Robert Grant (continued 2)

Mrs. Sherman. Perhaps I ought. Er—would you like it now?

Visitor. If you please.

(Mrs. Sherman goes upstairs and returns presently with a choice of photographs.)

Visitor. They are both exquisite. I choose this one for my article, and, if you don't object, I should like so much to keep the other for myself as a memento of this delightful interview. May I, dear lady?

Mrs. Sherman. If you wish it.

Visitor. Thank you. And there is one thing more. Please write your name on both. An autograph adds so much to the value of a photograph whether it be for the public eye or the album of a friend.

Mrs. Sherman (resignedly). What shall I write?

Visitor. Oh, anything. "Yours faithfully," or "Very cordially yours," are very popular just at present. Thank you so much. And I do hope to meet you soon again. If I should happen to give a little tea at my rooms for Mr. Hartney Collier, the actor, later in the winter, I shall take the liberty of sending you a card. You would like him so much. And now, goodby, dear lady. Exit.

I have given this conversation without the various comments and interjections made either by myself or Josephine during the course of it. To have set them forth would merely have served to mar the sequence of the dialogue. After announcing the departure of the visitor, there was a little pause and my wife regarded me almost pathetically.

"Poor thing!" she murmured, brushing away the semblance of a tear with her pocket-handkerchief. "I am sorry for her. I can understand just how it happened."

"For which of the two are you sorry?" I asked.

"I meant for your woman. But I'm sorry for them both. It almost seems like fate. The whole thing is disgusting, but the times are to blame. The public encourages the reporter and the interview, and when a woman is told that she is progressive, and that it is her duty to make herself felt still more, I can imagine her being goaded into it if she is the sort of woman your woman is. I suppose you think I've ruined her. I didn't mean to; I merely gave her her head, and that's what she did. I will hand her over to you now, and you can do what you like with her."

"Excuse me, Josephine. She is your creation. I shouldn't think of interfering at this stage. You have taken her in hand and you must work out her destiny for her."

"You mean let her work out her own destiny. That's all I was doing. I see your point; and, if you won't take her back, I'm willing to give her her head to the end. I'm interested in her, and I don't despair of her at all, in spite of the fact that you have washed your hands of her. I shall have to think a little before I give her her head again."

Hereupon Josephine assumed an attitude of reflection. When she began to speak presently, her words and manner suggested the demeanor of a trance medium, or seer—as though she were peering into the abyss of the future.

"The interview appears, and her husband is less disturbed than she expects. He declares that the press portrait is an abomination and libellous, but he admits that the text is considerately done for a newspaper interview, and that, barring a few inaccuracies and a little exaggeration due to poetic license, she is made to appear less of a fool than she had a right to expect. This cheers and encourages her, and helps to allay the consciousness that the publication of her face and doings was purely a gratuitous advertisement. She firmly resolves that she will reform and live up to the description of her, and she resolves to devote herself to a more definite field of action. Accordingly, after deliberation, she rejects the case of the blind, and decides to take up the problem of how to make humble homes attractive by simple art. She buys a complete edition of Ruskin, and writes to a half-dozen prominent men and as many women for the use of their names as a nucleus for a club to be known as "The Home Beautifying Society." A meeting is held, and she is elected President and a member of the Executive Committee, facts of which the public is duly informed by her pathetic newspaper admirer. There, philosopher, you see she is doing something serious already."

"You are incorrigible, Josephine," I asserted.

"She means so well, poor dear," my wife continued with a genuinely worried air. "She fully intends to devote herself to that society and make it a success, and she does so for a few weeks. Indeed, she raises money enough to employ a superintendent, and through him to give an exhibition of a poor man's house as it ought to be furnished, and by way of speaking contrast a poor man's house as it is too apt to be furnished when he has money enough to furnish it gaudily. And then she helps get out the annual report, which mentions progress, and shows a balance of $1.42 in the treasury, which leads her to make the announcement that in order to insure the successful continuation of a movement calculated to serve as a potent æsthetic influence among the unenlightened, the liberal contributions made by friends must be renewed in the fall. And then, there are so many other things she has to do. Just listen, philosopher, to what the poor thing has become in less than a year since her life appeared in the newspaper, and tell me what she is to do.

§ 1. Second Vice-President of the American Cremation Society.

§ 2. Member of Text Committee of the Society to Improve the Morals of Persons Undergoing Sentence.

§ 3. Chairman of the Inspecting Committee of the Sterilized Milk Association.

§ 4. Vice-President of the American Mothers' Kindergarten Association.

§ 5. Life member of Society to Protect the Indians.

§ 6. Honorary member of the Press Women's Social and Beneficent Club.

§ 7. Member of the Forty Associates Sewing Bee (luncheon club).

§ 8. Third Vice-President of the Woman's Club, and active participator in the following courses of original work arranged by the members of the Club:

(a) Literary Course for 1897-98. Shakespeare's Women. The Dramatists of the Elizabethan Period.

(b) Scientific Course for 1897-98. Darwin's Theory of Earth-worms. The present Status of the Conflict between Science and Religion. Recent Polar Expeditions.

(c) Political Course for 1897-98. The Tariff Bills of American History. The Theory of Bimetallism.

§ 9. Member of The Molière Club. (Class to read French plays one evening a fortnight.)

§ 10. President of the Home Beautifying Society. (Her pet interest.)

§ 11. To say nothing of dinner-parties, receptions, ladies' luncheons, the opera, concerts, authors' readings, and other more or less engrossing social diversions and distractions.

"There!" continued Josephine. "And this does not include the thought and worry she spends upon Mrs. J. Webb Johnston."

"And who, pray, is Mrs. J. Webb Johnston?" I asked.

"Her fascinating, deadly, and demoralizing rival," answered Josephine, with a mournful wag of the head. "I am really very sorry, my dear philosopher, that this fresh complication has appeared, for I really think your Mrs. Sherman had all she could attend to already. But I must be faithful to the truth, even though our cherished hopes are thereby frustrated. Mustn't I, philosopher?"

"Certainly," said I; "but since you instead of me seem to be writing this letter, I suggest that it is time to give our correspondents time to breathe by beginning a fresh paragraph."

To A Modern Woman with Social Ambitions. III.

ust as you men—merchants, lawyers, or doctors—" pursued Josephine, reflectively, "deliberately or unconsciously contrast yourselves with your fellows in the same calling and become friendly rivals yet competitors for success and renown, it seems to be inevitable that the modern woman with social ambitions should keep her eye on other modern women with social ambitions and try to make sure that they do not get ahead of her. Your Mrs. Sherman, at the time the newspaper woman visited her, had reached the point where it would naturally occur to her to scan the horizon to observe how the other feminine celebrities of her environment were progressing, and her attention was especially called to the matter by the article on 'Progressive Women.' There she had the opportunity to behold them in their respective glories, and to be jealous of or indifferent to them, according to her judgment as to what each amounted to. It was an interesting list, and she experienced in perusing it, in conjunction with the portraits, some qualms of mild envy on account of several of the progressionists, but the only face and career which really discouraged her were the face and career of the woman I have referred to, Mrs. J. Webb Johnston, or, as every one calls her, Mrs. Webb Johnston.

"When she had finished she felt herself essentially on a par with the others; but in the case of Mrs. Webb Johnston she experienced a frog in her throat, and she looked into distance with a harassed air for more than five minutes. Mrs. Webb Johnston was not a stranger to her, but she was comparatively a novelty. That is, she had appeared on the social stage since Mrs. Sherman herself had become prominent, and had been making mushroom-like progress; such rapid progress in fact that it was only when she read the text of the article that she realized the extent of it. Then it came over her with a rush that she was in peril of being distanced on her own ground. For, to all intents and purposes, they were rivals. Their visiting lists were practically the same; they represented and appealed to the same constituency. In personal appearance she could not justly claim any superiority to Mrs. Webb, who was at least three years her junior in age, and who possessed a certain luscious, Juno-like beauty which was calculated, without question, to dazzle undiscriminating eyes, and which would not be regarded except by the very subtle as inferior in type to her own refined effectiveness. Yes, there was no doubt about Mrs. Webb's physical charms, or her great executive ability, or her enthusiastic devotion to the entire range of interests over which she herself was aiming to hold undisputed sway. Her own ambition was to be the guiding spirit, the modern, original social force above all other modern social forces in her constituency; yet here was another with an evidently similar ambition, and a war-cry or shibboleth which was disconcertingly fetching. I trust you have appreciated, philosopher, that our Mrs. Sherman (I am really sorry for her now, so I call her 'our'), from the very first, has been decorously conservative in her point of view, eschewing cheap and vagabond devices and adhering to elegant and appropriately conventional usages, such as seemed to befit a conscientious woman eager to lead public opinion. If dignified conservatism has been her ruling motive, you will readily appreciate that it would disturb her to find that a Bohemian looseness of social vision distinguished her rival, who had been working her way to the front by the specious cry of 'liberty,' and a seductively expressed intention of freeing the community from the manacles of old fogy conventions. I am sure you will agree, philosopher, that it is natural she should have been worried, or, at least, distracted from settling down to her 'Art in Humble Homes' by this discovery. And investigation and reflection only serve to agitate her still further; for, as the weeks go by, it becomes more and more obvious that the things indicated in the article are true—that Mrs. Webb Johnston is hand in glove with authors, actors, opera-singers, and other celebrities, and that the entertainments which she gives and the conversation heard there lack the dull, cut-and-dried, mechanical flavor observable at ordinary social gatherings. You see the situation, don't you, dear?"

