The Art of Living

When a boy has reached the age of eleven or twelve, another consideration presents itself which is a source of serious perplexity to parents. Shall he be educated at home – that is, attend school in his own city or town – or be sent to one of the boarding-schools or academies which are ready to open their doors to him and fit him for college? Here again we are met by the suggestion that the boarding-school of this type is not a native growth, but an exotic. England has supplied us with a precedent. The great boarding-schools, Rugby, Eton, and Harrow, are the resort of the gentlemen of England. Though termed public schools, they are class schools, reserved and intended for the education of only the highly respectable. The sons of the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker are not formally barred, but they are tacitly excluded. The pupils are the sons of the upper and well-to-do middle classes. A few boarding-schools for boys have been in existence here for many years, but in the last twenty there has been a notable increase in their number and importance. These, too, are essentially class schools, for though ostensibly open to everybody, the charges for tuition and living are beyond the means of parents with a small income. Most of them are schools of a religious denomination, though commonly a belief in the creed for which the institution stands is not made a formal requisite for admission. The most successful profess the Episcopalian faith, and in other essential respects are modelled deliberately on the English public schools.

The strongest argument for sending a boy to one of these schools is the fresh-air plea. Undeniably, the growing boy in a large city is at a disadvantage. He can rarely, if ever, obtain opportunities for healthful exercise and recreation equal to those afforded by a well-conducted boarding-school. He is likely to become a little man too early, or else to sit in the house because there is nowhere to play. At a boarding-school he will, under firm but gentle discipline, keep regular hours, eat simple food, and between study times be stimulated to cultivate athletic or other outdoor pursuits. It is not strange that parents should be attracted by the comparison, and decide that, on the whole, their boys will fare better away from home. Obviously the aristocratic mother will point out to her husband that his predilection for the public school system is answered by the fact that the State does not supply schools away from the city, where abundant fresh air and a famous foot-ball field are appurtenant to the institution. Tom Brown at Rugby recurs to them both, and they conclude that what has been good enough for generations of English boys will be best for their own son and heir.

On the other hand, have we Americans ever quite reconciled ourselves to, and sympathized with, the traditional attitude of English parents toward their sons as portrayed in veracious fiction? The day of parting comes; the mother, red-eyed from secret weeping, tries not to break down; the blubbering sisters throw their arms around the neck of the hero of the hour, and slip pen-wipers of their own precious making into his pockets; the father, abnormally stern to hide his emotion, says, bluffly, “Good-by, Tom; it’s time to be off, and we’ll see you again at Christmas.” And out goes Tom, a tender fledgeling, into the great world of the public school, and that is the last of home. His holidays arrive, but there is no more weeping. He is practically out of his parents’ lives, and the sweet influence of a good mother is exercised only through fairly regular correspondence. And Tom is said to be getting manly, and that the nonsense has nearly been knocked out of him. He has been bullied and has learned to bully; he has been a fag and is now a cock. Perhaps he is first scholar, if not a hero of the cricket or foot-ball field. Then off he goes to college, half a stranger to those who love him best.

This is fine and manly perhaps, in the Anglo-Saxon sense, but does it not seem just a little brutal? Are we well-to-do Americans prepared to give up to others, however exemplary, the conduct of our children’s lives? Granting that the American private boarding-school is a delightful institution, where bullying and fags and cocks are not known, can it ever take the place of home, or supply the stimulus to individual life which is exercised by wise parental love and precept? Of course, it is easier, in a certain sense, to send one’s boy to a select boarding-school, where the conditions are known to be highly satisfactory. It shifts the responsibility on to other shoulders, and yet leaves one who is not sensitive, in the pleasing frame of mind that the very best thing has been done for the young idea. In our busy American life – more feverish than that of our English kinsfolk whose institution we have copied – many doubtless are induced to seek this solution of a perplexing problem by the consciousness of their own lack of efficiency, and their own lack of leisure to provide a continuous home influence superior or equal to what can be supplied by headmasters and their assistants, who are both churchmen and athletes. Many, too, especially fathers, are firm believers in that other English doctrine, that most boys need to have the nonsense knocked out of them, and that the best means of accomplishing this result is to cut them loose from their mothers’ apron-strings.

