do-they do not satisfy the unities: you must THE PHImake yourself useful. I have known men to go LISTINE off with a rollicking company of hilarious good fellows for a fortnight and come home fagged. There was too much of a good time. Usually, no man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one. Can you imagine anything worse than reinforcing the beauty of the forest with budge? In the woods, cut out booze, and forswear all fancy cookery. Don't try to scintillate or be smart, cultivate the silenceget acquainted with the birds and squirrels ; listen to the sighing of the breeze thru the branches, and the rippling music of the brook; watch the blue smoke curling from the cabin chimney, and look for the flock of quail that comes daily out into the clearing to get the scraps you have placed for them. And above all, keep on good terms with Santiago, and note how he can drive a stake fifty feet from a tree and then drop the monarch of the forest ( I trust etc.) so it will drive the peg into the ground. And see when you get home if you can do your work as calmly, surely and faithfully as he of the freckles, red head and imperturbable ways. To the woods! By right thinking does the race grow. THE PHI- HE friends of James Anthony Froude have issued a booklet, the manuscript of which was found in his strong box after his death. In this manuscript Froude expresses much regret because he did not tell the whole truth about Thomas and Jeannie Welsh Carlyle, and so his friends give him this chance after death. And he now proceeds to tell the truth, as he found it recorded in the Diary of Jeannie Welsh, and as it appears from the testimony of her friends and from the "confessions" of Carlyle himself. And the inference is that Thomas Carlyle was a very cruel and heartless wretch. Was Carlyle cruel? I think so. And he was also infinitely tender and kind. After his wife was dead we see he manifested great contrition, and was full of the desire to atone, to benefit, to bless. Was all this tenderness in his nature evolved after the woman's death? Then she would have better died before and given the divinity in his heart an opportunity to express itself. She lived too long. But no, men of seventy, for whom the shadows are lengthening toward the east, do not evolve new qualities. They just manifest old ones, THE PHIlike insane people. During the last ten years of LISTINE Emerson's life, did he manifest new English traits? Not at all-simply the habit of his life lay bare, his soul unmasked. We see him looking at the still, white face of Longfellow and saying, "A rare, sweet soul, but I cannot remember his name!" All souls were rare, sweet souls to Emerson-he remembered no others. The fact that T. Carlyle for fourteen years before his death paced the darkness, chiding himself and crying aloud because he had not manifested more love, proves that the lovenature was strong in him and always had been. People, cruel by nature, do not suddenly grow tender at seventy. ¶ Jeannie Welsh did not call out the love nature in her Tammas. That was her limitation, and she was the sufferer. Note this, however; her Diary proves that the lady lay in wait for cruelty and recorded it when it came. Her heart was fixed on cruelty. ¶ If there were nothing but unkindness in a marriage, the parties to it would die in a year. No one can endure continued cruelty. Well, why do men and women, mismated, continue living together? On account of the children? ¶ Rodents! THE PHI- Carlyles had no children, and many cases can LISTINE be recalled by every one where incompatible, childless couples cling for life. Books, pictures, relatives, furniture, society and ease make more clingers than children. There must be a certain satisfaction somewhere-followed by cruelty, of course, but in the cruelty there is mixed a certain tenderness. Love is always cruel. We give our best to the world, but reserve our worst for those we love. Indifference is neither cruel nor kind-love is both in turn. The woman who cannot endure pain should to a nunnery go—and quickly, too. Jeannie Welsh records the cruelty, but does not say anything about the hours of sweet peace and sublime content. In fixing her heart on cruelty she made a bid for more. If she recorded cruelty she thus perpetuated it. If she wrote of it, she talked of it. Everybody is cruel, unkind, contemptuous, scornful-it is all a point of view. I doubt whether a nigger ever lived who was No child ever lived who was as angelic as Little are little savages, and make a big demand on somebody's patience. A good friend yesterday showed me a letter wherein he was accused of "refined cruelty," with a list of times and places. The document showed how he had humiliated one of the meekest, gentlest souls imaginable by compelling the person to appear in unfit, cheap and ridiculous apparel, by ordering her to do slavish work, and he had even dictated what she called her religious convictions. My friend is not exactly perfect, but certainly he is not cruel. But after I had read the letter he said, "And the worst of it is, it is all true." It was just a point of view. The average man sees but little-and he sees mostly what is projected on the screen by his own heart. We can imagine a man going into an art gallery, and instead of looking at the pictures, he fixes his eyes upon some fly specks on the wall, and refuses to see aught else. When he goes away all he talks of is fly specks -his brain is speckled and freckled with fly specks✰✰ I used to pity Jeannie Welsh. Portraits show her as handsome, vivacious, intellectual. She had her taste of life-it was n't very bitter or she would not have lived to be over sixty, as THE PHI- |