Our Girls Part 17

COMPARATIVE VALUE OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH.

Our language is as superior to the French, as is our civilization.

The language of a people keeps pace with its mental and soul growth.

It would require more than a Lamartine to express our ideas of home, and of civil and religious liberty with the French tongue.

ENGLISH CLa.s.sICS.

For us, for our times, the "English cla.s.sics" are infinitely above the cla.s.sics of any other language--of all other languages.

Our cla.s.sics are laden with the richest, ripest, christian thought and sentiment. They are indissolubly interwoven with all the great intellectual and spiritual forces, which, at this hour, are marching on "conquering and to conquer."

How utterly inexplicable that American educators should conduct their pupils away from the vast, rich storehouses of the English cla.s.sics, radiant all over as the diadem of a queen, to wander amid the lingual mysteries of the cla.s.sics, of undeveloped, and even pagan peoples.

LATIN AND GREEK.

With regard to the legitimate place of these languages in American education, I can only refer my readers to the numerous and able papers and books which have recently appeared in Great Britain and America. Of these, Grimke's is one of the most philosophical and convincing.

A great number of educators and thinkers have reached the conclusion that the present prominence of the ancient cla.s.sics in our system, is not only a barbarism transmitted from the dark ages, but that, unlike most anachronisms which generally surprise and amuse us, this emasculates and paralyzes us. This carries us from the real, living present, way back into the dark past.

In the pursuit of the ancient cla.s.sics we immure ourselves in a cloister, we shut out things, facts, society, nature, and ponder over the fancies and philosophies of peoples who treated woman as a slave, and who never enjoyed the first glimmering of the true social or religious light.

I speak feelingly on this subject. When a young man, I spent several years almost exclusively upon Latin and Greek; first as a student, and then as a teacher.

One of my sincere regrets in life is, that I prepared about fifty young men for college.

But for a painful and rapidly deepening conviction, that the profession of a teacher, which I had embraced with all my heart, would, in the higher departments, bring me into constant collision with my idea of use as the aim and purpose of a manly life,--but for this, I should never have turned to the profession of medicine.

Gladly would I exchange all that the cla.s.sics gave me, for a familiarity with any one of several natural sciences, which I had but little time to examine during my school days.

The colleges and universities are rapidly emerging from this darkness of the past.

DANCING.

During the years of our school in Lexington, we danced from two to four evenings a week. Beginning about half past seven o'clock, we danced till half past eight, which was always our bed-time. In our school family there were several gentlemen, among them the revered Theodore Weld,--our most inveterate dancer.

The round dances were not admitted, for the following reasons:--

1st. The rotary motion is injurious to the brain and spinal marrow.

2nd. The peculiar contact between the man and the woman, may suggest impure thoughts.

I have many times asked young men what they thought of it, and after saying it was jolly, that they liked it first-rate, they have generally, when urged to tell me seriously their convictions, confessed that, knowing how men feel and sometimes talk about it, if they were women, they should not indulge. I never talked with one father or mother who was not gratified with my rule against round dances, while a number of them wrote me the warmest commendation. I wish I was at liberty to publish a letter on this subject, which I received from a well-known lady,--giving the letter entire, with the writer's name. I have requested her to allow me to publish it; but she says the sneers at Puritanism are too much for her.

I ask my reader, if a mother, whether, if her daughter were away from home, and attending dancing parties, dancing now with Lieut.

S., and then with Capt. W.; in brief, with such gentlemen as the managers choose to introduce to her; whether she would like to know that her daughter was being hugged up, and whisked about in the German? Very few mothers would answer yes, to this question.

The square dances are certainly very beautiful, graceful, chaste, and healthful. Besides, in a large and interesting way they are social. A large company may join in these dances.

The round dance is another ill.u.s.tration of the tendency toward individual display, so strikingly exhibited in the department of music. How constantly we see at dancing parties a single young lady and gentleman start out alone for a dizzy whirl about the hall. I will not comment upon the wild whirligig of her skirts, for I don't think a girl need be ashamed to show her legs. I only say that her contact with her partner is not a modest one.

Let a couple stand, in the presence of a company, with their arms about each other, and their persons in contact as for the "German,"

let them stand, thus intertwined, and what should we think? The dance is made the excuse for what, without it, would be a gross indelicacy. It is as with much of the opera, in which the fine music is made the apology for words that could not be spoken without it.

THE THEATRE.

Girls, I advise you not to go to the theatre. I know how much can be said in its favor. I know that, at one time in the history of the world, it really served the cause of morality and religion.

But how can we study Shakspeare so advantageously as in the impersonations of the stage?"

I confess I do not know where the great master can be studied so advantageously as in the best impersonations of the stage, but, nevertheless, I strongly advise that you should stay away from the theatre.

My first objection to the theatre is, that it is never well ventilated. You must breathe, three or four hours, a vitiated atmosphere, which unfits you for the best physical and mental labor during the whole of the next day, perhaps even longer.

My second objection, likewise physiological, is, that it keeps you up till midnight.

My third objection is that which we all make to the yellow-covered literature. While there may be a good thing here and there, the general tone is morbid, not to say impure.

The managers are opening their theatres once or twice a week for a matinee, and, knowing that women and children are likely to const.i.tute a large part of the audience, they present the most decent representations. I advise that, if you attend the theatre at all, you should attend the matinees.

SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE STOMACH AND THE SOUL.

Conceding the extremest views cherished by the Christian believer, in regard to the influence of the Holy Spirit, in the redemption of man's soul, we cannot shut our eyes to the intimate sympathy between the stomach and the moral nature.

The moral sentiments and sympathies are bewildered and lost when the intellect is deranged. No matter though the coronal portion of the brain is grandly developed, if the intellect be insane, or if the digestive function be insane, pure and n.o.ble moral impulses are no longer possible. Man is one,--body, mind and heart. These are not three distinct individual partners in a firm, but they are interlinked and interwoven so completely that they are one and not three. My highest conceptions of the Trinitarian idea find ill.u.s.tration in this trinity in man.

The great function of digestion--a.s.similation--underlies, as a foundation, the intellectual superstructure, while high above all, rising into the very heavens, the moral nature lifts up its sublime heights.

BOWELS OF COMPa.s.sION.

When a phrenologist is examining a man's head, and wishes to know about his heart, he feels of the stomach. There's where the heart lies.

The sacred writer understood it, when he spoke of the "bowels of compa.s.sion."

A man utters wiser than he knows, often, when, in a crowd surrounding some object appealing to the heart, he cries out,--

"Gentlemen, have you no bowels?"