It is to be borne in mind in this connection that the great English public schools are a national cult. That is, everybody above a certain class sends his sons to one of them. On the other hand, the private boarding-schools on this side of the water, fashioned after them, have thus far attracted the patronage of a very small element of the population. It is their misfortune, rather than their fault, that they are chiefly the resort of the sons of rich or fashionable people, and consequently are the most conspicuously class schools in the country. Doubtless the earnest men who conduct most of them regret that this is so, but it is one of the factors of the case which the American parent with sons must face at present. It may be that this is to be the type of school which is to become predominant here, and that, as in England, the nation will recognize it as a national force, even though here, as there, only the sons of the upper classes enjoy its advantages. That will depend partly on the extent to which we shall decide, as a society, to promote further class education. At present these schools are essentially private institutions. They are small; they do not, like our American colleges, offer scholarships, and thus invite the attendance of ambitious students without means. Moreover, they are almost universally conducted on a sectarian basis, or with a sectarian leaning, which is apt to proselytize, at least indirectly.

While those in charge of them indisputably strive to inculcate every virtue, the well-to-do American father must remember that his sons will associate intimately there with many boys whose parents belong to that frivolous class which is to-day chiefly absorbed in beautiful establishments, elaborate cookery, and the wholly material vanities of life, and are out of sympathy with, or are indifferent to, the earnest temper and views of that already large and intelligent portion of the community, which views with horror the development among us of an aristocracy of wealth, which apes and is striving to outdo the heartless inanities of the Old World. He must remember that a taste for luxury and sensuous, material aims, even though they be held in check by youthful devotion to the rites of the church, will prove no less disastrous, in the long run, to manhood and patriotism, than the lack of fresh air or a famous foot-ball field.

If, however, the American father chooses to keep his sons at home, he is bound to do all he can to overcome the physical disadvantages of city life. Fresh air and suitable exercise can be obtained in the suburbs of most cities by a little energy and co-operation on the part of parents. As an instance, in one or two of our leading cities, clubs of twelve to fifteen boys are sent out three or four afternoons a week under the charge of an older youth – usually a college or other student – who, without interfering with their liberty, supervises their sports, and sees that they are well occupied. On days when the weather is unsuitable for any kind of game, he will take them to museums, manufactories, or other places of interest in the vicinity. In this way some of the watchfulness and discipline which are constantly operative at a boarding-school, are exercised without injury to home ties. There is no doubt that, unless parents are vigilant and interest themselves unremittingly in providing necessary physical advantages, the boys in a crowded city are likely to be less healthy and vigorous in body, and perhaps in mind, than those educated at a first-class boarding-school. It may be, as our cities increase in size, and suburbs become more difficult of access, that the boarding-school will become more generally popular; but there is reason to believe that, before it is recognized as a national institution, sectarian religion will have ceased to control it, and it will be less imitative of England in its tone and social attitude. Until then, at least, many a parent will prefer to keep his boys at home.

II

“Supposing you had four daughters, like Mr. Perkins, what would you do with them, educationally speaking?” I said to my wife Barbara, by way of turning my attention to the other sex.

“You mean what would they do with me? They would drive me into my grave, I think,” she answered. “Woman’s horizon has become so enlarged that no mother can tell what her next daughter may not wish to do. I understand, though, that you are referring simply to schools. To begin with, I take for granted you will agree that American parents, who insist on sending their boys to a public school, very often hesitate or decline point-blank to send their girls.”

“Precisely. And we are forthwith confronted by the question whether they are justified in so doing.”

