BY FRANCES E. WILLARD,
President National W. C. T. U.

CHAPTER III.

But—as I was saying when the stern old gentleman was pleased to interrupt me—I am to give you reasons why you are to cultivate your specialty. And I claim, first (as has been implied already), that you should do this because you have a specialty to cultivate. (This, on the principle of the old cook book, which begins its “Recipe for Broiling Hares,” with the straightforward exhortation: “First catch your hare.”) The second reason is, because you will then work more easily and naturally, with the least friction, with the greatest pleasure to yourself and the most advantage to those around you. “Paddle your own canoe,” but paddle it right out into the swift, sure current of your strongest, noblest inclination. Thirdly, by this means you will get into your cranium, in place of aimless reverie, a resolute aim. This is where your brother has had his chief intellectual advantage over you. Quicker of wit than he, far less unwieldy in your mental processes, swifter in judgment, and every whit as accurate, you still have felt, when measuring intellectual swords with him, that yours was in your left hand, that his was in his right; and you have felt this chiefly, as I believe, because from the dawn of thought in his sturdy young brain, he has been taught that he must have a definite aim in life if he ever meant to swell the ranks of the somebodies upon this planet, while you have been just as sedulously taught that the handsome prince might whirl past your door “’most any day,” lift you to a seat beside him in his golden chariot and carry you off to his castle in Spain.

And of course you dream about all this; why shouldn’t you? Who wouldn’t? But, my dear friends, dreaming is the poorest of all grindstones on which to sharpen one’s wits. And to my thinking, the rust of woman’s intellect, the canker of her heart, the “worm i’ the bud” of her noblest possibilities has been this aimless reverie; this rambling of the thoughts; this vagueness, which when it is finished, is vacuity. Let us turn our gaze inward, those of us who are not thorough-going workers with brain or hand. What do we find? A wild chaos; a glimmering nebula of fancies; an insipid brain-soup where a few lumps of thought swim in a watery gravy of dreams, and, as nothing can come of nothing, what wonder if no brilliancy of achievement promises to flood our future with its light? Few women, growing up under the present order of things, can claim complete exemption from this grave intellectual infirmity.

Somehow one falls so readily into a sort of mental indolence; one’s thoughts flow onward in a pleasant, gurgling stream, a sort of intellectual lullaby, coming no-whence, going no-whither. Only one thing can help you if you are in this extremity, and that is what your brothers have—the snag of a fixed purpose in this stream of thought. Around this will soon cluster the dormant ideas, hopes, and possibilities that have thus far floated at random. The first one in the idle stream of my life was the purpose, lodged there by my life’s best friend, my mother, to have an education. Then, later on, Charlotte Bronte’s “Shirley” was a tremendous snag in the stream to me. Around that brave and steadfast character clustered a thousand new resolves. I was never quite so steeped in reveries again, though my temptations were unusual; my “Forest Home,” by a Wisconsin river, offering few reminders to my girlish thought, of the wide, wide world and its sore need of workers. The next jog that I got was from the intellectual attrition of a gifted and scholarly woman who asked me often to her home and sent me away laden with volumes of Wordsworth, Niebuhr and the British essayists. Margaret Fuller Ossoli was another fixed point—shall I not rather say a fixed star?—in the sky of my thought, while Arnold of Rugby, to one who meant to make teaching a profession, was chief of all. Well, is it possible that any word I have here written may set some of you thinking—that’s it, set you, a fixed purpose rather than a floating one—about a definite object in life toward which, henceforth, you may bend a steady, earnest gaze? I am not speaking of a thorough intellectual training only. It is rather to the life-work, which only a lifetime can fully compass, that I would direct your thoughts. Rather than that you should fail to have a fixed purpose concerning it, I would that your mental attitude might be like the one confided to me by a charming Philadelphia girl, whose letter of this morning has the following naÏve statement:

Nor do I here refer to that general knowledge of household arts which forms the sole acquirement set forth in the regulation “Women’s Department” of the bygone age newspaper, which in many localities remains in this like the boulder of a past epoch.

