The service rendered to humanity by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the elaboration of the Synthetic Philosophy, should command the admiration and gratitude of all broad-minded men. There are certain fallacies in the argument by which Religion is relegated into the “Unknowable,” however, to which it will be the purpose of this essay to call the reader’s attention. If Religion really be, by its very nature, unknowable, it follows that as man grows in intelligence, the extent to which it occupies his thought will tend to diminish towards final extinction. It is a thoroughly wholesome state of affairs that, like all things which claim our consideration, Religion should again and again be compelled to step into the arena to vindicate its right to hold sway over humanity. Nor is the attitude of many minds which places Religion upon the defensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perverse spirit, but, on the contrary, it results from the questionings of those eager to find the truth and anxious to “prove all things” and cast error aside. Let us see if Religion can withstand the fierce onslaught, threatening its very life, which Mr. Spencer makes in his “First Principles” (pp. 3-123).
Our author’s first attempt is to “form something like a general theory of current opinions,” so as neither to “over-estimate nor under-estimate their worth.” As a special case from the examination of which he hopes to derive a general method, he traces the evolution of government from the beginning until now. It is held that no belief concerning government is wholly true or false; “each of them insists upon a certain subordination of individual actions to social requirements…. From the oldest and rudest idea of allegiance, down to the most advanced political theory of our own day, there is on this point complete unanimity.” He speaks of this subordination as a postulate “which is, indeed, of self-evident validity,” as ranking “next in certainty to the postulates of exact science.” As the result of his search for “a generalization which may habitually guide us when seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous,” he concludes: “This method is to compare all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those various special and concrete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after the discordant constituents have been eliminated, and to find for the remaining constituent that abstract expression which holds true throughout its divergent modifications.”
What did Mr. Spencer discover by the application of his method to government? A postulate which he announces to be of “self-evident validity,” an “unquestionable fact”—that is all! His method is a statement of the process of abstraction. Very useful though it is in determining what one or more predicates may be affirmed of many objects of thought which differ widely otherwise or in revealing truths, as he points out, respecting which men can by no possibility disagree, it cannot assist us in discriminating between true and false “discordant constituents,” for which purpose a simple method would be helpful. Certainly this is not the method which gave us the most “advanced political theory” of the day! The fact is, that when used, as Mr. Spencer suggests, it shrivels the total content of any subject under consideration, down to the one truth lying at the foundation of the most primitive theory. In the case of Religion, he alleges that the one point upon which there is entire unanimity between the most divergent creeds, between the lowest fetichism and the most enlightened Christianity, is this: “That there is something to be explained.” An interesting piece of information, surely! Yes, but “the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.” Over against this, we have the magnificent superstructure of modern Science, erected by the employment of methods quite other than the one which he esteems competent to overthrow Religion.
The postulate, a straight line may be drawn between two points, while it makes a geometry possible, reveals nothing as to the properties of lines; so, in the present case, the proposition resulting from the process of abstraction, “there is something to be explained,” affirms that, at least à priori, Religion is possible, but decides nothing as to the truth or falsity of unnumbered statements which millions of people have believed for centuries to belong to the domain of Religion. This method does not and cannot discredit Religion.
“Religious ideas of one kind or another,” says Mr. Spencer, “are almost universal…. We are obliged to admit that, if not supernaturally derived, as the majority contend, they must be derived out of human experiences, slowly accumulated and organized…. Considering all faculties,” under the evolutionary hypothesis, “to result from accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the organism with its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist in the environment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined the growth of the feeling in question, and so are obliged to admit that it is as normal as any other faculty…. We are also forced to infer that this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare…. Positive knowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possible thought. At the utmost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question—what lies beyond?… Throughout all future time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness—if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge; then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all its forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matter is that which passes the sphere of experience.” Religion is “a constituent of the great whole; and being such must be treated as a subject of Science with no more prejudice than any other reality.”
It will suit our present purpose to divide the cognitive faculties into intuitive and non-intuitive. If I rightly understand Mr. Spencer, when he says of the subject matter of Religion that it “passes the sphere of experience,” he means that the content of Religion results from the action of the non-intuitive faculties upon material furnished by the intuitive faculties, and not from the immediate action of the latter upon environment. For the sake of the argument, I will grant this position. In order that mankind may build up sciences in which it reposes such confidence, the action of the non-intuitive faculties must be trusted, for it is only through such action that sciences can ever be constructed from the materials of experience. Granting, then, the general trustworthiness of mental operations, the mind cannot abstract out of human experiences what was not already in them; cannot evolve what was not involved. The separation of the true from the false in Religion, then, must be accomplished, as in the case of Science, by verifying the intuitions and going repeatedly over the chains of reasoning which lead to the conclusions farthest removed from intuitions, to guard as much as possible against error. Thus, because drawn out from given data, certain conclusions will embody to-day what is true in Religion, and later, with an enlarged experience, more or less modified conclusions will express what will then be seen to be true. This is in accord with the general law of evolution which holds for Science. From the present point of view, Mr. Spencer seems to concur in the above, since he says of religious ideas, that “to suppose these multiform conceptions” to “be one and all absolutely groundless, discredits too profoundly that average human intelligence from which all our individual intelligences are inherited.”
To the statement that the mind cannot abstract out of human experiences what was not already in them, Mr. Spencer could make, I think, but one answer, to wit: that while the operations of the mind are generally reliable, and while there has been an element in human experience which seemed to warrant conclusions derived from them, nevertheless, mankind has egregiously erred in thinking that it had the power to build up a valid content to Religion, since the very nature of Religion is such, that the mental operations which are reliable in the realm of Science cannot be so in the realm of Religion. To answer this, we must consider the argument for conceivability as the touchstone which is to separate the “Knowable” from the “Unknowable.” Corresponding to small objects, a piece of rock for example, where the sides, top, and bottom can be considered as practically all present in consciousness at once, and large ones, like the earth, where they cannot, our author divides conceptions into complete and symbolic. Great magnitudes and classes of objects also produce symbolic conceptions which, while indispensable to reasoning, often lead us into error. “We habitually mistake our symbolic conceptions for real ones.” The former “are legitimate, provided that by some cumulative or indirect process of thought, or by the fulfilment of predictions based upon them, we can assure ourselves that they stand for actualities,” otherwise “they are altogether vicious and illusive” and “illegitimate” and here belong religious ideas.
