Threads of Grey and Gold

It was at my own suggestion that she began to leave the dishes piled up in the sink until morning. When the room is otherwise immaculate, a tray of neatly piled plates, even if unwashed, does not disturb my æsthetic sense.

Ordinarily, she is free for the evening at half-past seven or a quarter of eight – always by eight. Her evenings are hers, not mine, – unless I pay her extra, as I always do. A dollar or so counts for nothing in the expense of an entertainment, and she both earns and deserves the extra wage.

If I am to entertain twenty or thirty people – the house will hold no more, and I cannot ask more than ten to dinner – I consult with her, decide upon the menu, tell her that she can have all the help she needs, and go my ways in peace. I can order the flowers, decorate the table, put on my best gown, and receive my guests, unwearied, with an easy mind.

When I am not expecting guests, I can leave the house immediately after breakfast, without a word about dinner, and return to the right sort of a meal at seven o’clock, bringing a guest or two with me, if I telephone first.

I can work for six weeks or two months in a seclusion as perfect as I could have in the Sahara Desert, and my household, meanwhile, will move as if on greased skids. I can go away for two months and hear nothing from her, and yet know that everything is all right at home. I think no more about it, so far as responsibility is concerned, when I am travelling, than as if I had no home at all. When we leave the apartment alone in the evening, we turn on the most of the lights, being assured by the police that burglars will never molest a brilliantly illuminated house.

The morose countenance of my ugly maid has subtly changed. It radiates, in its own way, beauty and good cheer. Her harsh voice is gentle, her manner is kind, her tastes are becoming refined, her ways are those of a lady.

My friends and neighbours continually allude to the transformation as “a miracle.” The janitor remarked, in a burst of confidence, that he “never saw anybody change so.” He “reckoned,” too, that “it must be the folks she lives with!” Annie herself, conscious of a change, recently said complacently: “Ay guess Ay wass one awful crank when Ay first come here.”

And so it happens that the highest satisfaction is connected with the beautiful theory, triumphantly proven now, against heavy odds. Whatever else I may have done, I have taught one woman the workman’s pride in her work, shown her where true happiness lies, and set her feet firmly on the path of right and joyous living.

To a Violin

(Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)What flights of years have gone to fashion thee,My violin! What centuries have wroughtThy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taughtThy music to awake in ecstasyBeyond our human dreams? Thy melodyIs resurrection. Every buried thoughtOf singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraughtWith tender message, or of sobbing sea,Lives once again. The tempest’s solemn rollIs in thy passion sleeping, till the kingWhose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,The crashing chords of thunder, and the wholeVast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!

The Old Maid

One of the best things the last century has done for woman is to make single-blessedness appear very tolerable indeed, even if it be not actually desirable.

The woman who didn’t marry used to be looked down upon as a sort of a “leftover” without a thought, apparently, that she may have refused many a chance to change her attitude toward the world. But now, the “bachelor maid” is welcomed everywhere, and is not considered eccentric on account of her oneness.

With the long records of the divorce courts before their eyes, it is not very unusual for the younger generation of women nowadays deliberately to choose spinsterhood as their independent lot in life.

A girl said the other day: “It’s no use to say that a woman can’t marry if she wants to. Look around you, and see the women who have married, and then ask yourself if there is anybody who can’t!”

This is a great truth very concisely stated. It is safe to say that no woman ever reached twenty-five years of age, and very few have passed twenty, without having an opportunity to become somebody’s mate.

A very small maiden with very bright eyes once came to her mother with the question: “Mamma, do you think I shall ever have a chance to get married?”

And the mother answered: “Surely you will, my child; the woods are full of offers of marriage – no woman can avoid them.”

And ere many years had passed the maiden had learned that the wisdom of her mother’s prophecy was fully vindicated.

Every one knows that a woman needs neither beauty, talent, nor money to win the deepest and sincerest love that man is capable of giving.

Single life is, with rare exceptions, a matter of choice and not of necessity; and while it is true that a happy married life is the happiest position for either man or woman, there are many things which are infinitely worse than being an old maid, and chiefest among these is marrying the wrong man!

The modern woman looks her future squarely in the face and decides according to her best light whether her happiness depends upon spinsterhood or matrimony. This decision is of course influenced very largely by the quality of her chances in either direction, but if the one whom she fully believes to be the right man comes along, he is likely to be able to overcome strong objections to the married state. If love comes to her from the right source, she takes it gladly; otherwise she bravely goes her way alone, often showing the world that some of the most mother-hearted women are not really mothers. Think of the magnificent solitude of such women as Florence Nightingale and our own splendid Frances Willard! Who shall say that these, and thousands of others of earth’s grandest souls, were not better for their single-heartedness in the service of humanity?

A writer in a leading journal recently said: “The fact that a woman remains single is a tribute to her perception. She gains an added dignity from being hard to suit.”

