The elements of character

by Mary G. Ware

In proportion as a true marriage of the affections between the pure in heart is productive of the highest happiness that can exist on earth, so every remove from it diminishes the degree of this happiness until it passes into the opposite, and becomes, in its most worldly and selfish form, a fountain of misery, of a quality absolutely infernal.

Amid the disorder and imperfection reigning in the world, it is not to be supposed that a large proportion of marriages should be truly heavenly. In order to arrive at this, both parties must be of a higher moral standing than is often reached at an age when marriage is usually entered upon; but unless the character of each is inclined heavenward there is no rational ground for anticipating happiness, except of the lowest kind.

Many persons of a naturally amiable disposition enjoy what may seem a high degree of happiness, through their sympathy with each other in worldliness and ambition; but such happiness is not of a kind that can endure the clouds and tempests of life. It is nourished only by the good things of this world, and, if it cannot obtain them, is converted into the greater wretchedness because the being who is dearest in life shares this wretchedness. When, on the contrary, things heavenly are those most highly prized and earnestly sought, each party helps to sustain the other in all earthly privations and disappointments; for each is looking beyond and above the trials of earth, and each is in possession of a hope, nay, a fruition, that cannot be taken away, and which is dearer than all that is lost. With them, to suffer together is to rob suffering of half its weight, and almost all its bitterness. Whatever earthly deprivation may befall them, the kingdom of heaven is ever within their souls.

The Companionship of our fellow-beings is not confined to the living men and women around us, but comes to us, through books, from all nations and ages. Wise teachers stand ever ready to instruct us, gentle moralists to console and strengthen us, poets to delight us. Scarce a country village is so poor that there may not be found beneath its roofs the printed words of more great men than ever lived at any one period of the earth's history.

We are too apt to use books, as well as society, merely for our amusement; to read the books that chance to fall into our hands, or to associate with the persons we happen to meet with, and not stop to ask ourselves if nothing better is within our reach. It may not be in our power to associate with great living minds, but the mental wealth of the past is within the reach of all. We boast much that we are a reading people, but it may be well to inquire how intelligently we read. The catalogues of books borrowed from our public libraries show, that, where the readers of works of amusement are counted by hundreds, the readers of instructive books are numbered by units. In conversation, it is not uncommon to hear persons expressing indifference or dislike to whole classes of books,—to hear Travels denounced as stupid, Biography as tame, and History as heavy and dull. It does not seem to occur to the mass of minds that any purpose beyond the amusement of the moment is to be thought of in reading, or that any plan should be laid, or any principles adopted, in the choice of books to be read.

It is undoubtedly a great good that nearly all our people are taught to read, but it is a small fraction of the community that reads to much good purpose. Children, so soon as they have acquired the use of the alphabet, are inundated with little juvenile stories, some of them good, but most of them silly, and many vulgar. As they grow older, successions of similar works of fiction await them, until they arrive at adolescence, when they are fully prepared for all the wealth of folly, vulgarity, falsehood, and wickedness that is bound up within the yellow covers of most of the cheap novels that infest every highway of the nation.

As you are jostled through the streets of our populous cities, or take your seat in a crowded railway-car, you are, perhaps, impressed with the general air of rudeness that pervades the scene,—a rudeness of a kind so new to the world, that, no old word sufficing to describe it, a new name has been coined, and the swaggering, careless, sensual looking beings, reeking with the fumes of tobacco, that make up the masses of our moving population, are adequately described only by the word rowdy. As yet, no title has been found for the female of this class, —bold, dashing, loud-talking and loud-laughing, ignorant, vain, and so coarse that she supposes fine clothes and assuming manners are all that is necessary to elevate her to the rank of a lady. Perhaps you wonder how so numerous a race of these beings has come to exist; but that boy at your elbow, bending under the weight of his literary burden, is a colporteur for converting the men and women of this "enlightened nation" to rowdyism. Those books portray just such men and women as you see before you, and that is why they are welcomed so warmly. A few cents will buy from that boy enough folly and impurity to gorge a human mind for a week, and possibly few among this throng often taste more wholesome intellectual food.

It is probable that some of these persons are the children of intelligent and well-bred parents; but their fathers were engrossed in business, and their mothers in family cares, and thought they had no time to form the moral and intellectual tastes of the immortal minds committed to their charge. They fancied that if they sent their children to good schools, and provided liberally for all their external wants, they had done enough. Ignorant nursery maids, perhaps, taught them morals and manners, while the father toiled to accumulate the means for supplying their external wants, and the mother hemmed ruffles and scolloped trimming to make people say, "How sweetly those children are dressed!" as the maid paraded them through the streets, teaching them their first lessons in vulgar vanity.

A child may be educated at the best schools without acquiring any taste for good literature. The way a parent treats a child in relation to its books has far more influence in this respect than a teacher can possibly possess. A mother, even if she is not an educated woman, can learn to read understandingly, and can teach her child to read in the same way. She can talk to it about its books, and awaken a desire in its mind to understand what it reads. Children are always curious in regard to the phenomena of nature, and whether this curiosity lives or dies depends very much on the answers it receives to its first questions. If the mother cannot answer them herself, she can help the child to find an answer somewhere else, and she should beware how she deceives herself with the idea that she has not time to attend to the moral and intellectual wants of her child. She has no right to so immerse all her own mind in the cares of life that she cannot, while attending to them, talk rationally with her children. The mothers who best fulfil their higher duties towards their children are quite as often found among those who are compelled to almost constant industry of the hands, as among those of abundant leisure. There is nothing in the handiwork of the housekeeper or the seamstress that need absorb all the mental attention; and hers must be an ill-regulated mind that cannot ply the needle, or perform the more active duties of the household, and yet listen to the child as it reads its little books, and converse with it about the moral lessons or the intellectual instruction they contain. The mother has it in her power to influence the mode in which the child makes companions of its books more than any other person; and the character of its Companionship with them through life will generally depend in a great degree on the tastes and habits acquired in childhood.

Many parents who guard their children with jealous care from the contamination of rude and vicious society among other children, allow them to associate with ideal companions of a very degraded kind. The parent should check the propensity, not only to read bad books, but also to read idle or foolish books, by exciting the action of the mind towards something better. Merely to deny improper books is not enough. Something must be given in place of them, or the craving will continue, and the child will be very apt to gratify its appetite in secret.