the specious name of unselfishness. It is for this reason that physicians generally recommend a professional nurse rather than a member of the family, not so much that the nurse is more skilful, but that she alone knows how to moderate her disinterestedness-to keep it on tap, as it were, and administer it from time to time, instead of pouring it, as the home nurse does, in one everlasting flood. The wife of the nervous patient breaks down at last herself, the daughter of the insane mother becomes herself insane, simply from prolonged and exhausting care, while a hired nurse would give herself relief. In such case the excessive unselfishness defeats itself; it does not even benefit other people; it only burdens the family at last with two invalids instead of one. There is an impression that it is the highest imaginable type of character to merge all one's own wishes and powers and aims in the absorbing care of other persons. Such is not, I am sorry to say, my own observation. Self-sacrifice, like many other forms of diet, is a food or a poison according as we use it. There are those who really carry it to a morbid extent, and can no more be trusted to measure out their own share of it than an opium-eater to write his own prescription. There are families where pastor and family physician have to bestir themselves all the time to defeat the plausible excuses under which the devotees of unselfishness veil their excesses. They need watching with unceasing vigilance, these people who stoutly maintain that they prefer drumsticks at dinner, and sleep best on a straw bed. One evidence of their growing demoralization is the utter disintegration in their characters of the virtue of truthfulness. No immoderately unselfish person can be truthful at the same time; they are soon ready to deny that they are ever cold or hot, or hungry or thirsty, or tired. and this unblushingly, in the face of overwhelming evidence. Nothing is too indigestible for them to eat, in order to save the feelings of the cook; and they will have the teething baby sleep with them for a dozen nights in succession, because dear Maria, his mother, really needs repose, and it is a peculiarity of theirs to be able to do without it. Truth is considered by the moralists to be a merit, as well as unselfishness; but these people simply lay it down, during their insatiate pursuit of their favorite virtue, as rich people lay down their carriageoccasionally when they go into bankruptcy. But such collateral faults are not the whole evil. There are - positive virtues to be cultivated as well as the negative virtue of self-surrender. It is right to do one's own work in the world, to develop one's own powers, to exercise a tonic as well as a soothing influence on those around. That was a profound remark which Charles Lamb made about himself in regard to his close and arduous supervision, for many years, of his partially insane sister. He said. -I quote from memory - that though this way of life "had saved him from some vices, it had also prevented the formation of many virtues." No person can spend the greater part of his time in a constrained position, or with a tight ligature round some portion of his body, without suffering some physical retribution; and if the constraint and repression are applied to the mind instead, that also suffers. Every human being is entitled, within certain limits, to live his or her own legitimate life; and though this may easily be made an excuse for the basest selfishness, the habit of unbroken self-sacrifice brings perils of its own just as marked, if less ignoble. There is a certain charm in it, no doubt-in feeling that self is absolutely annulled, that we live only for others, or for some one other. But this is, after all, to quit the helm of our own life, so that our vessel simply drifts before the winds of destiny. The true skill is seen when we sail as closely as possible in the face of the opposing gale, and thus extract motive power from the greatest obstacles. ON A CERTAIN HUMILITY IN AMERICANS. IT has always seemed to me that Lowell's paper on the condescension of foreigners should be followed by one on the humility of Americans. It may be that we do not make that quality obtrusive when travelling abroad, for there we are frequently stung and goaded out of this fine constitutional trait. "My dear young lady," said the kind English clergyman to a certain American traveller in Europe, "let me urge you not to make use of that word unless you are willing to be known as an American." "But suppose," said her mother, "that my daughters have no objection to being known as Americans, what then?" To this the good man had no answer ready, as it was a contingency he had not foreseen. In such cases the bruised Yankee will turn upon his assailant; nor does he always fail to offer the original provocation. But it is chiefly at home and in our dealings with foreigners that the constitutional humility asserts itself. It is needless to deny that many or most of our foreign visitors are persons of fairly good manners. It was especially to be noticed, in the large company of scientific men who visited the United States a few years ago, what simplicity and modesty marked the most eminent. Yet taking a whole year's yield, so to speak, of foreign arrivals, how much discrimination is needed, and how little we make! There is something admirable in the meekness with which we associate, on equal or even deferential terms, with persons of a far lower grade of courtesy than that to which we are accustomed - provided they come in under the laws of hospitality. Who has not dined in company with some travelling Englishman, perhaps a man of note, whose manners were so intolerable that, as a Boston woman said lately on one occasion, they justified dynamite? And who has not lived to see the same person's book of travels, in which he kindly gave his own verdict of approval or condemnation of the society which had made an exception from its general standard of good-breeding when it admitted him? Who has not heard some English lecturer, while coiling and uncoiling himself into and out of positions of inconceivable