8 THE IRIS. On the Conduct of Life. loveliness of great trees, and the sunrise, and the sunset. It goes to the sea only to live again in other forms ; on the way it may become soiled; unwholesome, a source of ruin and death. It may cleanse itself again. Is the comparison strained, or too large? Not so indeed. This life trust is more and larger than any comparison will help us to fitly apprehend. So then we are to consider how you are to conduct your lives. What to put into them, what to keep out. How to make them efficient. How to ornament and enjoy them. The conduct of life ! When standing apart one regards the strange complexity of the mechanism of the body, how it remains automatically the same as to pulse, breath, and temperature from the equator to the pole, the wonder of it all comes over one with freshness of interest. If this or that thing goes awry, it is mysteriously set right. The body has acquired, as it was evolved through the ages, what I may call organic habits, the regulative conscience of the tis- sues. Its strange mechanisms record disaster and summon noiseless help or ring warning bells of pain. But when we consider its mind side and moral side, we learn that some- thing called “will” comes into act a part and influence results. In its own sphere it is more or less the ruler of the in- tricate mechanism of mind. It can be trained to conduct the mental processes and to control and subdue unruly emotion, and thus keep a woman from being mobbed by her own feelings and becoming hysterical when most needed. Teach it to be masterful. No wonder Wordsworth spoke of “the very pulse of the machine,” or that Shakes- peare, too, should speak of this complex as a machine Now, when God made man and woman after his image, he made them male and female machines after their kind, and this it is still wise to recall. Therefore when talking of it to you, let me go back to the never-to-be-forgotten fact that you are wo- men. The women who try to ignore sex and to apply female education to standards of men are, as I see it, unwise, impolitic and unphysiological. If also education is made the excuse for not knowing, or for despis- ing, what every woman should know what education is all wrong. I mean that all American women should BY S. WEIR MITCHEEE, M. D When last year I said I would this winter come hither and talk to you, I was not en- tirely wise. “Time like distance lends a double grace,” and the task promised for a remote day seems always easy. So did this look to me. If I knew better your hopes, your fears, your lives, and your home sur- roundings, I should feel more at ease. I am, as it were, a stranger in a strange land, but still it is the realm of human nature of which I too am a citizen. You will pardon the failures of imperfect knowledge. I want to help you. Be sure of that, and any doubt I may have serves to intensify my sense of responsibility for the use I make of a great opportunity. But the man who does not bring hither some distrust of himself had better not be here at all. It seemed to me as I thought over the matter that there were two primary tilings to keep in mind. First, that I am to talk to women, not men. Second, that these women are going hence to be teachers, clerks, phonographers, typewriters, trained nurses, and what not. A proportion, a large one I trust, will soon or late take up the natural profession of the woman, and with good success be that difficult thing the good wife and efficient mother. I mean to talk to you of the Conduct of Fife. The first use of the word “conduct’’ in this relation seems to have been made by John Dryden. Before we go further let us ask what the word “conduct” means. To do this we will question the dictionary, as to the verb “to conduct.” Worcester says, “To lead, to manage, to regulate,” and my ponderous long folio, Johnson, adds, “to show the way.” This helps us. Fife is the thing you are to lead, manage, regulate, and through prop- er use of it to show others the way. Self- training, use, example; that is life. As children you are led by others, but thence onward life becomes an ever enlarging trust. Yes, ever enlarginglikealittlebrook. The old illustration tempts me. The stream of a human life ! How from the brook of youth it becomes, by many additions, a river, able to be put to increasing uses, to turn mills, irrigate, carry ships, and reflect the THE IRIS. 9 know certain things. Life has with us “many ups and many downs” as folks say. I have seen rich women reduced to cook for themselves and others, and entirely ignor- ant of every element of domestic manage- ment. Neglect of this is one of the troubles as to the women’s colleges and areally need- less to trouble. I would have every woman know how with economy to provide for the common wants of a home ; to cook, sew, cut out garments, but I want to add to this something better. Any fitting education ought to give a woman such knowledge as explains, on a scientific basis, the range of domestic duties, making clear why this is the right and that the wrong way. No doubt that many of you learn the