It was once thought to be a high virtue for women, no matter how lofty in station or how ample of fortune, to do their own work with the needle. Homer represents Penelope spinning, surrounded by her maids, and classic art abounds with illustrations of like character. But the virtues of one age often become the mistakes of the next. When loom, needle and broom were woman’s only weapons, she did well to handle them deftly, no matter what her rank, for they were her bread-winning implements, and fortune has been proverbially fickle in all ages. But men, by their “witty inventions,” have perpetually encroached on “woman’s sphere.”

Eli Whitney, with his cotton gin, Elias Howe, with his sewing machine, and a hundred other intricate-brained mechanics who have set steel fingers to do in an hour what women’s fingers could not accomplish in a year; all these have combined to revolutionize the daily cares of the gentler sex. With former occupations gone, and the world’s welcome ready when they succeed in special vocations new to them, it becomes not only the privilege but the sacred duty of every woman to cultivate and utilize her highest gift. There is no more practical form of philanthropy than this, for every one who makes a place for herself “higher up” leaves one lower down for some other woman who, but for the vacancy thus afforded her in the world’s close crowded ranks, might be tempted into paths of sin. There is an army of poor girls wholly dependent, for a livelihood, upon the doing of house work. They have no other earthly resource between them and the poor house or haunt of infamy. There is another class to whom an honorable support can come only by sewing or millinery work. Whoever then fits herself for some employment involving better pay and higher social recognition, graduates out of these lower grades and leaves them to those who can not so advance, has helped the world along in a substantial way, because she has added to the sum of humanity’s well being.

To young women in wealthy homes, these considerations should come with even greater convincing force. As David Swing has wisely said to his own rich congregation:

“The rhetoric thrown at women of property for not doing ‘their own work’ could only be useful in an age of fashionable idleness, but in a busy age it is a part of nature’s law that what are called the ‘better classes’ shall leave for the poorer classes some labor to be done, just as the Mosaic law left some sheaves in the field for the gleaner. The world’s work is to be apportioned according to the need and capability of its workers, and the higher order of power must not encroach upon the task which nature seems to have set apart for the employment and support of the less capable.”

Let it not be concluded that I have meant to speak lightly of the intricate, skilled labor involved in making healthful and attractive that bright, consummate flower of a Christian civilization—the home. I have felt that this theme has been so often treated that it needed no amplification at my hands, but I will add that, having been entertained in scores of homes belonging to “exceptional women,” “women with a career,” etc., my testimony is that for wholesomeness, heartsomeness, and every quality that superadds home-making to housekeeping, I have never seen their superiors, and seldom, take them all in all, their peers. But as a rule, these women have earned the “wherewithal” to make a home, by the exercise of some good gift of brain or hand, and thus having been enabled to put a proxy in the kitchen, they direct, but do not attend to the minutiÆ of their daily household cares.

Cultivate, then, your specialty, because the independence thus involved will lift you above the world’s pity to the level of its respect, perchance its honor. Understand this first, last, and always: The world wants the best thing. It wants your best. It needs you as a significant figure to give its ciphers value; to designate as an example; to serve up in a eulogy, perchance to shine in the galaxy by whose light alone its centuries maintain their places in the firmament of history. I know this may strike you as contradiction, for the paradox of paradoxes is this crotchety but kind, narrow-minded but just old world in which you and I are cast away, like Æneas in the domain of Dido. The effrontery of “Madame Grundy” passes all comprehension, and would be laughable if it were not so sad. She tells us women distinctly that we positively shall not do for society the thing we can do best; she declares that if we attempt it we shall be frowned down, and practically ostracised, if not utterly made away with, and then, if we go right on and succeed, she trumpets our names from sea to shore, showers us with greenbacks, and nods her conventional old head with a knowing “I told you so.” And per contra, while on one hand this same unreasonable old lady cripples our attempts to succeed, on the other she snubs us for not doing so. In fact, she is so poor a mathematician that she has never yet so much as tried to learn the value of the “unknown quantity.” The mute Milton is, to her, indeed “inglorious.” Her code of ethics recognizes just one crime (not mentioned in the Decalogue), and it is Failure. Her law is written on a single table—it is a table of stone—and it reads thus: “Succeed and live; make shipwreck of success, and die.”

