The American Scene
THE AMERICAN SCENE
To Mrs. Anna Shipley Aet. 50.
GERMANTOWN, fan. 11, 1882 Oh, Anna, my heart just aches for the misery, pure unmitigated misery, there is in this world.
Thee sees I get below the surface and know.
And as I sit in those meetings, and see the "' old stagers '', as thee calls them, come in, I know of the awful sorrows that lie hidden in those apparently calm lives, and I could cry for every one of them.
Only the other day I looked at a row of them who happened to be sitting together and every one of them
— I knew, though no one else did, had husbands who made their lives, as far as the earthly side of it goes, one long torture.
What is invalidism compared to that?
No, beloved, suffering is the universal lot, and we may well be thankful, it is no worse for us individually than it is.
Oscar Wilde is a "' sell'.
He looks like two radishes set up on their thin ends.
He does say now and then a fine thing about art, just about what I would say about religion.
But his manner is so poor and his style so excessively "' Rose Matilda" that I believe everybody is disgusted.
Logan did not get one idea from him, but I got several.
For instance, he said— "To the true artist there is no time but the artistic moment; and no land but the land of beauty."
There is a meaning in this, but what could Logan make out of it?
And such a Logan!
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To Miss Priscilla Mounsey Aet. 50.
GERMANTOWN, jan. 8, 1882 The loneliness thou speaks of I know.
For do not think, darling, that it is confined to unmarried people.
It is just as real in lives that have plenty of human ties, husbands, and children and friends.
It is the loneliness of this world life, the loneliness of hearts that are made for union with God, but which have not yet fully realised it.
I believe it is inseparable from humanity.
I believe God has ordained it in the very nature of things by creating us for Himself alone.
And I believe He very rarely allows any human love to be satisfying, just that this loneliness may drive us to Him.
I have noticed that when a human love is_ satisfying something always comes in to spoil it.
Either there is death, or there is separation, or there is a change of feeling on one side or the other or something, and the heart is driven out of its human resting place on to God alone.
Sometimes God permits a little taste of a satisfying love to a human being, but I do not believe it ever lasts long.
I do not mean that the Love may not last, but separation comes in some way, and the perfect satisfaction is taken out of it. Now, darling, thy loneliness is not only because thou art unmarried and hast no very close human ties, it is the loneliness of a heart made for God but which has not yet reached its full satisfaction in Him.
Human love might' for awhile satisfy thee, but it would not last.
If thou can only see this and settle down to it, it will help thee very much.
Thou wilt give up, as I have, . any expectation of finding satisfaction in the creature, and will no longer suffer with disappointment at not
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finding it. And this will deliver thee from the worst part of the suffering of loneliness. Thee will accept it asa
God-given blessing meant only to drive thee to Himself.
Thy loneliness is only different in kind but not in fact from the loneliness of every human heart apart from God.
Thy circumstances are lonely, but thy loneliness of spirit does not come from these, it is the loneliness of humanity.
Therefore nothing but God can satisfy it.
No change of circumstances, no coming in of the dearest earthly ties even, not my continued presence even, could really satisfy for any length of time the hungry depths of thy soul.
I am speaking, darling, out of the depths of my own experience when I say this, and thee may believe me.
To Miss Priscilla Mounsey Aet. 50.
\ GERMANTOWN, jan. 22, 1882 If I were with thee, my precious child, I would make thee give up all future self-reflective acts.
By this I mean all thinking over either thy successes or thy failures.
'The moment the action is passed, forget it, and pass on to the next.
If thee does not understand just what I mean here, tell me, and I will explain more fully.
It is the rule of my life never to think over my past action.
This saves me all temptations to selfelation, and all temptations to discouragement, and enables me to live continually in the present moment with God.
In the evening I preached to a great crowded church in the city and had to go all alone.
I wanted thee, darling ! And of course I left my gum shoes in the pulpit, and had to be run after out to the street by somebody to bring them.
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REBEL To Mrs. Lawrence Aet. 50.
