Rambles in Womanland

CHAPTER I

LITTLE MAXIMS FOR EVERYDAY USE

It would do most of us a great deal of good to always keep in mind, or to be now and then reminded of it, lest we should forget it, that, when we are gone, the earth will not stop, but will continue her course around the sun. No one is indispensable in this world.

In order to be successful, the cruet-stand should be used with a great deal of discretion: a little salt always, never any pepper, vinegar very sparingly, and oil always in plenty.

Never in your dealings with a man let him suppose that you take him for a fool. If he is not one, he will appreciate your consideration; and if he is one, he will go about singing your praises. Either way, you will probably win; at any rate, you can't lose, and that's something.

When you have seen a man enjoying himself telling you a story, never tell him that you have heard that story before, and, above all, never tell him that you know a much better version of it, and proceed with it.

Remember that the acknowledged best conversationalists are those who have the reputation of being good listeners. You will be called brilliant according to the way in which you will give others a chance to shine.

People who tell you all the good things that are said of you teach you nothing new. Listen to criticism, especially that which is fair and kind; then you may learn something and profit by it.

When there is something nasty said about you in a newspaper, you never run the slightest risk of not seeing it. There is always a friend, even at the Antipodes, who will post it to you, well marked in blue pencil at the four corners. He takes an interest in you, and feels that the paragraph may not do you any harm in the way of antidote. It doesn't.

When you hear that a man has taken such and such a resolution, take it for granted, when you feel ready to criticise him, that you are not the only person in the world who knows what he is about.

The most valuable gift of nature to man is not talent, not even genius, but temperament and character. If you have both talent and character, the world will belong to you, if you succeed in making talent the servant, and not the master, of your character.

The successful man is not the one who seeks opportunities, but the one who knows how to seize them by the forelock when they present themselves. The great diplomatist is not the one who creates events, but the one who foresees them and knows best how to profit by them.

A man may be very clever without being very successful. This happens when he has more talent than character; but when a man is very successful, never be jealous of him, for you may take it for absolutely granted that he possesses qualities which account for his success.

Envy is the worst of evils, the one that pays least, because it never excites pity in the breast of anyone, and because it causes you to waste lots of time concerning yourself about other people's business instead of spending it all minding your own.

Watch your children most carefully, for when they are ten or twelve years of age you may detect in them signs of defects, or even vices, which, if developed, instead of checked at once, may prove to be their ruin.

The key to success in life is the knowledge of value of all things.

It often requires a head more solidly screwed on the shoulders to bear a great success than to stand a great misfortune.

The knowledge of the most insignificant thing is worth having.

CHAPTER II

DO THE BEST WITH THE HAND YOU HAVE

It would be absurd to say that there is no such thing as luck. Of course, there is luck, and fortunate is the man who knows how to seize it at once by the forelock.

For instance, it is luck to be born handsome, strong, and healthy; it is luck to be born rich, or of generous parents who spend a little fortune in giving you a first-class education.

What is absurd, however, is to say that you are always unlucky. You cannot always be unlucky any more than you can always be lucky. When a man says to you, 'I am pursued by bad luck,' or, 'This is my usual bad luck,' you know that he is lazy, quarrelsome, unreliable, foolish, or a drunkard.

You may be unlucky at piquet a whole evening – even, though seldom, a whole week; but if you go on playing a whole year every day, you will find that, out of 365 games, you have won about 180 and lost about 180. I take it for granted, of course, that you are as good a player as your opponent.

There is no more constant luck or constant bad luck in life than there is at cards, but there is such a thing as good playing with either a good or bad hand, and in life such a thing as making the best of fortunate and unfortunate occurrences. A man is bound to have his chance, and his 'luck' consists in knowing how to avail himself of it.

Practically every officer has had a chance to distinguish himself one way or the other, and therefore to be noticed by his chiefs and obtain promotion. Every artist has seen something which may reveal his talent, his genius, if he has any. Every good actor is bound to come across a part which may make his fortune.

The same may be said of literary men and journalists. Every man in business, if he keeps a sharp look-out, has a chance for a good investment that will be the nucleus of his fortune if he knows how to watch and nurse it carefully. What most men call bad luck is not that chance does not present itself to them, but simply that they let it go by and miss it.

If you want to be lucky in life, force luck and make it yourself. Believe in yourself, and others will believe in you.

Rise early, be punctual, reliable, honest, economical, industrious, and persevering, and, take my word for it, you will be lucky – more lucky than you have any idea of.

