clever darling! How well our work fits. By Jove! What good times we'll have!"
And they did.
THE MINOR BIRDS
Shall no bird sing except the nightingale?
Must all the lesser voices cease?
Lark, thrush and blackbird hold their peace?
The woods wait dumb
Until he come?
Must we forego the voices of the field?
The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing,
All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing,
Where each reveals
What joy he feels?
Should we know how to praise the nightingale,
Master of music, ecstacy and pain,
If he alone sang in the springtime rain?
If no one heard
A minor bird?
PARLOR-MINDEDNESS
"Won't you step in?"
You step in.
"She will be down in a moment. Won't you sit down?"
You sit down. You wait. You are in the parlor.
What is this room? What is it for?
It is not to sleep in, the first need of the home. Not to eat in, the second. Not to shelter young in, the third. Not to cook and wash in, to sew and mend in, to nurse and tend in; not for any of the trades which we still practice in the home.
It is a place for social intercourse. If the family is sufficiently intelligent they use it for this purpose, gathering there in peace and decorum, for rest and pleasure. Whether the family is of that order or not, they use the parlor, if they have one, for the entertainment of visitors. Our ancient Webster gives first: "The apartment in monastery or nunnery where the inmates are permitted to meet and converse with each other, or with visitors and friends from without," and second, "A room in a house which the family usually occupy for society and conversation; the reception room for visitors." It is, as the derivation declares, "a talking room."
While you wait in the parlor you study it.
It is the best room. It has the best carpet, the best furniture, the pictures and decorations considered most worthy. It is adorned as a shrine for the service of what we feel rather than think to be a noble purpose—to promote social intercourse.
In the interchange of thought and feeling that form so large and essential a part of human life, these parlors are the vehicles provided. Are they all the vehicles provided? Is it in parlors that the sea of human thought ebbs and flows most freely? That mind meets mind, ideas are interchanged, and the soul grows by contact with its kind? Is it in parlors that art is talked? politics? business? affairs of state? new lights in science? the moving thoughts of the world?
If you could hide in a thousand parlors and listen to the talk therein what would you hear? When "she" has come down, greeted her friend with effusion or her caller with ample cordiality, and the talk begins, the interchange of thought, what does the parlor bring forth?
Alas and alas! It brings forth the kitchen, the nursery, and the dressmaker's shop. It furnishes shop-talk mostly, gossip of the daily concerns of the speakers.
Are there no men then in the parlors? Yes, frequently. The man of the house is there with his family in the evening; other men call with their wives; young men call on young women to court them; but in all these cases the men, talking to the women, must needs confine the conversation to their lines of work and thought. When men talk with men it is not in parlors. The women may be ignorant, knowing only household affairs; or they may be "cultivated," more highly educated than the men, talking glibly of books they have read, lectures they have heard, plays they have seen; while the men can talk well only of the work they have done.
When men wish to talk with men of world-business of any sort, they do not seek the parlor. The street, the barroom, the postoffice, some public place they want where they may meet freely on broader ground. For the parlor is the women's meeting ground—has been for long their only meeting ground except the church steps.
Its limits are sharp and clear. Only suitable persons may enter the parlor; only one's acquaintances and friends. Thus the social intercourse of women, for long years has been rigidly confined to parlor limits; they have conversed only with their own class and kind, forever rediscussing the same topics, the threadbare theme of their common trade; and the men who come to their parlor, talk politely to them there within prescribed lines.
It is interesting and pathetic to see the woman, when means allow, enlarge the size of her parlor, the number of her guests, seeking continually for that social intercourse for which the soul hungers, and which the parlor so meagerly provides. As we see the fakir;
"Eating with famished patience grain by grain,
A thousand grains of millet-seed a day,"—
So the woman talks incessantly with as many as she can—neither giving nor getting what is needed.
When we find an institution so common as the parlor, exerting a constant influence upon us from childhood up, carrying with it a code of manners, a system of conduct, a scheme of decoration, a steady prohibitive pressure upon progressive thought, we shall be wise to study that institution and in especial its effect upon the mind.
