Read Ebook: The Kobzar of the Ukraine Being select poems of Taras Shevchenko done into English verse with biographical fragments by Alexander Jardine Hunter by Shevchenko Taras Hunter Alexander J Alexander Jardine Translator

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To the Cloister of our Saviour Old gray-hair dancing goes. After him his joyous crowd And all the folk of Kiev so proud. Dances he up to the doors-- "Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!" he roars. Ye holy monks give greeting A comrade from the prairie meeting.

Opens the sacred door, The Cossack enters in. Again the portal closes To open no more for him. What a man was there this old gray-hair, Who said to the world farewell? 'Twas Semon Palee, a cossack free Whom trouble could not quell.

Oh in the East the sun climbs high And sets again in the western sky. In narrow cell in monkish gown Tramps an old man up and down, Then climbs the highest turret there To feast his eyes on Kiev so fair. And sitting on the parapet He yields a while to fond regret. Anon he goes to the woodland spring, The belfry near, where sweet bells ring. The cooling draught to his mind recalls How hard was life without the walls. Again the monk his cell floor paces 'Mid the silent walls his life retraces. The sacred book he holds in hand And loudly reads, The old man's mind to Cossack land Swiftly speeds. Now holy words do fade away, The monkish cell turns Cossack den, The glorious brotherhood lives again. The gray old captain, like an owl Peers beneath the monkish cowl. Music, dances, the city's calls, Rattling fetters, Moscow's walls, O'er woods and snows his eyes can see The banks of distant Yenisee. Upon his soul deep gloom has crept And thus the monk in sadness wept.

Down, Down! Bow thy head; On thy fleshly cravings tread. In the sacred writings read Read, read, to the bell give heed, Thy heart too long has ruled thee, All thy life it's fooled thee. Thy heart to exile led thee, Now let it silent be. As all things pass away, So thou shalt pass away. Thus may'st thou know thy lot, Mankind remembers not.

Though groans the old man's sadness tell. Upon his book he quickly fell, And tramped and tramped about his cell. He sits again in mood forlorn Wonders why he e'er was born. One thing alone he fain would tell. He loves his Ukraina well. For Matins now the great bell booms. The aged monk his cowl resumes. For Ukraina now to pray My good old Palee limps away.

THE COSSACKS

Back somewhere in the middle distance of European history--when the Ukraine was under Polish rule, though ever harrassed by the devastating raids of Turks and Tartars--there developed bands of guerilla fighters in the wild border-land beyond the rapids of the Dnieper.

Sometimes fighting against the Tartars, sometimes in alliance with them, they became known by the name 'Kazak,' a word of uncertain origin.

The fact that women have often equalled and sometimes excelled men in physical labor, intellectual effort, and lofty heroism, is sufficient proof that women have muscle, mind, and soul, as well as men; but it is no proof that they have had, or should have, the same kind of training; nor is it any proof that they are destined for the same career as men. The presumption is, that if woman, subjected to a masculine training, arranged for the development of a masculine organization, can equal man, she ought to excel him if educated by a feminine training, arranged to develop a feminine organization. Indeed, I have somewhere encountered an author who boldly affirms the superiority of women to all existences on this planet, because of the complexity of their organization. Without undertaking to indorse such an opinion, it may be affirmed, that an appropriate method of education for girls--one that should not ignore the mechanism of their bodies or blight any of their vital organs--would yield a better result than the world has yet seen.

The delicate bloom, early but rapidly fading beauty, and singular pallor of American girls and women have almost passed into a proverb. The first observation of a European that lands upon our shores is, that our women are a feeble race; and, if he is a physiological observer, he is sure to add, They will give birth to a feeble race, not of women only, but of men as well. "I never saw before so many pretty girls together," said Lady Amberley to the writer, after a visit to the public schools of Boston; and then added, "They all looked sick." Circumstances have repeatedly carried me to Europe, where I am always surprised by the red blood that fills and colors the faces of ladies and peasant girls, reminding one of the canvas of Rubens and Murillo; and am always equally surprised on my return, by crowds of pale, bloodless female faces, that suggest consumption, scrofula, anemia, and neuralgia. To a large extent, our present system of educating girls is the cause of this palor and weakness. How our schools, through their methods of education, contribute to this unfortunate result, and how our colleges that have undertaken to educate girls like boys, that is, in the same way, have succeeded in intensifying the evils of the schools, will be pointed out in another place.

