WHEN THOU GAINEST HAPPINESS

When thou gainest happiness,
Life's full cup of sweetest wine;
Dost thou stop in grieving blind
Over those dark years behind?
Bitter now, rebellious, mad,
For the things thou hast not had—
Before everything was thine?

Dost not rather wonder why
Nearing blaze of joy like this,
Some prevision had not lit
Those dark hours with hope of it?
That thou couldst in patient strength
Have endured that sorrow's length—
Nothing—to the coming bliss!

Now, awaken! Look ahead!
See the earth one garden fair!
See the evils of to-day
Like a child's faults put away!
See our little history seem
Like a short forgotten dream!
See a full-grown rising race
Find our joy their commonplace!
Find such new joy of their own
As our best hopes have not known!
And take shame for thy despair!

MARTHA'S MOTHER

It was nine feet long.

It was eight feet high.

It was six feet wide.

There was a closet, actually!—a closet one foot deep—that was why she took this room. There was the bed, and the trunk, and just room to open the closet door part way—that accounted for the length. There was the bed and the bureau and the chair—that accounted for the width. Between the bedside and the bureau and chair side was a strip extending the whole nine feet. There was room to turn around by the window. There was room to turn round by the door. Martha was thin.

One, two, three, four—turn.

She managed it nicely.

"It is a stateroom," she always said to herself. "It is a luxurious, large, well-furnished stateroom with a real window. It is not a cell."

Martha had a vigorous constructive imagination. Sometimes it was the joy of her life, her magic carpet, her Aladdin's lamp. Sometimes it frightened her—frightened her horribly, it was so strong.

The cell idea had come to her one gloomy day, and she had foolishly allowed it to enter—played with it a little while. Since then she had to keep a special bar on that particular intruder, so she had arranged a stateroom "set," and forcibly kept it on hand.

Martha was a stenographer and typewriter in a real estate office. She got $12 a week, and was thankful for it. It was steady pay, and enough to live on. Seven dollars she paid for board and lodging, ninety cents for her six lunches, ten a day for carfare, including Sundays; seventy-five for laundry; one for her mother—that left one dollar and sixty-five cents for clothes, shoes, gloves, everything. She had tried cheaper board, but made up the cost in doctor's bills; and lost a good place by being ill.

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor hall bedrooms a cage," said she determinedly. "Now then—here is another evening—what shall I do? Library? No. My eyes are tired. Besides, three times a week is enough. 'Tisn't club night. Will not sit in the parlor. Too wet to walk. Can't sew, worse'n reading—O good land! I'm almost ready to go with Basset!"

She shook herself and paced up and down again.

Prisoners form the habit of talking to themselves—this was the suggestion that floated through her mind—that cell idea again.

"I've got to get out of this!" said Martha, stopping short. "It's enough to drive a girl crazy!"

The driving process was stayed by a knock at the door. "Excuse me for coming up," said a voice. "It's Mrs. MacAvelly."

Martha knew this lady well. She was a friend of Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union Association. "Come in. I'm glad to see you!" she said hospitably. "Have the chair—or the bed's really more comfortable!"

"I was with Miss Podder this evening and she was anxious to know whether your union has gained any since the last meeting—I told her I'd find out—I had nothing else to do. Am I intruding?"

"Intruding!" Martha, gave a short laugh. "Why, it's a godsend, Mrs.
MacAvelly! If you knew how dull the evenings are to us girls!"

"Don't you—go out much? To—to theaters—or parks?" The lady's tone was sympathetic and not inquisitive.

"Not very much," said Martha, rather sardonically. "Theaters—two girls, two dollars, and twenty cents carfare. Parks, twenty cents—walk your feet off, or sit on the benches and be stared at. Museums—not open evenings."

"But don't you have visitors—in the parlor here?"

"Did you see it?" asked Martha.

Mrs. MacAvelly had seen it. It was cold and also stuffy. It was ugly and shabby and stiff. Three tired girls sat there, two trying to read by a strangled gaslight overhead; one trying to entertain a caller in a social fiction of privacy at the other end of the room.

"Yes, we have visitors—but mostly they ask us out. And some of us don't go," said Martha darkly.

"I see, I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly, with a pleasant smile; and Martha wondered whether she did see, or was just being civil.

"For instance, there's Mr. Basset," the girl pursued, somewhat recklessly; meaning that her visitor should understand her.

"Mr. Basset?"

