Books: Lessons in Life

T >> Timothy Titcomb >> Lessons in Life

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Well, all this can be improved. Men can cultivate the power to
apprehend and express truth. They can cast off the prejudice,
selfishness, bigotry, and sensuality that prevent them from
receiving truth. They can refrain from conscious lying; and no one
doubts that the world would be greatly improved by honest efforts
directed to these ends. Only the naked soul, in Eternity's white
light, can be wholly truthful; but we can all try for it, and we
shall find our highest account in trying.

LESSON VI.

MISTAKES OF PENANCE.

"For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form and doth the body make."
SPENSER.

"Can sackcloth clothe a fault or hide a shame?
Or do thy hands make Heaven a recompense,
By strewing dust upon thy briny face?
No! though thou pine thyself with willing want,
Or face look thin, or carcass ne'er so gaunt;
Such holy madness God rejects and loathes
That sinks no deeper than the skin or clothes."
QUARLES.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty." KEATS.

I have every reason to believe that God loves Shakers, but I do
not think He admires them. I do not see how He can; but perhaps
this is not a competent reason to offer in the premises. I saw a
wagon-load of what I supposed to be Shakers of both sexes, riding
along the street, the other day; and I wondered what I should
think of them if I had made them. I think I should have been
about equally vexed and amused to see the lines that I had made
beautiful, disguised, and every grace-giving swell of limb and
bust, upon which I had exercised such exquisite toil, carefully
hidden. They sat up very straight and prim, in a very square
wagon, behind a square-trotting horse, driven by "right lines" in
a pair of hands that seemed to grow out of the driver's stomach,
while his elevated, rectangular elbows cut rigidly against the air
on either side. It was a vision for a painter--a house painter--
"a painter by trade." The long-haired, meek-looking men,
with their flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hats, straight coats and
neutral colors, and the women with their sugar-scoop bonnets,
white kerchiefs and straight waists, looked like a case of faded
wax-figures, in prison uniform, that had "come down to us from a
former generation."

I heaved a sigh as the wagon-load of mortified and badly-dressed
flesh passed out of sight, and wondered if the souls inside of
those bodies were as angular as their covering. I did not believe
it--I do not believe it. I have no doubt that underneath those
straight waistcoats hearts have throbbed at the sight of woman and
child, and longed for home and family life, with yearnings that
could not be uttered. Those straightlaced sensibilities have been
thrilled by beauty, and bathed in the grace and glory of the life
around them. Trees have whispered to them, flowers have looked up
and rebuked them, brooks have called to them with laughter, rivers
have smiled upon them in sunshine, the great sky has bent over
them with infinite tenderness and fulness of beauty, and they have
felt what they could not define. It was something very wrong, they
supposed, and so they buttoned their straight jackets around them,
turned their eyes away from beholding vanity, and thought they had
done an excellent thing. I know that those young women, with their
abominable clothing outside, and their crushed and abused
sympathies inside, are unhappy, unless they have all been
mercifully transformed into fanatics. It is useless to tell me
that a man can ignore or trample to death the strongest passion of
his nature--the strongest, the purest, and the most ennobling--and
be a happy man. It is useless to say that a man or woman can walk
through a world of beauty--themselves the most beautiful of all
things--and bind themselves up in unbecoming drapery, and smother
all their impulses to express the beauty with which God inspires
them, and do it with content and satisfaction. It cannot be done.

So, when this wagon-load of Shakers drove out of sight, I heaved a
sigh, for I knew that not to be unhappy in the life which was
typefied in their dress and establishment, would be a greater
misfortune, essentially, than dissatisfaction and discontent would
be. If they were happy in their life, they must have become
perverted in their natures, or indurated beyond the susceptibility
to receive the impressions of healthy men and women. If God ever
put any thing majestic and noble into a man, and gave him a
fitting frame for it, He never intended that it should be hidden
in a meal-bag, or permanently quenched under a smock-frock. In the
infinite variety which he has introduced into human character and
into human forms and faces, there is no warrant for dressing men
in uniform, but a most emphatic protest against it. If God made
woman beautiful, He made her so to be looked at--to give pleasure
to the eyes which rest upon her--and she has no business to dress
herself as if she were a hitching-post, or to transform that which
should give delight to those among whom she moves, into a
ludicrous caricature of a woman's form.

