Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, Jenny June by Various

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Wisdom seems to have been the same always, but each one has to learn
its lessons for himself. That is the reason why there is so little
apparent progress in essential truths. There are always those who have
grown into their realization; there are always those who are at the
threshold, and who must travel over the same paths, for we can none of
us acquire true wisdom for another; it must become a part of
ourselves, of our own moral and spiritual consciousness.

"It is all very well for you," says one; "you have never known the
pinch of poverty." How do you know that? We none of us know how and
where the shoe has pinched another person's foot. It is not our
business to know, but it is our business to prevent our soreness from
becoming sourness and bitterness. It is our business to make the
pathway of others as pleasant as we can, so that their unseen corns
shall irritate them as little as possible. All the wisdom of the days
that have been, and the days that are, will be found in the following
lines from Goethe's "Tasso":

"Would'st thou fashion for thyself a seemly life?
Then fret not over what is past and gone;
And spite of all thou mayest have lost behind,
Yet act as if thy life were just begun.
What each day wills, enough for thee to know,
What each day wills, the day itself will tell.
Do thine own task, and therewith be content;
What others do that shall thou fairly judge.
Be sure that thou no mortal brother hate,
Then all beside leave to the Master Power."

A People's Church[1]

"What would you do if you were rich?" This is a question often asked,
and readily answered by those who have not wealth of their own to
dispose of, for there is nothing easier than to give away other
people's money. But it is more difficult to the conscientious, who
feel that their unearned millions ought to inure in some way to the
public benefit, yet do not always see the way to the reconciling of
their own conditions and circumstances with that use of money which
seems to them wisest and best.

[Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.]

As a rule it may safely be assumed that if all who are poor were
suddenly made rich, they would do as the majority of our rich men do
with their money--keep it. But it is at least pleasant to think how
generous one might be, and as the rich occasionally are; and I propose
to suggest one object that I hope will one day be realized in this
great city, where everything good is possible, as well as everything
evil, and which only needs to take vital root in some active mind to
become a living reality.

Within a certain area New York may be called a city of churches, but
they are churches for the rich; solemn, imposing, cathedral-aisled,
glass-stained, costly, munificently beneficed, elegantly pastored--God
locked in, the poor locked out. I know there are "mothers'" meetings
and "mite" societies, and all the rest of it, but all the same the
poor woman in her old shawl and bonnet would not think of entering one
of those expensive pews, nor does the man in his working suit feel
that that is the place for him. Outside, the majority of churches take
no account of the necessity for the consolation, the comfort, the
upbuilding, the refreshment of religion, save and only for certain
hours on Sunday, and then it must be in full toggery, and in company
with, the eminently respectable.

The most beautiful thing about the old churches abroad is not their
splendor of carving and painting, but that they stand with, open doors
week days and Sundays, for the people to enter; and they do enter. The
market woman with her basket drops in for a moment on her way home
from the labor of her weary day. The old woman totters in to say her
"Ave Maria," the young woman to pray away her perplexities. Even the
business man sometimes finds it a resource from his struggles and
temptations. The poor, with their crowded houses and narrow quarters,
have so little privacy as to make quiet, and even an opportunity for
self-communion, a luxury. Then how often in the perplexities which
fill their lives they desire for a little while a retreat, a refuge
where they can think, perhaps receive a word of counsel, at least find
an atmosphere of absolute peace and restfulness.

The Monday prayer-meeting, the afternoon exhortation; the evening
conference of the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, or the
Congregationalists, are not what is wanted; nor is it a cold and
barn-like edifice which makes one feel, if one goes to call upon God,
as though He were out, and could only be seen at stated times, and by
the will of the sexton and the trustees.

A people's church is wanted, where the people can come and go as they
please; which asks no questions, which is always open, which has brief
singing and organ services that all and any people of any kind and
degree may attend and feel themselves welcome. A morning service of
praise, a mid-day song of rejoicing, a vesper hymn of thankfulness. No
word of condemnation, no word of controversy, no word of doubt, no
word of assertion or denial; only unceasing love, continued and
eternal recognition of human kinship and readiness to minister to any
soul's need as far as it may be reached and helped.