The foregoing is applied by Mr. Spencer in his argument relative to the origin of the Universe respecting which, he asserts that “three verbally intelligible suppositions may be made”: (1) that it is self-existent, (2) that it was self-created, (3) that it was created by an external agency. “Which of these suppositions is most credible it is not needful here to enquire. The deeper question, into which this finally merges, is, whether any one of these is even conceivable in the true sense of the word.” He shows that, since the mind refuses to accept the transformation of absolute vacuity into the existent, the theory of self-creation forces us back to a potential Universe whose self-creation was transition to an actual Universe, and that then, we must explain the existence of the potential Universe and that, similarly, creation by an external agency demands that we account for the genesis of the Creator, so that both of these theories involve the self-existence of a something. Therefore, I shall analyze his presentation of the first theory only. “Self-existence necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility. To this let us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not in any sense be an explanation of the Universe…. It is not a question of probability, or credibility, but of conceivability.”
In making conceivability the supreme test as to what is knowable, Mr. Spencer sets up a criterion which he himself violates. If it can be shown that he places at the very foundation of Science a postulate or, what is generally conceded to be a demonstrated truth, which, equally with the conception of the Universe as self-existent, involves the conception of infinite past-time, it is evident that we shall have broken down the fundamental distinguishing characteristic which separates his “Knowable” from his “Unknowable,” and thus leave Science and Religion standing upon the same level of validity in their relation to the human mind. In the second part of “First Principles,” which treats of the “Knowable,” Mr. Spencer says (p. 180): “The Indestructibility of Matter … is a proposition on the truth of which depends the possibility of exact Science. Could it be shown, or could it with any rationality be even supposed, that Matter, either in its aggregates or in its units, ever became non-existent, there would be need either to ascertain under what conditions it became non-existent, or else to confess that Science and Philosophy are impossible. For if, instead of having to deal with fixed quantities and weights, we had to deal with quantities and weights which were apt, wholly or in part, to be annihilated, there would be introduced an incalculable element, fatal to all positive conclusions” (p. 172). Considering that in times past men have believed in the creation of Matter out of nothing and in its annihilation, he points out that it is to quantitative Chemistry that we owe the empirical basis for our present belief.
Next he inquires “whether we have any higher warrant for this fundamental belief than the warrant of conscious induction,” and writes as follows of logical necessity (pp. 172-179): “The consciousness of logical necessity, is the consciousness that a certain conclusion is implicitly contained in certain premises explicitly stated. If, contrasting a young child and an adult, we see that this consciousness of logical necessity, absent from the one is present in the other, we are taught that there is a growing up to the recognition of certain necessary truths, merely by the unfolding of the inherited intellectual forms and faculties. To state the case more specifically:—before a truth can be known as necessary, two conditions must be fulfilled. There must be a mental structure capable of grasping the terms of the proposition and the relation alleged between them; and there must be such definite and deliberate mental representation of these terms as makes possible a clear consciousness of this relation…. Along with acquirement of more complex faculty and more vivid imagination, there comes a power of perceiving to be necessary truths, what were before not recognized as truths at all…. All this which holds of logical and mathematical truths, holds, with change of terms, of physical truths. There are necessary truths in Physics for the apprehension of which, also, a developed and disciplined intelligence is required; and before such intelligence arises, not only may there be failure to apprehend the necessity of them, but there may be vague beliefs in their contraries…. But though many are incapable of grasping physical axioms, it no more follows that physical axioms are not knowable à priori by a developed intelligence, than it follows that logical relations are not necessary, because undeveloped intellects cannot perceive their necessity.
“The terms ‘à priori truth’ and ‘necessary truth’ … are to be interpreted,” he continues, “not in the old sense, as implying cognitions wholly independent of experiences, but as implying cognitions that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of experiences, received partly by the individual, but mainly by all ancestral individuals whose nervous systems he inherits. But when during mental evolution, the vague ideas arising in a nervous structure imperfectly organized, are replaced by clear ideas arising in a definite nervous structure; this definite structure, molded by experience into correspondence with external phenomena, makes necessary in thought the relations answering to absolute uniformities in things. Hence, among others, the conception of the Indestructibility of Matter…. Our inability to conceive Matter becoming non-existent, is immediately consequent upon the nature of thought…. It must be added, that no experimental verification of the truth that Matter is indestructible, is possible without a tacit assumption of it. For all such verification implies weighing, and weighing implies that the matter forming the weight remains the same. In other words, the proof that certain matter dealt with in certain ways is unchanged in quantity, depends on the assumption that other matter otherwise dealt with is unchanged in quantity.”
In answer to the above it can be said:—
First. The current explanation of the existence of Matter is that it was created by an external agency. Mr. Spencer’s lucid statement of the way in which Matter has been proved indestructible does not go far enough. Where he stops, logic might justly pronounce the whole procedure a fallacious one, a begging of the whole question at issue. The binding force of the whole argument rests upon a rational principle here overlooked by Mr. Spencer, the principle of sufficient cause. The chemist in making the experiment found that certain substances counterbalanced a given weight; after combustion, the products counterbalanced the same weight. If the weight did not change during the experiment, then no matter had been destroyed. The weight is believed not to have changed, because it existed under ordinary and quiescent conditions: which, in view of past race experience, rendered it extremely improbable that any force sufficient to vitiate the result had come into play during the experiment. The absence of a sufficient cause to change the weight, is, then, the critical point of the argument, and the perfect trust of the mind in the principle of sufficient cause forces us to the conclusion that Matter is indestructible.