I repeat that I have every reason to believe that God loves
Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. If God admires the
bodies He has made, He cannot admire them when they are covered by
the Shaker dress, for it spoils the looks of them, and differs
essentially from the plan which He pursues in draping all other
forms of life. There is no grace about it, and no beauty of color.
God admires clouds, I doubt not, when painted by the setting sun,
and stars flashing in the heavens, and the flowers of myriad hues
that are scattered over the earth, but if these are objects of His
special admiration, as they are of ours, what can He think of a
drab Shaker bonnet? What can He think when man and woman, the
glory and crown of His creation, are entirely overtopped and
thrown into the shade by birds and bees and blossoms, and go
poking around the world in unexampled and ingeniously contrived
ugliness? What does He think of men and women who take that
passion of love, which was intended to make them happy, and give
them sweet companionship, and bear young children to their arms,
and trample it under their feet as an unholy thing, and to welcome
to their hearts, in its stead, blackness, and darkness, and
tempest? What does He think of lives out of which are shut all
meaning and all individuality, and all love and expression of
beauty, and all vivifying, liberalizing, and humanizing
experience?

I owe no grudge to the Shakers. I like their apple sauce, (they
ask a thrifty price for it,) and have faith in the genuineness and
the generation, under favorable conditions, of their garden seeds;
but I object to their style of life and piety, and to every thing
outside of Shakerdom which looks like it. I object to this whole
idea, (and the Shakers have not monopolized it,) that God takes
delight in the voluntary personal mortification of His children,
and that He approves of their going about, sad-faced and
straight-laced, studiously avoiding all temptation to enjoy
themselves.

I have seen a deacon in the pride of his deep humility. He combed
his hair straight, and looked studiously after the main chance;
and while he looked, he employed himself in setting a good
example. His dress was rigidly plain, and his wife was not
indulged in the vanities of millinery and mantua-making. He never
joked. He did not know what a joke was, any further than to know
that it was a sin. He carried a Sunday face through the week. He
did not mingle in the happy social parties of his neighborhood. He
was a deacon. He starved his social nature because he was a
deacon. He refrained from all participation in a free and generous
life because he was a deacon. He made his children hate Sunday
because he was a deacon. He so brought them up that they learned
to consider themselves unfortunate in being the children of a
deacon. They were pitied by other children because they were the
children of a deacon. His wife was pitied by other women because
she was the wife of a deacon. Nobody loved him. If he came into a
circle where men were laughing or telling stories, they always
stopped until he went out. Nobody ever grasped his hand cordially,
or slapped him on the shoulder, or spoke of him as a good fellow.
He seemed as dry and hard and tough as a piece of jerked beef.
There was no softness of character--no juiciness--no loveliness
in him.

Now it is of no use for me to undertake to realize to myself that
God admires such a character as this. I do not doubt that He loves
the man, as He loves all men; but to admire his style of manhood
and piety is impossible for any intelligent being. It lacks the
roundness and fulness, and richness and sweetness, that belong to
a truly admirable character. Such a man caricatures Christianity,
and scares other men away from it. Such a man ostentatiously
presents himself as one in whose life religion is dominant. It is
religion that is supposed to rub down that long face, and inspire
that stiff demeanor, and to make him at all points an unattractive
and unlovable man. Of course it is not religion that does any
thing of the kind, but it has the credit of it with the world, and
the world does not like it. It looks around, and sees a great many
men who do not pretend to religion at all, and yet who are very
lovable men. If religion can transform a pleasant man into a most
unpleasant one, and change a free, bright, and happy home into a
dismal place of slavery, and blot out a man's aesthetic and social
nature, the world naturally thinks that getting religion would be
almost as much of a misfortune as getting some melancholy chronic
disease, and I do not blame it. It is not to be wondered at that
the world should mistake, very much, the true nature of
Christianity, when Christians themselves entertain such grievous
errors about it.