Barbara looked meditative for a moment, then she said: “I am quite aware there is no logical reason why girls should not be treated in the same way, and yet as a matter of fact I am not at all sure, patriotism and logic to the contrary notwithstanding, I should send a daughter to a public school unless I were convinced, from personal examination, that she would have neither a vulgar teacher nor vulgar associates. Manners mean so much to a woman, and by manners I refer chiefly to those nice perceptions of everything which stamp a lady, and which you can no more describe than you can describe the perfume of the violet. The objection to the public schools for a girl is that the unwritten constitution of this country declared years ago that every woman was a born lady, and that manners and nice perceptions were in the national blood, and required no cultivation for their production. Latterly, a good many people interested in educational matters have discovered the fallacy of this point of view; so that when the name of a woman to act as the head of a college or other first-class institution for girls is brought forward to-day, the first question asked is, ‘Is she a lady?’ Ten years ago mental acquirements would have been regarded as sufficient, and the questioner silenced with the severe answer that every American woman is a lady. The public school authorities are still harping too much on the original fallacy, or rather the new point of view has not spread sufficiently to cause the average American school-teacher to suspect that her manners might be improved and her sensibilities refined. There, that sounds like treason to the principles of democracy, yet you know I am at heart a patriot.”

“And yet to bring up boys on a common basis and separate the girls by class education seems like a contradiction of terms,” I said.

“I am confident – at least if we as a nation really do believe in obliterating class distinctions – that it won’t be long before those who control the public schools recognize more universally the value of manners, and of the other traits which distinguish the woman of breeding from the woman who has none,” said Barbara. “When that time comes the well-to-do American mother will have no more reason for not sending her daughters to a public school than her sons. As it is, they should send them oftener than they do.”

“Of course,” continued Barbara, presently, “the best private schools are in the East, and a very much larger percentage, both of girls and boys, attends the public schools in the West than in the East. Indeed, I am inclined to think that comparatively few people west of Chicago do not send their children to public schools. But, on the other hand, there are boarding-schools for girls all over the East which are mainly supported by girls from the West, whose mothers wish to have them finished. They go to the public schools at home until they are thirteen or fourteen, and then are packed off to school for three or four years in order to teach them how to move, and wear their hair, and spell, and control their voices – for the proper modulation of the voice has at last been recognized as a necessary attribute of the well-bred American woman. As for the Eastern girl who is not sent to the public school, she usually attends a private day-school in her native city, the resources of which are supplemented by special instruction of various kinds, in order to produce the same finished specimen. But it isn’t the finished specimen who is really interesting from the educational point of view to-day; that is, the conventional, cosmopolitan, finished specimen such as is turned out with deportment and accomplishments from the hands of the English governess, the French Mother Superior, or the American private school-mistress.

“After making due allowance for the national point of view, I don’t see very much difference in principle between the means adopted to finish the young lady of society here and elsewhere. There are thousands of daughters of well-to-do mothers in this country who are brought up on the old aristocratic theory that a woman should study moderately hard until she is eighteen, then look as pretty as she can, and devote herself until she is married to having what is called on this side of the Atlantic a good time. To be sure, in France the good time does not come until after marriage, and there are other differences, but the well-bred lady of social graces is the well-bred lady, whether it be in London, Paris, Vienna, or New York, and a ball-room in one capital is essentially the same as in all the others, unless it be that over here the very young people are allowed to crowd out everybody else. There are thousands of mothers who are content that this should be the limit of their daughter’s experience, a reasonably good education and perfect manners, four years of whirl, and then a husband, or no husband and a conservative afternoon tea-drinking spinsterhood – and they are thankful on the whole when their girls put their necks meekly beneath the yoke of convention and do as past generations of women all over the civilized world have done. For the reign of the unconventional society young woman is over. She shocks now her own countrywoman even more than foreigners; and though, like the buffalo, she is still extant, she is disappearing even more rapidly than that illustrious quadruped.”

