To a Violin
(Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)
What flights of years have gone to fashion thee,
My violin! What centuries have wrought
Thy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taught
Thy music to awake in ecstasy
Beyond our human dreams? Thy melody
Is resurrection. Every buried thought
Of singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraught
With tender message, or of sobbing sea,
Lives once again. The tempest’s solemn roll
Is in thy passion sleeping, till the king
Whose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.
The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,
The crashing chords of thunder, and the whole
Vast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!
The Old Maid
One of the best things the last century has done for woman is to make single-blessedness appear very tolerable indeed, even if it be not actually desirable.
The woman who didn’t marry used to be looked down upon as a sort of a “leftover” without a thought, apparently, that she may have refused many a chance to change her attitude toward the world. But now, the “bachelor maid” is welcomed everywhere, and is not considered eccentric on account of her oneness.
With the long records of the divorce courts before their eyes, it is not very unusual for the younger generation of women nowadays deliberately to choose spinsterhood as their independent lot in life.
A girl said the other day: “It’s no use to say that a woman can’t marry if she wants to. Look around you, and see the women who have married, and then ask yourself if there is anybody who can’t!”
This is a great truth very concisely stated. It is safe to say that no woman ever reached twenty-five years of age, and very few have passed twenty, without having an opportunity to become somebody’s mate.
A very small maiden with very bright eyes once came to her mother with the question: “Mamma, do you think I shall ever have a chance to get married?”
And the mother answered: “Surely you will, my child; the woods are full of offers of marriage – no woman can avoid them.”
And ere many years had passed the maiden had learned that the wisdom of her mother’s prophecy was fully vindicated.
Every one knows that a woman needs neither beauty, talent, nor money to win the deepest and sincerest love that man is capable of giving.
Single life is, with rare exceptions, a matter of choice and not of necessity; and while it is true that a happy married life is the happiest position for either man or woman, there are many things which are infinitely worse than being an old maid, and chiefest among these is marrying the wrong man!
The modern woman looks her future squarely in the face and decides according to her best light whether her happiness depends upon spinsterhood or matrimony. This decision is of course influenced very largely by the quality of her chances in either direction, but if the one whom she fully believes to be the right man comes along, he is likely to be able to overcome strong objections to the married state. If love comes to her from the right source, she takes it gladly; otherwise she bravely goes her way alone, often showing the world that some of the most mother-hearted women are not really mothers. Think of the magnificent solitude of such women as Florence Nightingale and our own splendid Frances Willard! Who shall say that these, and thousands of others of earth’s grandest souls, were not better for their single-heartedness in the service of humanity?
A writer in a leading journal recently said: “The fact that a woman remains single is a tribute to her perception. She gains an added dignity from being hard to suit.”
This, from the pen of a man, is somewhat of a revelation, in the light of various masculine criticisms concerning superfluous women. No woman is superfluous. God made her, and put her into this world to help her fellow-beings. There is a little niche somewhere which she, and she alone, can fill. She finds her own completeness in rounding out the lives of others.
It has been said that the average man may be piloted through life by one woman, but it must be admitted that several of him need somewhere near a dozen of the fair sex to wait upon him at the same time. His wife and mother are kept “hustling,” while his “sisters and his aunts” are likely to be “on the keen jump” from the time his lordship enters the house until he leaves it!
But to return to the “superfluous woman,” – although we cannot literally return to her because she does not exist. Of the “old maid” of to-day, it is safe to say that she has her allotted plane of usefulness. She isn’t the type our newspaper brethren delight to caricature. She doesn’t dwell altogether upon the subject of “woman’s sphere,” which, by the way, comes very near being the plane of the earth’s sphere, and she need not, for her position is now well recognised.
She doesn’t wear corkscrew curls and hideous reform garments. She is a dainty, feminine, broad-minded woman, and a charming companion. Men are her friends, and often her lovers, in her old age as well as in her youth.
Every old maid has her love story, a little romance that makes her heart young again as she dreams it over in the firelight, and it calls a happy smile to the faded face.
Or, perhaps, it is the old, sad story of a faithless lover, or a happiness spoiled by gossips – or it may be the scarcely less sad story of love and death.