I suppose God is attracted to very much the same style of
character that men are. Christ loved a young man at first sight,
who lacked the very thing essential to his highest manhood. But
He loved the kind of man He saw before Him. He was upright,
frank-hearted, open-minded, and bright; and "Jesus beholding him,
loved him." There are men whom one cannot help loving and admiring
though they lack a great many things--things very "needful" to
make them perfect men. Now I put it to good, conscientious,
Christian men and women, whether they do not take more pleasure in
the society of a warm-hearted, generous, chivalrous, well-fed, man
of the world, than in the society of any of that class of
Christians of whom the deacon I have mentioned is a type. I know
they do, and they cannot help it. There is more of that which
belongs to a first-class Christian character in the former than in
the latter, and if I were called upon to test the two men by
commanding them respectively to sell what they have and give to
the poor, I should be disappointed were the deacon to behave the
best. A character which religion does not fructify--does not
soften, enlarge, beautify, and enrich--is not benefited by
religion--or, rather, has not possessed itself of religion. God
loves that which is beautiful and attractive in character, just as
much as we do, and it makes no difference where he sees it. He
does not dislike the amiable traits of a sinner because he is a
sinner, nor does he admire those traits of a Christian which we
feel to be contemptible, simply because they belong to a
Christian. A Christian sucked dry of his humanity, is as juiceless
and as flavorless as a sucked orange, and I believe that God
regards him in the same light that we do. He will save such I
doubt not, for their faith; and, in the coming world, they will
learn what they do not know here; but the question whether they
are as well worth saving as some of their neighbors, may, I think,
be legitimately entertained. In saying this, I mean to be neither
light or irreverent. I mean simply to indicate that some men are
worth a great deal more to themselves and to their fellows than
others.

So, when I look abroad upon the world, and see men shaving their
heads, and wearing nasty hair shirts, and shutting themselves up
in cells, and living lives of celibacy, and when I see women
retiring from the world which they were sent to adorn, populate,
and bless, and Shakers driving around in square wagons and
studiously ugly garments, and Christians who should know better
abandoning all the bright and cheerful things of life, and feeling
that there is merit in mortification, I cannot but feel that God
looks down upon it all with sadness and pity. After doing every
thing in His power to make His children happy--after filling the
world with good things for their use, and giving them abundant
faculties for enjoying them--after endowing them with beauty, and
a sense of that which is beautiful--it must be sad to Him to see
them wandering about in strange disguises, hugging to their
half-rebellious hearts the awful mistake that, however much they
may suffer, they are gaining favor thereby in the sight of their
Maker. Of course, I believe in self-denial, and in the nobility
of self-denial, for the good of others; but I believe that all
self-denial that partakes of the character of penance, in whatever
form and under whatever circumstances it may develop itself, is
always a thing of mischief, and always a thing of error. It has its
basis in the miserable theory that there is something in the
passions and appetites with which God has constituted man that is
essentially bad--a theory as impious as it is injurious--as
fatal to all just conceptions of the divine Being and of man's
relations to Him, as to all human happiness.

Every thing which is truly admirable is good, and good and
desirable in the degree by which it is admirable. A beautiful face
and form are admirable, and just as good as they are admirable--
just as good in their element of beauty. They are good for that
quality, and in that quality, which excites our admiration. A
beautiful bonnet, a beautiful dress, a beautiful brooch or
necklace, are all admirable, and good because they are admirable,
or good because every thing admirable is necessarily good. A
family over which the father presides with tender dignity, and in
which the mother moves with love's divinest ministry--where the
faces of innocent children are shining, while their voices make
music sweeter than the morning songs of birds--is admirable, and
it is good in all those respects which make it admirable. A
well-dressed man or woman is admirable, and that thing is good in
itself which makes them so. A man who carries his heart in his
hand, who deals both justly and generously by men, who bears a
sunny face and pleasant words into society, whose cultured mind
enriches freely all with whom it is brought into relation, who has
abundant charity for the weak and erring, and who takes life and
what it brings him contentedly, is an admirable man, and good in
all the points which make him admirable. A house that presents a
harmonious and handsome interior to the eye of the passenger, and
whose exterior combines equal convenience and elegance, is
admirable, and, by that token, good.

