it. For those of them who don't sit in their libraries smoking till you can't see across it, when they should be knocking about in the open air, cultivating a breezy, sunny, healthful state of mind and body – just the same as if they were laymen, instead of "ministers," whom the devil desires, of all things, to see solemn and dyspeptic.
I lately read an article in one of our papers headed, "Have we a Healthy Woman among us?" I fully indorse what the writer says as to the marvellous amount of invalidism among our girls and women, and I deplore it as sincerely as he does. But let us have fair play on this subject. If there are few of them who ever ought to be wives and mothers, I ask, how much better qualified – physiologically speaking – are the young men of the present day to be husbands and fathers? Go to any physician of large practice and experience, and if he answers you frankly and truthfully, you will learn that it is six of one and half a dozen of the other. When boys of eight and twelve go to school with a satchel in one hand and a cigar in the other, I wouldn't give much for their future vitality, even without leaving a margin for other violations of the laws of health. It would be well, while publicly deploring "tight lacing" and "tight shoes" for girls, privately to inquire about the practice of smoking for boys in short-jackets. To be sure, I cannot see with what face a father, who is himself a bond-slave to this habit, can ask his boy to refrain from doing that which he, as a man, has not had self-control enough to accomplish. But don't let him then write or speak dolefully about the miserable ill-health of our girls and women, not, at least, till he moves out of his own "glass-house." If the truthful inscriptions were placed upon the myriad little graves in our cemeteries, it would be fathers, not mothers, in many cases, who could not read them without pangs of remorse.
The day will, I hope, come, when the marriage question will cease to be decided by Cupid or cupidity; when parents, and lovers, themselves, will consider a sound, healthy body to be of primary importance. Oh! the weary years of watching and dosing and misery for two, consequent upon the neglect of this precaution! Oh! the army of puny and idiotic children, doomed, if they live to adult years, to be a blight in themselves and to all around them! And how distressing is it to see a wife, made gloriously as a woman should be, with a broad chest, a free, firm, graceful step and a beaming face, married to a man whose only claim to be a living being is, that he has not yet ceased to breathe! And still as mournful is it, to look at a kingly man, whose very presence is so full of life that it is like stepping from a close room into the glad, free, balmy sunshine even to come where he is, married to a little pink-eyed, feeble dwarf of a creature, with little paws like a bird's, and not life enough left even to chirp to him.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" as the pre-Raphaelite friend asked of a disconsolate widow who kept on crying for her dead husband.
That's just the point where I want to bring you, my reader. I want you individually to look first for good health in the chosen wife who is to be the mother of your children. And you, young girl, look first for that rarity, a clean bill of health, with your future husband. A brown-stone house and a carriage and livery are nothing to it. Take my advice. Don't take copper for gold on the health question, and don't give it.
ARE MINISTERS SERFS?
We hear a great outcry occasionally about "ministers who work outside of their profession," as it is called – that is, in the lecture field, or in writing newspaper or magazine articles for pay, or in editing newspapers; and this although the ministers thus censured are faithful to their pastoral duties, and bring forth every Sunday, and during the week, fresh, vigorous thoughts for the profit and pleasure of these complainers.
Now in our view this is a great impertinence.
Suppose a clergyman has a decrepit mother or sister, whose only pecuniary reliance is himself? Suppose he is not willing, from delicacy toward them, to turn his family affairs inside out, and explain why he does this "outside work," which may enable him to meet this or some similar outside demand? Is it properly anybody's business? If he do not defraud his parish, have they any right to hold a coroner's inquest over his "outside" earnings and their possible appropriation? How would his deacons or church-members stand such a scrutiny over their own private affairs? We think that the "old Adam" in them would soon rear and plunge at it. Well, ministers are men too, though you sometimes seem to forget it; and they don't like it either. The parish has not purchased their souls, as I understand it, no more than have husbands those of their wives. Let us hope, in this enlightened age, that neither are serfs. Let us hope that all ministers, and all wives too, all over the land, may honestly and innocently earn money, and keep it in a private purse too, without accounting to either the parish or their husbands for the expenditure of the same; or without, in either case, causing unfounded suspicion or breach of the peace, or officious meddling, no more, in my opinion, to be justified, than as if the "boot was on the other foot," where Mrs. Grundy would consider it a great wrong to place it, or to insist upon its being worn, regardless of the limping or contortions of the wearers.
Before either parishes or husbands complain of outside honest earnings, let them inquire if the salaries they give are just and ample. Let them both inquire whether the objection they have to outside earning in both cases, does not mainly arise from the fear that the curious public will imagine that they are not.
Of course, in saying all this, I am referring to those clergymen and those married women who are sensible and judicious, as well as blessed with ability, and it is my opinion that Mrs. Grundy has meddled long enough with the proper independence and self-respect of both.
One thing I've forgotten, namely, parishes are not to suppose that an increase of a clergyman's salary is to padlock his lips afterward, if he is requested, or if he feels inclined, to deliver his sentiments, even "for pay," on the platform, as well as in the pulpit they have called him to fill. Nor after that, are they to handcuff him either, lest he should write a line "for pay" in a paper or magazine? In short, do try to be willing that your "minister" should stand up straight like any other man, and not go cringing round the world a bought serf, with his "white choker" for a badge of the same. I'm sick of seeing it. If I were a minister, it would take all the religion I could muster to keep me from saying wicked words about it.
"Our minister was away six weeks this summer," said a person complainingly, the other day. Well, are not ministers human? Must they not eat, drink, rest, sleep, sorrow and grieve, like other mortals? Have they not, in addition to all this, a constant and exhaustive demand upon their sympathies for the griefs of other people? And must they not constantly be racking their brains, in and out of the pulpit, to have all their words set fitly, like "apples of gold in pictures of silver"? And is it not better that a minister should rest "six weeks" than be laid useless upon the shelf for six months, or that his voice should be silenced forever because of the exactions of the unthinking portion of his hearers? And would it not be well if the persons thus complaining spent the time instead in looking to it that they had profited by what they had already heard?
Whatever else you grudge, never grudge a good, faithful minister a breathing spell.
BLAMING PROVIDENCE FOR OUR OWN FAULTS
Napoleon is said to have lost a battle on account of an underdone leg of mutton. Now, there are many who, shaking their heads, would say, it was "an overruling Providence." I have to smile sometimes at poor "Providence" – that convenient scapegoat for all the human stupidity extant; – who kills little babies, and puts a tombstone over young girls who should have lived to be the healthy mothers of healthy sons and daughters. This "All-wise Providence," who, as some would have us believe, is malignantly and perpetually employed in tripping up the heels of human beings for the benefit of the undertaker – what a convenient theology for bad cooks, for unwise school-teachers, for selfish, careless, ignorant parents!
Now "Providence" does no such things. Providence approves of live, fat, rollicking babies; of deep-chested women; of round, healthy girls; of muscular men; and sound physical specimens of every kind. Bless you
