Part 11 (1/2)
I am a.s.suming that you are man enough to be a man--not a mere machine of selfishness on the one hand, or an anemic imitation of masculinity on the other hand. I am a.s.suming that you think--and, what is more important, feel--that Nature knows what she is about; that ”G.o.d is not mocked”; and that therefore you propose to live in harmony with universal law.
Therefore, I am a.s.suming that you have established, or will establish, the new home in place of the old home. I am a.s.suming that you will do this before there is a gray hair in your head or a wrinkle under your eye. These new homes which young Americans are building will be the sources of all the power and righteousness of this Republic to-morrow, just as the lack of them will be the source of such weakness as our future develops.
Within these new homes which young Americans are to build, the altar must be raised again on which the sacred fire of American ideals must be kept burning, just as it was kept burning in the old homes which these young Americans have left. And precisely to the extent that these new homes are not erected will American ideals pale, and finally perish.
It is a question, you see, which travels quite to the horizon of our vision and beyond it, and which searches the very heart of our national purity and power. No wonder that Bismarck considered the perpetuation of the German home, with its elemental and joyous productivity, as the source of all imperial puissance on the one hand, and the purpose and end of all statesmans.h.i.+p on the other hand.
It would be far better for America if our public men were more interested in these simple, vital, elemental matters than in ”great problems of statesmans.h.i.+p,” many of which, on a.n.a.lysis, are found to be imaginary and supposit.i.tious. Yes, and it would be better for the country if our literary men would describe the healthful life of the Nation's plain people, than tell unsavory stories of artificial careers and abnormal affections, and all that sort of thing.
They would sell more books, too. I never yet heard that anybody got tired of ”The Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night.” I think it quite likely that the Book of Ruth will outlast all the short stories that will be written during the present decade. Yes, decidedly, our public men, and our writers, too, ought to ”get down to earth.” There is where the people live. The people walk upon the brown soil and the green gra.s.s.
They dwell beneath the apple-blossoms. How fine a thing it is that our American President is preaching the doctrine of the American home so forcefully that he impresses the Nation and the world with these basic truths of living and of life.
It is a good deal more important that the inst.i.tution of the American home shall not decay, than that the Panama Ca.n.a.l be built or our foreign trade increase. So, in considering the young man and the new home, we are dealing with an immediate and permanent and an absolutely vital question, not only from the view-point of the young man himself, but from that of the Nation as well.
Of course n.o.body means that young men should hurl themselves into matrimony. The fact that it is advisable for you to learn to swim does not mean that you should jump into the first stream you come to, with your clothes and shoes on. Undoubtedly you ought first to get ”settled”; that is, you ought to prepare for what you are going to do in life and begin the doing of it. Don't take this step while you are in college. If you mean to be a lawyer, you ought to get your legal education and open your office; if a business man, you should ”get started”; if an artizan, you should acquire your trade, etc. But it is inadvisable to wait longer.
It is not necessary for you to ”build up a practise” in the profession, or make a lot of money in business, or secure unusual wages as a skilled laborer. Begin at the beginning, and live your lives together, win your successes together, share your hards.h.i.+ps together, and let your fortune, good or ill, be of your joint making.
It will help you, too, in a business way.
Everybody else is, or was, situated nearly as you are, and there is a sort of fellow-feeling in the hearts of other men and women who once had to ”hoe the same row” you are hoeing; and it is among these men and women you must win your success. It is largely through their favor and confidence that you will get on at all. If you are making a new home you are in harmony with the world about you, and the very earth itself exhales a vital and sustaining sympathy.
It is not at all necessary that you should be able to provide as good a house and the furnis.h.i.+ngs thereof as that from which your wife comes. n.o.body expects you to be as successful in the very beginning of your life as her father was at the close of his. Least of all does she herself expect it. And even if this were possible, it is not from such continuous luxury that the best character is made. The absolute necessity to economize compels the ordinary young American couple to learn the value of things--the value of a dollar and the value of life.
