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women out of that anthropological past which is little enough to their credit is that men have persistently taken unto themselves most of the good things of life, leaving to women the particularly unpleasing and obscure and unrewarded labors. No doubt there is some truth in this, and there would be something to reprobate in it, if men had misbehaved themselves with conscious intent instead of being, like women themselves, the somewhat helpless creatures of civilizing forces that were stronger than they. Be that as it may, the curious thing is that, directly women get the chance to carry out to any extent their own idea of the privileges of life, they develop none of that taste for ease and irresponsibility which characterizes the normal man. Instead, they manifest a desire for self-expression, for relations with every interest and enterprise of the present, for all kinds of responsibilities and hardihoods, even up to the supreme hardihood of earning their own living (often without necessity). Therefore, if a man's club fairly expresses his idea of fun, and a woman's club stands for hers, it appears at once how vast and how melancholy is the superiority of the man in the gentle art of enjoying himself.

There are, to be sure, associations of men whose purpose is utilitarian, such as political clubs, or business or professional organizations, but no man befogs himself into thinking any recreation is to be sought or found in them. They fit into the general serious purpose of his life in some way, and he takes them as he does other duties, and makes as much or as little of them as possible. But a man's social club is another matter. It is a privilege and a pleasure, or it is nothing. It is based on the principle of exemption. A member goes to it or not as he likes, and if he goes he carries no burden of duties with him. He has something to drink or to smoke, or a game of billiards, if he wants them. He talks gossip, in a highly elevated and impersonal way, of course, or he thrusts his hands deep in his pockets and whistles at the window. If he stays away for three hundred and sixty-four days (and you may be sure he does stay away if he wants to), and comes back on the three hundred and sixty-fifth, he expects to find his chair just where he

left it, with the ash-tray and afternoon paper at its side, and he betrays an immediate sense of injury if he does not. He considers that one of the things he pays for is to have the club go on in his absence so that he may feel no jar on his return. He demands of it that it shall stand for that permanency and unbroken hospitality which make it as grateful to him in memory and suggestion as in the hour of enjoyment. Therefore he is likely to misbehave sadly toward the new man at the door (who is, no doubt, a vastly better servant than the old one), until the new face gets into his recollection, and ceases to look strange. In short, a man is disposed to take his clubs as he takes other good things in life—as easily as possible-feeling that they are quite his right, and that his enjoyment is sufficient reason for their existence.

IV

BUT the forces of the woman's club are largely centrifugal, and have a higher aim than mere enjoyment. They are for the enrichment of the individual largely as a means to the assistance and improvement of others. Ernesta herself has said it better than I should have dared—“ A club is an association for self-improvement and mutual helpfulness." Under "self-improvement" are to be included, I suppose, all those ambitions by reason of which ladies read and discuss papers, or listen to endless lectures upon endless subjects; while the "helpfulness " sums up all those benevolences, from cleaning our public highways to cleaning our private morals, for which women have developed so remarkable a taste within the past few years. All this is very noble, no doubt, and public-spirited, and quite in keeping with the ideas set forth thirty years ago by the first woman's club in the country, when gentle Alice Cary, sitting in the president's chair, pleaded for the club as a means to the wider and fuller development of women— "to teach them to think for themselves and get their opinions at first hand,

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disqualifying diffidence into womanly selfrespect and self-knowledge; to teach each one to make all work honorable by doing the share that falls to her, or that she may work out to herself agreeably to her own special aptitude cheerfully and faithfully, not going down to it, but bringing it up to her."

"Now," says Ernesta, triumphant, at my shoulder, "you must acknowledge that when that was written, there was room for mutual helpfulness among women. They had few amusements of an improving kind, and almost no stimulus to intellectual advancement; they were self-distrustful, incapable, dependent. The woman's club has done more than any other one thing to lift them out of all this, and now you want to cast discredit upon it!"