It has just been said that the educational methods of our schools and colleges for girls are, to a large extent, the cause of "the thousand ills" that beset American women. Let it be remembered that this is not asserting that such methods of education are the sole cause of female weaknesses, but only that they are one cause, and one of the most important causes of it. An immense loss of female power may be fairly charged to irrational cooking and indigestible diet. We live in the zone of perpetual pie and dough-nut; and our girls revel in those unassimilable abominations. Much also may be credited to artificial deformities strapped to the spine, or piled on the head, much to corsets and skirts, and as much to the omission of clothing where it is needed as to excess where the body does not require it; but, after the amplest allowance for these as causes of weakness, there remains a large margin of disease unaccounted for. Those grievous maladies which torture a woman's earthly existence, called leucorrhoea, amenorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, chronic and acute ovaritis, prolapsus uteri, hysteria, neuralgia, and the like, are indirectly affected by food, clothing, and exercise; they are directly and largely affected by the causes that will be presently pointed out, and which arise from a neglect of the peculiarities of a woman's organization. The regimen of our schools fosters this neglect. The regimen of a college arranged for boys, if imposed on girls, would foster it still more.

The scope of this paper does not permit the discussion of these other causes of female weaknesses. Its object is to call attention to the errors of physical training that have crept into, and twined themselves about, our ways of educating girls, both in public and private schools, and which now threaten to attain a larger development, and inflict a consequently greater injury, by their introduction into colleges and large seminaries of learning, that have adopted, or are preparing to adopt, the co-education of the sexes. Even if there were space to do so, it would not be necessary to discuss here the other causes alluded to. They are receiving the amplest attention elsewhere. The gifted authoress of "The Gates Ajar" has blown her trumpet with no uncertain sound, in explanation and advocacy of a new-clothes philosophy, which her sisters will do well to heed rather than to ridicule. It would be a blessing to the race, if some inspired prophet of clothes would appear, who should teach the coming woman how, in pharmaceutical phrase, to fit, put on, wear, and take off her dress,--

"Cito, Tuto, et Jucunde."

Corsets that embrace the waist with a grip that tightens respiration into pain, and skirts that weight the hips with heavier than maternal burdens, have often caused grievous maladies, and imposed a needless invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that breeches do not make a man, nor the want of them unmake a woman.

The second consideration is the acknowledged influence of beauty. "When one sees a god-like countenance," said Socrates to Phaedrus, "or some bodily form that represents beauty, he reverences it as a god, and would sacrifice to it." From the days of Plato till now, all have felt the power of woman's beauty, and been more than willing to sacrifice to it. The proper, not exclusive search for it is a legitimate inspiration. The way for a girl to obtain her portion of this radiant halo is by the symmetrical development of every part of her organization, muscle, ovary, stomach and nerve, and by a physiological management of every function that correlates every organ; not by neglecting or trying to stifle or abort any of the vital and integral parts of her structure, and supplying the deficiency by invoking the aid of the milliner's stuffing, the colorist's pencil, the druggist's compounds, the doctor's pelvic supporter, and the surgeon's spinal brace.

When travelling in the East, some years ago, it was my fortune to be summoned as a physician into a harem. With curious and not unwilling step I obeyed the summons. While examining the patient, nearly a dozen Syrian girls--a grave Turk's wifely crowd, a result and illustration of Mohammedan female education--pressed around the divan with eyes and ears intent to see and hear a Western Hakim's medical examination. As I looked upon their well-developed forms, their brown skins, rich with the blood and sun of the East, and their unintelligent, sensuous faces, I thought that if it were possible to marry the Oriental care of woman's organization to the Western liberty and culture of her brain, there would be a new birth and loftier type of womanly grace and force.

FOOTNOTES:

Woman's Wrongs, p. 59.

Enigmas of Life, p. 34.

CHIEFLY PHYSIOLOGICAL.

"She girdeth her loins with strength."--SOLOMON.