Never admit that you have failed, that you have been beaten; if you are down, get up again and fight on. Frequent good company, be sober, constantly take advice, and refrain from giving any until you have been asked for it. Be cheerful, amiable, and obliging. Do not show anxiety to be paid for any good turn you may have the chance of doing to others. When you have discovered who your real friends are, be true to them, stick to them through thick and thin.

Do not waste time regretting what is lost, but prepare yourself for the next deal. Forget injuries at once; never air your grievances; keep your own secrets as well as other people's; get determined to succeed, and let no one, no consideration whatever, divert you from the road that leads to the goal; let the dogs bark and pass on. According to the way you behave in life, you will be your greatest friend or your bitterest enemy. There is no more 'luck' than that in the world.

CHAPTER III

BEWARE OF THE FINISHING TOUCH

'Leave well enough alone,' as the English say, is a piece of advice which may be followed with benefit in many circumstances of life.

How many excellent pictures have been spoiled by the finishing touch! How often have I heard art critics, after examining a beautiful portrait, exclaim, 'H'm, léché!' Well, I cannot translate that French art expression better than by 'Too much retouched – too well finished!' This is a fault commonly found in women's portraits.

How many fortunes have been lost because people, instead of being satisfied with reasonable profits, waited for stocks to go still higher, and got caught in a financial crash!

Even in literature I see sad results, when authors follow too closely that principle laid down by Boileau for the elaboration of style: 'Polish and repolish it incessantly.'

Alas! how many stilted lines are due to the too strict obedience to this advice! What is too well finished often becomes far-fetched and unnatural.

How many sauces have been spoiled by cooks trying to improve what was already very good!

How many wings have been singed for not knowing how to keep at a respectful distance from the fire or the light!

No doubt there is such a thing as perfection; but who is perfect and what is perfect in this world, except that ineffable lady who, some weeks ago, took me severely to task for having written an article in which I advised my readers to be good, but not to overdo it?

The firmaments are perfect, some flowers are perfect, but these are not the work of man. Nature herself seems to have divided her gifts so as to have no absolute perfection in her creatures. The nightingale has song, but no plumage; the peacock has plumage, but his voice makes you stop your ears.

And the women! Well, yes, the women – let us speak of them.

Which of us, my dear fellow-men, has not admired a woman of ours whose toilet was finished? We thought she looked beautiful then, we admired her, and we put on our gloves proudly, saying:

'She is coming.' Yet she did not come. True, her hat was on and fixed when we saw her, and we thought that she was ready. Not a bit of it. She was not.

After she has finished dressing, and is absolutely ready to go out, she will begin to fret and potter about in her room for another hour. She goes from looking-glass to looking-glass. That is the time when she thinks of the finishing touches.

She pulls her hat a little more to the right, then a little more to the left, in order to ascertain how that hat can be improved. She touches and retouches her hair.

Her complexion is beautiful, a natural rosy pink, for which she ought to return thanks, all day long, to the most generous and kind Nature who gave it to her. But, at the last moment, she thinks that this, too, might be improved.

So she rubs her cheeks and puts more powder on them. The rubbing makes her cheeks so red that she has to subdue the colour. She works and works, and now takes it into her head that, being warm, her nose must be shining.

She takes the puff and puts powder on it. An hour before she was a woman who, in your eyes at all events, could not very well be improved.

Now she is ready, and emerges from her apartment. Her hair is undone behind and ruffed in front, her hat is too straight, and her face looks made-up. The rubbing has changed her lovely pink complexion into a sort of theatrical purple red.

You feel for her, because, being very proud of her complexion, you do not want your friends – you do not want anybody – to say: 'Oh, she is made-up.' And you own that she looks it, and altogether she does not look half so well as she did when she had finished dressing, and had not begun the finishing touches.

Beware, ladies! Many a most beautiful woman has been spoiled by the finishing touches.

CHAPTER IV

THE SELFISHNESS OF SORROW

Real sorrow is no more expressed by the correctness of a mourning attire and the despair written on a face than true religious fervour is expressed by the grimaces that are made at prayer-time.

Just as we are told in the Gospel to look cheerful and not to frown and make faces when we pray, just so, I believe, those who have gone before us would advise us not to advertise the sorrow we feel at their loss, but keep it in restraint, and not surround ourselves, and especially not compel those who are living with us to be surrounded, with gloom.

