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MRS.
MARY WOOD-ALLEN, M.D.
NEW
REVISED EDITION
Self
and Sex Series
WHAT A YOUNG
WOMAN
OUGHT TO KNOW
BY
MRS.
MARY WOOD-ALLEN, M.D.
National
Superintendent of the Purity
Department Woman's Christian Temperance
Union; Author of "What a Young Girl
Ought to Know," "Marvels of Our Bodily
Dwelling," "Child Confidence Rewarded,"
"Teaching Truth," "Almost a Man,"
"Almost a Woman."
(publisher's logo here)
Philadelphia,
Pa.: 200-214
N. Fifteenth Street
THE
VIR PUBLISHING COMPANY
London: Toronto:
4 Imperial Buildings, The
Ryerson Press,
Ludgate Circus, E.C. Queen
and John Streets.
Copyright,
1913, by SYLVANUS STALL
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England.
Protected by International copyright in Great Britain
and all her colonies and possessions, including India and Canada, and, under
the provisions of the Berne Convention in Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain and
her colonies, France, including Algeria and the French colonies, Haiti, Italy,
Japan, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Tunis.
All
rights reserved
[PRINTED
IN THE UNITED STATES]
Copyright,
1889; 1905, by Sylvanus Stall
TO
THE DAUGHTER DEAR,
WHOSE INTIMATE AND CONFIDENTIAL COMPANIONSHIP FROM
CHILDHOOD TO WOMANHOOD HAS MADE IT POSSIBLE
FOR ME TO FEEL A SYMPATHETIC INTEREST IN
THE LIFE-PROBLEMS OF ALL GIRLS, THIS
BOOK IS MOST LOVINGLY
DEDICATED
BY HER
MOTHER
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CONTENTS
Table of Contents
ADDED INJURIES FROM TIGHT
CLOTHING
NEED OF SPECIAL
KNOWLEDGE; SOME FORMS OF AVOIDABLE DISEASE, THEIR REMEDY AND PREVENTION.
YOU ARE MORE THAN BODY OR
MIND.
ARTIFICIALITIES OF
CIVILIZED LIFE
SOME CAUSES OF PAINFUL
MENSTRUATION
FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN BOYS
AND GIRLS.
HEREDITARY EFFECTS OF
ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, ETC.
EFFECTS OF IMMORALITY ON
THE RACE.
PREFACE
During a
number of years it has been my privilege to be the confidante and counsellor of
a large number of young women of various stations in life and in all parts of
the United States.
These girls
have talked freely with me concerning their plans, aspirations, fears and
personal problems. It has been a great revelation to me to note with what
unanimity they ask certain questions concerning conduct—queries which perhaps
might astonish the mothers of those same girls, as they, doubtless, take it for
granted that their daughters intuitively understand these fundamental laws of
propriety.
The truth is
that many girls who have been taught in the "ologies" of the schools,
who have been trained in the conventionalities of society, have been left to
pick up as they may their ideas upon personal conduct, and, coming face to face
with puzzling problems, are at a loss, and perhaps are led into wrong ways
of thinking and questionable ways of doing because no one has foreseen
their dilemma and warned them how to meet it.
The subjects
treated in this little book are discussed because every one of them has been
the substance of a query propounded by some girl otherwise intelligent and well
informed. They have been treated plainly and simply because they purport to be
the frank conferences of a mother and daughter, between whom there can be no
need of hesitation in dealing frankly with any question bearing on the life,
health or happiness of the girl. There is therefore no need of apology; the
book is its own excuse for being, the queries of the young women demand honest
answers.
Life will be
safer for the girl who understands her own nature and reverences her womanhood,
who realizes her responsibility towards the human race and conducts herself in
accordance with that realization.
Life will be
nobler and purer in its possession and its transmission, if, from childhood
onward to old age, the thought has been held that "Life is a gift of God
and is divine," and its physical is no less sacred than its mental or
moral manifestation; if it has been understood that the foundations of
character are laid in the habits formed in youth, and that a noble girlhood
assures a grand maturity.
Dear girls who
read this book, the mother-heart has gone out to you with great tenderness with
every line herein written, with many an unspoken prayer that you will be
helped, uplifted, inspired by its reading, and made more and more to feel
"A sacred
burden is this life ye bear.Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly;Stand up and
walk beneath it steadfastly;Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,But onward,
upward, till the goal ye win."
Mary Wood-Allen.
Ann Arbor, Michigan.
PART I
THE VALUE OF
HEALTH, AND RESPONSIBILITY IN MAINTAINING IT.
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CHAPTER
I
WHAT ARE YOU WORTH?
My Daughter
Dear:
When I see you
with your young girl friends, when I look into your bright faces and listen to
your merry laughter and your girlish chatter, I wonder if any one of you
understands how much you are worth. Now you may say, "I haven't any money
in the bank, I have no houses or land, I am worth nothing," but that would
only be detailing what you possess.
It is not what
you possess but what you are that determines what you are worth. One may possess
much wealth and be worth very little.
I was reading
the other day that the first great lesson for a young man to
learn, the first fact to realize, is that he is of some importance; that upon
his wisdom, energy and faithfulness all else depends, and that the world cannot
get along without him. Now if this is true of young men, I do not see why it is
not equally true of young women.
It is not
after you have grown old that you will be of value to the world; it is now, in
your young days, while you are laying the foundation of your character, that
you are of great importance. We cannot say that the foundation is of no
importance until the building is erected, for upon the right placing of the
foundation depends the firmness and stability of the superstructure. Dr.
Conwell, in his little book, "Manhood's Morning," estimates that
there are twelve million young men in the United States between fourteen and
twenty-eight years of age; that these twelve million young men represent latent
physical force enough to dig the iron ore from the mines, manufacture it into
wire, lay the foundation and construct
completely the great Brooklyn Bridge in three hours; that they represent force
enough, if rightly utilized, to dig the clay from the earth, manufacture the
bricks and construct the great Chinese Wall in five days. If each one were to
build himself a house twenty-five feet wide, these houses would line both sides
of eight streets reaching across the continent from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. For each one to be sick one day is equal to thirty thousand being sick
an entire year.
Now, if there
are twelve million young men in the United States, we may estimate that there
are an equal number of young women. Although we cannot calculate accurately
the amount of physical force represented by these young women, there are
some things we can tell. We know that for each one of these young women to be
sick one day means thirty thousand sick one year. Just imagine the loss to the
country, and the gain to posterity if it can be prevented!
Rome
endeavored to create good soldiery, but was not able to produce strength and
courage through physical culture of the men alone. Not until she began the
physical education of the women, the young women, was she able to insure to the
nation a race of strong, hardy, vigorous soldiery. So the health of the young
women of to-day is of great importance to the nation, for upon their vigor and
soundness of body depend to a very great extent the health and capacity of
future generations. We are told that in the State of Massachusetts, in one
year, there were lost twenty-eight thousand five hundred (28,500) years of time
through the illness of working-people by preventable diseases. Dr. Buck, in his
"Hygiene," tells us that one hundred thousand persons die every year
through preventable diseases, that one hundred and fifty thousand are
constantly sick through preventable diseases, and that the loss to the nation,
through the illness of working-people by diseases that might have been
prevented, is more than a hundred million dollars a year. So we can see that
each individual has a pecuniary value to the nation. You are worth just as
much to the nation as you can earn. If you earn a dollar a day, you are not
only worth a dollar a day to yourself and to your personal employer, but you
are worth a dollar a day to the nation; and if, through illness, you are laid
aside for one day, the nation, as well as yourself, is pecuniarily the loser.
Young women
could not build the houses that would line eight streets from New York to San
Francisco, but, rightly educated, they could convert each one of these houses
into a home, and to found a home and conduct it properly is to help the world.
It is so easy to measure what is done with physical strength. We can see what
men are doing when they build railroads, construct immense bridges and towering
buildings, but it is more difficult to measure what is done through
intellectual and spiritual forces; and woman's work in the world is not so much
the using of strength as it is the using of those finer forces which go to
build up men and women. With this thought in your mind, can you answer the
question, How much are you worth? How much are you worth to yourself? How much
are you worth in your home? How much money would your parents be willing to
accept in place of yourself? How much are you worth to the community in which
you live? How much are you worth to the state, the nation, the human race?
You can
recognize your value in the home when you remember how much you are the center
of all that goes on there, how much your interest is consulted in everything
that is done by father and mother. You can realize your value to the state when
you realize how much money is spent for the education of young people, how
cultured men and women give the best of their lives to your instruction. You
cannot measure your value to the human race until you begin to think that the
young people of to-day are creating the condition of the world in fifty or one
hundred years to come; that you, through your physical health, or lack of it,
are to become a source of strength or weakness in future years, if you are a
mother. It is all right that young women should think of marriage and
motherhood, provided they think of it in the right way.
I want you to
reverence yourself, to realize your own importance, to feel that you are a
necessity to God's perfect plan. When we are young and feel that we are of no
account in the world, it is difficult to realize that God's complete plan
cannot be carried out without us. The smallest, tiniest rivet or bolt may be of
such great importance in the construction of an engine that its loss means the
incapacity of that piece of machinery to do its work. As God has placed you in
the world, He has placed you here to do a specific work for Him and for humanity,
and your failure to do that work means the failure of His complete and perfect
plan. Now can you begin to see how much you are worth? And can you begin to
realize that in the conduct of your life as a young woman you are a factor of
immense importance to the great problem of the evolution of the human race? In
the light of these thoughts I would like to have you ask yourself this question
every day, How much am I worth?
CHAPTER
II
CARE OF BODY
The question
"How much are you worth?" is not answered by discussing your bodily
conditions, for your body is not yourself. It is your dwelling, but not you.
It, however, expresses you.
A man builds a
house, and through it expresses himself. The external appearance causes the
observer to form an opinion of him, and each apartment bears the impress of his
individuality. To look at the house and then to walk through it will tell you
much of the man. The outside will tell you whether he is neat, orderly and
artistic, or whether he cares nothing for the elements of beauty and neatness.
If you go into his parlor, you can judge whether he cares most for show or for
comfort. His library will reveal to you the character of his mind, and the
dining-room will indicate by its furnishings and its viands whether he loves
the pleasures of sense more than health of body. You do not need to see the man
to have a pretty clear idea of him.
So the body is
our house, and our individuality permeates every part of it. Those who look at
our bodily dwelling can gain a very good idea of what we are. The external
appearance will indicate to a great extent our character. We glance at one man
and say, "He is gross, sensual, cruel, domineering;" at another and
say, "He is intellectual, spiritual, fine-grained, benevolent." So we
judge of entire strangers, and usually find the character largely corresponds
to our judgment, if, later, we come to know the person.
The anatomist
and microscopist who penetrates into the secrets of his bodily house after the
inhabitant has moved out can tell much of his habits, his thoughts, his
capacities and powers by the traces of himself which he has left on the
insensate walls of his dwelling. The care of the body, then, adds to our value,
because it gives us a better instrument, a better medium of expression.
The old
saying, "A workman is known by his tools," is equally true of the
body. The carpenter who cares for his saws, chisels and planes, who keeps them
sharp and free from rust, will be able to do better work than the one who
carelessly allows them to become nicked, broken, handleless or rusted. The
finer the work which one does, the greater the care he must take of the
instruments with which he works. A jack-knife will do to whittle a pine stick,
but the carver of intricate designs must have his various sharp tools with
which to make the delicate lines and tracings.
When we speak
of health and physical conditions in discussing the question of your value, we
are discussing the instrument upon whose integrity depends your ability to
demonstrate your value.
Many young
people think it nonsense to pay attention to the preservation of health. I have
heard them say, "O, I don't want to be so fussy! It will do for old folks
to be coddling themselves, but I want a good time. I'd rather die ten years
sooner and have some fun while I do live."
I wonder what
these same young people would think if they should hear a workman say,
"Well, I have here a fine kit of tools; I am assured that if they are
destroyed they will never be replaced; but now, while I am learning my trade, I
don't want to be 'so fussy' about keeping them in order. It will do for 'boss
workmen' to take care of everything so constantly, but now I want to break
stones with these delicate hammers, to cut nails with these razor-bladed knives,
to crack nuts with these slender pincers. By and by, when I am older, I'll use
them as they should be used, but I think it's all nonsense to be so careful
now." If in later years you should hear him complain that he had nothing
to work with, would you feel like pitying him?
No "kit
of tools" was ever so complete as is the bodily instrument given to each
one of us. Its mechanism has been the inspiration of inventors; it
combines all forms of mechanical devices; its delicacy, intricacy, completeness
and adaptability challenge the admiration of the philosopher, the engineer, the
master mechanic.
I cannot here
tell you of all its wonders, but I would like to give you such an exalted
idea of its importance that you would look upon it with reverence and take a justifiable
pride in keeping it in perfect working order. I would like to make you feel
your personal responsibility in regard to its condition.
You know that
in the ages past men believed the body to be the individual, and they
endeavored through care of the body to build up mental as well as physical
power. In those days the acrobat and the sage were found working side by side
in the gymnasium, the one to gain physical strength, the other to increase his
mental ability, and each profited as he desired.
When men made
the discovery that the body is not the individual, but merely his dwelling and
instrument of expression, they came to feel less regard for it, and lost their
interest in its care and culture. Even the early Christians, forgetting what Paul
said about the body as a temple, began to call it vile, and thought it an
evidence of great piety to treat it with contempt. I have read of one religious
sect who believed that the Creator of the body could not have been the Creator
of the soul, and held that the chief object of God's government was to deliver
the captive souls of men from their bodily prisons.
When men began
to understand that the thinking principle was the real self and the body merely
a material encasement, it was no wonder that they valued the body less and held
mind as of great value. They failed to see that mind without a material organ
of expression is, in this world, of no account. A great pianist with no piano
could not make music, and he would be considered a strange being if he did not care
for his instrument most scrupulously. Think of a Rubinstein voluntarily
breaking the piano strings or smashing the keys, while he made discordant
poundings, and excusing himself by saying that it was "fussy" to take
care of a piano until it was old. You cannot imagine such a thing. We can all
appreciate the value of a man-made instrument or machine; but the God-created
body, a combination of machines and instruments of marvelous power and
delicacy, we neglect or treat with absolute, positive injury, and excuse
ourselves on the ground that when it is old we will treat it more kindly.
Melville says
it is a sin to die, ignoring what is to be done with the body. "That
body," he says, "has been redeemed, that body has been appointed to a
glorious condition."
It seems to me
we prize the body far more after its use for us is at an end than while it is
ours to use. We do not neglect the dead; we dress them in beautiful garments,
we adorn them with flowers, we follow them to the grave with religious
ceremonies, we build costly monuments to place over their graves, and then we
go to weep over their last resting-place.
After all, is
it not life that we should value? Life here and hereafter, not death, is the
real thing for which we should prepare, and earthly life without a sound body
is not life full and complete. Life is joy, vigor, elasticity, freedom from
pain or illness, enjoyment of all innocent pleasures in maturity as well as in
youth. We have no right to look forward to decrepitude, to failure in zest of living,
to lessening of real enjoyment because of coming years. Life should increase in
beauty and usefulness, in ability and joyousness, as the years bring us a wider
experience, and this will be the case if we in youth have been wise enough to
lay the foundation of health by a wise, thoughtful, prudent care of our bodies
and our minds.
FOOTNOTES:
This Dr. Mary Wood-Allen has done
in a volume entitled "Marvels of Our Bodily Dwelling." This book
teaches physiology and hygiene, by metaphor, parable, and allegory in a most
charming way. Superbly illustrated. 12mo. Price, cloth, $1.50, post free.
CHAPTER
III
FOOD
If I can
arouse in your mind a most earnest desire to be strong and vigorous, I shall
not find it necessary to give you very minute directions, for if you have the
ambition you will find the way. If I could excite in you an intense longing to
visit Paris, I should know that you would begin to seek for the way of getting
there. If I could create in you an earnest aspiration to be well and physically
strong, I should know that you would seek for the books that would give you the
necessary instruction. It will not be needful to talk of rules and restrictions
if I can make you feel the glory of having a sound body.
If you were
starting on a journey, I should not need to warn you of by-paths, of traps, or
of dangers if I could be assured that your eye was fixed upon your ultimate
destination. So it is in the matter of health; and yet there are some general
rules or principles which I might lay down for your consideration.
In regard to
the matter of diet. I do not want you to be hampered by "don'ts" and
restrictions as to what you shall eat, but I do want you to eat with the
thought in view that eating is to be governed by judgment and not by the
pleasures of sense. Why do we eat? Not merely because the food tastes good.
There is a better reason. We eat to live. We know that the food which we take
into our bodies is digested, elaborated and assimilated—that is, made over into
ourselves—and unless this digestion, elaboration and assimilation is properly
conducted, we shall not be fully and completely nourished. Our body is made up
of cells; the food which we eat is transformed into cell structure, and this
new cell-material takes the place of the worn-out cells. Our reason would tell
us that if too little material is furnished, cells will not be properly
repaired and ill-health will follow. Our reason would tell us in the same way
that if too much material is furnished, the machine will be clogged and the
work will not be properly done. We will also understand at once that an
irregular supply of new material would interfere with the elaboration of that
which is undergoing the process of digestion and assimilation. We can see, too,
that unless the various tissues receive the material which they can transform
into themselves, they will not be fully repaired. If material is taken into the
system which supplies no tissue with what it needs, this material becomes a
source of irritation.
These general
rules borne in mind are sufficient to guide us into a wiser life than if we
do not understand them; and, understanding these general principles, we
will be anxious to study the particular rules which govern digestion and
assimilation.
I have known
young women in college to be so absolutely ignorant or indifferent to
physiological law as to be injuring themselves constantly by disobedience of
such laws. I knew one girl, supposed to be a very fine student, and to have
brought on "fits" by overstudy, while away at school. I had an
opportunity to investigate the case, and I discovered that she had been eating
from morning till night. She carried nuts, and candy, and apples in her pocket,
had pickles and cake in her room, and studied and munched until it was no doubt
a disturbed digestion, rather than an overused brain, that caused the
"fits."
If you will
eat regularly of plain meat, vegetables, fruits, cereals, milk and eggs,
plainly prepared, and avoid rich pastries, cakes, puddings, pickles and
sweetmeats, you will have compassed the round of healthful diet, and need give
yourself very little anxiety in regard to anything more. I should like to
emphasize the fact, however, that tea and coffee are not foods. They are
irritants, stimulants, nerve-poisons. They bring nothing to the system to build
it up. They satisfy the sense of hunger without having contributed to the
nourishment of the body. If you are wise you will avoid them. You will not
create for yourself any false necessities. You will avoid the use of alcohol in
all forms, whether wine, ales, beer or cider, as well as in the stronger forms,
because you will know that these products interfere with digestion. Dr.
Kellogg, of Battle Creek, has made an experiment which proved that sherry to
the amount of 1 per cent. of the contents of the stomach retarded digestion
nearly 4 per cent.
He calculates
that 1 per cent. of sherry would be equal to two tenths of 1 per cent. of
alcohol, and it would be necessary to take less than an ordinary tablespoonful
of the wine to obtain this percentage.
When 3 per
cent. of claret was used (equivalent to three-tenths of 1 per cent. of
alcohol), there was marked diminution in digestive activity. This certainly
proves that even the so-called light wines are injurious, and certainly the
drinks that contain a large per cent. of alcohol must be that much more
hurtful.
If you use
good judgment both as to the quality and quantity of foods, you need then give
the matter very little thought. People sometimes make themselves dyspeptics by
worrying about what they eat. Eat what is set before you, making a judicious
choice both as to variety and quantity, and then determine that your food shall
digest.
When you live
upon the higher plane of thought, you will not be so much interested in the
question of food as regards gustatory pleasure. You will understand that eating
is a necessity, but you will not be thinking about it; you will not be desiring
to please the sense of taste; you will see that there are higher forms of
sociability than mere eating with friends, and you will not be so interested in
late suppers, and in various forms of sense gratification because you enjoy
more thoroughly the higher pleasures. You will serve your friends with delicate
food, simply and daintily prepared, and seasoned with that wit and wisdom which
remain as a permanent mental pabulum. You will make them feel that when you
come to visit them you come not to get something to eat, but to enjoy them, to
receive from them the inspiration which they can give. We often treat our
friends as if we thought they came as beggars for physical food. It is a much
higher compliment to treat them as though we thought they came to exchange
thoughts with us, to walk with us in the higher paths of living, and that the
physical food we give them is only incidental. I was once entertained where a
company of intelligent, cultured people were assembled, and we did not see the
hostess from the time we entered the house until supper was served. She sat at
the table, worried and anxious, and after the supper was over she did not make
her appearance until just as we were about to leave. She did not pay us the
high compliment of giving us herself, but she bestowed upon us that which
a hired cook might have given.
You remember
what Emerson says: "I pray you, O excellent wife, cumber not yourself and
me to get a curiously rich dinner for this man and woman who have just alighted
at our gate. These things, if they desire them, they can get for a few
shillings at any village inn; but rather let that stranger see, if he will, in
your looks, accents and behavior, your heart and earnestness, your thought and
will, that which he cannot buy at any price in any city, and which he may
travel miles and dine sparely and sleep hardly to behold."
It would
indeed be worth your while to study food scientifically, to know how to prepare
dainty and tempting dishes wholesomely, and then to serve your guests with such
beauty of manner, such graciousness of courtesy, that they will remember the
meal they have taken with you as idyllic in its simplicity, beauty and
helpfulness.
CHAPTER
IV
SLEEP
Shakespeare
writes of "Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care." The
metaphor is striking, but not accurate. To knit up that which is ravelled
implies using the old material in repairing the damage, but that is not the way
in which the body is rebuilt. The old material is thrown out and new material
put in its place, and that largely takes place during sleep. We have read of
brownies who came at night and swept and churned and baked while the housewife
slept. So, in our bodily dwelling, the vital forces are our brownies, and they
can work more uninterruptedly while we are asleep than when we are calling on
them to move us from place to place, or to aid us in various activities.
Much of life's
processes must remain a mystery to us, but certain things we have learned, and
one is that perfect health cannot be maintained, strong nerves cannot be
constructed, nor a clear brain be built without plenty of sleep. The baby
sleeps almost continually because he is building so much new structure. The
growing child needs more sleep than the adult; but even after reaching maturity
sleep cannot be materially lessened without injury to the whole
organization.
We appreciate
the need of food. We are often very needlessly alarmed for fear that we shall
starve from one meal to the next, but few of us realize that food cannot be
assimilated, built into tissue, without some hours in which the vital forces
can devote themselves wholly to the work of assimilation. During the working
hours of the day we are expending force. The brain is using it in thought, the
muscles are calling for force in various activities, the emotions are expending
energy, and each of these activities is creating changes in the cells of the body.
We know that life in the body is only possible through constant death of the
atoms of which it is composed. We can only live because we are constantly
dying. Huxley says, "For every vital act, life is used up. All work
implies waste, and the work of life results directly or indirectly in the waste
of protoplasm (which is the cell substance). Every word uttered by a speaker
costs him some physical loss, and in the strictest sense he burns that others
may have light."
Each word,
thought, activity, emotion causes expenditure, and unless expenditure is in
some way made good, there will be bankruptcy. How shall we get back the energy
we have expended and so restore our vital forces to their equilibrium? The
protoplasm of which our cells are made we can obtain from the protoplasm
of animal and vegetable substances which we eat, but we cannot use the material
unless we are sometimes at rest, and by quiescence of brain and muscle give a
chance for worn-out cells to be removed and new material put in their place. It
is when we lay our bodies down in the beautiful repose of slumber that this
process can go on with most perfect results. Then, when all the forces can be
concentrated on the process of nutrition, will nutrition be most perfect. When
we awake refreshed after a night of sound sleep we are really fed. It is quite
doubtful if, in a normal condition, we would want food until we had been at
work some time and by destroying tissue have created a demand for more new
material.
If we were
only half as anxious that food should be assimilated—that is, made over into
ourselves—as we are that it should be put into the stomach, we would be very
careful to secure for ourselves a due amount of good sleep. And what is a due
amount? That depends. I once heard of a servant girl whose mistress complained
of her because she did not get up early in the morning, and the girl's excuse
was, "But, ma'am, I can't get up early because I sleep so slow."
It seems a
ridiculous statement, and yet there is a germ of truth in it. In some people
the vital processes go on with such rapidity that the old, worn-out
material will be eliminated and the new material built into the body in a
comparatively short time. Seven hours of good sleep, perhaps, make them feel
strong and rested and able to start on a new day's work with courage and ease.
In others the vital processes are hindered or work feebly and slowly, and eight
or nine hours of sleep scarcely suffice to complete the work of restoration.
What is the obvious inference? Simply that each one shall judge for himself;
but each should be wise enough not to confuse sleeplessness with having had
sufficient sleep.
Very
frequently the loss of sleep makes it difficult or impossible to sleep, and not
until the excited condition of nerves can be calmed, can refreshing slumber be
obtained. Young women who attempt to be in school and in society at the same
time often bring themselves into the condition of insomnia or sleeplessness,
and foolishly fancy that because they do not sleep they do not need it.
It is not at
all difficult to understand that if you are constantly taking money out of the
bank, you must also be constantly putting money in, or some day you will be
told that your account is already overdrawn and your draft will not be honored.
One can overdraw for a time, and right here is the danger with young people. They
fancy, because they are not at once told that they are overdrawing, that
their bank account is unlimited, and then, when it is too late, they find
themselves on the verge, if not clear over the verge, of bankruptcy.
How shall you
know whether you sleep enough? If you will make it a rule to go to bed by ten
o'clock every night, and go to sleep at once, and sleep soundly and waken with
a clear head and a rested feeling, you may infer that you have slept enough. If
you are still tired or dull, something is wrong. You may have been in bed long
enough, but your room may not have been ventilated, and so you may be poisoned
by breathing over and over again the emanations from your own body. Or for some
reason the process of digestion and assimilation may not have been carried on,
and poisons have been created instead of being eliminated.
If you waken
unrefreshed, I should want to inquire into your habits of life. Was there
opportunity for fresh air to enter your room? Was there in it no uncovered
vessel, no old shoes in the closet, no soiled underclothing, nothing that could
contaminate the atmosphere? Did you eat a hearty supper late in the evening? Is
your system oppressed with a superabundance of sweets? Are you living on
simple, wholesome food, or eating irregularly of all sorts of trash? There may
be many causes, you see, for your "tired feeling" in the
morning, and instead of taking some "Sarsaparilla," or other
drug, I should try to find out the cause and remove it.
Many people
are afraid of night air, and scrupulously shut it out of their sleeping-rooms,
and yet, what kind of air can you get at night but night air? And is it not
better to have pure night air from out of doors than the impure night air of a
close room? I once went with two ladies to ascend the Rigi in Switzerland, in
order to see the sun rise. One of these was a Polish countess, who took with
her a little black-and-tan terrier. The hotel at the Rigi Staeffel was crowded,
and we thought ourselves very fortunate to secure a room with three beds. The
Countess disposed herself in one bed with her little dog, and I took one bed,
saying to my friend, "You'll please open the window before you go to
bed?" "O certainly," she replied.
The little
Countess sprang up in evident alarm. "Open the window!" she cried;
"why, we'd all take our death of cold! I beg of you don't do it. I could
not sleep a wink if the window were open."
My friend
spoke reassuringly to her, and she at length grew quiet, when my friend
surreptitiously raised a window and we went to sleep. The next morning the
Countess asked, with a strange air of incredulity, "Were you in earnest
when you spoke about opening the window? Why, I never heard of such a
thing in my life. I know I should have been ill if you had persisted in having
the window open."
My friend and
I exchanged glances silently. We knew she was not ill and she had slept with
the window open, but doubtless she would have been ill had she known it was
open, for she had a wonderful imagination. When we were called at three o'clock
to get up and go to the top of the mountain to see the sun rise, she turned
herself luxuriously in her bed and said she could imagine it. She had taken
this journey and "climbed the mountain" (that is, was carried up in a
chair, with her dog in her lap), to see the famous sunrise on the Rigi, and
then remained in bed and imagined it! Her imagination seemed entirely
satisfactory, and so we did not quarrel with her.
Sleep is the
most positive beautifier, the best cosmetic. The term "beauty sleep"
is no misnomer. Sleep freshens the complexion, smoothes out wrinkles, clears
out the brain, strengthens the muscles, puts light into the eyes and color into
the cheek.
CHAPTER V
BREATHING
The first
thing you did when you came into this world was to inspire, that is, to breathe
in. The last thing you will do will be to expire, that is, to breathe out. And
between your first inspiration and your last expiration there will have been
the process of respiration, that is, breathing in and out at an average rate of
twenty times a minute. Twenty times a minute means twelve hundred times an
hour, or nearly thirty thousand times a day, or over ten million times a year.
If you should live to be fifty years old, you will have breathed in and out
over five hundred million times. We eat three times a day, twenty-one times a
week, over a thousand times a year, fifty thousand times in fifty years, but we
breathe over five hundred million times in fifty years.
We realize the
importance of eating, but we can live days without food. On the other hand, we
cannot live many seconds entirely without air. We must infer from all this that
breathing is more important than eating. How can it be? From our food our body is
rebuilt. What life-process is accomplished by breathing?