“Are you not wandering slightly from the topic?” I ventured to inquire.

“Not at all,” said Barbara. “I was stating merely that the Old-World, New-World young lady, with all her originality and piquancy, however charming, and however delightfully inevitable she may be, is not interesting from the educational point of view. Or rather I will put it in this way: the thoughtful, well-to-do American mother is wondering hard whether she has a right to be content with the ancient programme for her daughters, and is watching with eager interest the experiments which some of her neighbors are trying with theirs. We cannot claim as an exclusive national invention collegiate education for women, and there’s no doubt that my sex in England is no less completely on the war-path than the female world here; but is there a question that the peculiar qualities of American womanhood are largely responsible for the awakening wherever it has taken place? My dear, you asked me just now what a man like Mr. Perkins should do with his four daughters. Probably Mrs. Perkins is trying to make up her mind whether she ought to send them to college. Very likely she is arguing with Mr. Perkins as to whether, all things considered, it wouldn’t be advisable to have one or two of them study a profession, or learn to do something bread-winning, so that in case he, poor man – for he does look overworked – should not succeed in leaving them the five thousand dollars a year he hopes, they need not swell the category of the decayed gentlewoman of the day. I dare say they discuss the subject assiduously, in spite of the views Mr. Perkins has expressed to you regarding the sacredness of unemployed feminine gentility; for it costs so much to live that he can’t lay up a great deal, and there are certainly strong arguments in favor of giving such girls the opportunity to make the most of themselves, or at least to look at life from the self-supporting point of view. At first, of course, the students at the colleges for women were chiefly girls who hoped to utilize, as workers in various lines, the higher knowledge they acquired there; but every year sees more and more girls, who expect to be married sooner or later – the daughters of lawyers, physicians, merchants – apply for admission, on the theory that what is requisite for a man is none too good for them; and it is the example of these girls which is agitating the serenity of so many mothers, and suggesting to so many daughters the idea of doing likewise. Even the ranks of the most fashionable are being invaded, though undeniably it is still the fashion to stay at home, and I am inclined to think that it is only the lack of the seal of fashion that restrains many conservative people, like the Perkinses, from educating their daughters as though they probably would not be married, instead of as though they were almost certain to be.”

“You may remember that Perkins assured me not long ago, that marriage did not run in the Perkins female line,” said I.

“All the more reason, then, that his girls should be encouraged to equip themselves thoroughly in some direction or other, instead of waiting disconsolately to be chosen in marriage, keeping up their courage as the years slip away, with a few cold drops of Associated Charity. Of course the majority of us will continue to be wives and mothers – there is nothing equal to that when it is a success – but will not marriage become still more desirable if the choicest girls are educated to be the intellectual companions of men, and taught to familiarize themselves with the real conditions of life, instead of being limited to the rose garden of a harem, over the hedges of which they are expected only to peep at the busy world – the world of men, the world of action and toil and struggle and sin – the world into which their sons are graduated when cut loose from the maternal apron-strings? We intend to learn what to teach our sons, so that we may no longer be silenced with the plea that women do not know, and be put off with a secretive conjugal smile. And as for the girls who do not marry, the world is open to them – the world of art and song and charity and healing and brave endeavor in a hundred fields. Become just like men? Never. If there is one thing which the educated woman of the present is seeking to preserve and foster, it is the subtle delicacy of nature, it is the engaging charm of womanhood which distinguishes us from men. Who are the pupils at the colleges for women to-day? The dowdy, sexless, unattractive, masculine-minded beings who have served to typify for nine men out of ten the crowning joke of the age – the emancipation of women? No; but lovely, graceful, sympathetic, earnest, pure-minded girls in the flower of attractive maidenhood. And that is why the well-to-do American mother is asking herself whether she would be doing the best thing for her daughter if she were to encourage her to become merely a New-World, Old-World young lady of the ancient order of things. For centuries the women of civilization have worshipped chastity, suffering resignation and elegance as the ideals of femininity; now we mean to be intelligent besides, or at least as nearly so as possible.”

