Chapter VIII: Part VI (2)

the Individual at length, with a sigh, placed them, keel upwards, on the floor in front of her, and, resting her head in her hands, gazed at them with such a fixedness and rigidity that she might have been taken for an old Ouate, absorbed in the exercise of his legitimate calling. (The old Druidical order were divided into three classes, Druids, Bards, and Ouates. The Druids philosophized and theologized, the Bards harped and sang, and the Ouates divined and CONTEMPLATED THE NATURE OF THINGS. I thought I would tell you, as you might not know. I execrate the self-conceited way some people have of tossing off their erudite items and allusions in a careless, familiar style, as if it is such A B C to them that they don't for a moment think of any one's not understanding it. Worse still is it to have some jagged brickbat, dug up from a heap of Patagonian rubbish, flung at you with a "we have all heard of"; or to be turned off, just as your ears are wide open to listen to an old pre-Thautic myth, with "the story of ---- is too familiar to need repetition." You have not the most distant conception what the story is, yet you don't like to say so, because it seems to be intimated that every intelligent person ought to know it; so you hold your peace. My dear, don't do it. Don't hold your peace. Don't let yourself be put down in that way. Don't be deceived. Half the time these people never knew it themselves, I dare say, more than a week before-hand, and have been puzzling their brains ever since for a chance to get it in.)

The Individual came at length to the conclusion that something must be done. Masterly inactivity must give way to the exigencies of the case. She had recourse to the "oldest inhabitant." A series of questions disclosed the important fact that--

"Well, there was a store at Sonose, about fourteen miles away; and Mr. Williams, he kept candy, and slate-pencils, and sich--"

"Do you suppose be keeps good thick boots?"

"O la! no."

"Do you suppose he keeps any kind of boots? You see I have worn mine out, and what am I to do?"

"Well, now, I thinks likely you can get 'em mended."

Individual brightens up. "O, do you?"

"Yes, there's Mr. Jacobs, lives right out there, under the hill; he makes men's boots. I do' know as he could do yours, but you might try. Thinks likely he ain't got the tools, nor the stuff to do that sort of work with."

I didn't care for the tools or the stuff. All I wanted was the shoemaker; if I could find HIM, little doubt that all the rest would follow naturally from the premises. So I arranged my "sandal shoon and scallop-shell," and departed on my pilgrimage. The way had been carefully pointed out to me, but I never can remember such things more than one turn, or street, ahead; so I made a point of inquiring of every one I met, where Mr. Jacobs lived. Every one, by the way, consisted of a little girl with a basket of potatoes, and a man carrying the United States mail on his arm.

At length the Individual found the house as directed, and found also that it was no house, but a barn, and the shoemaker's shop was upstairs, and the stairs were on the outside. If they were firm and strong, their looks were against them. Neither step nor balustrade invited confidence. The Individual stood on the lower one in a meditative mood for a while, and then gave a jump by way of test, thinking it best to go through the one nearest the ground, if she must go through any. An ominous creaking and swaying and cracking followed, but no actual rupture. The second step was tested with the same result; then the third and fourth; and, reflecting that appearances are deceitful, and recollecting the rocking-stone at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the tower of Pisa, &c., the Individual shook off her fears, and ascended rapidly. Being somewhat unfamiliar with the etiquette of shoemaker's shop, she hesitated whether to knock or plunge at once into the middle of things, but decided to err on the safe side, and gave a very moderate and conservative rap. Silence. A louder knock. The door rattled. Louder still. The whole building shook. Knuckles filed a caveat. Applied the heel of the dilapidated boot in her hand. Suffocated with a cloud of dust thence ensuing. Contemplated the nature of things for a while. Heard a voice. A man called from a neighboring turnip-field, "Arter Jake?"

"Yes, sir,--if he is a shoemaker" (to make sure of identity).

"Yes, well, he ain't to home."

"Oh."

"He's gone to Sonose."

"When will he be back, if you please?"

"Wall, I can't say for sartin. Next week or week after,--leastwise 'fore the fair. Got a job?"

"Yes, sir, but I can't very well wait so long. Do you know of any shoemakers anywhere about?"

"Wall, ma'am, I do' know as I do. Folks is mostly farmers here. There's Fuller, just moved, though. Come up from Exton yesterday. P'r'aps he'll give you a lift. That's his house right down there. 'Taint more 'n half a mile."

"Yes, sir, I see it. Thank you."

Individual descends from her precarious elevation, and marches to the attack of Fuller. A fresh-faced, good-natured-looking man is just coming out at the gate. His pleasant countenance captivates her at once, and, with a silent but intense hope that he may be the shoemaker, she asks if "Mr. Fuller lives here."

"Well," replies the man, in an easy, drawling tone, that harmonizes admirably with his face, "when a fellow is moving, he can't be said to live anywhere. I guess he'll live here, though, as soon as the stove gets up."