This, from the pen of a man, is somewhat of a revelation, in the light of various masculine criticisms concerning superfluous women. No woman is superfluous. God made her, and put her into this world to help her fellow-beings. There is a little niche somewhere which she, and she alone, can fill. She finds her own completeness in rounding out the lives of others.

It has been said that the average man may be piloted through life by one woman, but it must be admitted that several of him need somewhere near a dozen of the fair sex to wait upon him at the same time. His wife and mother are kept “hustling,” while his “sisters and his aunts” are likely to be “on the keen jump” from the time his lordship enters the house until he leaves it!

But to return to the “superfluous woman,” – although we cannot literally return to her because she does not exist. Of the “old maid” of to-day, it is safe to say that she has her allotted plane of usefulness. She isn’t the type our newspaper brethren delight to caricature. She doesn’t dwell altogether upon the subject of “woman’s sphere,” which, by the way, comes very near being the plane of the earth’s sphere, and she need not, for her position is now well recognised.

She doesn’t wear corkscrew curls and hideous reform garments. She is a dainty, feminine, broad-minded woman, and a charming companion. Men are her friends, and often her lovers, in her old age as well as in her youth.

Every old maid has her love story, a little romance that makes her heart young again as she dreams it over in the firelight, and it calls a happy smile to the faded face.

Or, perhaps, it is the old, sad story of a faithless lover, or a happiness spoiled by gossips – or it may be the scarcely less sad story of love and death.

Ibsen makes two of his characters, a young man and woman who love each other, part voluntarily on the top of a high mountain in order that they may be enabled to keep their high ideals and uplifting love for each other.

So the old maid keeps her ideals, not through fulfilment, but through memory, and she is far happier than many a woman who finds her ideal surprisingly and disagreeably real.

The bachelor girl and the bachelor man are much on the increase. Marriage is not in itself a failure, but the people who enter unwisely into this solemn covenant too often are not only failures, but bitter disappointments to those who love them best.

Life for men and women means the highest usefulness and happiness, for the terms are synonymous, neither being able to exist without the other.

The model spinster of to-day is philanthropic. She is connected, not with innumerable charities, but with a few well-chosen ones. She gives freely of her time and money in many ways, where her left hand scarcely knoweth what her right doeth, and the record of her good works is not found in the chronicles of the world.

She is literary, musical, or artistic. She is a devoted and loyal club member, and is well informed on the leading topics of the day, while the resources of her well-balanced mind are always at the service of her friends.

And when all is said and done, the highest and truest life is within the reach of us all. Doing well whatever is given us to do will keep us all busy, and married or single, no woman has a right to be idle. The old maid may be womanly and mother-hearted as well as the wife and mother.

The Spinster’s Rubaiyat

IWake! For the hour of hope will soon take flightAnd on your form and features leave a blight;Since Time, who heals full many an open wound,More oft than not is impolite.IIBefore my relatives began to chide,Methought the voice of conscience said inside:“Why should you want a husband, when you haveA cat who seldom will at home abide?”IIIAnd, when the evening breeze comes in the door,The lamp smokes like a chimney, only more;And yet the deacon of the churchIs telling every one my parrot swore.IVBehold, my aunt into my years inquires,Then swiftly with my parents she conspires,And in the family record changes dates —In that same book that says all men are liars.VCome, fill the cup and let the kettle sing!What though upon my finger gleams no ring,Save that cheap turquoise that I bought myself?The coming years a gladsome change may bring.VIHere, minion, fill the steaming cup that clearsThe skin I will not have exposed to jeers,And rub this wrinkle vigorously untilThe maddening crow’s-foot wholly disappears.VIIAnd let me don some artificial bloom,And turn the lamps down low, and make a gloomThat spreads from library to hall and stair;Thus do I look my best – but ah, for whom?

The Rights of Dogs

We hear a great deal about the “rights of men” and still more, perhaps, about the “rights of women,” but few stop to consider those which properly belong to the friend and companion of both – the dog.

According to our municipal code, a dog must be muzzled from June 1st to September 30th. The wise men who framed this measure either did not know, or did not stop to consider, that a dog perspires and “cools off” only at his mouth.

Man and the horse have tiny pores distributed all over the body, but in the dog they are found only in the tongue.

Any one who has had a fever need not be told what happened when these pores ceased to act; what, then, must be the sufferings of a dog on a hot day, when, securely muzzled, he takes his daily exercise?

Even on the coolest days, the barbarous muzzle will fret a thoroughbred almost to insanity, unless, indeed, he has brains to free himself, as did a brilliant Irish setter which we once knew. This wise dog would run far ahead of his human guardian, and with the help of his forepaws slip the strap over his slender head, then hide the offending muzzle in the gutter, and race onward again. When the loss was discovered, it was far too late to remedy it by any search that could be instituted.