First, we may observe as in the kitchen the dominant note of personality.
In the parlor more than elsewhere are to be found the "traces of a woman's hand." It is her room, the Lady of the House and other Ladies of other Houses, having each their own to exhibit, all politely praise one another's display.
When a knowledge of art, a sense of beauty, grows in the world, and slowly affects the decorators and furnishers, then does it through the blandishments of the merchants filter slowly into a thousand parlors. But as easily when there is neither art nor beauty in such furnishings, are they foisted upon the purchasing housewife. Such as it is, provided through the limitations of the housewife's mind and the husband's purse, this "best room" becomes a canon of taste to the growing child.
"The parlor set" he must needs see held up as beautiful; the "reception chairs," the carefully shadowed carpet,—these and the "best dress" to go with them and the "company manners" added, are unescapable aesthetic influences.
Few children like the parlor, few children are wanted or allowed in the parlor, yet it has a steady influence as a sort of social shrine.
Most rigidly it teaches the child exclusiveness, the narrow limits of one's "social acquaintances." As rigidly and most evilly it teaches him falsehood. Scarcely a child but hears the mother's fretful protest against the visitor, followed by the lightning change to cordial greeting. The white lie, the smiling fib, the steady concealment of the undesirable topic, the mutual steering off from all but a set allowance of themes, the artificial dragging in of these and their insufferable repetition—all this the silent, large-eyed child who has been allowed to stay if quiet, hears and remembers. See the little girl's "playing house." See the visitor arrive, the polite welcome, the inquiries after health, the babbling discussion of babies and dress and cookery and servants,—these they have well learned are proper subjects for parlor talk.
The foolish and false ideas of beauty held up to them as "best," they seek to perpetuate. The arbitrary "best dress" system, develops into a vast convention, a wearing of apparel not for beauty, and not for use, not for warmth, protection nor modesty (often quite the opposite of all these), but as a conventional symbol of respectability.
So interwoven with our inner consciousness are these purely arbitrary codes of propriety in costume, that we have such extremes as Kipling shows us in his remote Himalayan forests,—a white man thousands of miles from his kind, who "dressed for dinner every night to preserve his self-respect." No doubt a perfectly sincere conviction, and one sunk deep in the highbred British breast, but even so of a most shallow and ephemeral nature, based on nothing whatever but a temporary caprice of our parlor-mindedness.
Being reared in that state of mind, and half of us confined to it professionally, we are inevitably affected thereby, and react upon life—the real moving world-life, under its pitiful limitations.
If one's sense of beauty must be first, last and always personal, and confined to one's parlor,—for of course we cannot dictate as to other women's parlors,—then how is it to be expected that we should in any way notice, feel or see the ugliness of our town or city, schoolhouse or street-car?
See the woman who has had "an education," who has even "studied art," perhaps, and whose husband can pay for what she wants. Her parlor may become a drawing-room, or two, or more, but she does not grow to care that a public school-room is decorated in white plaster trimmed with a broad strip of blackboard.
The bald, cruel, wearing ugliness of the most of our schools, is worthy of penal institutions, yet we with cheerful unconcern submit growing children to such influences without ever giving it a thought.
"My parlor" must be beautiful, but "our school" is no business of mine. Is there any real reason, by the way, why blackboards must be black? A deep dull red or somber green would be restful and pleasant to the eye, and show chalk just as well. As is being now slowly discovered. There are no blackboards in our parlors. Our children leave home to go to school, and their mother's thoughts do not. In the small measure of parlor decoration grows no sense of public art.
Great art must be largely conceived, largely executed. For the temple and palace and forum rose the columns and statues of the past; for the church and castle the "frozen music" of mediaeval architecture; for church and palace again, the blazing outburst of pictorial art in the great re-birth. Now the struggling artist must cater to the tastes of parlor-bred patrons; must paint what suits the uses of that carpeted sanctuary, portraits of young ladies most successful! Or he must do for public buildings, if by chance he gets the opportunity, what meets the tastes of our universal parlor-mindedness.