I reciprocated his frankness with an engaging smile, and asked, in a confidential tone, "Do you suppose he would mend a shoe for me?"

I thought I would begin with a shoe, and, if I found him acquiescent, I would mount gradually to a boot, then to a pair. But my little subterfuge was water spilled on the ground.

"I don't know whether he would or not, but I know one thing."

"Well?"

"Couldn't if he wanted to. Ain't got his tools here. They ain't come up yet."

"Oh! is that all?"

"ALL?"

"Yes; because, if you know how, I shouldn't think it would make so much difference about the tools. Couldn't you borrow a gimlet or something from the neighbors?"

"A GIMLET?"

"Yes, or whatever you want, to make shoes with."

"An awl, you mean."

"Well, yes, an awl. Couldn't you borrow an awl?"

"Nary awl."

"When will your tools come?"

"Well, I don't know; you see I don't hurry 'em up, because it's haying, and I and my men, we'd just as lieves work out of doors a part of the time as not. We don't mend shoes much. We make 'em mostly."

"Oh that's better still; would you make me a pair?"

"Well, we don't do that kind of work. We work for the dealers. We make the shoes that they send down South for the niggers. We ain't got the lasts that would do for you."

Individual goes home, as Chaucer says, "in dumps," and determines to take the boots under her own supervision. First, she inks over all the gray parts. Then she takes some sealing-wax, and sticks down all the bits of cuticle torn up. Then, in lieu of anything better, she takes some white flannel-silk,--not embroidery-silk, you understand, but flannel-silk, harder twisted and stronger, such as is to be found, so far as I have tried, only in Boston,--and therewith endeavors to down the curled sole to its appropriate sphere, or rather plane. It is not the easiest or the most agreeable work in the world. How people manage to MAKE shoes I cannot divine, for of all awkward things to get hold of, and to handle and manage after you have hold, I think a shoe is the worst. The place where you put a needle in does not seem to hold the most distant relation to the place where it comes out. You set it where you wish it to go, and then proceed vi et armis et thimble, but it resists your armed intervention. Then you rest the head of the needle against the windowsill, and push. You feel something move. Everything is going on and in delightfully. Mind asserts its control over matter. You pause to examine. In? Yes, head deep in the pine-wood, but the point not an inch further in the shoe. You pull out. The shoe comes off the needle, but the needle does not come out of the windowsill. You pull the silk, and break it, and then work the needle out as well as you can, and then begin again,--destroying three needles, getting your fingers "exquisitely pricked," and keeping your temper--if you can.

By some such process did the Individual, a passage of whose biography I am now giving you, endeavor to repair the ravages of time and toil. In so far as she succeeded in making the crooked places straight and the rough places plain, her efforts may be said to have been crowned with success. It is but fair to add, however, that the result did not inspire her with so much confidence but that she determined to lay by the boots for a while, reserving them for such times as they should be most needed, with a vague hope also that rest might exercise some wonderful recuperative power.

About five days after this, they were again brought out, to do duty on a long walk. The event was most mournful. The flannel-silk gave at the first fire. The soles rolled themselves again in a most uncomfortable manner. At every step, the foot had to be put forward, placed on the ground, and then drawn back. The walk was an agony. It so happened that on our return, without any intention, we came out of woods in the immediate vicinity of the shoemaker's aforesaid, and the Individual was quite sure she heard the sound of his hammer. She remembered that, when she was young and at school, she was familiar with a certain "wardrobe" which was generally so bulging-full of clothes that the doors could not, by any fair, straightforward means, be shut; but if you sprang upon them suddenly, taking them unawares, as it were, and when they were off their guard, you could sometimes effect a closure. She determined to try this plan on the shoemaker. So she bade the rest of the party go on, while she turned off in the direction of the hammering. She went straight into the shop, without knocking, the door being ajar. There he was at it, sure enough.

"Your tools have come!" she exclaimed, with ill-concealed exultation. "Now, will you mend my shoes?"

"Well, I don't know as I can, hardly. I'm pretty much in a hurry. What with moving and haying, I've got a little behindhand."

"Oh! but you must mend them, because I am going up on the mountain tomorrow, and I have no others to wear, and I am afraid of the snakes; so you see, you must."

"Got 'em here?"

Individual furtively works off the best one, and picks it up,--while his eyes are bent on his work,--as if she had only dropped it, and hands it to him. He takes it, turns it over, pulls it, knocks it, with an evident intention of understanding the subject thoroughly.

"Rather a haggard-looking boot," he remarks, after his close survey.

"Yes, but--"

"Other a'n't so bad, I suppose?"

"Well--I--don't know--that is--"

"Both bad enough."

"Yes, indeed," with an uneasy laugh.

"Let's see the other one." The other one is produced, and examined in silence.