To understand
this, we must learn what processes are going on in the body, by means of
which food is converted into tissue, into heat and energy. These processes we
find are chemical, and may be likened to the combustion of wood or coal in the
furnace. We know that fire must have air in order to burn. Burning is the
process of oxidation or combustion of oxygen with the atoms of fuel and the
formation of a new substance thereby. Coal, we are told, consists of carbon and
nitrogen, both of which readily combine with oxygen, and in the process of
uniting heat is liberated, and waste compounds thus formed pass off through the
smokestack or chimney. We may not understand this scientifically, but we know that
if we want the fire to burn well we must give it draft or air.
Our bodies are
living engines, and use food and air instead of coal and air. Food in the body
without air is like the coal in an engine without air; and air is useful only
because it brings oxygen to unite chemically with the food. This process is
going on all over the body. Each little microscopical cell is a furnace in
which oxidation is taking place; and not only is energy liberated, but
reconstructive processes are going on, new tissues are being formed, and old
tissues removed.
But how can
the oxygen get to the cells in all parts of the body? We can readily see how it
gets to the air-cells of the lungs, but it would do little good if it
stopped there. It must be carried in some way to all the minutest cells of all
the tissues. This is done through the breathing. The blood goes to the lungs,
and there it gives out the waste material it has collected in its journey
through the body and takes up oxygen. The blood goes to the lungs dark in color
from its load of waste. It is changed to a bright red by taking up oxygen. Each
red blood-corpuscle takes a load of oxygen, carries it to its destination, and
gives it to some tissue to be used up in the chemical process of oxidation,
upon which depends our life and energy. During the hours of rest the tissues
are busy in this process, and during exercise the energy stored up in the
tissue-cells is liberated and waste created. So we see that the process is a
continual round of taking food and air, using them in rebuilding tissue, then
using up the tissue by exercise and casting out the waste products. And now we
can begin to understand that we live in proportion as we breathe. Dr. Holbrook
says: "The activity of the child is in close relation to the strength of
its lungs; so, too, is the calmness, dignity and power of a man in proportion
to the depth and tranquility of his respiration. If the lungs are strong and
active, there is courage and boldness; if feeble, there is cowardice and
debility. To be out of spirits is to be out of breath. To be animated and joyous
is to be full of breath." "Breathing," writes Dr. von der
Deeken, "is an actual vivifying act, and the need of breath as felt is a
real life-hunger and a proof that without the continual charging of the
blood-column with the proper force, all the other vital organs would soon
stagnate and cease action altogether."
Now I wonder
how many young women really know how to breathe. "Why," you say,
"we have always breathed!" And I reply, "So you have, to some
extent; but do you really breathe, or do you just let a little current of air
flow gently through a part of your lungs, not reaching the minute air-cells at
all, or have you crippled a large part of your lung-power by the restrictions
of tight clothing?" Now you shrug your shoulders and say, with a little
irritation, perhaps, "O, now she is going to scold about corsets and
tight-lacing, and I do not wear my clothes tight." But I am not now going
to talk of lacing; I am going to talk about singing, and speaking, and real
living. The highest class of living creatures are those that have most power to
breathe. The cold-blooded animals breathe little, and are slow-moving creatures
with deficient sensation and small powers of action. Man has large lung-capacity
and should be full of life and power, and will be, if he understands himself.
One benefit of exercise is the added impulse given to the heart and lungs, calling
for more breath, and bringing more blood to the lungs to receive the added
supply of oxygen.
If we were
wise we would practise the art of deep, voluntary breathing, as a daily form of
gymnastics. What would it do for us? Wonderful things, if we may believe the
doctors. Even in the old Greek and Roman times the doctors recommended deep
breathing, the voluntary holding of air in the lungs, believing that this
exercise cleansed the system of impurities and gave strength. And all our
scientific discoverers have proven that they were right, and modern doctors
have only learned more of the process and added to the wisdom of the ancients.
Professor Lehwess says that he uses deep breathing not only as a health remedy
but as a cure for muscular convulsions, especially chronic spasms; and he says
that he bases his method for the cure of stuttering mainly upon respiratory and
vocal exercises, "whereby," he says, "we work on enervated
muscles, and make their function bring them into permanent activity and make
them obedient to our will." Thus not only will the respiratory system be
enlarged and quickened, and the lungs strengthened, but the blood circulation
is promoted and those injurious influences overcome which often take away the
stutterer's courage for speaking.
Dr. Niemeyer,
of Leipzig, urges breathing in these words: "Prize air; use good, pure
air; breathe fresh air in your room by night and day." Dr. Bicking
says that respiratory gymnastics are the only effectual remedy for pulmonary
affection, especially for consumption. The Marquise Ciccolina claims that by
the teaching of breathing gymnastics she has cured people of a tendency to take
cold easily; she has benefited cases of lung and heart trouble, and she has
cured nervous asthma even in cases that have lasted from childhood to maturity.
Dr. Kitchen asserts that if the various structures of the body, including the
lungs, are in a sufficiently healthy state, consumption cannot find a soil in
which to commence its ravages, or, if already commenced, can be cured by
attention to the general health, by pure air and deep breathing.
All this
proves that the breathing is of great importance—of just as much importance to
women as to men. It used to be thought that women breathe naturally with the
upper part of the chest and men with the abdominal muscles, but we have now
learned that in the breathing of both men and women the diaphragm should be
used and the lower part of the chest expanded. The breathing should neither be
thoracic—that is, with the upper part of the chest—nor abdominal. It should be
diaphragmatic; that is, with the expansion of the sides of the lower part of
the chest, thus filling every air-cell and bringing the life-giving oxygen to
the blood. The importance of the diaphragm as the breathing muscle cannot
be overestimated. A diaphragm, you know, is a partition across a cylinder; the
diaphragm is a muscular partition across the cylinder of the body, dividing the
lungs from the abdomen. In breathing, the diaphragm becomes tense, and in
becoming tense becomes also flattened, just as an umbrella does by being
opened. In fact the opening and shutting of an umbrella gives a very good idea
of the motion of the diaphragm in breathing. We can realize, then, how much
larger around the body will be when the lungs are fully inflated than it is
when we breathe the air out and the lungs are empty. A few minutes spent each
day in exercising in diaphragmatic breathing would be of great advantage in
increasing beauty of form, in giving strength and power to the voice, in
improving the complexion and adding to the health, and therefore to the
happiness. In taking these exercises, one should either stand erect or lie flat
upon the back and draw the air in through the nose, keeping the mouth closed.
Draw in gently, allowing the chest to expand at the sides, hold the air for a
little time, and then breathe out slowly.
These
exercises performed in a room that is well ventilated, or, better still, in the
pure air of outdoors, will do much toward driving away headaches, clearing the
brain, giving better judgment, stronger will, and a clearer, happier, brighter
disposition.
CHAPTER VI
HINDRANCES TO BREATHING
This little
conversation will be on the hindrances to deep breathing, for if we make up our
minds that it is so important to breathe deeply we shall be very anxious to
know how to avoid the hindrances to deep breathing. First, let me speak of
attitude. If you study physiology and note the arrangement of the internal
organs, you will very easily see that when the body is compressed in a sitting
attitude there must be a hindrance to full and deep breathing. The girl who is
running the typewriter or the sewing-machine, or the girl who is working as
bookkeeper or stenographer, or the girl at her studies, is sitting so that it
will not be possible to breathe deeply, for the lungs are encroached upon by
the crowding together of the other viscera (which means the
vital organs) and the action of the breathing muscles is impeded by
compression. As you will readily observe, there can be no lifting of the chest
in this compressed attitude, no complete flattening of the diaphragm, no full
inflation of the minute air-cells; therefore, as we have learned, the blood is
not thoroughly purified, and actual poisons created by the vital
processes accumulate in the brain and tissues until you feel
overpoweringly weary and stupid. You cannot think, because you cannot fully
breathe.
You have often
found, when sewing, that the machine would get, as you say, bewitched. It
wouldn't feed, the thread would break or the needle would snap, and the whole
work go wrong. Put the machine away, take a rest, and the next day, without
doing anything at all to the machine, you find that it runs perfectly. The
trouble was with yourself. It is so with the girl who is running the
typewriter. She finds that it makes mistakes in spelling, things go wrong altogether.
It "acts up," as she would say. So with the girl who is bookkeeper.
The figures will not add themselves up right. Now if, under these
circumstances, the girl would get up, go to the door, take a few deep breaths
and expand the lungs fully, she would relieve the internal congestion
consequent upon the cramped position, the brain would be freed from the
accumulated poison, and as a consequence the troublesome problems would soon be
solved, the typewriter would spell correctly, the figures would add themselves
up accurately, and life would become brighter at once. Five minutes spent each
hour in deep breathing of pure air would add both to the quality and quantity
of work done, and so be a saving of time. This certainly is of great value to
you in your work in the world.
After
working-hours are over, the girl should make a special effort to sit erect for
other reasons than that of breathing, though that is reason enough.
But wrong
sitting-postures are not the only attitudes that interfere with deep breathing.
Very often the position in standing is also objectionable. When one stands with
the weight resting on the heels the body is thrown out of balance, and as a
consequence the shoulders are not on a vertical line with the hips. In this
attitude it is impossible to manifest fullness of life, because the lungs are
not fully inflated with air at each breath. We live, enjoy, accomplish only in
proportion to our breathing ability. As one writer says, "The deep
thinker, the orator, the fine singer, must of necessity be a good
breather."
The most
serious hindrance to deep breathing is found in the restrictions of the
clothing. I do not say of the corsets, because tight bands or waists can also
compress the body and make full breathing impossible. Of course you say your
dresses are loose, and you run your hand up under your waist to prove it to me.
I will not argue the question with you, but I will ask you to argue it with
yourself.
If breathing
is the measure of your living and doing, then if, in the least degree, you
limit by your dress your breathing, the dress is too tight. "Well," you
ask "how shall I know if I am hindering my breathing? My dress feels
comfortable. It seems to me that I breathe. Is there any way that I can prove
whether my dress is tight or not?"
It is true
that one becomes accustomed to uncomfortable things and scarcely realizes that
they ever were uncomfortable. The dress may seem a little tight when you first
put it on, then it begins to grow comfortable, and after a while it feels
loose, and you say it certainly is loose. I will give a simple rule by which
you may know whether your clothing is loose enough or not. Unfasten every
article of clothing; dress, corset, skirt-bands, everything. Now breathe in
slowly until every air-cell is full. It may take some practice to do this, but
persevere until you find the chest elevated and filled to its utmost extent. It
should swell out at the sides along the line of the insertion of the diaphragm.
There should be no heaving of the chest. Now, with the lungs so completely
filled with air, bring your dress waist together without pulling a particle.
Will it fasten without pressing out a bit of air from the lungs? If so, it is
loose enough. If, however, you have to pull it together, even to the tiniest
extent, you have pressed out some of the air. The minute air-cells that have
thus been emptied cannot be again filled while the dress is fastened. Therefore
you are defrauded of your rightful amount of air, and because part of the air
is pressed out, the lungs take less space and the dress seems looser. You
can understand how that would be.
The trouble is
that our dresses are usually fitted over empty lungs. The dressmaker pulls the
dress together, squeezes the air out of the lungs, and fastens the dress. Now
you can readily understand that it will be impossible to fill those air-cells
so long as the dress is worn, and yet it may not seem uncomfortable, because we
become accustomed to it. Nature has made us so that we can accustom ourselves
to many things that are not absolutely healthful, but this should not make us
willing to live unhealthfully when it is possible to avoid it.
CHAPTER VII
ADDED INJURIES FROM TIGHT
CLOTHING
We have talked
of the effect of tight clothing upon the breathing power. Let us see what other
injuries arise from wearing the dress too tight. In the first place, the action
of the heart is impeded. The heart is a hollow muscle which must be continually
filled with blood and emptied again many times a minute from the moment of
birth till the moment of death. You have been lying down for an hour; let me
count your pulse. Now sit up for a few moments. I find, now, that it beats
faster. Now stand up, and it beats still faster. You see, it increases
continually as you get into the erect position. Now walk quickly across the
floor and you will see how much it has increased again in rapidity.
You will
realize how much the dress interferes with the action of the heart better from
an illustration. Professor Sargent made an experiment with a number of girls.
One day they were dressed in perfectly loose clothing. He counted the pulse of
each. It beat on the average of eighty-four times in a minute. He had them run
five hundred and forty yards in the space of two and a half minutes. The
pulse was again counted. It had increased to one hundred and fifty-six
beats in a minute. This illustrates the effect of exercise even in loose
clothing. The next day at the same time, dressed with a corset which reduced
the waist to twenty-four inches, they ran the same distance in the same length
of time, and then he found that the pulse had run up to one hundred and
sixty-eight beats in a minute, showing how much harder it was for the heart to
do its work when restricted by tight clothing. No acrobat would attempt to perform
feats of strength or of agility if restricted even so much as by a belt.
The Russian
Government has issued an edict that the soldiers must wear their pantaloons
held up by suspenders, for it has been demonstrated that when they wear them
supported by a belt around the waist they are not able to do a fair amount of
work. The Austrian Government has also decreed that the pantaloons of soldiers
are not to be suspended by belts because of the increase of kidney difficulty
caused thereby.
We will
understand why kidney difficulty is caused by tight clothing when we study the
location of the kidneys and how they are affected by compression of the ribs.
Most people think the kidneys lie low down in the back, but in reality they lie
up under the short ribs, and the pressure of tight clothing brings the ribs to
bear directly upon the kidneys, injuring them in such a way as often to
cause disease.
The heart and
lungs are protected by a bony framework called the thorax, but below the thorax
there is no protection for the internal organs except that of the muscles,
therefore the corset or tight clothing can do most damage to the vital organs
below the diaphragm. The largest of these is the liver. It should lie close up
under the diaphragm, from which it is suspended. Under the influence of tight
clothing it is often pressed over on the right side, sometimes extending over
the whole front of the body, or even as low down as the navel. It is rutted by
the pressure of the ribs. The corset liver is well known in the dissecting-room.
Sometimes, where corsets are not worn and tight skirts are worn, supported by
the hips, the liver has almost been cut in two, the pieces being only held
together by a sufficient band of tissue to keep them from dying.
When Hiram
Powers, the great sculptor, was in this country, he once attended an elegant
party, and was observed watching very intently a beautifully dressed,
fashionable woman. A friend, noticing his interest, said to him, "What an
elegant figure she has, hasn't she?"
"Well,"
said Powers, "I was wondering where she put her liver."
You see,
Powers had studied the human body, and when he saw such an outline as the
figure of a fashionable woman, he knew that some internal organ must be
displaced in order to create that tapering waist, and his anxiety was for the
internal organs. As an artist he did not admire the tapering waist, as is shown
by the beautiful marble statue which he made. No artist would perpetuate in
marble the figure of the fashionable woman.
Not only is
the liver thus displaced, but the stomach is often pressed out of its original
position, which should be also close up under the diaphragm, towards the left
side. By the pressure of clothing it is sometimes pushed down until it lies in
the abdominal cavity, even as low down as the navel. This is the statement of
Dr. J.H. Kellogg, who, in his sanitarium at Battle Creek, examines hundreds, or
even thousands of women in a year, and asserts that it is almost impossible to
find a woman whose stomach is where it belongs. This is a serious matter,
because no organ can do its work properly when it is out of its rightful
position. We understand this in any machinery except that of the human body. We
would not meddle with a man-made machine because that would hinder its perfect
working, but we do not hesitate to interfere with the body, forgetful that it,
too, is a machine, divinely created, and with powers most fateful to us for
weal or woe.
But the harm
is not all done by the displacement of the organs mentioned. The bowels suffer,
and we can best understand what is done to them when we understand how they are
placed in the abdominal cavity.
Let me take
the ruffle you are making. The mesentery is a delicate, narrow membrane about
twenty feet long. We will compare it to the ruffle. Folded in it at one edge
are the small intestines, just as I can run this bodkin into the hem of this
ruffle. The other edge of the mesentery is gathered up as you have gathered the
ruffle. It is gathered into a space of about six inches in length, and is fastened
up and down the spine in the region of the small of the back. You can see, if I
gather up twenty feet of this ruffle into a space of six inches, how the
mesentery, with the intestines folded in the free edge, are held in the
abdominal cavity. They are held loosely, and at the same time so that the
intestines cannot be tied in knots or loops upon each other. In this way the
ruffle flares out into the abdominal cavity. The intestines should stay in
their place close up under the liver and stomach, but if pressure is brought to
bear around the body at this point, the bowels begin to sag into the abdominal
cavity. The abdominal walls lose their tonicity because they are so compressed
that they cannot have a perfect circulation, the bowels sink down still further
into the pelvis, and pull upon their attachment in the small of the back,
creating backache. The stomach sags down into the cavity; the liver sinks,
and all the organs pull upon their attachments; so it is no wonder that women
have backaches and headaches, and their eyes feel bad, and they are unable to
stand or walk. We don't want small rooms in our dwelling-houses, we don't like
it if we haven't sufficient space for our furniture; but in this bodily house
in which we dwell we are quite willing to constrict the rooms in which the
vital organs or furniture are placed, until everything is huddled together in
the closest pressure, so that the organs are unable to do their work. It
wouldn't matter in our parlors if the chairs and tables were huddled close
together, for they are not constantly changing in size, but it does matter in a
room where machines must have space to work and such space is not permitted
them; and we cannot expect good work where we crowd machinery so that it does
not have adequate room.
The influence
of tight clothing upon the pelvic organs is to displace them and create a great
many difficulties which we know as "Female Diseases." But these, in
my opinion, are not the most important things. The important things are the
displacement of the vital organs of the body—those organs without which we
cannot live, and those organs the perfect working of which is necessary both to
our health and our happiness. If we are wise we will be exceedingly anxious that
every vital organ shall be allowed to hold its own position, to do its own
work, with plenty of room.
The impeding
of the heart-action by tight clothing is not in itself the most serious effect
of this restriction. The serious trouble is in the disturbance of the
circulation. Upon a perfect circulation depends perfect nutrition. The blood
must go in sufficient quantity to every organ in order that it may be fully
nourished. When the waist is compressed the organs do not receive their full
amount of blood. It is retained, and therefore the organs are congested. The
feet are cold because the blood does not reach them in sufficient quantity, and
the brain, it may be, is hot, because the blood is not taken from the head with
enough rapidity and furnished to the other organs. So we find that tight
clothing interferes with the integrity and health of every organ in the body,
and consequently with our happiness and with our usefulness.
The reason we
admire the tapering waist is because we have been wrongly educated. We have
acquired wrong ideas of beauty. We have accepted the ideals of the
fashion-plate rather than those of the Creator. We find that some form of
physical deformity maintains in almost every country. The Chinese deform the
feet, and we think this is barbarous, but it is really not as serious as the
deforming of the vital parts of the body. The Flathead Indian is deformed
in babyhood by being compressed between boards until the head changes its
shape. Among some savage nations the leg is bandaged for a few inches above the
ankle and for a few inches below the knee and the central part is allowed to
expand as it will, and this deformity to them constitutes beauty. Among other
nations, holes are made in the ears and pieces of wood are inserted. The size
of these pieces is gradually increased until the lobe of the ear will hang down
upon the shoulder and a piece of wood as large as a man's arm be worn in the
ears. All of these things seem to us most horrible; yet, after all, they are
not as much an insult to the Divine Architect of the body as the deformity
practised by civilized and so-called Christian people, who by restriction of
the waist interfere with the vital organs and prevent the body from being
perfect in its development, or perfect in its action. The activity of the body
is an evidence of its life, and if it is so tied up that it cannot be active,
it certainly is not in the fullest condition of life.
CHAPTER
VIII
EXERCISE
You said to
me, my daughter, that you wanted to join the class in Physical Culture. I asked
you why, and you said because you thought you needed to build up in certain
parts of the body. You were defective in muscular development; you needed also
to acquire grace, you thought. And I said, "Is muscular development the
primary object of physical education?" You seemed to think that it is. Now
I want to talk to you a little along that line, and to demonstrate to you, if I
can, that physical education is not primarily for the building up of big
muscle, or for the gaining of power to do great feats of bodily strength or
skill. The object of physical education is to develop a quickly responsive,
flexible instrument for the soul to use, for that is what the body is. Physical
culture, rightly conducted, aims to secure the highest condition of the body
through the exercises that are required by the laws of the body. Law, physical
law, governs the body, and exercise should be according to this law. The first
object of exercise is to make a vital supply for the whole body. This is first
secured by proper attitude. If we stand or sit properly we gain a proper
position of the vital organs, and then they will do their work well, and the
result will be more perfect nutrition.
The use of
certain organs increases supply, and the use of others quickens waste; a
balance should be maintained between the two. We must nourish the
life-sustaining organs before using the organs which use up brain-supply,
therefore we want to be sure that we are working according to these laws. A
great many people have an idea that physical culture means building up big
muscle. They measure the muscles of the arm and of the leg, and judge by their
increase in size of the value of the exercise. This is not a correct
measurement. Individuals may weigh themselves down by development of muscles
until they have not sufficient internal vital force to carry so much weight. If
we could only balance between the organs which supply nutriment and the organs
which use it up, we would keep in perfect health.
We want to
learn how to secure a maximum of results with a minimum of force. That is, we
want the body to be quickly responsive, to be flexible, to be so that we can
use it for the things we want to do without wasting strength, and yet without
being weighed down by a superabundance of muscular tissue.
The first
desideratum in taking exercise is to have every organ of the body free,
therefore a gymnastic dress is a necessity. Then we should have the
exercise conducted by some one who understands the peculiarities of each
individual and knows just what exercises are suited for her in her special
physical condition. They should also be directed by one who understands
perfectly that the girl with an anæmic brain, that is, with a brain having too
little blood, cannot be conducted on the same plan as the exercise of the girl who
has a superabundance of blood in the brain.
The best
exercise is that which employs the mind pleasantly. A good deal of exercise may
be obtained in housework, and, if conducted with pleasure in the work, may be
of great physical advantage. Not long ago I listened to a very charming talk by
a lady whose dress betokened her a woman of society. She wore white kid gloves,
a dainty flower bonnet, and in herself appeared an exponent of leisure and
happiness. Her address was entitled "The Home Gymnasium," and I
supposed that it would consist of descriptions of machinery that could be put
up in one's own dwelling for gymnastic purposes, but I soon found that her home
gymnasium meant household duties. She said one could scrub the table and obtain
the best exercise for arms and chest, and at the same time produce an article
or piece of furniture which would be a delight to the eye in its whiteness and
brightness. She said that in scrubbing the floor one obtained very much
the same movement that would be given in the gymnasium, while at the same time
the exercise would conduce not only to the personal advantage but to the
happiness of the family. She spoke of sweeping, and dusting, and bed-making,
and expressed herself as competent to do all these kinds of work, in fact, as
doing them. And she said she never felt more of a lady than when scrubbing her
kitchen floor, and she was not ashamed to be seen by her friends at this work.
If any one rang the door-bell, she said she would simply put on a clean apron
and go to the door, and remark without hesitation that she was just scrubbing
her kitchen floor, but she was glad to see her friends.
This sort of a
home gymnasium is at the command of nearly every girl, and if she can bring
herself to feel an interest in this home gymnastic exercise, she may find it
conducive not only to her own physical well-being, but to the comfort and
happiness of all about her.
The question
is often asked whether bicycle-riding is injurious for girls, and I would say
that in my opinion it depends largely upon the girl. Has she good common sense?
Of course I am speaking of the girl who is in a normal condition of health. A
girl of extreme delicacy, or who is subject to some functional difficulty, or
the victim of some organic disease, might not find it advantageous to
ride. A physician should, in these cases, be consulted. But for the ordinary
girl, the girl of fairly good health, if she will learn how to sit properly
upon her saddle, will have the good sense to ride with judgment, it seems to me
that the exercise must be productive of great good.
My own
experience is somewhat limited. I made some discoveries in my attempts to ride.
In the first place, I learned that it was important to know how to sit. In
reading a book on "Physical Culture and Hygiene for Women," by Dr.
Anna Galbraith, I found this sentence: "Sit upon the gluteal muscles, and
not upon the perineum." This was a revelation to me. I found that I had
been doing the thing which was not proper, and bearing the weight almost
entirely upon the perineum had caused constant rectal irritation. The gluteal
muscles, closely held together, form a firm support for the body without
injuring any of the vital organs. I found that by distributing the weight—a
little upon the handle-bars, and some upon the feet—I was able to sit with less
weight and heaviness upon the saddle. I found, too, that it was quite important
to have the saddle high enough, so that the legs might be fully extended at
each stroke, and with these precautions I found the wheel a source both of
enjoyment and of strength.
The harm done
by the wheel I believe in most instances to be due to an ill-adapted
saddle or a lack of good judgment in the amount of exercise taken. It is such a
fascinating exercise, one seems to be flying and scarcely realizes how much of
nerve-force is being expended. If the girl learning to ride will be prudent,
gauging the amount of exercise by her amount of strength; if she will gradually
acquire the needed strength before attempting long wheeling trips; if she will
be judicious and not ride, perhaps, during the first two or three days of
menstruation, there seems to be no reason why the ordinary girl should not be
entirely benefited by this most delightful form of exercise. It is not as
objectionable, to any degree, as the exercise of dancing. Dancing is a most
fascinating amusement, and if it only could be conducted under proper
circumstances it would be very delightful. In itself it is not so objectionable
as in its concomitants; the late hours, the improper dressing, the hearty
suppers in the middle of the night, the promiscuous association and the undue
familiarity of the attitude of the round dance are what make dancing
objectionable. If dancing could be conducted out of doors, in the daylight,
with intimate friends, without the round dances, only those forms of dancing
which may be likened to gymnastics, as the contra-dance, the cotillion, the
objections to dancing would be largely removed, but I am of the opinion that a
large share of the fascination of dancing would go at the same time.
Skating is a
delightful, invigorating form of exercise, if conducted with judgment. One
objection to it is that the girl will skate until wearied, and then, in that
exhausted condition, perhaps ride home, or take a long, tiresome walk from the
pond to her residence, all of which is sapping her unduly and annulling the
value of the skating as an exercise.
Lawn-tennis is
delightful and beneficial, provided it is undertaken with due judgment and the
girl is properly dressed. In fact, the subject of dress is so closely
associated with that of exercise that they can never be considered separately.
Even the moderate exercise of walking, conducted in the dress of the
fashionable woman, is in itself an element of danger, whereas more violent
exercise in a loose dress becomes a means of increased strength and vigor.
I am often
asked if girls should be allowed to run up and down stairs. I see no reason why
girls should not go up and down stairs just as freely as boys, if they are
properly dressed; but going up and down stairs in tight clothing is certainly
very injurious.
CHAPTER IX
BATHING
You and your
girl friends take much pains with your personal adornment. You spend time in
curling your hair and in putting on ribbons and laces, but I sometimes think
you do not pay as much attention to personal cleanliness as you ought. It would
seem as if some of you thought that powder would cover a defect in cleanliness
and perfumery would conceal the odors of the person; but indeed it seems to me
that the stylish make-up of your dress or the curl of your hair is of very
little importance compared with the care of your health.
You each
desire to have a beautiful complexion. I used to be told in my childhood that
beauty was only skin-deep, but I have learned better. I know that even the
beauty of the complexion depends upon the integrity of the nutritive organs as
well as upon the care and attention given to matters of personal cleanliness.
I read the
other day of a discussion between two young men concerning the cleanliness of
girls of their acquaintance. One young man noticed that although one of the
girls wore a very pretty dress-gown, she had forgotten to clean her
finger-nails. The other remarked that many things in regard to a girl's personal
cleanliness could be learned by riding behind her on a tandem. The two then
commented favorably upon the girl whose nails were pink, whose ears and neck
were clean, her teeth white and dazzling, and her hair well brushed. I might
say, in passing, that this hair-brushing time at night may be well employed in
reviewing the experiences of the day in order to learn the lessons they teach,
and thereby to avoid to-morrow the mistakes of to-day.
These same
young men also said that the complexions of some girls suggested the idea of
too little fresh air and too much candy. This, they agreed, it was impossible
to hide with powder. So we see that the care of the skin is quite important if
one would have the respect and the admiration of her associates.
The skin is a
very beautiful, complex and delicate covering of the body. It consists of six
layers, and contains arteries, capillaries, lymphatics, nerves, sweat glands,
sebaceous glands, pigment, etc. So you see that the care of the skin involves
much. One writer has said, "At the skin man ends and the outlying universe
begins."
The skin,
filled with nerves, is continually reporting to the brain concerning what is
the condition of all parts of the body. The condition of the skin reflects the
condition of the digestive organs. Many girls are trying to cure pimples
on the face by the use of salves and lotions, when in all probability all that
they would need to do to gain a good complexion is to pay attention to diet, to
quit eating between meals, and not to eat so much pastry, pickles or
sweetmeats. Our athletes and pugilists are learning that they must take care of
the skin if they would keep in good condition, and they are what in horses
would be called well groomed. The skin is rubbed, cared for, kept active, because
it is understood that it is an organ of sensation, of secretion, of excretion,
of absorption, and of respiration. More solid matter is thrown out from the
skin than from the lungs, in the proportion of eleven to seven. It is even more
than the excretion from the bowels.