What has really been accomplished, however, by the experiment? I do not object to the statement that Matter is indestructible, but the meaning of this explicitly stated, is that in the light of the present knowledge of the race, we have experimented with Matter under certain extreme conditions—some chemical changes seeming, at first glance, to annihilate it—and have not been able to destroy it, therefore, Matter is indestructible. While this is true to an extent which preserves the integrity of the foundation for our Science and our Philosophy, it is at the same time consistent with the hypothesis that a Being surpassing man in intelligence and power, may be able to convert Matter into a not-matter—from the standpoint of present definitions of Matter and Space—quantitatively correlated with it, or vice versa; and this statement of the case harmonizes Science and Religion. Now, what from the point of view of Science Mr. Spencer accepts as indestructibility, is identical with what Religion means when it affirms self-existence, and as he has demonstrated to his own satisfaction that self-existence in the abstract is an illegitimate conception, a conception of what by its very nature is unknowable, because it involves the impossible conception of infinite past-time, he is logically bound by accepting one horn of the dilemma, to admit the conception of self-existence into the realm of the Knowable, or by choosing the other, to transfer his “Indestructibility,” his “possibility of exact Science” into the realm of the Unknowable! In either event, we place an ultimate religious idea and a scientific conception whose denial he admits to be the annihilation of exact Science, upon the same footing, and so reduce the distinguishing characteristic which he has set up to differentiate the Knowable from the Unknowable, to zero.
Second. We come now to the statement of some of the consequences which follow from Mr. Spencer’s view—already explained—as to how the higher warrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be an axiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon “Ultimate Scientific Ideas” he says that Space and Time are “wholly incomprehensible,” and that “Matter … in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time.” He affirms, as pointed out, that no experimental verification is possible without assuming what we set out to prove. If the chemical balance cannot demonstrate this truth, how, then, can we know it? It is, we are told, an à priori or necessary truth which arises in our consciousness through the “cognitions that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of experiences, received partly by the individual, but mainly by all ancestral individuals whose nervous systems” we inherit. This is Mr. Spencer’s answer. This commits us to the absurdity, that the truth of the doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter has come to be accepted as axiomatic by the repetition of cognitions of an inconceivable “absolute uniformity” of things, by an indefinite series of ancestors, in the face of the fact that the present development of Science does not now permit us, with the aid of all its apparatus, to receive a single logically valid cognition from the same phenomenal world which supplied all the others; ergo, add together a sufficient number of cognitions of the inconceivable, and you arrive at an axiomatic truth! To lift a ton weight, apply a vast number of forces of one ounce intensity, acting successively in time, and the thing is done!
Mr. Spencer cannot point out the characteristics which separate those inconceivable things and qualities which may legitimately furnish the raw material for the development of axioms, from those which cannot, since this would at once remove them to the category of the conceivable, and he cannot exhaustively catalogue the axioms, since the process of evolution which he puts forth as the sole and sufficient explanation of their origin and growth is still going on. We therefore see that we are justified in saying that conceivability is worthless as a test as to whether an object of thought lies within the domain of the Knowable or Unknowable. Further, should a theologian say to Mr. Spencer “To me, the existence of God and his Infinite Love, Wisdom, and Power rank as axioms,” I do not see how, consistently with the above, he could deny that these truths were valid to the theologian, even if they were not so to his own mind. How completely we have placed Religion and Science upon the same level is evident from our author’s statement that “a religious creed is definable as a theory of original causation” and from the fact that a self-existent Universe is one of the three possible hypotheses which he mentions in his argument.
Space forbids the criticism of Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the relativity of knowledge and of the speculations concerning the Infinite and Absolute based upon the writings of Hamilton and Mansel. I have been restricted, also, to the negative side of the question, but so far as inconceivability enters as a factor into the argument against Religion, I contend that it has broken down; that so far as that element affects the problem, Religion has as high credentials as Science.
Some barks there are that drift dreamily down stream, ever near to the shore where the waters are shallow. Some catch the current and go bounding on with sweep and swirl until the river, placid at last, slips into the tideless Everlasting. Some, alas! commanded by iron-hearted Fate, are headed up stream to fight—who dares call it Folly’s battle?—against the current which yields only to the invincible will and the tireless arm. They lie who swear that life turns on mere accident. There are no accidents in fate. The end is but a gathering of the means; the means but byways to the end; and at the last fate is master still, and we its victims are, as was she, my Claudia.
I am an old woman, childless and loveless; I know what it is to stand alone with life’s hollow corpses,—corpses of youth, and love, and hope. Perhaps this is why my heart turned to her in her sweet youth and guileless innocence. I used to fancy, when I saw her, a child under the old-fashioned locust’s shade that fell about her father’s modest place, that she was unlike other children. She had a thoughtful face—not beautiful, but soulful. I thank God now that the child was spared that curse. Fate set snares enough without that deadliest one of beauty. Yet she had soul; her eyes betrayed its strength and mirrored its deep passion,—that mightiest, holiest passion which men call genius. Her genius merely budded; fate set its heel against the plant and crushed it.
I knew her from her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and left her to his care.
“You have said you owe me something,” said the dying man; “if so, pay it to my child, my girl-babe, in fatherly advice and guidance.”
That man had been a felon and would have met a felon’s doom but for the friend whose child had been confided to his guidance. He had saved him by silence and by loans which had beggared him in lending. He was a strong man, and left his daughter something of his strength for heritage, and that was all. But from her mother, her great-souled mother, the child received enough of courage, and of hope, and faith, and energy, to make her life a sure thing at all events.
I lost her ’twixt the years of girl and womanhood, for both of us were poor, and I took such scanty living here and there as offered. But one day she found me out, and begged me to go with her to her old home under the locust trees. All were dead but her; she was alone; needed me for protection, and I, she argued, needed part of the old roof, too large for one small head.
“There’s a mortgage on it, dear,” she told me, “but I am young and strong, and have some education and some little energy; and,—” she laughed, “the note is held by that old boy-friend of my father who promised to look out for me, you know. So I have no fears of being turned out homeless, Gertie.”
So I went, and tried to be to her a friend. Instead, I was her lover—her worshipper. Her soul, as it opened to me day after day, expanding under the visé of poverty, took on such strength, such grandeur, that I almost stood in awe of her. She was so young, too, yet strong—strong as God, I used to think—and full of hope, and courage, and ambition. Ambition! that isn’t a word often applied to women; yet I say Claudia was ambitious. I upbraided her one day for this. She winced, and came and knelt down at my feet, her face upon her hands, her arms upon my knees, her sweet soul seeking mine through her eyes.