"Yes, 'Pond & Basset'—one of my employers."

Mrs. MacAvelly looked pained. "Couldn't you—er—avoid it?" she suggested.

"You mean shake him?" asked Martha. "Why, yes—I could. Might lose my job. Get another place—another Basset, probably."

"I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly again. "Like the Fox and the Swarm of
Flies! There ought to be a more comfortable way of living for all you
girls! And how about the union—I have to be going back to Miss
Podder."

Martha gave her the information she wanted, and started to accompany her downstairs. They heard the thin jangle of the door-bell, down through the echoing halls, and the dragging feet of the servant coming up. A kinky black head was thrust in at the door.

"Mr. Basset, callin' on Miss Joyce," was announced formally.

Martha stiffened. "Please tell Mr. Basset I am not feeling well to-night—and beg to be excused.

She looked rather defiantly at her guest, as Lucy clattered down the long stairs; then stole to the railing and peered down the narrow well. She heard the message given with pompous accuracy, and then heard the clear, firm tones of Mr. Basset:

"Tell Miss Joyce that I will wait."

Martha returned to her room in three long steps, slipped off her shoes and calmly got into bed. "Good-night, Mrs. MacAvelly," she said. "I'm so sorry, but my head aches and I've gone to bed! Would you be so very good as to tell Lucy so as you're going down."

Mrs. MacAvelly said she would, and departed, and Martha lay conscientiously quiet till she heard the door shut far below.

She was quiet, but she was not contented.

Yet the discontent of Martha was as nothing to the discontent of Mrs. Joyce, her mother, in her rural home. Here was a woman of fifty-three, alert, vigorous, nervously active; but an automobile-agitated horse had danced upon her, and her usefulness, as she understood it, was over. She could not get about without crutches, nor use her hands for needlework, though still able to write after a fashion. Writing was not her forte, however, at the best of times.

She lived with a widowed sister in a little, lean dusty farmhouse by the side of the road; a hill road that went nowhere in particular, and was too steep for those who were going there.

Brisk on her crutches, Mrs. Joyce hopped about the little house, there was nowhere else to hop to. She had talked her sister out long since—Mary never had never much to say. Occasionally they quarreled and then Mrs. Joyce hopped only in her room, a limited process.

She sat at the window one day, staring greedily out at the lumpy rock-ribbed road; silent, perforce, and tapping the arms of her chair with nervous intensity. Suddenly she called out, "Mary! Mary Ames! Come here quick! There's somebody coming up the road!"

Mary came in, as fast as she could with eggs in her apron. "It's Mrs.
Holmes!" she said. "And a boarder, I guess."

"No, it ain't," said Mrs. Joyce, eagerly. "It's that woman that's visiting the Holmes—she was in church last week, Myra Slater told me about her. Her name's MacDowell, or something."

"It ain't MacDowell," said her sister. "I remember; it's MacAvelly."

This theory was borne out by Mrs. Holmes' entrance and introduction of her friend.

"Have you any eggs for us, Mrs. Ames?" she said.

"Set down—set down," said Mrs. Ames cordially. "I was just getting in my eggs—but here's only about eight yet. How many was you wantin'?"

"I want all you can find," said Mrs. Holmes. "Two dozen, three dozen—all I can carry."

"There's two hens layin' out—I'll go and look them up. And I ain't been in the woodshed chamber yet. I'll go'n hunt. You set right here with my sister." And Mrs. Ames bustled off.

"Pleasant view you have here," said Mrs. MacAvelly politely, while Mrs.
Holmes rocked and fanned herself.

"Pleasant! Glad you think so, ma'am. Maybe you city folks wouldn't think so much of views if you had nothing else to look at!"

"What would you like to look at?"

"Folks!" said Mrs. Joyce briefly. "Lots of folks! Somethin' doin'."

"You'd like to Iive in the city?"

"Yes, ma'am—I would so! I worked in the city once when I was a girl. Waitress. In a big restaurant. I got to be cashier—in two years! I like the business!"

"And then you married a farmer?" suggested Mrs. Holmes.

"Yes, I did. And I never was sorry, Mrs. Holmes. David Joyce was a mighty good man. We was engaged before I left home—I was workin' to help earn, so 't we could marry."

"There's plenty of work on a farm, isn't there?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

Mrs. Joyce's eager eyes kindled. "There is so!" she agreed. "Lots to do. And lots to manage! We kept help then, and the farm hands, and the children growin' up. And some seasons we took boarders."