(As Josephine's prophecy has assumed an essay-like or argumentative form, it does not seem to me advisable to interrupt its flow for my correspondents by reciting our side observations, unless they would be material or elucidating. Although her appropriation of my Mrs. Sherman has proved to be a kidnapping of a very serious character, and her conversation is bracketed as a "note," still her remarks seem to me so pertinent that I am prepared to adopt them as a part of my letter.)

"The most perplexing thing, philosopher, for a modern woman with social ambitions who wishes to emulate Madame Récamier or Madame de Staël, is that we have no standards in this country. Public opinion is the only test of conduct. The progressive woman is expected on the one hand to be original, and yet on the other to guide correctly, and public opinion reserves the right to follow blindly and to applaud egregiously and afterward to condemn the leaders whom it has flattered into folly. An ambitious woman (or a man, for the matter of that) needs to-day a clear head, a high sense of responsibility, and a sense of humor if she or he would avoid being led astray by the will-o'-the-wisp crew of surface society livers which pursues talent and originality only to be amused, and who, provided it is amused, forgives everything else, and eggs the performer on to believe that its shallow approval is the real verdict of society. This crew, brought into being by mere wealth, lacking purpose and sneering at it if it threatens to interfere with the progress of the merry-go-round, and backed by the army of society reporters and tittle-tattlers, is a growing factor in our large cities and serves to debauch public sentiment by more and more audacious or frivolous ventures concerning the orthodoxy of which it claims to be the only intelligent judge. We are accustomed to sneer at the formal and confining conventions of older civilizations on the ground that liberty of action is thereby checked and life made artificial, but are we not beginning to discover that there are advantages in a definite prescription as to what gentlemen and ladies can do as compared with a happy-go-lucky system of individual competition in social experiments which, however vulgar and demoralizing, are invariably puffed and glorified by the social gossip editors of a host of newspapers? The subsequent course of Mrs. Sherman's career is an illustration of the plight in which a modern woman with social ambitions is liable to find herself as a result of the democratic habit of constituting the half-educated and often morally obtuse society reporter, her successors and assigns, the sole arbiter of what is socially elegant and invigorating.

"Setting aside the matter of the ethics of her egotism, our lady in question is animated by a conscientious desire to be a refining and admirable influence. It is her ambition to lead, but to lead nobly and unimpeachably. Her entertainments and her posture in and toward society have been pursued on this principle, and she has believed the effect produced by her to be irreproachable intellectual elegance, redeemed from formalism or dullness by scintillating vivacity. The suggestion, therefore, that she is behind the times gives her a genuine shock. She has hitherto prided herself on her mental acumen and on her knowingness. She has considered that she knew life to the dregs, so to speak, for she had passed through a course of French, and translated Russian novels, and acquired thereby a knowledge of things evil, which she kept stored in her inner consciousness as a source of pride and an antidote against undue primness in matters sexual and social. She begins to ask herself if it can possibly be true that she is an old fogy, and lacks breadth of view, and that society in its demands for liberty of conduct and agreeable entertainment is prepared to discard, as outworn and futile, conventions and limitations which she has been disposed to consider essential to civilized and decent deportment. As the result of this reasoning she resolves to cap her rival's next venture with something of her own. So it happens that not long after Mrs. Webb Johnston has summoned a few select spirits to sup and witness Miss Almira Wing, a visiting coryphée, do a skirt dance, Mrs. Sherman issues notes of invitation to what is mysteriously specified as 'An Eclipse Smoke Talk.' This proves to be a small gathering of choice souls to observe a total eclipse of the moon due at two o'clock in the morning from her own roof, and to listen to remarks by a leading astronomer secured for the occasion. This entertainment is a success, and serves to give her new heart. It was bold, still decent. She has preserved her self-respect, yet shown herself alive to the necessity of being original. She is prompt to reinforce it by an evening with a Russian Nihilist, a young woman reputed to have been prominent in plots to assassinate the Czar, and who makes a specialty of narrating her experiences after a Welsh rabbit, cigarette in mouth. Naturally, these enterprises spur Mrs. Webb Johnston to fresh efforts of the imagination. Her guests are beguiled at her next evening by a paper on 'Life among the Mormons,' delivered by one of the early female disciples of that community. No men are invited on this occasion. A fortnight later a very small and secretly invited company are bidden to behold an exhibition of the vagaries of a hypnotic patient.

"This enlargement of her horizon, though stimulating, puts Mrs. Sherman on tenter-hooks. It becomes necessary for her to keep accurately posted as to the comings of celebrities in order to get the first 'go' at them, so to speak, before they fall into the clutches of her rival. As a consequence, aspirants in every line of art or accomplishment who desire to win the patronage of the public ask for the use of her name and receive it. She had been nervous and over-occupied before, but now her days are passed in a ferment. She has recourse to tonics and to sleeping draughts. She feels elated at the success of her enfranchisement, but a feverish interest as to what Mrs. Webb Johnston will do next keeps her uneasy. Nor has she forgotten her serious intentions. She tries to assure herself that her progressiveness is for the benefit of society, and that she is leading it in noble directions. She still retains her scruples. She draws the line on women celebrities of unchaste life. In this she refuses to be led astray by her rival's practices. Mrs. Webb Johnston's openly avowed theory had been that where art was concerned, she chose to ask no questions. Accordingly, she took to her bosom, socially, any one who was brilliant or attractive; and every notoriously erotic actress, singer, dancer, or other artist whose talent had caught the public fancy was invited to her house, and became privileged on very short acquaintance to kiss her and call her by her first name.

"Mrs. Sherman's conscience obliges her to draw this line, but she is conscious that it is an inconvenience to do so, which puts her at a disadvantage. Mrs. Webb Johnston has merely to swoop down on the hotel, or insinuate herself behind the scenes, and offer her visiting card, and presently her cheek, in order to carry off the prize. She cannot but feel that there are advantages in the Bohemian democratic point of view which asks no questions, but takes the good without heeding the ill.

"By refusing social recognition to women whose private characters are disreputable, she is shutting herself off from alluring friendships with sopranos, contraltos, tragediennes, skirt-dancers, music-hall singers, and many other brilliant and fascinating creatures whose presence at her house could not fail to make her entertainments interesting to her guests. All these women are sought out and cherished by Mrs. Webb Johnston.

"The old adage that there are other ways of killing a cat than choking her with cream, comes pertinently to mind in this connection. Conscience is apt to be a tyrant if deliberately overridden, but it may be hoodwinked with comparative complacency. Mrs. Sherman remains true to her principle of excluding meretricious characters from social intercourse with her guests, but she reserves to herself the right of passing on the evidence. Seeing that she had read Madame Bovary and Anna Karénina, was she not amply qualified to detect immorality at first blush? That seemed to be almost an essential attribute of a modern woman with social ambitions.

"The occasion for putting into practice this prerogative was not far to seek. The arrival from Europe of one of the most brilliant of the galaxy of foreign actresses brings her heart into her mouth. She reads eagerly everything which the newspapers have to say about her, and naturally finds nothing there suggestive of impropriety. She buys and scans photographs, and these merely serve to heighten the ideal estimate which has shaped itself in her mind. She refuses to entertain sundry rumors which have reached her to the effect that the lady in question has been successively maintained by a French marquis, and a Russian banker, and was at present reputed to be on unduly intimate terms with the famous leading man of her own troupe. To the person who has confided to her these whisperings she answers, 'I don't believe a word of it,' and then adds, significantly, 'Wait.' The person is a man, and he shrugs his shoulders. But her soul is jubilant in its faith and in the hope that at last she has found a way to compete with Mrs. Webb Johnston.

"On the day when the actress arrives in town Mrs. Sherman goes to see her. The meeting is by appointment at ten o'clock in the morning, and lasts more than two hours. They come down-stairs together with the mien of happy sisters. Mrs. Sherman's face wears a seraphic smile. Her carriage is in waiting, and in it they are driven to her home for luncheon, and on the same evening cards are issued for an after-theatre supper-party as a preliminary announcement of impending festivities. She sends for the man who told her the rumors, and in a triumphant tone says, 'My friend, your stories are untrue; I have been to headquarters. I have seen her and asked her, and she has assured me, with tears in her eyes, that they are a wicked falsehood—a malicious, baseless slander.'

"'Surely,' says the man, 'she ought to know,' and then he shrugs his shoulders again, a caustic act which, though done as a friend, provokes Mrs. Sherman to anger, and puts a chasm between them.

