Part 5

"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.

I was talking, however, about the right of women to sing bass, and must go on. It is declared by those who oppose this right that woman has no natural organs and aptitudes for bass. This is the strong-point of the enemy, but it amounts to nothing. If woman fails, apparently, in organs and aptitudes for this part, it only shows what long years of abuse will accomplish. Let us never forget in this discussion that woman is only a female man, that there is no such thing as "sex of soul," and that woman's vocal organs are built exactly like man's--as much like man's as her hands and her feet and her head are like his--a little smaller, perhaps,--that's all. It is a familiar fact, I presume, that the little colts born of South American dams take to ambling as their natural step, simply because the men of South America have taught the fathers and mothers of these colts to amble through uncounted generations. Now in North America we train horses to trot, and the consequence is that amblers are scarce, and in most cases have to be educated to their gait. This is the way in which nature adapts herself to popular want and popular usage. The large variety of apples which load our orchards were developed from the insignificant crab, and the peach was the child of the almond, or the almond of the peach--I have forgotten which. Now I suppose (with some feeble doubts about it) that man and woman started exactly together, that her singing treble better than she does bass results from usage, and that her singing treble rather than bass was purely a matter of accident at first. All analogy teaches me that if she had begun on bass, and the other part had been given to man, we should be hearing today of Ma'lle Patti, "the charming new baritone," and "the magnificent basso," Madame Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, while admiring crowds would toss flowers to Carl Formes, "the unapproachable soprano," or Mario, "the king of contraltos."