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SADHVI BHAGAWATI SARASWATI

COME HOME TO YOURSELF

Wisdom for Life from Parmarth Niketan Ashram

PENGUIN BOOKS
 Contents

Introduction
From Hollywood to Holy Woods

The Purpose of Life

Connecting to the Divine

Knowing and Finding the Purpose of Human Life
Success and Spiritual Development
The Path of Spirituality
Looking for Something versus Running Away

The Mind

Calming and Understanding the Wandering Mind

Helpful Tools for Our Spiritual Journey
Breaking Out of Negative Patterns
The Mind and Conditioning
Withdrawing the Senses

Our Emotions

Using Anger as a Positive Tool for Action

How to Deal with Disappointment in Our Lives
Overcoming Fear and Anxiety
Overcoming Temptations
Non-Judgement
Compassion
Love
How to Deal with Loss
Desires and Attachment to the Fruit of Our Actions
Meditation
Renunciation

Spirituality throughout Our Lives

Creating Change
Dharmic Relationships
Raising Spiritual Children
Parents
Living through the Golden Years

Conclusion
Footnote
Love

Follow Penguin
Copyright
 PENGUIN ANANDA
COME HOME TO YOURSELF

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati lives and teaches at the Parmarth

Niketan Ashram on the banks of the Ganga. She is a graduate of
Stanford University and holds a PhD in psychology. She is also vice-
chair of the United Nations Faith Advisory Council on Religion. She
spearheads many social development projects as secretary-general
of the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance and president of the Divine
Shakti Foundation.
 Introduction

I vividly remember the first satsang I gave. It was about thirteen or

fourteen years ago. I had been in India for ten or eleven years by
that point, living, doing sadhana and seva at Parmarth Niketan
Ashram in Rishikesh under the guidance and blessings of my guru,
Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji. One evening, we were gathered
in Pujya Swamiji’s jyopri , the bamboo and gobar (cow dung) hut in
his garden, following the Ganga aarti ceremony on the banks of the
sacred river. Gathering together after the aarti was a near-daily
ritual. His garden door was open to anyone seeking darshan,
blessings or our involvement and assistance in a charitable project.
Or, frequently, it was a time for people to ask spiritual questions.
That evening, there was a group from America, and one of them
asked a question about anger and forgiveness. Pujya Swamiji turned
to me and said, ‘Sadhviji.’ I waited to hear the rest of the sentence. I
expected him to give me some instruction, say, ‘Sadhviji, please ask
the boy to bring books for this group.’ So, I waited. But no further
instruction came. It was just ‘Sadhviji’. I turned to Pujya Swamiji. His
eyes were now closed, and his hands were in dhyana mudra upon
his knees. Suddenly, I realized he wanted me to answer the
question. I panicked.
I had already been doing a lot of public speaking, particularly
about Indian culture, on tours for the Encyclopedia of Hinduism
project and at Hindu temples and events. However, those were
situations where I knew in advance that I was going to have to give
a lecture. I usually had some time, even if it were just ten minutes
on the stage when Pujya Swamiji would signal to me, ‘You will also
speak.’ But here, there was no time to even gather my thoughts.
I closed my eyes and tried to recollect all the knowledge I had
about anger and forgiveness. I regularly wrote articles for Pujya
Swamiji and had written several on the subject of emotions and the
importance of forgiving, forgetting and moving forward. So the topic
wasn’t new, but I still needed a while to organize my ideas and
thoughts. I tried to sift through the index cards stored away in my
mind. Growing up, when I had written papers for schoolwork or
studied for exams, my parents had taught me to use 3x5-inch index
cards to put topics, ideas and points in systematic order. It worked
beautifully. However, that method was not coming in handy now. I
could not arrange the cards in my brain quickly enough.
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, praying in the way children do, to
somehow make this group of people go away. Maybe if I just stayed
still like that and prayed very hard, this whole embarrassing situation
would turn out to be an illusion. I opened my eyes. The group was
still sitting there, staring at me expectantly. I looked again at Pujya
Swamiji. His eyes remained closed, and he was deep in meditation.
He was not going to rescue me from the deep ocean into which he
had just thrown me.
I closed my eyes once more, this time not to make the people
disappear but in full, humble surrender. I spoke to Pujya Swamiji
silently in my mind. I told him, ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t have it in me. I
don’t know what to tell these people. I don’t know the answer. I am
so sorry to disappoint you. I don’t have it in me.’
As I gently opened my eyes, fully prepared to face my own shame
in the eyes of the eagerly waiting group, my mouth also opened
slowly and, from somewhere other than my own brain, out flowed
the answer. I spoke and spoke to them, and tears filled their eyes
and rolled down their cheeks.
From that first satsang, till today, nearly fifteen years later, the
truth is the same. I don’t know the answer. It is not in me. However,
through the grace of God and the blessings of Pujya Swamiji, the
answers come through me. What each person needs to hear at a
given time and in a particular way simply flows through me, due to
no merit of my own. To be used as a vessel, as a vehicle for this flow
of graceful wisdom is the greatest blessing in my life.
For more than ten years now, each evening, following the sacred
Ganga aarti, I give satsang. People ask questions in person or send
them in advance by email or via social media. I am humbled every
evening by the gratitude in the eyes of the audience. I am deeply
aware that, as they are grateful to me for being the vehicle of
wisdom, so am I grateful to God for blessing me with the
opportunity to be this vehicle.
Satsang literally means ‘in the Presence of Truth’. It is a time of
delving deep into the truth of who we are and, of course, who we
are not. The ignorance of our false identification with the body, the
ego, our roles and identities is what leads to our suffering. If we can
free ourselves from this ignorance by diving deep into the truth, we
can learn to live in joy, peace and light. We can even, if our practice
is deep and dedicated enough, attain that divine state of self-
realization, enlightenment or moksha, freedom, which is ultimately
the goal of our life.
The pages of this book are filled with direct transcriptions of
answers from the satsangs I’ve given over the years, lovingly
transcribed and organized by Shanti Laughtin and edited by my
fantastic editor at Penguin, Roshini Dadlani.
As you read them, do not peruse them as you would a textbook.
These are not just teachings which we can read and say ‘oh wow’
and then forget all about them, have dinner, fight with our family,
watch TV and go to sleep. These are teachings for how we should
live.
Let the words carry you to the banks of Mother Ganga in
Rishikesh, and to the source of truth within yourself. The truth of
which I speak in my satsangs is the truth within all of us.
 From Hollywood to Holy Woods

How did you end up in India, taking sanyas ? What has

living in India taught you?