The sacred number, three, dominates the human frame. There is a trinity in our anatomy. Three systems, to which all the organs are directly or indirectly subsidiary, divide and control the body. First, there is the nutritive system, composed of stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, glands, and vessels, by which food is elaborated, effete matter removed, the blood manufactured, and the whole organization nourished. This is the commissariat. Secondly, there is the nervous system, which co-ordinates all the organs and functions; which enables man to entertain relations with the world around him, and with his fellows; and through which intellectual power is manifested, and human thought and reason made possible. Thirdly, there is the reproductive system, by which the race is continued, and its grasp on the earth assured. The first two of these systems are alike in each sex. They are so alike, that they require a similar training in each, and yield in each a similar result. The machinery of them is the same. No scalpel has disclosed any difference between a man's and a woman's liver. No microscope has revealed any structure, fibre, or cell, in the brain of man or woman, that is not common to both. No analysis or dynamometer has discovered or measured any chemical action or nerve-force that stamps either of these systems as male or female. From these anatomical and physiological data alone, the inference is legitimate, that intellectual power, the correlation and measure of cerebral structure and metamorphosis, is capable of equal development in both sexes. With regard to the reproductive system, the case is altogether different. Woman, in the interest of the race, is dowered with a set of organs peculiar to herself, whose complexity, delicacy, sympathies, and force are among the marvels of creation. If properly nurtured and cared for, they are a source of strength ae. In loyal service find his pleasure? Who will be their faithful son When low their sands of life do run?

Hard it is a child to rear, In roofless house 'mid want and fear. Yet just as hard 'mid gathered wealth, When death creeps on with crafty stealth, And one's treasures good At end of life's wandering, Are for strangers rude For mocking and squandering.

One fine Sunday, in the bright sunlight, All dressed up in blouses white, The old folks sat on the bench by the door; No cloud in sky, What could they ask more? All peace and love it seemed like Eden. Yet angels above their hearts might read in, A hidden sorrow, a gloomy mood Like lurking beast in darksome wood. In such a heaven Oh, do you see Whatever could the trouble be? I wonder now what ancient sorrow Suddenly sprang into their morrow. Was it quarrel of yesterday Choked off, then revived today, Or yet some newly sprouted ire Arisen to set their heaven on fire?

Perchance they're called to go to God, Nor longer dwell on earth's green sod. Then who for them on that far way Horses and chariot shall array?

"Anastasia, wife of mine, Soon will come our fatal day, Who will lay our bones away?"

"God only knows. With me always was that thought Which gloom into my heart has brought. Together in years and failing health, For what have we gathered all this wealth?"

"Hold a minute, Hearest thou? Something cries Beyond the gate--'tis like a child. Let's run! See'st ought? I thought something was there." Together they sprang And to the gate running; Then stopped in silence wondering.

Before the stile a swaddled child, Not bound tightly, just wrapped lightly, For it was in summer mild, And the mother with fond caress Had covered it with her own last dress. In wondering prayer stood our fond old pair. The little thing just seemed to plead. In little arms stretched out you'ld read Its prayer,-- in silence all. No crying--just a little breath its call. "See, 'Stasia! What did I tell thee? Here is fortune and fate for us; No longer dwell we in loneliness. Take it and dress it. Look at it! he

is faithful to either sex. Not as man or woman, but as a sexless being, does advanced age enter and pass the portals of what is called death.