"On this day the cat is killed, and yet the cream is saved. True to her principles, Mrs. Sherman still bars her doors against the wanton, yet never fails to convince herself that she is an infallible judge of virtue. If there are rumors and whisperings in advance, she invariably takes the bull, or, more accurately speaking, the heifer, by the horns and puts the inquiry. The answer settles the matter. It becomes a veritable 'open sesame' to her entertainments and her friendship. She shows herself in public with her arm, metaphorically and literally, around the waist of women whom all men know to be unchaste and living in violation of social laws. They kiss and talk poetry and art and philosophy, and her face gleams with the consciousness of new importance and the realization of her ambition.

"Mrs. Sherman has now reached the point where she feels that she can fairly regard herself as the most busily progressive woman of her community. She has a finger in every pie, literary, artistic, philanthropic, educational, and what not. She is always in a hurry, and she does nothing thoroughly. Her ideas jostle against each other in their promiscuity, and become all jumbled together in her consciousness. Her time is so occupied that when she is doing one thing and talking to one person, some other thing or person is in her mind, though her social skill often enables her to conceal the fact. Her life is one continuous series of kaleidoscopic sensations and emotions without system or result. She is ostensibly a leader, but her leadership suggests only ceaseless activity and indiscriminate, superficial posings and vanities. Her nerves are kept in a constant state of tension by breathless comings and goings, her digestion perpetually tried by the viands of festivities. Nor is her conscience satisfied. A vague unrest pursues her still, torturing her by insinuations of her own utter futility, yet goading her on to fresh efforts. She presently becomes a wreck morally, mentally, and physically, though she preserves a bold front to the world, until one day the news is flashed upon a busy public that she has died suddenly from 'heart failure' following an attack of pneumonia. The physician in attendance shakes his head when asked to give assurance of her recovery. He possesses an instinctive knowledge that she has kept her vitality keyed up to concert pitch by antipyrine, phenacetine, and the other drugs to the use of which modern progressive women are addicted. And so no more of Mrs. Alexander Sherman.

"Of course," continued Josephine, "it was not strictly necessary to kill her. The constitutions of some progressive women seem to be proof against anything. But the chances were in favor of her death. And if the poor thing had lived, what hope was there for anything but a vapid old age, haunted by visions of her decreasing notoriety? And the strangest part of all is that when I began with her I felt hopeful that she would amount to something. The laws of evolution are not to be trifled with, however, even by the wives of philosophers."

To A Modern Woman with Social Ambitions. IV.

feel confident that my correspondent, Number 4, a wife thoroughly happy in the wedded state, will appreciate that there was nothing personal in Josephine's portrayal of Mrs. Alexander Sherman's career. It seems to me that it presents, more clearly than any arguments or words of mine could do, the perils of egotism and superficiality, and that I need not further indicate to my correspondents that to do a little of everything and nothing thoroughly, to be so eager for individuality or notoriety that one is ready to be led instead of to lead, and to discard social canons on the plea of liberty or superior feminine acuteness, will produce a nervous, emotional, gibbering type of character adapted to cause Madame de Staël or Madame Récamier to turn in her grave. Neither you, Number 4, nor Number 5, the radiant, able-bodied spinster, haughtily unconcerned about love and lovers, need fear any detriment to your souls or to your social progress as a consequence of doing some one or two things well, and of refusing to sacrifice your self-respect to the urgency of cheap substitutes for refinement and elegance. Certainly, thoroughness and delicacy of thought and sentiment are essential to the modern woman who would be socially effective in the best sense.

Let me here state that I am entirely conscious that it is not a prerequisite to earnest living to be socially effective at all. One can pursue one's occupation, be it house-keeping, school teaching, scientific philanthropy, or novel writing without taking any part in what is known as society, and still be respectable and worthy in character. Yet if every woman were simply to eat her three meals a day, sleep, be affectionate to her family, reasonably charitable, and do her daily task, the world would lose much of its vivacity, color, and æsthetic interest. As the world is at present constituted the greater mass of human beings, both male and female, are shut off from participation in society in its narrower sense. Their means, their manner of living, and their tastes confine them to very simple or else to very coarse social diversions. Hence we are accustomed to read in the newspapers of "society people," as a term of reproach indicating that portion of the population which cultivates the social or æesthetic side of nature in its leisure hours. The demagogic force of the term is derived from the undeniable existence of a surface element of society, which has been and is still apt to conduct itself in such a manner as to subject itself justly to the charge of frivolity and extravagance. But the unthinking extend its application to the cultivated and intelligent many, who in all countries constitute the best force of the community. Society in this better sense must always exist, and, although the woman who holds herself aloof from it may not be distinctly culpable, there can be no question that those who succeed in participating in the social interests open to them, without neglecting or allowing them to obscure sterner pursuits, live finer and more serviceable lives than those who pass all their hours of relaxation by the chimney-corner, either because they fancy that essential to comfort or because they choose to despise what they call, with a virtuous inflection, "society."

This may sound elementary, but I present it as a premise to which is to follow. You, my correspondents, are ambitious to progress socially, yet doubtless you are not altogether impervious to the seductive suggestion that social interests are hollow and unprofitable. For instance, I feel sure that you, Number 5, the radiant, able-bodied spinster, haughtily unconcerned about love and lovers, feels the pressure of the times, and would regard the life of a Madame de Staël or a Madame Récamier, however brilliant or picturesque, as at variance with modern theories of social utility. I hear you making some such representation as this, which is merely an enlargement of the letter you wrote me: "Here am I, a young woman of some means, without family responsibilities or other demands upon my time. I have no prejudice against marriage; indeed, I earnestly hope to meet some day, some man who will love me and whom I may love, and whose wife I may become; but as I am no longer so young as I was once, being nearly thirty, I have no intention of bothering my head about the subject further, and so put it aside as a contingency. I have no special talent; that is, I never could accomplish anything unusual with my voice, my pen, or a brush. I have taken, and I do take, a strong interest in charitable enterprise and investigation. I belong to philanthropic societies, and it has more than once occurred to me to join a college settlement and live among the poor. I have friends who do that; but I do not feel a special fitness for the work. Nor am I sure that, however valuable that experience may be as a form of loving service to the people one hopes to influence, it can be other than episodic and limited to the individuals who are conscious of the need or of the inspiration. I am painfully aware of the dissipations and vanities of fashionable people, in many of which I have taken part myself, and have no desire to be merely a frivolous devotee of social amusements. And yet I feel sure that the social side is no less genuine in its claims upon us than any other. It seems to me that I might interest myself socially, but I am puzzled by the intricacies of the situation. It is so difficult to be democratic in one's sympathies and yet maintain the old standards of elegance and refinement. To be socially effective one ought to be in touch with modern social tendencies and yet be true to the finest instincts of aspiring womanhood. What can one do to realize this?"

That is, I believe, a clear presentation of your state of mind and its dilemma. Having read of the vicissitudes of Mrs. Alexander Sherman, you have probably a more distinct idea of what you ought not to do; but would have a right to argue that a mere warning loses half its force unless a substitute be supplied. To begin with, you are correct in your assumption—you see I credit you with a considerable intelligence—that if you hope to be effective you must not be content with mere aristocratic elegance. That is a requisite which will gain you a standing within certain narrow limits, and if cleverly cherished, may bring you a surface reputation which the society newspapers will vie with each other to enhance. The acquirement of mere fine ladyism is going on actively in our society, and though it has not turned the heads of so many American women as its opposite, superficial democratic smartness, it seems too apt to fill the breasts of its votaries with a pleasing self-satisfaction, which no suggestion that the gift is not original serves to disturb. It is a product of and inheritance from the older civilizations, and in its most precious but not its exaggerated form, is absolutely essential to the most highly evolved womanhood. A fringe of our people in the North and in the South, and latterly in the West, has always insisted on and cultivated it, generally with much credit, and has thereby evoked the taunt that they were out of sympathy with the institutions of the country. That has been far less true than demagogues would have us believe, but there has been enough truth in it, and there is still enough truth in it to put our well-bred class—"society people," as they are called—on their guard against themselves. There is certainly nothing essentially American in conventional fine manners and in the conventional social tone which people of breeding the world over cultivate, and where these are the possessor's chief or only title to superiority, and are worn as such, there is room for the sneer that he or she is not an American at heart.

During the last twenty years our population has been passing through a period of awakening in regard to the usages of civilized countries, with the result that the public point of view has been astonishingly readjusted. The people are, so to speak, tumbling over each other in their haste to adopt Old World social customs, and the paragrapher who tells us that the wife of the Chief Magistrate wears blue novelty silk waists to the theatre, made by one of her familiar friends, makes a point of assuring us that the dressmaker in question is herself "a leading society woman." Our public press is rife with society cant and society gossip, and justifies the practice on the plea that the plain people are absorbed in the contemplation of the doings and the dresses of those whom they know only by hearsay, even as an Englishwoman will run the risk of apoplexy in order to catch a passing glimpse of her sovereign. Of this appetite for social tittle-tattle, the wealthy class seems disposed to take every advantage, pluming itself on its new importance to the point where it is constantly trying to devise some new extravagance or inanity.