“Gertie,” said she, “I wonder why God made me a woman and fixed no place for me in all the many niches of creation. There is no room for such women as I am; women with bodies moulded for womanhood, and souls measured for man’s burdens.”
The words had a solemn sound—a solemn meaning likewise. I had no answer for such awesome words, and so the child talked on.
“I had a mother once,” she said, “who loved me, and who unfitted me—God rest her sainted memory—for my battle with adversity. Nay, dear, don’t look so shocked. I say that she unfitted me by instilling into my heart her own great grandeur, and her own grand courage. There is no room for such, I tell you. As a frail female weakling the slums would have cradled me; as a wife the world would have respected me; as a toiler for honest bread there is no place for me. My mother was to me a creature next to God, and I have sometimes dared to put her first when I have felt most deeply all her nobleness. My father died, then came our struggle, hers and mine. I was her idol, she my God. We clung as only child and parent can. I could have made good money in the shops or factories. The neighbors said so, and advised that I be ‘put to work.’
“‘What need had paupers of such training as she was giving me? Poverty was no disgrace, so it be honest poverty.’
“Aye, that’s it. How long will poverty be honest in children’s untrained keeping? My mother understood, and knew my needs, as well.
“‘The child is what the mother makes it,’ was her creed. And so she set her teeth against the factory and its damning influence, and she bade me look higher, teaching by her own life that hunger of body is better than a starved soul.
“Ambition was the food she gave my young life; that she declared the one rope thrown by God’s hand to the rescue of poor women. At last my soul took fire with hers; my heart awoke.
“My struggles for opportunities tortured her. She sold her thimble once,—a pretty golden one, my father’s gift—that I might have a book I needed. She did our household drudgery that the servant’s wage might go for my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and I together, cheating night of many hours o’er books and study that were to repay us at the last with decent independence.
“The school days ended, the neighbors urged again the shops. But ‘no’ again. She had not spent her strength to fit me for the yard-stick and the shop-girl’s meagre living. She read the riddle of my being as only mothers can; saw the stamp upon my soul and fondly called it genius. Pinned her faith upon that slumbering curse, or blessing, as we choose each to interpret it.
“I had a little school some sixty miles from home. She had agreed that I might teach; that was in the course in which she wished my life to go. The schoolhouse was a cabin in the wood, through which flowed a river. We cannot tell the route by which we run to fame, and mine lay through this cabin in the woods. I scribbled bits of rhyme and broken verse, constantly; and found it fame enough if in the hurried jingle my mother detected ‘improvement,’ ‘promise.’
“But one day when the river burst its banks, the cabin, deluged, lay under water for ten days, and I became a temporary prisoner in my miserable boarding-house, I wrote a story, a simple, earnest little story. It sold, and more, it won a prize. Two hundred and fifty dollars,—it would take ten months of the little school to make so much. When it came—Gertie, I cannot tell you how I felt!—I thought that somehow in the darkness I had reached my hands out and found them clasped in God’s; held tight and fast, and strong and safe. I kneeled down in that cabin schoolroom, with the awe-struck children gathered round me, and choked with sobs and happy tears, thanked God who sent the blessed treasure.
“I had but one thought—Mother. I sent the children home—my work with them was done. Now I could go to her, and with a sprig of laurel to lay upon my brow, could silence stinging tongues while I worked quietly on at home. Home! never would I leave its blessed roof again. Oh, how my longing heart hurried my laggard feet. I did not write; no pen should cheat my tongue of the blessed story. I wished to feel her arms, see her smile, catch her heart-beat while I told her. God! I whispered His name softly in gratitude and love. I planned my surprise well, but I was doomed to disappointment. It was midnight when I reached the town; the streets were silent and no one spoke to me. ‘Some one must have told her,’ I said, as the hack in which I rode drew up before the door, and I saw the house was lighted; every window was wide open; and her room, where I, a child, had learned my woman’s lesson, was filled with people. Solemn, sitting folk; it was not a jubilee at all. ‘She is sick,’ I gasped, as my trembling fingers sought the gate latch. No, I saw her bed, the bed where I had nestled in her arms for eighteen years. It was white and stiff in its familiar drapings. I tore the gate ajar and bounded up the steps. My youngest sister met me in the doorway, weeping. I brushed her aside and passed in among the friendly neighbors who had hurried out on my arrival. I felt, but scarcely saw them as I said: ‘I want my mother.’ Then some one burst in tears and pointed to the open parlor door. Merciless heaven! resting upon two chairs stood a long, brown box; a coffin. I gave one shriek, so wild, so full of agony that not one who heard it stayed to offer the hollow mockery of comfort. ‘Merciful God! not my mother?’
“But it was. I never saw her face again. I would not look on it in death; that face which had been my life. But I love to think I have her presence with me here, together with her teaching, in my bosom. And with her help, for the dear dead always help us, I am working out my destiny after the pattern she set me. It is a hard task; grows harder every day; but I am young yet, and strong.”
Poor child. She did not know the dangers of the road she travelled; she only knew its hardships. Day after day she toiled, hopeful even in failure. The bloom left her cheek; but faith still fired her eye. One day she put away her manuscript, and left the house. The next day she returned. She had been to ask for her old place in the cabin schoolhouse. Too late; the place was filled. She sought one of her mother’s friends and asked for work, copying. She returned with white face and set lip, and a look of horror in her eyes. I understood. God help the poor, the respectable poor, those starvelings who cannot rise to independence and cannot sink to vileness. And oh, I prayed, God pity her,—my Claudia.
I watched her struggles with my own power palsied by that same old curse, poverty. She did her best; her struggles were torture to me even when she smiled and met them with sweet faith in her own strength and God’s goodness. She never once murmured, although I knew that many a night she had gone hungry to her desk, and rose from it, hungry still, at dawn.
And oh, when hope began to die, I saw it all; saw it in the weary eyes; heard it in the step that lagging past my door, climbed to its task, its hopeless task, again. I saw it in the cheek where hunger,—the hunger of the common herd—had set its fangs upon the delicate bloom. To ask for bread meant to receive a stone, a stone like unto the stones cast at her, that one in old Jerusalem. Perhaps she hungered too; who dares judge, since Christ himself refused to condemn.