And still, without this uncomfortable encumbrance, it is unsafe for any valuable dog to be seen, even on his own doorsteps, for the “dog-catcher” is ever on the look-out for blue-blooded victims.

The homeless mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes, and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie, and the St. Bernard are choked into insensibility with a wire noose, hurled into a stuffy cage, and with the thermometer at ninety in the shade, are dragged through the blistering city, as a sop to that Cerberus of the law which demands for its citizens safety from dogs, and pays no attention to the lawlessness of men.

The dog tax which is paid every year is sufficient to guarantee the interest of the owner in his dog. Howells has pitied “the dogless man,” and Thomas Nelson Page has said somewhere that “some of us know what it is to be loved by a dog.”

Countless writers have paid tribute to his fidelity and devotion, and to the constant forgiveness of blows and neglect which spring from the heart of the commonest cur.

The trained hunter, who is as truly a sportsman as the man who brings down the birds he finds, can be easily fretted into madness by the injudicious application of the muzzle.

The average dog is a gentleman and does not attack people for the pleasure of it, and it is lamentably true that people who live in cities often find it necessary to keep some sort of a dog as a guardian to life and property. In spite of his loyalty, which every one admits, the dog is an absolute slave. Men with less sense, and less morality, constitute a court from which he has no appeal.

Four or five years of devotion to his master’s interests, and four or five years of peaceful, friendly conduct, count for absolutely nothing beside the perjured statement of some man, or even woman, who, from spite against the owner, is willing to assert, “the dog is vicious.”

“He is very imprudent, a dog is,” said Jerome K. Jerome. “He never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or wrong – never bothers as to whether you are going up or down life’s ladder – never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, saint or sinner. You are his pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune, good repute or bad, honour or shame, he is going to stick to you, to comfort you, guard you, and give his life for you, if need be – foolish, brainless, soulless dog!

“Ah! staunch old friend, with your deep, clear eyes, and bright quick glances that take in all one has to say, before one has time to speak it, do you know you are only an animal and have no mind?

“Do you know that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and base – whose every action is a fraud and whose every utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much superior to you as the sun is to the rush-light, you honourable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute?

“They are men, you know, and men are the greatest, noblest, wisest, and best beings in the universe. Any man will tell you that.”

Are the men whom we elect to public office our masters or our servants? If the former, let us change our form of government; if the latter, let us hope that from somewhere a little light may penetrate their craniums and that they may be induced to give the dog a chance.

Twilight

The birds were hushed into silence,The clouds had sunk from sight,And the great trees bowed to the summer breezeThat kissed the flowers good-night.The stars came out in the cool still air,From the mansions of the blest,And softly, over the dim blue hills,Night came to the world with rest.

Women’s Clothes in Men’s Books

When asked why women wrote better novels than men, Mr. Richard Le Gallienne is said to have replied, more or less conclusively, “They don’t”; thus recalling Punch’s famous advice to those about to marry.

Happily there is no segregation in literature, and masculine and feminine hands alike may dabble in fiction, as long as the publishers are willing.

If we accept Zola’s dictum to the effect that art is nature seen through the medium of a temperament, the thing is possible to many, though the achievement may differ both in manner and degree. For women have temperament – too much of it – as the hysterical novelists daily testify.

The gentleman novelist, however, prances in boldly, where feminine feet well may fear to tread, and consequently has a wider scope for his writing. It is not for a woman to mingle in a barroom brawl and write of the thing as she sees it. The prize-ring, the interior of a cattle-ship, Broadway at four in the morning – these and countless other places are forbidden by her innate refinement as well as by the Ladies’ Own, and all the other aunties who have taken upon themselves the guardianship of the Home with a big H.

Fancy the outpouring of scorn upon the luckless offender’s head if one should write to the Manners and Morals Department of the Ladies’ Own as follows: “Would it be proper for a lady novelist, in search of local colour and new experiences, to accept the escort of a strange man at midnight if he was too drunk to recognise her afterward?” Yet a man in the same circumstances would not hesitate to put an intoxicated woman into a sea-going cab, and would plume himself for a year and a day upon his virtuous performance.

All things are considered proper for a man who is about to write a book. Like the disciple of Mary McLane who stole a horse in order to get the emotions of a police court, he may delve deeply not only into life, but into that under-stratum which is not spoken of, where respectable journals circulate.

Everything is fish that comes into his net. If conscientious, he may even undertake marriage in order to study the feminine personal equations at close range. Woman’s emotions, singly and collectively, are pilloried before his scientific gaze. He cowers before one problem, and one only – woman’s clothes!

Carlyle, after long and painful thought, arrives at the conclusion that “cut betokens intellect and talent; colour reveals temper and heart.”