But this is not the spirit of the United States, nor are these the best Americans. Our nation is strange in this respect. We wear our faults upon our sleeves, or rather we suffer a surface population to belie us in various walks of life. That is the reason why the foreigners who come over here and try to amass the materials for a book in a few months fail to understand us as we really are. They are led by superficially prominent indications to believe many things which are true only of a limited portion of the population, and they fail to perceive the sturdiness of character, the independence of view, and the social charm which distinguishes a large and constantly increasing portion of the American people, who are neither extravagant plutocrats nor vulgar republican braggarts and despisers of civilized practices.

During the early years of our history as an independent nation, the imitators of foreign and civilized usages, the well-bred people of our country were, as I have indicated, regarded as out of sympathy with the population at large, and there was a certain justification in the charge; for though there was no conscious slur on the part of these students of manners, they were at fault in that they failed to manifest or to take an interest in that energy, originality, and freshness of mental vision which was known as Americanism. Blatant and mortifying as this national tendency was in its exaggerated forms, it was a genuine indigenous product typical of the native character. Chastened and subdued in New England, and assuming outrageous expression on the prairies, it was the real manifestation of our entity as a new departure from the peoples of Europe. Hence it was natural that those who were shocked by or felt no kinship for this trick of the blood should be looked at askance. Among those who claimed in their own hearts social prestige it was long the fashion to shrug their shoulders over the raw eccentricities of their fellow-countrymen, which, as revealed both in public affairs and during European travel, were often startling to precise taste and wofully suggestive of the boaster. Yet those very traits in their truer expression have been the vital force of the people, and give us our savor as a nation. Not to possess them is to be without the characteristics of an American.

The experience and events of fifty years have served to soften the eccentricities and tone down the unconventional manifestations of the national spirit. Although the prairies and the halls of Congress still afford occasional rampant types, the great body of the people is eager, as I have indicated, to adopt cosmopolitan usages. But the salt of the native character remains undiluted in the blood of the people, and marks them as genuinely as ever, though they have learned to avoid some of the exuberance of language and look which made foreigners smile, and their sensitive countrymen blush when they met them in the picture galleries of Europe.

Most significant among the changes which experience and time have brought to pass has been the development on the educational and social side. Always alive to the importance of general education, but unfortunately so proud of the maintenance of public schools that it was disposed to sneer at any learning not to be acquired at them, the American people—that portion of it which foreigners are so apt to overlook when they attempt to characterize us—is seeking to foster in a variety of ways the opportunities for higher learning, and wider intellectual intelligence. Within the last twenty-five years not merely an array of colleges and other educational institutions have sprung into existence, but with them an army of disciples whose clubs and classes and associations for the investigation and study of all the forms of learning from English literature to Sanscrit have given a new tone and stimulus to the social side of American life. An independent, but now generally respectful eagerness to learn has taken the place of an independent ignorance relying upon its own infallibility, which was often worn as a chip upon the shoulder. With it all has been manifest the same originality, independence, and energy of spirit which has been conspicuous from the first. This still serves to handicap as well as to promote progress, for it is apt to beget undue self-confidence and lead our new women and eager youth of both sexes to ignore the accumulated wisdom of older civilizations, and claim a special clearness of vision, the only basis for which is often half-digested superficial knowledge. But educational and professional life all over the country is being constantly enriched by more and more competent students and practitioners who stand not merely for what is best and most earnest in American life, but who typify the true American spirit. While the omniscient class in the population has become less assertive and more humble-minded, the class which was once politically proscribed in some sections of the country because it was cultivated and because it shrugged its shoulders in spite of its breeding, has undergone a transformation also. A large portion of it, always patriotic at heart so far as dying was concerned, has learned to recognize that it must live in sympathy with our republican institutions if it would not be regarded as an exotic, and that aloofness is akin to lack of patriotism. A fringe of vain and more and more extravagant and self-indulgent society exists in our large cities, especially in New York, which affects to claim social superiority to the rest of the population, and is indifferent to national progress and to the best public interests; but it is numerically small, and, except in the newspapers, a very unimportant factor of influence as compared with the already large and growing body of citizens over the country which is eager to live nobly and wisely. This right-minded and aspiring class represents the drawing together and amalgamation of the once seemingly hostile poles of opinion typified by the conservative, civilized, sedate, social aristocrats of the nation, and the independent, assertive, ignorant but truth-seeking sons and daughters of the soil. Each has recognized the justice of the other's criticisms, and as the outcome of a mutually amended point of view we have an earnest, intelligent, and interesting alliance, which insists on both fineness and strength of fibre as essential to progressive national character. The confines of this belt of good citizenship shade away into stiff or heartless conventionalism on the one side, and smart, obtuse, social perceptions on the other, but it is constantly widening and undergoing the refining process which results from the increasing intelligence of the contracting parties. By way of exemplification in matters feminine may be instanced the more and more frequent requirement by those in authority in women's colleges that applicants for the position of teacher should possess those evidences of gentle nurture which the world is accustomed to associate with the word "lady." Conversely one may point to the fact that originality, independence, and suggestiveness are no longer repulsed by the conservative, but welcomed as a leavening grace necessary to the development of a finer womanhood.

To the existence of this alliance I would call the attention of the modern woman with social ambitions—you, in particular, Numbers 4 and 5. For it seems to me that in its perpetuation and extension lies the best hope of society. It represents, of course, an involuntary approximation of contrary opinions, and has no definite corporate existence, like a woman's club, for instance. But the alliance is real, nevertheless, whether it be deliberate or not. Certainly the American woman who wishes to lead effectively and aspiringly can no longer be either of the insipidly fashionable or the smart, assertive, schoolma'am type. In her composition that eager, star-investigating spirit, which through all the phases of her brilliant but often nerve-harrowing evolution has distinguished her, must curb itself to the yoke of social refinement. On the other hand, the day has passed when the charms of mere convention, of graceful elegance fortified by nothing deeper than wit, or suppleness of mind, would rank the possessor among the leaders of society.

Imitation, therefore, of the witchery worn by the women of the French salons will, however successful, if it be limited to mere manners and mental accomplishments—the pyrotechnics of social adroitness—gain for the modern woman of ambition, be she discerning and honest with herself, only a sore conscience. First of all, let her be a lady—elegant, gracious, pure, and tender; but, last of all, let her be merely that and stop there, looking down with amiable superciliousness on the world outside the narrow limit hedged by the conventions of those who play at living, and fancy themselves the real world. It is becoming more and more easy in this country to be a fashionable fine lady, without audible reproach, for the class of mere society people is a growing one. Yet to those who are content thus to waste their lives, the difficulty of being recognized as anything but society persons is just as great as ever, for though the ranks of the alliance may seem to terminate on one side in their direction, there is a dividing chasm between them broad as is the difference between careless aristocracy and sympathizing humanity. On one side of this chasm live those whose vital interest is to be exquisite and to be entertained; on the other, those whose souls are bent upon the finest aspirations and hopes of the race. In the heart of this alliance between conventional culture and humanity the reforms, the enterprises, and the safeguards projected for the advancement of modern society are born, and here they find their truest champions.

It is not easy, however, my correspondents, to decide whether there lies greater danger for the modern woman with social ambitions in the allurements of mere fashionable society, or in the temptations to be smart, superficial, and common, which confront her at the point where the alliance shades toward the camp of democratic individuality. Here there is a second chasm; yet, like the sunken road into which the cuirassiers of Napoleon fell at Waterloo, it is not evident at first glance to those who, fired by the ardor of youth, but socially unenlightened, tilt at fame and world progress. The evolution of democracy having in the case of woman been supplemented by the enfranchisement of her sex, present conditions afford extraordinary opportunities for the exercise of her new-found liberty. So secure is her position, so welcome is her announced determination to readjust and regenerate the world, that humanity is prepared to give her her head and to applaud every sign of advancement.

But man, though thus encouraging and at heart keenly appreciative, is watching her closely, and there can be no question that if he has to choose between the old-time woman of convention—the exquisite, picturesque doll of society—and a monster who revolts at sex, sneers at sentiment, and administers the affairs of life on a dull, utilitarian basis enlivened only by knowing, mundane humor, he will prefer the doll, or, if she be out of the question, he will fight the monster. It would be St. George and the dragon again! Long has the idea which the poet put into words,

been uttered with a sigh by our wives and mothers; yet with pride, too, and a secret joy in spite of the melancholy inflection. There are some women to-day who would throw off the yoke of this adage and enter the lists of life on the footing of a second-class man, proud of their swagger, and with the instincts of the wife and mother sternly repressed. Fortunately, to the woman of the alliance this new woman of democratic individuality is as abhorrent as she is to men. But it is not in her extreme type that she is as yet most dangerous, for admiration comes only by degrees. The danger lies in the failure to recognize the species in the bustling, chirping, metallic, superficial class of women which in some numbers, and with the wiry whirr of grasshoppers, infests the cities and towns of the republic to-day—women who have no reverence and no sentiment, no desire to learn for the sake of knowledge, but merely for ostentation—women who have not progressed as souls, but who have substituted coarseness for aspiration, and material "cuteness" for unsophisticated purity of thought and sentiment.