With this parlor-mindedness, we repudiate and condemn in painting, literature, music, drama and the dance, whatever does not conform to the decorum of this shrine, whatsoever is not suitable to ladylike conversation. Be the book bad, it is unsuited to the parlor table. Be the book good—too good, or be it great, then it is equally unsuited. Controversy has no place in parlors, hence no controversial literature. Pleasant if possible, or sweetly sad, and not provocative of argument—this is the demeanor of the parlor table, and to this the editor conforms. To the editorial dictum the "reader" must submit; to the "readers" decisions the writer must submit; to the menu furnished by the magazines, the public must submit, and so grows up among us a canon of literary judgment, best described as "parlor-minded." This is by no means so damaging as kitchen-mindedness, for those who escape the influence of the parlor are many, and those who escape the influence of the kitchen are few; but it is quite damaging enough.
One of the main elements of beauty in our lives is the human body. Some keep swans, some peacocks, and some deer, that they may delight their eyes with the beauty thereof. We ourselves are more beautiful than any beast or bird, we are the inspiration of poet, painter, and sculptor; yet we have deliberately foregone all this constant world of beauty and substituted for it a fluctuating nightmare.
In what sordid or discordant colors do we move about! What desolate blurring of outline and action, by our dragging masses of cloth, stiffened and padded like Chinese armor! What strange figures, conventionalized as a lotus pattern, instead of the moving glory of the human form!
Why do we do it? Having done it why do we bear it longer? Why not fill our streets with beauty, gladden our eyes and uplift our souls with the loveliness that is ours by nature, plus the added loveliness of the textile art? We have pictures of our beauty, we have statues of our beauty—why go without the real thing? Suppose our swans could show us in paint and marble the slow white grace of their plumed sailing, but in person paddled about in a costume of stovepipes. Suppose deer and hound,—but wait!—this we have seen, this extreme of human folly forced upon the helpless beast,—dogs dressed to suit the taste of their parlor-minded owners! Not men's dogs,—women's dogs.
To cover—at any cost, with anything, that is a major ideal of the parlor. There is an exception made, when, at any cost of health, beauty and decency, we uncover—but this too, is to meet one of the parlor purposes. In it and its larger spread of drawing and assembly rooms, we provide not only for "social intercourse"—but for that necessary meeting of men and women that shall lead to marriage.
A right and wholesome purpose, but not a right and wholesome place. Men and women should meet and meet freely in the places where they live, but they should not live in parlors. They should meet and know one another in their working clothes, in the actual character and habit of their daily lives.
Marriages may be "made in heaven," but they are mainly—shall we say "retailed"? in parlors. What can the parlor-loved young woman know of the parlor-bound young man? Parlor manners only are produced, parlor topics, parlor ideas. He had better court her in the kitchen, if she is one of the "fifteen sixteenths" of our families who keep no servants, to know what he is going to live with. She never knows what she is going to live with; for the nature of man is not truly exhibited either in kitchen or parlor. A co-educational college does much, a studio or business office or work-shop does more, to show men and women to each other as they are. Neither does enough, for the blurring shadow of our parlor-mindedness still lies between. It has so habituated us to the soft wavelets and glassy shallows of polite conversation, that we refuse to face and discuss the realities of life. With gifts of roses and bonbons, suppers and theatres that cost more than the cows of the Kaffir lover, and ought to make the girl feel like a Kaffir bride, the man woos the woman. With elaborate toilettes and all the delicate trickery of her unnatural craft, the woman woos the man. And the trail of the parlor is over it all.
Gaily to the gate of marriage they go, and through it—and never have they asked or answered the questions on which the whole truth of their union depends. Our standards of decorum forbid,—parlor standards all. We have woven and embroidered a veil over the facts of life; an incense-clouded atmosphere blinds us; low music and murmured litanies dull the mind, but not the senses. We drift and dream. In the girl's mind floats a cloud of literary ideals. He is like a "Greek god," a "Galahad," a "Knight of old." He is in some mystic way a Hero, a Master, a Protector. She pictures herself as fulfilling exquisite ideals of wifely devotion, "all in all" to him, and he to her.