Upon my soul I do not. I only want to extend the usefulness of the woman's club; to suggest to it, since its impelling motives have always been missionary, a new and serious mission-the mission of being less serious.

66

Much of what Ernesta says is true. Allowing something for a fashion of thought and phrase set at that time by the earnest followers of Mr. Mill and his questionbegging book, these words of Alice Cary are sadly reminiscent of the need of that emancipation," which enthusiastic believers declare to be the special and triumphant movement of this "Woman's Century." But it may be well to admit to ourselves with candor that we seem to have arrived. The average American woman is to-day hardly to be suspected of "unwomanly self-distrust and disqualifying diffidence." She has no legal disabilities, she may enter any trade or profession she likes, have a college education, travel alone, ride a horse or a bicycle astride, and influence legislation greatly, if she cannot do it directly.

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Well, to blurt out the awful truth at once, I have never thought so highly of intellectual stimulation as I have of some other things in life. It is by no means clear, as yet, that the power of intellect upon life is of the greatest value; just as the history of human nature does not go to show that seeing clearly and doing well have been invariably associated. One man or one woman, with that extended and clarifying vision which is occasionally the flower of a well-informed mind, but is oftener the fruit of a beautiful spirit, is a greater power for all rightmindedness than the most active intellect, under the most conscientious stimulation. And as to the opportunity for culture offered in the woman's clubs, it seems to me that in a last analysis true culture eludes any conscious effort to acquire it. I have liked to think that culture, like all other graces of the mind and soul, is not attained by being too consciously sought. It droppeth like the gentle rain from Heaven, and in solitude and self-dependence. It is a "quiet, fireside thing," which neither needs nor desires the contribution of the exchange place. One gets it, as one gets grace from above, in the seclusion of one's closet, and as the guest of one's own soul. So far from ministering to real culture and scholarship, I make so bold as to say that no club, social or technical, male or female, bond or free, can do more than to receive the results of individual scholarship and culture, or offer more than mere stimulation. This of itself is good, if one does not make too much of it, and in small towns, where the wheels of life go slowly, where books are scarce and the resources of the individual are not abundantly developed, a woman's club is, no doubt, a necessary means to growth and diversion, even though the work undertaken be solemn enough to make a German university professor laugh. But that was a profound truth of Margaret Fuller's! "The soul that lives too much in relations becomes at last a stranger to its own resources."

V

To go back to that cum hoc, propter hoc assertion of Ernesta as to the efficiency of clubs in the advancement of women.

Something has certainly been going on among us women for the last sixty years, and at a galloping rate, too. Whether we have ever been in subjection or not, we are out of it now (greatly instigated and assisted thereto by a sex we have despised and arraigned), and we have got our heads. There seems to be little enough left for the women of the next century to accomplish in the way of mere emancipation, and to the glory of themselves and their sex. No wonder this has been called the Woman's Century! But it is well to remember that it has also been a marked century for a good many other persons. In it one race has almost disappeared from the face of the earth, another has been led out of slavery, and the blood of a dozen others has passed into our veins. It has been the century of democracy, of steam, of electricity, of the public schools, of the growth of big cities, of the mower and reaper, of the Hoe press. If it had not also been the century of woman's advancement, that fact would be really worth mentioning. The invention of machinery alone has affected women more than it has men, both by its substitution for handwork in the home and by drawing them at once from the safety and dignity of their own firesides into the factories and the great whirl of industrial life, thus making of them an economic problem whose value is still uncertain. It would be pleasant and self-satisfying to agree with Ernesta that we women and our clubs have done our own emancipating, but when we can sit down and think out this same conclusion in terms of half a dozen other agencies, I fear we shall have to regard the assumption as one of those fine but undigested ideas which seem to have a special attraction for our sex. The truth seems to be that, to the wonderful and wide opportunities of this century, women have responded with an eagerness, an insistence, and a disposition to carry things to extremes that causes some of the more conservative of us to stop and ask seriously whether this restless activity among women is not hectic rather than natural. For it must not be forgotten that there is an eagerness of disease as well as of health. I know two women who have nervous prostration at the

present hour. One of them has insomnia, and because she cannot sleep, writes innumerable papers for her club. She now has several pounds of wisdom, on widely varying subjects, locked up in her desk-all of which she regards as so much clear gain. The other explains that she is so restless as not to be able to sit still long enough to "do" her back hair; therefore she has learned how to carry on this enterprise while walking up and down the room, and the doctor threatens her with the horrors of the rest cure. Let us devoutly hope that the next century may not be Woman's also, lest it bring us even greater earnestness than this!