The modern woman with social ambitions must be essentially a modern woman. That is, she must recognize the justice of and sympathize with the aspirations of society for a broader humanity, and she must recognize and be a party to the responsibilities placed upon her own sex by the process of emancipation. Now, if ever, is the opportunity for woman to show what she is made of. If she is made simply of sugar and spice and all that is nice, as we are informed in the nursery rhyme, we shall have to accept her as she is, and put up with her delightful volatility and tender but unintellectual limitations. If, on the other hand, as the world is ready to believe, she is a star-seeking creature, who has been kept down, she will soon be able to give manifest signs of her ability to soar; and it is equitable to remind her that the burden of proof is on her. She cannot afford, distinctly, to be superficial. She must be thorough both in her investigations and her intuitions or she will amount to nothing, for it must be remembered that though man may be slow at intuition, he is capable in investigation. Every woman of the present day who becomes either an elegant voluptuary or an egotistical, metallic flibbertigibbet, furnishes one more piece of evidence for the edification of those who maintain that the mental constitution of her sex, save in its capacity for affection, is shallow. That is probably not the truth, but she should make the demonstration of the calumny more complete. Woman's authority over matters social is far greater than it has ever been. Not only as regards the social manifestations of society, but in the matter of the deeper problems of social living upon which the progress of society depends, her influence is becoming more and more a vital factor and force. If she is sincere, society will become both more earnest and more attractive; if she is simply seeking liberty at the expense of religion, purity, sentiment, and the fine things of the spirit, it were almost better she were again a credulous, beautiful doll, and remained so to the end of time. Clearly, the modern woman with social ambitions must not neglect to hold fast to the old and everlasting truths of life in her struggle toward the stars. Sympathy with and capacity to promote new ideas are essential to her progress, but only by allegiance to the eternal feminine, to the behests of love and motherhood and beauty of imagination, can the development of society on the lines of a broader and wiser humanity be effectually established.

To A Young Man wishing to be an American. I.

wrote this once as a definition of Americanism: "It seems to me to be, first of all, a consciousness of unfettered individuality coupled with a determination to make the most of self." In short, a compound of independence and energy. To you, in the earnest temper of mind which your letter of inquiry suggests, this definition may seem a generality of not much practical value; declarative of essential truth, yet only vaguely helpful to the individual. Yet I offer it as a starting-point of doctrine, for to my thinking the people of the United States who have impressed themselves most notably on the world have possessed these two traits, independence and energy, in marked degree. And to you, whatever your condition in life, if you consider, it must be apparent that manly self-respect and enterprising force are essential to character and good citizenship, and that the prominence accorded to these qualities by those who have analyzed the component parts of our nationality is a distinction which should be perpetuated and reinforced by succeeding generations.

Nevertheless, the counsel seems to approximate a glittering generality for the reason that the opportunities for acting upon it no longer sprout on every bush as in the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies of the present century when we were a budding nation and much of our territory was still virgin soil. I write "seems to approximate" advisedly, for the opportunities are just as plenty, merely less obvious. Yet here again I must make this qualification—one which recalls doubtless the favorite aphorism employed to meet the plea that the legal profession is overcrowded—that there is always an abundance of room on the top benches. Indisputably the day has passed when the ambitious and enterprising American youth could have fruit from the tree of material fortune almost by stretching out his hand. Now he has to climb far, and the process is likely to be slow and discouraging. The conditions peculiar to a sparse population in a new country rich in resources have almost ceased to exist, and, though a young nation still, we are face to face with the problems which concern a seething civilization where almost every calling seems full. Now and again some lucky seeker for fortune still finds it in a brief twelve-month, but for the mass of American young men the opportunities for speedy, dazzling prosperity have ceased to exist. Those who win the prizes of life among us nowadays owe their success, in all but sporadic cases, to unusual talents, tireless zeal and unremitting labor, almost as in England, and France, and Germany. So also, with the passing of the period when enterprise and ambition were whetted by the promise of sudden and vast rewards, have disappeared many of the traits, both external and psychological, which were characteristic of our early nationality. The buffalo is nearly extinct, and with him is vanishing much of the bluff, graceless assertiveness of demeanor which was once deemed essential by most citizens to the display of native independence. Our point of view has changed, broadened, evolved in so many ways that it were futile to do more than indicate by a general description what is so obvious. Partly by the engrafting and adoption of foreign ideas and customs, partly by the growth among us of new conditions beyond the simple ken of our forefathers, our national life has become both complex and cosmopolitan. If we, who were once prone to believe our knowledge, our manners, and our customs to be all-sufficient, have been borrowing from others, so we in our turn have been imitated by the older nations of Europe, and the result is an approximation in sympathies and a blurring of distinctions. Political differences and race superficialities of expression seem a larger barrier than they really are, for in its broader faiths and vision the civilized world is becoming homogeneous. The ocean cable and the facilities for travel have palsied insular prejudice and lifted the embargo on the free interchange of ideas. The educated American sees no resemblance to himself in the caricatures of twenty-five years ago, and rejoices in the consciousness that the best men the world over are essentially alike. This, perhaps, is only another way of reasserting that human nature is always human nature, but this old apothegm has a clearer significance to-day than ever before.

Yet the opportunities for the display of enterprise and independence remain none the less distinct because we are becoming a cosmopolitan community and the old spectacular flavor has been kneaded out of the national life. Much of our free soil has been appropriated by an army of emigrants from Europe, and in connection with this fact the saying is rife that every foreigner seems infused with a new dignity from the moment that he becomes an American. This may be bathos in individual cases, yet it is the offspring of truth. Still it remains equally true that we have an enormous foreign population whose ideas and standards are those which they brought with them. Proud as these men and women may be of their new nationality, and eager as they may be to aid in the promotion of good citizenship, their very existence here in large numbers has altered the conditions of the problem of Americanism. The problem involved is no longer that of the winning of a new land by a free, spirited people under a republican form of government, but the larger equation of the evolution of the human race. Americanism to-day stands in a sense more accurate than before as the experiment of government of the people, for the people, and by the people, and for the most complete amalgamation of the blood of Christendom which the human race has ever known. We have lately been celebrating our centennial anniversaries. Already the great figures of our early history seem remote. The struggle in which we are engaged is intenser and broader than theirs: It concerns the progress of human society. You, whom I am addressing, find yourself a unit in a vast, heterogeneous population and a complex civilization. You live in the midst of the most modern aspirations and appliances, and cheek by jowl with the joy and sorrow, the comfort and distress, the virtue and vice of a great democracy. Your birthright of independence and energy finds itself facing essentially the same perplexities as those which confront the inhabitants of other civilizations where the tide of existence runs strong and exuberant. If our nationality is to be of value to the world, Americanism must stand henceforth for a rectification of old theories concerning, and an application of fresh vitality to the entire problem of human living.

Love of country should be a part of the creed both of him who counsels and him who listens, yet I deem it my duty, considering the nature of our topic, to suggest that there are not a few in the world, foreigners chiefly, who would be disposed to answer your inquiry how best to be an American, by citing Punch's advice to persons about to marry, "don't!" It does credit to your love of country that you have assumed a true American to be a consummation devoutly to be emulated. Humility on this subject has certainly never been a national trait, and I cannot subscribe to any such doubt myself. But yet again let me indicate that across the water the point is at lest mooted whether the seeker for perfect truth would not be nearer success if incarnated under almost any other civilized name. Let me hasten to add that I believe this to be due to national prejudice, envy, and lack of intelligent discrimination, especially the latter, in that the foreigner is mistaken as to the identity of the true American. It behooves you therefore to ascertain carefully who the true American is, for even my defence seems to hint at the suggestion that all Americans are not equally admirable. Forty years ago an intimation that all Americans were not the moral and intellectual, to say nothing of the physical, superiors of any Englishman, Frenchman, German or Italian alive would have subjected a writer to beetling criticism; but, as I have already intimated, we have learned a thing or two since then. And it is not a little thing to have discovered that, though their hearts were right and their intentions good, our forefathers were not so abnormally virtuous and wise as to entitle them or us to an exclusive and proscriptive patent of superiority. We glory in them, but while we revere them as the fosterers and perpetuators of that fine, energetic, high-minded, probing spirit which we call the touch-stone of Americanism, we are prepared, with some reluctance, yet frankly, when cornered, to admit that they did not possess a monopoly of righteousness or knowledge.