And so, young friends, fold away your talents in a napkin if you choose; the world will not openly reprove you. She will never urge you to bring out your hidden treasure, but she knows right well when you defraud her, and the relentless old tyrant will punish you, with tireless lash, because you did not bring all your tithes into the storehouse of the common good, because you lived “beneath your privilege;” because, for yourself (which means for her), you did not “covet earnestly the best gifts.” She will cut you on the public street when she would have shown you all her teeth in smiles. She will send poverty on your track, when you might have sat down at her banquet an honored guest. Yes, the world wants the best thing; your best, and she will smite you stealthily if you do not hand over your gift. Now last, but not least (under the head of reasons for seeking to know your true vocation as a human being), let me bring forward the rationale of the bread-and-butter argument. In sooth, no writer or speaker may omit it with impunity, if he would retire in good order from an American audience. Briefly, then, your specialty, well trained, is your best bread-winning implement, and she who earliest grasps this, and who firmest holds it, comes off best in the race. “Be not simply good, be good for something,” said Henry D. Thoreau. A bright eyed girl of eighteen used to come to me on Friday evenings to give me German lessons. To be sure, I have lived in Germany, and she has never been out of Illinois, but then that language is not my specialty, while it is hers. “How is it that though so young, you have made yourself independent?” I inquired of her one day. Listen to the reply: “My mother was always quoting this saying of Carlyle: ‘The man who has a sixpence commands the world—to the extent of that sixpence.’ I early laid this sentiment to heart. Besides, when I was fifteen years old, I heard a sermon on the text: ‘This one thing I do.’ Being of a practical turn of mind, I made an application of which the preacher, perhaps, had no intention. I thought, why not in everyday affairs as well as in religion do one thing well, rather than many things indifferently, and in that way secure the magic sixpence of Carlyle! My father was a rich man then, but I resolved to prepare myself to teach the German language, of which I was very fond, by way of a profession. When the Chicago fire came we lost our property, but I discovered that I could not only support myself, but help my father to many a convenient sixpence, because, in prosperous days I had forearmed myself with a cultivated specialty.”

As she told me this, I thought how, from widely different premises and conditions in life young people may reach similar conclusions. For instance, on the top of the great St. Bernard, I said to the “Hospitable Father,” a noble young monk, “How is it that you, so gifted and well taught, are spending your life away up here among eternal snows?” And I shall never forget his look of exaltation as he simply answered, “’Tis my vocation.”

After all, this is the vital question: With what sort of a weapon will you ward off the attacks of the blood-hound Poverty, which Dame Fortune is pretty sure to let on everybody’s track sooner or later, that she may try his mettle, and learn what manner of spirit he is of? In times like these, when men’s hearts are failing them for fear, when riches are saved the trouble of “taking to themselves wings” by the faithless cashiers and bookkeepers who are adepts at furnishing these flying implements, and, above all, when labor is coming to be king, the question “What will you do?” has fresh significance. Remember, going forth from the uncertain Eden of your dreams, into the satisfying pleasures of honest, hard work, “the world is all before you, where to choose.” Will you share some other woman’s home, and help her make it beautiful? No task more noble or more needed awaits the thoughtful worker of to-day. The world exists but for the sake of its homes. Will you bestow your hand upon some fine Æsthetic industry, as drawing, designing, engraving, telegraphing, phonographing, photographing? Will you be an architect? a printer? an editor? Will you enter one of the three learned professions? Braver women than you or I have won a foot-hold for us in each of them; as to the brain-hold, that is our affair. I will not now pursue the question further. Only the “CyclopÆdia of Woman’s Occupations” (a book I recommend to your attention) can exhaust it, and with it exhaust you and the world’s work, too, for that matter!

After all, it doesn’t so much signify what you may do as that you do it well, whatever it may be. For the value of skilled labor is estimated on a democratic basis, nowadays. President Eliot, of Harvard University, the cook in the Parker House restaurant, and Mary L. Booth, who edits Harper’s Bazar, each receive $4,000 per year.

Think a moment. Will you be led to say: “The good old ways are good enough for me,” and so drop into the swollen ranks of teacherdom, or rattle awhile on a martyrized piano, and then set up for a musician, though you have not a particle of music in throat or finger-tips? Or will you stay at home and let papa support you until you grow tired of doing nothing and expecting nothing, and proceed to marry some man whom you endure rather than love, just to get decently out of your dilemma?