The outward signs of sorrow are often exaggerated and not uncommonly nothing but acts of selfishness. The memory of the departed is better respected by control over the most sincere sorrow, and children, young ones especially, who cannot at their age realize the loss they have sustained, have a right to expect to be brought up in that cheerfulness which is the very keynote of the education of children.

The real heroine is the woman who leaves her grief in her private apartments and appears smiling and cheerful before her children. The best way to serve the dead is to live for the living. There is no courage in the display of sorrow; there is heroism in the control of it.

Great hearts understand this so well that many of them, like the late Henry Ward Beecher, desire in their wills that none of their relatives should wear mourning at their death. There is a great difference between being in mourning and being in black, and I often suspect that the more in black a person is the less in mourning he or she is.

To be able to attend minutely to all the details of a most correct mourning attire almost shows signs of recovery from the depth of the sorrow.

But even when our sorrow is deeply felt and perfectly sincere is it not an act of selfishness on our part to impose it, to intrude it, on others – even on our nearest relatives?

I admire the Quaker who, quietly, without attracting the attention of anyone at table, silently says grace before taking his meal.

How favourably he compares with the host who invites every one of his guests to bend their heads, and to listen to him while he delivers a long recital of all the favours he has received from a merciful God, and of all the favours he expects to receive in the future!

The first is a Christian, the second a conceited Pharisee. There is as much selfishness in an exaggerated display of sorrow as there is in any act that is indulged in in order to more or less command admiration.

The truly brave and courageous people are modest in their countenance; the truly religious are tolerant and forgiving; the truly great are forbearing, simple, and unaffected; the truly sorrowful remember that their griefs are personal; before strangers they are natural and even cheerful, and before their children they are careful to appear with cheerful and smiling faces.

After all, the greatest virtue, the greatest act of unselfishness, is self-control. Sorrow gives man the best opportunity for the display of this virtue.

CHAPTER V

THE RIGHT OF CHANGING ONE'S MIND

A woman's prerogative, it is said, is the right of changing her mind. How is it that she so rarely avails herself of it when she is wrong?

It should be the prerogative of a man also. 'What is a mugwump?' once asked an American of a Democrat. 'It's a Republican who becomes a Democrat,' was the answer. 'But when a Democrat becomes a Republican, what do you call him?' 'Oh, a d – fool!' quickly rejoined the Democrat.

We forgive people for changing their opinions only when they do so to espouse our views, otherwise they are, in our eyes, fools, scoundrels, renegades, and traitors.

To my mind the most dignified, praiseworthy, manly act of a man is to change his opinions the moment he has become persuaded that they are wrong. To acknowledge to be in the wrong is an act of magnanimity. To persist in holding views that one knows to be wrong is an act of cowardice. To try to impose them on others is an act of indelicacy. The successful man is the opportunist who does what he thinks to be right at the moment, whatever views he may have held on the subject before.

When, in full Parliament, Victor Hugo and Lamartine declared that they ceased to be Royalists, and immediately went to take their seats on the Opposition benches, their honesty and manliness deserved the applause they received.

Gladstone, who died the greatest leader of the Liberal party, began his political life as a Tory Member of Parliament. Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, who for years was the chief of the Tory party, began his public career as Radical member for Maidstone.

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, to-day practically the leader of the Conservative party, not only was an advanced Radical, but a Republican. Up to about eighteen years ago, the comic papers never failed to represent him with a Phrygian cap on.

Every man can be mistaken in politics as well as in science, just as he can for a long time be mistaken in his friends.

The more you study, the more independence of mind you acquire. Events take a new aspect, and strike you in a different light. With age, judgment becomes more sober: you weigh more carefully the pros and cons of all questions, and you often arrive at the conclusion that what you honestly believed to be right is absolutely wrong. And it is your duty to abide by your conclusions.

The greatest crimes in history were committed by irreconcilable men who lacked moral courage and dared not admit that they were not infallible. Philip II. of Spain was one.

That irreconcilable Imperialist, M. Paul de Cassagnac, wrote the other day: 'When a statesman, a leader of men, perceives that he has made a mistake, he has only one thing left for him to do: disappear altogether from the scene, for, having deceived himself, he has been guilty of deceiving others.'

The aim of man – of the leader of men especially – is to seek truth at any price.

Some men proudly say at the top of their voices: 'I swear by the faith of my ancestors, what I thought at twenty I think now. I have never changed my opinions, and, with God's help, will never change them.'