No one minister could perform its offices; its servants would have to
be in a manner consecrated to its work, and they should be men and
women who have suffered, and therefore know, but who would find more
reason for rejoicing than lamentation; who would possess gifts of
music and oratory, and whose personal influence would be strong for
righteousness.

There are great churches with scattered congregations, in Fifth
avenue; there are a few poor churches, and small, for which no one
cares, and which offer no attractions to the over-flowing population
of Mott street. The spring and summer will soon come, and then these
great churches will be closed, their pew-owners distributed over lake
and mountain in all the different parts of the wide world. But the
"people" will be here. People who work in foundries and shops, who
live in tenement-houses; people who earn a hand-to-mouth living as
clerks, book-keepers, seamstresses and petty store-keepers; people who
have to stay in such homes as they can support because they cannot
afford to break them up and go elsewhere.

For these people and their children there is only the street. The
children occupy the street. For four or five months in the year they
make life hideous, especially on Sunday, by noise and exhibition of
vandalism that would disgrace the savages of any age or nation. The
police acknowledge themselves powerless to prevent it. It is simply
the exercise of undirected faculty which might be turned to account,
but which has only noise, confusion, and street warfare for its
opportunity for exercise.

There are possibilities in these congregations of the highways and
byways, and when we have our people's church or churches, open all the
year, and all the night as well as all the day, and the voices of the
angels for sweetness, singing love and peace on earth, in an anthem
that pierces the roof, and with the tones of a mighty organ to
emphasize to all the world its message, and it is not a question of
clothes, many people will be glad to listen, and will find an
influence in the music, in the willingness, in the free-heartedness,
in the sympathy, in the kindness, in the spirit of brotherhood, that
they would not get out of preaching nor dogma.

Whom are we waiting for to build this church? Is it a woman? Surely it
is an opportunity that carries the two-fold blessing.

Notes, Letters and Stray Leaves

A "free lance" is less free than the organs of a party. In one case it
means at least the opinions of a group; in the other, the dogmatism of
the one who wields the lance. Nothing is less free than the
self-styled freedom of the individual.

Enthusiasm implies a certain narrowness of vision. When people can
take a broad view they can see the elements of goodness or beauty
everywhere, and they cease to be enthusiastic in regard to one. The
great popular preachers are not university men, or those who are quiet
and literary in style, but strong, dogmatic men.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the so-called new woman
and the new man is this, that she is seizing every opportunity that
opens up new avenues of individual employment, while he is discovering
and storing energy to save himself from doing any work at all. The old
man made other men, and women too, work for him, the new man is making
the hitherto uncontrolled forces his servants, locking them up in such
small compass that a twist of the wrist will start the crash of
worlds.

The notes of the great god Pan, so "piercingly sweet by the river"--a
far cry and a weary way from Pan to Handel and Beethoven; yet during
all that time music has been the joy and the consolation of
peoples,--all except the Quakers.

If Poetry is the prophet of the future, music expresses all
emotions,--love, joy, fear, above all, aspiration. Music is
essentially religious, and has inspired the most perfect forms of
emotional composition we know.

I take off my hat to the new man--that is, I would if I wore one, but
I wear a bonnet, and pin it on with long, sharp-pointed things which
if they were not used voluntarily would be considered instruments of
torture. Think of the man who is testing the force of dynamite--who is
holding lightning bolts in his hand and forcing them to do the work
which he has planned for them, who is taking the altitude of the
mountains in Mars in his observatory in the air at midnight,--think of
these men stopping to swear while they ran the murderous little weapon
through six thicknesses of buckram, lining, velvet, lace, feathers,
ribbon and hair--to fasten on their bonnets!

Letter to the New York Woman's Press Club

October, 1900.