rule-of-thumb way in your homes, but it is often ill learned and without interest. I can see how all of it could be made easier and more pleasant by using science to inter- pret the rule-of-thumb, and by teaching so much of the rules of hygiene as apply to the proper care of a home, large or small. Make duties interesting and they become easy You may know how to boil a potato or a ham, but upon my word, it does seem to me that to know why you do it, and what hap- pens when you do it, might make potato boiling or bread making an interesting af- fair. Imagine me telling a patient to do this or that, and having no knowledge as to why I give this advice. What do you think of a business so conducted ? No wand then I hear clever young womensay they have no need of all this, that they are going to be this or that, and will never mar- ry. If this were honest, I should not like it. Generally I say little, but smile inward- ly, which is a prudent form of criticism. Deep in every woman’s heart should be modestly cherished this kindly and natural possibility of one day having a home to care for. I have no real fear that the tendency of women’s colleges to live up to the man’s standard of work will result in any widespread entertainment of the idea of marriage as a kind of domestic slavery. Some do so believe. My friend Charles Dudley Warner says, that in the collegiate life of women marriage is looked upon, not as a natural part of the life course, but as an elective. We may trust despotic nature as to that. Whether or not you marry, the chances are that most of you will soon or late have for yourselves or others the cares I speak of. To be quite unfit for them of- ten creates poverty or makes it harder, and gives rise to vast discomfort for those who rely on you. For some men or women not to be supplied with good food, means inef- ficiency ; for children it means ill health. I have seen much real misery because of in- competent housekeeping. A very learned young woman once said to me, “why should I bother about cooking and housekeeping ? I shall never marry.” She did marry. They had but modest means. Her hus- band, a delicate scholar, consulted me some year or so later, as to his digestion. He was really ill because of bad cooking and she was unhappy about it. I believe that she learned at last what she ought to have known from girlhood. It is interesting here to state the pains taken by the French to see that a woman is fitted for taking charge of a home. A young woman presenting herself for the higher courses of study attheEcole Normale must first show that she understands sewing, cutting out garments, cook- ing, economy of a house, how to keep accounts of a household, the care of a nurse- ry, and some knowledge of how to deal with the smaller surgical or medical necessities of childhood. When they are satisfied as to these points she is allowed to show whether she is sufficiently learned in the sciences to pass on through the Ecole Normale. If to be able to keep house well made it needful not to behighly educated, theeduca- tion might go ; but it is not necessary un- less women in the pride of knowledge, get above their more obvious duties. I could tell you queer stories about the distress caused by incompetent housekeeping. I do not know any better way to keep up perilous discomfort in a home than to feed it badly, nor any surer way to squander time than by gross absence of knowledge of how to do things rapidly, and at the same time well. Whether the work is done by the woman herself or she is to oversee the doing of it by another, these convictions still apply. If the machine of life is to be kept in or- der for its best uses it is to be done by hav- ing reasonable habits as to diet, meal hours, sleepand exercise. To speak of these in- volves too much detail, and I understand that you are taught personal Hygiene. I find 10 THE IRIS. time, therefore, only to emphasize a few hints. Get the amount of sleep you as an individual need. This varies. Eat at regular times, and eat slowly. Avoid increasing appetite for sweets. Beware of excess in tea or coffee. There is much folly written about exer- cise. Some people must have it in large doses, and I know those who need no more of it than the day’s round of incidental movement gives. There are people who can use the brain hard and exercise severe- ly, others cannot exercise violently and still continue to tax the mind. I am more afraid of excesses in exercise, than of too small use of it. Try to get, daily, enough of all round muscle work to suit your own personal need, but beware of over-use of the bicycle. It is not difficult to strain the heart muscles, and that is a sad business, and quite too common. I know personally what is the temptation of the cycle, and I have known cases of heart strain in young women requiring months of rest to recover. Let 11s presume that you have learned so to manage work, play and rest, as to secure health. It is the first essential. You are here to train the mind. It is, as I under- stand it, a general training, not always look- ing toward any especially