Carpenter, in his physiology, reports the discovery, which we owe to German investigation, "that the whole structure originates in a single cell; that this cell gives birth to others, analogous to itself, and these again to many future generations; and that all the varied tissues of the animal body are developed from cells." A more recent writer adds, "In the higher animals and plants, we are presented with structures which may be regarded as essentially aggregates of cells; and there is now a physiological division of labor, some of the cells being concerned with the nutriment of the organism, whilst others are set apart, and dedicated to the function of reproduction. Every cell in such an aggregate leads a life, which, in a certain limited sense, may be said to be independent; and each discharges its own function in the general economy. Each cell has a period of development, growth, and active life, and each ultimately perishes; the life of the organism not only not depending upon the life of its elemental factors, but actually being kept up by their constant destruction and as constant renewal." Growth, health, and disease are cellular manifestations. With every act of life, the movement of a finger, the pulsation of a heart, the uttering of a word, the coining of a thought, the thrill of an emotion, there is the destruction of a certain number of cells. Their destruction evolves or sets free the force that we recognize as movement, speech, thought, and emotion. The number of cells destroyed depends upon the intensity and duration of the effort that correlates their destruction. When a blacksmith wields a hammer for an hour, he uses up the number of cells necessary to yield that amount of muscular force. When a girl studies Latin for an hour, she uses up the number of brain-cells necessary to yield that amount of intellectual force. As fast as one cell is destroyed, another is generated. The death of one is followed instantly by the birth of its successor. This continual process of cellular death and birth, the income and outgo of cells, that follow each other like the waves of the sea, each different yet each the same, is metamorphosis of tissue. This is life. It corresponds very nearly to Bichat's definition that, "life is organization in action." The finer sense of Shakspeare dictated a truer definition than the science of the French physiologist,--

"What's yet in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths."

No physical or psychical act is possible without this change. It is a process of continual waste and repair. Subject to its inevitable power, the organization is continually wasting away and continually being repaired.

From birth to adult age, the cells of muscle, organ, and brain that are spent in the activities of life, such as digesting, growing, studying, playing, working, and the like, are replaced by others of better quality and larger number. At least, such is the case where metamorphosis is permitted to go on normally. The result is growth and development. This growing period or formative epoch extends from birth to the age of twenty or twenty-five years. Its duration is shorter for a girl than for a boy. She ripens quicker than he. In the four years from fourteen to eighteen, she accomplishes an amount of physiological cell change and growth which Nature does not require of a boy in less than twice that number of years. It is obvious, that to secure the best kind of growth during this period, and the best development at the end of it, the waste of tissue produced by study, work, and fashion must not be so great that repair will only equal it. It is equally obvious that a girl upon whom Nature, for a limited period and for a definite purpose, imposes so great a physiological task, will not have as much power left for the tasks of the school, as the boy of whom Nature requires less at the corresponding epoch. A margin must be allowed for growth. The repair must be greater and better than the waste.

During middle age, life's active period, there is an equilibrium between the body's waste and repair: one equals the other. The machine, when properly managed, then holds its own. A French physiologist fixes the close of this period for the ideal man of the future at eighty, when, he says, old age begins. Few have such inherited power, and live with such physiological wisdom, as to keep their machine in good repair,--in good working-order,--to that late period. From the age of twenty-five or thirty, however, to that of sixty or sixty-five, this equilibrium occurs. Repair then equals waste; reconstruction equals destruction. The female organization, like the male, is now developed: its tissues are consolidated; its functions are established. With decent care, it can perform an immense amount of physical and mental labor. It is now capable of its best work. But, in order to do its best, it must obey the law of periodicity; just as the male organization, to do its best, must obey the law of sustained effort.

Sleep, whose inventor received the benediction of Sancho Panza, and whose power Dryden apostrophized,--

"Of all the powers the best: Oh! peace of mind, repairer of decay, Whose balm renews the limbs to labor of the day,"--