Now these very simple propositions have their correlatives, which
it is not necessary to set down in order, any further than fairly
to illustrate my point. Things that are not admirable are not
good. If the dress of a Shaker is not admirable, it is not good.
If that sort of life which is led in a cloister, by monks or nuns,
is not admirable, it is not good. If a man who professes to be a
Christian lives a life out of which is shut all with which an
unsophisticated humanity sympathizes--a life barren of attractive
fruit--a life bare in all its surroundings--a life with no genial
outflow and expression--a life of niggardly negatives rather than
of generous positives--then that life is not admirable, and if it
be not admirable it cannot be good in those respects. A man may
carry along with such a life as this a spotless conscience and a
strict devotion to apprehended duty, and these may be admirable
and good, but the other characteristics cannot be either; and
however much God may approve his honest heart and honest endeavor,
He cannot admire the style of manhood in which they have their
dull and difficult illustration. The idea that I wish definitely
to convey is this: that on the basis of a right heart, God would
have us build up a bright, generous, genial, expressive Christian
character, and use gratefully and gladly all those things which He
has prepared to make life cheerful and admirable. I believe a
saint ought to have a better tailor than a sinner, and be in all
manly ways a better fellow. I believe a true Christian should be
in every thing that constitutes and belongs to a man the most
admirable man in the world.

I have an idea that God looks with the same kind of contempt on
the prominent characteristics of certain styles of Christian men
and women, that men of the world do. There is nothing admirable in
cant and whine, and nasal psalm-singing, and men whose hearts are
livers and whose blood is bile; and I cannot believe that He
blames people for not admiring them, and not being attracted to
them. I do not believe that an admirable Christian life is
repulsive to the men of the world. I believe that wherever the
human mind recognizes a rounded, chastened, rich, and outspoken
Christian character, whether it belong to manhood or womanhood, it
admires it, and feels attracted to it, by the degree in which it
admires it. I believe, moreover, that the Christianity which
discards as vanities those things which God has provided for the
pleasure of His children, and mortifies the love of beauty, and
adopts the theory that God is pleased with penance, and degrades,
abuses, and traduces the body to win greater sanctity of soul, and
finds a sin in every sweet of sense, is a bastard Christianity.
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

LESSON VII.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tones."
JOHN KEATS.

"I am as free as Nature first made man." DRYDEN.

"What she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." MILTON.

It was the sarcastic remark of a crusty old parson of Connecticut
that woman has the undoubted right to shave and sing bass, if she
chooses to do so. I question the right of bearded man to shave
himself, and I will not concede that woman has a superior right,
based on inferior necessities; but believing that man has an
undoubted right to sing bass, I am inclined to accord the same
right to woman. Woman is a female man, and there is no reason
that I know of why she should not have the same rights, precisely,
that a male man has. I claim for myself, and for man, the
privilege of singing treble, under certain circumstances; and why
should I not accord to woman the right to sing bass? The brave old
chorals of Germany would hardly be sung with much effect were the
airs denied to the masculine voice, yet if it be man's prerogative
to sing bass, it is surely woman's to sing treble. If it be
usurpation for her to grope among the gutturals of the masculine
clef, it is gross presumption for him to attempt to leap the
five-rail fence that stands between him and high C. I put this
consideration forward for the purpose of stopping every caviller's
mouth upon the subject, until I present arguments of a broader and
more comprehensive character, in support of woman's right to sing
bass.

It is claimed by those who deny woman's right to sing bass that
she is needed for the treble and alto parts. Needed by whom?
Needed by man? But who gave man the right to set up his needs as
the law of woman's life? If man needs treble and alto, I hope he
may get them. He has the undoubted right to sing both parts to
suit his own fancy, or to hire others to do it for him. Man needs
buttons on his shirts, and clean linen, but for the life of me I
cannot see why that need defines a woman's duty in any respect.
Let him do his own washing, and sew on his own buttons. Suppose a
woman should need to have hooks and eyes sewed upon her dress, as
some of them do, sometimes, after taking a very long breath, would
that determine it to be man's duty to sew them on? "It is a poor
rule that will not work both ways." This is one of the illustrations of
man's selfishness--that he sets up his needs as the rule by which the
rights of one-half of the human race are to be determined.