The skin is an
organ of breathing. This seems strange to us, but it really does take up oxygen
and give out carbonic acid, so upon the condition of the skin will depend very
largely the condition of the general health. We can detect a constipated
condition of the bowels through the color and odor of the skin.
Many girls
feel that it is more delicate to neglect the care of the bowels than to attend
to a daily evacuation, but if they would remember that it is just as indelicate
to carry effete or dead matter about in the bowels as it would be to carry it
upon the person in any other way, they would realize that it is only
politeness and refinement to see that this part of their bodily housekeeping is
duly attended to. If the bowels do not do their work the skin will be obliged
to take extra labor upon itself; so, as we have said, by the odor of the skin
we can detect the fact that the skin is doing the work that should be done by
the bowels. When a person is sick the condition of the internal organs is shown
in the complexion, and nothing more clearly indicates health than the condition
of the skin.
If this is so
important, how shall we care for the skin? First, by bathing. The tin bath-tub
of the Englishman accompanies him in all his travels, and has penetrated even
to the jungles of Africa. Bathing appliances are marks of civilization, and the
bath-room is becoming a necessity. Where the bath-room does not exist it is
easy to bathe thoroughly and completely. A wash-basin of water, with a sponge and
towel, furnish all that is absolutely necessary. A most convenient bath is the
portable thermal bath, an arrangement of rubber cloth that can be opened out to
form a square enclosure in which the person sits, with the head in the free
outside air, the body enveloped in steam generated by an alcohol lamp. This,
followed by a quick sponge-bath of cool water, is a most efficient way of
cleansing the skin; and this bath may be used in any room, no matter how beautifully
furnished, without soiling the carpet or furniture in the least.
One great
secret of healthful bathing is, when warm or hot water is used, to follow it by
an immediate application of cold water, which leaves the skin in a tonic
condition. In preparation for going out in cold weather, nothing is so
efficient a protection from the cold as a foot-bath. Soak the feet for a few
minutes in water as warm as is comfortable, then plunge them into cold water
and remove immediately, or throw cold water over them, wipe them thoroughly
dry, rub them with a little olive oil, draw on a pair of clean, warm hose, and
the feet are not only warmed, but are protected against cold and will stay
warm. These precautions will prevent one taking cold from the foot-bath. Care
of the feet is a great necessity not only for health, for equalizing the
circulation, but for the prevention of unpleasant odors.
As to time of
bathing, I suppose that the body is at its highest point of vital power at
about ten o'clock in the morning, but this is, for most people, the most
inconvenient time for a bath. The circumstances of the individual are to be
consulted, and also the effect of bathing. There are those who are made nervous
by taking a bath, consequently they will not be benefited by taking one just
before going to bed. In other cases the bath conduces to slumber. This
depends very largely upon the amount of blood in the brain. A person with an
anæmic brain will not be benefited by the bath at bedtime, but the person whose
brain is overcharged with blood will find the evening bath quieting.
I would not
advise everybody to take a daily bath. There are those who are benefited by it;
there are others who might be injured by it. It is best to study personal
peculiarities and to watch the effect of the bath. If, within a few hours, or
the next day, there is great exhaustion, one might naturally conclude that the
bath was not altogether beneficial. There are those in such delicate health
that a cold bath at any time does not seem desirable; but constant attention
will secure perfect cleanliness, as the arms and chest can be bathed one day,
the abdomen and back another, the lower extremities still another day, and so
the whole body be compassed twice or more in the space of a week.
In regard to
the use of soap for bathing purposes, the finest, purest soaps should be used,
and these alone. It is generally supposed that pure, white castile soap is the
best. Various soaps are widely advertised, while some that claim to be of the
very best are not always up to the requisite standard. Yet one can tell by a
little experience what soap is of pure quality, and such soap can be applied
even to the face without injury.
In washing the
face the hand is probably the best instrument, with the thumb under the chin,
the fingers turned toward the upper part of the face. The manipulation should
be against the direction of forming wrinkles, wherever there is a tendency for
wrinkles to appear. They can be held in check by the judicious manipulation of
the fingers in the opposite direction. Wrinkles are created by obliterating the
capillary circulation of the skin. The manipulation increases the circulation,
and so tends to overcome wrinkles. The expression of the face may form
wrinkles. I saw a girl the other day on a street-car who continually held her
eyebrows elevated, forming longitudinal lines across her forehead, which had
become as fixed in her youthful face as if she had been seventy years of age.
This was a lack of care in the governing of the expression of the face, and
also a lack in keeping up the capillary circulation.
The care of
the hands may be considered also while discussing the question of bathing. The
hands should be kept clean, the finger-nails particularly cared for, as much of
the beauty of the hands depends upon the delicate appearance of the finger-nails.
The manicure sets, which are at the disposal of almost every young woman of the
present day, are a very great addition to toilet appurtenances. The curved
scissors, the polisher, the blunt ivory instrument for pushing back the
fold of skin from the root of the nail, all of these used but a few moments in
the day will conduce to great beauty in the hands, even for those who are doing
housework.
PART II
NEED OF SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE; SOME FORMS OF AVOIDABLE
DISEASE, THEIR REMEDY AND PREVENTION.
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CHAPTER X
CREATIVE POWER
It is a
wonderful thought that God shares His divine endowments with man; that He,
being our Father, hath bestowed upon us the power to manifest His
characteristics. We are proud of these Godlike powers. We talk of our Godlike
reason, and it is divine. We know that God reasons. We have evidence of it in
the material world about us, and when we use our reason we are "thinking
God's thoughts after Him."
God has the
marvelous power of imagination, using that word in its noblest sense. He has
the power to conceive something in thought before it actually exists. He must
have seen all the glories of the material universe, worlds upon worlds circling
through space, moon and stars, the beauty of forest and stream, of tinted
flower and iridescent insect wing before they were brought into being, and He
had the power to create them. Man has this wonderful gift of imagination. The
inventor sees the machine in his thought before he attempts to build it. The
poet has the germ of his poem in mind, even the rhythm and rhyme, before he
puts it on paper. To the imagination of the artist the canvas glows with
color before his brush has touched it. The sculptor, looking at the rough block
of marble, sees within it the imprisoned shape of beauty which his genius shall
liberate to delight the world. The musician hears, singing through his brain,
the marvelous harmonies which, put upon paper, shall entrance all hearers.
Certainly this glorious gift of imagination is Godlike. But it would be useless
if it were not accompanied by creative power. The inventor must be able to
create as well as to imagine the engine. The poet, the musician, the artist
fails of deserving the name if he cannot embody his thought in a form that
others may recognize. He must not only imagine, but create. In some degree
every intelligent human being has these powers. The housewife imagines her
dinner before she prepares it, and a well-cooked dinner, placed upon a
well-appointed table with care and taste, manifests something of the ability of
the inventor and the artist. The same may be said of her who designs and
creates an elegant costume, or arranges a room with taste and skill.
We appreciate
the housewife's culinary creation; we admire the tasteful creation of the
dressmaker; we wonder at the glorious creation of artist or musician; perhaps
we even envy them. But food and clothing pass away and are forgotten. Even the
grand symphony, the beautiful picture, the graceful statue, may pass into
oblivion, and man forget that they ever existed.
But humanity
is endowed with creative powers that are not transient. The brains builded by
the individual are transmitted to his posterity from generation to generation.
God's greatest
power is that of conferring life, sentient life. We might have imagined that
that marvelous power he would have kept for Himself alone, but He has not done
so. We have also the power to confer life. We can call into existence other
human beings, and endow them with the record of our own lives, giving to them
our form, our features, our measure of vitality, our tendencies, our habits;
and these human beings whom we have thus called into life will never die. What
diviner, more responsible gift could God have conferred upon us than this? What
more worthy of our devout study? In this reverent attitude of mind let us study
this gift of creative power, learning what we may of its scope and purpose and
the material organs through which it works.
In your study
of physiology in school you took up the organs of individual life. You studied
the framework of the body, its machinery, its internal vital mechanism. You
studied about digestion, nutrition, respiration, elimination, and in this you
learned nothing of physical differences between individuals. All were
considered as having the same organs, used in the same way. Girls have the
same number of bones as boys, the same number of muscles, of vital organs. They
sleep, breathe, eat, digest, grow, according to the same plan. So far there
seems no reason why there should be any distinction of male and female. But as
we come to study what is called special physiology we discover physical
differences and reasons for their existence.
There are
certain differences of form that are discernible at a glance. Men are usually
larger than women. They have heavier bones and bigger muscles. They have broad
shoulders and narrow hips, and have hair upon the face. Women have smooth
faces, more rounded outlines, narrower shoulders and broader hips. In man the
broadest part of the body is at the shoulders, in woman at the hips. This is
significant of a great fact which will be manifest to you when you understand
the functions of each sex. Although each has the same general plan of
individual life, there are special functions which determine the trend of their
lives. The man's broad shoulders are indicative that he is to bear the heavy
burdens of life—struggles for material support—and woman's broad hips indicate
that she is to bear the heavier burden of the race.
When we come
fully to understand the deep significance of sex, we shall find in it a
wonderful revelation of possibilities of development into a God-likeness
that will stir our hearts to their very depths.
Humanity so
weak, so lacking in appreciation of his possibilities, so groveling when he
should soar, has been endowed with powers that give him control over the
destiny of the race. We may well exclaim, with Young:
"How
poor, how rich, how abject, how august,How complicate, how wonderful is man!How
passing wonder He who made him such!Who centred in his make such strange
extremes!From diff'rent natures, marvelously mix'd!Connection exquisite of
distant worlds!Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!Midway from nothing
to the Deity!"
CHAPTER XI
BUILDING BRAINS
When you were
born you were, as all babies are, deaf, dumb, blind, and helpless, but
immediately the external world began to act upon you. Then began the process of
mind-building. You began to experience sensations of heat and cold, of hunger,
of pain. The eyes began at once to recognize the light, the ears to become
aware of sounds. After a time, objects were made clear to your sight and
certain sounds were recognized. You learned your mother's face and voice, and,
little by little, became acquainted with all the objects in the world of home.
You began to use your limbs, and in this also you were at work building your
mind. We do not sufficiently realize that every aimless movement of the baby
has in reality a great purpose—that of creating brainpower sufficient to enable
the baby to control itself in all its voluntary movements. We do not think that
the fluttering hands and little kicking feet are really building brains, but
this is so. And all of life's experiences have been building brain for you ever
since.
Professor
Elmer Gates tells us that only about ten per cent. of our brains are
cultivated, that there is a vast field of brain possibilities lying
undeveloped in each one of us, and that these possibilities are to be developed
through cultivation of the senses. So while I have been talking to you of the
care of your body, I have been advocating that which will in reality develop
mind.
We have
learned that certain areas of brain govern certain movements of body. For
example, anatomists know not only where the general motor area is located, but
they can indicate the very spot where any special motor-force is generated.
In the case of
a mill girl who was subject to epilepsy and had pain in her right thumb at each
attack, it was decided to remove the part of the brain which governed the
motions of that thumb. This they could do because they knew just where that
motor-center lies, and yet they were able to take out no more than that, for
when the wound was healed she had full use of all of her hand except the thumb.
We may know
that by exercising a certain organ we are building up a certain part of the
brain. For example, the man who has cultivated his hearing until he can hear
sounds inaudible to ordinary men, has made for himself more brain-cells in the
hearing area. If he has cultivated his sight assiduously, he has created more
visual cells. If his touch has been cultivated, his brain has received new
touch sensation-cells. And Professor Gates asserts that his mental ability
has been thereby increased. You will be interested in hearing of his
experiments with animals and what he has learned therefrom.
He says he has
demonstrated that it is possible to give to an animal or a human being more
brains, and consequently a better use of the mental faculties. During twelve
months, for five or six hours a day, he trained dogs to discriminate colors. He
placed several hundred tin pans, painted different tints, in the yard with the
dogs. At one time he put their food under pans of a certain tint. When they had
learned to go at once to these pans for their food, he changed the color. Again
he arranged it so that they would receive an electric shock if they touched
pans of any color save the particular one. They soon learned to avoid all the
pans except those of this tint. So, by many different methods, he trained them
to recognize shades and tints until they could discriminate between seven
shades of red and as many shades of green, and in many ways they manifested
more mental ability than any untrained dog. While these dogs were being
trained, another group of dogs were being deprived of the use of sight by being
kept in a darkened room.
At the end of
the year both groups of dogs were killed and their brains dissected. He found
that the dogs kept in the darkness had less than the usual number of cells in
the seeing areas, and the cells were smaller, while the dogs which had been
trained to discriminate between tints and shades of color many times a day had
a far greater number of larger and more complex brain-cells in the seeing areas
than any dog of that age and species ever had before. "Therefore,"
says Professor Gates, "mind activity creates organic structure."
Prof. Gates
discovered other things of equal importance. He carried his observations to
successive generations, and found that the fifth generation was born with a far
greater number of brain-cells than could be found in animals not descended from
trained ancestors.
This is not
only interesting, but of value. You will remember, in our talk concerning your
value, we spoke of your value to the race, and learned that in cultivating
yourself in any direction you were adding to the welfare of future generations.
That was only a general statement, and now you can see how it can be. You see
that if you can make more brains for yourself you are also making more brains
for your posterity. Or if you fail to make brains for yourself, posterity will
in like degree be defrauded.
Many people
have the idea that we are obliged to be satisfied with our dower of mental
ability, and so are excusable for failing to reach as high a level as some
others. If we really believed that we could create brains we would not sit down
and sigh over small mental capacity, but go to work at once in building minds
for ourselves.
And first, we
must learn to control our thoughts and make them go where we send them. In too
many cases thoughts wander here and there, with no power governing and guiding
them.
When we are
sauntering in the wood we sometimes come upon pathways, and we know at once
that many, many footsteps of men or animals have been needed to make the paths.
If those who walked here had wandered each in his own way, no path would have
been made. One pair of feet going often over the same ground will make a path.
So the thoughts, traversing the same areas of brain, will make records on the
brain-cells which we may call paths. Every time a thought follows the same line
it creates a deeper impression, and makes it easier to go over the same
territory again. In this way habits are formed. If the thoughts are good, the
habits will be good; if evil, the habits will be bad.
It is not hard
to understand how much easier it is to form a habit than to overcome it. The
emotions, like the thoughts, create habits; but, more than this, they create
actual physical conditions.
It was my
pleasure and profit once to have a conversation with Professor Gates in his
laboratory, and he showed me an instrument wherein he condenses the breath. He
then subjects it to a chemical reagent, and by the precipitate formed he knows
what was the mental condition of the individual, whether he were angry,
sorrowful or remorseful. In five minutes after a fit of anger he finds the
excretory organs beginning to throw out the poison which anger has created.
Only five minutes suffice to create the poison, but half an hour is none too
much to eliminate it.
Think what
must be the bodily state of one who is constantly irritated or angry, who feels
jealousy, hatred, or revenge. With body poisoned by these malevolent passions
he cannot feel well, for his physical organs cannot do good work unless fed by
pure blood. Professor Gates finds that the benevolent emotions create
life-giving germs in the body; so, to love others is not only helpful to them,
but it also gives us new life.
Anger, worry,
hatred, jealousy, are suicidal emotions. We cannot for our own sakes afford to
indulge in them, while from selfish reasons alone we should be incited to
kindness, generosity, sympathy, and love.
CHAPTER XII
YOU ARE MORE THAN BODY OR MIND.
We have talked
of your body and your mind, but as yet not of yourself. You are not body; you
are not mind; but you possess both. You are spirit, created by God, who is
spirit; therefore you are His child. You may not have thought much of this
fact, but that has not changed the fact. No failure to recognize God as your
father changes His relationship to you. No conduct of yours can make you any
less His child.
"Well,"
you may say, "if that is so, what does it matter, then, what I do? If
disobedience or sin cannot make me less God's child, why should I be good and
obedient?" Because, dear heart, your conduct changes your attitude towards
Him. You might not know that I am your mother; you might know it and choose to
disobey my wishes; yet in both cases I should still be your mother, and no more
or less in one case than in the other. But you will have no difficulty in
understanding that in one case you would be a loving, helpful, obedient
daughter, a comfort and delight to me; in the other, a disobedient, willful,
unloving daughter, a care and trouble.
We are God's
children, each of us, dependent on His love and bounty for protection, food,
friends, intellect, even life. Is it dignified and noble in us to ignore and
disobey Him? Indeed the most worthy and dignified thing we can do is to
recognize ourselves as God's children and be obedient. It is a wonderful glory
to be a child of God. It means that we have Godlike powers. The children of
human parents are like them in their capacities. Children of God must have
capacities that are Godlike.
This is true
even of the most ignorant or degraded. They have in themselves divine
possibilities.
If you can get
this thought fully engrafted into your consciousness, it seems to me you can
never willfully do wrong, can never condescend to a mean or ignoble deed,
because you recognize your divine inheritance, and feel compelled by it to live
truly, nobly.
Being children
of God puts on us certain obligations towards Him, but it also puts on God
certain obligations towards us. "What!" you say; "God the
Infinite under obligations to man, the finite? The Creator under obligations to
the created?" Oh, yes.
We recognize
the fact that human parents are under obligations to care for their children,
to protect them, to educate them, to give them opportunities. Even such are the
obligations of God towards His human children, and He fulfills them. All
our earthly blessings are from His hand. Home, friends, shelter, food, are
gifts of His love. He takes such minute care of us that if for one second of
time He would forget us, we should be annihilated. He educates us. He does not
send us away to a boarding-school where we hear from Him but seldom, but He has
a home-school where He is both Father and Teacher, and His methods of
instruction are divinely wise.
The
injudicious love of earthly parents often induces them to do for their children
things it would be far better to let the children do for themselves. I once
knew a boy of seven years, as intelligent as the ordinary child, who had never been
allowed to go down stairs alone in his life for fear he would fall. This unwise
care of the parents had resulted in the child's being timid, fearful, and
unable to care for himself. He would cry if he fell, and would lie still
sobbing until some one came to pick him up and quiet him with caresses. At the
same time I saw a boy of four who could run up and down stairs, go to the store
alone to make purchases, and who, if he fell, would jump up quickly, saying,
"O, that didn't hurt." Which child had been better protected—the one
who had been cared for by an overindulgent parent, or the one who, by judicious
stimulation to self-help, had learned to care for himself?
God teaches us
how to help ourselves, and circumstances of life which we so often think hard
and cruel are only the means by which we are being trained to be strong. The
things we call failure, worriment, and hardship, are only the little tumbles by
which we are learning to walk.
The heathen
philosopher, Seneca, says: "God gives His best scholars the hardest
lessons." We know how proud we would feel if our school-teacher would say,
"This is a hard problem, but I believe you can solve it." We would be
stimulated to work night and day to justify his confidence in our ability. But
when a little trial comes in life we are quite apt to say, "God is so hard
in His dealings with me. Why should He be so unkind?" instead of saying:
"These hard things of life are a test of my scholarship, and are an
evidence of my Teacher's confidence in my ability."
I would like
you to get this thought fixed in your mind so firmly that you will feel sure
that all circumstances of life are but lessons in God's great school, and,
rightly used, will be the means of promoting you to higher grades.
No scholar
wants to stay always in the primary department because it is easy there. He
welcomes each promotion, although he knows it means harder lessons and new
difficulties. He looks forward to college or university with pride, even
though lessons grow harder and harder.
God's school of
earthly life has in it all grades of advancement. Will you be a studious,
courageous scholar and try to learn life's lessons well? It is such a wonderful
thing to be a child of God, for that means to be an heir of God, an heir of His
wisdom, His strength, His glory, His powers. "All things are yours,"
says Paul; "life, death, things present and things to come, all are yours,
and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."
CHAPTER XIII
SPECIAL PHYSIOLOGY
With a feeling
of reverence for ourselves we now take up the subject of special physiology to
learn what makes us women. In the study of general physiology we find very few
physical differences in the sexes, but when we come to investigate what is
called the reproductive system we find entire difference of structure and of
function.
Boys and girls
in early childhood are much alike in their inclinations. They both love
activity—to run, to climb, to shout, to laugh, to play. If left to themselves
one sees not much more difference between boys and girls than between different
individuals of the same sex. But as they grow and develop they begin to take on
characteristics that indicate the evolution of sex.
The boy grows
rapidly in height, his voice breaks, the signs of a moustache appear, he seems
constrained and embarrassed in society, and yet he begins to show more
politeness towards women and more of an inclination to be gallant to girls. He
is becoming a man, and assumes manlike airs. Often, too, he becomes restless and
willful, hard to govern, self-assertive, with an assumption of wisdom that
provokes laughter from his elders. The boy is passing through a serious crisis
and needs much wise and loving care. There are inner forces awakening that move
him strangely; he does not understand himself, neither do his friends seem to
understand him. Sometimes they snub and nag him, sometimes they tease and make
fun of him. In either case he does not find home a happy place, and frequently
leaves it to seek more sympathetic companionship elsewhere.
I once spoke
to an audience of women and girls along this line, and appealed to the mothers
and sisters to be kind to the boys in their homes who were between twelve and
eighteen years of age, to remember that they were passing through the critical
period of transition from boyhood to manhood, and to try and help them by
sympathy and kindness. Some time later, as I was on the train, a young lady
came and sat down by me and said: "I want to thank you for what you said
to us the other day about boys. I have a brother about sixteen, and we have
done just as you said; we have teased him about his moustache, and his voice,
and his awkwardness, and laughed the more because it seemed to touch him. He
had gotten so that he never would do anything for us girls, and we called him
an old bear. Since I heard you I concluded that we had done wrong and I
would make a change, so that evening I said kindly, 'Charlie, don't you want me
to tie your cravat? I'd like to, ever so much.' I shall never forget the
surprised look he gave me. It seemed as if he could not believe that I, his
sister, wanted to do something to please him, but as soon as he saw I really
meant it he accepted my offer with thanks, and since then it seems as if he
could not do enough for me. Really I have almost cried to think that so little
a thing would make him so grateful. I have invited him to go out with me
several times, and he seems so glad to go. Then I've begun to make things for
his room—little fancy things that I never thought a boy would care for—and he
has appreciated them so much. Why, he even stays in his room sometimes, now,
instead of going off with the boys. And the other day, when one of the boys
came to see him, I heard him say, 'Come up and see my room,' and the other boy
said, 'Well, I wish some one would fix up my room in such a
jolly fashion.' Really," said the girl, "if you have done nothing on
your trip but what you have done for me, in showing me how to be good to my
brother, it has paid for you to come."
I often think
of this little incident when I see boys at this critical age who are snubbed
and teased just because they are leaving the land of boyhood to begin the
difficult climb up the slopes of early manhood towards the grander height
of maturity; and I wish all parents, sisters and older brothers would manifest
a sympathy with the boy who, swayed by inner forces and influenced by outward
temptation, is in a place of great danger.
The girl at
this period is also passing through a crisis, but this fact is better
understood by her friends than is the crisis of the boy's life. Her parents are
anxious that she shall pass the crisis safely, and they have more patience with
her eccentricities. She, too, often shows nervousness, irritability, petulance,
or willfulness. She has headaches and backaches, she manifests lassitude and
weariness, and is, perhaps, quite changed from her former self. She weeps
easily or over nothing at all. She is dissatisfied with herself and the whole
world. She feels certain vague, romantic longings that she could not explain if
she tried. She inclines toward the reading of sensational love stories, and if
not well instructed and self-respecting may be easily led into flirtations or
conduct that later in life may make her blush to remember. Certain physical
changes begin to be manifest. She increases rapidly in height, her figure grows
fuller and more rounded, her breasts are often sore and tender. Hair makes its
appearance on the body, and altogether she seems to be blossoming out into a
fuller and riper beauty. She is changing from the girl to the woman, and this
is a matter of sex. At this time the organs of sex, which have been
dormant, awaken and take on their activity, and it is this awakening which is
making itself felt throughout her whole organization.
We are
sometimes apt to think that sex is located in certain organs only, but in truth
sex, while centralized in the reproductive organs, makes itself manifest
throughout the whole organization. I used to feel somewhat indignant when I
heard people talk of sex in mind, and I boldly asserted that it did not exist,
that intellect was neuter and had no reference to sex; but I do not feel so
now.
When I see
what an influence the awakening of sex has upon the entire body and upon the
character, I am led to believe that sex inheres in mind as well. That does not
mean that the brain of one sex is either inferior or superior to the other; it
means only that they differ; that men and women see things from different
standpoints; that they are the two eyes of the race, and the use of both is needed
to a clear understanding of any problem of human interest.
You know that
the true perspective of objects cannot be had with one eye only, for each eye
has its own range of vision, and one eye can see much farther on one side of an
object than the other can. You can try this for yourself.
If, then, in
viewing the vital problems of life we have the man's view only or the woman's
view only, we have not the true perspective. We cannot say that either has
superior powers of vision, but we can say that they differ, as this difference
is inherent in them as men and women, and not merely as individuals.
Instead, then,
of looking at sex as circumscribed, and perhaps as something low and vulgar, to
be thought of and spoken of only with whispers or questionable mirth, we should
see that sex is God's divinest gift to humanity, the power through which we
come into the nearest likeness to Himself—the function by which we become
creators and transmitters of our powers of body, mind, and soul.
It is
important that a young woman should understand her own structure and the
functions of all her organs, and so, with this feeling of reverence for sex, we
will begin this study.
The trunk of
the body is divided into three cavities; the upper or thoracic cavity contains
the heart and lungs; the central or abdominal cavity contains the organs of
nutrition, the stomach, liver, bowels, etc.; the lower or pelvic cavity
contains two organs of elimination, the bladder and the rectum, and also the
organs of reproduction, or of sex. Between the outlet of bladder and bowels is
the inlet to the reproductive organs. This inlet is a narrow channel called the
vagina, and is about six inches in length. At the upper end is the mouth
of the womb or uterus. The words mean the same, but womb is Anglo-Saxon
and uterus is Latin, and as Latin is the language of science,
we will use that word. The uterus is the little nest or room in which the
unborn baby has to live for three-fourths of a year. It is a small organ, about
the size and shape of a small flattened pear. It is suspended with the small
end downwards, and it is hollow. It is held in place by broad ligaments that
extend outward to the sides, and by short, round ligaments from front to back.
These ligaments do not hold it firmly in place, for it is necessary that it
should be able to rise out of the pelvic into the abdominal cavity during
pregnancy, as the baby grows too large to be contained in the small pelvic
space.
On the
posterior sides of the two broad ligaments are two small oval organs which are
called ovaries, meaning the place of the eggs.
CHAPTER XIV
BECOMING A WOMAN
Perhaps you
will remember that I once told you that all life is from an egg, the life of
the plant, the fish, the bird, the human being. In the book "What a Young
Girl Ought to Know" we discussed how all life originates in an egg, and
why there must needs be fathers as well as mothers. We found that some eggs
were small, were laid by the mothers in various places, and then left to
develop or to die. Others were larger, covered with a large shell, and kept
warm by the mothers sitting over them until the little ones were hatched.
Others were so
small that they developed in the mother's body until, as living creatures, they
were born into the world. This is the case with the human being. He is first an
egg in the mother's ovary. When this egg has reached a certain stage of
development it passes from the ovary through a tube into the uterus. If it
meets there, or on its way there, the fertilizing principle of the male, it
remains there and develops into the child. If it does not meet this principle,
it passes out through the vagina and is lost.
But the eggs,
or ova—which is the Latin word meaning eggs—do not begin to ripen until
the girl reaches the age of thirteen or fourteen, or, in other words, until she
begins to become a woman. This passing away of the ovum (singular of ova) is
called ovulation, and it occurs in the woman about every twenty-eight days. The
uterus is lined by a mucous membrane similar to that which lines the mouth, and
at this time of ovulation this membrane becomes swollen and soft, and little
hemorrhages, or bleedings, occur for three or four days, the blood passing away
through the vagina. This is called menstruation.
Sometimes,
when girls have not been told beforehand of the facts of menstruation, they
become greatly frightened at seeing this blood and imagine that they have some
dreadful disease. If they have no friend to whom they can speak freely they
sometimes do very injudicious things in their efforts to remove that which to
them seems so strange and inexplicable. I have known of girls who washed their
clothes in cold water and put them on wet, and so took cold and perhaps checked
the menstrual flow, and as a consequence were injured for life, or may even
have died years after as a result of this unwise conduct.
The girl who
is wisely taught will recognize in this the outward sign of the fact that she
has reached womanhood, that she has entered upon what is called the maternal
period of a woman's life, the period when it is possible for her to become
a mother.
This does not
mean that she should become a mother while so young. It only means that the sex
organs are so far developed that they are beginning to take up their peculiar
functions. But they are like the immature buds of the flower, and need time for
a perfect development. If she understands this, and recognizes her added value
to the world through the perfecting of her entire organism, she will desire to
take good care of herself, and during these years of early young womanhood to
develop into all that is possible of sweetness, grace, purity, and all true
womanliness.