"Are YOU going to wear them boots up the mountain?" with a tone that said very plainly, "Of course you're not."

"Why, yes, I WAS going to wear them. Don't you think they will do?"

"I wouldn't trust MY feet in 'em."

"O--h! ARE there snakes? Do you think snakes could bite through them?"

A shake of the head, and a little, low, plaintive whistle, is the only reply, but they speak in thunder of boa-constrictors, anacondas, and cobra de capellos.

"They were very good and stout when I had them. I called them very stout shoes."

"O yes, they're made of good material, but you see they 're worn out. I don't believe I could mend them worth while. The stitches would tear out."

"But couldn't you, somehow, glue on a pair of soles? any way to make them stick. I'll pay you anything, if you'll only make them last till I go home, or even till I get down the mountain. Now, I am sure you can do it, if you will only think so. Don't you know Kossuth says, 'Nothing is difficult to him who wills'?"

He was evidently moved by the earnestness of the appeal. "I suppose they'd be worth more to you now than half a dozen pair when you get home."

"Worth! why, they would be of inestimable value. Think of the snakes! I don't care how you do them, nor how you make them look. If you will only glue on, or sew on, or nail on, or rivet on, something that is thick and will stick, I will pay you, and be grateful to you through the remainder of my natural life."

"Well,--you leave 'em, and come over again this afternoon, and if I can do anything, I'll do it by that time."

"Oh! I am so much obliged to you"; and I went away in high spirits, just putting my head back through the door to say, "Now you persevere, and I am sure you will succeed."

I was as happy as a queen. To be sure, I had to walk home without any shoes; but the grass was as soft as velvet, and the dust as clean as sand, and it did not hurt me in the least. To be sure, he had not promised to mend them; but I had faith in him, and how did it turn out? Verily, I should not have known the boots, if I seen only the soles. They were clipped, and shaved, and underpinned, and smoothed, and looked as if they had taken out "a new lease of life."

"I don't suppose they will last you as long as I have been doing them," he remarked, with unprofessional frankness. I did not believe him, and indeed his prophecy was not true, for they are in existence yet, and I never disposed of "a quarter" in my life with more satisfaction than I dropped it that day into his benevolent hand.

A thousand years hence, when New Hampshire shall have become as populous as Babylon, this sketch may become the foundation of some "Tale of Beowulf" or other. At any rate here it is ready.

Of all the White Mountains, the one of which you hear least said is Agamenticus, and perhaps justly, for it is not one of the White Mountains, but an isolated peak by itself. My information concerning it is founded partly on observation, partly on testimony, and partly on memory, supported where she is weak by conjecture. These sources, however, mingle their waters together somewhat too intricately for accurate analysis, and I shall, therefore, waive distinctions, and plant myself on the broad basis of assertion, warning the future historian and antiquary not take this paper as conclusive without extraneous props.

Agamenticus is a huge rock rising abruptly from a level country along New Hampshire's half-yard of sea-shore. As it is the only large rock on the eastern coast of the United States, it is in invaluable beacon to mariners. The first city ever built on American continent was laid out at its base, the remains are now visible from its summit; but, as funds failed, and the founders were killed by the Indians, it was never completed, in fact was never begun, only laid out. To the east I was certain I saw Boar's Head and a steamer steaming towards it, till I was assured that in such case the steamer must have been steaming over the corn-fields, because, unlike Aenon near to Salim, there was no water there. So I suppose it must have been

"A painted ship upon a painted ocean."

The ascent to Agamenticus is sidling and uncertain so long as you hug your carriage; but, leaving that, and confiding yourself to Mother Earth, you gather both strength and equipoise from the touch, and, with a little boy to guide you through the woods and over the rocks, you will find the ascent quite pleasant and safe, if you are careful not to slip down, which you will be sure to do on your descent, whether you are careful or not. At the summit of the mountain is a fine and flourishing growth of muskmelon, sugar, and currant-wine. At least we found them there in profusion.

Agamenticus has its legend. Many years ago, the Indians, to avert the plague, drove twenty thousand cattle to the top of the mountain, and there sacrificed them to the Great Spirit. We could still discern traces of the sacrifice,--burnt stones, bits of green-black glass, and charred pine branches. Then we came home.

Perthes says, "That part of a journey which remains after the travelling is the journey." What remains of my journey, for me, for you? Will any live over again a pleasant past and look more cheerily into a lowering future for these wayward words of mine? Are there clouded lives that will find a little sunshine; pent-up souls that will catch a breath of blooms in my rambling record? Are there lips that will relax their tightness; eyes that will lose for a moment the shadow of remembered pain? Then, indeed, the best part of my journey is yet to come.

A CALL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN.