"Did you like that?"

"I did. I liked it first rate. I like lots of people, and to do for 'em. The best time I ever had was one summer I ran a hotel."

"Ran a hotel! How interesting!"

"Yes'm—it was interesting! I had a cousin who kept a summer hotel up here in the mountains a piece—and he was short-handed that summer and got me to go up and help him out. Then he was taken sick, and I had the whole thing on my shoulders! I just enjoyed it! And the place cleared more that summer'n it ever did! He said 'twas owin' to his advantageous buyin'. Maybe 'twas! But I could 'a bought more advantageous than he did—I could a' told him that. Point o' fact, I did tell him that—and he wouldn't have me again."

"That was a pity!" said Mrs. Holmes. "And I suppose if it wasn't for your foot you would do that now—and enjoy it!"

"Of course I could!" protested Mrs. Joyce. "Do it better 'n ever, city or country! But here I am, tied by the leg! And dependent on my sister and children! It galls me terribly!"

Mrs. Holmes nodded sympathetically. "You are very brave, Mrs. Joyce," she said. "I admire your courage, and—" she couldn't say patience, so she said, "cheerfulness."

Mrs. Ames came in with more eggs. "Not enough, but some," she said, and the visitors departed therewith.

Toward the end of the summer, Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union Association, sweltering in the little office, was pleased to receive a call from her friend, Mrs. MacAvelly.

"I'd no idea you were in town," she said.

"I'm not, officially," answered her visitor, "just stopping over between visits. It's hotter than I thought it would be, even on the upper west side."

"Think what it is on the lower east side!" answered Miss Podder, eagerly. "Hot all day—and hot at night! My girls do suffer so! They are so crowded!"

"How do the clubs get on?" asked Mrs. MacAvelly. "Have your girls any residence clubs yet?"

"No—nothing worth while. It takes somebody to run it right, you know. The girls can't; the people who work for money can't meet our wants—and the people who work for love, don't work well as a rule."

Mrs. McAvelly smiled sympathetically. "You're quite right about that," she said. "But really—some of those 'Homes' are better than others, aren't they?"

"The girls hate them," answered Miss Podder. "They'd rather board—even two or three in a room. They like their independence. You remember Martha Joyce?"

Mrs. MacAvelly remembered. "Yes," she said, "I do—I met her mother this summer."

"She's a cripple, isn't she?" asked Miss Podder. "Martha's told me about her."

"Why, not exactly. She's what a Westerner might call 'crippled up some,' but she's livelier than most well persons." And she amused her friend with a vivid rehearsal of Mrs. Joyce's love of the city and her former triumphs in restaurant and hotel.

"She'd be a fine one to run such a house for the girls, wouldn't she?" suddenly cried Miss Podder.

"Why—if she could," Mrs. MacAvelly admitted slowly.

"Could! Why not? You say she gets about easily enough. All she's have to do is manage, you see. She could order by 'phone and keep the servants running!"

"I'm sure she'd like it," said Mrs. MacAvelly. "But don't such things require capital?"

Miss Podder was somewhat daunted. "Yes—some; but I guess we could raise it. If we could find the right house!"

"Let's look in the paper," suggested her visitor. "I've got a Herald."

"There's one that reads all right," Miss Podder presently proclaimed. "The location's good, and it's got a lot of rooms—furnished. I suppose it would cost too much."

Mrs. MacAvelly agreed, rather ruefully.

"Come," she said, "it's time to close here, surely. Let's go and look at that house, anyway. It's not far."

They got their permit and were in the house very shortly. "I remember this place," said Miss Podder. "It was for sale earlier in the summer."

It was one of those once spacious houses, not of "old," but at least of "middle-aged" New York; with large rooms arbitrarily divided into smaller ones.

"It's been a boarding-house, that's clear," said Mrs. MacAvelly.

"Why, of course," Miss Podder answered, eagerly plunging about and examining everything. "Anybody could see that! But it's been done over—most thoroughly. The cellar's all whitewashed, and there's a new furnace, and new range, and look at this icebox!" It was an ice-closet, as a matter of fact, of large capacity, and a most sanitary aspect.

"Isn't it too big?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

"Not for a boarding-house, my dear," Miss Podder enthusiastically replied. "Why, they could buy a side of beef with that ice-box! And look at the extra ovens! Did you ever see a place better furnished—for what we want? It looks as if it had been done on purpose!"