Most people go to India seeking enlightenment, or at least advanced

yoga studies. I went because I liked the food. Twenty years ago, I
had graduated from Stanford and was doing my PhD in psychology,
with only my dissertation pending. It was time for a travel break. I
agreed to go to India, a place I knew nothing about, only because I
was a staunch vegetarian. In India, I knew I wouldn’t have to grill
waiters in languages I didn’t speak about whether there was chicken
broth in their vegetable soup.
I was not religious. I was not even one of those people who say,
‘Well, I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.’ I had a bat mitzvah to
make my grandparents happy. It was just what you did. I was an
academic and a hippie. If anyone ever said you couldn’t dance all
night on Saturday at a Grateful Dead show and still ace a neuro-
psychology exam on Monday morning, I would have proven them
wrong. I was not consciously seeking or yearning for God’s grace,
and yet, thirty-six months after becoming one of the very few
students to ever get an A+ in Dr Phil Zimbardo’s ‘Psychology of Mind
Control’ class, I was sitting on the banks of the Ganga in Rishikesh,
India, with tears of ecstasy streaming down my face.
The transformation happened suddenly. ‘I’m going to put my feet
in the river,’ I said, after we dropped off our bags at the hotel. I
wasn’t expecting spiritual awakening, but it happened, even before
my toes touched the water. They were not sad tears I was crying of
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course, but they weren’t happy tears either. They were tears of the
Truth. Tears of coming home.
It was a visual experience, but it wasn’t only visual. It was full, it
was all of my senses; it was an experience of being in the presence
of the Divine.
That which was given to me as I stood on the banks of the Ganga
was more real than anything I had experienced in my twenty-five
years of life up to that point. It wasn’t even a decision to be made. I
have always been someone deeply committed to truth, and so there
was no way to turn back. Otherwise, I could envision trying to lock
up the part of me that had just had that experience, pretending it
hadn’t happened, and going back. But, being the person I am, there
was no way I was going to let myself do that. Even though it wasn’t
the package that I had ever anticipated happiness or life would
come in, it was what I had been given.
I spent the next several days in Rishikesh in meditative bliss. I
thought, ‘OK, this is where I belong, but where? How? Doing what?’
My connection with Parmarth Niketan, the ashram where I now
live, began simply as the pathway for me to go from the hotel to the
river. I was walking through the ashram one day, and I heard a voice
say, ‘You must stay here.’ I looked around to see who had spoken. If
there was a voice, clearly someone had spoken. There was no one.
Now, in my entire sphere of reference and experience, the only
people who heard voices were schizophrenics and, of course, Joan of
Arc. But since I definitely was not Joan of Arc and I really hoped I
was not schizophrenic, I did what any self-respecting scientist would
do: I ignored the voice. If no one had spoken, I hadn’t heard
anything.
About thirty seconds later, I heard it again: ‘You must stay here.’ I
looked up and noticed a sign that said ‘Office’. I went in and told
them I wanted to stay. At that time, spiritual India was not very
open to foreign women. They were perfectly polite, but they said I
needed to get special permission from the president of the ashram,
and unfortunately, he was out of town.
‘OK, so when is he due back?’ I asked.
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ they said.
Being American, I took their words at face value, and every day, I
went back and asked if the president had returned, and every day
they’d say, ‘Maybe tomorrow’, which I only later learnt is code for ‘I
have no idea’ in India. Finally, he did return, and he turned out to be
not only the administrative head of the ashram, but His Holiness
Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, one of the most revered
spiritual leaders of India.
‘You are welcome to stay,’ Swamiji told me.
That was what you could call the beginning. I’ve spent the last
twenty-three years in Rishikesh, engaged in study of the self and in
service to others.
So what has living in India taught me? First, stay open. The
universe has a plan for you. Yes, of course, we have to choose a
path and walk it, but we only do that until we get a sign that says,
‘Turn right now.’ Look at the caterpillar. It spends most of its life
crawling on the ground, and then one day, it hears a voice or it gets
a sign that says, ‘Climb the tree.’ Now, it’s never seen anyone go up
that tree and come back. Mom’s gone up, dad’s gone up, but no one
has come back. That tree is the Bermuda Triangle for caterpillars.
But when it receives the instruction to climb, it does. It gets a signal
to go out on the branch, weave itself into a cocoon and sometime
later, burst forth, jump and fly away. It has no idea how to fly! It’s
never flown before, but when it is time to jump, it does.
A caterpillar never misses a chance to become a butterfly because
it is too scared to climb a tree, or because it doesn’t know how to
weave a cocoon, or because it jumps out of the cocoon too soon and
plummets to the ground. It never becomes a butterfly that climbs
back down the tree instead of flying because it doesn’t believe it can
really fly.
 There is an intelligence in the universe that pervades all of
creation, including us. But we have to trust it, and we have to be
quiet and still enough to hear it. If the caterpillar spent its entire life
bemoaning the fact that the millipede got a thousand legs while it
got only twelve, it might miss the call to climb the tree.
The second lesson is that your self is much more important than
your shelf. Most of us spend a lot of time and energy focused on
filling our shelves with possessions, and we spend very little time
thinking about the fullness of our self. But it is in that fullness that
real abundance lies. No matter how much we have, most of us want
more. We think, if I could just have that, or achieve this, then I’d be
happy . But if our happiness were contingent upon filling shelves,
then happiness and abundance would always be an arm’s length
away.
When I first came to India, the local people would implore me,
‘Please, please come home for a meal, come for a cup of tea, come
for a cold drink.’ These were people who could not even afford to
properly feed their families, but they would ask till I agreed. I learnt
that abundance was not building mansions while others lived in
shacks, or eating caviar while others starved. Abundance is
connecting deeply with the fullness of our self, recognizing that our
cup runneth over and eagerly sharing with others.
Lastly, and most importantly, in service to others, I have
discovered the fullness within myself. Not from the perspective of
one who has, serving those who don’t, nor a humanitarian serving
the masses, but service of self to self.
If you trip and injure your right leg, your left leg will pick up the
extra weight. We call this limping. There is no need for anyone to
say, ‘Oh great humanitarian left leg, would you mind picking up a
little bit of extra weight?’ The left leg does not anticipate an award
or a gold star. It does it because it understands that the right leg is
self. That is the goal of service—to serve myself in you.
 In serving children, I found myself. We build schools and
orphanages, run women’s empowerment programmes and medical
care programmes, and install toilets, hand-washing stations and
water filters.
Men seem to be more comfortable urinating or defecating in
public. But women are raised right from childhood to protect their
bodies from public view.
Across India, many girls and women have to wait for darkness to
heed the call of nature. They don’t drink water or eat food during
the day, because otherwise they will feel the need to relieve
themselves. The resultant dehydration and malnutrition wreak havoc
on their bodies and, of course, on their unborn babies as well. Every
day, across the world, thousands of children die of diarrhoea, simply
due to lack of clean water, sanitation and hygiene.
This is why it’s a fundamental tenet of a deep, real, true spiritual
path to be of service to others, to provide for them as we provide for
ourselves. When I open my eyes from my meditation, if my
meditation is real and deep, I should experience oneness not only
with a formless Creator but also with Creation—our sisters and
brothers with whom we share this planet. Thus, we serve.
Pujya Swamiji explains that now, seeing the global crisis around
the dearth of clean water, sanitation and hygiene, which is the cause
for thousands of deaths occurring each day, we need to shift our
focus from building temples to building toilets. So we started
constructing toilets and hand-washing stations and teaching proper
sanitation. We formed the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, with
leaders of many different religions coming together and agreeing
that it is time to expand our definition of peace. It is no longer
enough to simply say, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Today, true peace can only
exist when our sisters and brothers of all races, religions and species
have access to safe, sufficient water, sanitation, hygiene, education
and primary healthcare. Children across the world are suffering and
dying. They are our responsibility.
 A spiritual awakening does not take us further from the world, it
brings us closer. Spiritual awakening does not separate us, it
connects us. Spiritual awakening is not about my bliss in the midst of
your misery. Spiritual awakening is awakening from the illusion that
who we are is based on what we earn, acquire or achieve. It is an
awakening into the reality that each of us is an embodiment of the
Divine. It is awakening out of the illusion of our separateness into
the reality of our oneness, a reality in which there is no place that I
end and you begin. It is awakening from a life that is in pieces into a
life of peace.
The Purpose of Life
 Connecting to the Divine

What is God, and what is our relationship with God?

No metaphor is perfect when it is God you’re speaking about. Words,

which are finite, are incapable of aptly describing that which is
infinite. Words are two-dimensional and cannot do justice to
something that defies dimension. By using words, we sort of run
circles around the Truth, inching closer to it bit by bit.
One way of thinking about God is akin to the way we perceive the
sun. Though the sun is not infinite, it is a useful analogy here. Trying
to talk about God is like placing many different containers on the
ground, each of which will give us a different reflection of the sun.
A blue container shaped like a bowl will reflect it differently from
the way a glass container that is vertical and translucent will. It’s the
same sun, but there are different images of it because the
containers are different.
So, too, God is one. There really is nothing but God; however, that
God is manifest, seen and perceived in an infinite number of ways
due to infinitely differing containers.
There is a teaching in the Upanishads: ‘Isavasyamidam sarvam
yatkinca jagatyam jagat.’ It means that everything in the universe is
pervaded by the Divine. There is nothing and no one that is not
pervaded by the Divine.
If there is nothing but God, that doesn’t mean that God is
everything but your boss, or God is present in everyone except your
mother-in-law, or everything is God except you. No scripture would
allow that. If everything is God, then everything is God.
 In our lives, what we tend to do is identify with the container. We
see the bowl instead of the reflection of the sun. When people ask,
‘Who are you?’ I say, ‘I’m female, I’m white, I’m forty-eight, I’m
American, I’m a sanyasi, I’m a PhD, these are my parents, this is my
life, this is how much I weigh, this is how tall I am, this is what I’m
allergic to, this is what I like and don’t like.’ But just as the bowl is a
vessel for the sun, all we are and all we have is a vessel for the
presence of God.
We can’t see the sun’s reflection until and unless we have a
vessel. Similarly, with our two eyes, we are only able to see God in
form. This is why we emphasize the opening of our third eye. So
many people ask, ‘Why do we put this tilak here between the eyes?
What does it mean?’ Well, one significant aspect of the tilak is that it
tells us: When I use these two physical eyes, I’m able to only see
form. I can see hair colour, skin, weight, height, gender, beauty and
clothes, but all this is illusion. The third eye chakra is actually the
energy centre of the power of discrimination, the power to
discriminate Truth from untruth. The Truth, that capital-T eternal
Truth, is that we’re divine. So when we wear the tilak or meditate on
the third eye, what we are actually telling God is: Oh God, let me
see from this eye rather than using these two physical eyes which
keep seeing falsehood after falsehood, separation after separation,
form after form, instead of essence. Oh God, I want to see content,
not form, I want to see essence, not form. I want to see the Truth.
The third eye sees that there is no separation between you and
me. If we perceive using only our physical eyes and thereby see only
false separation, then I see you as an object. I may love you, I may
hate you, I may want to bring you into my life, I may want to push
you out of my life, but either way you are a separate object. When I
am able to use my third eye, when I’m really living with the
awareness that there’s nothing but God, there is no separation and
there’s no place I end and you begin. It’s all God.
 There’s a great story of what happens to so many of us when we
embark on the spiritual path and gain some of this knowledge.
A Guru was teaching his disciples that everything is Brahma and
there is nothing but Brahma. One day, two of his disciples went into
the city and heard a loud shout that there was an elephant coming
their way. The man who was atop the elephant shouted, ‘Get out of
the way!’ But the disciple thought, ‘Well, my Guru says everything is
God, so I’m going to stay here because this elephant is just an
illusion. It’s really Brahma, it’s God, and I’m really Brahma, I’m not
this weak guy, so why do I have to get out of the way?’
The elephant handler was screaming at this point, ‘Get out of the
way, get out of the way!’ But the disciple said to himself, ‘No, no, it’s
all good, it’s all God, no problem!’ The elephant, of course, scooped
him up with his trunk and tossed him hundreds of yards away. He
lay there, broken. Finally, his fellow disciples came to where he lay
bleeding and in pain. He cried out to them, ‘I hate our Guru! He
gave us this false piece of information. That was a horrible elephant;
that was not God. I’m never going back to the ashram!’
The disciples went back and relayed everything to the Guru. The
Guru went to the man and asked him what had happened. The
disciple, in a fit of ego, replied, ‘I was just trying to implement your
teaching, you are the one who said everything is God. Look what the
elephant did to me.’
And the Guru replied, ‘Ah, but you really didn’t implement the
teaching.’
Perturbed, the man said that he saw the elephant as Brahma.
The Guru explained, ‘But what about the elephant handler who
told you to get out of the way? What about all of the people who
tried to grab you and pull you out of the way? I told you everything
is Brahma, but in your ego, you decided it was just going to be you
and the elephant. You left out the elephant handler, all the people
and all your fellow disciples who tried to help you.’
 Sadly, this is what happens to us. We tend to develop these very
narrow views about what being spiritual means. We think, I am God,
therefore you should do the dishes tonight. Therefore, you should
take care of me. Well, if I am God, then so are you, because God
doesn’t play favourites, there is no God that says, ‘I will be one with
you but not with them.’ When there is nothing but God, there is
nothing but God .