This reminds one of the language of flowers, and the directions given for postage-stamp flirtation. If that massive mind had penetrated further into the mysteries of the subject, we might have been told that a turnover collar indicated that the woman was a High Church Episcopalian who had embroidered two altar cloths, and that suède gloves show a yielding but contradictory nature.

Clothes are, undoubtedly, indices of character and taste, as well as a sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong her in the sight of gods and women, though men know nothing about it.

Once upon a time there was a notion to the effect that women dressed to please men, but that idea has long since been relegated to the limbo of forgotten things.

Not one man in a thousand can tell the difference between Brussels point at thirty dollars a yard, and imitation Valenciennes at ten or fifteen cents a yard which was one of the “famous Friday features in the busy bargain basement.”

But across the room, yea, even from across the street, the eagle eye of another woman can unerringly locate the Brussels point and the mock Valenciennes.

A man knows silk by the sound of it and diamonds by the shine. He will say that his heroine “was richly dressed in silk.” Little does he wot of the difference between taffeta at eighty-five cents a yard and broadcloth at four dollars. Still less does he know that a white cotton shirt-waist represents financial ease, and a silk waist of festive colouring represents poverty, since it takes but two days to “do up” a white shirt-waist in one sense, and thirty or forty cents to do it up in the other!

One listens with wicked delight to men’s discourse upon woman’s clothes. Now and then a man will express his preference for a tailored gown, as being eminently simple and satisfactory. Unless he is married and has seen the bills for tailored gowns, he also thinks they are inexpensive.

It is the benedict, wise with the acquired knowledge of the serpent, who begs his wife to get a new party gown and let the tailor-made go until next season. He also knows that when the material is bought, the expense has scarcely begun, whereas the ignorant bachelor thinks that the worst is happily over.

In A Little Journey through the World Mr. Warner philosophised thus: “How a woman in a crisis hesitates before her wardrobe, and at last chooses just what will express her innermost feelings!”

If all a woman’s feelings were to be expressed by her clothes, the benedicts would immediately encounter financial shipwreck. On account of the lamentable scarcity of money and closets, one is eternally adjusting the emotion to the gown.

Some gown, seen at the exact psychological moment, fixes forever in a man’s mind his ideal garment. Thus we read of blue calico, of pink-and-white print, and more often still, of white lawn. Mad colour combinations run riot in the masculine fancy, as in the case of a man who boldly described his favourite costume as “red, with black ruffles down the front!”

Of a hat, a man may be a surpassingly fine critic, since he recks not of style. Guileful is the woman who leads her liege to the millinery and lets him choose, taking no heed of the price and the attendant shock until later.

A normal man is anxious that his wife shall be well dressed because it shows the critical observer that his business is a great success. After futile explorations in the labyrinth, he concerns himself simply with the fit, preferring always that the clothes of his heart’s dearest shall cling to her as lovingly as a kid glove, regardless of the pouches and fulnesses prescribed by Dame Fashion.

In the writing of books, men are at their wits’ end when it comes to women’s clothes. They are hampered by no restrictions – no thought of style or period enters into their calculations, and unless they have a wholesome fear of the unknown theme, they produce results which further international gaiety.

Many an outrageous garment has been embalmed in a man’s book, simply because an attractive woman once wore something like it when she fed the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we read of “a clinging white gown” in the days of stiff silks and rampant crinoline; of “the curve of the upper arm” when it took five yards for a pair of sleeves, and of “short walking skirts” during the reign of bustles and trains!

In The Blazed Trail, Mr. White observes that his heroine was clad in brown which fitted her slender figure perfectly. As Hilda had yellow hair, “like corn silk,” this was all right, and if the brown was of the proper golden shade, she was doubtless stunning when Thorpe first saw her in the forest. But the gown could not have fitted her as the sheath encases the dagger, for before the straight-front corsets there were the big sleeves, and still further back were bustles and bouffant draperies. One does not get the impression that The Blazed Trail was placed in the days of crinolines, but doubtless Hilda’s clothes did not fit as Mr. White seems to think they did.

That strenuous follower of millinery, Mr. Gibson, might give lessons to his friend, Mr. Davis, with advantage to the writer, if not to the artist. In Captain Macklin, the young man’s cousin makes her first appearance in a thin gown, and a white hat trimmed with roses, reminding the adventurous captain of a Dresden statuette, in spite of the fact that she wore heavy gauntlet gloves and carried a trowel. The lady had been doing a hard day’s work in the garden. No woman outside the asylum ever did gardening in such a costume, and Mr. Davis evidently has the hat and gown sadly mixed with some other pleasant impression.

The feminine reader immediately hides Mr. Davis’ mistake with the broad mantle of charity, and in her own mind clothes Beatrice properly in a short walking skirt, heavy shoes, shirt-waist, old hat tied down over the ears with a rumpled ribbon, and a pair of ancient masculine gloves, long since discarded by their rightful owner. Thus does lovely woman garden, except on the stage and in men’s books.