Girls who are
not wisely taught sometimes feel that this new physical function is a vexatious
hindrance to their happiness. It is often accompanied with pain, and its
periodical recurrence interferes with their plans for pleasure, and they in
ignorance sometimes say, rebelliously, "O, I hate being a woman!"
A young woman
once came to consult me professionally. She was a well-formed, good-looking
girl, to all outward appearance lacking nothing in her physical make-up; but
she was now twenty-two and had never menstruated, so she was aware that for
some reason she was not like other girls. She came to ask me to make an
examination and find out, if possible, what was wrong. She was engaged to be
married, and knew that motherhood was in some way connected with
menstruation, and she thought it might be possible that her physical condition
would preclude the possibility of her becoming a mother, and, if so, it would
be dishonorable to marry. Upon examination I discovered that all the organs of
reproduction were lacking. When I disclosed this fact to her she exclaimed,
with sadness, "Oh, why was I not made like other girls? I have heard them
complain because they were girls, but I think if they were in my place, and
knew that they could never have a home and children of their own, they would
feel they had greater reason then to complain."
I think so,
too. We seldom think of the fact that upon sex depend all the sweet ties of
home and family. It is because of sex that we are fathers, mothers and
children; that we have the dear family life, with its anniversaries of weddings
and birthdays. It is through sex that the "desolate of the earth are set
in families," and love and generosity have sway instead of selfishness.
For this reason we ought to regard sex with reverent thought, to hold it sacred
to the highest purposes, to speak of it ever with purest delicacy, and never
with jesting or prurient smiles. I do not want you to center your thought on
the physical facts of sex, but I would like to have you feel that womanhood,
which is the mental, moral and physical expression of sex, is a glorious,
divine gift, to be received with solemn thankfulness.
I want you,
for the sake of a perfect womanhood, to take care of your bodily health, and
yet I do not want you to feel that a woman must of necessity be a periodical
semi-invalid.
CHAPTER XV
ARTIFICIALITIES OF CIVILIZED LIFE
Menstruation
is a perfectly physiological process and should be without pain. Indeed, Dr.
Mary Putnam Jacobi maintains that a woman ought to feel more life, vigor and
ambition at that period than at any other time. As a fact, however, the
majority of civilized women feel more or less lassitude and discomfort, and
many suffer intensely. Whenever there is actual pain at any stage of the
monthly period, it is because something is wrong, either in the dress, or the
diet, or the personal and social habits of the individual. We certainly cannot
believe that a kind and just God has made it necessary for women to suffer
merely because they are women, and the observation of travelers among
uncivilized peoples seems to indicate that where life is conducted according to
nature's laws, the limitations of sex are less observable.
It is
difficult for us to understand how very far our lives are from being natural.
Professor Emmett, a world-renowned specialist in diseases peculiar to women,
says: "At the very dawn of womanhood the young girl begins to live an
artificial life utterly inconsistent with normal development. The girl of the
period is made a woman before her time by associating too much with her
elders, and in diet, dress, habits and tastes becomes at an early age but a
reflection of her elder sisters. She may have acquired every accomplishment,
and yet will have been kept in ignorance of the simplest features of her
organization, and of the requirements for the preservation of her health. Her
bloom is often as transient as that of the hothouse plant, where the flower has
been forced by cultivation to an excess of development by stunting the growth
of its branches and limiting the spread of its roots. A girl is scarcely in her
teens before custom requires a change in her dress. Her shoulder-straps and
buttons are given up for a number of strings about her waist and the additional
weight of an increased length in skirt is added. She is unable to take the
proper kind or necessary amount of exercise, even if she were not taught that
it would be unladylike to make the attempt. Her waist is drawn into a shape
little adapted to accommodate the organs placed there, and as the abdominal and
spinal muscles are seldom brought into play they become atrophied. The viscera
are thus compressed and displaced, and as the full play of the abdominal wall
and the descent of the diaphragm are interfered with, the venous blood is
hindered in its return to the heart."
Since
Professor Emmett wrote this, public sentiment has changed, and it is no
longer unladylike for girls to exercise; but with this increased freedom
in custom should also come increased physical freedom through healthful
clothing that allows perfect use of every muscle, more especially of the
breathing muscles. I am sure you would rather pay out your money for that which
shall add to your health and real happiness than to pay physicians to help you
from suffering the just penalty of your own wrongdoing, and that is why I am
anxious to give you this needed instruction. I do not care to have you study much
about diseases, but I want you to understand very fully how, through care of
yourself, to prevent disease.
CHAPTER XVI
SOME CAUSES OF PAINFUL
MENSTRUATION
There should
be no pain at menstruation, but that pain is quite common cannot be denied. Let
us look for other causes than are found in the dress.
One frequent
cause is found in the ignorance of girls, and their consequent injudicious
conduct at the time of the beginning of sexual activity. At this time of life
the girl is often called lazy because she manifests lassitude, and this is
nature's indication that she should rest. The vital forces are busy
establishing a new function, and the energy that has been expressed in bodily
activity is now being otherwise employed. The girl who has been properly
brought up, whose muscles are strong, and whose nervous supply is abundant, may
have no need of especial care at this time, but the average girl needs much
judicious care, in order that her physical womanhood shall be healthfully
established. She should be guarded from taking cold, from overexertion, from
social dissipation, and especially from mental excitement, and other causes of
nervousness. I would like to call your attention to the great evil of
romance-reading, both in the production of premature development and in
the creation of morbid mental states which will tend to the production of
physical evils, such as nervousness, hysteria, and a host of maladies which
largely depend upon disturbed nerves.
Girls are not
apt to understand the evils of novel-reading, and may think it is only because
mothers have outlived their days of romance that they object to their daughters
enjoying such sentimental reading; but the wise mother understands the effects
of sensational reading upon the physical organization, and wishes to protect
her daughter from the evils thus produced.
It is not only
that novel-reading engenders false and unreal ideas of life, but the
descriptions of love-scenes, of thrilling, romantic episodes, find an echo in
the girl's physical system and tend to create an abnormal excitement of her
organs of sex, which she recognizes only as a pleasurable mental emotion, with
no comprehension of the physical origin or the evil effects.
Romance-reading
by young girls will, by this excitement of the bodily organs, tend to create
their premature development, and the child becomes physically a woman months,
or even years, before she should.
In one case it
became my duty to warn a girl of eleven, who was an omnivorous reader of
romances, that such reading was in all probability hastening her
development, and she would become a woman in bodily functions while she ought
yet to be a child. Her indications of approaching womanhood were very apparent.
By becoming impressed by my words she gave up romance-reading, devoted herself
to outdoor sports, to nature studies, and the vital forces diverted from the
reproductive system were employed in building up her physical energy, her
health improved, her nervousness disappeared, and three years later her
function of menstruation was painlessly established.
A frequent
cause of painful menstruation is found in habitual neglect of the bowels. The
evils of constipation are common to the majority of women and girls, and the
foundation is laid in childhood. Mothers are not careful enough in instructing
children in the need of care in this respect, and so the habit is formed early
in life, and the results are felt later.
If the bowels
are not evacuated regularly the matter to be cast out of the body accumulates
in the rectum and large bowel, and by pressure the circulation of the blood is
impeded and congestion ensues. This extends to all the pelvic organs; the
uterus and ovaries thus congested will soon manifest disease, and painful
menstruation be the result.
One of the
most frequent causes of pain is congestion produced by displacements.
People are very apt to think that the displacement of the uterus is the
main factor, but in my opinion it is a secondary condition, and not the one to
be first considered. The uterus is a small organ, not vital to the individual,
is very movable, and not sensitive, so that its displacement alone could hardly
be considered sufficient to cause so great a train of evils as is frequently
manifest. But the liver, stomach and bowels are large, vital organs, and their
displacement leads to greater consequences. You learned at school that the
bowels are over twenty feet in length, weigh as much as twelve or fifteen
pounds, are supported in a way that makes it possible for them to sag into the
abdominal cavity and press upon the pelvic organs. Dr. Emerson, of the Boston
School of Oratory, asserts that in most adults the stomach and bowels are from
two to six inches below their normal location; and, as I have said before, Dr.
Kellogg often finds the stomach lying in the abdominal cavity as low down as
the umbilicus. What has caused this sagging of the abdominal viscera? They
certainly must have been intended to keep their place unless there has been
some interference. We find just such interference in the ordinary arrangement
of the clothing. Tight waists and bands, and skirts supported by the hips, are
cause sufficient for these displacements.
Just above the
hips there is no bony structure to protect and support the soft, muscular
parts. They yield to pressure, and the internal viscera, deprived of muscular
support, sink until they rest on the pelvic organs. If, when you look at your
abdomen, you see depressions or hollows on each side below the floating ribs,
you may know that the bowels have sagged down out of place. If you feel great
weariness, backache, or a dragged down feeling in standing or walking, you may
know that the contents of the abdomen are pulling on their attachments or
pressing on the pelvic organs. Thus displaced, circulation is hindered and the
organs all become congested, or filled with blood that moves very slowly. This
congested condition is increased at menstruation, and great pain may result.
It is well to
have the counsel of some good, honest physician under such circumstances, but
should you be where it is not possible to have such counsel, you may still be
able to do something to help yourself. In the first place, you can rearrange
your clothing so as to relieve all the organs from external weight or pressure,
and, in the second place, you can support the abdominal walls by applying
pressure from below. I have known cases of painful menstruation entirely
relieved by simply supporting the bowels by a bandage, thus relieving the
uterus of pressure and allowing a free circulation through all the internal
organs.
A very simple
and practical bandage can be made at home at almost no cost, either in time or
money. Buy some thin, cheap cotton flannel. Take lengthwise of the goods a
strip long enough to go around the body at the hips, which will be a yard or a
little over, and wide enough to fit from the thighs up to the waist, perhaps
eight inches. Put darts on the sides and in the center of the back, to make it
fit the figure. Make a couple of straps four inches wide and half a yard long;
cut off one end of each diagonally. Sew these slanting ends to the lower side
of the band about four inches from the center, that is eight inches apart, and
so that the short side of the strap will be towards the center. Do not hem
either band or straps, but overcast them; then they will not feel
uncomfortable.
In order to
adjust the band properly it will be well to lie down on the back upon the
bandage with the knees raised. Press the hands low down upon the abdomen and
raise the contents. Repeat this several times; then draw the bandage around,
pin with safety pins, draw the straps up between the limbs and fasten with
safety pins to the bandage. The support thus given is found to be very
comfortable, and girls who have much trouble in walking or standing during their
menstrual periods would find this simple bandage a great help at that time.
When the
bandage is removed at night you should rub and manipulate the abdominal walls
so as to increase the circulation and stimulate in them a better circulation
and thus make you stronger.
By deep
breathing in a proper standing attitude the abdominal viscera are lifted
upward, and if the firmness of the abdominal walls is at the same time
increased by exercise, the difficulties may be largely overcome. Some exercises
will be found in Chapter
XXIII. which are calculated to strengthen the walls and to lift the
internal organs.
I wish to call
your attention to a cause of displacement that is quite generally overlooked,
and that is, a wrong attitude.
Dr. Eliza
Mosher has made a very thorough study of this matter, and she says that the
common habit of standing on one foot is productive of marked deformities of
both face and body and of serious displacements of internal organs. It is
seldom a girl or woman can be found whose body is perfectly symmetrical. By
standing on one foot, the hip and shoulder of one side approach each other, and
so lessen the space within the abdomen on that side. On the other side a
support has been removed for the contents of the abdomen, and they sag down
until they pry the uterus out of place and press it over towards the side where
there is less pressure. The broad ligament on one side is stretched from
use and on the other side shortened from disuse, and so the uterus remains
permanently dislocated.
Dr. Mosher
thinks that standing continually with the weight on the left foot is more
injurious than bearing it on the right foot, for it causes the uterus and ovaries
to press upon the rectum and so produces a mechanical constipation, especially
during menstruation.
Wrong habits
of sitting will produce the same results. If the girl sits at school with one
elbow on the desk, the head will be turned to the opposite side and the spine
will be inclined from the perpendicular, and a lateral curvature be likely to
result. If she carries her books always on the same side, it will tend to
increase the curvature. If she sits with both elbows supported, her shoulders
will be pushed up. If her body is twisted as she sits, a strain comes upon the
muscles, and some ligaments will be lengthened and others shortened, thus
producing a lateral curvature.
To sit
"on the small of the back," that is, slipping down in the chair,
bracing the shoulders against the chair-back, tends to injure the nerves by
pressure, and also to create a posterior curvature of the spine.
Does it not
seem unfortunate that we should allow ourselves even to form such wrong habits
of sitting and standing? And now we ask, How shall we know when we are in a
correct attitude?
We have
comparatively few correct examples to imitate. I notice people everywhere, and
I see that old and young stand incorrectly. The head is poked forward, the
shoulders are rounded, the chest is flattened, and the curve in the lower part
of the back is straightened. The whole figure is out of balance, and therefore
not harmonious. Not only is the beauty of the figure destroyed, but the
internal organs are displaced. Many a mother who sees her daughter thus growing
round-shouldered keeps telling her to throw her shoulders back; but to follow
this command only increases the difficulty. The shoulders are not primarily at
fault, but the trouble originates in non-use of the front waist muscles. These muscles,
weakened by disease because of tight clothing and corset steels, and also by
cramped positions in school or at work, refuse to hold the body erect, and it
"lops" just at this point. This "lopping" disturbs the
harmonious relation of the weights of shoulders, abdomen, head, and the large
lower gluteal muscles with which nature has cushioned the lower part of the
body, and so they are obliged to readjust themselves to balance each other, and
the awkward, ungainly, unhealthful posture results.
What is needed
is to restore the right relation of these weights and all will again be
harmonious. Do not interfere with the shoulders, but straighten the front of
the body by elevating the chest and raising the head until it is supported
directly on the spine, letting the shoulders take care of themselves. If the
abdomen is now held back and the gluteal muscles raised, the beautiful curves
of the spine will be restored, the shoulders will be straightened, and the
internal organs will have a chance to resume their natural position.
A very easy
way of finding out if you have the correct attitude is to place your toes
against the bottom of the door. Now bring your chest up to touch the door, and
throw the lower part of the spine backward so that there will be a space
between the abdomen and the door. Place the head erect, with the chin drawn in
towards the neck, and you will have very nearly the correct attitude. It may
seem a little tiresome at first, because you will be apt to hold yourself in
position with needless tension of muscles, but you will soon learn to relax the
unnecessary tension, and then you will find the position the most comfortable
possible. You can walk farther without fatigue, and stand longer without
backache, because the body is placed in the attitude in which all parts occupy
their designed relation to each other.
One very
important fact is that in the wrong attitude the abdominal organs crowd down
into the pelvis, while in the correct position they are supported and kept from
sagging, so that the matter of a correct attitude is not only a matter of
beauty, but also of health.
In sitting,
also, the most comfortable posture is the most healthful; that is, with the
body squarely placed on the seat, and equally supported upon the pelvis—not
leaning back against the chair, unless the chair should chance to be so
constructed that it supports the lower part of the back and keeps the body
erect.
CHAPTER XVII
"FEMALE DISEASES."
We hear a
great deal in these days of "female diseases," by which is meant the
displacements of the organs of the reproductive system; that is, of the uterus,
ovaries, etc. These displacements are many, for the uterus may not only drop
down out of place, but it may be tipped towards one side or the other, to the
front or the back; or it may be bent upon itself in various directions. These
different displacements cause much pain, and often result in ulcerations and
profuse discharges which are known as the "whites," or scientifically
as leucorrhea. I only mention these things incidentally, so that I may call
your attention to the things you may do to prevent them.
A great many
girls and women are spending large sums of money in being doctored for these
difficulties who need not suffer with them at all if they had known how to dress
healthfully; and many are bearing much anxiety over the possibility of becoming
sufferers with these distressing diseases who could have their burden of fear
removed by the knowledge that "female diseases," in the great
majority of cases, are the results of wrong habits of dress and life. Leucorrhea
is not a disease. It is a symptom of abnormal conditions, and to be cured it is
needful that the conditions shall be understood.
Dr. Kellogg
says, "Leucorrhea may result from simple congestion of the bloodvessels of
the vaginal mucous membrane, due to improper dress. It may also be occasioned
by taking cold, and by a debilitated condition of the stomach."
Leucorrhea is
merely an abnormal increase of a normal secretion. All mucous membrane secretes
mucus in small quantities—enough to keep the membrane moist. When from any
cause this secretion is increased, we have what is called a catarrhal
condition. As all cavities that communicate with the air are lined with mucous
membrane, this catarrhal condition may exist in the nose, the throat, the eyes,
the ears, the bowels, or the reproductive organs, and will be named according
to the location.
A natural
increase of this secretion takes place just before and after menstruation, and
should occasion no anxiety, but if continued during the remainder of the month,
especially if very profuse, of offensive odor, or bloody in character, it needs
the attention of the skilled physician.
I do not wish
to make you think constantly of yourself as diseased, and so I do not give you
directions as to local self-treatment. Many symptoms can be overcome by general
care of the health-habits of the girl, and if they do not yield to this
general care it is better to consult a responsible physician than to tamper
with yourself.
And here let
me give you a word of warning. If you need medical care, never consult the
traveling doctors who advertise to do such wonderful things. They charge big
fees and give a little medicine and then move on, and you have no redress if
they have not accomplished all that they have promised. They live off the
gullibility of people. Again, never take patent medicines. Wonderful
discoveries, favorite prescriptions and the like may be harmless, and they may
not. And even if they are, how can you judge that they are suited to your
special case? That they cured some one else is not proof that they will benefit
you, and you run a risk by taking them as an experiment. One very serious
danger in the taking of patent medicines is the fact that they are so largely
alcoholic in composition, and girls and women have all too often been led into
the alcohol habit and become habitual drunkards through taking some advertised
remedy.
Another has
correctly said: "If you need the consultation and advice of a physician go
to your family physician, or, if you prefer, go to some other physician; but
always select one whose moral character and acknowledged ability render him a
suitable and safe adviser in such a time of need. Above all things avoid
quacks. The policy they pursue is to frighten you, to work upon your
imagination, and to make such alarming and unreliable statements as will induce
you to purchase their nostrums and subject yourself to such a series of
humiliations and impositions as will enable them to pilfer your purse and without
rendering you in return any value received, but likely leave you in a much
worse condition than they found you."
You will
probably be advised by your personal friends, who may know of your ailments, to
take hot douches, and perhaps you may wonder why I do not prescribe them for
leucorrhea, and kindred difficulties.
I do not
commend them for the fact that I do not want you to be turning your constantly
anxious thought towards yourself in these matters. If you need such treatment,
let it be prescribed by your physician, who knows exactly your condition. As
far as possible turn your thoughts from the reproductive system. Take care of
your general health, dress properly, obey all the rules of hygiene in regard to
diet, sleep, bathing, special cleanliness, and care, and then forget as far as
possible the physical facts of womanhood.
An excellent
addition to your general bathing can be taken once a week in the form of a sitz
bath, which is effective for cleanliness, and also for the reduction of
congestion. If you have no sitz bath-tub, an ordinary wash-tub can be made
to answer by raising one side an inch or two by means of some support. Have the
water at a comfortable temperature, say about 98 degrees, and if you have no
thermometer you can gauge the heat by putting in three gallons of cold water
and add one gallon of boiling water. Sit down in the tub and cover yourself
with a blanket. In about ten minutes add by degrees a gallon of cold water.
Remain sitting a minute or two longer, then rub dry.
Many people
are afraid to use cold water after hot, in bathing, for fear they will take
cold, but that is just the way to prevent such a result from the hot bath. The
hot water has caused all the pores on the surface of the body to open, and the
bodily heat is rapidly lost through this cause. The cold water, quickly
applied, causes the pores to close, leaves the skin in a tonic condition, and
conserves the bodily heat. One should never take a hot bath without following
it with a quick cold application to the surface. It should
continue, however, but for a moment.
This kind of a
bath is very useful for all chronic congestions of the abdominal and pelvic
viscera, such as piles, constipation, painful menstruation, leucorrhea, or
other affections of the reproductive organs. It is also very helpful in
headaches due to congestion of the brain. If there is too little blood in the
brain it might produce wakefulness, but when the brain is too full of
blood this bath tends to produce sound and refreshing sleep.
A foot bath
may be taken at the same time as the sitz bath, and in this case the water
should be warmer than that in the sitz bath, and as the person rises from the
sitz bath she should step into it, so that her feet will get the tonic effect
of the cold water.
The average age
at which menstruation first appears is fourteen, but some girls menstruate as
early as eleven, while others may not develop till some years later.
Frequently, when the girl does not manifest this symptom of womanly
development, the mother becomes anxious and begins to give forcing medicines.
She knows that girls often die with consumption in their early young womanhood,
and has heard that it was because they did not physically develop, and she
fears that such danger threatens her daughter, and imagines that if something
can be done to "bring on her courses," as she expresses it, the
danger will be averted.
In this case
she has reversed cause and effect. The consumptive girl did not menstruate
because she had not the vitality to do so. The consumption was the cause, the
non-menstruation the effect. To produce hemorrhage from the reproductive system
by strong, forcing medicines is only to increase the danger. The only thing to
do is to improve the general health, and if the girl can increase in
strength until she has more vital force than suffices to keep her alive, the
function that is vital—not to her, but to the race—will establish itself.
The failure of
the menses to appear at the average age may be due merely to a slow
development, and in this case there is nothing to do but wait. If the girl
seems well, if she has no backache, no headache, no general lassitude, no undue
nervous symptoms, the mere non-appearance of the menses need occasion no alarm.
If, however, she has these symptoms, it is an evidence that nature is
attempting to establish the function and is hindered either by general lack of
vitality or by some local condition, and in either case the giving of forcing
medicines would be a mistake. The weekly sitz bath would do no harm as a
semi-local measure. All proper precautions should be observed as to maintenance
of general health and mental serenity, and if these do not prove sufficient the
physician should be consulted.
In the case I
mentioned, where the reproductive organs were lacking, the girl had been
subjected to a long course of home medication which had proven disastrous to
her digestion, and yet, as will be readily understood, had not resulted in the
establishment of a function that is dependent upon organs which, in this case,
did not exist.
Sometimes
there are slight mechanical hindrances which can only be determined by the
physician, though their presence will be indicated by the symptoms of
menstruation without the accompanying sanguineous discharge. In these cases the
home medication is dangerous. If the girl regularly has symptoms of approaching
menstruation, with pain and bloating, and these subside without flow, it would
be wise to consult the physician instead of resorting to domestic remedies or
letting the matter go on without attention.
Quite
frequently the first appearance of menstruation is followed by weeks or even
months of freedom from its reappearance. In these cases no alarm need be felt
as long as the general health is not affected. Again, there may be suspension
of the function from change of surroundings. Girls who go away to school often
suffer from irregularity. I have known of a case where the girl never
menstruated during the school year, but was perfectly regular during vacations.
These cases
may be accounted for by the nervous strain, the using up of vital forces in
mental effort to such degree that there is nothing left with which to carry on
the menstrual function. In all such cases it is wise to watch carefully the
general health, and if all functions are not properly conducted, to reduce the
strain until the vitality is able to keep all functions in order.
Girls are
sometimes disturbed because the flow is scanty, and think they should do
something to increase the amount. It is no doubt true that profuse menstrual
flow is the result of our artificial lives. If we lived more normally we should
have naturally a scanty menstrual flow. Therefore if a girl has good health and
no monthly pain and the flow is scanty, she may consider herself as more nearly
in a normal state, and be thankful.
If, however,
the menses are suddenly less than normal it denotes a suppression, which may be
the result of cold, exhaustion of body, weariness of nerves, mental anxiety, or
disturbance of the emotions. If gradual suppression occurs, accompanied by loss
of health, it indicates some constitutional difficulty or local trouble which
demands professional counsel.
Profuse
menstruation is also a relative term, as there is no definite standard as to
amount of menstrual flow, nor the length of time it should continue. The
profuseness must be measured by the condition of the individual. Where health
seems fully maintained there would appear no cause for anxiety. But if there is
a marked increase over the amount usual for the individual, if great weakness
and prostration is produced, either at the time or afterward, it may be called
profuse, and the cause may be either debility, that is weakness, or
plethora, which means fullness. If from the latter, there will be throbbing
headache, pain in the back, and general signs of fever. If from debility, there
will be pallor, weakness, and perhaps an almost continuous flow.
As may be
imagined, the treatment in the two cases will differ. The full-blooded girl
should be put on a plain, unstimulating diet, with plenty of out-door exercise
during the month, but about twenty-four hours before the flow is expected she
should have complete mental and physical rest. She should remain in bed, and
apply cold wet cloths over the abdomen and between the thighs for an hour at a
time, with intervals of at least one-half hour between the applications. The
bowels should be freed from all fecal matter, and cool, small enemas be given
two or three times a day. If these simple measures do not avail, the doctor
should be consulted.
The pale and
debilitated girl needs to rest. Sometimes, if hemorrhage continues almost from
one period to the next, she should remain in bed even after the flow seems
checked. The great desideratum is to build up the general health, not by
tonics, which are usually only stimulants, but by the judicious observance of
the laws of health. This will, in many cases, call for the advice of the
physician, who can see and study the patient and her special conditions. It is
not safe to trust to book-doctoring.
CHAPTER
XVIII
CARE DURING MENSTRUATION
I have said
that I do not want you to think yourself a semi-invalid and so be
"fussy" about yourself, but I have also said that I want you to take
care of yourself at all times, and especially during your menstrual periods.
How can you make these ideas agree with each other?
I know that
many writers say that a girl should spend one day each month in bed, or at
least lying down; that there are some things that should always be forbidden to
girls, simply because they are girls, such as running up and down stairs. These
wholesale restrictions make girls rebellious at their womanhood. I simply want
you to use good sense at all times in your care of yourself.
Knowing the
fact that just before and during menstruation the uterus is heavier than at
other times, because engorged with blood, and remembering that it is loosely
suspended, it is easy to understand that long walks or severe exercise at the
menstrual period will more easily cause it to sag, and this sagging becoming permanent
may cause pain, backache, and other discomforts. Therefore, having good sense,
you will not plan to take long rides or walks or do any severe exercise.
At the same time moderate exercise in proper clothing will tend to relieve
pelvic congestion by equalizing the circulation, and if the clothing is
properly adjusted and the muscles are strong and well-developed, an ordinary
amount of physical activity may be beneficial rather than harmful.
Girls are so
often told that they must not walk at their monthly periods, must not study,
must not ride, etc., etc., that it really is no wonder that they feel it a very
undesirable thing to be a woman. My observation leads me to believe that if
girls from earliest childhood were dressed loosely, with no clothing suspended
on the hips, if their muscles were well developed through judicious exercise,
they would seldom find it necessary to be semi-invalids at any time. In fact,
we do sometimes find a young woman who has no consciousness of physical
disturbance during menstruation. She can pursue her usual avocations without
hindrance, and finds her physical womanhood no bar to any enjoyment.
This is as it
should be; but as girls have not all been well developed and properly dressed,
we cannot assert that all girls can be indifferent to physical conditions at
this time. If a girl is well, has no pain or discomfort, then I would say, let
her use good common sense in the ordering of her daily life and give the matter
no special or anxious thought. If she has pain or uneasiness, let her
govern her life accordingly, using care, taking some rest at the time of the
menses; but, above all things, let her arrange her clothing at all times so as
to secure for herself absolute freedom of movement. Then let her, during the
intervals between the menstrual periods, endeavor by judicious exercise to
build up strong muscular structure around the vital organs, such structure as
will support the viscera where they belong, and in time she
will probably find herself growing free from menstrual pain.
During the
painful periods resulting from congestion it is often advisable to keep the
recumbent position, and to use heat both externally and internally. However, I
would advise never using alcoholic beverages. Their apparent usefulness lies
principally in the hot water with which they are administered, and the danger
of forming the alcohol habit is too great to justify their use.
There are
cases of nervous pain at menstruation that are aggravated by heat and
diminished by cold. I knew such a case where a girl at school, suffering with
menstrual pain, alarmed teachers and friends by wringing towels out of cold
water and laying them over her abdomen. But the alarm subsided when they saw
that the pain soon passed away under the cold application. The girl was one in
whom there were no local congestions, but great nervous exhaustion and
heat always increased her sufferings, while cold allayed.
I have read
that a woman should not bathe or change her underwear while menstruating. I
cannot see how soiled clothing can be more healthful than that which is clean;
and if well-aired, I should no more object to your putting on clean underwear
than to your changing your dress. Most especially would I advise a frequent
change of napkins, in order to remove those which are soiled from their
irritating contact with the body. A full bath during menstruation would, for
most people, be unadvisable, but the cleansing of the private parts is
imperative. For this, tepid water, with good soap, may be used daily or
oftener. Other parts of the body may be rubbed with a wet cloth, followed by
vigorous, dry rubbing. Cleanliness at all times is certainly a mark of
refinement.
You should use
good sense and not run out in thin slippers on wet or cold ground; but if your
feet get wet through accident, keep in motion until you can make a change of
shoes and stockings. There is little danger from wet feet to those in good
health, if they keep in vigorous motion.