How can we implement, practically, the idea that there is

nothing but God?

It is not easy to move through the world remembering there is

nothing but God. We have to remember that yes, this is the ultimate
truth, and yet there is the Creator and there is creation, and that’s
us. Yes, at our core, we’re God. There is nothing but God. But as the
creation in this leela, this beautiful divine drama that God has
created, we have hearts that love and minds that think, we have the
ability to have compassion and the ability to lend a helping hand.
One of the tragic pitfalls of a superficial understanding of these
truths is that we tend to blindly use them to our benefit. We tell
ourselves, well, everything is God, so why do I have to do my
homework? Everything is God, so why give charity, why pay my
taxes, why do anything? If it’s all perfect, if there’s nothing but God,
why do I have to wake up in the morning and meditate and pray?
Such thinking lends itself to very challenging games of the ego.
So, what I have found, personally, is that it’s beautiful to hold that
Truth, to remember it, to know that it is the highest level of Truth,
but when I can’t live that Truth every moment of every day, I can at
least live my humanity, rather than push my humanity away. That’s a
trap we don’t want to fall into.
One way to think about existence is to imagine the old TV sets
that had dials to switch from one channel to another. On the highest
channel is the all-encompassing Truth in which it’s all God. But on
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another channel, we’re here in this human form, wherein we have
the ability to smile at each other, hug each other, help each other,
feed each other and use our talents and abilities to serve each other.
We don’t want to dismiss that, because if God had wanted us to
just disconnect entirely from the world and to let people suffer and
die, I do not believe we would’ve been born with the ability to
experience empathy and compassion, and to cry at the plight of one
another. If someone falls down in front of us, we don’t take a
moment to process in our brains: Is it God? Is it not God? No. We
just reach out and help. If we refuse to embrace our humanity, then
we would be throwing away a gift that God has given us. God is
perfect, and God gave us a human birth on purpose. We could have
been a leaf or an earthworm. Why did God make us human, give us
the capacity for consciousness, love and intuition?
So, we use those gifts, with an awareness that the perfect, all-
knowing God gave them to us for a reason. We hold in our
awareness that the highest, deepest, truest Truth is that it’s all
perfect, and we reach out and help the person who tripped in front
of us, because that channel of love and compassion also exists,
connecting us to one another, as long as we are tapping into the
best of being human.

How do we connect with our Divine Self, and then stay

connected?