YOSEMITE VALLEY, Aug. 5, 1882
Carrie, do let us cultivate ourselves into being nice old people.
One secret I am sure is always to take the part of the young, and I intend to do this more and more.
Right or wrong, they shall have my sympathy, and help in the former.
I wonder if thee could not come to an understanding with thy mother.
I had to with mine. I just told her plain out that she must not interfere in my children's lives and I advised her not to criticise my management of them. I told her it would not change my management in the least, and it would only make unpleasant feelings.
She cried, and it was very hard for me and for her too, but it worked like a charm and was far happier for her as well as the rest of us ever afterwards.
That continual interfering ruins a household, and it gets worse as people grow older.
I think Mother really loved me better after that than before.
She laid down the responsibility of things, and it was a relief to her.
Is it not strange, Carrie, that in this world we cannot do really kind and Christlike things without getting into trouble?
We may do a thing in a business way and it turns out a great success; but do the same thing as a kindness, and it is sure to make a muss somehow.
I would love to open my house to all the distressed saints if I could, but if I did, it would just end in trouble, I suppose.
To Mrs. Henry Ford Barclay Aet. 50.
GERMANTOWN, Oct. 18, 1882 I do not think myself it is any harm to be proud of our children, when our pride takes the form of thank-
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fulness to our Heavenly Father for His goodness in Wars . giving us such lovely gifts.
But I may tell thee confidentially that I do not expect any of my children to live many years.
Whether this is because I have lost so many that I feel it natural they should die, or whether it is prophecy I do not know.
It does not worry me at all, but I confess it does make me indulgent.
The other day when I was fixing up Mary's room at College, she wanted me to buy her a leather covered arm chair.
I did not think she needed it, and was going to refuse, when she coughed.
Immediately I thought "' Now perhaps she will die of consumption, and then how I shall wish I had bought her the chair."
So forthwith, I bought it.
And when it came home I said, "' There, daughter, thee coughed up that chair."
I tell thee this that thee may know just what a foolish mother I am. I tell the children that Heavenly
Father will have to give them their discipline, for their earthly parents have not the heart to do it.
To Miss Priscilla Mounsey Aet. 51.
Jan. 10, 1883 Oh, darling, do pray that I may never be so far "left to myself' as to start a newspaper.
I am actually afraid that sometime I will, everybody seems so driven to it!
Lady Mount Temple is about as sweet as a human being can be.
But she is a spiritualist, and told me that nothing had saved her from absolute infidelity but the proofs she had seen in spiritualism of a life in another region.
I undertook to "labour" with her once, but she turned round and " laboured "' with me, and had so much Scripture on her side, that I concluded
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REBEL prudence was the better part of valour, and said .
/ nothing more.
Journal Letter to her friends Aet. 51.
MAINE, Aug. 8, 1883 I will write a Journal Letter for the information, edification, commiseration and admiration of my sisters and friends, and it may go the rounds.
Our yacht is a tiny steamer with a little cabin large enough for our party of ro to crowd into for our meals, and for the 7 females to sleep on the floor at night.
But: our first night out we decided to sleep on shore and viewed the putting up of our tent and the piling up of our fresh hemlock beds with complacency, and quite looked forward to the night.
But alas! we left the mosquitoes and '" minges" as the Guides call them, altogether out of our calculations, and it was a night of cruel disappointments.
Simple misery would best express our condition of mind and body.
We preferred the cabin floor thereafter to the softest bed of hemlock boughs that could be dreamed of.
For by pushing the yacht out away from the shore we escape all the insects of every kind.
Imagine a little cabin about 12 by 8 [feet] as the sleeping place of seven good sized " female women", 2 on tiny lounges and 5 on the floor, and you will know there could not be much spare room nor spare comfort.
But it is all fun to the children, and J grin and bear it.
One day we made a trip to a Logging Camp on the Nahhoodus river.
To get there, we had to walk 4 miles through the primeval forest over a rough logging road.
