someone may protest against the nature of the simple life in the name of esthetics, or oppose to ours the theory of the service of luxury—that providence of business, fostering mother of arts, and grace of civilized society. we shall try, briefly, to anticipate these objections.

it will no doubt have been evident that the spirit which animates these pages is not utilitarian. it would be an error to suppose that the simplicity we seek has anything in common with that which misers impose upon themselves through cupidity, or narrow-minded people through false austerity. to the former the simple life is the one that costs least; to the latter it is a flat and colorless existence, whose merit lies in depriving one's self of everything bright, smiling, seductive.

it displeases us not a whit that people of large means should put their fortune into circulation instead of hoarding it, so giving life to commerce and [140]the fine arts. that is using one's privileges to good advantage. what we would combat is foolish prodigality, the selfish use of wealth, and above all the quest of the superfluous on the part of those who have the greatest need of taking thought for the necessary. the lavishness of a m?cenas could not have the same effect in a society as that of a common spendthrift who astonishes his contemporaries by the magnificence of his life and the folly of his waste. in these two cases the same term means very different things—to scatter money broadcast does not say it all; there are ways of doing it which ennoble men, and others which degrade them. besides, to scatter money supposes that one is well provided with it. when the love of sumptuous living takes possession of those whose means are limited, the matter becomes strangely altered. and a very striking characteristic of our time is the rage for scattering broadcast which the very people have who ought to husband their resources. munificence is a benefit to society, that we grant willingly. let us even allow that the prodigality of certain rich men is a [141]safety-valve for the escape of the superabundant: we shall not attempt to gainsay it. our contention is that too many people meddle with the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both their interest and their duty: their extravagance is a private misfortune and a public danger.

so much for the utility of luxury.

we now wish to explain ourselves upon the question of esthetics—oh! very modestly, and without trespassing on the ground of the specialists. through a too common illusion, simplicity and beauty are considered as rivals. but simple is not synonymous with ugly, any more than sumptuous, stylish and costly are synonymous with beautiful. our eyes are wounded by the crying spectacle of gaudy ornament, venal art and senseless and graceless luxury. wealth coupled with bad taste sometimes makes us regret that so much money is in circulation to provoke the creation of such a prodigality of horrors. our contemporary art suffers as much from the want of simplicity as does our literature—too much in it that is irrelevant, over-wrought, falsely imagined. rarely is it given us to contemplate in line, form, or color, that simplicity allied to perfection which commands the eyes as evidence does the mind. we need to be rebaptized in the ideal purity of immortal beauty which puts its [142]seal on the masterpieces; one shaft of its radiance is worth more than all our pompous exhibitions.

yet what we now have most at heart is to speak of the ordinary esthetics of life, of the care one should bestow upon the adornment of his dwelling and his person, giving to existence that luster without which it lacks charm. for it is not a matter of indifference whether man pays attention to these superfluous necessities or whether he does not: it is by them that we know whether he puts soul into his work. far from considering it as wasteful to give time and thought to the perfecting, beautifying and poetizing of forms, i think we should spend as much as we can upon it. nature gives us her example, and the man who should affect contempt for the ephemeral splendor of beauty with which we garnish our brief days, would lose sight of the intentions of him who has put the same care and love into the painting of the lily of an hour and the eternal hills.

but we must not fall into the gross error of confounding true beauty with that which has only the name. the beauty and poetry of existence lie in the understanding we have of it. our home, our [143]table, our dress should be the interpreters of intentions. that these intentions be so expressed, it is first necessary to have them, and he who possesses them makes them evident through the simplest means. one need not be rich to give grace and charm to his habit and his habitation: it suffices to have good taste and good-will. we come here to a point very important to everybody, but perhaps of more interest to women than to men.

those who would have women conceal themselves in coarse garments of the shapeless uniformity of bags, violate nature in her very heart, and misunderstand completely the spirit of things. if dress were only a precaution to shelter us from cold or rain, a piece of sacking or the skin of a beast would answer. but it is vastly more than this. man puts himself entire into all that he does; he transforms into types the things that serve him. the dress is not simply a covering, it is a symbol. i call to witness the rich flowering of national and provincial costumes, and those worn by our early corporations. a woman's toilette, too, has something to say to us. the more meaning there is in it, the greater its worth. to be truly beautiful, it must tell us of beautiful things, things personal and veritable. [144]spend all the money you possess upon it, if its form is determined by chance or custom, if it has no relation to her who wears it, it is only toggery, a domino. ultra-fashionable dress, which completely masks feminine personality under designs of pure convention, despoils it of its principal attraction. from this abuse it comes about that many things which women admire do as much wrong to their beauty as to the purses of their husbands and fathers. what would you say of a young girl who expressed her thoughts in terms very choice, indeed, but taken word for word from a phrase-book? what charm could you find in this borrowed language? the effect of toilettes well-designed in themselves but seen again and again on all women indiscriminately, is precisely the same.

i can not resist citing here a passage from camille lemonnier, that harmonizes with my idea.