Ibsen makes two of his characters, a young man and woman who love each other, part voluntarily on the top of a high mountain in order that they may be enabled to keep their high ideals and uplifting love for each other.
So the old maid keeps her ideals, not through fulfilment, but through memory, and she is far happier than many a woman who finds her ideal surprisingly and disagreeably real.
The bachelor girl and the bachelor man are much on the increase. Marriage is not in itself a failure, but the people who enter unwisely into this solemn covenant too often are not only failures, but bitter disappointments to those who love them best.
Life for men and women means the highest usefulness and happiness, for the terms are synonymous, neither being able to exist without the other.
The model spinster of to-day is philanthropic. She is connected, not with innumerable charities, but with a few well-chosen ones. She gives freely of her time and money in many ways, where her left hand scarcely knoweth what her right doeth, and the record of her good works is not found in the chronicles of the world.
She is literary, musical, or artistic. She is a devoted and loyal club member, and is well informed on the leading topics of the day, while the resources of her well-balanced mind are always at the service of her friends.
And when all is said and done, the highest and truest life is within the reach of us all. Doing well whatever is given us to do will keep us all busy, and married or single, no woman has a right to be idle. The old maid may be womanly and mother-hearted as well as the wife and mother.
The Spinster’s Rubaiyat
I
Wake! For the hour of hope will soon take flight
And on your form and features leave a blight;
Since Time, who heals full many an open wound,
More oft than not is impolite.
II
Before my relatives began to chide,
Methought the voice of conscience said inside:
“Why should you want a husband, when you have
A cat who seldom will at home abide?”
III
And, when the evening breeze comes in the door,
The lamp smokes like a chimney, only more;
And yet the deacon of the church
Is telling every one my parrot swore.
IV
Behold, my aunt into my years inquires,
Then swiftly with my parents she conspires,
And in the family record changes dates —
In that same book that says all men are liars.
V
Come, fill the cup and let the kettle sing!
What though upon my finger gleams no ring,
Save that cheap turquoise that I bought myself?
The coming years a gladsome change may bring.
VI
Here, minion, fill the steaming cup that clears
The skin I will not have exposed to jeers,
And rub this wrinkle vigorously until
The maddening crow’s-foot wholly disappears.
VII
And let me don some artificial bloom,
And turn the lamps down low, and make a gloom
That spreads from library to hall and stair;
Thus do I look my best – but ah, for whom?
The Rights of Dogs
We hear a great deal about the “rights of men” and still more, perhaps, about the “rights of women,” but few stop to consider those which properly belong to the friend and companion of both – the dog.
According to our municipal code, a dog must be muzzled from June 1st to September 30th. The wise men who framed this measure either did not know, or did not stop to consider, that a dog perspires and “cools off” only at his mouth.
Man and the horse have tiny pores distributed all over the body, but in the dog they are found only in the tongue.
Any one who has had a fever need not be told what happened when these pores ceased to act; what, then, must be the sufferings of a dog on a hot day, when, securely muzzled, he takes his daily exercise?
Even on the coolest days, the barbarous muzzle will fret a thoroughbred almost to insanity, unless, indeed, he has brains to free himself, as did a brilliant Irish setter which we once knew. This wise dog would run far ahead of his human guardian, and with the help of his forepaws slip the strap over his slender head, then hide the offending muzzle in the gutter, and race onward again. When the loss was discovered, it was far too late to remedy it by any search that could be instituted.
And still, without this uncomfortable encumbrance, it is unsafe for any valuable dog to be seen, even on his own doorsteps, for the “dog-catcher” is ever on the look-out for blue-blooded victims.
The homeless mongrel, to whom a painless death would be a blessing, is left to get a precarious living as best he may from the garbage boxes, and spread pestilence from house to house, but the setter, the collie, and the St. Bernard are choked into insensibility with a wire noose, hurled into a stuffy cage, and with the thermometer at ninety in the shade, are dragged through the blistering city, as a sop to that Cerberus of the law which demands for its citizens safety from dogs, and pays no attention to the lawlessness of men.
The dog tax which is paid every year is sufficient to guarantee the interest of the owner in his dog. Howells has pitied “the dogless man,” and Thomas Nelson Page has said somewhere that “some of us know what it is to be loved by a dog.”