As to other
rules, they are those that pertain to the care of health at all times: loose
clothing, deep breathing, wholesome food, plenty of sleep, sunlight, pure air,
exercise according to your strength, and, above all, serenity of mind,
accepting the fact of physical womanhood, together with a recognition of its
sacredness and dignity.
As a minor
item, I would suggest that the napkins be fastened to straps that go over the
shoulder and are then joined together in front and back to an end piece, on
each of which a button is sewn. Buttonholes in the napkins at the corners,
diagonal from each other, will make them easily attached or removed. The
napkins should be of a material that is quickly absorbent of the flow.
Cheesecloth is cheap, and can be burned or otherwise disposed of after using.
It may be protected by an outer strip of unbleached muslin which is almost
water-proof.
A very
comfortable way of arranging napkins that are to be used from time to time is
to take a piece of linen or cotton diaper sixteen inches square. About three
inches from one end, make on each side an incision four inches long. Fold this
strip in the middle lengthwise, and sew together up to the end of the
incisions. This makes a band with a sort of pocket in the middle. Hem the cut
edges. Fold the napkin over, four inches on each side, that is as deep as the incisions.
Then fold crosswise until you can enclose the whole in the pocket in the band.
This makes a thick center and thin ends by which to attach the napkin to the
suspender.
I hold that
mental serenity is one of the essentials of healthful menstrual periods, and
this cannot be had if the mind is continually troubled and the thought centered
on the physical condition. I would be glad to have your mind freed from the
ideas of sex matters as far as possible. It is a scientific fact that thinking
continually of an organ tends to disturb that organ. I know a man who was so
afraid of heart disease that he felt of his pulse every few minutes and kept a
stethoscope on the head of his bed to listen to his heart in the night. I would
have been surprised had he not had heart trouble.
CHAPTER XIX
SOLITARY VICE.
As the
reproductive system awakens to activity it naturally attracts the attention of
the girl, and an effort should be made to call her thoughts to other themes.
As I have said
before, the reading of sensational love stories is most detrimental. The
descriptions of passionate love scenes arouse in the reader a thrill through
her own sexual organism that tends to increase its activity and derange its
normal state. Girls often mature into women earlier than they should, because
through romances, through jests of associates in regard to beaus and lovers,
and through indulgence in sentimental fancies their sexual systems are unduly
stimulated and aroused. This stimulation sometimes leads to the formation of an
evil habit, known as self-abuse. The stimulation of the sex organs is
accompanied with a pleasurable sensation, and this excitement may be created by
mechanical means, or even by thought. Many girls who are victims of this most
injurious habit are unaware of its dangers, although they instinctively feel
that they do not want it known. Others who would not stoop to a mechanical
exciting of themselves do so through thoughts, and do not know that they
are just as truly guilty of self-abuse as the girl who uses the hand or other
mechanical means.
The results of
self-abuse are most disastrous. It destroys mental power and memory, it
blotches the complexion, dulls the eye, takes away the strength, and may even
cause insanity. It is a habit most difficult to overcome, and may not only last
for years, but in its tendency be transmitted to one's children.
If you have
from the first thought nobly of yourself, you will have fallen into no such
debasing habit. But if, through ignorance, you have acquired it, how shall you
overcome it?
I should
hesitate to write more on this subject did I not know that many girls fall
victims to this evil through ignorance, and many who thus fall could and would
have been saved had they been rightly instructed. I therefore desire that you
shall be wise.
Every normal
function of the body is attended with a pleasurable sensation. We enjoy eating,
seeing, walking. Odors bring sensations which are agreeable, the sense of touch
may give pleasure, and as we enjoy these sensations in fact, so we may enjoy
them in memory or in imagination. We can recall the beauty of the rose, the
perfume of the mignonette, the flavor of the orange, or we can imagine new
combinations of these delights. We feel joy or grief through reading vivid
descriptions, or we can ourselves create imaginary scenes in which we are
actors, who suffer or enjoy.
The
reproductive system is the seat of great nervous susceptibility, and the
excitation of these nerves gives a pleasurable sensation. This excitation may
be thought a local mechanical irritation or it may be mental. In little
children it may be caused by lack of cleanliness of the external organs. An
irritation is produced, and an attempt to allay this by rubbing produces an
agreeable feeling, which may be repeated until the evil habit of self-abuse is
formed.
Sometimes
constipation, by creating a pelvic congestion, will have the same result.
Sometimes clothing which is too small may, by undue pressure on the parts, call
the thought of the child to these organs, and in an attempt to remove the
pressure by pulling the clothing away the habit may be begun.
Sometimes the
tiny pin-worms in the rectum may wander into the vagina, and the little girl
feel a constant annoyance, which rubbing allays temporarily, but which results
in the evil habit of the use of the hands to produce an agreeable sensation.
Thus through avoidable causes the evil habit may be acquired. Then it may be
taught by one thus learning it to another who, without this instruction, would
never have acquired it.
But new
dangers arise as the girl approaches the age when the reproductive system
begins to take on the activity that indicates approaching womanhood. The normal
congestion of the parts causes a hitherto unknown consciousness of sex, and
unless she is warned she may at this period acquire the habit without knowing
its evils.
All functions
necessary to the preservation of the individual life are attended with
pleasure, and so are those which are for the continuation of the species. While
the emotion may be pleasurable, it is at the same time the most exhausting,
that can be experienced. We see that in some forms of animal existence
parenthood is purchased at the expense of the life of the parent; and while in
the human being the procreative act does not kill, it exhausts, and no doubt
takes from the vital force of those exercising it. One can feel justified to
lose a part of her own life if she is conferring life upon others, but to
indulge in such a waste of vital force merely for pleasure is certainly never excusable,
and least excusable of all is the arousing of pleasurable emotions by a direct
violation of natural law.
The only
natural method of arousing a recognition of sexual feeling is as God has
appointed in holy marriage, and the self-respecting girl feels that no approach
of personal familiarity is either right or proper. But it may be that she
does not know that feelings may be awakened by the imagination which are as
wrong morally as, and more injurious physically than, actual deeds, and so may
allow her mind to revel in fancies that would shock her as actualities.
I received a
letter not long ago from a young woman who most emphatically asserted that she
would never, never, never permit familiarities, and then most innocently says,
"but it wouldn't be wrong to imagine yourself enjoying the embrace of some
certain one, would it?"
It is just
this idea that there is no wrong in thought that weakens virtue's fortress and
renders it easily demolished. Girls who would shrink from use of mechanical
means to arouse sexual desire will permit themselves to revel in imaginary
scenes of love-making with real or unreal individuals, or in mental pictures
which arouse the spasmodic feelings of sexual pleasure, and yet be unaware that
they are guilty of self-abuse.
Sexual feeling
in itself is not base, but it can be debased either in thought or in deed.
Rightly considered, it is the indication of the possession of the most sacred
powers, that of the perpetuation of life.
"Passion
is the instinct for preservation of one's kind, the voice of the life
principle, the sign of creative power." These last four words open before
us a wonderful field of thought. "Creative power!" What does
that mean? Is creative power limited to reproduction of kind? Do you not create
when you work out with brain some idea and then embody it in some visible form?
Worth is said to create an artistic dress, the actor creates his part in the
play, the musician creates the arrangement of harmonies which are represented
in musical signs, and in the same sense you may be in a myriad of ways a
creator.
With the
beginning of activity of sexual life in yourself came increased development and
new energy, beauty, and power, and the preservation and right use of that life
will continue to be a source of power. "When the signs of this creative
power come throbbing and pulsing in every fiber, it only shows that one has
more and greater ability to create than ever before. One knows by this that she
can now do greater work than she has done or is doing;" so says one
writer.
Is it not a
beautiful thought that this feeling, which we have supposed we must fight as
something low, is in reality the stirring of a divine impulse which we can
control and govern and make to serve us in all high and noble deeds?
If you hold such
noble thoughts in your heart concerning yourself, you will need no threatenings
to keep you from self-debasement and self-defilement. You will not need to be
told of the loss of physical strength or of beauty, of memory or of
reason, through evil habits of solitary vice, for they will have no temptation
for you, even as you do not need threats of police and prisons to keep you from
stealing, because honesty is the active and guiding principle of your life.
But supposing
you have already acquired the evil habit and are now awakened to the wrong you
are doing yourself; you observe the lack of lustre in the eye, the sallow,
blotched complexion; you realize your loss of nerve-power manifested in cold
and clammy hands, backache, lassitude, irritability, lack of memory, and
inability to concentrate thought. What shall you do to overcome and to gain
control of yourself? The question is a serious one, for no habit is more
tyrannical than the dominion of unrestrained sexual desire. Its victims often
fight for years, only to be conquered at last. If there was no cure but in
fighting, I should feel that the case was almost hopeless.
The very first
thing to do is to change the mental attitude in regard to the whole matter of
sex; to hold it in thought as sacred, holy, consecrated to the highest of all
functions, that of procreation. Recognize that, conserved and controlled, it
becomes a source of energy to the individual. Cleanse the mind of all polluting
images by substituting this purer thought; then go to work to establish correct
habits of living in dress, diet, exercise, etc. See to it that there are
no such causes of pelvic congestions as prolapsed bowels, caused by tight
clothing or constipation; keep the skin active; and, above all, keep the mind
healthfully occupied.
The victim of
self-abuse has, through the frequent repetition of the habit, built up an undue
amount of brain that is sensitive to local irritation of the sex-organs or to
mental pictures of sex-pleasure. She must now allow this part of the brain to
become quiescent, and she should go to work to build up other brain centers.
Let her train her sight by close observation of form, color, size, location.
Let her cultivate her sense of hearing in the study of different qualities of
sound, tone, pitch, intensity, duration, timbre; her sense of touch, by
learning to judge with closed eyes of different materials, of quality of fiber,
of the different degrees of temperature, of roughness or smoothness, of
density; in fact, let her endeavor to become alert, observant, along all the
lines of sense-perception. Let her study nature, leaf-forms, cloud-shapes,
insects, flowers, birds, bird-songs, the causes of natural phenomena; and,
above all, let her keep out of the realm of the artificial, the sentimental,
the emotional, and, holding firmly to the thought that creative energy is
symbolized by desire and can be dignified and consecrated to noblest purposes,
she will find herself daily growing into a stronger, more beautiful
self-control.
CHAPTER XX
BE GOOD TO YOURSELF.
I witnessed
the other day a parting between two men. The elder, as he took the younger by
the hand, said, "Good-by, my boy; be good to yourself;" and the
younger responded, heartily, "Oh, there is no danger but I'll be
that." I wondered, as I saw the laughing face, so full of the indications
of the love of pleasure, if he really would be good to himself, or if he would
interpret it to mean to indulge himself in all kinds of sensuous gratification.
It is a great thing to be truly good to one's self, and I would give the
injunction with the highest ideal. Be good to your real self with that true
goodness that sees the end from the beginning, that realizes the tendency of
certain forms of pleasure, and that claims the privilege of being master of the
senses, and not their slave.
"Well,"
you say, rather deprecatingly, "you can't expect young people to act as
staid and wise as you old folks. We want some fun." So you do, and that is
perfectly right. You should want fun and have fun. All I ask is that you shall
try to understand what real, true fun is.
I have seen
young folks pull the chair from under some one "for fun," and
the result was pain and perhaps permanent injury to the object of the joke.
I have known
young men to imagine they were having "fun" when they went on a
spree, to get "gloriously drunk," as they phrased it. You can see no
fun in this. You realize that it is a most serious tragedy, with not an element
of real fun in it, involving, as it does, the loss of health, the risking of
life, the possibility of crime, the heart-break of friends, and perhaps even
death. It is altogether a wrong idea of fun.
I have known
girls in the secrecy of their rooms to smoke cigarettes "for fun,"
and in that I am sure that you see no amusement. It was a lowering of the
standard of womanhood; it was tampering with a poison; it was something to be
ashamed of, rather than something to call fun.
I have known
young men and women to enter into flirtations "for fun." I knew a
girl whose chief delight seemed to be in getting young men in love with her,
only to cast them aside when tired of their adoration. She called this fun, but
it was cruelty. In olden times men amused themselves by throwing Christians to
wild beasts and watching them while being torn to pieces. This was their idea
of fun, and the flirt's idea of amusement seems to be of the same order. She
plays with the man as the cat with the mouse, and experiences no pangs of
conscience when, torn and bleeding in heart, she tosses him aside for a new
victim.
There are
other young people who would not enter into such serious flirtations, and yet
are unduly familiar with each other. They mean nothing by their endearments and
familiarities, and neither will suffer any pangs when the pleasant intimacy is
ended. Can we not call this innocent fun? They have indulged in some unobserved
hand-pressures, or a few stolen kisses; but neither believed the other to mean
anything serious. It was only fun; what harm could there be in that?
Many girls
to-day are reasoning thus, and many of these may pass through the experience
without loss of reputation; they may subsequently marry honorably, and become
respected and beloved mothers. But ask any of these girls, in her mature years,
when her own daughters are growing up around her, if she wants them to pass
through the same experiences. I once knew a beautiful young woman who thought
it was fun to have these familiar intimacies with young men, because, as she
said, she knew how far to go. I saw her in her maturity, with daughters of her
own, and heard her say that when she recalled her own girlish escapades, even
in the darkness of the night the blushes would rush over her from head to foot,
and in heartfelt agony she would say to herself, "Oh, I wonder if my
girls will ever do so?"
It was fun to
her in her girlhood; it was shame to her in her mature remembrance; it was
agony when she saw it possible to her own children.
True fun is
fun in anticipation, fun in realization, fun in retrospection, and fun in
seeing it repeated by succeeding generations. If it fails to be fun in any of
these instances, it fails to be genuine.
I like to see
young people full of vivacity. I like to hear their merry laughter, to witness
their innocent pranks; but I do not like to see them laughing at the sufferings
of others, or amusing themselves with dangers of any kind. Above all, I regret
to see them playing with the fire of physical passion.
Many a girl
who to-day is lost to virtue had no idea that she was starting on this downward
road. She was only having a good time. She was pretty, attractive, and admired.
Young men flattered her with words, and when they held her hand, or put their
arm around her, she took it as another compliment to her charms. She did not
see that it was only selfishness, only a desire to feel the thrills of physical
pleasure which this contact with her person aroused. She would have felt
humiliated had she recognized this fact, and it seems to me that girls should
understand the feelings that prompt young men to take personal familiarities.
The young man
might deny the fact to the girl, but he understands it well enough as a fact,
and he loses a measure of respect for her because she is willing to permit his
advances. The girl no doubt imagines that these are sweet little secrets between
herself and the young man, when perhaps he is discussing her openly with his
young men friends. I have even heard such discussions on railway trains,
carried on in no very low tones, between young men, well dressed and with all
the outward appearances of gentlemen, and I have wondered how Jennie and Sadie
and Clara and Nellie, whose names I heard openly mentioned, would have felt to
have heard themselves described as "a nice, soft little thing to
hug," or "she knows how to kiss."
Do you imagine
these young men would have thus spoken had they truly respected the girls? They
might say "They are nice girls," but would they say, in their deeper
consciousness, "They are true, self-respecting, womanly girls, and I honor
them?"
"But what
is a girl to do?" asks one. "If she is prudish she won't get any
attention. She has to allow a certain innocent freedom, or young men won't go
with her."
Do you really
believe that, dear girl? Let me tell you what young men have said to me. Said
one, "O, we have to be familiar with the girls. They all expect it, and
would be offended if we were just friendly and manifested no
familiarities." Do you suppose girls ever thought of the possibility of
the young men saying that? When they are pleading for permission to be familiar
they do sometimes say, "Why, all the girls allow it," but they also
add, "so there can be no harm;" while among themselves they are
laughing at the credulity of the girls, or accusing them of making it necessary
for the young men to take "innocent" liberties in order to have the
good will of the girls.
A young man
may assure you most emphatically that he respects you none the less, although
you allow him to hold your hand or kiss you at parting, but he knows it is not
true, and he will admit it to others rather than to the girl herself. Truthful
young men say, "Of course, we have the most respect for the girls who keep
us at a distance." "But they won't pay us attention," say the
girls. "Is that so?" I asked of a young man. "Are you more
earnest in pursuit of the girl who courts approaches, or the girl who holds you
at bay?" "Why!" responded he, with emphasis, "the girls
ought to know that a boy wants most that which is hardest to get; but we are
actually obliged to treat the girls with familiarity or they won't go with
us." And this young man seemed really surprised when I assured him
that girls supposed they were obliged to accept caresses in order to have the
attention of young men. Then this same young man spoke of something that I know
to be too often true. He said, "It is strange, if the girls don't want
these things, that they act as they do, for they actually invite familiarity.
In fact, many times I would have been glad to be respectfully friendly, but the
girls did not seem satisfied, and by many little ways and manners they
indicated that they were ready to be caressed. I think they mean to be good
girls, but they put an awful lot of temptation in a fellow's way."
No doubt these
girls did not realize what they were doing, but I believe every young woman should
have so clear an understanding of human nature as to know that she is playing
with a dangerous fire when she allows caresses and unbecoming familiarity. She
ought to know that, while she may hold herself above criminal deeds, if she
permits fondlings and caresses she may be directly responsible for arousing a
passion in the young man that may lead him to go out from her presence and seek
the company of dissolute women, and thus lose his honor and purity because a
girl who called herself virtuous tempted him. Is she in truth more honorable
than the outcast woman? She has allowed familiarities in the matter of embraces
and kisses, and she may not know what thoughts have been inspired in the
mind of the young man by her unguarded conduct. She may feel indignant at the
suggestion, because she has meant no harm, but in reality she should blush that
her own familiar conduct has given him a tacit right to think of her with even
greater freedom.
Girls have a
wonderful responsibility in regard even to the moral conduct of young men, and
the self-respecting girl will guard herself not only from the contamination of
touch, but from an undue freedom of thought.
Do you say she
cannot govern the thoughts of men? I reply, she can to a great extent. By a
dress that exposes her person to public gaze, or even more seductively hides it
under a film of suggestive lace, she has given a direction to the thoughts of
those who look at her. She has declared that their eyes may touch her, that
their thoughts may be occupied with an inventory of her physical charms. She
has openly announced that she is willing to be appraised by eyes of men as a
beautiful animal. What wonder if their thoughts go further than her public
declaration, and that they may freely surmise the charms that still remain
hidden?
When a girl,
by putting herself into graceful attitudes in tempting nearness to a young man,
casts coquettish glances, she has done that which will give a turn to the
thought which may prove provocative of deeds.
"I am
afraid of that girl," said a young man who desired to live purely.
"May be she does not mean it, but her poses and glances make it almost
impossible for me to keep my hands off of her. I am obliged to leave her for
fear that I shall kiss her when she looks so mischievously alluring."
The girl,
perhaps, would have been flattered by the kiss and indignant at further
liberties, yet would have felt no compunctions had her victim been inflamed by
a passion that he lacked the power to control, prompting him to seek some other
girl to be his prey.
You think men
should have self-control. So they should. We will not lessen the blame of the
young man, but the girl who puts the temptation in his way, even if she did not
herself yield to it, is not guiltless.
The conduct of
a pure woman should be the safeguard and not the destruction of a man, and she
can be his protector, even as he is hers. I heard an eminent woman say that
woman was man's moral protector, and man woman's physical protector, and I said
that is only half true. Man is also woman's moral protector, and woman is also
man's physical protector. She is acknowledged to be his physical tempter. If
she knows her power she can, by her wise, modest, womanly demeanor, make it
impossible for him to feel an impure impulse in her presence. Ruskin says:
"You
cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was
a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth—that the
soul's armor is never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it;
and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails. Know
you not those lovely lines—I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of
England—
"'Ah
wasteful woman! she who mayOn her sweet self set her own price,Knowing he cannot
choose but pay—How has she cheapen'd Paradise!How given for nought her
priceless gift,How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine,Which, spent with
due, respective thrift,Had made brutes men, and men divine!'"
CHAPTER XXI
FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN BOYS AND
GIRLS.
You might like
to know, dear reader, if I do not believe in some intermediate relation between
that of the comrade and the lover—a more intimate relation than the one and
less intimate than the other. You ask, Cannot a young man and a young woman be
real, true friends?
Let us talk a
little about friendship and what it implies. I should define a friend as one
who believes in me, who expects much of me, who encourages me to do the best
that is in me, who will tell me of my faults, who recognizes my virtues, who
trusts in my honor.
You are
willing to accept that definition, and you think it possible to be all that to
each other without being lovers. I believe it, too, but I would like to make
some further statements before we have the discussion of this question.
I believe that
a girl's first and best friends are her parents; her wisest confidante,
her mother. To these she may speak unreservedly of herself. With these she may
freely talk over family matters. In a friendship with some outside the family
it would be unwise to discuss family matters. It might be an unkindness to
other members of the family, and in case of a break in the friendship the
family secrets might be betrayed, and to the detriment of the trusting friend.
I once read of such an affair, where one girl had confided to another certain
matters that reflected on the honor of her family, and when the friendship was
broken the secret was betrayed, to the public shame of the girl who had been
unwise in her confidences.
True honor
would forbid the betrayal of a confidence even after the rupture of a
friendship; but all persons have not the highest ideal of honor. If the girl is
not discreet in her revelation of herself, and her mother is her only confidante,
it will not be so serious a matter, for the mother will never be tempted to
reveal to others anything that would bring scorn or criticism upon her child.
Nowhere, in her girlish ignorance, can the girl find as sincere sympathy as in
the loving mother.
"But all
mothers are not sympathetic," you say. "They are often nagging, and
use the confidences of the daughter to make her uncomfortable." Well, if
this be so, you, at least, can learn the lesson, and by your habits of thought
fit yourself to be the wise, loving, companionable, sympathetic confidante of
your daughter, for you will be anxious that she should have no friend so close
as yourself.
However, I
believe that mothers should recognize the individuality of their
daughters, and win, rather than command, confidence. It is difficult for
us, as mothers, to realize that our daughter is just as much a separate
individual as is our neighbor's daughter, and that we have no right to thrust
ourselves upon her, no right to demand that she shall love us. We have the
right to sympathize, to counsel, to direct her conduct so long as she remains
in our personal care, but we should remember that she must be responsible, that
she is a soul and must live her own life, learn her own lessons, suffer her own
experiences. Our deepest love can only enable us to help her to choose wisely,
to think truly, to act judiciously. So I would have the friendship of mother
and daughter something very deep and true—something more than a petting and
caressing, an indulging or humoring.
I would be
inclined to have less outward demonstration and more inner tenderness. I
believe that very often outward impression comes largely to take the place of
true affection. I see girls who kiss and fondle their mothers, who never open
to them their heart's deepest secrets. Fewer kisses and more confidence would
satisfy more thoroughly the mother's heart. I believe that, even in the family,
a kiss should not become a conventionality. It should have a meaning. I would
rather that my daughter should kiss me once a week, with a spontaneous desire
thus to express her love, than that, from custom, she should kiss me
morning, noon, and night.
There are
sanitary reasons against kissing, such as transmission of germs of disease; but
aside from this, there are affectional reasons why kisses should be few, and
these few spontaneous rather than required.
We ought never
to force our kisses upon children; but, recognizing their individuality, leave
them free to proffer or to refuse.
Next to the
friendship of parents should come that of brother and sister. We almost think
it a wonder when members of the same family seem really to love each other, and
yet family ties should be the strongest in the world. Why should there not be
the sweetest intimacy between two sisters, whose lives and interests are so closely
united? Why should not the bond between mother and sister be indissoluble?
A young man
and woman, children of the same parents, brought up in the same home, ought to
be the best of friends. Their friendship is without the danger of
misunderstanding. It can be free from the slight feeling of envy or jealousy
that might arise between sisters. It would seem that it could be the truest
comradeship possible to two young people.
A sister
should be to a brother not merely some one at hand to mend his gloves or make
his neckties, not simply some one to fondle and indulge, but she should be
one whom he would never scold or browbeat. A brother should not be simply some
one to run errands, to call on for help in emergencies, not some one to tease
when the spirit of mischief prompts, or to scold when things have gone wrong.
I would have
the love of these two manifest itself in all true helpfulness, but in a way
that would draw out the noblest self-reliance in each. It should manifest
itself in courteous words, in helpful deeds, in glances of the eye, in tones of
the voice, in heartfelt sympathies that stimulate to nobler deeds, in every way
that strengthens and uplifts; and if caresses are few, they will not be missed
in the wealth of that truer manifestation which makes the recipient feel his
nobility and worth.
A young lady
once asked me if I believed in young people who were not related treating each
other as brother and sister, and I replied that would depend on how the brother
and sister treated each other. I have seen girls treat brothers in ways that
other young men would not enjoy—finding fault, nagging, and snubbing generally.
I have seen young men browbeat their sisters, tease them, and be continually
unkind. I presume, if such a young man should propose to be a brother to a
girl, he would not purpose to treat her in this way. Young people sometimes
like to try to deceive themselves, and they fancy that the subterfuge of
calling each other brother and sister will be a warrant for the parting kiss or
the tender endearment that they enjoy, but which they feel proprieties will not
allow. The subterfuge is too transparent. It deceives no one, and it does not
make right that which, without it, would be improper.
Platonic
friendships—that is, friendships between men and women without the element of
physical love—are rare; rarer, indeed, than they should be. They are difficult
to maintain because of the temptation to begin in the indulgences of personal
familiarities, which tend to lead the friendship over into debatable ground.
Men and women ought to be grand, true friends, inciting each other to the
noblest achievements, but it never can be through sentimentality.
A girl may
think she is sisterly when she listens to the young man's cry for sympathy in
some trouble, and she holds his hand and smoothes his hair and comforts him
after this tender fashion, and he may go away feeling comforted, even as a baby
might be quieted by petting; but his moral fiber has not been strengthened; he
has not been made to feel stronger to do and dare.
Supposing she
had listened with interest to his story, and then, without laying her hands
upon him, she had said, "You are a man, a prince, the son of a King. You
are strong to bear, brave to do. Obstacles surmounted give broader
outlooks. Burdens bravely borne bring strength. I believe in you;" and
then, with a strong, firm—I had almost said manly—grasp of the hand, she had
sent him away, he would go feeling stronger, braver, more self-reliant,
stimulated, encouraged, not merely soothed and quieted. In this fashion a girl
may treat a young man as a brother. She may tell him his faults in all
kindness. She may listen to his dreams, ambitions, aspirations, and encourage
with approval, incite by gentle sarcasm, or enliven by kindly sportiveness; but
her person is her own, and he should be made to feel that beyond these bounds
he may not pass. Such friendship may endure vicissitude, or separation, and be
through life a source of truest inspiration. To be such a friend to a noble man
is a worthy ambition. It would prove the possession of more qualities of
womanliness than merely to win his passionate love.
When the world
comes to accept the highest ideals of life and believes that all relations of
men and women are not of necessity founded on physical attraction, then will
such friendships be more possible, and the earth can offer no more desirable
future than that in which men and women, knowing each other as immortal
intelligences, shall leave the vale of unsafe sentimentality and sensuous
poison to dwell on heights of noble companionship.
CHAPTER XXII
FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN GIRLS.
You think,
perhaps, that I can find no fault with the friendship of girls with each other,
that that certainly is safe and pleasant. I have said enough for you to
understand that I believe in reserve even in girl friendships. Girls are apt at
certain periods of their lives to be rather gushing creatures. They form most
sentimental attachments for each other. They go about with their arms around
each other, they loll against each other, and sit with clasped hands by the
hour. They fondle and kiss until beholders are fairly nauseated, and in a few
weeks, perhaps, they do not speak as they pass each other, and their caresses
are lavished on others. Such friendships are not only silly, they are even
dangerous. They are a weakening of moral fiber, a waste of mawkish
sentimentality. They may be even worse. Such friendship may degenerate even
into a species of self-abuse that is most deplorable.
When girls are
so sentimentally fond of each other that they are like silly lovers when
together, and weep over each other's absence in uncontrollable agony, the
conditions are serious enough for the consultation of a physician. It is
an abnormal state of affairs, and if probed thoroughly might be found to be a
sort of perversion, a sex mania, needing immediate and perhaps severe measures.
I wish the
friendships of girls were less sentimental, were more manly. Two young men who
are friends do not lop on each other, and kiss and gush. They trust each other,
they talk freely together, they would stand by each other in any trouble or
emergency, but their expressions of endearment are not more than the cordial
handgrasp and the unsentimental appellation, "Dear old chap."
I admire these
friendships in young men. They seem to mean so much, and yet to exact so
little. They believe in each other's love, but do not demand to be told of it
every minute.
It is the
highest type of friendship that can believe in the friend under all
circumstances. I have a friend from whom I may not hear once a year, yet I know
just where she stands in her relation to me, and I would have no fear of
finding her cold or unresponsive should I at any time call on her for a
friendly service. I may never see her, or even hear from her again in life, and
we may live long years yet on the earth, but I would as soon think of doubting
the return of to-morrow's sun as to doubt her love. There is no need of words,
of caresses, even of deeds. We are both busy women. Our daily cares absorb us,
yet we know that we are friends, and in the great hereafter we hope to
find a place where we may pause and look into each other's faces and enjoy an
interchange of thought. But now other interests than self-seeking claim us. We
work on, cheered by the thought that time cannot alienate us, for true love is
eternal.