"nature has given to the fingers of woman a charming art, which she knows by instinct, and which is peculiarly her own—as silk to the worm, and lace-work to the swift and subtle spider. she is the poet, the interpreter of her own grace and ingenuousness, the spinner of the mystery in which her wish to please arrays itself. all the talent she [145]expends in her effort to equal man in the other arts, is never worth the spirit and conception wrought out through a bit of stuff in her skillful hands.

"well, i wish that this art were more honored than it is. as education should consist in thinking with one's mind, feeling with one's heart, expressing the little personalities of the inmost, invisible i,—which on the contrary are repressed, leveled down by conformity,—i would that the young girl in her novitiate of womanhood, the future mother, might early become the little exponent of this art of the toilet, her own dressmaker in short—she who one day shall make the dresses of her children. but with the taste and the gift to improvise, to express herself in that masterpiece of feminine personality and skill—a gown, without which a woman is no more than a bundle of rags."

the dress you have made for yourself is almost always the most becoming, and, however that may be, it is the one that pleases you most. women of leisure too often forget this; working women, also, in city and country alike. since these last are costumed by dressmakers and milliners, in very doubtful imitation of the modish world, grace has almost [146]disappeared from their dress. and has anything more surely the gift to please than the fresh apparition of a young working girl or a daughter of the fields, wearing the costume of her country, and beautiful from her simplicity alone?

these same reflections might be applied to the fashion of decorating and arranging our houses. if there are toilettes which reveal an entire conception of life, hats that are poems, knots of ribbon that are veritable works of art, so there are interiors which after their manner speak to the mind. why, under pretext of decorating our homes, do we destroy that personal character which always has such value? why have our sleeping-rooms conform to those of hotels, our reception-rooms to waiting-rooms, by making predominant a uniform type of official beauty?

what a pity to go through the houses of a city, the cities of a country, the countries of a vast continent, and encounter everywhere certain forms, identical, inevitable, exasperating by their repetition! how esthetics would gain by more simplicity! instead of this luxury in job lots, all these decorations, pretentious but vapid from iteration, we should have an infinite variety; happy improvisations would [147]strike our eyes, the unexpected in a thousand forms would rejoice our hearts, and we should rediscover the secret of impressing on a drapery or a piece of furniture that stamp of human personality which makes certain antiques priceless.

let us pass at last to things simpler still; i mean the little details of housekeeping which many young people of our day find so unpoetical. their contempt for material things, for the humble cares a house demands, arises from a confusion very common but none the less unfortunate, which comes from the belief that beauty and poetry are within some things, while others lack them; that some occupations are distinguished and agreeable, such as cultivating letters, playing the harp; and that others are menial and disagreeable, like blacking shoes, sweeping, and watching the pot boil. childish error! neither harp nor broom has anything to do with it; all depends on the hand in which they rest and the spirit that moves it. poetry is not in things, it is in us. it must be impressed on objects from without, as the sculptor impresses his dream on the marble. if our life and our occupations remain too often without charm, in spite of any outward distinction they may have, it is because we have [148]not known how to put anything into them. the height of art is to make the inert live, and to tame the savage. i would have our young girls apply themselves to the development of the truly feminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. the triumph of woman's charm is in that work. only a woman knows how to put into a home that indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, "the housetop rejoices and is glad." they say there are no such things as fairies, or that there are fairies no longer, but they know not what they say. the original of the fairies sung by poets was found, and is still, among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, mend rents with cheerfulness, nurse the sick with smiles, put witchery into a ribbon and genius into a stew.

it is indisputable that the culture of the fine arts has something refining about it, and that our thoughts and acts are in the end impregnated with that which strikes our eyes. but the exercise of the arts and the contemplation of their products is a restricted privilege. it is not given to everyone to possess, to comprehend or to create fine things. yet there is a kind of ministering beauty [149]which may make its way everywhere—the beauty which springs from the hands of our wives and daughters. without it, what is the most richly decorated house? a dead dwelling-place. with it the barest home has life and brightness. among the forces capable of transforming the will and increasing happiness, there is perhaps none in more universal use than this beauty. it knows how to shape itself by means of the crudest tools, in the midst of the greatest difficulties. when the dwelling is cramped, the purse limited, the table modest, a woman who has the gift, finds a way to make order, fitness and convenience reign in her house. she puts care and art into everything she undertakes. to do well what one has to do is not in her eyes the privilege of the rich, but the right of all. that is her aim, and she knows how to give her home a dignity and an attractiveness that the dwellings of princes, if everything is left to mercenaries, cannot possess.

thus understood, life quickly shows itself rich in hidden beauties, in attractions and satisfactions close at hand. to be one's self, to realize in one's natural place the kind of beauty which is fitting there—this is the ideal. how the mission of [150]woman broadens and deepens in significance when it is summed up in this: to put a soul into the inanimate, and to give to this gracious spirit of things those subtle and winsome outward manifestations to which the most brutish of human beings is sensible. is not this better than to covet what one has not, and to give one's self up to longings for a poor imitation of others' finery?