"It does, doesn't it?" said Mrs. MacAvelley.

Miss Podder, eager and determined, let no grass grow under her feet.
The rent of the place was within reason.

"If they had twenty boarders—and some "mealers," I believe it could be done! she said. "It's a miracle—this house. Seems as if somebody had done it just for us!"

Armed with a list of girls who would agree to come, for six and seven dollars a week, Miss Podder made a trip to Willettville and laid the matter before Martha's mother.

"What an outrageous rent!" said that lady.

"Yes—New York rents are rather inconsiderate," Miss Podder admitted. "But see, here's a guaranteed income if the girls stay—and I'm sure they will; and if the cooking's good you could easily get table boarders besides."

Mrs. Joyce hopped to the bureau and brought out a hard, sharp-pointed pencil, and a lined writing tablet.

"Let's figger it out," said she. "You say that house rents furnished at $3,200. It would take a cook and a chambermaid!"

"And a furnace man," said Miss Podder. "They come to about fifty a year. The cook would be thirty a month, the maid twenty-five, if you got first-class help, and you'd need it."

"That amounts to $710 altogether," stated Mrs. Joyce.

"Fuel and light and such things would be $200," Miss Podder estimated, "and I think you ought to allow $200 more for breakage and extras generally."

"That's $4,310 already," said Mrs. Joyce.

Then there's the food," Miss Podder went on. "How much do you think it would cost to feed twenty girls, two meals a day, and three Sundays?"

"And three more," Mrs. Joyce added, "with me, and the help, twenty-three. I could do it for $2.00 a week apiece."

"Oh!" said Miss Podder. "Could you? At New York prices?"

"See me do it!" said Mrs. Joyce.

"That makes a total expense of $6,710 a year. Now, what's the income, ma'am?"

The income was clear—if they could get it. Ten girls at $6.00 and ten at $7.00 made $130.00 a week—$6,700.00 a year.

"There you are!" said Mrs. Joyce triumphantly. "And the 'mealers'—if my griddle-cakes don't fetch 'em I'm mistaken! If I have ten—at $5.00 a week and clear $3.00 off 'em—that'll be another bit—$1,560.00 more. Total income $8,320.00. More'n one thousand clear! Maybe I can feed 'em a little higher—or charge less!"

The two women worked together for an hour or so; Mrs. Ames drawn in later with demands as to butter, eggs, and "eatin' chickens."

"There's an ice-box as big as a closet," said Miss Podder.

Mrs. Joyce smiled triumphantly. "Good!" she said. "I can buy my critters of Judson here and have him freight 'em down. I can get apples here and potatoes, and lots of stuff."

"You'll need, probably, a little capital to start with," suggested Miss
Podder. "I think the Association could—"

"It don't have to, thank you just the same," said Mrs. Joyce. "I've got enough in my stocking to take me to New York and get some fuel. Besides, all my boarders is goin' to pay in advance—that's the one sure way. The mealers can buy tickets!"

Her eyes danced. She fairly coursed about the room on her nimble crutches.

"My!" she said, "it will seem good to have my girl to feed again."

The house opened in September, full of eager girls with large appetites long unsatisfied. The place was new-smelling, fresh-painted, beautifully clean. The furnishing was cheap, but fresh, tasteful, with minor conveniences dear to the hearts of women.

The smallest rooms were larger than hall bedrooms, the big ones were shared by friends. Martha and her mother had a chamber with two beds and space to spare!

The dining-room was very large, and at night the tables were turned into "settles" by the wall and the girls could dance to the sound of a hired pianola. So could the "mealers," when invited; and there was soon a waiting list of both sexes.

"I guess I can make a livin'," said Mrs. Joyce, "allowin' for bad years."

"I don't understand how you feed us so well—for so little," said Miss
Podder, who was one of the boarders.

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce, privately. "Your breakfast don't really cost more'n ten cents—nor your dinner fifteen—not the way I order! Things taste good 'cause they're cooked good—that's all!"

"And you have no troubles with your help?"

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce again, more privately. "I work 'em hard—and pay 'em a bonus—a dollar a week extra, as long as they give satisfaction. It reduces my profits some—but it's worth it!"

"It's worth it to us, I'm sure!" said Miss Podder.

Mrs. MacAvelly called one evening in the first week, with warm interest and approval. The tired girls were sitting about in comfortable rockers and lounges, under comfortable lights, reading and sewing. The untired ones were dancing in the dining-room, to the industrious pianola, or having games of cards in the parlor.