My dear Friends and Fellow-Members:

It was really a grief to me not to be able to meet you individually
and collectively before leaving to be absent the entire season. The
accident which disabled me for the summer, threatens to cripple me for
the winter also, and in this condition of dependence and general
disability, it seemed best to go where I could have seclusion, and the
care of some member of my own family.

I resign my place among you with less reluctance because the Woman's
Press Club is now strong and well able to guard its own interests, and
direct its own affairs. It will, I am sure, be all the better and
stronger from being thrown upon its own resources, and made to depend
wholly upon the potent efforts which have been evoked, and which may
be still further developed on the part of its membership.

It will be a source of the deepest satisfaction to me in my retirement
to think of you in connection with the happy times we have had, and
the good work done during the past three years, and also of the spirit
of loving fellowship which has grown so strong and so deep. Nothing
can give greater pleasure than to hear of your continued growth and
prosperity, of continued endeavor to make the work effective, and the
life of the Woman's Press Club beautiful and useful.

Remember that a well-rounded club is an epitome of the world; that it
never can and never ought to be perfect according to any one
individual's idea of perfection, for every one's ideal is different;
and it is the unity in this diversity which constitutes the spiritual
life of the club, as the soul animates and inspires the body.

Exalt the club. Bring your best to the front. Extinguish personal
aims. Mind not at all the little picking and carping of human
gadflies, whose desire to extract blood is perhaps a survival of their
species, and an evidence of their unfitness for human companionship.

I think of you at every gathering, and if you remember me, show it in
your determination to make the Woman's Press Club of Greater New York
an honor to the metropolis of the New World and to American womanhood.

J.C. CROLY.
Hill Farm, Hersham,
Walton-on-Thames, England.

Letter to Sorosis

May, 1899.

To my dear friends and fellow-members of Sorosis:

On the eve of my departure from New York for a season, my heart turns
towards Sorosis with a depth of affection I find it difficult to put
into words. For thirty years it has held a large place in my life. It
has represented the closest companionship, the dearest friendships,
the most serious aspirations of my womanhood. The past is filled with
delightful memories, social and intellectual, of which it was the
happy instrument and inspiration. Its galleries are stored with living
pictures of noble women who were with us, who are always of us, who
have become a part of that eternal source of spiritual life from which
the best things spring. What is the secret of the strength of Sorosis?
What is its value to the community and the world at large? It is, as a
centre of unity. This is our Holy Grail,--and this we are bound never
to defame, or defile by thought, word or deed.

We planted the seed not in Sorosis alone, but in the General
Federation; and it is our duty to see that it is preserved in its
integrity. Sorosis does not want place or power in the organization
she created, but it is hers to see that the great principle it
embodied is not lost sight of. That the limitless growth and
expansion provided for in its foundations are always from centre to
circumference, not in sections; and that as differences are not
recognized in the local organization, so there can be no north, south,
east, or west in the general organization, nor any separation or
division of interests. This is the aim of Sorosis:--to perfect within
its own membership that unity in diversity which is the basis of its
life, and the source of its growth; and, as far as its strength and
influence extend, preserve it as the foundation of a united womanhood.

The consolation I feel in going away is that I shall find you here
when I return; not, I hope, crippled and disabled as now, but able to
be among you once more. I leave a monument of the woman's club in the
"Women's Club History," which carries marvellous testimony to the
ideals and aspirations of the woman of the home--for this is the woman
of the club.

God bless and keep you all! I wish I could look into your kind faces
individually, and thank you for all that Sorosis past and present has
been to me.

Faithfully yours,
J.C. CROLY.

Letter to the Society of American Women in London

November, 1901.

To the Society of American women in London:

On the eve of my departure for America, I desire to express to the
Society of American Women something of what I feel sure I owe it
individually and collectively since its initial gathering in the
beginning of March.

My visit to England has been made under extremely trying and painful
circumstances. I had expected no participation in any social
functions. I had communicated with only a very few near and dear
friends. Formal intercourse with comparative strangers seemed
impossible.