In the newspapers and magazines you shall see many poems and papers--written by women who meekly term themselves weak, and modestly profess to represent only the weak among their sex--discussing the duties which the weak owe to their country in days like these. The invariable conclusion is, that, though they cannot fight, because they are not men,--or go down to nurse the sick and wounded, because they have children to take care of,--or write effectively, because they do not know how,--or do any great and heroic thing, because they have not the ability,--they can pray; and they generally do close with a melodious and beautiful prayer. Now praying is a good thing. It is, in fact, the very best thing in the world to do, and there is no danger of our having too much of it; but if women, weak or strong, consider that praying is all they can or ought to do for their country, and so settle down contented with that, they make as great a mistake as if they did not pray at all. True, women cannot fight, and there is no call for any great number of female nurses; notwithstanding this, the issue of this war depends quite as much upon American women as upon American men,--and depends, too, not upon the few who write, but upon the many who do not. The women of the Revolution were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future of this nation.

Shall I say that the women of today have not come up to the level of today,--that they do not stand abreast with its issues,--they do not rise to the height of its great argument? I do not forget what you have done. I have beheld, O Dorcases, with admiration and gratitude, the coats and garments, the lint and bandages, which you have made. If you could have finished the war with your needle, it would have been finished long ago; but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the Lord. Excellent as far as it goes, it stops fearfully of the goal. This ought ye to do, but there other things which you ought not to leave me. The war cannot be finished by sheets and pillow-cases. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that it cannot be finished till we have flung them all away. When I read of the rebels fighting bare-headed, bare-footed, haggard, and shorn, in rags and filth,--fighting bravely, heroically, successfully,--I am ready to make a burnt-offering of our stacks of clothing. I feel and fear that we must come down, as they have to a recklessness of all incidentals, down to the rough and rugged fastnesses of life, down to very gates of death itself, before we shall be ready and worthy to win victories. Yet it is not for the hardest fights the earth has ever known have been made by the delicate-handed and purple-robed. So, in the ultimate analysis, it is neither gold-lace nor rags that overpower obstacles, but the fiery soul that consumes both in the intensity of its furnace-heat, bending impossibilities to the ends of its passionate purpose.

This soul of fire is what I wish to see kindled in our women, burning white and strong and steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, treachery in church or state or press or parlor, scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,--extinguished by no tempest of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the abomination of our desolation a highway for the Prince of Peace.

O my countrywomen, I long to see you stand under the time and bear it up in your strong hearts, and not need to be borne up through it. I wish you to stimulate, and not crave stimulants from others. I wish you to be the consolers, the encouragers, the sustainers, and not tremble in perpetual need of consolation and encouragement. When men's brains are knotted and their brows corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing of financial crises, military disasters, and any and every form of national calamity consequent upon the war, come you out to meet them, serene and smiling and unafraid. And let your smile be no formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray from the sunshine in your heart. Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your goods. Not only look poverty in the face with high disdain, but embrace it with gladness and welcome. The loss is but for a moment; the gain is for all time. Go further than this. Consecrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of life, but life itself. Father, husband, child,--I do not say, Give them up to toil, exposure, suffering, death, without a murmur;--that implies reluctance. I rather say, Urge them to the offering; fill them with sacred fury; fire them with irresistible desire; strengthen them to heroic will. Look not on details, the present, the trivial, the aspects of our conflict, but fix your ardent gaze on its eternal side. Be not resigned, but rejoicing. Be spontaneous and exultant. Be large and lofty. Count it all joy that you are reckoned worthy to suffer in a grand and righteous cause. Give thanks evermore that you were born in this time; and BECAUSE it is dark, be you the light of world.

And follow the soldier to the battle-field with spirit. The great army of letters that marches southward with every morning sun is a powerful engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe. Write as tenderly as you will. In camp, the roughest man idealizes his far-off home, and every word of love uplifts him to a lover. But let your tenderness unfold its sunny side, and keep the shadows for His pity who knows the end from the beginning, and whom no foreboding can dishearten. Glory in your tribulation. Show your soldier that his unflinching courage, his undying fortitude, are your crown of rejoicing. Incite him to enthusiasm by your inspiration. Make a mock of your discomforts. Be unwearying in details of the little interests of home. Fill your letters with kittens and canaries, with baby's shoes, and Johnny's sled, and the old cloak which you have turned into a handsome gown. Keep him posted in all the village-gossip, the lectures, the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing schools. Bring out the good points of the world in strong relief. Tell every piquant and pleasant and funny story you call think of. Show him that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace would pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more appalling warfare. Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under yours. Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero-pitch. Hush your plaintive Miserere, accept the nation's pain for penance, and commission every Northern breeze to bear a Te Deum laudamus.