Countless writers have paid tribute to his fidelity and devotion, and to the constant forgiveness of blows and neglect which spring from the heart of the commonest cur.
The trained hunter, who is as truly a sportsman as the man who brings down the birds he finds, can be easily fretted into madness by the injudicious application of the muzzle.
The average dog is a gentleman and does not attack people for the pleasure of it, and it is lamentably true that people who live in cities often find it necessary to keep some sort of a dog as a guardian to life and property. In spite of his loyalty, which every one admits, the dog is an absolute slave. Men with less sense, and less morality, constitute a court from which he has no appeal.
Four or five years of devotion to his master’s interests, and four or five years of peaceful, friendly conduct, count for absolutely nothing beside the perjured statement of some man, or even woman, who, from spite against the owner, is willing to assert, “the dog is vicious.”
“He is very imprudent, a dog is,” said Jerome K. Jerome. “He never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or wrong – never bothers as to whether you are going up or down life’s ladder – never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, saint or sinner. You are his pal. That is enough for him, and come luck or misfortune, good repute or bad, honour or shame, he is going to stick to you, to comfort you, guard you, and give his life for you, if need be – foolish, brainless, soulless dog!
“Ah! staunch old friend, with your deep, clear eyes, and bright quick glances that take in all one has to say, before one has time to speak it, do you know you are only an animal and have no mind?
“Do you know that dull-eyed, gin-sodden lout leaning against the post out there is immeasurably your intellectual superior? Do you know that every little-minded selfish scoundrel, who never had a thought that was not mean and base – whose every action is a fraud and whose every utterance is a lie; do you know that these are as much superior to you as the sun is to the rush-light, you honourable, brave-hearted, unselfish brute?
“They are men, you know, and men are the greatest, noblest, wisest, and best beings in the universe. Any man will tell you that.”
Are the men whom we elect to public office our masters or our servants? If the former, let us change our form of government; if the latter, let us hope that from somewhere a little light may penetrate their craniums and that they may be induced to give the dog a chance.
Twilight
The birds were hushed into silence,
The clouds had sunk from sight,
And the great trees bowed to the summer breeze
That kissed the flowers good-night.
The stars came out in the cool still air,
From the mansions of the blest,
And softly, over the dim blue hills,
Night came to the world with rest.
Women’s Clothes in Men’s Books
When asked why women wrote better novels than men, Mr. Richard Le Gallienne is said to have replied, more or less conclusively, “They don’t”; thus recalling Punch’s famous advice to those about to marry.
Happily there is no segregation in literature, and masculine and feminine hands alike may dabble in fiction, as long as the publishers are willing.
If we accept Zola’s dictum to the effect that art is nature seen through the medium of a temperament, the thing is possible to many, though the achievement may differ both in manner and degree. For women have temperament – too much of it – as the hysterical novelists daily testify.
The gentleman novelist, however, prances in boldly, where feminine feet well may fear to tread, and consequently has a wider scope for his writing. It is not for a woman to mingle in a barroom brawl and write of the thing as she sees it. The prize-ring, the interior of a cattle-ship, Broadway at four in the morning – these and countless other places are forbidden by her innate refinement as well as by the Ladies’ Own, and all the other aunties who have taken upon themselves the guardianship of the Home with a big H.
Fancy the outpouring of scorn upon the luckless offender’s head if one should write to the Manners and Morals Department of the Ladies’ Own as follows: “Would it be proper for a lady novelist, in search of local colour and new experiences, to accept the escort of a strange man at midnight if he was too drunk to recognise her afterward?” Yet a man in the same circumstances would not hesitate to put an intoxicated woman into a sea-going cab, and would plume himself for a year and a day upon his virtuous performance.
All things are considered proper for a man who is about to write a book. Like the disciple of Mary McLane who stole a horse in order to get the emotions of a police court, he may delve deeply not only into life, but into that under-stratum which is not spoken of, where respectable journals circulate.
Everything is fish that comes into his net. If conscientious, he may even undertake marriage in order to study the feminine personal equations at close range. Woman’s emotions, singly and collectively, are pilloried before his scientific gaze. He cowers before one problem, and one only – woman’s clothes!