She does not once prefigure to herself the plain common facts of the experience that lies before her. She does not known them. In parlors such things are not discussed,—no naked truths can be admitted there.
We live a marvellous life at home. Visibly we have the care and labor of housekeeping, the strain and anxiety of childbearing as it is practised, the elaborate convention of "receiving" and "entertaining." Under these goes on life. Our bodies are tired, overtaxed, ill-fed, grossly ill-treated. Our minds are hungry, unsatisfied, or drugged and calm. We live, we suffer and we die,—and never once do we face the facts. Birth and death are salient enough, one would think, but birth and death we particularly cover and hide, concealing from our friends with conventional phrases, lying about to our children. Over the strong ever-lasting life-processes, we spin veil on veil; drape and smother them till they become sufficiently remote and symbolic for the parlor to recognize.
In older nations than ours, we can see this web of convention thickened and hardened till life runs low within. Think what can be the state of mind in India which allows child-marriage—the mother concurrent! Think of the slow torture of little girls in foot-bound China, the mother concurrent! Then turning quickly, think of our own state of mind, which allows young girls to marry old reprobates,—the mother concurrent!
That mental attitude which maintains ancient conventions, which prefers symbol to fact, which prescribes limits to our conversation, and draws them narrowly down to what can be understood by anybody, and can instruct, interest and inspire nobody, is parlor-mindedness. It does harm enough both in its low ideals of beauty and art, manners and morals, to its placid inmates and its complaisant visitors; it does more harm in its fallacious shallows as a promoter of marriage; it does most in its failure to promote the one thing it is for—social intercourse.
To meet freely; to talk, discuss, exchange and compare ideas, is a general human need. Those who do not know they need it, need it most.
Each of us alone, taps the reservoir of world-force, in some degree, and pours it forth in some expression. Often the intake seems to fail, the output is unsatisfying. Then we need one another, now this one and now that one, now several, now a crowd. In combination we receive new power. The human soul calls for contact and exchange with its kind. This contact should be fluent and free, spontaneous, natural; that we may go as we are drawn to those who feed us best.
Men need men and women women; men and women need one another; it is a general human condition. From such natural meeting arises personal relief, rest, pleasure, stimulus, and social gain beyond counting, in the growth of thought. The social battery is continually replenished by contact and exchange. Some friends draw out the best that is in us, some, though perhaps near and dear to us, do not.
No matter how "happily married," or how unhappily unmarried, we need social interchange. To quench this thirst, to meet this need, wide as the world and deep as life, we provide—the parlor.
Is it any wonder that our talk is mainly personality? That we love gossip, even when it bites and sours to scandal? Is it any wonder that women talk so much of their kitchen and nurseries, of their diseases, and their clothes, yet learn so little about better feeding, better dressing, better health and better child-culture? Is it any wonder that to our parlor-mindedness the daily press descends, gives us the pap we are used to, and then artfully peppers our pap, insinuating some sparkle of alcohol, some solace of insidious drug, that we may "get the habit" more firmly? Is it any wonder that we, parlor-bred and newspaper-fed, continue to cry out fiercely against personal, primitive, parlor sins, and remain calm and unshocked by world-sins that should rouse us to horror, shame and action?
In these small shrines, adorned with what, in our doll-house taste, we fondly imagine to be beautiful, we seek to keep ourselves, "unspotted from the world," but by no saving grace of a thousand parlors, do we succeed in keeping the world unspotted from ourselves! We make the world. We are the world. It might be a place of noble freedom, of ever-growing beauty, of a fluent, truthful radiant art, of broadening education, wide peace and culture, universal wealth and progress. And we miss even seeing this, living sedately, curtained, carpeted, well content, in our ancestral parlor-mindedness.
NAUGHTY
The young brain was awake and hungry. It was a vigorous young brain, well-organized; eager, receiving impressions with keen joy and storing them rapidly away in due relation.
Such a wonder world!
Sweetness and light were the first impressions—light which made his eyes laugh; and Sweetness Incarnate—that great soft Presence which was Food and Warmth and Rest and Comfort and something better still; for all of which he had no name as yet except "Ma-ma!"