And I want you to imagine me pegging doggedly along, with a dark blue felt hat on my head, a
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staff in my hand, and groans in my heart, which I valiantly repressed lest I should spoil the fun of the rest.
The groans I have thus repressed at various times during this trip would have furnished David
Updegraff (that excitable Quaker preacher) with enough for several series of his revival meetings, I verily think.
I honestly do believe that this time zs the last time I shall take a camping-out trip.
For I find' my stiff knees and other accessories of old age make it too tiresome for even me to enjoy.
But I suppose you will not believe me ; and in fact, I hardly believe myself.
When summer comes, and the children get after me, I seem to lose all my backbone, and yield myself up
-an easy martyr.
We have had grand camp fires at our camp, and they are delightful, at least to all youthful minds.
They were attended with some drawbacks to me, 1 must confess.
In the first place, I had no comfortable place to sit, as logs without any backs to them, or stones are not the most luxurious of seats to matrons over 50 years of age.
And then the clash-ma-clabbers were not always of the most "filling" nature to a mature mind, and I had therefore nothing to do but to hold Quaker meeting between times, and wonder how soon I might dare to propose bed to the youthful party.
Towards the end of our trip we met Professor Phelps and his party, which consisted of Professor Farnham of Yale, and the Rev. Newman Smyth, the author of 'Old Faiths in a New Light", a grand book on Christian evolution.
I think I told you a few months ago that I wrote | to Newman Smyth asking him to explain, if he could, why God forbade Adam and Eve from coming to the knowledge of good and evil.
I said in my letter that
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL it seemed to me a necessary step in development, and that I should have thought God would have wanted them to come to it ; that they would have been mere animals otherwise.
He had never answered this letter so when I met him, I introduced myself and asked him if he had received it.
He said " Yes"', and that he had it in his trunk at Mount Kineo, meaning to answer it this summer, if he could see clearly what to say, but that as yet he did not.
He said he was thinking about it and felt sure he would have something to say concerning it soon.
He said no one had ever spoken to him on the subject before, though he had often wondered that they had not.
He promised to write me as soon as he had any light, and asked me to do the same.
He is a delightful man, and my short conversation with him interested me exceedingly.
But, oh, girls, what a guy I looked like.
It is painful to think of.
They were just going into the woods in all the neatness and cleanliness of new outfits, and we were just coming out, in rags and dirt, draggled and blowsy and forlorn.
For once, I did care for looks ; and I really feel as if the man would conclude I was not worth writing to after all, even if he should get an idea on the subject.
Clothes do make a difference, there is no denying it.
To her family Aet. 51.
MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MASS., Aug. 30, 1883
This is a place about like Ocean Grove, but the meetings must be much smaller, for the one last night was a very meagre affair.
The sermon was a denunciatory one that was calculated in my opinion to drive sinners away from the God depicted in it; and
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apparently it did, for with all their coaxing they could not get a single person old or young up to the altar.
The preacher asked all who loved Christ to hold up their hands and keep them up, and then he sent people down through the audience to speak to those who had not raised a hand and invite them forward.
But it was all of no avail, forward they would not go.
Then he drew a blood-curdling picture of the awfulness of thus rejecting God's offers of mercy.
He certainly tried the " terror "' plan, which David Updegraff says is the only effectual way, most fully and vigorously.
It fairly made me heartsick, and I wondered how God could endure it to be so misrepresented, but the text came to my mind " the times of this ignorance God winked at" and it comforted me.
Especially as I knew He had nothing much but ignorance to wink at in all of us all our lives long.
After the sermon, I was introduced to the preacher and determined to "upset his theology" by asking him my question.
So I said that I had noticed he had said in the course of his sermon that the thing which distinguishes a man from a beast is his free moral agency, and I asked him if this free moral agency did not necessitate a knowledge of good and evil?
'"' Most certainly it does," was his reply, "and that is just where man shows his divine origin," etc., etc.
Then I said, '' Why did God forbid man to come to that knowledge?
And why is it called a ' fall' when he did come to it?