Carlyle, after long and painful thought, arrives at the conclusion that “cut betokens intellect and talent; colour reveals temper and heart.”
This reminds one of the language of flowers, and the directions given for postage-stamp flirtation. If that massive mind had penetrated further into the mysteries of the subject, we might have been told that a turnover collar indicated that the woman was a High Church Episcopalian who had embroidered two altar cloths, and that suède gloves show a yielding but contradictory nature.
Clothes are, undoubtedly, indices of character and taste, as well as a sop to conventionality, but this only when one has the wherewithal to browse at will in the department store. Many a woman with ermine tastes has only a rabbit-fur pocket-book, and thus her clothes wrong her in the sight of gods and women, though men know nothing about it.
Once upon a time there was a notion to the effect that women dressed to please men, but that idea has long since been relegated to the limbo of forgotten things.
Not one man in a thousand can tell the difference between Brussels point at thirty dollars a yard, and imitation Valenciennes at ten or fifteen cents a yard which was one of the “famous Friday features in the busy bargain basement.”
But across the room, yea, even from across the street, the eagle eye of another woman can unerringly locate the Brussels point and the mock Valenciennes.
A man knows silk by the sound of it and diamonds by the shine. He will say that his heroine “was richly dressed in silk.” Little does he wot of the difference between taffeta at eighty-five cents a yard and broadcloth at four dollars. Still less does he know that a white cotton shirt-waist represents financial ease, and a silk waist of festive colouring represents poverty, since it takes but two days to “do up” a white shirt-waist in one sense, and thirty or forty cents to do it up in the other!
One listens with wicked delight to men’s discourse upon woman’s clothes. Now and then a man will express his preference for a tailored gown, as being eminently simple and satisfactory. Unless he is married and has seen the bills for tailored gowns, he also thinks they are inexpensive.
It is the benedict, wise with the acquired knowledge of the serpent, who begs his wife to get a new party gown and let the tailor-made go until next season. He also knows that when the material is bought, the expense has scarcely begun, whereas the ignorant bachelor thinks that the worst is happily over.
In A Little Journey through the World Mr. Warner philosophised thus: “How a woman in a crisis hesitates before her wardrobe, and at last chooses just what will express her innermost feelings!”
If all a woman’s feelings were to be expressed by her clothes, the benedicts would immediately encounter financial shipwreck. On account of the lamentable scarcity of money and closets, one is eternally adjusting the emotion to the gown.
Some gown, seen at the exact psychological moment, fixes forever in a man’s mind his ideal garment. Thus we read of blue calico, of pink-and-white print, and more often still, of white lawn. Mad colour combinations run riot in the masculine fancy, as in the case of a man who boldly described his favourite costume as “red, with black ruffles down the front!”
Of a hat, a man may be a surpassingly fine critic, since he recks not of style. Guileful is the woman who leads her liege to the millinery and lets him choose, taking no heed of the price and the attendant shock until later.
A normal man is anxious that his wife shall be well dressed because it shows the critical observer that his business is a great success. After futile explorations in the labyrinth, he concerns himself simply with the fit, preferring always that the clothes of his heart’s dearest shall cling to her as lovingly as a kid glove, regardless of the pouches and fulnesses prescribed by Dame Fashion.
In the writing of books, men are at their wits’ end when it comes to women’s clothes. They are hampered by no restrictions – no thought of style or period enters into their calculations, and unless they have a wholesome fear of the unknown theme, they produce results which further international gaiety.
Many an outrageous garment has been embalmed in a man’s book, simply because an attractive woman once wore something like it when she fed the novelist. Unbalanced by the joy of the situation, he did not accurately observe the garb of the ministering angel, and hence we read of “a clinging white gown” in the days of stiff silks and rampant crinoline; of “the curve of the upper arm” when it took five yards for a pair of sleeves, and of “short walking skirts” during the reign of bustles and trains!
In The Blazed Trail, Mr. White observes that his heroine was clad in brown which fitted her slender figure perfectly. As Hilda had yellow hair, “like corn silk,” this was all right, and if the brown was of the proper golden shade, she was doubtless stunning when Thorpe first saw her in the forest. But the gown could not have fitted her as the sheath encases the dagger, for before the straight-front corsets there were the big sleeves, and still further back were bustles and bouffant draperies. One does not get the impression that The Blazed Trail was placed in the days of crinolines, but doubtless Hilda’s clothes did not fit as Mr. White seems to think they did.