selected future. No matter how competent your thought machinery may be, there are certain quali- ties which determine by their force and amount the extent to which the reason shall be available. The qualities which give to you, or to the scientific man the best results of thought in its varied forms, are equally essential in the domain of literature to the poet and the novelist. Not even great genius can do without talents. A foolish man has said that genius is only the power to- take pains. That is nonsense, but if genius is, as I think it, always creatively original, ability to criticize its own product is essential, and industry to use the ma- chinery of genius is always required. It is worth while to pause here when speaking of industry to dwell a moment on the popular notion of how poetry is written, and what inspiration means. Of course, there are certain parts of all great poems, and certain small poems, which are written, so to speak off-hand, under the influence of a strong emotion acting upon the imagina- tion. These times of exaltation however, are somewhat rare, and almost all the great poems have been, in all probability, the product of inconceivable labor. Byron says he was sometimes two weeks over a couplet. Matthew Arnold tells us that writing good verse is the hardest labor a man can do. There is distinct evidence that Shakespeare must have enormously changed his plays, and Shelley, who is supposed to have written with greater ease than most men of genius, did in fact enormously alter his poems, I believe that if I had all the evidence, we should see that no great poem was ever fin- ally submitted to the public, without hav- ing undergone a vast amount of critical change on the part of its author. It may be interesting to know that poets cannot repeat with ease their own verse, without learning it as though it were the verse of another person. Wendell Holmes told me this was the case with him. It is so with the present speaker. The reason for it is that the poet has had in his mind so many versions of the poem. Let us linger here. Among the things needed to utilize all forms of mental power, industry is first—that is, capacity for steady work. Learn to be intent. When you work let the subject before you be to you as if it were the most important thing on earth. Suppose this special bit of labor puzzles you, is too hard, drop it for a little ; get up, move about and try it again. If the atten- tion drifts and will not be anchored, read your problem aloud ; for there are two ways to the mind, and sometimes, what goes in at the ear is understood, when what is seen is not comprehended. Queer that, but true. It is of use at times, to write out a problem. As a novelist, if I am in doubt as to a bit of talk, I often test the reality of my creation by reading it aloud ; or if still dubious, I have it read to me by another; then I know. • There are people who cannot focus atten- tion longer than a certain time. These can learn slowly to increase it. It is so with some invalids, and too often this fact is neglected in the studies of children. The industry of the minute is also a fine helpmate. You are waiting for someone or have a few minutes before a meal. Most folks waste these minutes ; others recall a bit of lesson or write a note or a few lines of a letter. I like to observe what a very THE IRIS. 11 busy man does with his stray minutes. They are the sawdust and chips of a life mill. To be methodical in your work is well ac- counted. The habit of always putting this thing here and that thing there, and of wor- king in definite, pre-arranged ways is inval- uable. That is method. In everyday life it is the handmaid of that pretty, womanly grace, neatness. It saves time, and saves too, a world of temper-trying bother. Did you ever see an unmethodical man looking in a hurry for a railway ticket in his eleven pockets? The man of method always puts these tickets in one and the same pocket. Here you have us at an advantage ; you have only one pocket but then it takes you a minute to find it. To be industrious is one thing, to be en- ergetically industrious is quite another ; that is, to get out of industry by concentra- tion and persistent will power that which otherwise is not to be had. Industry; ener- gy, which gives backbone to industry ; per- sistency, which gives permanence ; these are our needs. If also I say that I want you all to culti- vate curiosity, do not be amazed. Curiosity has a long gamut, with low notes and very high notes. You feel it faintly as you justify a sum, or get near to the solving of a mathematical problem. It walks with you through all your studies ; but this and all these mental qualities are like officials and have duties not to be exceeded. Curiosity may take you into the sties of life to feed on your neighbor’s private affairs. It may nobly re- port the gossip of the stars. It may desire to learn the embryology of a great poem, or to know how much of the personality of the man Shakespeare went to the mak- ing of Hamlet. Take care how you use this ever busy inquisitor. There