awkwardness, dole out elementary lessons on literature and science, as it were in words of one syllable, to audiences which had heard these same themes discussed by Agassiz or Rogers or Holmes? And who has not subsequently read that worthy man's book or magazine essay, in which he perhaps benignantly complimented the intelligence of his audience an intelligence which he never could fairly compute, since he never found out how it had criticised him. I forget which of these excellent gentlemen it was who gravely recommended to the good people of Boston a wholly new means of mental improvement reading aloud in the evening! What is it that carries us calmly through these inflictions? No doubt good-nature has something to do with it, and the feeling of hospitality; but it is also largely due to the tradition of humility, the habit of thinking that light and grace come from Europe- ex oriente lux. We early overcame this humility in political matters, because it took a race of strong men to free us from the parental yoke, and we recognized their strength; but literature and art and science and refined manners come more slowly, and in these we do not yet trust ourselves. That was true of our early days which Aulus Gellius quotes Cato as saying of early Rome: "Poetry was not held in honor; if any one devoted himself to it, or went about to banquets, he was called a vagabond" (grassator vocabatur). Hence we were slower to assert ourselves in these finer arts, and when we did, it was with becoming modesty. It was thought daring in Emerson to sing of the humblebee or Lowell of the bobolink; as for Whittier, who had never even crossed the Atlantic, how could he sing at all? Especially in the realm of manners this humility has prevailed. During the last French Empire it used to be held at Newport and New York that there was no standard of goodbreeding but in Paris, as if the best-bred American society were not of older tradition as well as better strain than the dynasty of the Napoleons. The truth is that the finest American manners are indigenous, not imported. You will find such manners in little towns in Virginia and Kentucky, where not a person has ever seen Europe, and where to have been to Philadelphia or New York is to be a great traveller. Never have I seen more truly gracious and dignified manners than in the little Boston and Cambridge of my youth, among ladies mostly untravelled, and speaking no language but their own. The Italian refugee Gallenga, formerly Mariotti, has lately borne testimony to their social standard and to the conceited familiarity with which he repaid it. Their bearing would have fully justified such unflinching patriotism as that of Senator Tracy, of Connecticut, when, at the end of the last century, the British Minister expressed his admiration for Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, of Litchfield, Connecticut, wife of the Secretary of the Treasury. "Your countrywoman," said the Englishman, "would be admired at the court of St. James." "Sir," said the sturdy American, "she is admired even on Litchfield Hill." There is no occasion for any petty prejudice against European science or art or literature or manners; all nations can learn of each other, and we as the younger nation have more to learn, in many ways, than to teach. The nations of Europe are the elder sons of Time; but the youngest-born are also sons. It was not mere imitation that gave us Morse's telegraph, or Bell's telephone, or Emerson's books, or Lowell's speeches, or the American trotting horse, or those illustrated magazines that are printed for two continents. I heard the most eminent of English electricians say, a few years ago, that he had learned more of the possible applications of electricity during his first fortnight in this country than in his whole life before. When I spoke to Mr. Darwin of the Peabody Museum at Yale College, he said, "Huxley tells me that there is more to be learned from that museum than from all the museums of Europe." I do not urge a foolish insulation from England and Germany, Italy and France, but only to remember that what we need is not imitation, but growth; that a healthy growth implies a certain selfreliance; and that strength, like charity, begins at home. THE INDEPENDENT PURSE. (From "Women and Men.") WERE I asked what change would make most difference in the happiness of married pairs, it would not be hard to answer. The change would not relate to the laws of divorce, whether loosened or tightened; it would not even lie in conceding to women the right of the separate boudoir, though it has always seemed to me that it would enhance the dignity and delicacy, and therefore the happiness, of wedded life, if every woman had an apartment of which she might turn the key, even against her husband, as freely as he may turn the key of his study or his office. But the change now meant is one already affected in many families, and always, I suspect, with happy results-the introduction, under some form, of the Independent Purse. By this institution is meant something quite beyond that mere allowance for dress, or for household expenses, which is so often made in families. That is usually based on sheer convenience. There is no more thought of justice in it than in the sum allowed to Bridget to buy yeast, or to Michael for horse-feed. The true division is not based on convenience, but on righton the knowledge, namely, that the wife's share of the day's work is as essential as the husband's, and that there should be some equality in the distribution of proceeds. The family relation is, in its merely business aspects, a kind of copartnership. Now it is very common in such partnerships for one partner to see to the manufacturing or to the care of the property, while all the money passes through another partner's hands. But he who handles the money does not therefore regard it all as primarily his own, nor does he talk of "giving" it to the other partners; they simply draw their share of the profits from time to time, under conditions agreed upon. They draw it as of right, not through his kindness. Why is it not so with a wife? |