Did not God Himself say after it was done ' Man has now become as one of us to know good and evil?"
For once the preacher was nonplussed, but rallying himself he said, "Oh, that only meant actually doing evil, it meant the experimental knowledge that comes from doing it.
Of course man knew about good and evil before that."
"Then," I said,
pp?
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REBEL *' was that experimental knowledge the kind God had, for He said man had come to His kind of knowledge."
** Yes," he replied, '' it was."
'' What," I said, "' had God actually done the wrong thing?"
'Oh, no, I did not mean that,"' he answered.
And then I took pity on him and said, "' Well, thanks, that is something to think about.
Good night," and walked off.
He called out after me, '"' I never thought of the subject before so have only answered your questions off hand."
* Well," I called back, " can of it now and see what will come to you about it.'
To her sister, Sarah Nicholson Aet. 53.
GERMANTOWN, Mar. 12, 1885 Thy letter dictated to Madge ! fell like a knell upon my heart.
And I immediately made up my mind that I would let thee die if thee could, and would not be so hatefully selfish as to try to keep thee in thy poor suffering body one day longer.
But what I shall do without thee I cannot tell ; for I assure thee, life looks like a dreary pilgrimage if I am to walk through the rest of it without my twin.
Poor Charles Coffin was here last night, and, oh Sarah, what trouble he has had and is having.
Then Rendel Harris was here too and he has just sent in his resignation, and it is probable that he and Helen will have to take up their march again, and find a new home and new work.
Then there was Robert—three doctrinaire men, all three quite eminent in the religious world, and (all three under a cloud.
It did seem rather odd.
I told them the trouble with them was 1 Madge Nicholson, her niece.
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that they had all been righteous overmuch ; they had not mixed in enough of the world in their religion.
Thee and I have had such a spice of the old Adam in all our religion that we have never been able to quite turn the corner into the region of extra piety.
I am sure that has been my salvation many a time.
We were made to be human beings here, and when people try to be anything else, they generally get into some sort of scrapes.
To her sister, Sarah Nicholson Aet. 53.
GERMANTOWN, Mar. 15, 1885 I fairly ache for one of our good old-fashioned powwows, when we have so often settled our own affairs and everybody else's, with the words at the end of all our talk, "' Well, I'm sure I don't know."
To her sister, Sarah Nicholson Aet. 53.
GERMANTOWN, Mar. 28, 1885 Sarah, I want to ask thee a solemn question.
Did thee ever one single time have thy Bank book balance and thy own cheque book balance agree exactly?
Do not tell, but Z never did.
To her friends Aet. 54.
LONDON, Feb. 7, 1886 Busy, busy, busy is the word that best describes my life in London.
Busy with house fixing, busy with people, busy with meetings, busy with a thousand fe
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REBEL interests of every kind.
Too busy in this busy London to get one tenth part of the things done that I want to do.
While I was at Broadlands a young niece of Lady Mount Temple's came in who is a London belle just now, and is in the midst of the gayest life possible.
I was very much interested in talking with her, and trying to get at the true inwardness of her life.
She had been at a Ball a few nights before and danced with Prince Edward and Prince George, the sons of the Prince of Wales, several times.
She said they were "very nice young fellows".
She is named Agnita, and is living with her sister Lady Hastings, her chaperone to all her dissipations.
I asked her how often she saw her chaperone during the evenings, and she said only when they arrived at a place and when they left, and that having chaperones was a perfect farce.
I asked how many Ball dresses she had to have for the "' Season "', and she said about six would do by freshening them up every time.
She said she did not dare to dance with any man more than twice, or remarks would be made, and the men, she said, were always afraid of being entrapped by the girls, and so avoided them.
This was what I had always heard, but could not believe ; but I suppose it must be true if such a girl as this says so.
Agnita said she often danced all night, from 11 until 5, and this, night after night, and she never felt tired and never was bored either.
I looked with amazement upon a human being who could give such a record of her life and think it all right.
And yet she seemed like a nice girl, too.
Well, lives are different !