I shall assume, then, that you, in common with other citizens, have reached this rationally patriotic point of view and are willing to agree that we are not, as a nation, above criticism. If you are still inclined to regard us, the plain people of these United States, as a mighty phalanx of Sir Galahads in search of the Holy Grail, the citation of a few facts may act aperiently on your mind and wash away the cobwebs of hallucination. For instance, to begin from the political standpoint, our acquirement of Texas and other territory once belonging to Mexico suggests the predatory methods of the Middle Ages rather than an aspiring and sensitive national public temper. The government of our large cities has from time to time been so notoriously corrupt as to indicate at least an easy-going, shiftless, civic spirit in the average free-born municipal voter. It is a matter of common knowledge that in the legislative bodies of all our States there is a certain number of members whose action in support of or against measures is controlled by money bribes. From the point of view of morals, statistics show that poverty and crime, drunkenness and licentiousness in our large cities are little less rife than in the great capitals of Europe; and you have merely to read the newspapers to satisfy yourself that individuals from the population of the small towns and of the country districts from the eastern limit of Maine to the southwestern coast of California are capable of monstrous murders, rank thefts, and a sensational variety of ordinary human vices. It were easy to illustrate further, but this should convince you that the patriotic enthusiast who would prove the people of the United States to be a cohort of angels of light has verily a task compared with which the labors of Sisyphus and other victims of impossibility fade into ease. Even our public schools, that favorite emblem of our omniscience, have been declared by authority to merit interest but by no means grovelling admiration on the part of the effete peoples of Europe.

We will proceed then on the understanding that, whatever its past, the present civilization of the United States reveals the every-day human being in his or her infinite variety, and that the true American must grasp this fact in order to fulfil his destiny. If our nation is to be a lamp to the civilized world, it will be because we prove with time that poor human nature, by virtue of the leaven called Americanism, has reached a higher plane of intelligent virtue and happiness than the world has hitherto attained. Who then is the true American? And what are the signs which give us hope that the people of the United States are capable of accomplishing this result? What, too, are the signs which induce our censors and critics to shake their heads and refuse to acknowledge the probability of it?

To A Young Man wishing to be an American. II.

will begin with the inverse process and indicate a list of those who are not true Americans, and yet who are so familiar types in our national community that the burden of proof is on the patriot to show that they are not essentially representative.

No. 1. The Plutocratic Gentleman of Leisure who Amuses Himself.—Here we have a deliberate imitation of a well-known figure of the older civilizations. The grandfather by superior ability, industry, and enterprise has accumulated a vast fortune. His grandchildren, nurtured with care, spend their golden youth in mere extravagant amusement and often in dissipation. There are many individuals in our so-called leisure class who devote their lives to intelligent and useful occupation, but there is every reason for asserting that the point of view of the child of fortune in this country is significantly that of the idler—and a more deplorable idler than he of the aristocracies of Europe on whom he models himself for the reason that the foreigner is less indifferent than he to intellectual interests. Is there any body of people in the world more contemptible, and any body among us more useless as an inspiring product of Americanism, than the pleasure-seeking, unpatriotic element of the very rich who, under the caption of our best society, arrogate social distinction by reason of their vulgar ostentation of wealth, their extravagant methods of entertainment and their aimless pleasure-loving lives? To vie with each other in lavish outlay, to visit Europe with frequency, to possess steam-yachts, to bribe custom-house officers, to sneer at our institutions and, save by an occasional check, to ignore all the duties of citizenship, is an off-handed epitome of their existence. And in it all they are merely copy-cats—servile followers of the aristocratic creed, but without the genuine prestige of the old-time nobilities. And in the same breath let me not forget the women.

[Note.—"I was afraid you were going to," said my wife, Josephine. "Women count for so much here, and yet their heads seem to become hopelessly turned as soon as they are multi-millionaires."]

Women indeed count for much here, and yet it is they even more than the men who are responsible for and encourage the mere pleasure-loving life among the leisure class. A ceaseless round of every variety of money-consuming, vapid amusement occupies their days and nights from January to January, and for what purpose? To marry their daughters to foreign noblemen? To breed scandal by pursuing intimacies with other men than their husbands? To demonstrate that the American woman, when she has all the opportunities which health, wealth, and leisure can bestow, is content to become a mere quick-witted, shallow voluptuary?

You will be told that these people are very inconsiderable in number, that they really exercise a small influence, and that one is not to judge the men and women of the United States by them. It is true that they are not very numerous, though their number seems to be increasing, and I am fain to believe that they are not merely out of sympathy with, but alien in character to, the American people as a whole; and yet I cannot see why an unfriendly critic should not claim that they are representative, for they are the lineal descendants of the men from every part of the land who have been the most successful in the accumulation of wealth. Their grandfathers were the pioneers whose brains and sinews were stronger than their fellows in the struggle of nation-building; their fathers were the keenest and not presumptively the most dishonest men of affairs in the country. Though the plain people of the nation affect to reprobate this class as un-American and evil, yet the newspapers, who aim to be the exponents of the opinions of the general mass and to cater to their preferences, are constantly setting forth the doings of the so-called multi-millionaires and their associates with a journalistic gusto and redundancy which reveals an absorbing interest and satisfaction in their concerns on the part of the every-day public.

Undeniably there are no laws which prohibit the wealthy from squandering their riches in futile extravagance and wasting their time in empty frivolities, nor is our leisure class peculiar in this when compared with the corresponding class in other countries, unless it be in a more manifest bent toward civic imbecility. But, from the point of view of human progress, is it not rather discouraging that the most financially prosperous should aspire merely to mimic and outdo the follies of courts, the heartless levity and extravagance of which have been among the instigators of popular revolution? Surely, if this is the best Americanism, if this is what democracy proffers as the flower of its crown of success, it were more satisfactory to the sensitive citizen to owe allegiance to some country where the pretensions to omniscient soul superiority were more commensurate with the results produced.

No. 2. The Easy-going Hypocrite.—Here is another slip from the tree of human nature, which flourishes on this soil with a sturdy growth. A large section of the American people has been talking for buncombe, not merely since years ago the member of Congress from North Carolina naïvely admitted that his remarks were uttered solely for the edification of the county of that name, and so supplied a descriptive phrase for the habit, but from the outset of our national responsibilities. To talk for effect with the thinly concealed purpose of deceiving a part of the American people all of the time has been and continues to be a favorite practice with many of the politicians of the country. Yet this public trick of proclaiming sentiments and opinions with the tongue in the cheek is the conspicuous surface-symptom of a larger vice which is fitly described as hypocrisy. There is a way of looking at this accusation which deprives it of part of its sting, yet leaves us in a predicament not very complimentary to our boasted sense of humor. It is that the free-born American citizen means so well that he is habitually dazzled by his own predilections toward righteousness into utterances which he as a frail mortal cannot hope to live up to, and consequently that he is prone to express himself in terms which none but the unsophisticated are expected to believe. In other words, that he is an unconscious hypocrite. However harmless this idiosyncrasy may have been as a preliminary trick of expression, there is no room for doubt that the plea of unconsciousness must cease to satisfy the most indulgent moral philosopher after a very short time. Yet we have persevered in the practice astonishingly, until it may be said that hyperbole is the favorite form of public utterance on almost any subject among a large class of individuals, in the expectation that only a certain percentage will not understand that the speaker or writer is not strictly in earnest. In this manner the virtuous and the patriotic are enabled to give free vent to their emotions and to set their fellow-citizens and themselves highest among the people of the earth without other expenditure than words, resolutions, or empty laws. The process gently titillates the self-esteem of the performer so that he almost persuades himself for the time being that he believes what he is saying: He appreciates that his hearers like better to have their hopes rehearsed as realities at the expense of veracity than to be reminded of imperfections at the expense of pride: And he rejoices in those whom he has fooled into believing that their hopes have been realized, and that all the virtue which he tremendously stands for is part and parcel of the national equipment. Under the insidious influence of this mode of enlightenment the every-day keen American citizen goes about with his head in the air, knowing in his secret heart that one-half of what he hears from the lips of those who represent him in public is buncombe, but content with the shadow for the substance, and wearing a chip on his shoulder as a warning to those who would assert that we are not really as virtuous and as noble as our spokesmen have declared.

For instance, to return to the concrete, consider the plight of a police commissioner in most of our large cities. Those interested in the suppression of vice appear before the legislature and urge the maintenance of a vigorous policy. Acts are passed by the law-makers manifesting the intention of the community to wage vigorous war against the social evil and the sale of liquor, and prescribing unequivocal regulations. The appointing power is urged to select a strong man to enforce these laws. Supposing he does, what follows? Murmurs and contemptuous abuse. Murmurs from what is known as the hard-headed, common-sense portion of the community, who complain that the strong man entrusted with authority does not show tact; that what was expected of him was judicious surface enforcement of the law sufficient to beguile reformers and cranks, and give a semblance of improvement, not strict, literal compliance. They will tell you that the social evil can no more be suppressed than water can be prevented from running down hill, and that the explicit language of the statutes was framed for the benefit of clergymen, and that no one else with common-sense supposed it would be enforced to the letter by any intelligent official. The very legislators who voted to pass the laws will shrug their shoulders rancorously and confide to you the same thing; yet in another breath assert to their constituents that they have fought the fight in defence of white-robed chastity and the sacred sanctity of the home.

