Symmetrical Womanhood
Mrs. Wesley Smith is a native of the United States; she was
born in Chicago. Her parents were Edson L. O'Hara and
Tonsley O'Hara. She was educated at Park Institute, Chicago,
Kenwuod Seminary, Chicago, and the Convent of Loretto
Abbey, Toronto, and has traveled in the United States,
Germany, France, England, Holland and the Bahama Islands. She
married Hon. S. Wesley Smith, M. D., of New York City. Her
special work has been in the interest of literature, charities
of all creeds, clubs, congresses and organizations of women
and literary societies. Her principal literary works are
addresses, orations and papers for public reading. In religious
faith she is Protestant, and is a member of the Episcopal
Church. She is a most graceful and attractive woman, an
elocutionist and writer, not a professional. Her permanent
postoffice address is No. 21 West Thirtieth Street, New York City.
Said the poet Göethe, to his friend Eckermann, in the seventy-seventh year of his
age: 'Had I earlier known how many excellent things have been in existence for
hundreds of years. I would not have written a line,
but would have done something else;" and Lord
Byron, early in his literary career, wrote: 'All that
can be done has been done." And when these serene
stars, in the blue heaven of thought, thus falter, how
shall we, who as yet but look upward, dare give our
message.
Writes Oliver Wendell Holmes, our genial autocrat:
"An author does not always know when he. though
performs the service of the angel who stirred the
waters at the pool of Bethesda. It gives many readers
a singular pleasure to find a writer telling them
something they have long known or felt, but which
they have never found anyone to put in words for
them." And so, be it mine today to plead for some
old-fashioned virtues, and to repeat some old, old
truths of life and love and womanhood.
Mother Nature loves a trinity; her handiwork,
material and immaterial, is largely made up of
threefold creations. A geometrician would tell us that
the triangle is often the keynote of her handicraft.
Men and women are the highest type of this visible
trinity. With a three-fold nature have they been endowed, mental, moral and physical;
intellectual, spiritual and corporeal; a mind, a body, and a soul. The word symmetrical,
Webster tells us, means "each Part in proportion to the other." How shall
Our Trinity Be Beautiful, Or Our Triangle Perfect. Unless Each Of These Sides Be
symmetrically developed?
It Is The Unfortunate Fashion Of The Hour To Adopt Some Theory, some hobby, some
Fashion Or Fancy, "And Forsaking All Others, Keep Only To It, So Long As The Hobby Shall
Live." It May Be Physical Culture Is The Modern Woman'S Fetich, and she drapes herself
fearfully and wonderfully, passes much of her time in weird and mystifying
motions, and assures you that she shall never grow old. Intellectuality is perhaps
her shrine, and she soars in the empyrean of mind over matter, cares not for the
adornment of her bonnet or the cut of her gown, pities you because you have not read
Ibsen and Tolstoi, laments that you cannot rise to her higher plane and frowns upon
all trivial conversation as to dress, disease, or domestics. Again, sweet charity may
engross her time, and she founds a home for distressed cats and wandering dogs, or
makes little pinafores for the chilly children of Greenland. and sometimes forgets
that charity means loving kindness, the womanly courtesy to the maid-servant and
the gentle word to the man-servant.
The perfect woman shall cherish all of these, hold fast that which is good in each,
and remember that she owes an equal allegiance to every part of her being. She who
neglects health — some rational means of physical culture, or the like — shall reap a
whirlwind of weariness and wretchedness; she who aids not beauty by all reasonable
means has lost one of the strongest levers whereby to move the world. She who fails
to expand her intellectual faculties unto the highest, cannot seek recognition or honor
among men. The woman who slays love does ill, for, like the wounded lion, it shall
turn and rend her, and leave her at last desolate, and stricken, and alone; while for
her who knows the grace of a heavenly spirit, "her deeds shall drop as the rain, her
speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the
showers upon the grass." All these things are lovely when rightly proportioned and
nicely adjusted to the eternal balance. The ancient Greeks, that most perfect race
physically and mentally the world has ever known, had engraven upon the arch of
their academies, that he who ran might read, this motto: "Do nothing too much."
and to we moderns this message comes today with timely warning.
The history of the world is rich with the tales of famous women who would have
been beyond cavil had they but remembered, a woman to realize the highest must
cultivate harmoniously her threefold being. Elizabeth, Queen of England, of whom
Laud writes: "I am proud that such a woman has lived and reigned and died in
honor;" she who was rich in mind and estate, but who lacked the gentler side, whose
heart was not attuned to love and whose life missed those sweet chords in its music
which only a fond affection can bring. Cleopatra, who could charm the colossus
Cæsar, whose intellect was broad and great. whose beautiful body was a fit temple for
a noble soul — but, alas! the casket was empty of the jewel, else the world's story had
been nobler. Madame Recamier, whose gracious heart and lovely spirit made all men
her knights, but who failed in that mental force which should have thrown her power
into the world's work and aided its upward and onward march. Madame de Maintenon,
whose piety was deep and sincere, but cultivated to such an excess that the
god-like virtue of tolerance was forgotten, and the reign of Louis, the grand monarch,
sullied with one of the darkest political crimes in history, the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, whereby eight thousand faithful subjects were exiled or imprisoned.
