“Stay where you are.”

I received a letter the other day in which the writer said:  “Amber, I want to come to the city and earn my living.  What chance have I?” And I felt like posting back an immediate answer and saying:  “Stay where you are.”  I didn’t do it, though, for I knew it would be useless.  The child is bound to come, and come she will.  And she will drift into a third-rate Chicago boarding-house, than which if there is anything meaner—­let us pray!  And if she is pretty she will have to carry herself like snow on high hills to avoid contamination.  If she is confiding and innocent the fate of that highly persecuted heroine of old-fashioned romance, Clarissa Harlowe, is before her.  If she is homely the doors of opportunity are firmly closed against her.  If she is smart she will perhaps succeed in earning enough money to pay her board bill and have sufficient left over to indulge in the maddening extravagance of an occasional paper of pins or a ball of tape!  What if, after hard labor, and repeated failure, she does secure something like success?  No sooner will she do so, than up will step some dapper youth who will beckon her over the border into the land where troubles just begin.  She won’t know how to sew, or bake, or make good coffee, for such arts are liable to be overlooked when a girl makes a career for herself, and so love will gallop away over the hills like a riderless steed, and happiness will flare like a light in a windy night.  Oh, no, my little country maid, stay where you are, if you have a home and friends.  Be content with fishing for trout in the brook rather than cruising a stormy sea for whales.  A great city is a cruel place for young lives.  It takes them as the cider press takes juicy apples, sun-kissed and flavored with the breath of the hills, and crushes them into pulp.  There is a spoonful of juice for each apple, but cider is cheap!

III.

A cowardly mate.

I know a wife who is waiting, safe and sound in her father’s home, for her young husband to earn the money single handed to make a home worthy of her acceptance.  She makes me think of the first mate of a ship who should stay on shore until the captain tested the ability of his vessel to weather the storm.  Back to your ship, you cowardly one!  If the boat goes down, go down with it, but do not count yourself worthy of any fair weather you did not help to gain!  A woman who will do all she can to win a man’s love merely for the profit his purse is going to be to her, and will desert him when the cash runs low, is a bad woman and carries a bad heart in her bosom.  Why, you are never really wedded until you have had dark days together.  What earthly purpose would a cable serve that never was tested by a weight?  Of what use is the tie that binds wedded hearts together if like a filament of floss it parts when the strain