It fell to me once to read the record of a young life laid early on our country's altar. I saw noble words traced by the still hand,--words of duty and honor and love and trust that thrilled my heart and brought back once more the virtue of the Golden Age,--nay, rather revealed the virgin gold of this; but through all his letters and his life shone, half concealed, yet wholly revealed, a silver thread of light, woven in by a woman's hand. Rest and courage and hope, patience in the weariness of disease, strength that nerved his arm for shock and onset, and for the last grand that laid his young head low,--all flowed in upon him through the tones of one brave, sweet voice far off. A gentle, fragile, soft-eyed woman, what could such a delicate flower do against the "thunder-storm of battle"? What DID she do? Poured her own great heart and own high spirit into the patriot's heart and soul, and so did all. Now as she goes to fro and in her daily life, soft-eyed still and serene, she seems to me no longer a beautiful girl, but a saint wrapped around already with the radiance of immortality.

Under God, the only question, as to whether war shall be conducted to a shameful or an honorable close, is not of men or money or material resource. In these our superiority is unquestioned. As Wellington phrased it, there is hard pounding; but we shall pound the longest, if only our hearts not fail us. Women need not beat their pewter spoon into bullets, for there are plenty of bullets without them. It is not whether our soldiers shall fight a good fight; they have played the man on a hundred battle-fields. It is not whether officers are or are not competent; generals have blundered nation into victory since the world began. It is whether this people shall have virtue to endure to the end,--to endure, not starving, not cold, but the pangs of hope deferred, of disappointment and uncertainty, of commerce deranged and outward prosperity checked. Will our vigilance to detect treachery and our perseverance to punish it hold out? If we stand firm, we shall be saved, though so as by fire. If we do not, we shall fall, and shall richly deserve to fall; and may God sweep us off from the face of the earth, and plant in our stead a nation with the hearts of men!

O women, here you may stand powerful, invincible, I had almost said omnipotent. Rise now to the heights of a sublime courage,--for the hour has need of you. When the first ball smote the rocky sides of Sumter, the rebound thrilled from shore to shore, and waked the slumbering hero in every human soul. Then every eye flamed, every lip was touched with a live coal from the sacred altar, every form dilated to the stature of the ideal time. Then we felt in our veins the pulse of immortal youth. Then all the chivalry of the ancient days, all the heroism, all the self-sacrifice that shaped itself into noble living, came back to us, poured over us, swept away the dross of selfishness and deception and petty scheming, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave stately as a goddess. Patriotism, that had been to us but a dingy and meaningless antiquity, took on a new form, a new mien, a countenance divinely fair and forever young, and received once more the homage of our hearts. Was that a childish outburst of excitement, or the glow of an aroused principle? Was it a puerile anger, or a manly indignation? Did we spring up startled pygmies, or girded giants? If the former, let us veil our faces, and march swiftly (and silently) to merciful forgetfulness. If the latter, shall we not lay aside every weight, and this besetting sin of despondency, and run with patience the race set before us?