The charm of a
true friendship is that it does not make demands. I had a school friend who
thought that because she was my friend I must tell her all my affairs. She was
offended if I received a letter that I did not read to her, or if I went out to
spend the evening without first informing her. Her friendship became a tax
because it demanded so much. And, after all, was it true friendship? Was it not
love of self, rather than of me? People sometimes imagine that, because they
crave love, they are affectionate and unselfish. Is it true? It is rather
natural to want to be loved, but it is selfish, and the feeling indulged in to
any extent is weakening. To want to be loved means usually to want some one to
be a protector, a giver of pleasure, a supplier of wants. To desire to love is
nobler, for to love is to give. God so loved the world that he gave. Christ
loved us and gave—gave Himself for us. To love truly, grandly, nobly, is to
grow strong through giving. Not giving that which we should not give, not
unwisely giving of time that belongs to our own best good, not giving of
strength that should be dedicated to some better purpose, not a yielding
of principle, nor purity, nor honor, but the true giving of that which enriches
both giver and recipient, which ennobles, uplifts, encourages and strengthens,
and leaves no sorrow in its wake. The truest giving is sometimes a refusal to
yield to demands that are unworthy. Love wisely, my daughter, and you will give
wisely.
CHAPTER XXIII
EXERCISES
As many girls
are affected by spinal curvature, round shoulders, weak back or ankles,
prolapsed stomach, bowels, or pelvic organs, constipation and poor general
circulation, it seems well to give a few exercises that shall be corrective of
these defects, premising that each exercise should be begun gradually and
easily, increasing frequency and force, as strength is gained, say five times a
day the first week, eight times a day the second week, and so on.
Never
exercise in tight clothing or in a corset, and do not exercise to
exhaustion.
To Overcome Slight Lateral Curvature.
1. If it is
the right shoulder that is depressed, place the hands on hips or behind neck,
and bend slowly to the left.
Reverse this movement
if the left is the lower shoulder.
2. With arms
raised above the head, bend the body slowly forward and try to touch the floor
without bending the knees, then rise slowly to an erect position.
To Overcome Round Shoulders
Do not fold
the arms in front.
Any motion
that brings hands together behind the back is good.
Draw the
elbows quickly backward.
Carry a weight
in each hand, holding the weight behind you and out from the body.
Hold the body
in the correct attitude (see
page 132), head balanced on spine, chest elevated, posterior part of body
thrown out, weight on balls of feet, not on heels.
Exercises that
strengthen the waist muscles will help to maintain the erect position, and so
tend to overcome round shoulders.
To Strengthen Weak Back.
1. Hold a
light weight in each hand. Place the weights on the floor in front of you.
Stand with feet eight inches apart, and take three slow, deep breaths. Stoop
over and take the weights in the hands and gradually straighten up till the
hands hang easily at the sides. Bend slowly forward, and again place the
weights on the floor. Repeat five times.
2. Clasp the
hands back of the neck and bend slowly forward until the head is on a level
with the waist. Count ten, then straighten up to erect position. Repeat.
3. Bend the
body backward, forward and sidewise at the waist.
4. Put your
right arm over your head till it touches your left ear. Hold the chin high.
Breathe slowly and deeply while you walk around the room. Repeat with other
arm. Increase the length of your walk gradually.
5. Playing
tennis is good exercise for the sides of the waist.
6. Carry a
weight first on one shoulder, then on the other.
7. Run on the
toes.
8. Hop on one
foot.
To Strengthen and Develop the Chest.
1. Maintain an
erect attitude.
2. Raise and
lower the arm, forward, upward, backward, without bending the elbows.
3. Lie on the
floor, stretch the arms over the head till the hands touch the floor. Take a deep
breath and hold it; now bring the arms over the head as high as you can reach,
and do not bend the elbows. Rest and repeat three times.
4. Hold chin
as high as possible. Raise the arms at the side as high as you can. Breathe
deeply and hold the air in the lungs. Now, without letting any air out and
without bending the elbows, bring your hands down steadily to your sides.
Repeat. Keep chin well up.
To Strengthen Abdominal Muscles.
1. Stand with
chin high.
2. Breathe
slowly and deeply.
3. Raise the
right knee till the right foot is about twelve inches from the floor.
4. Give a
little spring with the left foot, raise it swiftly from the floor, and at the
same time put the right toe and sole (not heel) to the floor.
5. Spring on
right foot and put left down. Repeat five times.
6. Fold arms
behind. Hold chin up. Breathe slowly and very deeply. Do not bend the knees.
Hold your left foot far out in front of you while you count five.
7. Lower it
and raise right foot in same way. Repeat four times. Keep the shoulders well
back and down while doing this exercise. Point the toes down and out.
8. Lie on your
back. Keep feet down and rise to a sitting position. Drop slowly back, and
repeat three times.
9. Run,
lifting your feet high, like a spirited horse.
10. Stand with
chin high, arms akimbo. Breathe slowly and deeply. Advance left foot eight
inches in front of right. Lean head slowly as far back as possible. Hold it
while you count five. Straighten, and repeat five times.
11. Place the
hands on the wall in front of you as high as you can reach and about two feet
apart, with the elbows straight. Have chin up till you face the ceiling, and
keep it so. Take a very deep breath and hold it. Now bend your elbows and let
the body go slowly forward till the chest touches the wall, keeping the body
and legs stiff all the time. Push back till straight again. Do not take heels
off the floor, nor hands off the wall, nor eyes off the ceiling right overhead.
Repeat five times.
12. Lie on the
floor, stretch the arms over the head till the hands touch the floor. Clinch
the fists. Take a deep breath and hold it. Now raise the arms slowly, keeping
the fists clinched, and bring them down at the sides, raising the head from the
floor at same time. Raise the arms and stretch them on the floor over the head
at same time, letting the head sink back to the floor, and breathe out slowly.
To Facilitate the Return of Displaced Organs to
Their Normal Position.
1. Lie on your
back upon a smooth, hard surface. Draw the feet up as close to the body as
possible. Now lift the lower part of the body until it is wholly supported by
the feet and shoulders. Hold it in this position as long as possible without
fatigue. Lower slowly to original position. Rest a few minutes. Repeat. Continue
for twenty or thirty minutes, according to strength.
2. Lie with
face downward. Raise the hips as high as possible, supporting the body on the
toes and elbows.
3. Slip from
the bed head first and face downwards until the head rests on the floor and the
legs and feet remain upon the bed. Let the arms to the elbows rest on the
floor. When weary of this attitude slip to the floor, turn on the back, and
apply the bandage.
CHAPTER
XXIV
RECREATIONS
Walking.
It is well to
bear constantly in mind that all exercise, even walking on level ground, is
objectionable in clothing that compresses the body; and as exercise is the law
of the development of muscle, the only safe thing to do is so to dress that
every muscle has free and unrestrained motion. Walking to be beneficial should
be out of doors, with some pleasant motive, and taken with some degree of
energy. The length of the walk should be proportional to the strength of the
girl—short at first, and increasing as strength increases. The erect attitude
should be maintained, and the walking not prolonged to exhaustion.
Walking slowly
home from school, laden with books and intent on conversation with others, will
not fulfill the demands of walking for exercise. It makes no demand on
breathing power, does not develop depth of chest or strength of limb.
Running.
This is an
admirable exercise if the dress be suitable. Long skirts are an
impediment. Running on the toes develops the calf of the leg.
The swift
motion causes deep breathing, which expands the chest. If violent or
long-continued, it may make too urgent a demand on the heart and lungs, and so
be detrimental. The counsel of a physician is safest for those whose heart and
lungs are weak.
Riding.
Horseback
riding is a vigorous exercise, which would be especially beneficial were it not
for the cramped position women are forced by custom to assume. It cannot be
recommended to those who have a tendency to lateral curvature of the spine or
weak back, or prolapsed internal organs. Such girls should by proper care be
put into a better physical condition before attempting to ride. Harvey advises
learning to ride on either side of the horse, so as to bring opposite sets of
muscles into play, and counteract the curvature which physicians who have the
opportunity to observe say is produced by riding. That being true, why not
adopt the sensible fashion of riding on both sides of the horse at once, as men
do? I saw a young lady so mounted the other day, and the sight was far more
agreeable than the twisted attitude compelled by the side-saddle. Medical men
also assert that riding tends to produce round shoulders, and as the
greatest muscular strain comes on the back, it is not helpful to weak
backs.
Skating.
Skating is a
fine exercise. It quickens the circulation and the respiration, aids digestion,
exercises a great number of muscles, both of limbs and trunk of body,
strengthens the ankles, and incidentally the nerves. Evils are to be found in
wrong habits of dressing, the tendency to overdo through the fascination of the
sport, the danger of taking cold by carelessly sitting down to rest when
heated, or driving home after being warmed up by the severe exertion. A girl of
good judgment, properly clothed, ought to be benefited by this charming
out-door sport.
It should be
begun very gradually at the opening of the skating season, and not undertaken
if the internal organs are prolapsed.
Rowing.
Rowing is an
exercise that develops the upper back and back of shoulders, and therefore
needs to be counteracted by exercise that calls into play the muscles of the
front of the chest.
Cycling.
The dangers of
cycling arise principally from lack of judgment. The temptation to overdo is
very great, and injury is done in attempts to ride longer, farther and faster
than the strength will safely allow. The whole dress should be so arranged as
to give perfect freedom of movement, the skirt short enough to clear the
dangerous part of the mechanism, the saddle adjusted to the individual both in
its make and height, and the girl be taught to sit properly and to adjust her weight
so that the pressure will not be undue upon the perineum. Rectal and other
local irritations are produced by the pressure of the whole weight resting on
the saddle.
The position
should not be absolutely erect, but leaning slightly forward,
so as to allow the weight to be distributed between the handle-bars, the pedal,
and the saddle. This slightly inclined attitude also maintains the proper and
harmonious relation of the internal organs, so that the bowels do not crowd
down on the pelvic organs.
If the girl is
taught to sit on the machine properly, to distribute her weight, to sit on the
large gluteal muscles, and not on the perineum, to use judgment in the amount
of exercise taken at a time, there is no reason why a girl in a normal
condition of health should not be benefited.
There may be
particular reasons why some girls should not undertake to ride, and these can be
determined by the physician.
Tennis
This is a game
that demands great activity, consequently there is especial need of entire
freedom of movement. All constrictions of clothing are especially injurious.
It is claimed
by some that, being essentially a one-sided exercise, there is a possibility,
if unwisely indulged in, that it may produce injurious results, especially to
the spine.
Swimming
Swimming is
not only a valuable exercise, but it really conduces to the safety of life in
these days of constant boat travel, and there are no adequate reasons why girls
should not learn. The younger they begin, the more readily will they become
expert. It is not wise to indulge in this exercise while menstruating, nor
immediately after eating.
Skipping.
There is some
prejudice against this form of exercise from the fact that it can be overdone,
and also from the popular idea that it is injurious to girls to jump.
If they are
properly dressed, and their muscles are gradually developed, and they use good
common sense as to amount, there are practically no dangers in skipping. It
is admirably adapted to strengthen a great variety of muscles, as those of
the legs, back, abdomen, and neck. It strengthens the knees and the arches of
the feet, thereby tending to overcome flat foot. It strengthens weak backs,
increases circulation and respiration and promotes digestion, and, if practised
out of doors, is one of the most perfect forms of exercise. Of course the
judgment dictates that when the pelvic organs are heavy with the menstrual
congestion it would not be advisable.
Dancing
Dancing, in
itself considered, is a pleasant and beneficial exercise. It develops grace and
muscular strength, increases circulation and respiration, and is cheering
because of rhythm. One wishes that it could be unqualifiedly commended. But
when we take into account the late hours, the heated rooms, the promiscuous
company, the late unwholesome suppers, the improper dress, the dangers of
taking cold, the immodest freedom of the round dance, and the not infrequent
evils resulting therefrom, it would seem unwise to commend an exercise so
surrounded by objectionable concomitants. It is observed that young church
members who become interested in the dance soon lose all their interest in
church work.
If dancing
could be conducted in the daytime, out of doors, among well-known home
friends and companions, in proper dress, and with no round dances, there
would be much to commend, and little to condemn.
Card-playing
I can find
little to say in favor of this form of amusement. It contains no exercise for
the body. It continues the cramped attitudes to which most people are condemned
during the day.
It certainly
contributes nothing to the higher forms of enjoyment. It stimulates emulations,
which St. Paul enumerates among things to be avoided; it is the accompaniment
of gambling and low society; and, while we must admit that a pack of cards in
itself is not evil, yet it can be and often is made most detrimental to the
best interests of morality and righteousness.
The young
woman who respects her own intellectual and moral powers will see little charm
in manipulating cards in a way to gain a momentary success over another and
perhaps arousing unkind feelings, it may be even passions, that may culminate
in bloodshed.
Theatre-going
It is natural
that we should enjoy pictorial representation of human life with living actors
and audible words; and, understanding this, many good people have had the
hope that the stage might be purified and made a teacher of morals. Certainly
valuable lessons of life might be most strongly presented in this concrete
form, and thus appeal with wonderful power to the young and inexperienced. But
that it might be so used does not insure that it will be, and observation shows
us that it is not.
The modern
play concerns itself principally with a delineation of those phases of life
which we condemn when they become reality, and the teaching power of the stage
becomes a lesson in wrongdoing which to the young and inexperienced is potent
in its suggestiveness.
The costumes
of actresses are often immodest, and many of these women are immoral in
character. It would not be just to condemn all actors with the sweeping
assertion of immorality, but all will admit that the temptations are great, and
that great moral force is needed to resist the influences that lead towards
wrong.
That many of
our great actors will not permit their children to become actors, or, in some
cases, even to enter the theatre as a witness of its performances, speaks
strongly on the matter.
In the
consideration of this subject the girl may safely decide that she will not be a
permanent loser if she is not a frequenter of the theatre. It is safer to
keep the mind pure and untainted from all pictures of sin, more especially if
they are made attractive by the glamour of jewels and silken attire, of music,
dancing, and lifelike portrayal.
PART III.
LOVE; HEREDITY; ENGAGEMENTS.
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CHAPTER XXV
LOVE
In our study
we have first learned of general and then of special physiology, so, in
continuing the same study in mental and moral fields, we first learn of the
general and then of our special relation to others. We cultivate body, mind and
spirit because it is our duty to develop ourselves for our own interests; but
it is also our duty to cultivate all our powers because of our responsibility
in regard to others. This responsibility I will include in the one word,
"love."
What is love?
The idea of love occupies much of the thought of old and young, and in
different persons it will have very different meanings. To one it means merely
pleasurable sensations aroused by either the thought of a person, or by the
actual presence of that person. To another it means an opportunity to sacrifice
inclination and pleasure in order to promote the happiness or welfare of a
certain person.
Much that
passes in the world as love is principally love of self. The man loves the
woman because she satisfies his sense of beauty; her presence causes thrills
and ecstasies; she contributes to his happiness and comfort. That is, he
loves himself through her. The woman loves the man because he protects her, he
surrounds her with luxury, his presence brings thrills and ecstasies to her.
She loves herself through him. Is not this but the essence of selfishness? In
another case the man loves the woman so tenderly that he cannot do enough to
prove his devotion. If her welfare demands his absence, he gladly foregoes the
pleasure of her society. If her comfort requires his unremitting toil, he gives
his days, and even his nights, to the task of labor for her. His only anxiety
is to know her wants and to supply them. He effaces himself and his wishes to
serve her. He would die to secure her good. He gives, and asks nothing. Or, in
the same way, the woman loves the man so that her whole thought is not what she
can obtain from him, but what she can give him. True love desires only to give.
Self-love strives only to secure.
Emerson says,
"All the world loves a lover," and conversely we may say a true lover
loves all the world. The affection kindled in the heart by one worthy
individual goes out in a kindlier feeling for all the world. A poet once said
that the world was brighter and all humanity dearer because he loved truly one
worthy woman. He was more gentle with little children; the very beggar on the
street corner seemed to be a brother in distress. Because the woman he
loved had given him her heart, he wanted to give something to every one he met.
This is the spirit of true love, to go out in blessings towards the beloved
object, and so on towards every created thing.
I was once
asked if I believed in love at first sight. How can love spring up in a minute?
There may be admiration of beauty, there may be appreciation of intellectual
qualities, there may be a recognition of magnetic personal attraction, but none
of these is love. Love, to be worthy the name, must be a superstructure built
upon a firm foundation of acquaintance with each other's true qualities. Love
is not a balloon, in which two young people may go sailing among the clouds,
away from all regions of every-day life. Those who try it with that idea find
the cloud-world cold and uncomfortable, and not at all the rosy, gold-tinted
region it looked at a distance.
Love is rather
like a building with foundations set into the earth—foundations solid, firmly
laid and durable. How can people love when they do not know each other?
Acquaintance first, then friendship, comradeship; then, if the sentiment grows,
love. But how are young people to get really acquainted? They meet under unreal
conditions. They see each other in society, in Sunday dress and with Sunday
manners. They doubtless do not mean to deceive each other, but there is
little to draw out the real self. There is nothing to disturb or irritate,
nothing to prove the honesty, the neatness, the industry, the persistence, the
business ability; nothing to disclose the true ideas in matters of serious
import, of health, religion, duties of husbands and wives, the government of
the home; and too often the intimacy of marriage discloses many personal
peculiarities of temper, habits and manners that, if seen in time, would have prevented
marriage.
The trouble
does not originate with young people themselves, but with older people; but as
the young people of to-day will be the older people of the future, it would be
well for them to realize what the trouble is. The fact is, that in the present
conditions of society the association of young people is unnatural. From
earliest childhood boys and girls are taught to think of each other only in
sentimental ways. The little boys and girls in school are playing at
"lovering," and their conversation is often more about beaus and
sweethearts than about the plays of childhood, which alone should occupy their
thoughts. You remember that little miss of ten who asked you, when you were
sixteen, who was your beau. You recall her look of surprise when you replied
that you had none, and her exclamation, "Have no beau! Why, how do you get
along without one?" What made such a mere child imagine a beau to be
an essential agent of a girl's life? Because she had been taught by the jests
and suggestions of her elders that every boy was a possible lover, and, young
as she was, that thought was woven into her very life. It is pitiable to see
how early the mind of the child is tainted by sentimentality, by the unwise
suggestions of older friends. I remember hearing of a child of six who was
talking of getting married. Some one said, "You are too little to think of
getting married," and the child replied, "Why, I have thought of it
since I was two years old." And doubtless she had, because it had been
continually impressed on her mind by the conversation of parents and friends,
and the direction they had given her thought in regard to her relation to
everything masculine.
Parents are
often very unwilling to teach their daughters the facts of sex, and yet quite
willing to emphasize the consciousness of sex by intimating the possibility of
flirtations, love affairs, etc. And this false, pernicious idea of the relation
of men and women is too often called love. The central idea of romances is this
passionate attraction of the sexes. The plot gathers in intensity around the
lovers, and culminates in their marriage, after which life is presumed to move
on without a jar, and silly girls and impulsive boys imagine that the
sweet pain that accompanies the touch of hands or the glance of the eyes
is love, and is a sufficient guarantee for the forming of a life partnership.
Let us face
this question fairly. What is love? Of what is it made? Can you judge with any
certainty of its lasting qualities? How can you know the true from the false?
Unfortunately
we have but the one word, "love," to designate many phases of kindly
regard. The mother loves her child, the child loves the mother, yet love
differs much in these two instances. The one is protecting, anxious,
self-sacrificing, unstinted care, unqualified devotion; the other is sweet
dependence, unquestioning acceptance, asking all and giving little. The love of
brother and sister differs from that of brother for brother, or sister for
sister. The love of man for woman differs from all other emotions of love. It
contains elements not found in other forms. It may have the same quality of
giving or accepting, of protecting or yielding, but with all this there is an
added quality that is not found in any other relation of life, a quality that
rises to the intensity of a passion, and which, if thwarted or distorted, may
become murderous or lead to insanity.
This
overwhelming, domineering sway of feeling inheres in the fact of sex. It is the
expression of the whole nature, through the physical; it is the vital creative
force endeavoring to reach a tangible result. Holy in its inception, it
can be degraded to the vilest uses. Forming the distinctive feature of love
between the sexes, it is too often imagined to be the all, and a strong physical
attraction without the basic friendship, which can only come through
acquaintance, is not infrequently supposed to be worthy of the name of love,
and found, alas! to be the most unsubstantial of chimeras.
Love, to be
worthy of the name, must rest, not on the fact of admiration for beauty, not on
the physical attraction manifested in sweet electric thrills. Love should
include intellectual congeniality and spiritual sympathy, as well as physical
attraction. Lacking any one of these three ingredients, the interest of two
people in each other should not be called love.
In order that
it may be determined whether there is the true basis of love, there should be
opportunity for unsentimental acquaintance. If we could free the minds of young
people from the romantic idea, and allow them to associate as intelligent
beings, and so form acquaintance on the basis of comradeship, we should make
things safer for them.
But if the
older people do not know how to secure this desirable state of affairs, the
young people themselves might secure it if they understood its desirability.
You, as a young woman, can have much influence in the right directions,
supposing that you drop from your mind the idea of sentimental relations
with young men and meet them on the ground of a friendly comradeship.
Don't indulge
in tête-à -têtes, or in lackadaisical glances of the eye. Don't
permit personal familiarities, hand pressures, or caresses. Don't simper, and
put on the airs which mean, though the girl may not understand it, an effort to
arouse the admiration and the physical feeling of love. Refuse to be flattered,
to be played with, to be treated as a female, but insist on being treated as a
woman with intelligence, with a capacity to understand reasonable things.
Manifest an interest in the movements of the world, of politics, literature,
art, religion, athletics. Talk of the things that interest the young man as a
citizen of the world, and not merely of those things which appeal to him as a
male. Be frank, be lively, be witty, be wise, but do not be sentimental.
When a young
man calls, don't let him get the idea that you have to be secluded in a room
apart from the rest of the family. You will be better able to judge of him if
you see him with your brothers, if you note his manner towards your mother, if
you hear him converse with your father, if you mark his conduct towards the
younger children. He will talk sense, if he can, when he meets your family,
while in a tête-à -tête conversation with yourself he may be
able to hide his lack of wisdom under the glamour of sweet nothings and
soft nonsense.
Then be
yourself when he comes. Let him see you in your home life, at your domestic
duties, sewing, helping mother, reading to father, caring for the little ones.
Be an honest, free-hearted, companionable girl, and put sentimentality out of
mind. You can have many such friends, and by and by, out of these you will
probably find one whom you admire more and more as time goes on. You hear his
sentiments always expressed in favor of truth and probity. You come to know
something of his business principles, you see his courtesy to old and young,
you learn of his home, his family, his social position, and out of this
intimate knowledge there springs the attachment, blended with deep respect,
which assures you that he is worthy of your heart and hand, and indeed of your
whole life.
Little by
little the comradeship has grown more intimate. You have not been sentimental.
You have treated each other with respect, you have maintained your
self-respect, you have held a tight rein over your fancies and emotions, but
now you are convinced that you may allow them to have sway. You begin to
acknowledge to yourself that you love.
And he, too,
begins to manifest a deeper interest in you. You see this with a certain pride
in the fact that he is not self-deceived He knows you, has seen you in
your daily life, has sounded the depth of your intellect, knows of your
religious beliefs, and in all he has found you coming up to his ideals. His eye
meets yours with a new tenderness in its glance that touches you, because you
know it is not an earthly fire of passion that glows therein. It is you, the
real, immortal you, that he seeks; not merely the pleasures of sense through
you; and feeling the response in your own heart, your glance kindles with the
same divine fire, and your true selves have spoken to each other. You have
gradually grown into the knowledge of love. You have not fallen in love. And
yet there have been no words, and in maiden shyness you await his speech. Your
womanly reserve has won his respect, and he makes no attempts to win privileges
of endearments before he confesses his love, but frankly and manfully pleads
his suit and wins.
Oh, my dear
child, this has been no matter for jesting; it has been serious, and we who
have watched this dawning love have realized that the great drama of life, so
full of tragic possibilities, is being here enacted. We do not laugh, nor jest,
but with the tenderest prayers we welcome you into the possibilities of God's
divinest gift of human love.
CHAPTER XXVI
RESPONSIBILITY IN MARRIAGE
You are
beginning to feel a peculiar interest in one young man more than in any other.
You think of him in his absence; you welcome his coming; his eyes seem to
caress you; the clasp of his hand thrills you; you begin to think that you have
passed from the domain of friendship into that of love.
Before you
really make that admission, let us "reason together." Let us take a
fair look at matters, and see whether it is wiser to pass the border line, or
to remain only friends. Who is this young man? You tell me his name, but that
means nothing. Who is he? What is he in himself? What are his talents,
capacities, habits, inherited tendencies? Who is his father, his mother? What
is their worth? I do not mean in money, but in themselves? What ancestral
diseases or defects may he transmit to his posterity, which will be your
posterity if he becomes your husband? Are the family tendencies such that you
would be willing to see them repeated in your children?
There is no
indelicacy in asking yourself these questions, nor in making the investigations
which will enable you to answer them satisfactorily. The woman who
marries, marries not only into her husband's family, she also
marries his family; she is to become one of it, to live with it in closer and
closer companionship as her children, bearing the family temperament,
disposition and tendencies, gather one by one around her hearth.
Is the family
one of the type that she will desire to associate with intimately all the days
of her life? You may feel that it does not matter if you do not love your
husband's mother, or admire his sisters; no matter if you do not have respect
for his father, you will live so far away from them that it will not be oftener
than once in several years that you will be obliged to meet them. It might even
happen that you would never see them, and yet it be a very serious matter that
they were not respectable or lovable people, for they constitute one-half of
the ancestry of your children. Their most undesirable characteristics may,
perchance, be the endowment of your sons and daughters, and your heart ache, or
even break, over the habits, or, it may be, criminality, which may disgrace
your home through the paternal inheritance that you chose for them. Viewed in
this light, marriage becomes a most serious matter. It is unfortunate that
girls generally have the idea that it is not modest to think of marriage
further than the ceremony. Of the responsibilities and duties they are not only
ignorant, but think it ladylike to remain uninformed until experience teaches
them, and that teaching is often accompanied by heart-breaking sorrow. If you
should make inquiry you would discover that a large proportion of mothers have
buried their firstborn children, and should you ask them why, they would in all
probability say, almost without exception, that it was because they did not
know how to give them a dower of health, or how to care for their physical
needs.
Again,
investigation would show you that children go astray, become wild, dissipated,
or even criminal, because parents have not known how to train them, how to keep
their confidence, how wisely to guide them in ways of righteousness.
We all believe
it very important that mothers should know how to direct and govern their
children, and yet we do not train the future mothers for this important office.
We teach girls how to sew or cook, how to embroider and play the piano. We do
not expect them to know, without instruction, how to mingle the ingredients for
a cake or pudding, but we imagine that they will know by intuition how to
secure the best results in the mingling of heterogeneous compounds in the
formation of the characteristics of a human being.
When we speak
of the mother's privilege, we think of the actual mother, whose privilege is
to care for and guide her real children. But the mother's privilege in fact
begins in her own childhood, when by her habits of life and thought she is
deciding her own character, and at the same time creating, in great degree, the
talents and tendencies of her possible children. It is her privilege to secure
a measure of physical vigor for her descendants by her care of her own health
in her very girlhood. She can endow them with mental power by not frittering
away her own powers of mind in foolish reading or careless methods of study. By
her own self-respecting conduct she helps to give them the reverence for self
which will insure their acting wisely. All this is the mother's privilege; and
still one more great privilege is hers, and that is to choose one-half the
ancestry of her descendants. She cannot choose their ancestry that comes to
them through herself; that is a fixed fact. Her parents must of necessity be
her children's grandparents. Her family characteristics are also their
inheritance. The only thing she can do in regard to their inheritance through
her is to modify the objectionable traits, and to cultivate the good traits
herself, so that family faults may in her be weakened and the probability of
transmission lessened, and the family virtues be strengthened and their
probable transmission intensified. But she has the power to decide what shall
be the paternal ancestry of her household; and if she is duly impressed
with the responsibility of this power, she will not allow herself to fall in
love and marry a man of whose family she knows nothing, or knows facts that do
not promise well for posterity.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE LAW OF HEREDITY
I once heard
of a man who on his death-bed made a singular will. He had no houses or lands
to bequeath his children, but he had observed that they had inherited much from
him, and so he made a formal bequest to them of that which they already
possessed.
He wrote:
"I bequeath to my son John my big bony frame and the slouching gait I
acquired by carelessness, also my inherited tendency to consumption. To my
daughter Mary I bequeath my sallow complexion and torpid liver, which are the
result of my gross living; also my melancholy disposition and tendency to look
on the dark side of life. To my son Samuel I give my love for alcoholic liquors
and my irritable disposition; to my daughter Jane my coarseness of thought and
my unwillingness to be restrained in my desires, and also my tendency to commit
suicide."