Now, is this Americanism, the very best Americanism? Surely not. It has an Anglo-Saxon flavor about it which it is easy to recognize as foreign and imported. Englishmen have been asserting for centuries that they were fighting the fight in defence of white-robed chastity and the sanctity of the home, to the amusement of the rest of the world, for in spite of the fact that the laws demand a vigorous policy and the British matron and the Sunday-school Unions declare that the home is safe, those familiar with facts know that London is one of the most disgustingly impure cities in the world, and that the youth let loose upon its streets is in very much the same predicament as Daniel in the den of lions, without the same certainty of rescue. And why? Because the hard-headed, common-sense British public sanctions hypocrisy. They tell you that they are doing their utmost to crush the evil. This is for the marines, the British matron, and the Sunday-school Unions. But let a strong man attempt to banish from the streets the shoals of women of loose character, and what an unmistakable murmur would arise. How long would he remain in office?

It may be that the social evil can no more be suppressed than water can be prevented from running down hill. That is neither here nor there for the purposes of this illustration. But to demand the passage of laws, and then to abuse and undermine the influence of those who try to enforce them is a vice more subversive to national character than the fault of Mary Magdalene and her unpenitent successors, both male and female.

Take, again, our custom-house regulations concerning persons returning home from abroad. The law demands a certain tariff, yet it is notorious that a large number of so-called respectable people are able to procure free entry for their effects by bribes to the subordinates. And why? Because those who passed the law devised it to cajole a certain portion of the community; but those charged with the enforcement of it, in deference to its unpopularity, are expected to make matters at the port smooth for travellers with easy-going consciences. Hence the continued existence at the New York Custom-house of the shameless bribe-taker in all his disgusting variety. Authority from time to time puts on a semblance of integrity and discipline, but the home-comer continues to gloat over the old story of double deceit, his own and another's. Is this the best Americanism? Yet these are American citizens who offer the bribe, who pocket it, and who allow the abuse to exist by solemnly or good-naturedly ignoring it. Consider the diversity of our divorce laws. It is indeed true that opinions differ as to what are and what are not suitable grounds for divorce, so that uniformity of legislation in the different States is difficult of attainment; yet there is reason to believe that progress toward this would be swifter were it not for the convenience of the present system which allows men and women who profess orthodoxy a loop-hole of escape to a less rigorous jurisdiction when the occasion arises. Similarly, in the case of corporation laws, it is noticeable that not far removed from those communities where paid-up capital stock and other assurances of good faith are required from incorporators, some State is to be found where none of these restrictions exist. Thus an appearance of virtue is preserved, self-consciousness of virtue flattered, a certain number deluded, and yet all the conveniences and privileges of a hard-headed, easy-going civilization are kept within reaching distance.

No. 3. The Worshipper of False Gods.—It is a commonplace of foreign criticism that the free-born American is insatiate for money, and that everything else pales into insignificance before the diameter of the mighty dollar. That is the favorite taunt of those who do not admire our institutions and behavior, and the favorite note of warning of those who would fain think well of us. No one can deny that the influence and power of money in this country during the last thirty years have been enormous. One reason for this is obvious. The magnificent resources of a huge territory have been developed during that period. Men have grown rich in a night, and huge fortunes have been accumulated with a rapidity adapted not merely to dazzle and stir to envy other nations, but to turn the heads of our own people. We have become one of the wealthiest civilizations, and our multi-millionaires are among the money magnates of the world. Yet popular sentiment in public utterance affects to despise money, and inclines to abuse those who possess it. I write "affects," for here again the point of hypocrisy recurs to mind, and even you very likely would be prompt to remind me that, according to our vernacular, to make one's pile and make it quickly is a widespread touch-stone of ambition. True enough it is that there has been, and is, room for reproach in the aggressiveness of this tendency, and yet the seeming hypocrisy is once more unconscious in that the popular point of view intends to be sincere, but the situation has been too dazzling for sober brains and high resolves. For let it be said that keenness of vision and a capacity for escaping from the trammels of conventional and inveterate delusions are essentially American traits, and as a consequence no one more clearly than the American citizen appreciates the importance of material resources as a factor of happy living, and none so definitely as he refuses to be discouraged by the priestly creed that only a few can be comfortable and happy in this life and that the poor and miserable will be recompensed hereafter for their earthly travails. His doctrine is that he desires, if possible, to be one of that comfortable and happy few, and in the exuberance of his consciousness that human life is absorbing, he fortifies the capacity to make the most of it by the quaint, convincing statement that we shall be a long time dead. His quick-witted, intelligent repugnance to the old theory that the mass should be cajoled into dispensing with earthly comforts has helped to give a humorous, material twist to his words; and yet, I venture to assert, has left his finer instincts unperverted, except in the case of the individual. This combination of an extraordinary opportunity and a shrewd intelligence has, however, it must be admitted, produced a considerable and sorry crop of individuals guided by the principle that wealth is the highest good, and should be sought at the expense of every scruple. Their many successes in the accomplishment of this single purpose have served to create the impression that the whole nation is thus diseased, and have done the greater harm of dwarfing many an aspiring nature, spell-bound by the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces which sheer money-making has established. As a result the best Americanism is menaced both by the example of accumulation without conscience, and the dangerous public atmosphere which this generates, in that the common eye is caught by the brilliance of the spectacle, and the common mind lured to meditate imitation at every sacrifice. So they say of us that the American hero is the man of material successes, "the smart man" who "gets there" by hook or crook, and that we are content to ask no embarrassing questions as to ways and means, provided the pecuniary evidences of attainment are indisputable. The patriotic American resents this as a libel, and maintains that this type of hero-worship is but a surface indication of the public soul, just as the horrors of the divorce court are but a surface indication of the general conditions of married life. Yet the patriot must admit that there is danger to the noble aspirations which we claim to cherish as Americans from the bright, keen, easy-going, metallic, practical, hard-headed, humorous citizen, male and female, whose aim is simply to push ahead, at any cost, and who in the process does not hesitate to part with his spiritual properties as being cumbersome, unremunerative and somewhat ridiculous. The materialist is no new figure in human civilization. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die," is but the ancient synonyme for "we shall be a long time dead." A deep, abiding faith in the serious purposes of humanity has ever been obvious to us Americans as a national possession, however foreigners may deny it to us, but the American nature is at the same time, as I have suggested, essentially practical, level-headed, and inquiring, and is ever ready with a shrewd jest to dispute the sway of traditions founded on cant or outworn ideas. It behooves you then, if you would be a true American, to beware overstepping the limit which separates aspiring, intelligent, winsome common-sense from the philosophy of mere materialism. There lies one of the great perils of democracy; and unless the development of democracy be toward higher spiritual experiences, Americanism must prove a failure. Keen enjoyment of living is a noble thing, so too is the ambition to overcome material circumstances, and to command the fruits of the earth. A realization of the possibility of this, and an emancipation from dogmas which foreordained him to despair, has evolved the alert, independent, progressive American citizen, and side by side with him the individual whom the less enlightened portion of the community have enshrined in their hearts under the caption of a smart man. This popular hero, with his taking guise of easy-going good nature, assuring his admirers by way of flippant disposition of the claims of conscience and aspiration that "it will be all the same a hundred years hence" is the kind of American whom every patriot should seek to discredit and avoid imitating.

To A Young Man wishing to be an American. III.

he foregoing suggestions will suffice, I think, to demonstrate to you that we are not uniformly a nation of Sir Galahads, and that certain types of Americanism, if encouraged and perpetuated, are likely to impair the value and force of our civilization. But having dispelled the hallucination that we are uniformly irreproachable, I would remind you that, in order to be a good American, it is even more necessary for you to appreciate the fine traits of your countrymen than to be keenly alive to their shortcomings. There are two ways of looking at any community, as there are two ways of looking at life. The same landscape may appear to the same gaze brilliant, inspiring, and interesting, or flat, homely, and unsuggestive, according as the eye of the onlooker be healthy or jaundiced. It is easy to fix one's attention on the vulgar and heartless ostentation of the rich, on the cheapness and venality of some of our legislators, on the evidences of hypocrisy and false hero-worship, materialism, and superficiality of a portion of our population, and in doing so to forget and overlook the efficacy and finer manifestations of the people whose lives are the force and bulwark of the state. It is easy to go through the streets of a large city and note only the noise and smoke and stir, coarse circumstance and coarser crime, neglecting to remember that beneath this kernel of hard, real life the human heart is beating high and warm with the hopes and desires of the spirit. It is not necessary for a human being, it is essentially not necessary for an American, to look at life from the point of view of what the eye beholds in the hours of soul-torpor. True is it that Americanism stands to-day as almost synonymous with the struggle of democracy, and that the equal development of the life of the whole people for the common good is what most deeply concerns us; but this does not mean that it is right or American to adhere to what is ordinary and low, because it is still inevitable that the ideals and standards of the mass should not be those of the finest spirits. It was an American who bade you hitch your wagon to a star, and you have only to reflect in order to recall the spiritual vigor, the righteous force of will, the strength of aspiring mind, the patriotic courage, the tireless soul-struggle of the early generations of choicely educated, simply nurtured Americans. Their thought and conscience, true and star-seeking even in its limitations, laid the foundations of law and order, of civic liberty and private welfare, of national honor and domestic repute. Their enterprise and perseverance, their grit and suppleness of intelligence wrested our broad Western acreage from the savage and—

[Note.—I was here interrupted in the fervor of this genuine peroration by my wife Josephine's exclamation, "Oh, how atrociously they abused and persecuted those poor Indians, shunting them off from reservation to reservation, cheating them out of their lands and furs!"