Those men believe themselves to be heroes; they are asses, and if they are leaders of men, they are most dangerous asses.

To live and learn should be the object of every intelligent man whose eyes are not blinded by conceit or obstinacy.

CHAPTER VI

WHAT WE OWE TO CHANCE

Pascal once said that if Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch shorter the face of the world would have been changed. If we read history, or even only use our own recollections, we can get up an interesting and sometimes amusing record of more or less important events which are entirely due to chance or most insignificant incidents.

To begin with my noble self. On August 30, 1872, I went to the St. Lazare station in Paris to catch a train to Versailles. At the foot of the stairs I met a friend whom I had not seen for a long time. He took me to the café, and there, over a cup of coffee, we chatted for half an hour. I missed my train; but fortunately for me I did, for that train which I was to have caught was a total wreck, and thirty lives were lost in the accident.

A lady whom I knew many years ago once eloped with a young man she had fallen in love with. Now, this was very wicked, because she was married. It was on a cold December day. When both arrived at the hotel where they were going to stay, they found no fire in their apartment, and ordered one to be made at once. While this was going on they both caught a cold, and were seized with an endless fit of sneezing. They thought that they looked so ridiculous – well, the lady did, at any rate – that she ordered her trunk to be taken to the station immediately. She caught the next train to Paris, and never did I hear that she was guilty of any escapade ever after. But for that fire that was not lit, all would have been lost.

At the inquest which a few days ago was held over the body of Mrs. Gore, the American lady who was shot accidentally while in the room of her Russian friend, it was discovered that the bullet had struck the eye without even grazing the eyelid. The experts came to the conclusion that if she had been murdered, or had committed suicide, she would have blinked, and her eyelids would have been touched by the bullet. But for this marvellous occurrence, the young Russian would have been tried for murder, and perhaps found guilty.

An Australian of my acquaintance some years ago wrote to his broker ordering him to sell 500 shares in the Broken Hill Mining Company. The servant to whom the letter was given mislaid it, and only screwed up his courage to tell his master two days later. In the meantime the shares had gone up, and, so seeing, the Australian waited a little longer before selling. Then came the boom. Two months after the day on which he had ordered his broker to sell the 500 shares at 40s. apiece these shares were worth £96. He sold, and through the carelessness of his servant became a rich man. This is luck, if you like.

The late Edmond About, the famous French novelist, came out first of the Normale Supérieure School. As such he was entitled to be sent to the French school at Athens for two years before being appointed professor in some French Faculty. About had a humorous turn of mind. Instead of studying ancient Greece at Athens, he studied the modern Greeks. After his two years he returned with the manuscripts of two books, 'Contemporary Greece' and 'The Mountain King,' which were such successes that he immediately resigned his professorship to devote his time to literature. If, instead of coming out first, he had come out second, he would never have been sent to Athens, and About would probably have spent his life as a learned Professor of Greek or Latin at one of our Universities.

CHAPTER VII

WE NEEDN'T GET OLD

'When my next birthday comes,' once said to me Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'I shall be eighty years young.' And he looked it – young, cheerful, with a kind, merry twinkle in his eyes.

'And,' I said to him, 'to what in particular do you attribute your youth? To good health and careful living, I suppose?'

'Well, yes,' he replied, 'to a certain extent, but chiefly to a cheerful disposition and invariable contentment, in every period of my life, with what I was. I have never felt the pangs of ambition.'

'You needn't,' I remarked. 'The most ambitious man would have been content with being what you have been – what you are.'

'Happiness, which has contentment for its invariable cause, is within the reach of practically everyone,' the amiable doctor asserted. 'It is restlessness, ambition, discontent, and disquietude that make us grow old prematurely by carving wrinkles on our faces. Wrinkles do not appear on faces that have constantly smiled. Smiling is the best possible massage. Contentment is the Fountain of Youth.'

That same evening he was the guest at a banquet given by a Boston club, to which I had been kindly invited. When he rose to make a speech, they cheered and applauded to the echo. His face was radiant, beautiful. After he sat down, I said to him:

'Are you not tired of cheers and applause, after all these years of triumphs?'

'No,' he replied; 'they never cheer loud enough, they never applaud long enough to please me.'

Oliver Wendell Holmes was right; he had found the key to happiness.

The philosophers of all ages have deservedly condemned that universal discontent and disquietude which runs through every rank of society and degree of life as one of the bitterest reproaches of human nature, as well as the highest affront to the Divine Author of it.