Nay, I do you injustice. Few girls who breathe the free air of our western prairies will be so cowardly. I may not construct your horoscope, but this much I will venture—that when you marry, no matter what you find, you will seek not a name, behind which to cover up the insignificance of your own; not a “good provider,” to feed and clothe one who has learned how to feed and clothe herself; not a “natural protector,” to shield you in his plaidie, the gallant, gallant laddie, from the cauld, cauld blast; but you will seek (and may heaven grant that you shall find) that rarest, choicest, most elusive prize of man’s existence, as of woman’s; one which—mournfully I say it—the modern marriage is by no means certain to involve, namely, a mate. At this juncture, shrewd mater familias whispers to pater: “That’s the first orthodox word she’s said.” Some youth throws down the magazine and mutters to himself: “There, I knew it would come to this! Look at the absurdity of these women! Why, they preach up all sorts of trades and professions, and then they come back, at last, to the ‘good old way’ they have forsaken, and advise every young lady to get a situation in a school of one scholar, and her board thrown in.”

Meanwhile, heroic Hypatia sits near by, and “musing in maiden meditation, fancy free,” on a “career,” murmurs within herself, “To this complexion must it come at last!”

Peace, peace, good friends! This seeming inconsistency is readily explained. In this century, when the wage of battle has cost our land an army of her sons, when widows mourn, and unwedded thousands are forced to meet the hard-faced world (from which rose-water theorists would shield them), America is coming to the rescue of her daughters! For the nearer perfect—that is, the more Christian—a civilization has become, the more carefully are the exceptional classes of society provided for. All our philanthropic institutions under state or private patronage illustrate this. In less enlightened days, your ideal woman composed the single, grand class for which public prejudice set itself to provide. She was to be the wife and mother, and she was carefully enshrined at home. But, happily, this is the world’s way no longer. The exceptions are so many, made by war, by the thousand misunderstandings and cross-purposes of social intercourse, by the peculiar features of the transition period in which we live, by the absurdly extravagant customs of our day, and the false notions of both men and women—that not to provide for them would be a monstrous meanness, if not a crime. And the provision made in this instance is the most rational, indeed, the only rational one which it is in the power of society or government to make for any save the utterly incapable, namely: a fair chance for self-help. Nor (to pursue the line of our argument still further) can we forget that skeleton hand which, in utter disregard of “the proprieties” in destiny’s drama, thrusts itself so often into the charmed domestic circle, and snatches the beloved “provider” away forever, while it sets gaunt famine by the fireside in his stead? Can we forget that, in ten thousand families, wives are this moment waiting in suspense and agony the return of wretched husbands to homes made hideous by the drunkard’s sin—wives whose work of brain or hand alone keeps their children from want, now that their “strong staff is broken, and their beautiful rod?” There are delicate white fingers turning the page on which I print these words, that will never wear the marriage ring; there are slight forms bending over my friendly lines, which, not far down the years, will be clothed in widow’s weeds. Alas, there are as surely others, who, when they have been wooed and won, shall find that they are worse than widowed. And what of these three classes of women, sweet and helpless? Clearly, to all of them I am declaring a true and blessed gospel, in this good news concerning honest independence and brave self-help! Clearly, also, no one is wise enough to go through the assembly of my readers, and tell me who, in future years, shall need a bread-winning weapon with which to defend herself and perchance, also, the helpless ones between whom and the world there may be no arm but hers. But it is a principle in public as well as private economy, that the wisest foresight provides for the remotest contingency, and thus, in its full force, all that I have been saying applies to every woman who may read this article on “How to Win.” Suppose that many of you, dear girls, are destined to a downy nest, instead of a strong-winged flight. What then? Will the years spent in making the most of the best powers with which God has endowed you be worse employed than if you had given them to fashion and frivolity? Those “ad interim” years which separate the graduate’s diploma from the bride’s marriage certificate, can they possibly be invested better than in the acquisition of some useful trade or dignified profession? And then, aside from this, I would help the youngest of you to remember (even in the bewildered years of her second decade) what noble Margaret Fuller said: “No woman can give her hand with dignity, or her heart with loyalty, until she has learned how to stand alone.” It is not so much what comes to you as what you come to, that determines whether you are a winner in the great race of life. Never forget that the only indestructible material in destiny’s fierce crucible is character. Say this, not to another—say it to yourself; utter it early, and repeat it often: Fail me not, thou.