First, I’m going to change the phrase to ‘True Self,’ because if we say
‘Divine Self’, it implies that there is a ‘non-divine self’; that is to say,
this part of me is my Divine Self, and this part of me is my non-
divine self. What we have is a True Self and a non-true self. The
non-true self is the stuff that most of us actually identify as: our
name, our age, where we’re from, the colour of our skin, our bank
account, our career, our titles, all that stuff we associate our lives
with, but which actually isn’t us. The reason we know all that isn’t
truly Self is because it keeps changing.
If you’re driving down the freeway and someone calls you on the
phone and asks, ‘Who are you?’ and you say, ‘I’m Exit 30,’ they will
say, ‘No, I didn’t ask where you are, I asked who are you.’ Then if
you say, ‘I told you, I’m Exit 30, but actually now I’m almost Exit 31,’
they would think that either you couldn’t hear them or that you had
gone crazy. We understand that Exit 30 or 31 is simply the
intersection of time and space that our vehicle has reached. That’s
where we are, but it’s not who we are.
If I say to you that I am forty-eight, female, white, American and
a sanyasi, all of that is true, none of it is a lie, and yet, it’s what we’ll
call the lowercase-t truth. It’s true at this exact intersection of time
and space. It’s my where , not my who . It’s not the capital-T Truth;
it’s just telling you the story of my vehicle and where it happens to
be at this exact intersection of time and space. But our True Self is
the Divine, the essence. This body is just the container. When we
connect with our True Self, what we have to do is sink beneath the
container. If we remain stuck on the container, we won’t get to the
essence.
If I pick up a glass of water and spend all my time marvelling at
how beautiful or ugly or solid or soft it is, it’s not going to quench
my thirst. In order to do that, I actually have to drink what’s inside.
There’s nothing wrong with admiring the beauty of the glass; it just
doesn’t do anything for my thirst. Similarly, there’s nothing wrong
with paying attention to our body vehicles—we’ve only got one, and
it’s a temple. If who we are is the Divine and the Divine lives in this
body vehicle, it means the vehicle is a temple. We have to take as
much care of it as we take care of our temples, our churches, our
synagogues, our mosques and wherever the Divine resides.
However, we shouldn’t confuse form for content, packaging for
essence.
 Our True Self is the essence, the spirit. There are so many ways to
connect with it. One simple and easy way is through a meditation
practice called ‘neti, neti ’, which means, ‘not this, not this’. We begin
literally by saying, ‘I am not my orange saree, I am not my skin, I
am not my bones . . .’ Should anyone doubt this, we know it is true
because the skin keeps sloughing off but ‘I’ am still here. My bones
break, but I’m still here. Similarly, I’m not my blood—I could get a
blood transfusion, donate blood, but I’d still be here. I’m not my
organs—I could get a transplant, but I’d still be here. We then go
deeper and deeper, recognizing that all of the parts of our body
actually slough off or regenerate over a period of time. After every
eight or nine years, I am brand new! If there is any grudge that I
am holding on to over something that happened eight or nine years
ago, it did not happen to the I who exists today!
Then we go a little bit deeper, and we say, ‘Well, I’m also not my
emotions. I’m not my anger.’ The reason I know this is because I’m
not always angry. I may be angry way too frequently but I’m not
always angry. When I’m not angry, I don’t cease to exist. If I am my
anger, I would cease to exist when I’m not angry. I’m not even my
thoughts, because there’s a very small space in between my
thoughts, and in that space, I don’t evaporate. If I did, if I were my
thoughts and I ceased to exist even momentarily in between my
thoughts, who would think the next thought?
After a while, maybe something else will come to us. ‘I’m the child
of an alcoholic.’ No, because that child is not who I am any more. My
body has literally completely regenerated its cells since I was that
child, and if I believe in past lives, it wasn’t true in my last birth.
This way, we slowly go as deep as we can until there’s really
nothing else to remove. If we do this in a quiet, meditative place and
we allow ourselves to just sit there, peeling layer after layer, what
we find is this beautiful stillness, this beautiful experience.
So, we can discard everything that we identify with until we get to
what the Buddhists speak of as nothingness and the Hindus speak of
as everythingness, but which is the same experience of infinity.
Imagine, if I’ve got a glass jar of air and the jar breaks, what do I
have? On the one hand, you could say I have nothing as I no longer
have my jar of air. It broke, so I have nothing now. On the other
hand, you could say that the only thing that happened was I lost
that dividing line between my jar of air and all of the air, so now
actually I have all of the air instead of just one jar of the air. Neither
is right, neither is wrong; they are just two ways of looking at it, but
you’ll recognize that they actually take us to exactly the same place.
We all agree that we’re left with just air. And that’s the truth of who
you are. When the border and boundary dissolve, when the walls of
the container shatter, you realize you have always been the infinite,
you have always been consciousness, you have always been divine.
The last aspect of how we can stay connected to that Divine is
just in remembrance. There’s no magic formula, unfortunately. It
would be convenient if every time we forgot, we received this
infusion of remembrance and awakening. But we don’t have that.
What we have is just practice.
When you start meditating, you find that your mind wanders more
than its still, and your meditation feels like a process of doing
nothing but bringing your mind back. But then, slowly, the spaces in
between having to bring the mind back lengthen, and the mind
stays. You’re able to catch it faster and bring it back faster, and
slowly you’re able to accumulate lots of consecutive moments of
being there. This is what it’s like living within our True Self. It’s about
remembrance, about coming back. A mantra is a great life raft to
bring us back. Our breath is a great life raft to bring us back. They’re
techniques to bring us out of where we’ve gone and back into who
we are. And gradually, we keep living as that.
An integral aspect of staying connected is to remember not to
berate ourselves, because in this consciousness and acceptance of
the invitation to live with love and connection, it’s very important not
to leave ourselves out of the equation. Many of us are very
comfortable with connection, compassion, love, forgiveness and
seeing the Divine in all as a practice, as long as it relates to
everyone other than ourselves. It becomes very difficult when we
have to turn it back inward. And ironically, we further berate
ourselves for that: Oh my God, you are so stupid, look at that, you
forgot to be compassionate again. Here I am, criticizing myself for
not being compassionate to another. But where’s my compassion for
myself? We have to remember that as we work on staying
connected, it’s not just about being connected to God outside of us
and in those around us, but about being connected to God within us.
When we lose it, when we find ourselves disconnected, we have to
have that same compassion, love, understanding and presence for
our lowercase-s self that wandered off that we have for the world
around us.
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own personal share of credit for the good appearance of her
establishment, that even the children of the house have not
supposed that there is any particular will of hers in the matter,—it all
seems the natural consequence of having very good servants.
One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected on,—that,
under all the changes of the domestic cabinet which are so apt to
occur in American households, the same coffee, the same bread and
biscuit, the same nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table always
gladdened their eyes; and from this they inferred only that good
servants were more abundant than most people had supposed. They
were somewhat surprised when these marvels were wrought by
professedly green hands, but were given to suppose that these
green hands must have had some remarkable quickness or aptitude
for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored ice-creams, clear
soups, and delicate biscuits could be made by a raw Irish girl, fresh
from her native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the genius of the
race; and my wife, who never felt it important to attain to the
reputation of a cook, quietly let it pass.
For some time, therefore, after the inauguration of the new
household, there was trouble in the camp. Sour bread had appeared
on the table,—bitter, acrid coffee had shocked and astonished the
palate,—lint had been observed on tumblers, and the spoons had
sometimes dingy streaks on the brightness of their first bridal polish,
—beds were detected made shockingly awry,—and Marianne came
burning with indignation to her mother.
“Such a little family as we have, and two strong girls,” said she,
—“everything ought to be perfect; there is really nothing to do.
Think of a whole batch of bread absolutely sour! and when I gave
that away, then this morning another exactly like it! and when I
talked to cook about it, she said she had lived in this and that family,
and her bread had always been praised as equal to the baker’s!”
“I don’t doubt she is right,” said I. “Many families never have
anything but sour bread from one end of the year to the other,
eating it unperceiving, and with good cheer; and they buy also sour
bread of the baker, with like approbation,—lightness being in their
estimation the only virtue necessary in the article.”
“Could you not correct her fault?” suggested my wife.
“I have done all I can. I told her we could not have such bread,
that it was dreadful; Bob says it would give him the dyspepsia in a
week; and then she went and made exactly the same;—it seems to
me mere wilfulness.”
“But,” said I, “suppose, instead of such general directions, you
should analyze her proceedings and find out just where she makes
her mistake,—is the root of the trouble in the yeast, or in the time
she begins it, letting it rise too long?—the time, you know, should
vary so much with the temperature of the weather.”
“As to that,” said Marianne, “I know nothing. I never noticed; it
never was my business to make bread; it always seemed quite a
simple process, mixing yeast and flour and kneading it; and our
bread at home was always good.”
“It seems, then, my dear, that you have come to your profession
without even having studied it.”
My wife smiled, and said,—
“You know, Marianne, I proposed to you to be our family bread-
maker for one month of the year before you married.”
“Yes, mamma, I remember; but I was like other girls; I thought
there was no need of it. I never liked to do such things; perhaps I
had better have done it.”
“You certainly had,” said I; “for the first business of a housekeeper
in America is that of a teacher. She can have a good table only by
having practical knowledge, and tact in imparting it. If she
understands her business practically and experimentally, her eye
detects at once the weak spot; it requires only a little tact, some
patience, some clearness in giving directions, and all comes right. I
venture to say that your mother would have exactly such bread as
always appears on our table, and have it by the hands of your cook,
because she could detect and explain to her exactly her error.”
“Do you know,” said my wife, “what yeast she uses?”
“I believe,” said Marianne, “it’s a kind she makes herself. I think I
heard her say so. I know she makes a great fuss about it, and rather
values herself upon it. She is evidently accustomed to being praised
for her bread, and feels mortified and angry, and I don’t know how
to manage her.”
“Well,” said I, “if you carry your watch to a watchmaker, and
undertake to show him how to regulate the machinery, he laughs
and goes on his own way; but if a brother-machinist makes
suggestions, he listens respectfully. So, when a woman who knows
nothing of woman’s work undertakes to instruct one who knows
more than she does, she makes no impression; but a woman who
has been trained experimentally, and shows she understands the
matter thoroughly, is listened to with respect.”
“I think,” said my wife, “that your Bridget is worth teaching. She is
honest, well-principled, and tidy. She has good recommendations
from excellent families, whose ideas of good bread it appears differ
from ours; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience, she will
come into your ways.”
“But the coffee, mamma,—you would not imagine it to be from
the same bag with your own, so dark and so bitter; what do you
suppose she has done to it?”
“Simply this,” said my wife. “She has let the berries stay a few
moments too long over the fire,—they are burnt, instead of being
roasted; and there are people who think it essential to good coffee
that it should look black, and have a strong, bitter flavor. A very little
change in the preparing will alter this.”
“Now,” said I, “Marianne, if you want my advice, I’ll give it to you
gratis:—Make your own bread for one month. Simple as the process
seems, I think it will take as long as that to give you a thorough
knowledge of all the possibilities in the case; but after that you will
never need to make any more,—you will be able to command good
bread by the aid of all sorts of servants; you will, in other words, be
a thoroughly prepared teacher.”
“I did not think,” said Marianne, “that so simple a thing required
so much attention.”
“It is simple,” said my wife, “and yet requires a delicate care and
watchfulness. There are fifty ways to spoil good bread; there are a
hundred little things to be considered and allowed for that require
accurate observation and experience. The same process that will
raise good bread in cold weather will make sour bread in the heat of
summer; different qualities of flour require variations in treatment,
as also different sorts and conditions of yeast; and when all is done,
the baking presents another series of possibilities which require
exact attention.”
“So it appears,” said Marianne, gayly, “that I must begin to study
my profession at the eleventh hour.”
“Better late than never,” said I. “But there is this advantage on
your side: a well-trained mind, accustomed to reflect, analyze, and
generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double
experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her
business than you do. After a very brief period of attention and
experiment, you will not only know more than she does, but you will
convince her that you do, which is quite as much to the purpose.”