A true philosophy and a true religion make the way possible to us. The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will; and he never yet willed that a nation strong in means, and battling for the right, should be given over to a nation weak and battling for the wrong. Nations have their future--reward and penalty--in this world; and it is as certain as God lives, that Providence AND the heaviest battalions will prevail. We have had reverses, but no misfortune hath happened unto us but such as is common unto nations. Country has been sacrificed to partisanship. Early love has fallen away, and lukewarmness has taken its place. Unlimited enthusiasm has given place to limited stolidity. Disloyalty, overawed at first into quietude, has lifted its head among us, and waxes wroth and ravening. There are dissensions at home worse than the guns of our foes. Some that did run well have faltered; some signal-lights have gone shamefully out, and some are lurid with a baleful glare. But unto this end were we born, and for this cause came we into the world. When shall greatness of soul stand forth, if not in evil times? When the skies are fair and the seas smooth, all ships sail festively. But the clouds lower, the winds shriek, the waves boil, and immediately each craft shows its quality. The deep is strown with broken masts, parted keels, floating wrecks; but here and there a ship rides the raging sea, and flings defiance to the wind. She overlives the sea because she is sea-worthy. Not our eighty years of peace alone, but our two years of war, are the touchstone of our character. We have rolled our Democracy as a sweet morsel under our tongue; we have gloried in the prosperity which it brought to the individual; but if the comforts of men minister to the degradation of man, if Democracy levels down and does not level up, if our era of peace and plenty leaves us so feeble and frivolous, so childish, so impatient, so deaf to all that calls to us from the past, and entreats us in the future, that we faint and fail under the stress of our one short effort, then indeed is our Democracy our shame and curse. Let us show now what manner of people we are. Let us be clear-sighted and far-sighted to see how great is the issue that hangs upon the occasion. It is not a mere military reputation that is at stake, not the decay of a generation's commerce, not the determination of this or that party to power. It is the question of the world that we have been set to answer. In the great conflict of ages, the long strife between right and wrong, between progress and sluggardy, through the providence of God we are placed in the vanguard. Three hundred years ago a world was unfolded for the battle-ground. Choice spirits came hither to level and intrench. Swords clashed and blood flowed, and the great reconnaissance was successfully made. Since then both sides have been gathering strength, marshalling forces, planting batteries, and today we stand in the thick of the fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the cause go by default? When a great idea, that has been uplifted on the shoulders of generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs only stout hearts for its strong hands,--when the eyes of a great multitude are turned upon you, and the of dumb millions in the silent future rest you,--when the suffering and sorrowful, the lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws at hearts, who blindly see, but keenly feel, by their God-given instincts, that somehow you are working out their salvation, and the high-born, monarchs in the domain of mind, who, standing far off; see with prophetic eye the two courses that lie before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated Right, one to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes, their prayers, their tears,--will you, for a moment's bodily comfort and rest and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the upper and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour by your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself; and put the knife to your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to you neither ease nor rest. You will but have spread a bed of thorns. Failure will write disgrace upon the brow of this generation, and shame will outlast the age. It is not with us as with the South. She can surrender without dishonor. She is the weaker power, and her success will be against the nature of things. Her dishonor lay in her attempt, not in its relinquishment. But we shall fail, not because of mechanics and mathematics, but because our manhood and womanhood weighed in the balance are found wanting. There are few who will not share in the sin. There are none who will not share in the shame. Wives, would you hold back your husbands? Mothers, would you keep your sons? From what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, beckons him forward. Death itself wears for him a golden crown. Ever since the world swung free from God's hand, men have died,--obeying the blind fiat of Nature; but only once in a generation comes the sacrificial year, the year of jubilee, when men march lovingly to meet their fate and die for a nation's life. Holding back, we transmit to those that shall come after us a blackened waste. The little one that lies in his cradle will be accursed for our sakes. Every child will be base-born, springing from ignoble blood. We inherited a fair fame, and bays from a glorious battle; but for him is no background, no stand-point. His country will be a burden on his shoulders, a blush upon his cheek, a chain about his feet. There is no career for the future, but a weary effort, a long, a painful, a heavy-hearted struggle to lift the land out of its slough of degradation and set it once more upon a dry place.

Therefore let us have done at once and forever paltry considerations, with talk of despondency and darkness. Let compromise, submission, and every form of dishonorable peace be not so much as named among us. Tolerate no coward's voice or pen or eye. Wherever the serpent's head is raised, strike it down. Measure every man by the standard of manhood. Measure country's price by country's worth, and country's worth by country's integrity. Let a cold, clear breeze sweep down from the mountains of life, and drive out these miasmas that befog and beguile the unwary. Around every hearthstone let sunshine gleam. In every home let fatherland have its altar and its fortress. From every household let words of cheer and resolve and high-heartiness ring out, till the whole land is shining and resonant in the bloom of its awakening spring.

A SPASM OF SENSE

The conjunction of amiability and sense in the same individual renders that individual's position in a world like us very disagreeable. Amiability without sense, or sense without amiability, runs along smoothly enough. The former takes things as they are. It receives all glitter as pure gold, and does not see that it is custom alone which varnishes wrong with a slimy coat of respectability, and glorifies selfishness with the aureole of sacrifice. It sets down all collisions as foreordained, and never observes that they occur because people will not smooth off their angles, but sharpen them, and not only sharpen them, but run them into you. It forgets that the Lord made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions. It attributes all the collision and inaptitude which it finds to the nature of things, and never suspects that the Devil goes around in the night, thrusting the square men into the round places, and the round men into the square places. It never notices that the reason why the rope does not unwind easily is because one strand is a world too large, and another a world too small, and so it sticks where it ought to roll, and rolls where it ought to stick. It makes sweet, faint efforts, with tender fingers and palpitating heart to oil the wheels and polish up the machine, and does not for a moment imagine that the hitch is owing to original incompatibility of parts and purposes, that the whole machine must be pulled to pieces and made over, and that nothing will be done by standing patiently by, trying to sooth away the creaking and wheezing and groaning of the laboring, lumbering thing, by laying on a little drop of sweet oil with a pin-feather. As it does not see any of these things that are happening before its eyes, of course it is shallowly happy. And on the other hand, he who does see them, and is not amiable, is grimly and Grendally happy. He likes to say disagreeable things, and all this dismay and disaster scatter disagreeable things broadcast along his path, so that all he has to do is to pick them up and say them. Therefore this world is his paradise. He would not know what to do with himself in a world where matters were sorted and folded and laid away ready for you when you should want them. He likes to see human affairs mixing themselves up in irretrievable confusion. If he detects a symptom of straightening, it shall go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and snarl a thread or two. He is delighted to find dogged duty and eager desire butting each other. All the irresistible forces crashing against all the immovable bodies give him no shock, only a pleasant titillation. He is never so happy as when men are taking hold of things by the blade, and cutting their hands, and losing blood. He tells them of it, but not in order to relieve so much as to "aggravate" them; and he does aggravate them, and is satisfied. O, but he is an aggravating person!