George Eliot, the brightness of whose descriptive pen we may never see surpassed,
but whose intellectual faculties were allowed to exhaust and warp her nature so that
her days were largely those of an unhappy invalid, and discord rang within them.
"'Tis strange that a harp of a thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long,"
sings the poet, and we shall only hear life's harmony aright when the bass and the
treble and the medium register shall sound aloud together in one triumphant symphony.
Lord Lytton writes the praises of "a various, vigorous, versatile mind." and
Göethe observes: "The object of life is culture, not what we can accomplish, but what
can be accomplished in us.
Let us divide our threefold being into a sexagon — from our physical nature we shall
have health and beauty, from our mental endowment knowledge and sentiment, from
our spiritual side morality and piety, and cultivate each unto the utmost, but each in
its due proportion. The peach that grows toward the sun's warm kisses becomes
first ripe and mellow and fragrant, but unless Phœbus travels on to touch its other side,
is soon o'er-ripe and blackened and decayed. And so with us, if we let not the genial
sun of culture shine upon us equally from all directions, we shall grow blackened with
the vice of narrowness and littleness and scrupulosity, and fail our perfect fruitage.
The world today is, oh, so largely, what we women make it. Let us strive earnestly
until all womanly vices shall cease to be.
"Oh! lift your natures up;
Embrace high aims, work out your freedom,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain scaled;
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and envy
And slander, die. Better not to be at all
Than not to be noble."
Woman cannot reign until she is worthy to be a queen. It is not by crying like
a fretful child for more, that we shall attain all things, but by bearing our duties and
our work so bravely, so wisely, that men shall gladly call us unto the high places to
aid, until we stand—
"Two in the council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life."
The meanest pool by the wayside can hold the stars in its bosom, and give back
the gleam of the sunlight, and receive the showers from heaven even as the mighty
ocean. To all of us it is not given to climb the mountain, and few may wear the
laurel, but who shall say what constitutes success, who deny she has achieved her
highest mission, who has been simply a good woman. Says Victor Hugo: "There is
in this world no function more important than that of charming. To shed joy, to
radiate happiness, to cast light upon dark days, to be the golden thread of our destiny,
the spirit of grace and harmony, is not this to render a service?"
It is so pleasant to dwell upon the ideal side of life, to lay far-reaching plans and
dream great deeds, but be you the most orthodox of Christians or the broadest of
ethical culturists, we shall yet agree that the truest and most searching test of character
lies in "the trivial round, the common task," along life's wayside. The great
Creative Power takes as infinite patience and care in fashioning the facets of an
insect's eye, as in marking the course of a Niagara or building a Matterhorn. And
George Eliot preached to us a great gospel when she wrote:
"The growing good of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts, and
that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to
the number who have lived faithfully hidden lives and lie in unvisited tombs."
It is more satisfying to efficiently perform our duty of the hour than to hope
that large opportunities may yet be ours. It is better to live today nobly than to muse
on a radiant tomorrow. You cannot dream yourself into a character, you must
hammer and forge one out.
It was of some fair woman who held herself worthy of being symmetrically developed
unto a perfect whole that Longfellow said: "When she had passed it seemed
like the ceasing of exquisite music;" and of her, also, Mrs. Hemans wrote, it was a
life-long happiness
"To have met the joy of thy speaking face,
To have felt the spell of thy breezy grace,
To have lingered before thee, and turned and borne
One vision away of the cloudless morn."
In the twilight time we see her — that fair woman yet to be. She stands serene
and beautiful, looking forward to meet the coming years, with calm eyes that tell of
inward grace and the peace of God upon her forehead. She is robed in the white garment
of modesty. About her throat she wears a circle of rare gems. and these are
the pearls of truth. Her feet are shod with the winged sandals of a willing heart.
Her eyes beam love and courage into the soul of Him who is her other self. Her cool,
white palms are made to lay soft touches on some sweet baby brow, and to clasp the
hand of manhood when it falters, so that they two shall climb together up the white
heights of God.
She shall cherish both the meanest flower that blows and the highest stars in
heaven. She shall do all things possible with honor to herself and to her Maker.
She passes on life's highway, gathering here the rose of beauty, and there the stately
lily of a faithful soul. She stoops for the green mosses of love that grow all about
her feet, and will yield her ever fragrant favor. She lingers long in the grateful
shade of the tree of knowledge; of its wide-spreading branches she gathers the leaves
to weave a garland for her forehead. She plucks the olive branch to bear within her
hand. She treads the beaten path of life, and in her wake the way appears a little
greener where her feet have trod, until she stands at heaven's gate and the angel
saith: "Come in. All hail, fair woman yet to be; love bless thee, joy crown thee,
God speed thy career."