It is not agreeable to be held up in this highwayman fashion when one is warming to a subject, but there is a melancholy truth in Josephine's statement which cannot be utterly contradicted. Still this is what I said to her: "My dear, I had hoped you understood that I had referred sufficiently to our national delinquencies, and that I was trying to depict to my correspondent the other side of the case. However just and appropriate your criticism might be under other circumstances, I can only regard it now as misplaced and unfortunate." I spoke with appropriate dignity. "Hoity, toity, toity me!" she responded. "I won't say another word."]

—wrested our broad Western acreage from the savage, and in less than half a century transformed it into a thriving, bustling, forceful civilization. Their ingenuity, their restless spirit of inquiry, their practical skill, their impatience of delay and love of swift decisive action have erected countless monuments in huge new cities founded in the twinkling of an eye, in the marvellous useful inventions which have revolutionized the methods of the world, the cotton-gin, the steamboat, the telegraph, the telephone, the palace-car—in the eager response made to the call of patriotism when danger threatened the existence of their country, and in the strong, original, clear-thinking, shrewdly acting, quaint personalities which have sprung from time to time from the very soil, as it were, in full mental panoply like the warriors of the Cadmean seed. Their stern sense of responsibility, their earnest desire for self-improvement, their ambitious zeal to acquire and to diffuse knowledge have founded, fostered, and supported the system of public schools and well-organized colleges which exist to-day in almost every portion of the country. The possessors of these qualities were Americans—the best Americans. Their plan of life was neither cheap nor shallow, but steadfast, aspiring, strong, and patient. From small beginnings, by industry and fortitude, they fought their way to success, and produced the powerful and vital nation whose career the world is watching with an interest born of the knowledge that it is humanity's latest and most important experiment. The development of the democratic principle is at the root of Americanism, but whoever, out of deference to what may be called practical considerations, abates one jot the fervor of his or her desire to escape from the commonplace, or who, in other words, forsakes his ideals and is content with a lower aim and a lower outlook, in order to suit the average temper, is false to his birthright and to the best Americanism.

It has been one of the grievances of those, whose material surroundings have been more favorable and who have possessed more ostensible social refinement than the mass of the population, that they were regarded askance and excluded from public service and influence. There used to be some foundation for this charge, but the counter plea of lack of sympathy and distrust of country was still more true, and an explanation and, in a large measure, a justification of the prejudice. True strength and refinement of character has always in the end commanded the respect and admiration of our people, but they have been roughly suspicious of any class isolation or assumption of superiority. It has been difficult accordingly for that type of Americans who arrogated tacitly, but nevertheless plainly, the prerogatives of social importance, to take an active part in the responsibilities of citizenship. They have been mistrusted, and sneered at, and not always unjustly, for they have been prone to belittle our national institutions and to make sport of the social idiosyncrasies of their unconventional countrymen for the entertainment of foreigners. And yet the people have never failed to recognize and to reverence the fine emanations of the spirit as evidenced by our poets, historians, thinkers, or statesmen. Our forceful humanitarian and ethical movements, our most earnest reforms found their most zealous and untiring supporters among the rank and file of the people. Abraham Lincoln was understood last of all by the social aristocracy of the nation. Emerson's inspiration found an answering chord in every country town in New England. True it is that on the surface the popular judgment may often seem superficial and cheap in tone, but the wise American is chary of accepting surface ebullitions as the real index of the public judgment. He understands that mixed in with the unthinking and the degenerate is a rank and file majority of sober, self-respecting men and women, whose instincts are both earnest and original, and who are to be depended on in every serious emergency to think and act on the side of civilizing progress. It is the inability to appreciate this which breeds our civic censors, who are led by their lack of perspective to underestimate the character of the people and to foretell the ultimate failure of our experiment.

The increase of wealth and a wider familiarity with luxury and comfort through the country has made a considerable and more important class of those whose material and social surroundings are exceptional. The participation of the citizens of this class in the affairs of government is no longer discouraged—on the contrary, it is welcomed by the community. Indeed, many men have secured nomination and election to office solely because of their large means, which enabled them to control men and caucuses in their own favor.

[Note.—An appearance of spontaneity is preserved in these cases by the publication of a letter from leading citizens requesting the candidate to stand for office. He thereupon yields to the overwhelming invitation of the voters of the district, and his henchmen do the rest.]

But though the possession of wealth and social sophistication are no longer regarded as un-American, the public sentiment against open or tacit assumption of social superiority, or a lack of sympathy with democratic principles, is as strong as ever. It is incumbent, therefore, on you, if you would be an American in the best sense, to fix your ideal of life high, and at the same time to fix it in sympathy with the underlying American principle of a broad and progressive common humanity, free from caste or discriminating social conventions. It is not necessary for you to accept the standards and adopt the behavior of the superficial and imperfectly educated, but it is indispensable that you accept and act on the faith that your fellow-man is your brother, and that the attainment of a freer and more equal enjoyment of the privileges of life is essential to true human progress. We have, as I have intimated, passed through the pioneer stage of national development; we have tilled our fields, opened our mines, built our railroads, established our large cities—in short, have laid the foundations of a new and masterful civilization; it now remains for us to show whether we are capable of treating with originality the old problems which confront complex societies, and of solving them for the welfare of the public and the consequent elevation of individual character.

The originality and clearness of the American point of view has always been a salient national characteristic. Hitherto its favorite scope has been commercial and utilitarian. Yankee notions have been suggestive of sewing-machines, reapers, and labor-saving contrivances, or the mechanism of rushing trade. Now that we have caught up with the rest of the world in material progress and taught it many tricks, it remains for the true American to demonstrate equal sagacity and clear-headedness in dealing with subtler conditions. To be sure the scope of our originality has not been entirely directed to things material, for we have ever asserted with some vehemence our devotion to the things of the spirit, squinting longingly at them even when obliged to deplore only a passing acquaintance with them because of lack of time. The splendid superficiality of the army of youth of both sexes in the department of intellectual and artistic exertion, which has been one of the notable features of the last thirty years, has shown clearly enough the true temper and fibre of our people. To regard this superficiality as more than a transient symptom, and thereby to lose sight of the genuine intensity of nature which has animated it, would indicate the shallow observer. Our youth has been audacious, self-confident, and lacking in thoroughness because of its zeal to assert and distinguish itself, and thus has justly, in one sense, incurred the accusation of being superficial, but it has incurred this partially because of its disposition to maintain the privileges of individual judgments.

Our young men and women have been blamed for their lack of reverence and their readiness to form conclusions without adequate knowledge or study in the teeth of venerable opinion and convention. Indisputably they have erred in this respect, but indisputably also the fault is now recognized, and is being cured in the curriculum of education. Yet, evil as the fault is, the traits which seem to have nourished it—unwillingness to accept tradition and a searching, honest clearness of vision—are virtues of the first water, and typical of the best national character. There are many persons of education and refinement in our society who accept as satisfactory and indisputable the old forms and symbols which illustrate the experience, and have become the final word of the older civilizations in ethics, politics, and art. They would be willing that we should become a mere complement to the most highly civilized nations of Europe, and they welcome every evidence that we are becoming so. As I have already suggested to you, the nations of the world are all nearer akin in thought and impulse than formerly, but if our civilization is to stand for anything, it must be by our divergence from the conclusions of the past when they fail to pass the test of honest scrutiny, not by tame imitation. Profoundly necessary as it is that we should accept with reverence the truths of experience, and much as our students and citizens may learn from the wisdom and performance of older peoples, it behooves the American to prize and cherish his birthright of independent judgment and freedom from servile adherence to convention. Almost everything that has been truly vital in our production has borne the stamp of this birthright.

The American citizen of the finest type is essentially a man or woman of simple character, and the effect of our institutions and mode of thought, when rightly appreciated, is to produce simplicity. The American is free from the glamour or prejudice which results from the conscious or unconscious influence of the lay figures of the old political, social, or religious world, from the glamour of royalty and vested caste, of an established or dominant church, of aristocratic, monkish, or military privilege. He is neither impelled nor allured to subject the liberty of conscience or opinion to the conventions appurtenant to these former forces of society. For him the law of the state, in the making of which he has a voice, and the authority of his own judgment are the only arbiters of his conduct. He accords neither to fineness of race nor force of intellect the right of aristocratic exclusiveness which they have too often hitherto claimed. To the cloistered nun he devotes no special reverence; he sees in the haughty and condescending fine gentleman an object for the exercise of his humor, not of servility; he is indifferent to the claim of all who by reason of self-congratulation or ancient custom arrogate to themselves special privileges on earth, or special privileges in heaven. This temper of mind, when unalloyed by shallow conceit, begets a quiet self-respect and simple honesty of judgment, eminently serviceable in the struggle to live wisely.