is a pretty story of Faraday, how when a man broke in on an experiment Faraday said : “Wait a moment. I am cur- ious. I have asked God a question, I am waiting for the answer.” I have yet to say a word as to habit. What is a habit? The French word for a kind of coat is habit. We speak of a riding- habit, and Hamlet, of his father’s dress, “in his habit—as he walked.” Thus, too, men- tal and moral habits are the clothing of the mind, things not natural. We make them by repetitions until they seem part of us. To change or drop them reminds, warns, surprises, disturbs, just as an unusual change of garments would disturb. Do cer- tain things for years in one way, and you clothe the mind, in a habit ; or, to change the illustration, you create a deep rut out of which the wheels of life do not turn, with- out a warning jar. But as there are good and bad habit ruts —Take care ! The habit of persistent in- dustry leads at last to all tasks becoming pleasant, even the most monotonous clerk work, or typewriting ; for this is the law of work. Do it long enough and you get to like it, you get to be proud of doing it well. In a word you become interested, and so it does not matter what you do, whether now or later, it will in the end, if you eagerly give to it energetic industry, become its own reward. I find it a trifle hard to deal in due pro- portion with all the parts of the machine you conduct. I have as yet said no word about accuracy. Mental exactness is an es- sential part of certain studies like mathema- tics. The failure to be exact is there self detective. But in many studies and in life you may be guilty of much inaccuracy with- out the self-convicting disaster which arises in the mathematic problem. A continuous little leakage of failures to be exact in let- ters, talk, work, at last become serious, and then you lose a place, or fail of promo- tion, and wonder why. Inaccurate people are often unjustly set down as untruthful ; but want of power to state facts as they occured has often had the same result as desire to misstate them. Think of the bother made by a historian who misquotes. One misquotation in a medical essay once cost me days of search in libraries. Nov; inaccuracy in speech is due to carelessness, indifference, or to im- perfect memory, or to some combination of these. There are children who are distressed if they have told you they had ten marbles when they have eleven. Others do not care, and so of grown people. Cultivate accuracy in study and in talk. It is one of the men- tal foundations of morals. And now just a few hints as to memory. A first rate memory is more a gift than an acquisition ; but memory can be trained in 12 THE IRIS. youth and long afterwards. All forms of careful study help it ; and necessarily, as life differentiates your puisuits, memory gets technical training, and then we see what a tremendously efficient part it may be- come of the machine you conduct. I have small faith in short cuts to perfect memory. Attention is the best fiiend of memory. As in photography, so here the fixation of facts is to be had by long exposure, or by the intense sunlight of attentiveness. Make this a habit. Method has its mem- orial use, and so has the voluntary associa- tion of facts. I have no time to say more. Bind facts in bundles and fasten a date to them for a tag. Dates are only hooks to hang facts on. Thus, for example, an important date is 1616. Shakespeare died in that year. So did Cervantes. Harvey discovered the cir- culation of the blood, and Cromwell went to college—there is poetry, science and his- tory. A great trainer of memory is to use time in short travel, or while dressing or undressing, to learn and repeat bits of the best verse, or the finest prose. The amaz- ing thing is the way some people store away facts, and the ease with which they use the index of these accumulations. Thus some of you may recall that sing- ular form of technical memory which has enabled a man at the door of a great dining hall to always return to the guest on his exit, the hat which belonged to him, al- though often he has had to pick out the hat from at least four hundred. This was a form of technical memory. A more inter- esting and more largely valuable memory is that which belongs to a friend of mine. On one occasion, I read a long dramatic poem to an audience at Bar Harbor. The next day the lady in question met me, and remarked how pleased she was with one of the songs in that poem. I said, “Which one?” She then and there repeated the three or four verses of the song with abso- lute accuracy, having heard it but this once. She has been often a valuable source of quotations for me, because whenever I am in doubt, I ask her for a quotation which will fit a particular subject,and so far she has never failed me. Some actors find that to write out a part forever fixes it in memory. Well-used, memory becomes not only valuable but a source of joy, so that by middle age one acquires wealth on which he draws interest in its prettiest sense. Most of what I have thus loosely put be- fore you, relates to the