"A very
strange will," said everybody, and yet it was a will that was probated
long before the testator's death. That it gave perfect satisfaction I will not
assert, but it was never contested and paid no fees to lawyers.
Just such
wills are being made daily by the lives and conduct of young people,
though they are not put into writing. Some time in the future, however, they
will be written into "living epistles, known and read of all men."
Other wills
are being made daily that through sober, virtuous, youthful lives will bequeath
to posterity dowers of health, strength, purity and power.
This being
true, it seems only a part of prudent foresight to study in youth the law that
governs the transmission of personal characteristics to the future
"denizens of life's great city." This law is known as Heredity, and
its first written record is in the first chapter of Genesis, where it is
written that "Every plant and animal shall bring forth after its
kind." We are so accustomed to seeing the results of this law that we give
it little or no thought. We see that grass springs up each year on our lawns
and meadows. We know that if we put the seeds of a certain flower in the
ground, that kind of flower will always spring up, never another kind. The
farmer is not anxious, after he sows wheat, for fear that the crop will be rye
or barley. We expect that the young of cats will be kittens, of geese will be
goslings, of men will be human children, and we are never disappointed. The law
holds good under all circumstances.
We see, too,
that there are certain race characteristics that maintain. The Mongolian
race has peculiar high cheek-bones, sallow complexions and eyes set in
bias, and we recognize the Japanese or Chinese at once, even though dressed in
the garb of our country. So, too, we recognize the African or the Caucasian by
certain marked characteristics. This transmission of racial traits we call race
heredity.
Then each race
has its own traits, physical or mental, which we recognize as national, and so
speak of them. We always mention thrift as an attribute of the Teutonic
nations; the Irishman we characterize as witty and pugnacious; the Frenchman as
polite; the American as progressive.
Each
individual has not only his human inheritance, his race inheritance and his
national characteristics, but he has also an endowment of family traits.
But we are not
made up of odds and ends of ancestral belongings alone. We have in ourselves
something that is original, that makes us different from each other, and from
all others. I have sometimes thought that we are somewhat like patchwork
quilts, the parti-colored blocks being set together by some solid-colored
material; or, better still, we are like "hit and miss" rag carpets,
with a warp of our own individuality, filled in with a woof made of qualities
and capacities of all those who have preceded us. You know, in making "hit
and miss" rag carpets we take little strips and bits of various
materials and all colors, and sew them together without regard to order or
arrangement, and these long strips are woven back and forth in the warp until
the carpet is woven, showing no set pattern, but a mingling of tints and shades
that is sometimes crude and unsightly, sometimes soft and artistic.
I used, in
childhood, to find great delight in seeking among the blended colors in the
carpet for scraps of clothing which I recognized as having belonged to father
or mother, or perhaps even to grandparents. Even now, in my maturer years, I am
interested in finding in myself the physical, mental or moral characteristics
of those same ancestors; and you, no doubt, can do the same, while some of your
traits seem to be yours entirely, constituting individual variations upon
ancestral inheritances.
Nature has
been doing for centuries, unheeded, what the photographer of to-day thinks is a
modern discovery, that is, making composite photographs of us all.
Through this
law of inheritance have arisen the intellectual, the moral or the criminal
types of humanity, and the process is continuing; the types are becoming more
and more marked, or modifying influences are being brought in to change the
type.
These
influences are also the result of law, even though we may not be able to trace
them to their cause. Knowing this, however, we begin to see that heredity
is not fatality; that the power to modify the endowments of future generations
is ours. To know how to employ it, we should study the law as far as we have
opportunity.
This subject
is a large one, and no doubt you will some day want to give it a thorough
investigation. Just now, however, you will have to accept my statements. I will
not make them technical, but strictly practical to you as a young woman
desiring that knowledge which shall best fit you for the responsibilities of
future life.
A superficial
study is rather discouraging. We see with what certainty evil characteristics
are transmitted, and we feel that the law is a cruel one; but if we have
patience we shall find that, like all laws of God, its purpose is for the
benefit of the race. Before we begin to take comfort from the law let us first
learn its warnings, one of which is that all weakening of the individual,
either in bodily strength, in intellectual power or moral fiber, tends to
produce a like weakness in posterity. This is why I say to you that the young
people of the present have in their hands the welfare of the future. Their
habits to-day are moulding the possibilities of the race. Young women may feel
that their individual violation of the laws of health is of no importance, but
when they realize that the girls of to-day are the mothers of the future,
and that the physical strength or weakness of each individual girl affects the
average health of the nation, not only now, but it may be through her posterity
for centuries, we can see that each girl's health is a matter of national and
of racial importance.
But it is not
alone in the physical organization that we can trace the law of heredity in the
transmission of undesirable qualities. We find that evil traits and tendencies
of mind or morals are transmissible. Galton finds that a bad temper is quite
sure to be passed on from one generation to the next, and any peculiarity of
disposition in either parents is quite likely to become an inheritance of the
child. This fact makes our little faults seem of vastly more importance than
otherwise. We can endure them in ourselves, but they strike us very
unpleasantly when we are obliged to see them manifested in our children. As the
poet says:
"Little
faults unheeded, which I now despise;For my baby took them with her hair and
eyes."
It may not
strike us very unpleasantly when we speak disrespectfully to our parents, but
when our own children show us lack of courtesy and cheerful obedience it cuts
deeply, and all the more deeply if we see in their conduct but a repetition of
our own.
Of course, if
these minor faults are transmissible, we will not be surprised that
graver moral defects are passed on. The grandson of a thief began to steal
at three years of age, and at fourteen was an expert pickpocket. The police
records show the same family names recurring year after year.
These cases
are so grave as to attract attention, while we overlook the fact that the
smaller immoralities are as apt to be transmitted, and perhaps with increased
power. I should be afraid that slight lack of strict integrity in the father
might appear as actual crime in the son.
I would not
omit to mention also the law of Atavism, in this discussion of heredity. This
is that expression of the law in the omission of one generation in the
transmission of a quality. We sometimes see the peculiarities or defects of a
man or woman not manifested in their children, but reappearing in their
grandchildren.
Not long ago I
was in a family where both parents and all the children had dark hair but one,
and she had long, bright auburn ringlets. I asked, "Where did you get your
hair?"
"From my
red-headed grandmother," she answered, with a laugh, indicating that the
matter had been so often discussed in her hearing that she understood it quite
fully.
To cover the
whole scope of the law of heredity would take more time than we have to spare.
You can follow out the line of thought, and make practical application of the
facts and principles here laid down.
CHAPTER XXVIII
HEREDITARY EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL,
TOBACCO, ETC.
Civilized life
in its progress is accompanied by certain customs and habits which are
detrimental to the individual health, and therefore to national health. The
dress of women is not merely an unimportant matter, to be made the subject of
sneers or jests. Fashions often create deformities, and are therefore worthy of
most philosophic consideration, especially when we know that the effects of
these deformities may be transmitted.
The
tightly-compressed waist of the girl displaces her internal organs, weakens her
digestion, and deprives her children of their rightful inheritance. They are
born with lessened vitality, with diminished nerve power, and are less likely
to live, or, living, are more liable not only to grow up physically weak, but
also lacking in mental and moral stamina. This weakness may manifest itself in
immoral tendencies, or in some form of inebriety. It is now recognized that
alcoholism will produce nerve degeneration, but it is not so well understood
that nerve degeneration may be a factor in producing inebriates from alcohol or
other poisons.
Dr. Crothers
says: "Hysteria, convulsions, unreasonable anger, excitement, depression,
credulity, skepticism, most unusual emotionalism and faulty reasoning, are some
of the signs of nerve degeneration," and adds that this central failure of
nerve and brain power is often accompanied by a resulting alcohol or drug
inebriety. That is, the weak and degenerate nerves crave a stimulant, and the
weak will yield to the demand, and inebriety result. If this degeneration of
nerve comes from the low vitality given by the mother, because of her
unhealthful habits of dress and life, is it not wise that in her early
womanhood she should know of this possibility, and guard against it through her
care of herself?
She ought also
to understand the effect of alcohol and other poisons in producing nerve
degeneration in the individual, and its probability in his posterity.
George
McMichaels says: "The hereditary nature of the abnormal condition of which
inebriety is the outward sign is not understood, even by physicians, as it
should be. It is still, I regret to say, looked upon as a vice acquired by the
individual, the outcome of voluntary wrongdoing. In some few cases this may be
true, but in the majority of instances inquiry into the family history will
reveal the presence of an inherited taint, such families usually showing a
neurotic condition. No position in the social or intellectual world is, or
ever has been, entirely free from the tendency towards alcoholism, and a study
of the family history of the great men who have fallen victims to alcohol will
show that the cause has been identical with the case among the most obscure of
mankind, viz.: That a degenerated nerve condition has been inherited which
renders the sufferer specially susceptible to this and allied neuroses, such as
epilepsy, idiocy and suicide. The inheritance of an unstable nervous system
makes the individual easily affected by what I must call 'alcoholic
surroundings.' In other words, the provocation to drink which would have no
influence upon an ordinary, stable nervous organization, is sufficient to turn
the neurotic into a confirmed drunkard."
As a young
woman you hold great power over the race in yourself, and through your
influence over others, especially over young men. Your influence, wisely used,
may save more than one from a drunkard's fate, and to use it wisely you should
be instructed as to the real character of alcohol and its effects on the
system. I have not time to tell you in minutiæ of the effects of alcohol, but I
must take time to speak of the law of heredity in this respect.
Idiocy and
inebriety are on the increase among civilized peoples. This startling fact
should make us ask the reason.
T.D. Crothers,
M.D., who is making a life study of inebriety, states that from 1870 to
1890 inebriety increased in proportion to the population over 100 per cent.,
and that a large proportion is the result of inebriety in one or both parents.
It is a sad fact that many women, even of good social standing, are fond of
alcoholic beverages. I saw a very bright, pretty young woman not long since, at
a reception, refuse to take ice-cream or cake, but drink four glasses of punch,
with many jests as to her fondness for the same, apparently without any
glimmering of the thought that she was drinking to excess, although her flushed
face and loudness of manner were proof of this to those who were witnesses.
Many people have an idea that the finer drinks, such as wine and its various
disguises, do not intoxicate, but in this they are mistaken. All alcoholics are
intoxicating in just the degree that they contain alcohol. The exhilaration of
wine is but the first step of intoxication, and that means always an
accompanying lack of judgment, a lessening of the sense of propriety.
One young
woman who, under ordinary circumstances, was most modest in deportment, drank
at her wedding in response to the toasts to her health, and grew very jovial,
until at last she danced a jig on the platform at the railway station amid the
applause of her exhilarated friends, who had accompanied the young husband and wife
to the train, as they started on their wedding-journey. What a sorrowful
and undignified beginning to the duties of marriage!
There is no
absolute safety for either man or woman except in total abstinence. The débauché knows
the effect of wine, and uses that knowledge to lead astray the young girl who,
if herself, would find no charm in his blandishments, but who, after the wine
supper, has no will to resist his advances.
A young
husband exacted of his bride a promise that she would never take a glass of
wine except in his company, and when asked the reason, replied that he knew
that no woman's judgment was to be trusted after taking one glass of wine.
Another cause
of inebriety in women is found in the patent medicines advertised as a panacea
for all pain, which chemical analysis shows to be largely alcoholic. Many
temperance women would be horrified to know that they are taking alcohol in
varying quantity, from 6 to 47 per cent., in the bitters, tonics and
restorative medicines they are using, many of which are especially advertised
as "purely vegetable extracts, perfectly harmless, sustaining to the
nervous system," etc.
The result of
inebriety of parents in inflicting injury upon offspring has not been well
understood in the past, but is becoming recognized. Dr. McMichael says:
"In every
form of insanity the disease is more dangerous in the mother than in the
father, as far as the next generation is concerned. This is a good and
sufficient reason why the daughter of drunken parents, very often attractive to
some men by reason of their excitable, vivacious, neurotic manner, should be
carefully avoided by young men in search of wives. The man who marries the
daughter of an inebriate not only endangers his own happiness, but runs the
risk of entailing upon his children an inheritance of degradation and misery.
"No woman
should marry a man who, even occasionally, drinks to excess. Further, the
disposition of the sons of drunken parents ought to be investigated before any
girl becomes engaged to one of them. This is one instance in which long
engagements are not to be condemned, for, if the man has inherited the
alcoholic craving, it may become known in time, and his fiancée may
be saved from the most terrible fate that I can think of—becoming the wife of a
drunkard.
"One word
more before I leave this aspect of the subject. As the majority of inebriates
are sufferers from a disease which is partly the result of hereditary
predisposition, it is foolish for any woman to marry a drunkard in the belief
that she can reform him. If women would realize that alcoholism is a disease
and not a vice, they would understand that, while the spirit which prompts
their devotion and self-sacrifice is praiseworthy, yet the probability of its
success is very remote. No doubt there are women who have made this experiment
and who have managed to 'reform,' as it is called, confirmed inebriates; but
such cases are by no means numerous. While it might not be right to attempt to
interfere with any effort to benefit any representative of suffering humanity,
it must be remembered that the fate of the next generation is at stake, and
that unborn children certainly have rights, although we are very apt to
disregard them. Admitting, then, that anyone is at liberty to risk everything,
even life itself, to benefit another, nevertheless it cannot be said that
anyone has a moral right to jeopardize the future of a family to satisfy any
instinct or feeling of affection, however noble it may be. If what I have
written is true, no woman is justified in marrying a drunkard."
The unstable
nervous organization bequeathed by intemperate parents is like a sword of
Damocles over the heads of their unfortunate children, and even moderate
drinkers will not give vigorous bodies and strong wills to their descendants.
One man boasted that he had used a bottle of wine daily for fifty years, and it
had not injured him; but of his twelve children, six died in infancy, one was
imbecile, one was insane, the rest were hysterical invalids.
And alcohol is
not the only substance that inebriates. Opium, morphine, chloral, cocaine, and
all drugs of a similar nature, are dangerous, and each not only inflicts its
injury on the individual, but transmits its results to posterity in that nerve
degeneration which renders the sufferer an easy victim to all forms of
intoxication, and intoxication is nothing more nor less than poisoning. Opium
and morphine are often prescribed by physicians, and the patient, experiencing
the sudden relief from pain, and perhaps not knowing the danger of indulgence,
resorts next time to the delightful pain-quieter on his own responsibility, and
almost before he knows it the habit is formed, and the weak will that made the
easy victim now makes the unwilling slave, loathing his chains, yet unable to
break them; and these evil habits are, in their effects, transmitted.
Dr. Robertson
says: "The part that heredity plays in all functional diseases or states
of the nervous system is not to be misunderstood. It is safe to assert that no
idiopathic case of insanity, chorea, hysteria, megrim, dipsomania, or moral
insanity, can occur except by reason of inherited predisposition."
The evils of
morphinism are even greater than those of alcoholism, and their transmission no
less sure. Especially is there loss of moral power. Dr. Robertson says:
"No matter how honorable, upright and conscientious a man's past life may
have been, let him become thoroughly addicted to morphine, and I would not believe
any statement he might make, either with reference to the use of the drug or on
any other subject that concerned his habit. This extends further, and clouds
his moral perceptions in all relations of life."
Dr. Brush
says: "Cocaine is the only drug the effects of which are more dangerous
and more slavish than the inhalation of the fumes of opium."
The danger in
the fast life of this age is that we try to find something that will enable us
to do our excessive undertakings with less feeling of fatigue. We fail to see
in this that we are exhausting our reserve force, instead of adding to our
store of force.
The Popular
Science News says that kola, cocoa, chocolate, coffee, tea, and
similar substances make nervous work seem lighter, because they call out the
reserve fund which should be most sacredly preserved, and the result is nervous
bankruptcy. Understanding that nervous bankruptcy of the parent threatens the
welfare of future generations through the law of heredity, we will surely
hesitate to bring ourselves under the strain produced by the use of these
substances.
The most dangerous
habit of the present would almost seem to be the tobacco habit, because it
is considered quite respectable and is therefore almost universal. Men who are
prominent, not only as statesmen and business men, but also as moral leaders,
smoke with no apparent recognition of the evils, and lads can often sanction
their beginning of the habit by the fact that a certain pastor or Sunday-school
superintendent is a smoker.
But science has
not been idle in regard to the investigation of the effects of tobacco, and the
discoveries made have been published, so that we are not now ignorant of the
tobacco heart, or tobacco throat, or tobacco nerves, nor of the transmission of
nerve degeneracy to the children of smokers.
Girls
sometimes think it is a great joke to smoke cigarettes for fun, and some grow
into the habit of smoking, but the injury is not lessened by the fact that the
use of the cigarette was begun in jest, nor that the user is a woman.
In fact,
the Medical Times is quite inclined to assert that much of the
neurasthenia, including a general disturbance of the digestive organs, now so
common in that portion of the female sex who have ample means and leisure to
indulge in any luxury agreeable to their taste, or which, for the time being,
may contribute to their enjoyment, is due to narcotics.
During the
Civil War we are told that 13 per cent. of all men examined were excluded
as unfit for military service. We are now told that 31 per cent. are found to
be unfit. Nearly one-third of the young men found physically incompetent to be
soldiers! From what cause? Certainly tobacco must bear a large share of the
blame.
Some years ago
Major Houston, of the Naval School at Annapolis, made the statement that
one-fifth of the boys who applied for admittance were rejected on account of
heart disease, and that 90 per cent. of these had produced the heart difficulty
by the use of tobacco.
Dr. Pidduch
asserts that "the hysteria, the hypochondriasis, the consumption, the
dwarfish deformities, the suffering lives and early deaths of the children of
inveterate smokers, bear ample testimony to the feebleness of constitution
which they have inherited."
Girls
sometimes have the idea that a little wildness in a young man is rather to be
admired. On one occasion a young woman left a church where she had heard a
lecture on the evils of using tobacco, saying, as she went out, "I would
not marry a young man if he did not smoke. I think it looks manly, and I don't
want a husband who is not a man among men."
Years after,
when her three babies died, one after the other, with infantile paralysis,
because their father was an inveterate smoker, the habit did not seem to
her altogether so admirable, and when she herself became a confirmed invalid,
because compelled to breathe night and day a nicotine-poisoned atmosphere, she
gave loud voice to her denunciation of the very habit which in her ignorant
girlhood she had characterized as manly.
CHAPTER
XXIX
EFFECTS OF IMMORALITY ON THE
RACE.
There is
another influence at work in causing race degeneracy concerning which the
majority of girls are ignorant, and that is immorality. The prevalent idea that
young men must "sow their wild oats" is accepted by many young women
as true, and they think if the lover reforms before marriage and remains true
to them thereafter, that is all they can reasonably demand. They will not make
such excuses for themselves for lapses from virtue, but they imbibe the idea
that men are not to be held to an absolute standard of purity, and so think it
delicate to shut their eyes to the derelictions of young men. This chapter of
human life is a sorrowful one to read, but to heed its warnings would save many
a girl from sorrow, many a wife from heartache.
The law of God
is not a double law, holding woman to the most rigid code of a "thou shalt
not" and allowing men the liberty of a "thou mayest."
The penalty
inflicted for the violation of moral law is one of the most severe, both in its
effects upon the individual transgressor and upon his descendants. The most
dreadful scourge of physical disease, as well as moral degeneracy, follows
an impure life. This disease, known as syphilis, is practically incurable. It
may temporarily disappear, only to reappear in some other form later in life;
and even after all signs have become quiescent in the man, they may reappear in
his children in some form of transmission. Even one lapse from virtue is enough
to taint the young man with this dreadful poison, which may be in after years
communicated to his innocent wife or transmitted to his children.
Dr. Guernsey
says: "I do not overdraw the picture when I declare that millions of human
beings die annually from the effects of poison contracted in this way, in some
form of suffering or other; for, by insinuating its effects into and poisoning
the whole man, it complicates various disorders and renders them incurable.
This horrible infection sometimes becomes engrafted upon other acute diseases,
when lingering disorders follow, causing years of misery, and only terminating
in death. Sometimes the poison attacks the throat, causing most destructive
alterations therein. Sometimes it seizes upon the nasal bones, resulting in
their entire destruction and an awful disfigurement of the face. Sometimes it
ultimates itself in the ulceration and destruction of other osseous tissues in
different portions of the body. Living examples of these facts are too
frequently witnessed in the streets of any large city. Young men marrying
with the slightest taint of this poison in the blood will surely transmit the
disease to their children. Thousands of abortions transpire every year from
this cause alone, the poison being so destructive as to kill the child in
utero, before it is matured for birth; and even if the child be born alive,
it is liable to break down with most loathsome disorders of some kind and die
during dentition; the few that survive this period are short-lived, and are
unhealthy so long as they do live. The first unchaste connection of a man with
a woman may be attended with a contamination entailing upon him a life of
suffering, and even death itself. Almost imperceptible in its origin, it
corrupts the whole body, makes the very air offensive to surrounding friends,
and lays multitudes literally to rot in the grave. It commences in one part of
the body, and usually, in more or less degree, extends to the whole system, and
is said by most eminent physicians to be a morbid poison, having the power of
extending itself to every part of the body into which it is infused, and to
other persons with whom it in any way comes in contact, so that even its
moisture, communicated by linen or otherwise, may corrupt those who
unfortunately touch it."
If girls were
aware of all this they would not only be careful how they marry immoral men,
but they would shrink from personal contact with them as from a viper. Not
one, but many girls who have held somewhat lax ideas concerning the propriety
of allowing young men to be familiar have reaped the result in a contamination
merely through the touch of the lips. To-day a young woman in good social
standing is a sufferer from this cause. She was acquainted with a young man of
respectable family, but immoral life. His gaiety had a fascination for her, and
his reputed wildness only added to the charm. On one evening, as he escorted
her home, and took leave of her on the doorstep, she allowed him to kiss her.
It chanced that at the time she had a small sore on her lip. The poisonous
touch of his lips conveyed the infection through this slight abrasion, and she
became tainted with the syphilitic virus, and to-day bears the loathsome
disfigurement in consequence. I do not need to multiply such cases. You can be
warned by one as well as by a hundred.
A young woman
of pure life married a man whose reputation was bad, but whose social position
was high. To-day she is suffering from the horrible disease which he
communicated to her, and her children have died or are betraying to the world
in their very faces the story of their father's wrong deeds. Truly you cannot
afford to be ignorant of facts so grave as these.
FOOTNOTES:
For an extended presentation of
the character and diseases which accompany vice, the reader is referred to the
chapters which treat of this subject in "What a Young Man Ought to
Know." Every young woman should be intelligent upon these important
subjects. There is nothing in this book to young men which a young woman
approaching maturity may not know, both with propriety and benefit, so that she
may most successfully protect herself from possible companionship with
well-dressed and polite but impure young men by discreetly placing the book in
the hands of her father and brothers, that they may become intelligent
concerning the dangers against which they can most successfully protect her. It
might not be improper for her, after due acquaintance, to see that the book is
placed in the hands of the one who seeks to become her husband and the father
of her children, that she may at the proper time, and before it is too late,
learn whether he has always lived by the standards of social purity which are
there set up, and whether he is able to bring to the union the same unsullied
life and character which he expects and requires of her.
CHAPTER
XXX
THE GOSPEL OF HEREDITY
I have often
heard people say that God was unjust in making this law of heredity and
compelling innocent children to bear the sins of the guilty parents, and at
first thought it might so seem; but God is a God of justice and also of mercy,
and our study of His laws in their ultimate outcome leads us to know that they
are invariably made for our welfare. Let us see, then, if we cannot find
something encouraging even in this law of heredity. Are the majority of people
born straight or deformed, sick or well, honest or dishonest? You may ask, Are
all of these conditions a matter of heredity? Certainly. The fact that we are
human beings instead of animals, that we have our due proportion of organs and
faculties, that we are not monstrosities or imbeciles, are all hereditary
conditions. We see, then, that the law of heredity insures to us our full
complement of organs and capabilities, as well as the more pronounced
characteristics which we the more readily recognize as inheritances. The fact
is that inheritance of good is so universal that we fail to think of it.
When the baby
is "well-favored" and straight-limbed, no credit is given to
heredity; but if he is in some way out of the ordinary, we blame the law that
has fixed on him some result of parental conduct.
If he
possesses a good mentality, it scarcely occurs to us that this is just as
surely heredity as is the transmission of the mental weakness of some ancestor.
By the Gospel
of Heredity I mean this brighter side, this "Good-tidings" of the
law. In the first written Biblical record of the law, where the statement is
made that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third
and fourth generation, we have also the statement of the
"Good-tidings" that the Lord sheweth mercy to thousands of them that
love him and keep his commandments; and that means not thousands of
individuals, but thousands of generations. Justice is meted to the third and
fourth, but mercy to thousands of generations.
All through
the Scriptures we find this brighter phase of the law enunciated. Perhaps you
would like to study both the law and the Gospel from the Bible. I will give you
some texts and you can find them for yourself. It would be interesting also for
you to read the lives of men and women of renown, and observe the transmission
of talents and capabilities.
Encouraging as
this view of the subject may be, it is by no means the brightest side of
the subject of heredity, for if we have inherited no special talents, and
if we are handicapped by the transmitted results of the sins of our ancestors,
we may say "There is no hope for us, nor for our children." To us
then will come, as special "Good-tidings of great joy," the news that
heredity is not fatality. We are not obliged to sit and quietly bear the fetters
our ancestors have forged for us. We can break the chains, we can free
ourselves. It may be difficult, but it can be done, and a great incentive to
the effort is found in the fact that by success we not only improve ourselves,
but we can pass on a better inheritance to our posterity.
We may
cultivate our health by obedience to its laws so as to overcome inherited
weaknesses to a very great extent. We are not absolutely obliged to die with
consumption because one of our parents did. By simple living, and especially by
deep breathing of pure air, we may so strengthen ourselves that we will have
the power to resist the encroachments of the germ of tuberculosis.
We may be born
with weak digestive power, but by plain, wholesome fare, by freedom from worry,
by a careful attention to all healthful habits, we may grow strong and free
from dyspeptic symptoms.
We can by
cultivation of our minds and morals not only increase our own powers, but add
to the powers of our posterity.
Then, too, the
effects of mental education are transmissible; not the education itself, but an
increased capacity, a new tendency. Every mental activity is accompanied by an
actual modifying influence on brain structure, so that we are really building
our brains by our thoughts, and this increase of our own brains is
transmissible to posterity.
I know that
some of our philosophers assert strongly that acquired characteristics are not
transmitted, and their theories seem quite plausible; but I would rather accept
facts than theories any time, and Professor Elmer Gates has demonstrated that
this theory does not accord with the facts. He has trained dogs until they
could recognize seven or eight shades of green or red. The brains of these
dogs, so trained, show under the microscope a great increase of brain-cells in
the visual area, proving that the education has created actual brain material.
The progeny of these dogs, to several generations, shows at birth a much larger
number of brain-cells in the visual area than is the case where the ancestry has
not been so strained.
Where the dogs
have been brought up in absolute darkness there is a great lack of cells in the
visual area, both in these dogs and in their progeny.
This is the
brief statement of a most hopeful and encouraging fact.
We look to the
dark side of the law of heredity for our warning. It makes us solemnly
thoughtful in view of our power over the race in the transmitted result from
our own wrongdoing; and then, when we feel overwhelmed and discouraged, we turn
towards the Gospel of Heredity and take hope from the fact that good is
transmissible; and, more than that, we have it in our power so to modify our
own characters, tendencies and habits that we can, in all probability, give our
children a better dower than we received, and the earlier in life we begin this
making over of ourselves the better.
I have heard
people excuse themselves for all manner of faults on the plea that they were
inheritances, and therefore could not be overcome. That is to declare that we
are slaves, with no chance to acquire freedom, and I am not willing to admit
that.
"Whereas
in Adam all die, in Christ may all be made alive." That is, that while
under the Law of Heredity we are fettered, under the Gospel of Heredity our
chains may be broken and we become free.
There is much
of encouragement in the poem of Ella Wheeler Wilcox on heredity:
"There is
no trait you cannot overcome.Say not thy evil instinct is inherited,Or that
some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn,And calls for punishment that is
not merited.
"Back of
thy parents and grandparents lies The great Eternal Will, that, too, is
thineInheritance—strong, beautiful, divine;Sure lever of success for one who
tries.
"Pry up
thy fault with this great lever—will;However deeply bedded in
propensity;However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yetIs that great power that
comes from truth's immensity.
"There is
no noble height thou canst not climb;All triumphs may be thine in time's
futurity,If, whatsoe'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt,But lean upon
the staff of God's security.
"Earth
has no claim the soul cannot contest;Know thyself part of the supernal
source,And naught can stand before thy spirit's force;The soul's divine
inheritance is best."
BIBLE TEXTS BEARING ON THE
SUBJECT OF HEREDITY.
Natural Heredity.
Law.—Gen. 1:12-24; Ex.
20:6; Num. 14:18.
Sins visited.—Job
21:17-19; Ps. 37:28; Jer. 32:18.
Blessings.—Gen. 22:17, 18;
Deut. 4:40; 5:29; 30:19; Ps. 21:13; 37:18, 22, 26, 29; 103:17, 18; 112:1, 2;
128:3; Prov. 10:25; 11:19; 13:22; 17:6; 20:7; Isa. 48:18, 19; Jer. 32:18.