"Do you think it'll be a success?" she asked her friend.

"It is a success!" Miss Podder triumphantly replied. "I'm immensely proud of it!"

"I should think you would be," aid Mrs. MacAvelly.

The doorbell rang sharply.

Mrs. Joyce was hopping through the hall at the moment, and promptly opened it.

"Does Miss Martha Joyce board here?" inquired a gentleman.

"She does."

"I should like to see her," said he, handing in his card.

Mrs. Joyce read the card and looked at the man, her face setting in hard lines. She had heard that name before.

"Miss Joyce is engaged," she replied curtly, still holding the door.

He could see past her into the bright, pleasant rooms. He heard the music below, the swing of dancing feet, Martha's gay laugh from the parlor.

The little lady on crutches blocked his path.

"Are you the housekeeper of this place?" he asked sharply.

"I'm more'n that!" she answered. "I'm Martha's mother."

Mr. Basset concluded he would not wait.

FOR FEAR

For fear of prowling beasts at night
They blocked the cave;
Women and children hid from sight,
Men scarce more brave.

For fear of warrior's sword and spear
They barred the gate;
Women and children lived in fear,
Men lived in hate.

For fear of criminals to-day
We lock the door;
Women and children still to stay
Hid evermore.

Come out! You need no longer hide!
What fear ye now?
No wolf nor lion waits outside—
Only a cow.

Come out! The world approaches peace,
War nears its end;
No warrior watches your release—
Only a friend.

Come out! The night of crime his fled—
Day is begun;
Here is no criminal to dread—
Only your son!

The world, half yours, demands your care,
Waken, and come!
Make it a woman's world, safe, fair,
Garden and home!

NURSERY-MINDEDNESS

Where do we get our first training in the field of common behavior, our earliest and strongest impressions of ethics?

In the nursery, in the early environment of the little child, in the daily influences that affect the opening mind; or, to put it in a phrase hallowed by poetic imagery, "at our mother's knee." We are accustomed to think highly of these early influences. Almost any man will say that his mother taught him what was right—it was his own evil nature that drove him wrong. So believing, we perpetuate these influences unchanged from age to age, and it is small wonder we think human nature to be inherently perverse if it continues to show such poor results from such good education.

Suppose for a moment we take down one more old idol, and look into his record, examining the environment of the little child as dispassionately as we would examine the environment of a college student.

The child is born into an atmosphere of personality, which is essential, and reared continuously in that atmosphere, which is not so essential. Owing to these early impressions; so deep and ineffaceable, he grows to look at human life with a huge "I," and an almost as large "My Family," in his immediate foreground; so out of drawing as to throw the whole world into false perspective, seen as a generality, dim, confused and distant.

In this atmosphere of unbroken personality, he repeats continually the mistakes of the early savage, the animistic tendency we should as a race have long since outgrown. The family with the male head was the great hotbed of early religions.

In this primitive group, unchecked by any higher authority of king or governor, arose ancestor-worship—that unnatural religion which erases the laws of life and bids the chicken feed the hen—or rather the rooster. No matriarchal cult would have made that mistake. The patriarch owned his women, owned his children, owned all the property; he gave and took away at his pleasure. Therefore, looming vast in unchecked pride, he erected sacrificial religions all his own, demanding sons to perform sacred rites in his honor; and grew so inflated with superiority that he thanked his patriarchal God and Father every day that he was not born a woman.

This Personality has cast its shadow across heaven. It has deified its own traits and worships them. Through blind and selfish eyes it has mis-seen and misrepresented God, and forced dark dogmas on its children, age after age. Each child of us, though really born to the broad light of a democratic age, is reared in the patriarchate. Each child of us sees the father, dispenser of benefits, arbiter and ruler of the family; and, so reared, each child of us repeats from generation to generation the mistakes of personality.

The basic law of the patriarchal system was obedience, and is yet. The child's first ethical lesson is in the verb "to obey." Not with any convincing instance of right or wrong, though life bristles with them, but as the duty of submission. He is not taught to observe, to relate, to make his inference, to act, and to note results. He is taught that his one duty is not to think, observe, or experiment, but to do what he is told.