“In the same manner,” said my wife, “you will have to give lessons
to your other girl on the washing of silver and the making of beds.
Good servants do not often come to us; they must be made by
patience and training; and if a girl has a good disposition and a
reasonable degree of handiness, and the housekeeper understands
her profession, she may make a good servant out of an indifferent
one. Some of my best girls have been those who came to me
directly from the ship, with no preparation but docility and some
natural quickness. The hardest cases to be managed are not of
those who have been taught nothing, but of those who have been
taught wrongly,—who come to you self-opinionated, with ways
which are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of your
housekeeping. Such require that their mistress shall understand at
least so much of the actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the
servant that there are better ways than those in which she has
hitherto been trained.”
“Don’t you think, mamma,” said Marianne, “that there has been a
sort of reaction against woman’s work in our day? So much has been
said of the higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done to
find some better work for her, that insensibly, I think, almost
everybody begins to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in
good society to be much tied down to family affairs.”
“Especially,” said my wife, “since in these Woman’s-Rights
Conventions there is so much indignation expressed at those who
would confine her ideas to the kitchen and nursery.”
“There is reason in all things,” said I. “Woman’s-Rights
Conventions are a protest against many former absurd,
unreasonable ideas,—the mere physical and culinary idea of
womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-buttons, the
unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast
upon the sex. Many of the women connected with these movements
are as superior in everything properly womanly as they are in
exceptional talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the
sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that republican
governments in particular are to be saved from corruption and
failure only by allowing to woman this enlarged sphere. Every
woman has rights as a human being first, which belong to no sex,
and ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man,—
and first and foremost, the great right of doing anything which God
and Nature evidently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a
natural orator, like Miss Dickenson, or an astronomer, like Mrs.
Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of
womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of her powers. Nor
can there be any reason shown why a woman’s vote in the state
should not be received with as much respect as in the family. A state
is but an association of families, and laws relate to the rights and
immunities which touch woman’s most private and immediate wants
and dearest hopes; and there is no reason why sister, wife, and
mother should be more powerless in the state than in the home. Nor
does it make a woman unwomanly to express an opinion by
dropping a slip of paper into a box, more than to express that same
opinion by conversation. In fact, there is no doubt, that, in all
matters relating to the interests of education, temperance, and
religion, the state would be a material gainer by receiving the votes
of women.
“But, having said all this, I must admit, per contra, not only a
great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions, but a too
great tendency of the age to make the education of women anti-
domestic. It seems as if the world never could advance, except like
ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too far, now in this
direction, and now in the opposite. Our common-school system now
rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used
to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. The
daughters of laborers and artisans are put through algebra,
geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics, to the entire
neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A girl
cannot keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to domestic
matters; and accordingly she is excused from them all during the
whole term of her education. The boy of a family, at an early age, is
put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father becomes impatient
of his support, and requires of him to care for himself. Hence an
interrupted education,—learning coming by snatches in the winter
months or in the intervals of work. As the result, the females in our
country towns are commonly, in mental culture, vastly in advance of
the males of the same household; but with this comes a physical
delicacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain and a neglect of
the muscular system, with great inefficiency in practical domestic
duties. The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow
up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New England
kitchens of old times,—the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake,
harness a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider,
draw, paint, and read innumerable books,—this race of women,
pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the
fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-
learning, ignorant of common things. The great danger of all this,
and of the evils that come from it, is that society by and by will turn
as blindly against female intellectual culture as it now advocates it,
and, having worked disproportionately one way, will work
disproportionately in the opposite direction.”
“The fact is,” said my wife, “that domestic service is the great
problem of life here in America; the happiness of families, their
thrift, well-being, and comfort, are more affected by this than by any
one thing else. Our girls, as they have been brought up, cannot
perform the labor of their own families, as in those simpler, old-
fashioned days you tell of; and what is worse, they have no practical
skill with which to instruct servants, and servants come to us, as a
class, raw and untrained; so what is to be done? In the present state
of prices, the board of a domestic costs double her wages, and the
waste she makes is a more serious matter still. Suppose you give us
an article upon this subject in your ‘House and Home Papers.’ You
could not have a better one.”
So I sat down, and wrote thus on
 Servants and Service.
Many of the domestic evils in America originate in the fact, that,
while society here is professedly based on new principles which
ought to make social life in every respect different from the life of
the Old World, yet these principles have never been so thought out
and applied as to give consistency and harmony to our daily
relations. America starts with a political organization based on a
declaration of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every
human being, according to this principle, stands on the same natural
level with every other, and has the same chance to rise according to
the degree of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil
institutions are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible,
from generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there
are no hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes,—all
are to be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.
The condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it
something of the influences from feudal times, and from the near
presence of slavery in neighboring States. All English literature, all
the literature of the world, describes domestic service in the old
feudal spirit and with the old feudal language, which regarded the
master as belonging to a privileged class and the servant to an
inferior one. There is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a
history, that does not present this view. The master’s rights, like the
rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his being born in a superior
rank. The good servant was one who, from childhood, had learned
“to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters.” When New
England brought to these shores the theory of democracy, she
brought, in the persons of the first pilgrims, the habits of thought
and of action formed in aristocratic communities. Winthrop’s Journal,
and all the old records of the earlier colonists, show households
where masters and mistresses stood on the “right divine” of the
privileged classes, howsoever they might have risen up against
authorities themselves.
The first consequence of this state of things was a universal
rejection of domestic service in all classes of American-born society.
For a generation or two, there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of
family strength,—sons and daughters engaging in the service of
neighboring families, in default of a sufficient working-force of their
own, but always on conditions of strict equality. The assistant was to
share the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and
attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When families
increased in refinement and education so as to make these
conditions of close intimacy with more uncultured neighbors
disagreeable, they had to choose between such intimacies and the
performance of their own domestic toil. No wages could induce a
son or daughter of New England to take the condition of a servant
on terms which they thought applicable to that of a slave. The
slightest hint of a separate table was resented as an insult; not to
enter the front-door, and not to sit in the front-parlor on state-
occasions, was bitterly commented on as a personal indignity.
The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers, the class
most valuable in domestic service, gradually retired from it. They
preferred any other employment, however laborious. Beyond all
doubt, the labors of a well-regulated family are more healthy, more
cheerful, more interesting, because less monotonous, than the
mechanical toils of a factory; yet the girls of New England, with one
consent, preferred the factory, and left the whole business of
domestic service to a foreign population; and they did it mainly
because they would not take positions in families as an inferior
laboring-class by the side of others of their own age who assumed
as their prerogative to live without labor.
“I can’t let you have one of my daughters,” said an energetic
matron to her neighbor from the city, who was seeking for a servant
in her summer vacation; “if you hadn’t daughters of your own,
maybe I would; but my girls ain’t going to work so that your girls
may live in idleness.”
It was vain to offer money. “We don’t need your money, ma’am,
we can support ourselves in other ways; my girls can braid straw,
and bind shoes, but they ain’t going to be slaves to anybody.”
In the Irish and German servants who took the place of Americans
in families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in
favor of a higher class; but even the foreign population became
more or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this
country with vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant
and uncultivated people such ideas are often more unreasonable for
being vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in
the parlor, but they repudiated many of those habits of respect and
courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted
their own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they
supposed to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort
of domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who
secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to
assume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who
knew their power and insisted on their privileges. From this cause
domestic service in America has had less of mutual kindliness than in
old countries. Its terms have been so ill understood and defined that
both parties have assumed the defensive; and a common topic of
conversation in American female society has often been the general
servile war which in one form or another was going on in their
different families,—a war as interminable as would be a struggle
between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill of
rights or constitution, and therefore opening fields for endless
disputes. In England, the class who go to service are a class, and
service is a profession; the distance between them and their
employers is so marked and defined, and all the customs and
requirements of the position are so perfectly understood, that the
master or mistress has no fear of being compromised by
condescension, and no need of the external voice or air of authority.
The higher up in the social scale one goes, the more courteous
seems to become the intercourse of master and servant; the more
perfect and real the power, the more is it veiled in outward
expression,—commands are phrased as requests, and gentleness of
voice and manner covers an authority which no one would think of
offending without trembling.
But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there is no class
who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in.
It is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher;
your best servants always have something else in view as soon as
they have laid by a little money; some form of independence which
shall give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families
look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered
brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the
common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a
dress-maker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is
pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils
from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women are eagerly
rushing into every other employment, till female trades and callings
are all overstocked. We are continually harrowed with tales of the
sufferings of distressed needle-women, of the exactions and
extortions practised on the frail sex in the many branches of labor
and trade at which they try their hands; and yet women will
encounter all these chances of ruin and starvation rather than make
up their minds to permanent domestic service. Now what is the
matter with domestic service? One would think, on the face of it,
that a calling which gives a settled home, a comfortable room, rent-
free, with fire and lights, good board and lodging, and steady, well-
paid wages, would certainly offer more attractions than the making
of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing one’s own
sustenance and shelter.
I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true
position of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic
service is so shunned and avoided in America, that it is the very last
thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living. It is
more the want of personal respect toward those in that position than