That strenuous follower of millinery, Mr. Gibson, might give lessons to his friend, Mr. Davis, with advantage to the writer, if not to the artist. In Captain Macklin, the young man’s cousin makes her first appearance in a thin gown, and a white hat trimmed with roses, reminding the adventurous captain of a Dresden statuette, in spite of the fact that she wore heavy gauntlet gloves and carried a trowel. The lady had been doing a hard day’s work in the garden. No woman outside the asylum ever did gardening in such a costume, and Mr. Davis evidently has the hat and gown sadly mixed with some other pleasant impression.
The feminine reader immediately hides Mr. Davis’ mistake with the broad mantle of charity, and in her own mind clothes Beatrice properly in a short walking skirt, heavy shoes, shirt-waist, old hat tied down over the ears with a rumpled ribbon, and a pair of ancient masculine gloves, long since discarded by their rightful owner. Thus does lovely woman garden, except on the stage and in men’s books.
In The Story of Eva, Mr. Payne announces that Eva climbed out of a cab in “a fawn-coloured jacket,” conspicuous by reason of its newness, and a hat “with an owl’s head upon it!”
The jacket was possibly a coat of tan covert cloth with strapped seams, but it is the startling climax which claims attention. An owl! Surely not, Mr. Payne! It may have been a parrot, for once upon a time, before the Audubon Society met with widespread recognition, women wore such things, and at afternoon teas where many fair ones were gathered together the parrot garniture was not without significance. But an owl’s face, with its glaring glassy eyes, is too much like a pussy cat’s to be appropriate, and one could not wear it at the back without conveying an unpleasant impression of two-facedness, if the coined word be permissible.
Still the owl is no worse than the trimming suggested by a funny paper. The tears of mirth come yet at the picture of a hat of rough straw, shaped like a nest, on which sat a full-fledged Plymouth Rock hen, with her neck proudly, yet graciously curved. Perhaps Mr. Payne saw the picture and forthwith decided to do something in the same line, but there is a singular inappropriateness in placing the bird of Minerva upon the head of poor Eva, who made the old, old bargain in which she had everything to lose, and nothing save the bitterest experience to gain. A stuffed kitten, so young and innocent that its eyes were still blue and bleary, would have been more appropriate on Eva’s bonnet, and just as pretty.
In The Fortunes of Oliver Horn, Margaret Grant wears a particularly striking costume:
“The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and the leather as tough.
“Her blouse was of grey flannel, belted to the waist by a cotton saddle-girth, white and red, and as broad as her hand. The tam-o-shanter was coarse and rough, evidently home-made, and not at all like McFudd’s, which was as soft as the back of a kitten and without a seam.”
With all due respect to Mr. Smith, one must insist that Margaret’s shoes were all right as regards material and build. She would have been more comfortable if they had been “high-necked” shoes, and, in that case, the yarn hosiery would not have troubled him, but that is a minor detail. The quibble comes at the belt, and knowing that Margaret was an artist, we must be sure that Mr. Smith was mistaken. It may have been one of the woven cotton belts, not more than two inches wide, which, for a dizzy moment, were at the height of fashion, and then tottered and fell, but a “saddle-girth” – never!
In that charming morceau, The Inn of the Silver Moon, Mr. Viele puts his heroine into plaid stockings and green knickerbockers – an outrageous costume truly, even for wheeling.
As if recognising his error, and, with veritable masculine stubbornness, refusing to admit it, Mr. Viele goes on to say that the knickerbockers were “tailor-made!” And thereby he makes a bad matter very much worse.
In The Wings of the Morning, Iris, in spite of the storm through which the Sirdar vainly attempts to make its way, appears throughout in a “lawn dress” – white, undoubtedly, since all sorts and conditions of men profess to admire white lawn!
How cold the poor girl must have been! And even if she could have been so inappropriately gowned on shipboard, she had plenty of time to put on a warm and suitable tailor-made gown before she was shipwrecked. This is sheer fatuity, for any one with Mr. Tracy’s abundant ingenuity could easily have contrived ruin for the tailored gown in time for Iris to assume masculine garb and participate bravely in that fearful fight on the ledge.