She tried at shops at last, but no man wanted modest Quaker maids to measure off their goods. The shop-girl’s smile was part and parcel of the bargain, and if the smile beguiled a serpent in man’s clothing, why the girl must look to that.
One night I sought her room, her tidy little nest—my poor solitary birdling—and found her at her work, her old task of writing. She had gone back to it. There were rings about the eyes where tears were forbidden visitors. I took the poor head in my arms.
“Don’t, Claudia,” I cried. “The youth is all gone from your face.” “That’s right,” she said. “It left my heart long ago, and face and heart should have a common correspondence.”
And then she laughed, as if to cheat my old ears with the sound of merriment.
“I needed stamps,” she said. “The question rested, stamps vs. supper. Like a true artist I made my choice for art. But see here. That manuscript when it is finished, means no more hunger. Something tells me it will succeed, and save me. So I have called it Refuge, and on it I have staked my last hope.”
She playfully tapped the tidy page, and laughed again. But her words had a solemn earnestness about them to which her pale pinched face lent something still of awe.
Day after day I watched her, as day after day the battle became too much for her. Too much? I spoke too quickly when I said so. She was a mystery to me. I felt but could not understand her life, and its grand, heart-breaking changes. She had planned for something which she could not reach. The doors to it were closed. Her starving woman’s soul called for food; the husks were offered in its stead; the bestial, grovelling, brutish swine’s husks. She refused them. Her soul would make no compromise with swine. She was so strong, and had been so full of hope I could not understand her. You who have studied the tricks of the human heart, you who have held your own while faith died in your bosom, or you who have felt it stabbed and crushed refuse to die, perhaps you can understand that strange and fitful strength that came and went; that outburst of hope, that silence of despair which made, in turn, my dear one’s torture.
One night I found her sitting in the moonlight with her face dropped forward on the windowsill. So pure, so white, so frail of body, and so strong of soul, she might have been some marble priestess waiting there for God’s breath to move in passion through the pulseless stone.
“Claudia, dear, are you asleep?” I whispered.
“No, I was thinking if the moon would ever shine upon the night when I shall feel no more the pangs of hunger.”
I took her in my arms and wept, although her eyes were strangely tearless. She put out her hand and stroked away my tears.
“Don’t, dear,” she begged. “It is all right. It is only that there is no place for me. The niche I wish to fill has never been chiseled in the wall of this world’s matters. It is God’s mistake if one is made, and God must look to it. I tell you, Gertie,” and she rose up grandly in her pride and in her wrath, “there are but two niches made for woman in this world. There’s but one choice, wife or harlot. The poor, who refuse still to be vile, must step aside, since honest poverty by man’s decree is but a myth. There’s no room in this world for such.”
She was growing bitter, bitter, driving on, I thought, to that fatal rock from which the wrecks of lost women cry back to rail at God who would not save them from destruction, although they prayed aloud and shrieked their agony up heavenward, straight to His ears. I think sometimes I should not like to sit in God’s stead when such women come to face His judgment. Women who called, and called, and never had an answer, and so went down, still calling.
It was thus she called.
One day I came upon her where she had thrown herself upon a little garden stool to rest. A book lay on her knee, her eyes upon the page; and as I listened, for she read aloud, slowly, as when one reads to his own heart, I caught the meaning of the poet’s words as they had found interpretation by her:—
“‘For each man deems his own sand-house secure,
While life’s wild waves are lulled; yet who can say,
If yet his faith’s foundations do endure,
It is not that no wind hath blown that way?’”
She was silent a moment, then repeated the first line of the stanza again, even more softly than before,
“‘For each man deems his own sand-house secure.’”
Then, tossing the book aside, she burst out wildly, all the pent-up patience, all the insulted and outraged womanhood within her, breaking bonds at last. She lifted up her hand as if calling down from God a curse, or offering at His register an oath. It might have been an oath, indeed; who knows? Thinking of her since I think it was an oath, made, in that moment of her frenzy, betwixt her soul and God, and registered with Him.
“Gertie,” she said, “to-day a man offered me money. Offered me all I asked, offered to make me his mistress. Do you hear? Do you? or has your soul gone deaf as mine has? His mistress! I meet it everywhere. Yet why? Because I am respectably poor. To-morrow the roof tumbles about my ears. The mortgage closes. You and I alike are homeless. I went to him, my father’s friend, to whom, in dying, he entrusted me for guidance. I begged of him that guidance, or, at the least, a little longer time upon the mortgage. He laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ said he, ‘and don’t soil your pretty hands with ink stains any further. Leave that for the printer, or the devil. You and I will make an easier trade.’ Ease! ease! I tell you ’tis these flowery beds of ease on which poor suffocated women wake in hell. ‘Soil’ my soul and leave that for the ‘devil,’ too, his trade meant. He put it in plain words, that gray-haired guardian of a dead friend’s honor. Ease! I did not ask for ease, but work. I am strong, and young, and willing; but my ‘sand-house’ trembles with the lashing of the tide on its foundation. O my God! what fools we women be to kick against the pricks of fate.”
“Each man deems his own sand-house secure.”
I repeated the words when she had left me there with the echo of her bitter rebellious words still ringing in my ears. I felt no anger and no fear for her, only sorrow, sorrow. My poor, proud darling. Her father’s house had sheltered many; his hand had been open and his bounty free. And yet not one reached out a hand to her. She might have begged, or held a hireling’s place. She was ‘not too good for it,’ the old friends said (so few are friends to poverty), but yet none found such a place for her.
Through my tears I saw her go down the garden walk, stopping to pluck a handful of the large Jack roses growing near the gate and tuck them in her belt, so that the dullish red blooms lay upon her heart, like blots of blood against her soft white dress. I shuddered, and drew my hand across my eyes. Blood! those old blood-roses rise before me now, in dreams at night. I heard the latch lift and click again into its place, and when I looked the child was gone.
She stayed a long while. Over all the garden and across the open windows, the moon was shining when I heard her step upon the doorway. It had a weary sound. Those feet which had begun so bravely were tired out already. Still had I no fear for her. She might have stayed until the gray dawn cleft the black of night and not one doubt of her could sting my faith. She climbed the stairs wearily, as if old age had of a sudden caught and cramped the young life in her feet; and listening thus I swore a mighty oath against the thing called Fate.