the labors incident to it which repels our people from it. Many would
be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to place
themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly wounded
by the implication of a degree of inferiority which does not follow
any kind of labor or service in this country but that of the family.
There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of
superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance
which democracy inspires in the working-class. Many families think
of servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and
all that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they
seek in every way to get from them as much and to give them as
little as possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished,
incommodious ones,—and the kitchen is the most cheerless and
comfortless place in the house. Other families, more good-natured
and liberal, provide their domestics with more suitable
accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there is still a latent
spirit of something like contempt for the position. That they treat
their servants with so much consideration seems to them a merit
entitling them to the most prostrate gratitude; and they are
constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense of
inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to
appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere
matters of common justice.
It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that
servants should insist on having the same human wants as
themselves. Ladies who yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors,
among books and pictures, if they have not company, parties, or
opera to diversify the evening, seem astonished and half indignant
that cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out for an
evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the kitchen where they
have been toiling all day. The pretty chambermaid’s anxieties about
her dress, the time she spends at her small and not very clear
mirror, are sneeringly noticed by those whose toilet-cares take up
serious hours; and the question has never apparently occurred to
them why a serving-maid should not want to look pretty as well as
her mistress. She is a woman as well as they, with all a woman’s
wants and weaknesses; and her dress is as much to her as theirs to
them.
A vast deal of trouble among servants arises from impertinent
interferences and petty tyrannical exactions on the part of
employers. Now the authority of the master and mistress of a house
in regard to their domestics extends simply to the things they have
contracted to do and the hours during which they have contracted to
serve; otherwise than this, they have no more right to interfere with
them in the disposal of their time than with any mechanic whom
they employ. They have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of
their own household, and servants can choose between conformity
to these hours and the loss of their situation; but, within reasonable
limits, their right to come and go at their own discretion, in their
own time, should be unquestioned.
If employers are troubled by the fondness of their servants for
dancing, evening company, and late hours, the proper mode of
proceeding is to make these matters a subject of distinct contract in
hiring. The more strictly and perfectly the business matters of the
first engagement of domestics are conducted, the more likelihood
there is of mutual quiet and satisfaction in the relation. It is quite
competent to every housekeeper to say what practices are or are not
consistent with the rules of her family, and what will be inconsistent
with the service for which she agrees to pay. It is much better to
regulate such affairs by cool contract in the outset than by warm
altercations and protracted domestic battles.
As to the terms of social intercourse it seems somehow to be
settled in the minds of many employers that their servants owe them
and their family more respect than they and the family owe to the
servants. But do they? What is the relation of servant to employer in
a democratic country? Precisely that of a person who for money
performs any kind of service for you. The carpenter comes into your
house to put up a set of shelves,—the cook comes into your kitchen
to cook your dinner. You never think that the carpenter owes you
any more respect than you owe to him because he is in your house
doing your behests; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with
respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him. You have a
claim on him that he shall do your work according to your directions,
—no more. Now I apprehend that there is a very common notion as
to the position and rights of servants which is quite different from
this. Is it not a common feeling that a servant is one who may be
treated with a degree of freedom by every member of the family
which he or she may not return? Do not people feel at liberty to
question servants about their private affairs, to comment on their
dress and appearance, in a manner which they would feel to be an
impertinence, if reciprocated? Do they not feel at liberty to express
dissatisfaction with their performances in rude and unceremonious
terms, to reprove them in the presence of company, while yet they
require that the dissatisfaction of servants shall be expressed only in
terms of respect? A woman would not feel herself at liberty to talk to
her milliner or her dressmaker in language as devoid of
consideration as she will employ towards her cook or chambermaid.
Yet both are rendering her a service which she pays for in money,
and one is no more made her inferior thereby than the other. Both
have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The master and
mistress of a house have a right to require respectful treatment from
all whom their roof shelters, but they have no more right to exact it
of servants than of every guest and every child, and they themselves
owe it as much to servants as to guests.
In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it
is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the
family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you
do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-
maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them
to your parties. It is well-understood that your relations with them
are of a mere business character. They never take it as an
assumption of superiority on your part that you do not admit them
to relations of private intimacy. There may be the most perfect
respect and esteem and even friendship between them and you,
notwithstanding. So it may be in the case of servants. It is easy to
make any person understand that there are quite other reasons than
the assumption of personal superiority for not wishing to admit
servants to the family privacy. It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor
or at the table, in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed
at by New England girls,—these were valued only as signs that they
were deemed worthy of respect and consideration, and, where freely
conceded, were often in point of fact declined.
Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers, and in the
atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a
respectable one, let them feel in the mistress of the family the
charm of unvarying consideration and good manners, let their work-
rooms be made convenient and comfortable, and their private
apartments bear some reasonable comparison in point of
agreeableness to those of other members of the family, and
domestic service will be more frequently sought by a superior and
self-respecting class. There are families in which such a state of
things prevails; and such families, amid the many causes which unite
to make the tenure of service uncertain, have generally been able to
keep good permanent servants.
There is an extreme into which kindly disposed people often run
with regard to servants, which may be mentioned here. They make
pets of them. They give extravagant wages and indiscreet
indulgences, and, through indolence and easiness of temper, tolerate
neglect of duty. Many of the complaints of the ingratitude of servants
come from those who have spoiled them in this way; while many of
the longest and most harmonious domestic unions have sprung from
a simple, quiet course of Christian justice and benevolence, a
recognition of servants as fellow-beings and fellow-Christians, and a
doing to them as we would in like circumstances that they should do
to us.
The mistresses of American families, whether they like it or not,
have the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that class
from which our supply of domestic servants is drawn. They may as
well accept the position cheerfully, and, as one raw, untrained hand
after another passes through their family, and is instructed by them
in the mysteries of good housekeeping, comfort themselves with the
reflection that they are doing something to form good wives and
mothers for the Republic.
The complaints made of Irish girls are numerous and loud; the
failings of green Erin, alas! are but too open and manifest; yet, in
arrest of judgment, let us move this consideration: let us imagine
our own daughters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four,
untaught and inexperienced in domestic affairs as they commonly
are, shipped to a foreign shore to seek service in families. It may be
questioned whether as a whole they would do much better. The girls
that fill our families and do our house-work are often of the age of
our own daughters, standing for themselves, without mothers to
guide them, in a foreign country, not only bravely supporting
themselves, but sending home in every ship remittances to
impoverished friends left behind. If our daughters did as much for
us, should we not be proud of their energy and heroism?
When we go into the houses of our country, we find a majority of
well-kept, well-ordered, and even elegant establishments where the
only hands employed are those of the daughters of Erin. True,
American women have been their instructors, and many a weary
hour of care have they had in the discharge of this office; but the
result on the whole is beautiful and good, and the end of it,
doubtless, will be peace.
In speaking of the office of the American mistress as being a
missionary one, we are far from recommending any controversial
interference with the religious faith of our servants. It is far better to
incite them to be good Christians in their own way than to run the
risk of shaking their faith in all religion by pointing out to them the
errors of that in which they have been educated. The general purity
of life and propriety of demeanor of so many thousands of
undefended young girls cast yearly upon our shores, with no home
but their church, and no shield but their religion, are a sufficient
proof that this religion exerts an influence over them not to be lightly
trifled with. But there is a real unity even in opposite Christian
forms; and the Roman Catholic servant and the Protestant mistress,
if alike possessed by the spirit of Christ, and striving to conform to
the Golden Rule, cannot help being one in heart, though one go to
mass and the other to meeting.
Finally, the bitter baptism through which we are passing, the life-
blood dearer than our own which is drenching distant fields, should
remind us of the preciousness of distinctive American ideas. They
who would seek in their foolish pride to establish the pomp of
liveried servants in America are doing that which is simply absurd. A
servant can never in our country be the mere appendage to another
man, to be marked like a sheep with the color of his owner; he must
be a fellow-citizen, with an established position of his own, free to
make contracts, free to come and go, and having in his sphere titles
to consideration and respect just as definite as those of any trade or
profession whatever.
Moreover, we cannot in this country maintain to any great extent
large retinues of servants. Even with ample fortunes they are
forbidden by the general character of society here, which makes
them cumbrous and difficult to manage. Every mistress of a family
knows that her cares increase with every additional servant. Two
keep the peace with each other and their employer; three begin a
possible discord, which possibility increases with four, and becomes
certain with five or six. Trained housekeepers, such as regulate the
complicated establishments of the Old World, form a class that are
not, and from the nature of the case never will be, found in any
great numbers in this country. All such women, as a general thing,
are keeping, and prefer to keep, houses of their own.
A moderate style of housekeeping, small, compact, and simple
domestic establishments, must necessarily be the general order of
life in America. So many openings of profit are to be found in this
country, that domestic service necessarily wants the permanence
which forms so agreeable a feature of it in the Old World.
 This being the case, it should be an object in America to exclude
from the labors of the family all that can, with greater advantage, be
executed out of it by combined labor.
Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were to be made in
each separate family; now, comparatively few take this toil upon
them. We buy soap of the soap-maker, and candles of the candle-
factor. This principle might be extended much further. In France no
family makes its own bread, and better bread cannot be eaten than
what can be bought at the appropriate shops. No family does its
own washing, the family’s linen is all sent to women who, making
this their sole profession, get it up with a care and nicety which can
seldom be equalled in any family.
How would it simplify the burdens of the American housekeeper to
have washing and ironing day expunged from her calendar! How
much more neatly and compactly could the whole domestic system
be arranged! If all the money that each separate family spends on
the outfit and accommodations for washing and ironing, on fuel,
soap, starch, and the other et ceteras, were united in a fund to
create a laundry for every dozen families, one or two good women
could do in first rate style what now is very indifferently done by the
disturbance and disarrangement of all other domestic processes in
these families. Whoever sets neighborhood laundries on foot will do
much to solve the American housekeeper’s hardest problem.
Finally, American women must not try with three servants to carry
on life in the style which in the Old World requires sixteen,—they
must thoroughly understand, and be prepared to teach, every
branch of housekeeping,—they must study to make domestic service
desirable, by treating their servants in a way to lead them to respect
themselves and to feel themselves respected,—and there will
gradually be evolved from the present confusion a solution of the
domestic problem which shall be adapted to the life of a new and
growing world.
 X.

