596

Views with a Capital V.

So, friends, as I think of the new America, the good time coming, when He who is the best friend that women ever knew, the Christ of God, shall rule in our hearts and lives, not outwardly, but by His Spirit-as I think of it all I say, to myself, I am glad I am alive, I am glad I was not alive till this last part of the nineteenth century, I am glad I shall be alive when the golden hinges turn and roll wide open the door of the twentieth century that shall let the women in; when this big-hearted brotherhood of broadshouldered men who have made it possible for us to have such a council as this, who listen to us and are more pleased with us than we are with ourselves and that is saying a great deal-and who, if we write a book that is interesting, or a song, or make a speech, are sure to say, "That is good; go on, and do better next time; we will buy your books and listen to your speeches," when these men shall see that it was not to the harm of the home, but for its good, that we were working for temperance and for the ballot.

Home is the citadel of everything that is good and pure on earth; nothing must enter there to defile, neither anything which loveth or maketh a lie. And it shall be found that all society needed to make it altogether homelike was the home-folks; that all government needed to make it altogether pure from the fumes of tobacco and the debasing effects of strong drink, was the home-folks; that wherever you put a woman who has the atmosphere of home about her, she brings in the good time of pleasant and friendly relationship and points with the finger of hope and the eye of faith always to something better-always it is better farther on. As I look around and see the heavy cloud of apathy under which so many still are stifled, who take no interest in these things, I just think they do not half mean the hard words that they sometimes speak to us, or they would n't if they knew; and, after awhile, they will have the same views I have, spell them with a capital V, and all be harmonious, like Barnum's happy family, a splendid menagerie of the whole human race — clear-eyed, kind and victorious!

"Good Will to Men."

597

MY OPINION OF MEN.

"I've heard of unkind words, kind deeds

With deeds unkind returning;

Alas! the gratitude of men

Has oftener left me mourning."

Men know where their true interests lie, and women whom men love and trust and honor are always motherly at heart.

If there is a spectacle more odious and distasteful than a man who hates women, it is a woman who hates men. If I am glad of anything it is that, while I have my playful quips and passing sallies anent them in my own inner home circle, when some passing injustice of the old régime quickens my pulses, the life-long tenor of my pen and voice and work has been not more for "Peace on earth" than for "Good will to men." This frank utterance may surely be permitted to one now entered on her fiftieth year, and who thanks God with unspeakable tenderness for all the pleasant land on which she can look back from the high chronologic vantage-ground she has attained. If this had not been so, surely the royal wives and mothers who in all these working years have rallied around me, would rightfully have refused my leadership.

I

From this time on, the world will have in it no active, vital force so strong for its uplifting as its organized mother-hearts. do not say all mothers, because all women who are technically mothers are not mother-hearted, while many a woman is so, from whom the criss-cross currents of the world have withheld her holiest crown.

In my own quiet refuge at Evanston, where we are wont to talk of these things, I once said to Susan B. Anthony, that noblest Roman of them all :

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Mother-hearted Women.

'Bravely as you have trodden it, and glorious as has been your via solitaria, have you not always felt a sense of loss?" She answered in the gentle, thoughtful voice that we all love :

"Could I be really the woman that I am and fail to feel that under happier conditions I might have known a more sacred companionship than has ever come to me, and that this companion could not have been a woman?"

But that she also felt God's call, under the unhappy conditions that exist, to go her own victorious way alone, is proved by her reply to a good man who once said to her :

"Miss Anthony, with your great head and heart, you, of all women I have met, ought to have been a wife and mother." Our noble pioneer answered him after this fashion:

"I thank you, sir, for what I take to be the highest compliment, but sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them."

And now, concerning my opinion of men, let me give a few scenes in which they have been chief actors and I “a chiel amang ye takin' notes":

I was coming from New Orleans alone after attending the Louisiana W. C. T. U. Convention in that city in 1881. Mrs. Judge Merrick, my generous hostess, had provided me with such a lunch as rarely falls to mortal lot. As usual, I had a section which I hardly left during the trip, and as has happened several times in my experience, I was the only lady in the car. The porter provided me with a table and I had open my well-worn traveling bag, "Old Faithful," and was writing letters and articles uninterruptedly. By some mischance, I do not now remember what, we were side-tracked twelve hours and no food could be had. In traveling, my constant preoccupation makes me peculiarly uncommunicative. I have gone from Chicago to Boston without speaking to any one except the porter, indeed almost without seeing any one. But as the day wore on and our car stood there motionless, my thoughts went out to those stalwart men about me, those hungry travelers. After much reflection and some quiet observation, I selected a man in whom by

Brother-hearted Men.