She so young, so strong, so willing, so full of aspiration, so loyal to faith and honor, with every door barred against her. O my God! was there none, not one human heart open to her cry? Was there but one resource—one opening for her pure soul and her proud heart—the harlot’s door? O my God! my God! women are driven to it every day, every day. Is it, indeed, the only door that opens to their knock? And would she, too, seek it at last, when faith should be quite dead? No, never! not while my palsied fingers could find strength to draw a knife across her throat.
I arose, and went to find her in her room. The door stood slightly open, and I entered, softly. Why so softly, I never could have told; only it seemed the proper thing to do. She had thrown herself across the bed, near by the open window. The moonlight flooded the room, showing me the strong, pale face lying against the pillow. Her white dress fell about her like a silverish shroud; and on the table near the window where she had sat to finish her task lay a manuscript. The moonlight fell upon the title page with mocking splendor. I stooped and read:
“‘Thou art our Refuge and our Strength.’”
Dear heart! dear, sad soul! She had sought her refuge and indeed found strength. Strength! I brand him liar who calls it other.
One hand lay on the coverlid beside her, and one upon her breast half hidden by the dark blood-roses covering her heart. And that heart when I placed my hand over it—was still.
Broken! who dares say suicide? I say it was the grandest blow that weakness struck for virtue,—her life, offered in the name of outraged womanhood. The choice lay open. Shame or suicide! and like the real woman that she was, she made her choice for virtue. Conquered by fate, overcome by adversity, those who should have been helpers turned tempters. Who dares meet God in his soul and say she did not choose the better part?
“‘Thou art our Refuge and our Strength.’”
I whispered it above her grave and left her there, under the stars and broken lily buds.
But when the grand Jack roses bloom, I always think of her, and thinking, I ponder again the same old riddle, Fate, whose edict swears, “No room for honest poverty; no niche for such as she.” And thinking thus I wonder,—where shall the blame rest? Whose shall the crime be?
The “Ridger” is quite a different person from the Mountaineer. He looks upon the latter individual as a sodden and benighted unfortunate, whose inaccessible habitation entitles him to the pity of the favored dwellers on the “Ridge.”
That the Ridge is but a low out-put of the Mountain, that it is barren and isolated, does not disturb the comfortable theory of its inhabitants. To the people of the Valley the Ridger is a twin brother of the owner of the hut on the top-most peak of the range.
They look alike. Their bearing and habits are similar. To the Valley eye their clothes are of the same material and cut; but to the Ridger himself there is as wide a difference between him and his less favored brother on the “mounting” as that to be found by the stroller on Fifth Avenue when he gazes with profound contempt upon the egotistic biped who plainly hopes to deceive the elect into a belief that he, also, belongs to the charmed circle and has not simply “run over” from Jersey City, or St. Louis, or New Bedford.
The Mountaineer is frequently a Tunker, the Ridger rarely. Therefore the Ridger is likely to have a shaven face, and, for the younger contingent, a mustache is the rule, a “goatee” the fashion. To the Tunker none of these are permissible. The beard may not be cut, a mustache may not be worn, and, with the first of these propositions in force it will be seen at once that “a goatee” is quite out of the question.
When I say that the Ridger is likely to have a shaven face I do not intend to convey the impression that he ever uses a razor. He shaves his face with the scissors. His Tunker neighbor up the mountain performs the same feat on his own upper lip. The result is effective and satisfactory from both a religious and artistic outlook in the eyes of these sticklers for fashion and dogma, albeit, it might be looked upon as more or less disappointing by the habitués of the Union League Club or the devotees at St. Thomas.
If the rivet, which at some previous date had held the two halves of the scissors together, happens to be lost, or if it has worn so loose that these members “do not speak as they pass by,” a jack knife or even a butcher’s knife is no stranger to the tonsorial process of these followers of the elusive god of style.
I do not know that I have ever met a Tunker so lost to a deep sense of religious duty, or a Ridger sufficiently devoid of the pride of personal appearance, that he would “go to town” without having first performed this rite.
It is a serious business.
In the house of my old friend Jeb Hilson there had once been a “lookin’ glass” of no mean proportions, if those of his neighbors may be taken as the standard, and how else do we measure elegance or style? It had occupied a black frame, and a position on the wall directly over a “toilet,” which was the most conspicuous piece of furniture in the room. At the present time there was nothing to tell the tale but a large nail (from which hung a bunch of seed onions,) and the smoked outline of something which had been nearly fourteen inches long and not far from the same width. In front of this drab outline Jeb Hilson always stood to shave. His memory was so tenacious that I never observed that he noticed the absence of the glass. He gazed steadily at the wall and worked the scissors so deftly that the stubble rained in little showers upon the top of the “toilet” and within the open bosom of his tennis shirt. Not that Jeb Hilson ever heard of tennis, or knew that he was clad in a garment of so approved a metropolitan style and make; but that was the pattern he had worn for many years, and it was the one which his women folk were best able to reproduce. His flannel ones were gray, and his trousers were belted about with a leather strap. For full dress occasions he wore a white cotton shirt of the same pattern and a brown homespun vest. This latter garment was seldom buttoned. Why hide the glory of that shirt? If Jeb owned a coat I have never seen it. He appeared to think it a useless garment.
I believe I did not say that Jeb Hilson was the leader of those who eschewed all hair upon the face. Whether this was done to show a profounder contempt for the Tunker superstition, or whether Jeb had a secret pride in the outline of his mouth and chin, and a desire to give full expression to their best effects, it would be hard to say. It is certain, however, that his motives must have been powerful, for he underwent untold torture to achieve his results. If the blades of the scissors clicked past each other or wabbled apart too far to even click, Jeb would resort to his knife and proceed to saw off the offending beard.
“Hit air saw off er chaw off,” he would remark laconically, as he tried first one implement and then the other. “I wisht ter gracious thet theer scisser leg’d stay whar’t war put; but Lide trum the grape vines with ’em las’ week an’ they is wus sprung then they wus befo’. But wimmen folks is all durn fools. I’d be right down glad ef the good Lord had a saw fit ter give ’em a mite er sense. Some folks sez it would er spilt ’em, but I’m blame ef I kin see how they could er been wus spilt than the way they is fixed now.”