COOKERY.

M Y wife and I were sitting at the open bow-window of my study,

watching the tuft of bright red leaves on our favorite maple,
which warned us that summer was over. I was solacing myself,
like all the world in our days, with reading the “Schönberg Cotta
Family,” when my wife made her voice heard through the enchanted
distance, and dispersed the pretty vision of German cottage-life.
“Chris!”
“Well, my dear.”
“Do you know the day of the month?”
Now my wife knows this is a thing that I never do know, that I
can’t know, and, in fact, that there is no need I should trouble
myself about, since she always knows, and what is more, always
tells me. In fact, the question, when asked by her, meant more than
met the ear. It was a delicate way of admonishing me that another
paper for the “Atlantic” ought to be in train; and so I answered, not
to the external form, but to the internal intention.
“Well, you see, my dear, I haven’t made up my mind what my next
paper shall be about.”
“Suppose, then, you let me give you a subject.”
“Sovereign lady, speak on! Your slave hears!”
 “Well, then, take Cookery. It may seem a vulgar subject, but I
think more of health and happiness depends on that than on any
other one thing. You may make houses enchantingly beautiful, hang
them with pictures, have them clean and airy and convenient; but if
the stomach is fed with sour bread and burnt coffee, it will raise
such rebellions that the eyes will see no beauty anywhere. Now in
the little tour that you and I have been taking this summer, I have
been thinking of the great abundance of splendid material we have
in America, compared with the poor cooking. How often, in our
stoppings, we have sat down to tables loaded with material,
originally of the very best kind, which had been so spoiled in the
treatment that there was really nothing to eat! Green biscuits with
acrid spots of alkali,—sour yeast-bread,—meat slowly simmered in
fat till it seemed like grease itself; and slowly congealing in cold
grease,—and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong butter!
How often I have longed to show people what might have been
done with the raw material out of which all these monstrosities were
concocted!”
“My dear,” said I, “you are driving me upon delicate ground. Would
you have your husband appear in public with that most opprobrious
badge of the domestic furies, a dishcloth pinned to his coat-tail? It is
coming to exactly the point I have always predicted, Mrs. Crowfield:
you must write yourself. I always told you that you could write far
better than I, if you would only try. Only sit down and write as you
sometimes talk to me, and I might hang up my pen by the side of
‘Uncle Ned’s’ fiddle and bow.”
“O, nonsense!” said my wife. “I never could write. I know what
ought to be said, and I could say it to any one; but my ideas freeze
in the pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy
bread. I was born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the
best things on all subjects in this world of ours are said, not by the
practical workers, but by the careful observers.”
“Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had made it myself,”
said I. “It is true that I have been all my life a speculator and
observer in all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under
my eye in our own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman’s
matter, it must be understood that I am only your pen and mouth-
piece,—only giving tangible form to wisdom which I have derived
from you.”
So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign lady quietly
stitched by my side. And here I tell my reader that I write on such a
subject under protest,—declaring again my conviction, that, if my
wife only believed in herself as firmly as I do, she would write so
that nobody would ever want to listen to me again.
 Cookery.
We in America have the raw material of provision in greater
abundance than any other nation. There is no country where an
ample, well-furnished table is more easily spread, and for that
reason, perhaps, none where the bounties of Providence are more
generally neglected. I do not mean to say that the traveller through
the length and breadth of our land could not, on the whole, find an
average of comfortable subsistence; yet, considering that our
resources are greater than those of any other civilized people, our
results are comparatively poorer.
It is said, that, a list of the summer vegetables which are exhibited
on New York hotel-tables being shown to a French artiste, he
declared that to serve such a dinner properly would take till
midnight. I recollect how I was once struck with our national
plenteousness, on returning from a Continental tour, and going
directly from the ship to a New York hotel, in the bounteous season
of autumn. For months I had been habituated to my neat little bits
of chop or poultry garnished with the inevitable cauliflower or
potato, which seemed to be the sole possibility after the reign of
green-peas was over; now I sat down all at once to a carnival of
vegetables: ripe, juicy tomatoes, raw or cooked; cucumbers in brittle
slices; rich, yellow sweet-potatoes; broad Lima-beans, and beans of
other and various names; tempting ears of Indian-corn steaming in
enormous piles, and great smoking tureens of the savory succotash,
an Indian gift to the table for which civilization need not blush; sliced
egg-plant in delicate fritters; and marrow-squashes, of creamy pulp
and sweetness: a rich variety, embarrassing to the appetite, and
perplexing to the choice. Verily, the thought has often impressed
itself on my mind that the vegetarian doctrine preached in America
left a man quite as much as he had capacity to eat or enjoy, and
that in the midst of such tantalizing abundance he really lost the
apology which elsewhere bears him out in preying upon his less
gifted and accomplished animal neighbors.
But with all this, the American table, taken as a whole, is inferior
to that of England or France. It presents a fine abundance of
material, carelessly and poorly treated. The management of food is
nowhere in the world, perhaps, more slovenly and wasteful.
Everything betokens that want of care that waits on abundance;
there are great capabilities and poor execution. A tourist through
England can seldom fail, at the quietest country-inn, of finding
himself served with the essentials of English table-comfort,—his
mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming little private apparatus for
concocting his own tea, his choice pot of marmalade or slice of cold
ham, and his delicate rolls and creamy butter, all served with care
and neatness. In France, one never asks in vain for delicious café-
au-lait, good bread and butter, a nice omelet, or some savory little
portion of meat with a French name. But to a tourist taking like
chance in American country-fare, what is the prospect? What is the
coffee? what the tea? and the meat? and above all, the butter?
In lecturing on cookery, as on house-building, I divide the subject
into not four, but five, grand elements: first, Bread; second, Butter;
third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea,—by which I mean,
generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in
teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or
what-not.
I affirm, that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great
ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and
well-being of life are concerned. I am aware that there exists
another department, which is often regarded by culinary amateurs
and young aspirants as the higher branch and very collegiate course
of practical cookery; to wit, Confectionery, by which I mean to
designate all pleasing and complicated compounds of sweets and
spices, devised not for health and nourishment, and strongly
suspected of interfering with both,—mere tolerated gratifications of
the palate, which we eat, not with the expectation of being
benefited, but only with the hope of not being injured by them. In
this large department rank all sort of cakes, pies, preserves, ices,
etc. I shall have a word or two to say under this head before I have
done. I only remark now, that in my tours about the country I have
often had a virulent ill-will excited towards these works of culinary
supererogation, because I thought their excellence was attained by
treading under foot and disregarding the five grand essentials. I
have sat at many a table garnished with three or four kinds of well-
made cake, compounded with citron and spices and all imaginable
good things, where the meat was tough and greasy, the bread some
hot preparation of flour, lard, saleratus, and acid, and the butter
unutterably detestable. At such tables I have thought, that, if the
mistress of the feast had given the care, time, and labor to
preparing the simple items of bread, butter, and meat, that she
evidently had given to the preparation of these extras, the lot of a
traveller might be much more comfortable. Evidently, she never had
thought of these common articles as constituting a good table. So
long as she had puff pastry, rich black cake, clear jelly, and
preserves, she seemed to consider that such unimportant matters as
bread, butter, and meat could take care of themselves. It is the
same inattention to common things as that which leads people to
build houses with stone fronts and window-caps and expensive
front-door trimmings, without bathing-rooms or fireplaces or
ventilators.
Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farm-
houses know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always
fresh, the tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the
meats properly kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a
hundred, the fabulous enchanted island. It seems impossible to get
the idea into the minds of people that what is called common food,
carefully prepared, becomes, in virtue of that very care and
attention, a delicacy, superseding the necessity of artificially
compounded dainties.
To begin, then, with the very foundation of a good table,—Bread:
What ought it to be? It should be light, sweet, and tender.
 This matter of lightness is the distinctive line between savage and
civilized bread. The savage mixes simple flour and water into balls of
paste, which he throws into boiling water, and which come out solid,
glutinous masses, of which his common saying is, “Man eat dis, he
no die,”—which a facetious traveller who was obliged to subsist on it
interpreted to mean, “Dis no kill you, nothing will.” In short, it
requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage to digest this
primitive form of bread, and of course more or less attention in all
civilized modes of bread-making is given to producing lightness. By
lightness is meant simply that the particles are to be separated from
each other by little holes or air-cells; and all the different methods of
making light bread are neither more nor less than the formation in
bread of these air-cells.
So far as we know, there are four practicable methods of aerating
bread; namely, by fermentation,—by effervescence of an acid and an
alkali,—by aerated egg, or egg which has been filled with air by the
process of beating,—and lastly, by pressure of some gaseous
substance into the paste, by a process much resembling the
impregnation of water in a soda-fountain. All these have one and the
same object,—to give us the cooked particles of our flour separated
by such permanent air-cells as will enable the stomach more readily
to digest them.
A very common mode of aerating bread, in America, is by the
effervescence of an acid and an alkali in the flour. The carbonic acid
gas thus formed produces minute air-cells in the bread, or, as the
cook says, makes it light. When this process is performed with exact
attention to chemical laws, so that the acid and alkali completely
neutralize each other, leaving no overplus of either, the result is
often very palatable. The difficulty is, that this is a happy
conjunction of circumstances which seldom occurs. The acid most
commonly employed is that of sour milk, and, as milk has many
degrees of sourness, the rule of a certain quantity of alkali to the
pint must necessarily produce very different results at different
times. As an actual fact, where this mode of making bread prevails,
as we lament to say it does to a great extent in this country, one
finds five cases of failure to one of success. It is a woful thing that
the daughters of New England have abandoned the old respectable
mode of yeast-brewing and bread-raising for this specious
substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well made. The green,
clammy, acrid substance, called biscuit, which many of our worthy
republicans are obliged to eat in these days, is wholly unworthy of
the men and women of the Republic. Good patriots ought not to be
put off in that way,—they deserve better fare.
As an occasional variety, as a household convenience for obtaining
bread or biscuit at a moment’s notice, the process of effervescence
may be retained; but we earnestly entreat American housekeepers,
in Scriptural language, to stand in the way and ask for the old paths,
and return to the good yeast-bread of their sainted grandmothers.
If acid and alkali must be used, by all means let them be mixed in
due proportions. No cook should be left to guess and judge for
herself about this matter. There is an article, called “Preston’s
Infallible Yeast-Powder,” which is made by chemical rule, and
produces very perfect results. The use of this obviates the worst
dangers in making bread by effervescence.
Of all processes of aeration in bread-making, the oldest and most
time-honored is by fermentation. That this was known in the days of
our Saviour is evident from the forcible simile in which he compares
the silent permeating force of truth in human society to the very
familiar household process of raising bread by a little yeast.
There is, however, one species of yeast, much used in some parts
of the country, against which I have to enter my protest. It is called
salt-risings, or milk-risings, and is made by mixing flour, milk, and a
little salt together, and leaving them to ferment. The bread thus
produced is often very attractive, when new and made with great
care. It is white and delicate, with fine, even air-cells. It has,
however, when kept, some characteristics which remind us of the
terms in which our old-English Bible describes the effect of keeping
the manna of the ancient Israelites, which we are informed, in words
more explicit than agreeable, “stank, and bred worms.” If salt-rising
bread does not fulfil the whole of this unpleasant description, it
certainly does emphatically a part of it. The smell which it has in
baking, and when more than a day old, suggests the inquiry,
whether it is the saccharine or the putrid fermentation with which it
is raised. Whoever breaks a piece of it after a day or two will often
see minute filaments or clammy strings drawing out from the
fragments, which, with the unmistakable smell, will cause him to
pause before consummating a nearer acquaintance.
The fermentation of flour by means of brewer’s or distiller’s yeast
produces, if rightly managed, results far more palatable and
wholesome. The only requisites for success in it are, first, good
materials, and, second, great care in a few small things. There are
certain low-priced or damaged kinds of flour which can never by any
kind of domestic chemistry be made into good bread; and to those
persons whose stomachs forbid them to eat gummy, glutinous paste,
under the name of bread, there is no economy in buying these poor
brands, even at half the price of good flour.
But good flour and good yeast being supposed, with a
temperature favorable to the development of fermentation, the
whole success of the process depends on the thorough diffusion of
the proper proportion of yeast through the whole mass, and on
stopping the subsequent fermentation at the precise and fortunate
point. The true housewife makes her bread the sovereign of her
kitchen,—its behests must be attended to in all critical points and
moments, no matter what else be postponed. She who attends to
her bread when she has done this, and arranged that, and
performed the other, very often finds that the forces of nature will
not wait for her. The snowy mass, perfectly mixed, kneaded with
care and strength, rises in its beautiful perfection till the moment
comes for fixing the air-cells by baking. A few minutes now, and the
acetous fermentation will begin, and the whole result be spoiled.
Many bread-makers pass in utter carelessness over this sacred and
mysterious boundary. Their oven has cake in it, or they are
skimming jelly, or attending to some other of the so-called higher
branches of cookery, while the bread is quickly passing into the
acetous stage. At last, when they are ready to attend to it, they find
that it has been going its own way,—it is so sour that the pungent
smell is plainly perceptible. Now the saleratus-bottle is handed
down, and a quantity of the dissolved alkali mixed with the paste,—
an expedient sometimes making itself too manifest by greenish
streaks or small acrid spots in the bread. As the result, we have a
beautiful article spoiled,—bread without sweetness, if not absolutely
sour.
In the view of many, lightness is the only property required in this
article. The delicate, refined sweetness which exists in carefully
kneaded bread, baked just before it passes to the extreme point of
fermentation, is something of which they have no conception; and
thus they will even regard this process of spoiling the paste by the
acetous fermentation, and then rectifying that acid by effervescence
with an alkali, as something positively meritorious. How else can
they value and relish bakers’ loaves, such as some are, drugged with
ammonia and other disagreeable things, light indeed, so light that
they seem to have neither weight nor substance, but with no more
sweetness or taste than so much white cotton?
Some persons prepare bread for the oven by simply mixing it in
the mass, without kneading, pouring it into pans, and suffering it to
rise there. The air-cells in bread thus prepared are coarse and
uneven; the bread is as inferior in delicacy and nicety to that which
is well kneaded as a raw Irish servant to a perfectly educated and
refined lady. The process of kneading seems to impart an evenness
to the minute air-cells, a fineness of texture, and a tenderness and
pliability to the whole substance, that can be gained in no other way.
The divine principle of beauty has its reign over bread as well as
over all other things; it has its laws of æsthetics; and that bread
which is so prepared that it can be formed into separate and well-
proportioned loaves, each one carefully worked and moulded, will
develop the most beautiful results. After being moulded, the loaves
should stand a little while, just long enough to allow the
fermentation going on in them to expand each little air-cell to the
point at which it stood before it was worked down, and then they
should be immediately put into the oven.
Many a good thing, however, is spoiled in the oven. We cannot but
regret, for the sake of bread, that our old steady brick ovens have
been almost universally superseded by those of ranges and cooking-
stoves, which are infinite in their caprices, and forbid all general
rules. One thing, however, may be borne in mind as a principle,—
that the excellence of bread in all its varieties, plain or sweetened,
depends on the perfection of its air-cells, whether produced by
yeast, egg, or effervescence; that one of the objects of baking is to
fix these air-cells, and that the quicker this can be done through the
whole mass, the better will the result be. When cake or bread is
made heavy by baking too quickly, it is because the immediate
formation of the top crust hinders the exhaling of the moisture in the
centre, and prevents the air-cells from cooking. The weight also of
the crust pressing down on the doughy air-cells below destroys
them, producing that horror of good cooks, a heavy streak. The
problem in baking, then, is the quick application of heat rather below
than above the loaf, and its steady continuance till all the air-cells
are thoroughly dried into permanent consistency. Every housewife
must watch her own oven to know how this can be best
accomplished.
Bread-making can be cultivated to any extent as a fine art,—and
the various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, into which bread
may be made, are much better worth a housekeeper’s ambition than
the getting-up of rich and expensive cake or confections. There are
also varieties of material which are rich in good effects. Unbolted
flour, altogether more wholesome than the fine wheat, and when
properly prepared more palatable,—rye-flour and corn-meal, each
affording a thousand attractive possibilities,—each and all of these
come under the general laws of bread-stuffs, and are worth a careful
attention.
A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the Southern
and Western States, is the constant exhibition of various