is a most important physiological factor. Our schools are as apt in frightening it away as our churches are in inviting it. Sleep is the opportunity for repair. During its hours of quiet rest, when muscular and nervous effort are stilled, millions of microscopic cells are busy in the penetralia of the organism, like coral insects in the depths of the sea, repairing the waste which the day's study and work have caused. Dr. B.W. Richardson of London, one of the most ingenious and accomplished physiologists of the present day, describes the labor of sleep in the following language: "During this period of natural sleep, the most important changes of nutrition are in progress: the body is renovating, and, if young, is actually growing. If the body be properly covered, the animal heat is being conserved, and laid up for expenditure during the waking hours that are to follow; the respiration is reduced, the inspirations being lessened in the proportion of six to seven, as compared with the number made when the body is awake; the action of the heart is reduced; the voluntary muscles, relieved of all fatigue, and with the extensors more relaxed than the flexors, are undergoing repair of structure, and recruiting their excitability; and the voluntary nervous system, dead for the time to the external vibration, or, as the older men called it, 'stimulus' from without, is also undergoing rest and repair, so that, when it comes again into work, it may receive better the impressions it may have to gather up, and influence more effectively the muscles it may be called upon to animate, direct, control." An American observer and physiologist, Dr. William A. Hammond, confirms the views of his English colleague. He tells us that "the state of general repose which accompanies sleep is of especial value to the organism, in allowing the nutrition of the nervous tissue to go on at a greater rate than its destructive metamorphosis." In another place he adds, "For the brain, there is no rest except during sleep." And, again, he says, "The more active the mind, the greater the necessity for sleep; just as with a steamer, the greater the number of revolutions its engine makes, the more imperative is the demand for fuel." These statements justify and explain the instinctive demand for sleep. They also show why it is that infants require more sleep than children, and children than middle-age folk, and middle-age folk than old people. Infants must have sleep for repair and rapid growth; children, for repair and moderate growth; middle-age folk, for repair without growth; and old people, only for the minimum of repair. Girls, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, must have sleep, not only for repair and growth, like boys, but for the additional task of constructing, or, more properly speaking, of developing and perfecting then, a reproductive system,--the engine within an engine. The bearing of this physiological fact upon education is obvious. Work of the school is work of the brain. Work of the brain eats the brain away. Sleep is the chance and laboratory of repair. If a child's brain-work and sleep are normally proportioned to each other, each night will more than make good each day's loss. Clear heads will greet each welcome morn. But if the reverse occurs, the night will not repair the day; and aching heads will signalize the advance of neuralgia, tubercle, and disease. So Nature punishes disobedience.

It is apparent, from these physiological considerations, that, in order to give girls a fair chance in education, four conditions at least must be observed: first, a sufficient supply of appropriate nutriment; secondly, a normal management of the catamenial functions, including the building of the reproductive apparatus; thirdly, mental and physical work so apportioned, that repair shall exceed waste, and a margin be left for general and sexual development; and fourthly, sufficient sleep. Evidence of the results brought about by a disregard of these conditions will next be given.

FOOTNOTES:

Human Physiology, p. 546.

Lectures on Diseases of Women. Am. ed., p. 48.

Enigmas of Life, pp. 165-8.

Tuckerman's Genera Lichenum, Introduction, p. v.

Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 455.

Nicholson, Study of Biology, p. 79.

Popular Science Monthly, August, 1872, p. 411.

Sleep and its Derangements, pp. 9, 10, 13.

CHIEFLY CLINICAL.

"Et l'on nous persuadera difficilement que lorsque les hommes ont tant de peine ? ?tre hommes, les femmes puissent, tout en restant femmes, devenir hommes aussi, mettant ainsi la main sur les deux r?les, exer?ant la double mission, r?sumant le double caract?re de l'humanit?! Nous perdrons la femme, et nous n'aurons pas l'homme. Voila ce qui nous arrivera. On nous donnera ce quelque chose de monstreux, cet ?tre r?pugnant, qui d?j? parait ? notre horizon."--LE COMTE A. DE GASPARIN.

We have previously seen that the blood is the life, and that the loss of it is the loss of so much life. Deluded by strange theories, and groping in physiological darkness, our fathers' physicians were too often Sangrados. Nourishing food, pure air, and haematized blood were stigmatized as the friends of disease and the enemies of convalescence. Oxygen was shut out from and carbonic acid shut into the chambers of phthisis and fever; and veins were opened, that the currents of blood and disease might flow out together. Happily, those days of ignorance, which God winked at, and which the race survived, have passed by. Air and food and blood are recognized as Nature's restoratives. No physician would dare, nowadays, to bleed either man or woman once a month, year in and year out, for a quarter of a century continuously. But girls often have the courage, or the ignorance, to do this to themselves. And the worst of it is, that the organization of our schools and workshops, and the demands of social life and polite society, encourage them in this slow suicide. It has already been stated that the excretory organs, by constantly eliminating from the system its effete and used material, the measure and source of its force, keep the machine in clean, healthy, and working order, and that the reproductive apparatus of woman uses the blood as one of its agents of elimination. Kept within natural limits, this elimination is a source of strength, a perpetual fountain of health, a constant renewal of life. Beyond these limits it is a hemorrhage, that, by draining away the life, becomes a source of weakness and a perpetual fountain of disease.

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