599

intuition I believed, and catching his eye, beckoned him to come to my side. I had spread out my tempting lunch in all its fascinating forms and colors and I said, "Will you do me the favor to divide this among my fellow-travelers?" Those words were a magic spell! The glow of gratitude upon his face was worth doing without one's meals twenty-four hours to enjoy. The grace and courtesy with which he acknowledged my thoughtfulness, the gathered group of men who came to take away a fragment of the feast, the doffing of hats, and charm of manner were worthy of any drawing-room. Poor fellows! they had been trying to get themselves some coffee and had gone to the engine for hot water. I had sugar and cream, which they had not, but my coffee was cold and such an ado as they made to see that it was heated, and such solicitude lest I should not keep refreshments enough for my own needs!

My chosen spokesman said, "I am from Illinois and my wife belongs to the W. C. T. U." Another echoed, "I am from Massachusetts; have heard you speak in my own town," and a third chimed in, "I was in your audience two nights ago at New Orleans." Of course I think well of those men; the little incident did me good for many a day and I rejoice to hope that those men think well of me!

Early in my work it became necessary for me to go across the country in Michigan on a freight train, the trip involving a whole day's ride in a caboose. Although my secretary is almost always with me, on this occasion she was not. I seated myself opposite the stove on a rough bench, and began reading and writing, as is my custom, now so confirmed that while hours and days flit by I do not find travel wearisome, and often think I have but fairly begun work when I find a half day is gone and we are at the lunch station. But on this occasion there slowly stole over my senses a dull perception of something strange, and then of something most unpleasant, and then of something deadly. It was the foul emanations from the pipes and mouths of six or seven freight train "hands," sitting at a short distance from me. hurriedly rose, went out of the rear door and stood in the cold and snow upon the platform, filled my mouth with snow and tried in every way to take my mind off from the intolerable misery of the situation. But I could not long remain outside,

600

On a Freight Train.

the cold was too extreme. I re-entered the car and was soon enveloped in a tobacco cloud, the nausea becoming so violent that a manifest exhibition thereof in a form recalling "Neptune's tribute," soon occurred. I suppose my face was very white, for the men all came toward me in consternation, cursing at one another and each separately cursing himself with oaths, not loud but deep. They flung open the doors, they established me on the long wooden settle, bringing their coats and fitting the place up for me, folding one or two for a pillow, which they placed under my head with as much gentleness as my own mother could have done, asking my pardon over and over again, saying, "Our hides are so rough and so thick we did not have sense enough to know how this smoke would strike a lady." Indeed, their penitence was of such a poignant type that in my efforts to assuage it I quite forgot my sad condition. They brought me some nice apples, and after a little I was able to resume my work. But there was no more tobacco smoke about that car, and there was very earnest consideration for my comfort, they often asking me if the ventilation was right, and if the fire was warm enough. These men always remain in my mind as one more proof of what I steadfastly believe, that if there are remainders of evil there are also great, noble conceptions of good in every human breast. And of these men, in spite of their tobacco smoke, I can but have a good opinion.

In 1884, just after the presidential election, when politics ran high, I received a letter postmarked -, Wisconsin, guiltless of punctuation, and as to its orthography, gone quite astray. Opening it curiously, and finding it voluminous, I read in the initial lines the gist of the communication. It was from Mike, our man-of-all-work on the farm, one of the best-hearted and brightest of Irishmen, whom it had been our good fortune to indoctrinate into the mysteries of reading, writing, and, perhaps, a little arithmetic. He had evidently retained a kindly remembrance, for what I read was to this purpose:

DEAR MISS It is long since I seen you and you will be glad to hear that now I am a farmer mesilf and not working out. I have three sons, one studying at the Wisconsin University, another at a Catholic school in Milwaukee, and a third is minded to be a lawyer. We are all Dimocrats but I have read in the papers that St. John and Daniel were your candidates, and