LITMIR.BIZ

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men is running benevolence into the ground. Not that women consciously do this, but they do it. They don't mean to pander to false masculine notions, but they do. They don't know that they are pandering to them, but they are. Men say silly things, partly because they don't know any better, and partly because they don't want any better. They are strong, and can generally make shift to bear their end of the pole without being crushed. So they are tolerably content. They are not very much to blame. People cannot be expected to start on a crusade against ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy conception. The edge does not cut them, and so they think it is not much of a sword after all. But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile and intimate acquaintance with realities. They ought to know what is fact and what is fol-de-rol. They ought to distinguish between the really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men do not, it is women's duty to help them. I think, if women would only not be quite so afraid of being thought unwomanly, they would be a great deal more womanly than they are. To be brave, and single-minded, and discriminating, and judicious, and clear-sighted, and self-reliant, and decisive, that is pure womanly. To be womanish is not to be womanly. To be flabby, and plastic, and weak, and acquiescent, and insipid, is not womanly. And I could wish sometimes that women would not be quite so patient. They often exhibit a degree of long-suffering entirely unwarrantable. There is no use in suffering, unless you cannot help it; and a good, stout, resolute protest would often be a great deal more wise, and Christian, and beneficial on all sides, than so much patient endurance. A little spirit and "spunk" would go a great way towards setting the world right. It is not necessary to be a termagant. The firmest will and the stoutest heart may be combined with the gentlest delicacy. Tameness is not the stuff that the finest women are made of. Nobody can be more kind, considerate, or sympathizing towards weakness or weariness than men, if they only know it exists; and it is a wrong to them to go on bolstering them up in their bungling opinions, when a few sensible ideas, wisely administered, would do so much to enlighten them, and reveal the path which needs only to be revealed to secure their unhesitating entrance upon it. It is absurd to suppose that unvarying acquiescence is necessary to secure and retain their esteem, and that a frank avowal of differing opinions, even if they were wrong, would work its forfeiture. A respect held on so frail a tenure were little worth. But it is not so. I believe that manhood and womanhood are too truly harmonious to need iron bands, too truly noble to require the props of falsehood. Truth, simple and sincere, without partiality and without hypocrisy, is the best food for both. If any are to be found on either side too weak to administer or digest it, the remedy is not to mix it with folly or falsehood, for they are poisons, but to strengthen the organisms with wholesome tonics,—not undiluted, perhaps, but certainly unadulterated.

      O Edmund Sparkler, you builded better than you knew, when you reared eulogiums upon the woman with no nonsense about her!

      MY SHIP

        Mist on the shore, and dark on the sand,

          The chilly gulls swept over my head,

        When a stately ship drew near the land,—

          Onward in silent grace she sped.

        Lonely, I threw but a coward's glance

          Upon the brave ship tall and free,

        Joyfully dancing her mystic dance,

          As if skies were blue and smooth the sea.

        I breathed the forgotten odors of Spain,

          Remembered my castles so far removed,

        For they brought the distant faith again

          That one who loves shall be beloved.

        Then the goodly galleon suddenly

          Dropped anchor close to the barren strand,

        And various cargoes, all for me,

          Laid on the bosom of my land.

        O friend! her cargoes were thy love,

          The stately ship thy presence fair;

        Her pointed sails, like wings above,

          Shall fill with praises and with prayer.

* * * * *

      BETROTHAL BY PROXY: A ROMANCE OF GENEALOGY

      CHAPTER I

      Ye who listen with impatience to the Reports of Historical Societies and have hitherto neglected to subscribe to an Antiquarian Journal, ye who imagine that there can be no intelligent and practical reply to the cui bono? shake of the head which declines to supply the funds for a genealogical investigation, attend to the history of my adventure in Foxden.

      There!—I like to begin with the Moral; for no sensible man will leave the point and purpose of his testimony to the languid curiosity of a spent reader. Dr. Johnson never did so; and who am I to question his literary infallibility? So if you do not take kindly to the solemn rumble of the Johnsonese mail-coach of a sentence in which we set out, receive the purport of it thus: It is of advantage to be on good terms with one's ancestors: Also; men absorbed in this practical present may be all the better for a little counter irritation with the driest twigs of the family-tree.

      And now, Why did I marry Miss Hurribattle? I am sure I had no intention of doing so. In the first place, when about eighteen years of age, I had firmly determined never to marry anybody. Then there were so many nice tea-ing families in the Atlantic city whose principal street was decorated by my modest counsellor's sign, that I really must excuse the rather unpleasant wonder of several friends at my out-of-the-way selection. That a somewhat experienced advocate, who had resisted for three years the fascinations of city belle-ship, should spend the legal vacation in a visit to an old gentleman he never saw before, and return affianced to a lady nobody had ever heard of,—I own there was something temptingly discussible in the circumstance; and knowing that fine relish for personal topics which distinguishes the American conversazione, how could I hope to escape? At first, it was a little awkward, when I went to a party, to see people who were talking together glance at me and murmur on with increased interest. Sometimes, when the wave of talk retreated a little, I would catch the prattle of some retiring rill to this effect: "But who are these Hurribattles? What an odd name! I wonder if that had anything to do with it."

      The querist, whoever he or she might be, had unconsciously struck upon the explanation of the whole matter. Yes, it was the name: it had a great deal to do with it. And if you will allow me to step back a little into the past, and thence begin over again in good storyteller fashion, I will endeavor to make you understand how it all came about.

      If I were obliged to designate in one word the profession and calling of Colonel Prowley of Foxden, I should say he was a Correspondent. Of course I do not mean a regular newspaper-correspondent, paid to concoct letters from Paris in the office of the "Foxden Regulator"; nor yet the amateur ditto, who is never tired of making family-tours to the White Mountains. But rather was he a gentleman, with an immense epistolary acquaintance all over the country, whose main business in life consisted in writing letters to all sorts of persons in a great variety of places. And this he did as his particular contribution towards the solution of this question: What in the world—or rather, what in the United States—is a man to do who accumulates sufficient property to relieve him from the necessities of active business? The answers offered to this inquiry of the Democratic Sphinx are, as we all know, various enough. Some men, of ready assurance and fluent speech, go into politics; some doze in libraries; some get up trotting-matches and yacht-races; while others dodge the difficulty altogether by going to disport themselves among the arts and letters of a foreign land. Colonel Prowley, with considerable originality, was moved to find employment in letter-writing, pursuing it with the same daily relish which many people find for gossip or small-talk. And this is the way in which I came to be favored with the good gentleman's communications. About three years ago a friend in England procured for me a book that I had long coveted,—Morton's "New English Canaan," printed at Amsterdam in the year 1637. This little volume, after the novelty of a fresh perusal was past, I happened to lend to a young gentleman of our

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