“In truth a philippic, Barbara,” I said. “It would seem as though Mrs. Grundy would not be able to hold out much longer. Will you tell me, by the way, what you women intend to do after you are fully emancipated?”

“One thing at a time,” she answered. “We have been talking of education, and I have simply been suggesting that no conscientious mother can afford to ignore or pass by with scorn the claims of higher education for girls – experimental and faulty as many of the present methods to attain it doubtless are. As to what women are going to do when our preliminary perplexities are solved and our sails are set before a favorable wind, I have my ideas on that score also, and some day I will discuss them with you. But just now I should like you to answer me a question. What are the best occupations for sons to follow when they have left school or college?”

Pertinent and interesting as was this inquiry of Barbara’s, I felt the necessity of drawing a long breath before I answered it.

Occupation

I

The American young man, in the selection of a vocation, is practically cut off from two callings which are dear to his contemporaries in other civilized countries – the Army and the Navy. The possibility of war, with all its horrors and its opportunities for personal renown, is always looming up before the English, French, German, or Russian youth, who is well content to live a life of gilded martial inactivity in the hope of sooner or later winning the cross for conspicuous service, if he escapes a soldier’s grave. We have endured one war, and we profoundly hope never to undergo another. Those of us who are ethically opposed to the slaughter of thousands of human beings in a single day by cannon, feel that we have geography on our side. Even the bloodthirsty are forced to acknowledge that the prospects here for a genuine contest of any kind are not favorable. Consequently, the ardor of the son and heir, who would like to be a great soldier or a sea captain, is very apt to be cooled by the representation that his days would be spent in watching Indians or cattle thieves on the Western plains, or in cruising uneventfully in the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico. At all events our standing, or, more accurately speaking, sitting Army, and our Navy are so small, that the demand for generals and captains is very limited. Therefore, though we commend to our sons the prowess of Cæsar, Napoleon, Nelson, Von Moltke, and Grant, we are able to demonstrate to them, even without recourse to modern ethical arguments, that the opportunities for distinction on this side of the water are likely to be very meagre.

Also, we Americans, unlike English parents, hesitate to hold out as offerings to the Church a younger son in every large family. We have no national Church; moreover, the calling of a clergyman in this country lacks the social picturesqueness which goes far, or did go far, to reconcile the British younger son to accept the living which fell to his lot through family influence. Then again, would the American mother, like the conventional mother of the older civilizations, as represented in biography and fiction, if asked which of all vocations she would prefer to have her son adopt, reply promptly and fervidly, “the ministry?”

I put this question to my wife by way of obtaining an answer. She reflected a moment, then she said, “If one of my boys really felt called to be a clergyman, I should be a very happy woman; but I wouldn’t on any account have one of them enter the ministry unless he did.” This reply seems to me to express not merely the attitude of the American mother, but also the point of view from which the American young man of to-day is apt to look at the question. He no longer regards the ministry as a profession which he is free to prefer, merely because he needs to earn his daily bread; and he understands, when he becomes a clergyman, that lukewarm or merely conventional service will be utterly worthless in a community which is thirsty for inspirational suggestion, but which is soul-sick of cant and the perfervid reiteration of outworn delusions. The consciousness that he has no closer insight into the mysteries of the universe than his fellow-men, and the fear that he may be able to solace their doubts only by skilful concealment of his own, is tending, here and all over the civilized world, to deter many a young man from embracing that profession, which once seemed to offer a safe and legitimate niche for any pious youth who was uncertain what he wished to do for a living. Happy he who feels so closely in touch with the infinite that he is certain of his mission to his brother-man! But is any one more out of place than the priest who seems to know no more than we do of what we desire to know most? We demand that a poet should be heaven-born; why should we not require equivalent evidence of fitness from our spiritual advisers?