VI

FOR One of the special confusions of the situation is that we seem to have got what we want without knowing exactly what to do with it. We are still on nervous tiptoe; we make duties even of our pleasures, and we lack conspicuously in that sense of proportion-of the real values of things-which, if it be not essential to one's salvation in the next world, is certainly essential to one's salvation in this. We sow hurry, and reap indigestion; we cultivate our aspirations, and are landed in a typical case of neurasthenia; we tipple all kinds of intellectual stimulants-not to say intoxicants and then we wonder that our knowledge is not steadier and more serviceable. I sometimes wonder if there are not plenty of women to-day, conscientiously weighted down with the burdens of progress, who would gladly exchange all the privileges of "emancipation" for the exemptions of a lesser liberty. It was with no smile of selfgratulation that I came upon this passage not long ago in one of Hannah More's letters: "Women are from their domestic habits in possession of more leisure and tranquillity for religious pursuits, as well as secured from those difficulties and strong temptations to which men are exposed in the tumult of a bustling world. Their lives are more regular and uniform, less agitated by the passions, the businesses, the contentions, the shocks of opinions, and the opposition

of interests which divide society and convulse the world." If the average intelligent American woman with a family and a house to look after, one or two clubs to attend, a moderate interest in public affairs, and a reasonable social ambition, leads a life "less agitated by the passions, the businesses, the contentions, the shocks of opinions, and the opposition of interests," either my observation must be most defective or my experience most unfortu

nate.

Truly, to strike a brave and generous average between duty to one's self and desire for others is the highest task of wisdom. One wishes, of course, to be neither a shirk nor a parasite. Yet, surely, there should be somewhere in life, occasional garden - spots wherein one may walk lightly, and with ease of heart concerning one's self and one's neighbor, without deliberate and selfish purpose of self-improvement or any impertinence of bestowal upon others. And if, in the unambitious intercourse of friends, with sympathy and a happy certainty of response, there be not such a green and shady spot, I know not, indeed, where to look for one. Moreover, it is just this ease in intercourse of which women stand most in need. If our doctrine of life must be heroic, then the tension must be the oftener relaxed. If we women needed stimulation and opportunity forty years ago, we need to-day strength more than stimulation, and capacity rather than opportunity. We need repose, leisure, and that sense of ample self-possession which comes from the habit of staying at home in one's mind.

Here is the higher mission of the woman's club-to give women the occasional chance to rest, both in mind and body.

For such a club as this, developed along the lines of ease, of relaxation, of pure vacuity if one wished, with exemption, and not responsibility, as its first privilege, above all, with abundant inclination in the souls of its members toward nothing but that profitable idleness which, as Mr. Stevenson says, consists not so much in doing nothing as in doing a great deal that is not usually recognized as work-for

such a club I would be almost willing to become a propagandist! For here no insidious desire for work would be allowed to masquerade under the guise of recreation, and no amount of recreation would serve to carry any ulterior purpose of selfimprovement. There would be luncheon. for luncheon's sake, and women would sit down to eat it, greedy and unashamed. And you may be sure there would be no papers read, and no members fined because they were not there to listen to them. Thus a normal and natural intercourse would be promoted in which the self-improvement, though incidental and half unconscious, would be real and permanent, because developed upon the plane on which one customarily dwells. Ernesta tells me that there is a growing desire among the wealthy and influential women's clubs to build club-houses for themselves, and when I hail this as special cause for congratulation, since all these higher uses of the club will begin with permanency in residence, she says that none of the clubhouses she knows anything about are especially designed for the frivolous purposes I have outlined. "There isn't a restaurant," she explains, "or such lounging-rooms as men enjoy and as you seem to consider the only things worth having about a club. There are rooms for meetings of different kinds, from a large auditorium to small committee-rooms. There is a writing-room, usually, and a library, and sometimes a free kindergarten or a working-girls' club has quarters under its roof."