Whence, oh whence, comes this fondness for lawn? Are not organdies, dimities, and embroidered muslins fully as becoming to the women who trip daintily through the pages of men’s books? Lawn has been a back number for many a weary moon, and still we read of it!
“When in doubt, lead trumps,” might well be paraphrased thus: “When in doubt, put her into white lawn!” Even “J. P. M.,” that gentle spirit to whom so many hidden things were revealed, sent his shrewish “Kate” off for a canter through the woods in a white gown, and, if memory serves, it was lawn!
In The Master, Mr. Zangwill describes Eleanor Wyndwood as “the radiant apparition of a beautiful woman in a shimmering amber gown, from which her shoulders rose dazzling.”
So far so good. But a page or two farther on, that delightful minx, Olive Regan, wears “a dress of soft green-blue cut high, with yellow roses at the throat.” One wonders whether Mr. Zangwill ever really saw a woman in any kind of a gown “with yellow roses at the throat,” or whether it is but the slip of an overstrained fancy. The fact that he has married since writing this gives a goodly assurance that by this time he knows considerably more about gowns.
Still there is always a chance that the charm may not work, for Mr. Arthur Stringer, who has been reported as being married to a very lovely woman, takes astonishing liberties in The Silver Poppy:
“She floated in before Reppellier, buoyant, smiling, like a breath of open morning itself, a confusion of mellow autumnal colours in her wine-coloured gown, and a hat of roses and mottled leaves.
“Before she had as much as drawn off her gloves – and they were always the most spotless of white gloves – she glanced about in mock dismay, and saw that the last of the righting up had already been done.”
Later, we read that the artist pinned an American Beauty upon her gown, then shook his head over the colour combination and took it off. If the American Beauty jarred enough for a man to notice it, the dress must have been the colour of claret, or Burgundy, rather than the clear soft gold of sauterne.
This brings us up with a short turn before the hat. What colour were the roses? Surely they were not American Beauties, and they could not have been pink. Yellow roses would have been a fright, so they must have been white ones, and a hat covered with white roses is altogether too festive to wear in the morning. The white gloves also would have been sadly out of place.
What a comfort it would be to all concerned if the feminine reader could take poor Cordelia one side and fix her up a bit! One could pat the artistic disorder out of her beautiful yellow hair, help her out of her hideous clothes into a grey tailor-made, with a shirt-waist of mercerised white cheviot, put on a stock of the same material, give her a “ready-to-wear” hat of the same trig-tailored quality, and, as she passed out, hand her a pair of grey suède gloves which exactly matched her gown.
Though grey would be more becoming, she might wear tan as a concession to Mr. Stringer, who evidently likes yellow.
In the same book, we find a woman who gathers up her “yellow skirts” and goes down a ladder. It might have been only a yellow taffeta drop-skirt under tan etamine, but we must take his word for it, as we did not see it and he did.
As the Chinese keep the rat tails for the end of the feast, the worst clothes to be found in any book must come last by way of climax. Mr. Dixon, in The Leopard’s Spots, has easily outdone every other knight of the pen who has entered the lists to portray women’s clothes. Listen to the inspired description of Miss Sallie’s gown!
“She was dressed in a morning gown of a soft red material, trimmed with old cream lace. The material of a woman’s dress had never interested him before. He knew calico from silk, but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy white, with the bodice cut low, showing the lines of her beautiful white shoulders, and the great mass of dark hair rising in graceful curves from her full round neck, heightened her beauty to an extraordinary degree.
“As she walked, the clinging folds of her dress, outlining her queenly figure, seemed part of her very being, and to be imbued with her soul. He was dazzled with the new revelation of her power over him.”
The fact that she goes for a ride later on, “dressed in pure white,” sinks into insignificance beside this new and original creation of Mr. Dixon’s. A red morning gown, trimmed with cream lace, cut low enough to show the “beautiful white shoulders” – ye gods and little fishes! Where were the authorities, and why was not “Miss Sallie” taken to the detention hospital, pending an inquiry into her sanity?