This is a convenient habit for those in authority; but not conducive to any true development of the ethical sense. We are turned out into a world of cause and effect, with no knowledge, no experience, no guide whatever, but the painfully acquired habit of doing what some one else tells us. We are not taught to study right and wrong conduct, to understand it, to see the wisdom of the one and the folly of the other.

The child's first notion of "being good" is either sheer inaction or prompt submission. What we call "a good baby" is one who does absolutely nothing. Here we have an explanation of the amazing inertia of people in general; of the smug immobility of those shining lights "the best people." We all have been taught—rigorously taught in our infancy—that to "keep quiet" was a virtue; and we keep quiet through life. This is one clear instance of our nursery-mindedness.

We are reared in a black and white world: sharp wrong,—to do almost anything amusing, and particularly and most of all, To Disobey; sharp right,—to do nothing whatever, and particularly and best of all, To Obey. We come out into a world that is all colors of the rainbow in every shade and blending, where the things people tell us to do are mostly wrong, and to do right requires the most strenuous and independent activity. Greatly are we hindered in the work of life to-day by our mis-taught infancy.

In the narrow round of family life, the inevitable repetitions, the natural ruts of usage, the child has forced upon him the conservatism he should have every help to out-grow. Habit uncriticized and unresisted; convention an unquestioned good; these are the rules of the little world. How he hates it! How he longs for something different—for something to happen! The world is full of differences and happenings, but he is helpless to meet them—he has been only trained in narrow routine.

The oldest status in life, that of serving woman, is about him in his infancy. That mother should do for him is right and natural, but why should his mother be waiting on these other persons? Why is she the house-servant as well as the mother? If she is but a fashionable person in gay attire, he still has about him women servants. He cannot think as yet, but he accepts from daily contact this serving womanhood as natural and right, grows up to demand it in his household and to rear his children in its shadow; and so perpetuate from age to age the patriarchal error.

Then deep into this infant soul sinks the iron weight of what we call Discipline. We women, having small knowledge of child-nature or world-nature, never studying nature at all, but each girl-mother handed on from nursery to nursery, a child teaching children, we undertake to introduce the new soul to life!

We show him, as "life," the nursery, kitchen and parlor group in which we live. We try to teach him the behavior required by these surroundings. Two of the heaviest crosses to both the child and mother lie in his bi- and tri-daily difficulties with clothing, and prolonged initiation to the sacred mysteries of the table. We seek, as best we may, to bend the new soul visiting this world to a correct fulfilment of the polite functions of our domestic shrine; and we succeed unhappily well. We rear a world of people who put manners before morals, conventions before principles, conformity before initiative. Sorely do we strive with the new soul, to choke questionings and crush its resistance.

"Why?" says the child, "Why?" protesting with might and main against the mummery into which he is being forced.

"Because Mother says so!" is the reason given. "Because you must obey!" is the duty given; and to enforce the command comes punishment.

Punishment is a pitiful invention arbitrarily inserted in place of consequence. Its power is in giving pain. Its appeal is to terror. We, immovable and besotted in our ancient sanctuaries, deliberately give pain to little children, deliberately arouse in them that curse of old savagery, blind fear. To compel behavior which we cannot explain even to ourselves, to force the new wine of their young lives into the old bottles of our traditional habits, we keep alive in the little child an attitude of mind the whole world should seek to outgrow and forget forever.

The ethics of the nursery does not give us laws to be learned and understood; relations of cause and effect for instructive practice; matters of general use and welfare not to know and practice which argues a foolish ignorance. It gives command purely arbitrary and disconnected; their profit is not visible to the child; and their penalties, while painfully conspicuous, bear no real relation to offences.

Besides being arbitrary and disconnected, the penalties we give our children have this alarming weakness—they are wholly contingent upon discovery. No whipped child is too young to learn that his whipping did not follow on the act—unless his mother knew he did it. Thus with elaborate care, with trouble to ourselves and anguish to the child, we develop in him the attitude of mind with which our criminals, big and little, face the world—it is not what you do that matters—it is being found out. This is not the position of the thinking being—it is nursery-mindedness.

Pain and terror we teach our babies, and also shame. The child is pure, innocent, natural. One of the first efforts of nursery culture is to smear that white page with our self-made foulness. We labor conscientiously and with patience, to teach our babies shame. We degrade the human body, we befoul the habits of nature, we desecrate life, teaching evil and foolish falsehood to our defenceless little children. The "sex-taboos" of darkest savagery, the decencies and indecencies of primitive convention, we have preserved throughout the ages in our guarded temple of ancient idols, and in that atmosphere we rear the child.