Divine Heredity.
Isa. 43:16; Jer. 3:19; Mal. 2:10;
Matt. 5:9, 45, 48; 6:4, 6, 9, 14, 15, 18, 26; John 20:17; Rom. 8:16, 17; Gal.
4:7; Eph. 4:6; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 John 3:2; 5:1.
CHAPTER XXXI
REQUISITES OF A HUSBAND.
Having spent so
much time in the study of principles and laws, we will now return to the
discussion of this concrete case. What can you decide in regard to this
individual young man to whom you think you have given your heart? What is he in
his inheritance? What is he in himself? I do not ask that he shall have
inherited wealth, for that often proves a young man's ruin, but does he come of
an honest, industrious family? Have you just reason to suppose that he will
make a fair success of life? Is his father shiftless, lazy, improvident? If so,
it will be harder for him to be provident, business-like. Has he true ideas of
the dignity of life and his own responsibility? Is he looking for an "easy
job," or does he purpose to give a fair equivalent for all that he receives?
Would he rather toil at honest manual labor than be supported by a rich
father-in-law?
What are his
ideas as to his responsibility in the founding of a home? How will he look upon
his wife? As an equal, a companion, or as a plaything, a petted child, or a sort
of upper servant? What value does he put upon the wife's labor in the
conducting of the household? Will he consider that the money he hands over to
her is a gift from him, or only a fair recognition of the value of her work, a
rendering to her of her share in the family purse?
What is his
estimate of woman? Is she an individual with rights, with intellect and heart,
with a judgment to be consulted, opinions worthy of recognition, or only an
appendage to man, created for his comfort and to be held in her "sphere"
by his will?
What are his
defects of temper, or his weaknesses of body? Of course, to you now he seems
perfection, and yet he is a human being, fallible and imperfect. If his faults
are similar to yours, you double the possibility of their inheritance by your
children. If you both have a tendency to lung trouble, the probabilities are
that your children will have consumption. If you both are of rheumatic
proclivities, you may expect a manifestation of the same early in the life of
your children. If you both are "nervous" or irritable in temper, both
jealously inclined, or are morbid and melancholy, you need not be surprised at
an intensifying of these qualities in your little ones.
If there are
more serious family traits, such as insanity, epilepsy, alcoholism and the
like, it might even be your duty never to run the risk of their transmission.
I once spoke
on heredity when in the audience sat a young man by the side of his fiancée,
who, I was afterwards told, had been in an insane asylum three times, and yet
he purposed marrying her.
I know a
clergyman who has wisely dedicated himself to a celibate life because there is
marked insanity in his family.
You chafe a
little under this reiteration of the duty you owe to children yet unborn, and
who may possibly never exist, and perhaps you say, as I have heard girls say,
"Oh, I don't mean to have any children;" and perhaps you add, "I
don't see why people may not marry and be happy just by themselves without
having children."
It is not
strange that you should not understand all that is involved in such a
statement. It is true that some married people do not have children, and are
comparatively happy, and yet perhaps if we could read their hearts we should
find that the one great longing of their lives is for the blessing of a child.
It is natural
to desire to know the joys of parenthood. In the home, through the cares and
love, the anxiety, self-sacrifice, tenderness and patience which accompany
parenthood, the education of the individual is made most complete and perfect.
The girl who
marries without a willingness to accept these responsibilities is willing to
sacrifice that which, rightly borne, will bring her the highest
development. If she purposes deliberately to avoid motherhood she puts herself
in a position of moral peril, for such immunity is not often secured except at
the risk of criminality. I say not often, although I believe that if husband
and wife are actuated by the worthy motive of not inflicting on posterity some
dower of woe, they are justified in a marriage that does not contemplate
parenthood, if they are of lofty purpose enough to live solely in mental and
spiritual companionship. But all attempts to secure the pleasure of a physical
relation and escape its legitimate results are a menace to the health and a
degradation to the moral nature. This subject, and the questions arising
therefrom, will be discussed more fully in the next book of this series,
"What a Young Wife Ought to Know."
But how is a
girl to know all these things concerning her lover's ideas, thoughts,
principles, and purposes? Many of these you think cannot be known until after
marriage, and then it is too late. That is true; therefore be wise and learn
all you can of each other's habits, peculiarities, opinions, and predilections
now, before it is too late. Talk over business matters. Find out what your
lover's ideas are as to the wife's right to a pecuniary recognition of the
value of her labor in making the home. Does he think that she earns nothing,
and that what he gives her of his money is a donation for which she gives
no return? I know a young woman who had been self-supporting before her
marriage who felt timid about asking her husband for money. So she wore her
wedding garments until they were shabby, went without money when her own funds
were exhausted, and kept silent for five years, and her husband—a young
clergyman—never thought to ask her if she needed anything, never observed her
growing shabbiness. When at last she summoned courage to tell him her needs, he
was overwhelmed with regret for his own lack of thought and observation, and
yet he could not understand why she should hesitate to ask for money.
"Why, it is all yours, dear," he said. "You were only asking for
what already belongs to you." And many young husbands are just as obtuse,
therefore they should receive in advance the instruction that is needed to
prevent a possibility of such neglect. Have it understood that if you are
worthy to be trusted as a bearer of the name and a sharer of the fortunes of a man,
you are worthy to share also the burden of the knowledge of his business
experiences, and to bear the responsibility of economically guarding his
interests in the expenditure of money which, by your love and care and labor,
you have helped him to earn.
I think a
young woman should know something of the personal habits of her future husband.
Does he like fresh air, or does he want the windows hermetically sealed at
night. Is he a believer in the godliness of cleanliness? I have just read of
two people who married after a six week's acquaintance, knowing nothing of each
other's antecedents, personal habits, caprices or principles. The man proved to
be a regular hypochondriac, taking medicine constantly, at one time with five
doctors prescribing for him. He counted his pulse at every odd moment, and
looked at his tongue instead of at the eyes of his wife, as he had done when a
lover. He had a dread of pure air, and was as averse to bathing as a cat. The
woman had lived in the open air, taken a daily morning bath, and was disgusted
with those who did not do likewise. The writer says, "She stormed, took
her baths, and opened the windows; he cried, took no baths, shut the windows,
and called the doctors." There is no need to depict the unhappiness of the
home, and yet no doubt the girl would have been shocked had anyone suggested
that she inquire into these facts concerning her lover. But if she had been
less romantic and more practical, if she had remembered that the marriage
contract would bind her for life to one who would be more closely connected
with her than anyone else could be, and this union for life, by day and by
night, constant, continuous, and not to be annulled by any such small matters
as bad breath or unpleasant personal habits, perhaps she would have
considered it no small matter to discover the possible causes of disgust before
they became fixtures in her life.
And perhaps,
also, she would have given her own personal habits more consideration. True
love will endure much, but it sometimes dies in the presence of untidiness, of
carelessness as to dress or room, or lack of sweetness of person or of breath.
If you demand much of a husband, he has a right to demand just as much from
you. If there are habits concerning which you would rather he as a lover should
be ignorant, believe me that it is even more important that as a husband he
should not know them. Therefore employ your available time before marriage to
rid yourself of them. If a lover would be disenchanted to see the room from
which his blooming, beauteous adored one had departed, bearing the marks of
carelessness and disorder, with soiled clothing, unmade bed, shoes, hose and
dresses all in tumbled heaps on chairs and floor, remember that the marriage
ceremony does not make such a room more attractive to the husband, who must not
only see but share its discomforts.
In addition to
the knowledge of each other's personal peculiarities there should be an
understanding of each other's ideas as to the duties and responsibilities of
their proposed relation to each other. I lately received a letter from a
young woman who asks, "How freely do you think two engaged young people
may talk concerning their future life? Would it not be indelicate for them to
discuss their future relations, the possibility and responsibilities of
parenthood, etc.?"
I answer, that
depends on the young people. If they have false ideas, if they have little or
no scientific knowledge, if their thoughts are filled with wrong mental
pictures, they will not know how to talk wisely and beneficially. But these two
young people are intelligent, are scientifically educated, are Christians.
Their hearts are pure, their standards high, their motives praiseworthy. It
would seem that they might talk as freely as their inclination would prompt. In
fact there seems to me more indelicacy and more danger from long evenings spent
in murmuring ardent protestations of love and indulging in embraces and
endearments than in a frank, serious conversation on the realities and
responsibilities of marriage, an exchange of earnest thoughts, voiced in
chaste, well-chosen language—a conversation which by its very solemnity is
lifted out of the realm of sense-pleasure into the dignified domain of science
and morality.
CHAPTER XXXII
ENGAGEMENTS.
There now
sparkles on your finger a ring that symbolizes the promise you have given to
become a wife. You are engaged, and there now arises in your mind the query as
to the conduct of yourselves during this period of engagement: How much of
privilege shall you grant your lover? As you are promised to each other for
life, are you not warranted in assuming towards each other greater personal
familiarity? May you not with perfect modesty allow endearments and caresses
that hitherto have not been permissible?
I take it for
granted that you are not one of those unwise young women who permit themselves
to become engaged for fun; who consider an engagement as of so little
seriousness that it may be made and broken without regret. I have known girls
who even enter into engagements just in order to feel justified in greater
freedom of conduct without compunction of conscience. If such engagements do
not violate the code of conventionalities they certainly infringe upon the
moral code.
It is not
strange that girls should fail to see all the dangers of such conduct—that
they should not comprehend that thus they become sources of temptation to
their lovers, and may even imperil their own safety.
But your
engagement is an honest one, your love is true, based upon thorough acquaintance;
you have mutual respect and entire confidence in each other. May you not now
throw aside much of the restrictions that have surrounded your association and
manifest your affection in reciprocal demonstrations?
We often read
the advice to young people not to enter upon long engagements, and the reason
given is that it exacts too much in the way of self-control, is too great a
nervous strain, is too full of peril. I would like to quote just here a few
words by Dr. C.W. Eaton:
"Away
with the sexual argument against engagements, and let us all set about that
cultivation of will and purpose which can make the weakest a tower of strength
and the arbiter of his own destiny; and let us say to our appetites, Thus far
shalt thou come and no farther, neither shalt thou presume to deny to thy
master the best earthly companionship which may come into his life. It may be a
far harder task than the ardent and poetical lover allows himself at first to
think, but the hardest battles are best worth the fighting; and what manner of
men should we become if we systematically evaded life's conflicts, instead of
meeting them squarely and fighting them through manfully? Dr. Bourgeois
says: 'The ancient custom of betrothals is the safeguard for the purity of
morals and the happy association of man and wife. This institution was known to
the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans, and during the Middle Ages. In Germany it
has still preserved its poetical and moral character. The young people are
sometimes affianced many years before their marriage. We see the young man,
thus betrothed, with heart full of his chaste love, absent himself for a time
in order to finish his education, to perform his studies of science or art, his
apprenticeship to a trade, and to prepare himself for manly life. He returns to
his betrothed with a soul which has remained pure, with a reason enlarged and
fortified. Then both are ripe for the austere duties of marriage.
"'Chaste
love, consecrated by betrothals, can be cultivated in the midst of work. It
lightens toil, it banishes ennui, it illumines the horizon of life
with delightful prospects; it excites in the young man the manly courage and
the high intelligence to create for himself a position in the world; in woman,
the noble ambition to perfect herself to become a worthy companion and good
adviser.
"'During
the stormy period of youth it is the only means of preserving the virgin purity
of the heart and of the body. Does anyone believe that young men who in
good season have in their hearts a love strong and worthy of them would profane
themselves, as they so often otherwise do, in vile affections, in those
relations of a day, giving themselves a holocaust to beauty without soul, or
even to licentiousness without beauty?'"
Emerson says:
"If, however, from too much conversing with material objects the soul was
gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it reaped nothing but
sorrow, body being unable to fulfill the promise which beauty holds out; but
if, accepting the hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to
his mind, the soul passes through the body and fails to admire strokes of
character, and the lovers contemplate one another in their discourses and their
actions, then they pass to the true palace of beauty, more and more inflame
their love of it, and by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun
puts out fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By
conversation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous, lowly and
just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobilities, and a quicker
apprehension of them. Then he passes from loving them in one to loving them in
all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to
the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate
he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has
contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual
joy that they are now able, without offense, to indicate blemishes and
hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the
same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and
separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has
contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love
and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls."
And this all
means that when the thought of the sex-relation constitutes in the mind of
either the idea of marriage, then the wedding ceremony will be supposed to
remove all restrictions, and the only limit of gratification will be the limit
of desire. Under these circumstances the close familiarity of a long engagement
would be a mental and physical tax, because the self-control exercised is felt
to be only temporary, and will be no longer needed when the wedding ceremony
has been said.
But if the
idea of marriage is nobler, if the sex-relation is consecrated to its highest
purpose of reproduction, if marriage is felt to be only an added opportunity
for self-control, which will be more difficult then because there will be no
restraint except that which is self-imposed, then the engagement will be felt
to be a time of gradual preparation for that closer relationship which
needs more will-power because opportunity is greater.
Under these
conditions the lovers will be aiming towards an ideal which recognizes that in
wedded life all that is lasting in affection, in tender courtesy, in most
intimate companionship, in sweetest demonstration, is possible without the
physical union, which in itself is the most transitory of pleasures, but which
in unlimited indulgence becomes the most domineering of passions, exhaustive of
physical power and of mental vigor, and absolutely annihilating all true love.
If you ask why
there should exist this marvelous drawing of the sexes towards each other if
their relation is not based upon the exercise of sex-functions, I reply that
sex is more than its local expression; it is inherent in mind as well as body,
and therefore sexual power may be expressed in masculine courage, energy or
daring, or in feminine constancy, self-abnegation, or sweet courtesy. Sexual
attraction is not limited to the local expression, nor creative power to
reproduction of kind, but may give a stimulus to the intellectual companionship
of men and women, and result in the creation of nobler ideals and grander
aspirations.
Having settled
in your mind your attitude towards your lover, let us consider what it shall be
towards your family during these days of the engagement. Naturally you
will not feel a separation from the home circle as keenly as do the other
members of your family. You two are so absorbed in each other, are so busy
exchanging ideas, in becoming acquainted, that you are oblivious to the change
brought about in your family. You think you two ought to be allowed the
privilege of tête-à -têtes, for of course you cannot talk freely
together in the hearing of others. This is true. You should have times of
seclusion, when, without a sense of oppression through fear of criticism or
jesting, you can rhapsodize, or quote poetry and open your hearts' treasures to
each other. But you still owe a duty to your home. Doubtless your mother is not
now as necessary to your happiness as you are to hers. She is thinking of you
with most tender solicitude, she misses your presence, she already begins to
feel the loneliness of the inevitable separation. If you are thoughtful you
will see to it that the separation does not begin sooner than is necessary.
Then, too, your parents need to get acquainted with this new member whom you
are to introduce into the family, and he needs to know them. He will think none
the less of you if he sees that you do not allow him to monopolize you
entirely, that you recognize your obligations to the family and that you expect
him to recognize them also, and, in addition, his obligations to show them due
courtesy and attention. He is not to absorb you entirely, to take you out
of the home circle, but he is to come in and be a part of it, even as you are
to become one in the home of which he is a member. You need to remember that he
is son and brother to women who loved him long before you knew him, and that he
still owes them attention and thoughtful, affectionate courtesy.
Never allow
yourself to feel jealous of his mother or sisters. The fact that he is a
loving, thoughtful son and brother is in a measure a guarantee that he will be
a loving, thoughtful husband.
Let me add to
this advice a word more. Do not allow yourself to feel jealous of him in any
way. Jealousy is the quintessence of selfishness, and no other passion is so
destructive of happiness, so full of the contagion of evil. If your lover is
not to be trusted, you would be wise to end the engagement at once. If he is to
be trusted, that trust should be absolute. I said you should not allow him to
monopolize you, neither should you attempt to monopolize him. There are other
people in the world besides yourself, and other occupations than the business
of waiting on you. If you make him feel that he dare not speak to anyone but
you, that he dare not think of anything but you, he will begin to chafe under
the restraint and feel a desire to break the bonds that are becoming fetters.
If he were not your acknowledged lover, if you were anxious to win his
love, but were a little uncertain as to your power to do so, you would not meet
him with tears and upbraidings because he had for one moment seemed to forget
you, but you would at once use every possible effort to make yourself more
attractive in his eyes than any other person could possibly be. You will be
wise to use those same tactics now, even though his allegiance is pledged to
you. Be so charming that no one else can be considered so entertaining; that no
one else can be so wise, so witty, so sympathetic, so altogether lovely, that
everything but yourself is forgotten; and then believe in him so absolutely
that he could not possibly swerve in his fidelity to you. Have you ever thought
that to accuse one of a certain wrong act may be just the way to suggest to him
the possibility of committing it? If one trusts you implicitly, that very trust
is a constant suggestion to be true, and doubt is a suggestion to act worthy of
being doubted.
You must trust
each other or you have no sure foundation for future love and happiness. It
needs a great deal of good common sense to learn how to live happily in
marriage. You may have chosen wisely. The man may be honest, pure, kindly,
intelligent, and Christian, but he is human, therefore not perfect. He has faults,
peculiarities, moods, perhaps tempers, and he will probably not wait until you
are married to begin to show them. There will come differences of
opinions, divergences in desires, clashings in judgment. Now is the time to
display your tact, to learn how to express an opposing opinion without arousing
antagonism, to yield a desire for the sake of a greater love than that of self,
to adhere to principle without unpleasant discussion; in short, to be dignified
and womanly without pettiness or littleness of any kind. You remember the words
of Ruskin, that the woman must be "incorruptibly good, instinctively,
infallibly wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation," and
that will be the highest development.
No doubt you
will think that some of this advice should be given to young men as well as to
young women, and I think so too, and were I talking to your lover I could say
many warning words; but just now I am telling you things that he does not need
to hear, and I do not need to tell you what, if I had the chance, I would say
to him. You are to train yourself and not him, and yet I would not have you
ignorant of your power over him in developing in him all that is noblest and
best. You should hold him ever to his highest ideals. He should never feel so
absolutely sure of your adoration as to imagine that it will endure a lowering
of his standards. You have been posing a little before each other. Doubtless
you were not aware of this, but, now that you have each gained the heart
of the other, you may sometimes feel that you can relax; but this is a
dangerous error. You should continue to be as thoughtful, as courteous, as
careful as ever; you should endeavor really to be all that you have tried or
appeared to be during these days of courtship. You will be none too perfect
even then.
Once, in
talking to a group of women, I asserted that a wife should exact of her husband
as high a tone of morality as of her lover, that she should not allow him to
become lax in his conversation with her any more than with any other woman. One
woman thought me too strict. She said men liked to feel that at home they could
do as they pleased, and would resent a wife's interference with their right to
be loose in their talk in their own home. I replied that the home is not the
man's nor the woman's alone; it is theirs jointly; that each has a right to
demand that the other shall not pollute or poison the air, the food, the water
or the moral atmosphere; and the wife who allows contamination of the
thought-atmosphere of the home is as culpable as if she were to permit poison
to be put into the food.
As a man
admires the girl who respects herself too much to permit him to tell her
questionable stories, so will he reverence the wife who refuses to allow him to
degrade himself in her presence either by speech or conduct. Love would
not so often fail if wives knew the secret of retaining it, and that is not by
sacrifice of principle, nor by tearful reproaches and upbraidings, but by being
true to the highest impulses, and while having the good common sense that can
make all reasonable allowance for fallibility, still permits no lowering of
moral standards, no willful falling short of the very best.
CHAPTER
XXXIII
THE WEDDING.
Said my friend:
There's to be
a grand wedding, you know,With no end to the fuss and parade,With sixteen fair
bridesmaids to stand in a row,With sixteen young groomsmen to help out the
show,One to stand by the side of each maid.
Then there's a
reception to be very fine,With all sorts of magnificent things,With silver to
glitter and mirrors to shine,With tropical fruit and famous old wine,With
odorous flowers and music divine,Drawn forth from melodious strings.
In the minds
of many girls the wedding means only this public show, the display of elegant
toilets, the reception of costly gifts; and the preparation of marriage means
too often merely the making of an elegant trousseau. People
generally do not ask concerning the fitness of the young people to enter on the
solemn duties of life—do not ask how well they have been instructed concerning
that which is before them; but the questions are all about clothes and gifts
and ceremonials. No wonder, then, that the thought of the young woman centers
on these things, to the exclusion of nearly all else; indeed, it may be to the
detriment of health and the lessening of true happiness. The prospective
husband finds his fiancée so absorbed in sewing, shopping
and interviews with dressmakers that she has few moments to give to him,
and these few occupied more with the thought of gowns and personal adornments
than with ideals of wedded happiness.
Perhaps she
even excuses herself for lessening the number of his visits on the plea that
very soon now she will be all his, and so he is left to spend his last days of
bachelorhood in loneliness, and made to feel that raiment is more than love.
Worse still, it may be that on the wedding-day he takes to his heart a bride so
wearied, so nervously exhausted by the preparations of the trousseau that
she is at least temporarily an invalid. I have known more than one bride so
worn out by the preparation for her wedding that instead of bringing
brightness, joy and beauty into the new life, she brought illness, anxiety and
care, and made demands at once upon the patience and service of the husband,
who had a right to expect health and vigor and a power to enjoy.
I knew a
sensible girl who said months before her marriage, "I am not going to
bring to my new life a remnant of health, a shattered nervous system and a
tattered temper," and she kept her word. Her sewing was done by degrees,
and was all out of the way weeks before the wedding. Shopping and dressmaking
were never allowed to interfere with the walks and drives, the chats and
moonlight strolls. "We shall not be able to repeat this experience,"
she wisely said, and so her lover found her ever ready to give him her society
and her thought. Her trousseau was not elaborate, her
wedding-dress was simple, but in it she shone like a flower of the morning,
full of brightness and health and joy.
She was wise
in other respects. Only her intimate friends were invited to the wedding
ceremony, and to these she said, "I want you to feel that it is you I
invite, not your gifts. If your love impels you to give me some simple memento
of yourself it will be cherished, but I'd rather have a pincushion made by your
own hand, or a little flower painted by yourself, than the most costly
purchased picture or most elegant piece of silver that you bought, because you
thought it was expected. And if, when you come, you bring no gift but your love
and blessing, I shall feel that that is the richest treasure."
There was no
display of presents to a vulgar curiosity, no collection of duplicate
butter-knives or berry-spoons to be secretly disposed of after the wedding. The
gifts were few and not costly, but each told its own story of personal
affection, and therefore really had a meaning.
This sensible
young woman introduced another innovation into her wedding. She would not
listen to the suggestion of a bridal tour. "I do not want to be stared at
and commented on by strangers," she said. "Let us go to some quiet
spot in the mountains or by the sea, and let us live with each other and with
nature." In after years she often said, "I would not miss from my
memory the picture of those happy days for anything that any trip on railway
trains and sojourns at hotels could give me. We had time and opportunity to
learn each other's souls as we could not have done amid 'the madding crowd;'
and we have loved each other more truly, I know, because in those early wedded
days we sat with Nature and Nature's God in the true companionship which such
solitude alone can bring."
I never see
the parade of a fashionable wedding that I am not reminded of her and of a sad
contrast to her experience, when two young people were married amid a blaze of
light, a rain of flowers, and under the curious eyes of hundreds of strangers
took their wedding tour, while the papers glowingly described the dress and
beauty of the bride, the necktie and the trousers of the groom, and pictures of
the two were labeled "The Happy Couple." In two years the bride came
home to her parents wrecked in health and broken in heart.
There is a
beauty in a golden wedding that truly celebrates a happy union of half a
century. But when life is all untried, when perhaps the two young people know
nothing of what is before them, it may be are but little acquainted with each
other, and have mistaken the thrill of passion for the steady exaltation
of love, then it would seem wiser to make the occasion one of most solemn
import, free from glitter and show, and full of that deep meaning which makes
the heart stand still in reverence for life's deepest mysteries.
O, gallant
young groom, it may seem a slight thingTo take this young girl as your bride;To
place on her finger the plain golden ring,Around her these bright
flower-festoons to fling,But have you e'er thought what the future will bringTo
you in this life so untried?
Have you
thought how your temper may often be tried?That you may grow gouty and old,That
the fair smiling face of your bonnie young brideMay grow pale and haggard, and
wrinkled, beside,Or she prove a sloven and scold?
And you,
bonnie bride, on this glad wedding day,In the midst of the curious crowd,Do you
fancy that life will be always so gay?Can you work, can you wait, do you know
how to pray,Can you suffer, and not cry aloud?
Can you watch
out the hours by sad beds of pain?Can you bear and forbear and forgive?Can you
cheerfully hope e'en when hoping is vain,And when hope is dead, and to die you
would fain,Can you still feel it right you should live?
O, touchingly
solemn and tender the hour,So full of deep meaning the vowYou have uttered. And
sorely you need Divine powerTo guide you and guard you in sunshine and
shower,For trouble will come and love's delicate flowerBe crushed, you can
scarcely tell how.
And yet, dear
heart, there is nothing that has such unconquerable vitality as love; but it
must be true love, not self-love, not sentimentality, not passion, not any of
the spurious emotions that masquerade under the name of love, and which
wither with the slightest adverse wind.
Love is not an
exotic, growing only in the conservatories of wealth. It is a hardy plant,
covering desolate places with verdure, glowing amid the snows of mountain
peaks, blossoming by night as well as by day, hiding defects, clinging to
ruins, enduring drouth and heat and cold.
I know a woman
who says that there should never be marriage where there are unpleasant
peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, or even mannerisms; but should we act on that
principle, few would marry. Love is sometimes said to be blind in the days of
wooing, but wearing magnifying glasses after wedlock. True love is never blind,
but he is capable of judging of true relative values, and will count as naught
the slight defect when measured by the overwhelming perfection. Who has not
seen men devoted to wives who were homely or peculiar, but who were genuinely
pure and true?
"I don't
care," said one woman, "if my husband is bald and cross-eyed, he has
a heart of gold."
True love is
not blind, but with a deep, keen insight looks through the encasing garment of
human imperfections, and sees within the divine ego, and because it recognizes
the true inner self that is worthy, hopeth all things, believeth all things,
endureth all things, and never faileth.
THE END.
This version of is edited by Inspired Scoop and it is free to readers under public domain laws. You can support our
mission through donation or by buying one of our eBooks.
Offices of Publication
¶ IN THE UNITED STATES. The Vir
Publishing Company, 200-214 N. Fifteenth St., Philadelphia, Pa.
¶ IN ENGLAND. The Vir Publishing
Company, 4 Imperial B'l'd'g's, Ludgate Circus, London, E.C.
¶ IN CANADA. Ryerson Press, Cor.
Queen and John Sts. Toronto, Ontario.
"What a Young Girl Ought
to Know."
BY MRS. MARY WOOD-ALLEN, M.D.
Condensed Table of Contents
PART I
The origin of
life—One plan in all forms of life—How plants grow from the seed—They feed on
the soil, grow and mature—How the plant reproduces itself—The flower, the
pollen, the pod, the seed—The office of bees and insects in fertilization.
PART II
Fishes and
their young—The parent fishes and the baby fishes—The seeds of plants and eggs
of fishes, birds and animals—How fishes never know their baby offspring—Warm
blooded animals—Lessons from birds—Their nests, eggs and little ones.
PART III
Animals and
their young—The place which God has prepared for their young—Beginning their
independent life—Human babies the most helpless and dependent of all
creatures—The relations of parent and child—The child a part of each
parent—Heredity and its lessons.
PART IV
The value of
good health—The care of the body—The body a temple to be kept holy—Girls should
receive their instruction from their mothers—The body the garment which the
soul wears—Effects of thoughts upon life and character—Value of good
companions, good books and good influences—What it is to become a woman.
"What a Young Girl Ought
to Know"
WHAT EMINENT PEOPLE SAY
Francis E. Willard, LL.D.
"I do earnestly hope that
this book, founded on a strictly scientific but not forgetting a strong ethical
basis, may be well known and widely read by the dear girls in their teens and
the young women in their homes."
Mrs. Elizabeth B. Grannis
"These facts ought to be
judiciously brought to the intelligence of every child whenever it asks
questions concerning its own origin."
Mrs. Harriet Lincoln Coolidge
"It is a book that mothers
and daughters ought to own."
Mrs. Katharine L. Stevenson
"The book is strong, direct,
pure, as healthy as a breeze from the mountain-top."
Mrs. Isabelle MacDonald Alden,
"Pansy"
"It is just the book needed
to teach what most people do not know how to teach, being scientific, simple
and plain-spoken, yet delicate."
Miss Grace H. Dodge
"I know of no one who writes
or speaks on these great subjects with more womanly touch than Mrs. Wood-Allen,
nor with deeper reverence. When I listen to her I feel that she has been
inspired by a Higher Power."
Ira D. Sankey
"Every mother in the land
that has a daughter should secure for her a copy of "What a Young Girl
Ought to Know." It will save the world untold sorrow."
This version of is edited by Inspired Scoop and it is free to readers under public domain laws. You can support our
mission through donation or by buying one of our eBooks.
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