He gazed intently at the smoked image on the wall, and collecting, between his thumb and finger, a pinch of hair on his upper lip began to saw at it with his knife. His large yellow teeth were displayed, and the appearance of a beak was so effectively presented by the protruded lip that words came from behind it with the uncanny sound of a parrot; but it did not occur to him to cease talking.
“I fromised” (his upper lip was drawn too far out to form the letter p, or any with like requirements), “I fromised the young ’squire ter be at the cote house ter day, an’ I tole him thet I’d ast the jedge fer ter ’fint a gyardeen fer thet theer demented widder uv Ike’s.”
He grasped a fresh bunch of stubble, shifted onto the other foot, turned the side of his face to the smoked image of the one time mirror, and rolled his eyes so that in case a glass had hung there he might have been able to see one inch from his left ear. The shaving went steadily on. So did the conversation.
“Ef I don’t make considdable much hase I’m gwine ter be late, an’ ef the jedge don’t ’pint a gyardeen fer thet theer Sabriny she’s goin’ fer ter squander the hull uv her proppity. Thet theer wuthless Lige Tummun is goin’ fer ter git the hull uv hit. Thet’s thes persisely what he’s a figgerin’ fer in my erpinion. He hev thes persuaged her fer ter let him hev the han’lin uv hit, an’ she air a goin’ ter live thar fer the res’er her days; but I’d thes like ter know what’s a goin’ ter hinder him fum a bouncin’ her thes es soon es he onct gits holt er the hull er thet theer proppity. An’ then whose a goin’ ter take keer uv her? Nobody air a hankerin’ fer ter take keer uv a demented widder woman onless she air got proppity. But I hain’t a wantin’ ter say much, fer they is folks mean enough ter up an’ think I mout be a try’n ter git holt er thet proppity myse’f, an’ have the han’lin uv hit; so I thes tole the young ’squire abouten hit, an’ he thes rec’mended me fer ter thes go ter town nex’ cote day an’ erply ter the jedge fer ter ’pint a gyardeen over Sabriny.”
The shaving was finished at last and the homespun “weskit” donned. He stood in front of the smoked reminder while he performed this latter feat, and, after staring intently at the wall, appeared to be perfectly content with the result. Then he trudged away and joined the innumerable host which would as soon think of staying away from town on court day as it would think of standing on its head to pray.
All Ridgers of the masculine gender went to town on court day, and as few Valley men failed to do the same—whether because they knew it would be a good chance to see everybody in the county and talk politics, or because few men were so destitute as to be without lawsuits of their own,—certain it is that they all went and that it furnished topics of conversation which lasted until court day rolled around again.
As I was a guest at the “young ’squire’s” house I was privileged to hear on the following day some further conversation on the subject of Sabriny’s guardian. I was sitting on the front porch with the sweet and simple-hearted mother of the young ’squire when Jeb Hilson’s lithe form appeared.
Jeb was still in full dress. The fronts of his vest hung beneath his long arms as he walked, and he wore his white cotton shirt, somewhat the worse for its “Cote Day” experiences, it must be confessed. On his head was one of those delightfully soft straw hats which the young men of the valley buy by the dozen for fifty cents, wear until they get damp, or for some other reason droop about the face and head like a “Havelock,” and then cast aside for a new one. But a Ridger does not pay out five cents recklessly. One of these straw coverings must last him all summer. But for all that a Ridger must see, and therefore the front of the drooping brim is sacrificed to stern necessity when it can no longer be kept off of the face. The effect is unique. A soft straw crown, run to a peak; a pendant wide brim touching the back and shoulders; a few “frazzles” of straw on the forehead which tell where a brim once was; for the Ridger cuts the front out with the same scissors or knife with which he shaves, and with no more accuracy of outline. The young farmers wear these broad straw hats to protect their faces and eyes from the down-beating sun. The Ridger appears to wear them purely for ornament, since the only protection which they offer in their new shape is to the back of necks already so wrinkled and tanned that even a Virginia sun could hardly penetrate to a discomforting degree.
Jeb nodded to me. Then he took his straw ornament by the top of the peak and lifted it high above his head, so that he could bring it forward without scraping his hair, and “made his manners” to the young “’squire’s” mother. He seated himself on the upper step of the wide gallery, crossed his long legs, placed his straw ornament carefully on his knee, with the pendant portion falling toward his foot, and began a bit of diplomatic manœuvring.
“Howdy, Miss Brady, howdy. I hope yo’ health is tollible. I thes thought I’d like t’ see the young ’squire. Air he in? Hit air thes a leetle bisness matter twixt him an’ me, thes a leetle matter uv mo’ er less intrust’ t’ us both.”
But the young ’squire was not at home. His mother indicated a willingness to convey any message to him upon his return; but Jeb, always contemptuous of women, was in a state of elusive subtlety. Someone in town had lent wings to his already abnormally developed caution in the matter of the application for the appointment of the “gyardeen” for his weak-minded sister-in-law, and had hinted that he might have to swear to her mental condition if he became the sponsor for such a move. Jeb was wily. He had tasted of his brother’s wife’s wrath on more occasions than one, and whatever his opinion may have been of the strength of her mind, he entertained no doubts as to the vigor of her temper when it was aroused. Jeb wanted to be appointed her “gyardeen.” He looked upon the “proppity” as a vast and important financial trust. If he asked the judge to appoint a guardian, and Sabriny knew that he had said that she was of defective intellect—well—Jeb would face much to be allowed to handle that $134.92. (This was the “proppity” in question. It was a “back” pension and there was to be $2.11 per month henceforth.) But Jeb was not foolhardy, and he had trudged back from town without having done what the young “’squire” had advised, and Sabriny’s “proppity” was in jeopardy still.
“No,” he said, wagging his head and looking slyly at the young ’squire’s mother. “No, I thes wanted ter see the young ’squire fer a leetle private talk. I thes promised him fer ter do sompin, an’ then I never done it. Not as he’d keer; but I thes wanted ter make my part fa’r an’ squar’.”
