Papa's own girl: A novel

by Marie Stevens Howland

“I have been asked many times to-day, if we do not suffer here from want of privacy. One lady told me she would like to live here but for the terrible ‘mixing up.’ Now that lady lives in one of the most crowded streets of one of our great cities. She cannot step into the street without entering a promiscuous throng. Here, she would meet only honest people, and her purse would be quite safe. The truth is, there is here the utmost enjoyment of privacy. There is but one law, and that is liberty. All the cooking, washing, and ironing, may be done in individual homes or in the cuisine and laundry, just as the people prefer. There is, however, a remarkable unanimity in preferring the latter. The world has generally believed that women are by nature devoted to the cooking-stove, the wash-tub, and the cradle. We have found out positively that this is a mistake. [Applause.] It may be different in a state of nature—among the Otaheitans, for example—but certainly I never found a civilized woman who did not wish to get away, even from the cradle, a few hours during the day. Why, one civilized baby is capable of turning an isolated household into a pandemonium [laughter]; and how many of the very tenderest mothers are worn out with the care of a single infant. The child, however small, pines for the society of other children, and this is really the secret of many a ‘cross baby.’ The baby, by crying, is only expressing the fact that its wants are not supplied. Explain it as you can: cross babies cease to bear that reputation when they are accustomed to our nursery; and when brought home, if kept after a certain time, they fret and worry until carried back among their baby companions. Now, if the children did not prefer the nursery, but cried to go home, we should not decide that they were naturally depraved, but that there was a screw loose in the organization of the nursery. We do not accept the doctrine of total depravity. We know that if we give an acorn its proper conditions, it will become a beautiful tree. If we wish a chicken to grow into a strong and perfect fowl, we study what its wants are, and then supply them; and but for the interference of theology, I think mankind would have discovered, a little before this time, that human nature is no more naturally bad than an acorn or a chicken. We are depraved only through the want of conditions for the normal and harmonious growth of all our parts. But theology itself is finding out that it cannot preserve its rigidity in the face of the progress of the age. I find there are many priests who are very excellent men [laughter and applause]; but then, these have rotated out of theology into common sense. You will find some to-day who would rather see a Social Palace founded than a mill for grinding out parsons, or, to speak more respectfully, a theological seminary. A clergyman told me to-day that he was greatly pleased with our Social Palace, but he regretted to see that we had provided a theatre. You can judge what a labor I had with that individual. [Laughter.] I would rather build stone-wall all day, than have another two hours’ struggle with that man’s powerful but theological intellect. [Great laughter.] Of course I had to go back for my premises among the monsters of antediluvian times, where theologians and scientists differ radically as to the conditions of our ancestors. [Laughter.] You see that is such uncertain ground, that one can bully just as much as the other. In short, I attempted to show that theological mind, that human nature was decent enough to prefer beauty to ugliness, virtue to vice, and that what he called depravity, was only false development, through the want of the right conditions for true and healthful development.

“Do you suppose we are willing, or that we can afford, to have our children pining in the Social Palace for amusement, and being driven to seek it in the questionable resorts of the city? It is to avoid this, that we have billiards and other games, and musical and dramatic societies. It is to avoid this, that we have a library and reading-room. Our theatre is a special pride. You all know how irresistibly the young are attracted to dramatic performances; and out of our respect to human attractions, we have built the theatre, and furnished it with an extensive wardrobe of historical costumes and all stage appointments. Those pupils take the first rank for polite address and grace of bearing, are rewarded by becoming members of the dramatic company; and there is no honor more coveted and ardently sought for, than this. Many strangers in these grounds to-day have remarked the polite and easy address of some of the boys and girls, who have sacrificed voluntarily their play to answer the questions of visitors, to bring them delicacies from the restaurant, or to show them over the grounds. [Applause and cries of ‘That is true!’] It gives me pleasure to hear you acknowledge this so readily. These boys and girls are competitors for dramatic distinction, and if any of them manifest very marked and promising histrionic talent, they will be furnished with the means to continue their studies here and abroad. To-morrow, at the one o’clock matinée, and at the evening performances, you will have an opportunity to judge, from what the dramatic company has accomplished in six months, whether or not it promises well for the future.