He was growing, growing fast. He was satisfied with food. He was satisfied with sleep. But his brain was not satisfied. So the brain's first servant went forth to minister to it; small, soft, uncertain, searching for all knowledge—the little hand.
Something to hold! Ancestral reflexes awoke as the fingers closed upon it. Something to pull! The soft arm flexors tightened with a sense of pleasure. Sensations came flowing to the hungry brain—welcomed eagerly.
Then suddenly, a new sensation—Pain! He drew back his hand as a touched anemone draws in its tentacles, scarce softer than those pink fingers; but he did not know quite where the pain was—much less where it came from, or what it meant.
"More!" said the hungry brain. "More!" and the little hand went out again.
It was sharply spatted. "No, No!" said a strange voice—he had never heard that kind of tone before. "No! No! Naughty! Don't touch!" He lifted his face unbelievingly. Yes—it was Food and Warmth and Comfort who was doing this to him.
The small moist mouth quivered grievingly—a cry rose in him.
"Here!" said the Presence, and gave him a rattle.
He had had that before. He knew all that it could do. He dropped it.
Over and over again, day after day, the little servant of the brain ran forth to minister, and met sharp pain; while the dim new concept "'Naughty'—something you want to do and mustn't"—was registered within.
The child grew and his brain grew faster. He learned new words, an behind the words, in the fresh untouched spaces, the swift brain placed ideas—according to its lights. He had learned that the Presence varied. It was not always Sweetness and Rest and Joy—sometimes it was Discomfort—Hindrance—even Pain. He had learned to look at it with doubt—when about to do something—to see which way it would react upon him.
"Isn't that baby cute?" said the Presence. "He knows just as well!"
But his brain grew stronger, and his hand grew stronger, and about him was a world of objects, rousing all manner of sensations which he fain would learn.
"I have to watch that child every minute to keep him out of mischief!" said the Presence.
She caught him sharply by the arm and drew him back.
"Don't touch that again! If you do I'll whip you!"
He stared at her, large-eyed, revolving the language. Language was so interesting. "Don't" he knew well, and "touch" and "that" and "again." "If you do" was harder. He was not at all sure about "if." And "whip"—that was quite new. He puckered his soft mouth and made a little whispering sound, trying to say it.
"Yes, Whip!" said the Presence. "Now you be good!" He knew "be good," too. It meant not doing anything. He couldn't be good very long—any more than the Proverbial Indian.
In the course of his growing he soon learned "Whip." It was very unpleasant. The busy brain, receiving, sorting, arranging, re-arranging, stored up this fierce experience without delay. "Whipping—Pain and Insult. It happens when you break anything. It is a Consequence."
The brain was kept very busy re-arranging this Consequence. "It happens when you spill the milk—when you soil your dress—when you tear it (dresses must be sacred!)—when you 'meddle'—when you run away—when you get wet—when you take sugar—when"—(this was a great discovery), "when Mama is Angry." He was older now, and found that the Presence varied a good deal. So the brain built up its group of ethical impressions.
And then—one memorable day—this neat arrangement of ethics, true, received a great shock.
There was the sugar—in easy reach—and sugar is All Good to the young body. Remembered pleasure, strong immediate desire, the eye's guidance, the hand's impulse—all urged to perform the natural act of eating. Against it,—what? The blurred remembrance of promiscuous pain, only by main force to be associated with that coveted, visible pleasure; and the dawning power of inhibition. To check strong natural desire by no better force than the memory of oral threat, or even of felt pain, is not easy always for adults.
He ate the sugar, fearing yet joyous. No one else was present. No one saw the act, nor learned it later.
He was not whipped.
Then rose the strong young brain to new occasion. It observed, deduced, even experimented, flushed with the pleasure of normal exercise. It established, before he was five years old, these conclusions:
"'Naughty' is a thing you're punished for doing—if you're not punished it isn't naughty.
"Punishment is a thing that happens if you're found out—if you're not found out you're not punished.
"Ergo—if you're not found out you're not naughty!"
And the child grew up to be a man.