It is you, you who combine the heart of a seraph with the head of a cherub, who know what trouble is. You see where the shoe pinches, but your whole soul shrinks from pointing out the tender place. You see why things go wrong, and how they might be set right; but you have a mortal dread of being thought meddlesome and impertinent, or cold and cruel, or restless and arrogant, if you attempt to demolish the wrong or rebel against the custom. When you draw your bow at an abuse, people think you are trying to bring down religion and propriety and humanity. But your conscience will not let you see the abuse raving to and fro over the earth without taking aim; so, either way, you are cut to the heart.

I love men. I adore women. I value their good opinion. There is much in them to applaud and imitate. There is much in them to elicit faith and reverence. If, only, one could see their good alone, or, seeing their vapid and vicious ones, could contemplate them with no touch of tenderness for the owner, life might indeed be lovely. As it is, while I am at one moment rapt in enthusiastic admiration of the strength and grace, the power and pathos, the hidden resources, the profound capabilities of my race, at another, I could wish, Nero-like, that all mankind were concentrated in one person, and all womankind in another, that I might take them, after the fashion of rural schoolmasters, and shake their heads together. Condemnation and reproach are not in my line; but there is so much in the world that merits condemnation and reproach, and receives indifference and even reward, there is so munch acquiescence in wrong doing and wrong thinking, so much letting things jolt along in the same rut wherein we and they were born, without inquiring whether, lifted into another groove, they might not run more easily, that, if one who does see the difficulty holds his peace, the very stones will cry out. However gladly one would lie on a bed of roses and glide silken-sailed down the stream of life, how exquisitely painful soever it may be to say what you fear and feel may give pain, it is only a Sybarite who sets ease above righteousness, only a coward who misses victory through dread of defeat.

There are many false ideas afloat regarding womanly duties. I do not design now to open anew any vulgar, worn-out, woman's-rightsy question. Every remark that could be made on that theme has been made--but one, and that I will take the liberty to make now in a single sentence, close the discussion. It is this: the man who gave rubber-boots to women did more to elevate woman than all the theorizers, male or female, that were born.

But without any suspicious lunges into that dubious region which lies outside of woman's universally acknowledged "sphere," (a blight rest upon the word!) there is within the pale, within boundary-line which the most conservative never dreamed of questioning, room for a great divergence of ideas. Now divergence of ideas does not necessarily imply fighting at short range. People may adopt a course of conduct which you not approve; yet you may feel it your duty to make no open animadversio. Circumstances may have suggested such a course to them, or forced it upon them; and perhaps, considering all things, it is the best they can do. But when, encouraged by your silence, they publish it to the world, not only as relatively, but intrinsically, the best and most desirable,--when, not content with swallowing it themselves as medicine, they insist on ramming it down your throat as food,--it is time to buckle on your armor, and have at them.

A little book, published by the Tract Society, "The Mother and her Work," has been doing just this thing. It is a modest little book. It makes no pretensions to literary or other superiority. It has much excellent counsel, pious reflection, and comfortable suggestion. Being a little book, it costs but little, and it will console, refresh, and instruct weary, conscientious mothers, and so have a large circulation, a wide influence, and do an immense amount of mischief. For the Evil One in his senses never sends out poison labelled "POISON." He mixes it in with great quantities of innocent and nutritive flour and sugar. He shapes it in cunning shapes of pigs and lambs and hearts and birds and braids. He tints it with gay lines of green and pink and rose, and puts it in the confectioner's glass windows, where you buy--what? Poison? No, indeed! Candy, at prices to suit the purchasers. So this good and pious little book has such a preponderance of goodness and piety that the poison in it will not be detected, except by chemical analysis. It will go down sweetly, like grapes of Beulah. Nobody will suspect he is poisoned; but just so far as it reaches and touches, the social dyspepsia will be aggravated.

I submit a few atoms of the poison revealed by careful examination.

"The mother's is a MOST HONORABLE calling. 'What a pity that one so gifted should be so tied down!' remarks a superficial observer, as she looks upon the mother of a young and increasing family. The pale, thin face and feeble step, bespeaking the multiplied and wearying cares of domestic life, elicit an earnest sympathy from the many, thoughtlessly flitting across her pathway, and the remark passes from mouth to mouth, 'How I pity her! What a shame it is! She is completely worn down with so many children.' It may be, however, that this young mother is one who needs and asks no pity," etc.

