Although we must stand alone in the spiritual life, we can not stand alone in the material one, for life is like a great interwoven fabric where one thread holds another. Think of the way in which all the relations of our social life are complicated, so that no one lives in the civilized world who is not doing something for some one else, either physically or intellectually or spiritually, paying rent, it might be said, for the lease of life. The bad are pulling down the good, the good are lifting up the bad, the poor are working for the rich, the rich are spending for the poor, and even the baby of the pauper is creating a demand that some one must supply.
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| The good are lifting up the bad. |
The wealthy woman stepping from her stone mansion to her carriage is an illustration, in her mere material affairs, of the way in which all humanity works together, and works for each member of itself. To say nothing of those influences that have shaped her heart and soul, how many workers have
contributed to send her abroad in the guise in which she appears? to how many workers has she contributed a fractional support? The quarry-man has wrought the stone for the mansion; the kiln-man has burned the brick; the woodman has felled the lumber; the miner has sent the iron and lead; carpenter and turner, mason and blacksmith and marble-worker and plumber, and all the kindred trades, have been at her service. The watchman has patrolled the street at night for her soft slumbers in that mansion ; the laborer has made that street, and has cleaned it; the lamp-lighter has lighted the gas before it; powerful officials, learned doctors of the boards of health, committees of the city government, have seen that all this was properly done, and she has paid her stipend to assessors, recorders, and receivers of taxes for having it done. Slaughterers, leather-dressers, carriage-makers, again, have afforded her the coach into which she steps ; some one of the old countries, or rather the influences working there, have probably sent her coachman and footman; the farmer, who supplies much on her table, has raised her horses. And for that same table has the vaquero driven the herd of steers that came sweeping up from bayou and prairie of the far New Mexican and Texan regions; have flocks of fowl been brought from the Northwest ; have fruits been pulled in the tropics, and sweetmeats been sent from the East; has the fisher in the Columbia taken salmon, and the Hindoo on the bank of the Ganges sent hot sauces; has the peasant of the Rhine tended his grapes, and pressed the must. Look then at her array: the farmer has bent under the sun picking the cotton that enters into some portion of it; the flax-raiser has been in her employ; the Irish girl at home has turned the woven linen for her in sun and dew; the maidens of France have tended the silkworms for her, and reeled the cocoons; the shuttles have tossed to and fro for her in the looms of Lyons; industrious Orientals have squatted at their rude frames embellishing the rich stuffs she folds about her; while minors in the diamond mines have dug and delved for her at one side of the globe, and fishermen have stripped the seal at the other. For her, too, have the keels of ships been laid, to bring her these silks and cashmeres and furs and jewels; for her have sailors braved the mid-ocean storms, have pilots gone out to bring the ships to port through curling breakers; for her the watcher in his solitary sea-washed tower kindles the light-house lamp each evening on the edge of dark. For her, too, have the shining lines of railway steel been laid, and the trains led thundering over them by engineer and fireman, bringing her fineries and dainties; for her has the daily paper been struck off, with editor, reporter, and printer on her payroll; for her delectation did the morning news run at midnight over the telegraph wires; for her safety has the sentinel paced all night on the lonely seawall in the harbor defense, and have bodies of troops been moved up and down on the frontier haunted by the tomahawk: For her pleasure has the inspiration of the musician come, has painter painted, and statuary carved; has the performer spent weary hours of practice with his instrument; has the actor plodded through his lines, the dancer through her steps, before the curtain rises on the scene where all joy and suffering are fused in swift sparkle and beauty For her the judge sits on his bench to administer justice; for her even the chief of the nation holds the reins of power, and one might say that for her all the nations of the earth exist, and kings and queens and emperors sit upon their thrones. And to each and all of these, from peasant to prince, who thus work for her she pays tribute, and is, in turn, their feudatory. She can not do without them, as they can not do without her; her life is their life, her wishes give them their wishes. And what is true of the rich woman is true of the poor woman as well. For although she have not a dollar but what she earns with her hard and pitiful laundry-work, she does not spend it without receiving service and paying tribute also to all the crafts and trades that supply her needs, and the radius in which she is felt is just as the circle of her wants is wide or narrow; and the rich woman is her "bound woman" again, for one furnishes the other with the clean linen that she wants, and one furnishes the other with the money that she wants! With the unequal fortune of the two there is also a mutual dependence.
And if the dependence is so intimate in purely material things, how close is it in things of the spiritual domain, in the mental and moral world. What surmise and suspicion of evil does not swing from one to another in scandal, till it mows down its swath before it? What theft, in the simple injury of the loss of the loser, does not entail trouble passing again from one to another, and in the injury of the crime to the taker does not entail other trouble on all with whom his degradation comes in contact, not only in his diminished power to do good, but in his increased aptitude to do evil? What wicked thought can prompt the speaking of a wicked word that its vibration shall not cause the air to thrill, and make some other voice its echo? For we can neither do nor think wrong without injuring, in degree as the cuttle-fish darkens the water about him all those within the limit of our influence. Let us be ever so much accountable to fate and to our consciences as separate individuals, we are yet more certainly congregated and bound together in one great circulation and interchange than the atoms of some vast polyp building its coral reef in the South Pacific, and every one's self-respect and reverence must have its effect upon the individuality of every other soul.
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