They learn to ”know how it comes,” again to employ one of the wise sayings of the common people. And the numberless experiences of their first few years of comparative hards.h.i.+p are the very things necessary to bring out in them sweetness, self-sacrifice, and uplifting hardihood of character. In these sharp experiences, too, there is greatest happiness. How many hundreds of times have you heard men and women say of their early married years, ”Those were the happiest days of my life.”
As a matter of good business on the one hand, and of sheer felicity on the other hand, make the ideals of this new home of yours as high as you possibly can. Don't make them so high that neither you nor any other human being can live up to them, of course; but if you can put them a notch beyond those even of the exalted standard of the old home, by all means do it. Do it, that is, if you can live up to them.
It is remarkable what individual power grows out of clean living. It is profitable also. The mere business value of a reputation for a high quality of home life will be one of the best a.s.sets that you can acc.u.mulate. ”They are attending strictly to business and will make their mark,” said a wise old banker to a group of friends in discussing a fine type of young business man, and the equally fine type of the young American woman who was his wife.
I do not know whether that young man was borrowing money for his business from that particular bank or not, but I do know that he could borrow it if he wanted it. And one reason why his credit was established with the money-wise old financier was the ideal home life which he and his wife were leading.
For, mark you, they were not ”living beyond their means.” That was the first thing. That is one of the best rules you can follow. Who has not known of the premature withering of young business men and lawyers (yes, and sometimes men not so young, alas!) who have suddenly blossomed out with houses and clothes and horses, and a lot of other things which their business or practise ought not reasonably to stand.
On the other hand, do not begin your life as a miser. Do not let the new home proclaim by its barrenness that it is the abode of a poor young man asking sympathy and aid of his friends. ”Yes, rent a piano, by all means. Do not economize on your wife and your home,” advised an old Methodist preacher noted for his horse-sense. And he was right.
After all, what is the purpose and end of all your labor? If it is not that very home, I do not know what it is. Put on a little more steam, therefore, and earn enough extra to buy a picture. And get a good one while you are at it. It will not break you up to buy a really good etching. A fine ”print” is infinitely better than a poor painting.
Anything is better than a poor painting. If she has good taste, your wife will make the walls of that new home most attractive with an astonis.h.i.+ngly small amount of money.
It is the new _home_ you and she are making, remember that. Very well; you cannot make it in a flat. ”Apartments” cannot by any magic be converted into a home. For the purposes of a _home_, better a separate dwelling with dry-goods box for table and camp-stools for chairs than tapestried walls, mosaic floors, and all luxuriousness in those modern structures where human beings hive.
These buildings have their indispensable uses, but home-making is not one of them. ”Apartments” are not cheaper for you and easier for her than a house to yourselves--no, not if you got the finest apartments for nothing, not even if you were paid to live in gilded rooms. For the making of a home is priceless. And that cannot be done in flats or hotels or other walled and roofed herding places. Every man would like to have a picture of ”the house he was born in”; but who would choose a hotel for a birthplace? Boniface himself would not ”admire” (to use one of our Westernisms) to have you select his hostelry for that purpose.
Of course you will spend all of your extra time at home. That is what home is for. Live in your home; do not merely eat and sleep there. It is not a boarding-house, remember that. Books are there, and music and a human sympathy and a marvelous care for you, under whose influence alone the soul of a young man grows into real grandeur, power, and beauty. And be sure that you let each day have its play-hour.
”I would not care to live,” said one of the very ablest and most eminent members of the American Catholic priesthood--”I would not care to live,” said he, ”if I could not have my play-hour, music, and flowers. They are G.o.d's gifts and my necessity. Every young man who has a home commits a crime if he does not each day bring one hour of joy into his household.”
The man who said that is not only brilliant and wise, but one of the most exalted souls it has ever been my fortune to know. And his words have good sense in them, have they not? Make that good sense yours, then. Make a play-hour each day for yourself and wife and children. I say children, for I a.s.sume, of course, that when you are making a new home you are making a _home_ indeed.
Very well. The absence of children is either unfortunate or immoral. A purposely childless marriage is no marriage at all; it is merely an arrangement. Robert Louis Stevenson calls it ”a friends.h.i.+p recognized by the police.” A house undisturbed and unglorified by the wailings and laughter of little ones is not a home--it is a habitation.