“The theatre and the opera are two of the greatest moral educators of the world, and they should in every community be under the control of the highest and most cultivated of the citizens. When controlled by the impulse of avarice alone, they are sure to become degraded and fail in their high mission, which is to stimulate the imagination to a love of heroism and virtue, and to cultivate and develop artistic taste. Mark well that the drama and the opera are democratic in their principle; rank is gained by study and high merit, and woman is recognized as man’s equal, and receives equal or even higher compensation for her labor. Equality, you know, is one of our watchwords; and our institution is not a sham, but a real republic, where the voices of all citizens over sixteen years of age are heard in the making of our laws and regulations. This, in the opinion of some people, is too early an age for the exercise of the ballot; but it must be remembered, that long before that age, the children are thoroughly acquainted with its use, and with the general principles of democratic government. Woman’s political duties are not onerous, and so far as I know, though every woman votes, not one has yet ‘unsexed’ herself. [Great laughter and applause.] You know certain weak, unscientific men, are dreadfully afraid of that calamity. [Laughter.] One reason may be that our voting is not conducted in dirty halls nor rum-shops.

“The education of the children from infancy up, is all free, and supported by our shops and industries. Every orphan will be adopted, educated, and tenderly cared for, as will the sick, the aged, and the infirm; not as a charity, mark well, but as a natural right. We have educational classes for adults, and they are well attended, while the education of the children embraces a wide range of scientific and industrial training. You have seen to-day in the lowest class of the school proper, nearly a hundred children engaged in what are called the Froëbel exercises—seated at their long tables constructing houses, fences, furniture—innumerable tiny objects, with their blocks, and sticks, and plastic clay. Some of them already show great skill. Visitors called their occupation play. So it is, but a most important play; so organized that skill and artistic taste are gradually developed, through friendly emulation and the natural love of beautiful forms.

“The right education of children is the most sacred duty of the world. Remember, you who have these dear little ones under your care to-day, how you fill their tender, impressible minds with effete creeds and unverifiable hypotheses. You may think you are doing them good, forgetting that we have seen the dawn of the scientific method of investigation, and that hereafter these children will rise up and reproach you for wasting their precious time. Teach them to see God, not as a greater man, subject to anger, repentance, and the various passions of men, but as the invisible, and to us, incomprehensible, power behind what we call phenomena. The religious aspiration is the aspiration toward universal harmony, and is literally, as well as in principle, the highest part of man. It is most normally excited by the study of nature—the mysterious laws that we see governing the springing grass, the unfolding flower, the growth and development of the child, and the great kosmic forces that control the movements of the planets, and suns, and systems of the universe.

“We are standing on the threshold of a brighter era for mankind, as I believe I can see, and I am not alone in this faith. Since the great success of the labors of M. Godin in France, we may confidently assert that the laws of social harmony have been put into practice; but it is to the coming generation that we must look for more significant results, for higher harmonies than we can effect—cramped and robbed of our birthright, as we have been, by false and imperfect conditions for the free development of our physical and mental powers. We look to the educational system of the Social Palace for the working out of the grand problem that we have stated; and hence the advent of every child here will be a signal for rejoicing, for he is born into conditions that should make him

‘Grow in beauty like the rose,’

and become a blessing to the world.

“And now, my friends, thanking you for your courteous attention to what I have said to you, and out of respect to the thousand youthful feet that are impatient to open the ball, I will end my remarks by the announcement of a joyful event. The birth of the first child in the Social Palace, occurred this morning at sunrise: a happy omen for our inaugural festival.”

At this announcement the air was filled with long-continued shouts of applause and cries of “Whose baby is it?” “Tell us whose child it is,” “Is it a boy or girl?” “Of course it is a girl,” said a man in the audience. “No boy would dare to take precedence here.”