best way to conduct the mental mechanisms of your life ma- chine. But this is not all. We must look on life in other ways. There are moral qualities which help to give mental talents efficiency by giving them motives. The conduct of life involves contact with others. You are to feel, as well as to think ; are to act and be acted on. Here we get on to the higher plane of duties. Let us take a text—“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This seems plain but do you ever ask yourself how you shall love yourself? If it be a noble self-love it is well with you ; for then you will be sure to deal as nobly with the many neighbors life brings to you. The neighbor of a minute, the neighbor of a life, the neigh- bors of your home and heart, the working father and the toiling mother. I like to think of these neighbors, for indeed if your unusual education causes discontent with home surroundings, makes duties dull, gives you too good an opinion of yourself, then indeed you are ignobly and wickedly loving yourself, and your neighbors will fare but ill. You are here for what? To be educated. That is what a High School is for. There is a Higher school, a greater Master is over it. These two schools go on together. There will be in this school no earthly ex- amination as to whether you have become cheerful, gentle, generous and charitable in word and act. No diploma says that you are modest, unselfish, serviceable, trying to make home happy, an example of how cul- ture, hand in hand with goodness, may sweeten and purify life for you, and for all whom you love. I am sure that mere gain in knowledge does not make character robust. Washing- ton was a babe in learning compared to any High School graduate. Lincoln was hard- ly better, till he taught himself. It is char- acter—character—the harmonious balance of moral qualities, which make for the truest success. But then these men went to school all their lives, and until the great Master said, “ Well done.” Nor here can I fail to remind you again THE IRIS. 13 that you are women, and that you will surely possess influence which will affect men who vote and think, or do not think. Here is where the life of education comes in. If you can make a home comfortable, and also raise its standards of right, elevate its tastes and patiently employ the vast half-used power of sex, the whole politics of this city and country would be made more wholesome. And now I come upon thin ice. Eet us go boldly, for that is best on thin ice. There are certain minor qualities which are invaluable in life. They are more ef- fective than some larger ones. And now your pardon, but whether you are clerk, doctor, nurse, typewriter, teacher or wife, there is one characteristic which has angelic power to lesson all the friction of life. It is sweet temper. Not merely passive good temper, but sweet temper—two lumps, three. It is amazing what it will do in business, in the home, anywhere in life,and also how very rare it is. It leads me on to still thinner ice. “ If,” said a great lawyer to me, “ I were asked what two minor things were the most valuable adjuncts for the young in any business, I should say clear handwriting and good manners.” - Of course all of you write so as to cause no annoyance to those who read your themes; and of course we all have good manners. Admit that; therefore, conscious of our own virtue, we shall now speak only of our outside neighbors whom we intelligently desire to reform. Find me a reasonably able man or woman who has really sweet tem- per, patience, desire to please, interest in their work, and the pleasant ways summed up as good manners, and that person will in the race of life beat many a one of far- higher mental endowments, who is want- ing in these minor social moralities. I have known some men in my own profession whose success in life was absurdly greater than it should have been, because of their being high-minded gentlemen with the charm of really good manners. I have known men of far greater force and effi- ciency partially fail because they had not the qualities of which I speak. If indeed you want to be made to feel the effect of bad manners, try to shop a little in the shops of this great city. The saleswo- man will very likely not be absolutely rude, but she will serve you in a half-hearted way. She is simply absolutely indifferent and without the faintest real interest in her bus- iness, or in your being suited. Naturally one goes away in disgust. Our salesmen are much less exasperatingly indifferent but both in the men and women of our shops, one misses the cheery personal interest of the average French saleswoman. This want of good manners is certainly increas- ing and is shown in other ways than in bus- iness. Men are by degrees becoming less desir- ous of giving up seats in cars to women. This is because—either we are not thanked at all, or because the woman mumbles something, and is half shy of using out- spoken good-mannerly words. All this is important because it leads to a decrease in the courtesy of men to the physically weaker sex, and lessens