"But the TRUE MOTHER yields herself uncomplainingly, yea, cheerfully, to the wholesome privation, solitude, and self-denial allotted her...... Was she fond of travelling, of visiting the wonderful in Nature and in Art, of mingling in new and often-varying scenes? Now she has found 'an abiding city,' and no allurements are strong enough to tempt her thence. Had society charms for her, and in the social circle and the festive throng were her chief delights? Now she stays at home, and the gorgeous saloon and brilliant assemblage give place to the nursery and the baby. Was she devoted to literary pursuits? Now the library is seldom visited, the cherished studies are neglected, the rattle and the doll are substituted for the pen. Her piano is silent, while she chants softly and sweetly the soothing lullaby. Her dress can last another season now, and the hat--oh, she does not care, if it is not in the latest mode, for she has a baby to look after, and has no time for herself. Even the ride and the walk are given up, perhaps too often, with the excuse, 'Baby-tending is exercise enough for me.' Her whole life is reversed."

The assumption is, that all this is just as it should be. The thoughtless person may fancy that it is a pity; but it is not a pity. This is a model mother and a model state of things. It is not simply to be submitted to, not simply to be patiently borne; it is to be aspired to as the noblest and holiest state.

That is the strychnine. You may counsel people to take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and comfort, encourage, and strengthen them by so doing; but when you tell them that to be robbed and plundered is of itself a priceless blessing, the highest stage of human development, you do them harm; because, in general, falsehood is always harmful, and because, in particular, so far as you influence them at all, you prevent them from taking measures to stop the wrong-doing. You ought to counsel them to bear with Christian resignation what they cannot help; but you ought with equal fervor to counsel them to look around and see if there are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means to help them. What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne, should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery. Christian character is never formed by acquiescence in, or apotheosis of wrong.

The principle that underlies these extracts, and makes them ministrative of evil, is the principle that a woman can benefit her children by sacrificing herself. It teaches, that pale, thin faces and feeble steps are excellent things in young mothers,--provided they are gained by maternal duties. We infer that it is meet, right, and the bounden of such to give up society, reading, riding, music, and become indifferent to dress, cultivation, recreation, to everything, in short, except taking care of the children. It is all just as wrong as it can be. It is wrong morally; it is wrong socially; wrong in principle, wrong in practice. It is a blunder as well as a crime, for it works woe. It is a wrong means to accomplish an end; and it does not accomplish the end, after all, but demolishes it.

On the contrary, the duty and dignity of a mother require that she should never subordinate herself to her children. When she does so, she does it to their manifest injury and her own. Of course, if illness or accident demand unusual care, she does well to grow thin and pale in bestowing unusual care. But when a mother in the ordinary routine of life grows thin and pale, gives up riding, reading, and the amusements and occupations of life, there is a wrong somewhere, and her children shall reap the fruits of it. The father and mother are the head of the family, the most comely and the most honorable part. They cannot benefit their children by descending from their Heaven-appointed places, and becoming perpetual and exclusive feet and hands. This is the great fault of American mothers. They swamp themselves in a slough of self-sacrifice. They are smothered in their own sweetness. They dash into domesticity with an impetus and abandonment that annihilate themselves. They sink into their families like a light in a poisonous well, and are extinguished.

One hears much complaint of the direction and character of female education. It is dolefully affirmed that young ladies learn how to sing operas but not how to keep house,--that they can conjugate Greek verbs, but cannot make bread,--that they are good for pretty toying, but not for homely using. Doubtless there is foundation for this remark, or it would never have been made. But I have been in the East and the West, and the North and the South; I know that I have seen the best society, and I am sure I have seen very bad, if not the worst; and I never met a woman whose superior education, whose piano, whose pencil, whose German, or French, or any school-accomplishments, or even whose novels, clashed with her domestic duties. I have read of them in books; I did hear of one once; but I never met one,--not one. I have seen women, through love of gossip, through indolence, through sheer famine of mental PABLUM, leave undone things that ought to be done,--rush to the assembly, lecture-room, the sewing-circle, or vegetate in squalid, shabby, unwholesome homes; but I never saw education run to ruin. So it seems to me that we are needlessly alarmed in that direction.

I have seen scores and scores of women leave school, leave their piano and drawing and fancy-work, and all manner of pretty and pleasant things, and marry and bury themselves. You hear of them about six times in ten years, and there is a baby each time. They crawl out of the farther end of the ten years, sallow and wrinkled and lank,--teeth gone, hair gone, roses gone, plumpness gone,--freshness, and vivacity, and sparkle, everything that is dewy, and springing, and spontaneous, gone, gone, gone forever. This our Tract-Society book puts very prettily. "She wraps herself in the robes of infantile simplicity, and, burying her womanly nature in the tomb of childhood, patiently awaits the sure-coming resurrection in the form of a noble, high-minded, world-stirring son, or a virtuous, lovely daughter. The nursery is the mother's chrysalis. Let her abide for a little season, and she shall emerge triumphantly, with ethereal wings and a happy flight."