This same selfishness of man will demand that I reconsider this
talk, and will accuse me of sophistry. It will declare that I do
not state the case fairly. It will say that woman needs money with
which to buy her dresses and procure her food, and strong hands to
labor for her and protect her, and that these needs do indeed
define man's duty with respect to her. But I place all this on the
ground of gallantry and humanity. Of course, we are all very glad
to do these things, you know,--we who have human feelings--but
woman has no right to them, based upon her need--particularly if
she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her indefeasible right
to sing bass. I know that it helps things along for a woman to
look after a man's linen and buttons, and do his fine work
generally, because she seems to have a kind of natural knack at
the business. I am aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a
woman sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it
remembered, of woman's right to sing bass. Let us stick to the
question.

The enemies of this highest among the rights of woman are fond of
alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found
who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter
upon the work of singing bass. The large majority of women prefer
to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as
a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter
of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without
onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought forward as an
argument against the right of a man to eat it with onions. It is
possible, indeed, that if people were more accustomed to eating
beef-steak with onions, or those savory vegetables were less
objectionable in their style of perfume, there would be a majority
in favor of the associated luxuries. We must remember, too, in
considering this aspect of the question, that woman is, to a
certain extent, a creature of whims. (She is exceedingly apt to
adopt a practice because it is fashionable.) If it were
fashionable for woman to sing bass, how long would it be before
the lower tones would find full development? And how long would it
be before the men themselves would repeat those words of the
immortal bard:--

"Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle and _low_,--An excellent thing in woman"?

After all, this sort of argument against woman's right to sing
bass answers itself. If the preference of women generally for the
soprano and alto be a good reason for their confining themselves
to the performance of those parts, then a change of preference
would be a valid reason for their leaving them. If individual
right goes with general preference, then the pillars of the
universe are uprooted, or we have no pillars worth mentioning. I
suppose that women generally prefer in-door to out-of-door
employments--labor that draws less upon muscle, and more upon
ingenuity and delicate-fingered facility; but that settles nothing
as to their right to engage in muscular toils in the open air. The
German peasant-woman has labored out-of-doors for many generations.
The result has been the gradual approach to each other of her hips
and shoulders, the extinguishment of that portion of her person known
as the waist, and some noticeable flatness over the cerebral organs;
but the German peasant-woman has her right, and that is worth any
sacrifice, you know. If she prefers hoeing cabbages to spinning flax,
who shall hinder her? If all women should prefer hoeing cabbages to
spinning flax, or any variety of yarn, who shall hinder them? So far
as man is concerned, woman has a right to grow her shoulders just as
near her hips, and wear a head as flat as she pleases. In short, the
general preference of women with respect to any thing decides no
question of individual right, whatever.

I will not admit that the general preference of women for private
life imposes any obligation upon any woman to abstain from public
life, or affects in any way her right to enter upon public life. I
am aware that one would not like to have one's wife or sister an
opera-singer, or a public dancer, or a preacher, or a doctor in
general practice, or a circus-rider, or a popular lecturer, or an
actress; but I am talking about the question of right. Most women
would shrink from war--from its fatigues, its dangers, its bloody
strife; but Joan of Arc asserted her right to go into war; and her
name is engrossed upon the scroll of fame. All women have the same
right to go to war that she had. I confess that I should like to
see a regiment of women six feet high, officered by women, all
dressed in Balmorals illustrating the national colors, marching to
battle in as close order as the peculiarity of their garments would
permit, and accompanied by a corps of cavalry in sidesaddles.
Such an assertion of woman's right would be grand beyond
description. I should not care to live on very intimate terms with
the colonel of the regiment, but I don't know as that has any thing
to do with this question.

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