Part 5 (1/2)
At which answer, it seems to me, another sneer might curl the lip of the august shade, as he said to himself--”This, at least, I did not expect, when I made Christianity the state religion of my empire. But you, good barbarian, look clean enough. You do not look on dirt as a sign of sanct.i.ty?”
”On the contrary, sire, the upper cla.s.ses of our empire boast of being the cleanliest--perhaps the only perfectly cleanly--people in the world: except, of course, the savages of the South Seas. And dirt is so far from being a thing which we admire, that our scientific men--than whom the world has never seen wiser--have proved to us, for a whole generation past, that dirt is the fertile cause of disease and drunkenness, misery and recklessness.”
”And, therefore,” replies the shade, ere he disappears, ”of discontent and revolution; followed by a tyranny endured, as in Rome and many another place, by men once free; because tyranny will at least do for them what they are too lazy, and cowardly, and greedy to do for themselves. Farewell, and prosper; as you seem likely to prosper, on the whole. But if you wish me to consider you a civilised nation: let me hear that you have brought a great river from the depths of the earth, be they a thousand fathoms deep, or from your nearest mountains, be they five hundred miles away; and have washed out London's dirt--and your own shame. Till then, abstain from judging too harshly a Constantine, or even a Caracalla; for they, whatever were their sins, built baths, and kept their people clean. But do your gymnasia--your schools and universities, teach your youth nought about all this?”
THRIFT. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT WINCHESTER, MARCH 17, 1869.
Ladies,--I have chosen for the t.i.tle of this lecture a practical and prosaic word, because I intend the lecture itself to be as practical and prosaic as I can make it, without becoming altogether dull.
The question of the better or worse education of women is one far too important for vague sentiment, wild aspirations, or Utopian dreams.
It is a practical question, on which depends not merely money or comfort, but too often health and life, as the consequences of a good education, or disease and death--I know too well of what I speak--as the consequences of a bad one.
I beg you, therefore, to put out of your minds at the outset any fancy that I wish for a social revolution in the position of women; or that I wish to see them educated by exactly the same methods, and in exactly the same subjects, as men. British lads, on an average, are far too ill-taught still, in spite of all recent improvements, for me to wish that British girls should be taught in the same way.
Moreover, whatever defects there may have been--and defects there must be in all things human--in the past education of British women, it has been most certainly a splendid moral success. It has made, by the grace of G.o.d, British women the best wives, mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, that the world, as far as I can discover, has yet seen.
Let those who will sneer at the women of England. We who have to do the work and to fight the battle of life know the inspiration which we derive from their virtue, their counsel, their tenderness, and--but too often--from their compa.s.sion and their forgiveness. There is, I doubt not, still left in England many a man with chivalry and patriotism enough to challenge the world to show so perfect a specimen of humanity as a cultivated British woman.
But just because a cultivated British woman is so perfect a personage; therefore I wish to see all British women cultivated. Because the womanhood of England is so precious a treasure; I wish to see none of it wasted. It is an invaluable capital, or material, out of which the greatest possible profit to the nation must be made. And that can only be done by thrift; and that, again, can only be attained by knowledge.
Consider that word thrift. If you will look at Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, or if you know your Shakespeare, you will see that thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gotten--in a word, the marks of a man's thriving.
How, then, did the word thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy--which first, of course, meant the management of a household--got to mean also the opposite of waste.
It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in fact, men throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their material, their force.
Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws of nature--call them, rather, laws of G.o.d--which apply not merely to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to physiology, to society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every person in this room.
The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear.
And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion.
The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you; and can do more work with less effort.
A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves capital, enabling a less capital to do the work of a greater. Knowledge of the electric telegraph saves time; knowledge of writing saves human speech and locomotion; knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and life; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain; and knowledge of the laws of the spirit--what does it not save?
A well-educated moral sense, a well-regulated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper pa.s.sions, those n.o.bler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man; and which are potent in her, for evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and undisciplined, or are trained and developed into graceful, harmonious, self-restraining strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come under their influence.
What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lecture is thrift; thrift of themselves and of their own powers: and knowledge as the parent of thrift.
And because it is well to begin with the lower applications of thrift, and to work up to the higher, I am much pleased to hear that the first course of the proposed lectures to women in this place will be one on domestic economy.
I presume that the learned gentleman who will deliver these lectures will be the last to mean by that term the mere saving of money; that he will tell you, as--being a German--he will have good reason to know, that the young lady who learns thrift in domestic economy is also learning thrift of the very highest faculties of her immortal spirit. He will tell you, I doubt not--for he must know--how you may see in Germany young ladies living in what we more luxurious British would consider something like poverty; cooking, waiting at table, and performing many a household office which would be here considered menial; and yet finding time for a cultivation of the intellect, which is, unfortunately, too rare in Great Britain.
The truth is, that we British are too wealthy. We make money, if not too rapidly for the good of the nation at large, yet too rapidly, I fear, for the good of the daughters of those who make it. Their temptation--I do not, of course, say they all yield to it--but their temptation is, to waste of the very simplest--I had almost said, if I may be pardoned the expression, of the most barbaric--kind; to an oriental waste of money, and waste of time; to a fondness for mere finery, pardonable enough, but still a waste; and to the mistaken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to sit idle and let servants do everything for her.
Such women may well take a lesson by contrast from the pure and n.o.ble, useful and cultivated thrift of an average German young lady--for ladies these German women are, in every possible sense of the word.