He espied a straw that had straggled out from the ragged cut in the front of his hat. He took it firmly between thumb and finger and gave it a quick sidewise jerk, whereupon it parted company forever with its fellows. Jeb inserted this between two of his lower front teeth at their very base. When it was firmly established he continued his conversation, leaving his lower lip to struggle in vain to regain a position of horizontal dignity. The straw was tenacious, and the lip was held at bay. He did not want to tell his story to anyone but the young ’squire; but an opportunity to display his mental vigor and business acumen to the ’squire’s mother did not present itself every day, and might he not tell the tale, and yet not tell it? Could he not give an outline and still conceal his own motives and desires? Certainly. Women were very weak minded at best, and even the young ’squire’s mother would not be able to sound the depths of his subtle nature.
“The young ’squire, he tole me fer ter ast the jedge ter ’pint a gyardeen over the proppity o’ Sabriny, along o’ her beein’—thet is ter say—wimmen bein’ incompertent ter—thet is, Miss Brady, mose wimmen not havin’ the ’bility fer ter hannel a large proppity—even if they is—. I aint sayin’ that Sabriny is diff’nt fum mose wimmen, you mine. They is folks thet say her mine is—thet she aint adzackly right in her head; but lawsy, I aint sayin’ thet; an’ you mus’ know thet wimmin’ aint in no way fit fer ter manage a proppity—a large proppity—-more especial if they is any man a-tryin’ fer ter git hit away frum ’em.”
“Why, is anybody trying to get poor Sabriny’s money, Jeb?” asked the young ’squire’s mother in sympathetic wonder.
But Jeb had been warned that he would better not commit himself if he hoped for fair sailing. He turned his straw over and put the stiff end between his teeth again, glanced covertly about, concluded that the lady was not setting a trap for him, and began again.
“I aint a sayin’ as they is, an’ I aint a swarin’ thet they aint. Mebby you mout o’ heard uv Lige Tummun?”
“Yes, I have heard that he is a trifling fellow,” said the young ’squire’s mother. “I hope there is no way he can get Sabriny’s little pension.”
“I aint a sayin’ nothin’ agin’ Lige,” said Jeb, with wily inflection which said all things against that luckless wight. “I aint sayin’ nothing’ agin Lige, an’ I aint sayin’ thet he wants ter git hole uv Sabriny fer ter git her proppity; but he hev drawed up a paper, an’ she hev sign hit, fer ter live with him an’ his ole ’oman the res’ er her days fer, an’ in consideration, uv the hull uv thet back pension down, en half—er as near half as $2.11 kin be halft,—every month whilse she live; an’ he bines hisself fer ter feed, an’ cloth, an pervide fer her so long as they both do live, by an’ accordin’ ter the terms uv thet theer paper he hed draw’d up and Sabriny hev sign.”
“Too bad, too bad,” said the young ’squire’s mother; “but the judge will appoint you, don’t you think, since she is weak-minded, and Lige is so unreliable? Poor Sabriny would have very little comfort in that torn-down hut I’m afraid. Did the judge say he would see to it?”
Jeb took the straw from between his teeth, and his lip resumed its normal position. He turned and twisted, seated himself on the lower step, and readjusted his hat on his knee. Then he went on:—
“I aint sayin’ I want ter be ’pinted her gyardeen. Thet air fer the jedge ter say, pervided somebody er other fetch the needcessity ter his mine befo’ all thet proppity air squandered. I haint sayin’ that Sabriny air weak-minded, nuther—thet is weakmindeder then thet she air a—she hev the mine uv a female, an’ nachully not able ter hannel proppity. An’ I haint sayin’ she aint gettin’ mighty well took keer uv by Lige, nuther. The last time I war theer she war roolin’ the roost. She slep’ in the bes’ bed, an’ et offen the bes’ plate, an’ had the bes’ corn dodger an’ shote; but what I air—that is what some air thinkin’ about air whence Lige onct gits the hull er thet proppity in bulk, air hit goin’ ter be thet away? Mine you, I aint asten this yer question; but they is them thet does, an’ whilse they does hit do seem only right an’ proper fer hit ter be looked inter by the proper ‘thorities. Now I tole the young ’squire thet I’d lay the hull caste befo’ the jedge las’ cote day, but the fack air that whence I git theer I met up with a few er my bisness erquaintainces an’ on reflection I made up my mine thet I bes’ thes say nothin’ to the jedge. Thet’s what I kem ter tell the young ’squire so’s he won’t ercuse me in his mine er lyin’ ter ‘im whence he fine out thet I never tole the jedge. They was reasons—numbrous and gineral reasons—fer me ter refleck an’ retrack my plan.”
He reflected for a moment now, and then lifting his hat by the peak, turned it around, raised it high over his head, carried it back and put it on; then from its mutilated front just above his eyebrow he snipped off, with a deft jerk, another straw and started down the steps.
“They is some thet say Sabriny hev a temper thet don’t stop ter be lit up, Miss Brady, but lawsy, I haint sayin’ nothing agin’ Sabriny’s temper, ner agin’ Lige, ner nobody. Some folks will talk thet away. You can’t stop ’em long es they’s ’live en kickin’; but I got mighty little ter say.”
There was a long pause. Then with studied indifference of inflection he continued:—
“I reckon my leetle bisness with the young ’squire kin wait without mouldin’ over night. I thes reckon hit wouldn’t be edzackly bes’ fer ter discuss hit with nobody else,” and he inserted the straw between his teeth with great care and precision, and took his high stepping way toward the Ridge, secure in his self-esteem and approbation in that not even the wiles of a lady of the position of the young ’squire’s mother could betray him into divulging his secret. For, after all, she was but a woman, and—well—this whole matter was a question of “proppity,” and therefore quite beyond her capacity.
As he disappeared over the hill, his straw havelock flapping gently in the wind, and his vest spread wide against his pendent arms, the young ’squire’s mother laughed gently and said:—
“Poor Sabrina, she is a little weaker minded than Jeb, and Jeb is a kind soul in his way. We must let the judge know the trouble, and see if some honest and capable person cannot be found to handle that ‘proppity’ and not squander, too recklessly, the two dollars and eleven cents in the months that are to come. The life of an heiress is, indeed, beset with pitfalls even among the Ridgers.”