But there was nothing strange in the atmosphere of the American
Society. It provided at once an atmosphere in which one could breathe
freely, so kindly and so cordial were its tone and spirit.

It formed at once a social centre in which the best elements
contributed to the most varying attractions. It brought together many
of the most charming and progressive women in English as well as
American society, and also many of the brilliant women we read about,
but rarely meet.

In addition, it performed a most useful office in extending the hand
of welcome from American women in London to the representative women
who attended the International Council; and has a future of
exceptional character in filling a social need which has never been
filled by the official representatives in republican America.

It is not too much to say that it has put life in London in quite a
new and much more attractive aspect to American women, by focusing the
best elements and bringing them in touch with each other. With time
and development the highest results of the modern co-operative spirit
should be attained, and the fulness of a life that will enrich each
individual member, and reach out beyond to an ever widening sphere of
happy influence.

J.C. CROLY.

Letter to the Pioneer Club of London

June, 1901.

To the Finance Committee of the Pioneer Club:

I hope I shall not be considered as taking a liberty in presenting a
subject of some importance for your consideration.

There is a feeling in some clubs and among some clubwomen that the
time has arrived for expanding the club idea and at the same time
drawing closer the ties which unite women in the form of organized
fellowship, which the modern clubwoman recognizes as a potent and most
valued element of her club life. It is believed, in short, that the
time has come for the initial steps to be taken for the formation of a
European Federation of Women's Clubs.

There are many reasons which seem to make it eminently proper that the
Pioneer Club should be the one to take these initial steps. It is the
oldest and best known woman's club in London. It was founded upon the
broadest human lines by a woman who possessed in the highest degree
that sixth sense which the nineteenth century contributes to the
twentieth--the sense of the Universal. This led her to affiliate the
Pioneer Club in the beginning with the General Federation of Women's
Clubs in the United States, and should inspire it to progressive life
and work.

The initial step is not formidable. It is, if thought desirable,
simply to address a circular letter to women's clubs on record,
wherever they may be known to exist, proposing a basis of federated
affiliation, and inviting them to unite in forming a grand Federation
of organized bodies of women capable of realizing any purpose upon
which they might bring their united forces to bear.

If it is said, "Of what use is such a Federation?" I might point to
many instances of educational and municipal progress, and social
reform in America effected by this combined effort. But details are
as nothing compared with the one great, glowing, ultimate aim of the
solidarity of thoughtful, high-minded, intelligent, progressive women.
It is written in the stars. It will surely become an accomplished
fact; and there are other clubs willing to take the initiative; but it
is fitting that the Pioneer Club should lead, and by its wisdom and
judgment lend an added dignity to noble endeavor.

J.C. CROLY.

Letters to Mrs. Dimies T.S. Denison, President of Sorosis

22 AVENUE ROAD,
LONDON, NW., January 27, 1899.

My dear Mrs. Denison:

Thank you very much for your delightful letter. It was so good and
heartening. Its spirit was so representative of the best that
club-life has given us that it made me feel more than ever thankful
for Sorosis and for that reserved strength and all-roundedness of
resource and character which makes it able to successfully tide over
any difficulties.

I have not heard of any effort to form a London Sorosis, nor do I
think it could be done successfully on precisely the same lines. If we
were starting a club to-day it would differ considerably from the one
started thirty-one years ago. That had to be formed out of such
materials as were available at that time, and built as it knew and as
it grew. Its virtue lay in its breadth, in the true and scientific
character of its conception. It made a centre and worked from that to
the radiating points of an illimitable circle, not knowing precisely
where these would take it, but with all the faith of Columbus in
results founded upon essential principles. We had no idea at the time,
that at every one of these farther points other centres were being
formed that also, in their own time and way, struck out feelers and
shafts, and thus became part of that great system of creative force,
which, still acting on its central and original idea of a larger
unity, brought together the General Federation. This is the mother
idea which Sorosis represents, and which needs no legal enactment to
enforce. It stands for this as much in London as in New York, and in
its own way has become unique. It lacks some of the elements of the
newer clubs, but it contained the germ of them all, and is essentially
a true growth, an aggregation of all the qualities of a diverse and
unified womanhood;--not by making it something else, but by studying
its own spirit and life, and the genius it has developed.