the feel- ing of kindly chivalry and respect which enables our women to feel free to travel alone and to rely at once on the honest help of the nearest man. That it all tends to lower the tone of the man is obvious. I have tried to make you see how har- monious all the life of social and business contacts can be made by courtesy, that is good manners. I have insisted also on its mere commercial value. And observe that I am urging the cause of good manners. There is something higher attained by a limited number; manners which rise to the level of a fine art, and possess the mystery of charm, the magic of tact. It is always well to have an ideal. Some of these outside people we are dis- cussing may say to me: this is all very well, but / have lived among folks who work hard, whose lives are difficult. We have no time to think how we shall say or do this or that. Where should we find the teachers of manners ? I was once asked this question by a man who from being un- couth, abrupt, careless of dress, became by observation and self-watchfulness a neat, well-mannered gentleman. I see that President Eliot said lately at Wellesley, among other things with which I heartily agree, that men’s colleges do not teach manners. I am not sure that they do not indirectly teach them. I am very sure that the great schools like St. Pauls do teach them, and most admirably well. Mr. Eliot 14 THE IRIS. says we must look to the women’s colleges, and I presume to their great schools for education in courtesy and in good manners. You see therefore what we expect of you. But who is to teach ? I see on your list no professor of manners. Perhaps all are that, but you know the proverb as to what is eveiybody’s business. Now to answer myself and you. There is in Decker, about 1602, a fine passage in which he speaks in language which has been called “as bold as it is true:” Here he says— The best of men Ibat e’er wore earth about him ; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed. This was Christ—Will you be surprised after this if I say that the New Testament is a fine text book of manners, the finest, indeed, because it lifts them on to the plane of the highest motives. If you turn back to my text of “ How to love yourself,” you will find ample illustration there. She who lives obedient to Christ’s code will need no other lesson; and loving herself with His wise love, will know always to test her own social conduct by putting herself mentally in the place of whatever neighbor she is serving in-any one of the ways in which you will be called to serve. There is one more bit of wisdom I want to engrave on every heart here. I never lose a chance to repeat it. There is no intellect in this hall which has not limi- tations as to what it can rise to in life, or what it can accomplish. You may be sure that you will never equal Newton or Faraday, nor achieve the learning of Porson, or soar with Shelley or Keats. But in the moral life there are no such limitations. Any woman here may educate her soul to the level of any saint who ever lived. I do not mean that the highest tasks of the most saintly life are to be done by any but the intellectually gifted. But while goodness may rise to the level of genius, as in St. Paul or Jeremy Taylor, the humblest intellects, the most uncul- tured, have before them the unforbidden possibility of securing such deeply-grooved habits of goodness as make discourtesy and rudeness and selfishness and all larger sin as difficult at last as are the ways of virtue to some poor criminal outcast these many times behind prison walls. There are limits to what you may do mentally. There are none to what you may attain morally. I have been long and I fear tedious. You have been attentive and patient, so that I have at least helped toward creating two very good habits. I promise next time to be more interesting. I shall still speak of the conduct of life, but I shall dwell only on the play of the brain, on how to reason- ably enjoy life, on books, and on nature. Fall Colors in Nature Most people who are not interested in botany consider Autumn beauty merely as such,and pass on without observing of what this beauty consists ; but to the enthusiastic botanist, fall colors in nature are a revela- tion of wonder and delight. If we go to the wood, which abounds in subjects for the student, we find it ablaze with bright colors. Those which predom- inate are red, yellow, green and brown, with their various shades and tints. The leaves of the maple change to a beautiful red and gold hue, intermixed with green. The ash. chestnut, horse chestnut, and tulip turn yellow. The leaves of the catalpa, linden, walnut, hickory nut, and several others are first golden and then brown. The oak leaves in some instances have a glossy brown color, and in others a com- bination of green and yellow, while the scarlet oaks are fairly ablaze. The syca- more and beech change to a lighter green and are sometimes spotted with yellow be- fore the wind whisks them away. The evergreens, of course, never change their color. With the evergreens we might class