The heaviest drag on progress is the persistence of race-habits and traditions, once natural and useful, but long since outgrown. The main stronghold of this body of tradition is in that uneducated, undeveloped, unorganized, lingering rudiment of earlier social forms—the woman-servant group of primitive industries, in which our children grow.

We have cried out against the crushing restriction of old religions; and, going farther, have seen that these religions have their strongest hold on the woman and the child. It is here suggested that it is not the religion that keeps down the woman and renews its grip on each new generation of children, but that it is the degraded status of the woman and her influence on the child which made possible such religions in the first instance, and which accounts for their astonishing persistence in modern times.

In the atmosphere of the nursery each child re-learns continually the mental habits of a remote and lowly past. His sense of duty is a personal one, it is obligation; and justified when we attempt to justify it by the beneficent services of the parent. This parental religion naturally pictures God as a parent—a father of course, and people as his children. We, as his children, are to love and serve and glorify him, and he to take care of us, parentally.

Coming out into the world of which he has been taught nothing, the young man finds no corroboration whatever for this theory. He does not see the alleged grounds of the religious views given him, and so he drops his religion altogether.

If he had early been shown God in a thousand beautiful common instances, as ever-present, unescapable, and beneficent Law—the sure, sound constant force of life, then he would find the same God still visibly at work in the world of love and labor, and not lose his religion by outgrowing his nursery.

Instead of personal gratitude for personal service as a cause for good behavior, he should be shown that his parents and teachers serve him and other children because so best is the human race improved; and that he, and the other children, owe their life's service to the same great body, to the human race. This ideal would need neither patching nor enlargement, but would last unbroken through life.

Our nursery-bred consciences suffer personally for personal sins, with morbid keenness, but are stone blocks of indifference to the collective sins which are the major evils of life to-day. A man may pointed out to us as a wholesale malefactor, a dealer in bad meat, a poisoner of the public mind through a degraded press, an extortioner, liar, doer of uncounted evil; we reply that he is a "moral man"—that his personal relations are excellent; and, if one continues to complain, we say, "What has he done to you?"

Personality is the limit of our moral sense, the steady check to growth in ethical understanding, as it is in economics, and in art. The normal growth of the human soul to-day is into a wide, fluent, general relation with mankind; and a deeper more satisfying and workable conception of God than we ever knew before. In our nursery-mindedness we face the problems of civic morality, catching visible offenders and shutting them in a closet, sending them supperless to bed, hurting and depriving them in various ways, as blindly, stupidly and unprofitably as a woman spanks her child.

Children reared in a democratic, scientific, broadly educative atmosphere, would grow up able to see the absurdity of our primitive institutions—but such an atmosphere does not originate in and cannot be brought into the nursery.

As an inevitable reaction from nursery-government, the child finds joyous relief in sheer riot and self-will. The behavior of our boys in college shows well their previous uneducated and ill-educated condition. The persistence of "hazing" among twentieth century persons old enough to go to school, shows the weakness of nursery culture. This is a custom prevalent among low savage races, known as "initiation by torture." Its reason—if it ever had any—was to outdo nature's cruelest and most wasteful methods, and to prepare for a life of struggle and pain by a worse experience to begin with. About the age of puberty, when body and mind are both sensitive, this pleasant rite took place. Those who survived it, habituated to cruelty and unreason, were thereby fitted to live cruel and unreasonable lives—and did so.

Race-customs, as old as this, die hard. They have to be understood, condemned, opposed, and educated out of us. Our small children get no such education. They, as a class, get no influence tending to uplift and develop their sociological status. Clever and "well-trained" they may be; well-loved and well—at least, expensively-dressed. But as soon as they escape the nursery bounds, out pops the primeval savage, unrestrained. These young students, with their revolting practices, ought to know that they are in the social stage with cannibalism, voudooism, fetich-worship; and to be hot with shame at their condition. It is the race's babyhood,—a drooling, fumbling, infantile folly—manifested almost to adult age. That it endures is due to our nursery-mindedness.

About the little child should cluster and concentrate the noblest forces of our latest days, our highest wisdom and deepest experience, our most subtle skill. Such wisdom, skill and experience do not exist in the average young woman, albeit a mother; still less in her low-class, ignorant serving-maids. A wider, deeper love would desire better environment for the child, more foresight and more power would provide it. But our love, though intense, is narrow and largely childish—the mother has not long left the influence of her own nursery; and neither wisdom nor power grew there. Some day our women will see this. They will understand at last what womanhood is for, and the power and glory of civilized motherhood. They will see that the educative influences of the first few years are pre-eminently important, and prepare for them as assiduously as they prepare to give a college education to older children.