Well, I am sorry to see so much money only half spent, and I still hope for the day when some woman's club shall rise to a new declaration of dependence and confess that it is tired of being instructed and wants to be amused; when my dear, hurried, clubbed sisters may be willing to take their "little gift of being clean from God, not haggling for a better;" content even in their limitations; satisfied to know less and be more; glad to let the savor of happy intercourse (though without profit) have its rightful place in that complete living which would not be complete without it.

"THE DURKET SPERRET"

VI

By Sarah Barnwell Elliott

Author of "Jerry"

Is she wronged? To the rescue of her honor,
My heart!

Is she poor?What costs it to become a donor?
Merely an earth to cleave-a sea to part.
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon
her!

"DOCK WILSON ! Mrs. Wilson stood in the open door of her small log-house. Dock turned and looked from where he sat on the wood-pile whittling, but did not answer, and she raised her voice, "Dinner's done, an' I wish you'd come !"

Dock went on with the whittling, whistling softly. He was tall and fair, with a grave, kind face, and his eyes were true. His stepmother, Lizer Wilson, ruled him "to the last notch," people said, but Dock had his own code and went his quiet way, with few words or friends. He had not been in the Cove long. When old man Wilson was dying, he sent for this son; and since his father's death Dock had worked faithfully for his stepmother and her two boys.

In Mrs. Warren's eyes he was contemptible. "Any man that kin stan' Lizer Wilson must hev cotton insides," she would say, conclusively, and Hannah began to think of Dock with sympathy.

Just now he took his own time about obeying Mrs. Wilson's call. He was in deep thought that he seemed to work into the butter-paddle he was fashioning, whistling softly. He regarded it with some satisfaction, as he shut his knife and dropped it into his cavernous pocket.

"A piece o' glass 'll make hit smooth." He put it away in the hollow of a tree near by, and went into the house.

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"If Hannah Warren hes to peddle to pay me, she kin pay what she hes a mind to pay. Hannah is a Sunday gal "An' me an' the boys 'thout rags to ourn backs," rising, as if to keep up with her voice; "an' you eatin' like a horse! I ain't a-goin' to stand hit, Dock Wilson, I tell you I ain't! An' thet dratted Hannah Warren thinkin' herself too good to go alonger me. You're a fool-a deadgone fool! I ain't a-goin' to stand hit!"

Dock drew his shirt-sleeve slowly across his bearded lips as he rose. Mrs. Wilson seized his arm. "Is you deef?" she cried, shrilly. Dock looked down on her.

"No," he answered, deliberately, "I ain't deef; an' I b'lieve you could raise the dead, Lizer, much less make the deef hear."

The woman swung away from him. "I sw'ar you'll wish yerseff dead if you don't make a good trade,' she said; "I sw'ar you will."

"Thet won't be nothin' new." Then Dock went to a little shanty he had built for himself, where Lizer was denied entrance. He pushed up the fire, and, sit"'Pears like you ain't much honggry," ting down, lighted his pipe. Hannah Warwas Mrs. Wilson's greeting.

"I dunno," Dock answered, "I'll try an' see." For a few moments there was silence; then, eying Dock closely, Mrs. Wilson asked:

"What did Hannah Warren want?"

ren!

Her worth had dawned on him gradually. He was first struck by the difference between her and the other women he knew. She reminded him of a pool of water deep under the rocks, where there was no sound of trickling stream—no rip

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