First, it stands for a wide hospitality and the generous recognition
of all other women; for high standards in literature, art, ethics, and
all the interests belonging to and growing out of them. Above all, it
stands for home duty; for honor, faithfulness, loyalty, courage and
truth. Finally, it stands for subjection;--that highest subjection of
the one will to the many; of that subordination of our own dominant
desire to the spirit and will of God, represented by the spirit and
will of the majority. For the voice of the people is in a real sense
the voice of God, whether we recognize it or not.

O my beloved Sorosis, you are the core of my heart! What have I said
but that you represent an ideal of life and character, and that each
member should hold herself responsible for its preservation and its
increasing beauty and value?

Faithfully yours,
J.C. CROLY,
Honorary President.

Dearest Mrs. Denison: When I began this letter it was intended for you
alone; as I went on it seemed as if it might find a little place at
the Breakfast. Use your own judgment in regard to having an extract
made for that purpose...

Yours lovingly, J.C.C.

QUEEN'S ROAD, ST. JOHN'S WOOD,
LONDON, N.W., April 16, 1899.

My dear President:

What a lovely programme! I am so proud to show it, and so happy that
Sorosis is going on so beautifully. Have I congratulated you? If not,
let me do it now with all my heart. I always knew your time would
come, and that you would make a popular as well as a wise president.
You have a light touch, but a very appreciative one, and that good
thing--a fine sense of humor. You do not take yourself too seriously,
but you give the best of yourself unreservedly. God bless you for
carrying the banner of Sorosis up to its highest level, and
maintaining its dignity in a way worthy of its reputation.

The London Club, or Society of American Women in London, is
flourishing. The president comes often to see me, and in her address
at the second luncheon, April 10th, said that she considered it a
special providence that I was in London at the beginning; that I had
been of the greatest help to her, and that she should always look upon
me as their "Club Mother." I began to wonder if that was what my leg
was broken for, and how many more times I might have to be cut to
pieces to make "Mother" enough to go around.

Mrs. Henry Norman (Muriel Dowie, author of "A Girl in the
Carpathians") made a brilliant little speech. She is delightful, and
very anxious to visit America. Her husband is the Englishman who of
his own choice graduated from Harvard. He has written some very
appreciative articles about America...

I hope I shall know when Mrs. F. and Mrs. L. are coming, and something
of their plans. At least how long they will stay in London. Won't you
be so good as to tell them this and give them my address?

I am endeavoring now to put myself under treatment for the pain and
weakness I feel when I try to walk (with sticks) in the street...

Really yours,
J.C. CROLY.

7 RUE D'ASSAS, PARIS, FRANCE,
October 3, 1900.

My very dear President and Friend:

Your letter was most welcome. I have been in a quiet little country
place since coming from Ober-Ammergau, and know no one. I thought much
of you in those quiet days, and wished to write, but waited to hear,
and the echoes did come in a way I understood, for I had letters
before leaving America which were an indication of the general trend
of thought and desire. Of course I never for a moment misunderstood
your attitude in the matter of the election... You could not help your
election. [Referring to the first vice-presidency of the General
Federation.]

I am very, very sorry the color question has been raised again. It
almost made a split six years ago. It was, at the best, premature. It
was a sacrifice of the greater to the less, of the real good we had
attained and the ideal towards which we were working, to a theoretical
possibility which had not yet presented itself. We have yet a thousand
obstacles to overcome within ourselves; a thousand problems to solve;
an ideal to work towards capable of infinite expansion. But we should
not strain the limits while the centre still lacks order and form, and
depends upon the wisdom with which it is guided for permanence.

We have made some dreadful blunders,... but ideals are not stones in
the street; they are stars in the sky. They are always beyond us; we
cannot wear them as breast-pins but we can work towards them...

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