The baby is a new human soul, learning Life. He should have about him from the first, Truth and Order, with a sequence of impressions which great minds have labored to prepare. He should have his mother's love, his father's care, his brother's and sister's society; his home's seclusion; and he should also have from his earliest days, a place to share with many other children, and the love and care and service of such guides and teachers as are most fit to help the growing of the world.

We have gone far indeed in those things we learn after we leave home. In our trades and professions, our arts and sciences, in the broad avenues of the world's life, we have made great progress—albeit hampered always to some extent by our nursery-mindedness.

But in our own personal relations we are stagnant, hide-bound, inert. Our littleness, our morbidness, our self-consciousness, our narrowness, our short-sightedness, our oppressive, insistent, omnipresent personality—all these still crush us down. Bumptious with a good child's complacency, grieving with a bad child's remorse, indifferent and rebellious as ill-trained children are, we live unawakened among social laws. We enjoy when we can; we suffer much—and needlessly; but we seem incapable of taking hold of our large world-questions and settling them.

It is only an apparent limitation. We are quite capable were we but taught so. What hinders us is Nursery-Mindedness.

A VILLAGE OF FOOLS

There was a certain village, a little village on a little stream; and the inhabitants thereof were Fools.

By profession they were tillers of the soil; and they kept beasts, beasts of burden, and beasts to furnish meat. They lived upon the products of their tillage, and upon the beasts, and upon fish from the stream.

The Wise said, "This is a good village. There is land to furnish food, and beasts in plenty, and a good stream flowing steadily from the tree-clothed hills. These people should prosper well."

They did not know that the people of the village were Fools; Utter Fools. Observe now their Foolishness! They cut down the trees of the hills to make their fires withal; many and great fires, without stint or hindrance; and presently there was no more any forest upon the hills to cover them. Then the moist breath of the cloud-building forest was dried away; and the thick wet sponge about the roots of the forest was dried away; and the snow slid down the hills as it slides down steep roof gables; and the rain ran down the narrow valleys as it runs down gutter pipes; and the village was swept by floods in flood time, and lay parched and thirsty in the dry season. And the people of the village called the flood an Act of God, and they called the drought an Act of God; for they were Fools.

Their fields they tilled continuously, for they needs must eat; gathering from the good ground year after year, and generation after generation, till the ground became sour and stale, and was bad ground and bore no fruit.

"Surely," said the Wise, "they will gather from the stables of their beasts and from the village that which shall enrich their soil and make it bear fruit again."

They did not know that the people of the Village were Fools.

Thus did they with their beasts. They kept them thick in their village; draught animals and burden-bearers; and from the defiled streets arose a Plague of Flies, and tormented the people, so that they fell sick of divers diseases. And they themselves crowded together ever more thickly, till all the village became unsavory and unfit for human habitation. Then they arose, wagging their heads sagaciously; and with vast labor and expense they gathered together from their stables and their habitations all that which should enrich the soil and produce fruit again; and they poured it carefully into the stream. Now this was the stream from which they drank; and when they drank their diluted diseases they fell sick anew, and many died.

Also the fish fed upon this filth, and they also absorbed diseases; and the people fed upon the fish which had fed upon the filth, and again fell sick, and many died.

And those who died they carefully wrapped up in many coverings and laid in the ground—them and their diseases with them—that the seeds thereof might be fostered eternally, and continually came forth anew.

But the Wise burned their dead in clean fire, cherishing their memories in their hearts, but not their slowly deteriorating remains in the dark earth. And the wise kept their forests as a wild garden, planting as well as reaping; having wood therefrom at need, and always the green beauty and the cool shade, the moist winds and carpet of held water over the hill slopes.

Their streams were pure and steady, tree shadowed and grass bordered from end to end; for a tree beareth food as well as a field, and is planted in a moment and the young tree cometh up as the old tree dieth.

And their fields they fed continually, so that they bore more rather than less from year to year, and they prospered and did not die of hand-made diseases.

But they knew not their own wisdom, for these things it seemed to them that even Fools might see, and do accordingly.

Neither did the Fools know their own foolishness.