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Author’s Note: This memoir has been pieced together with the help of
journals, photographs, blogs, and Facebook posts. Most names and identifying
characteristics have been changed to protect them from recognition. Time has
been compressed. Dialogue has been approximated and in some cases
compositely arranged. Great care has been taken to tell my truths. This is my
story and how I remember it.
Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Land
Jacket design by Amanda Kain
Jacket copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of
copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to
produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a
theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use
material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact
permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Hachette Books
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
hachettebooks.com
twitter.com/hachettebooks
First Edition: January 2019
Hachette Books is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Hachette Books
name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not
owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking
events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call
(866) 376-6591.
LCCN 2018954908
ISBNs: 978-0-316-50511-6 (hardcover), 978-0-316-50510-9 (ebook), 978-0-
316-45450-6 (Canadian trade paperback)
E3-20181115-DA-NF-ORI
 Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword
PART ONE
1: THE CABIN
2: THE CAMPER
3: TRANSITIONAL HOUSING
4: THE FAIRGROUNDS APARTMENT
5: SEVEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE
6: THE FARM
7: THE LAST JOB ON EARTH
8: THE PORN HOUSE
9: THE MOVE-O UT CLEAN
10: HENRY’S HOUSE
PART TWO
11: THE STUDIO
12: MINIMALIST
13: WENDY’S HOUSE
14: THE PLANT HOUSE
15: THE CHEF’S HOUSE
16: DONNA’S HOUSE
17: IN THREE YEARS
18: THE SAD HOUSE
19: LORI’S HOUSE
20: “I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU DO IT”
21: THE CLOWN HOUSE
22: STILL LIFE WITH MIA
PART THREE
 23: DO BETTER
24: THE BAY HOUSE
25: THE HARDEST WORKER
26: THE HOARDER HOUSE
27: WE’RE HOME
Acknowledgments
Newsletters
 For Mia:
Goodnight
I love you
See you in the morning.
—Mom
I’ve learned that making a living is not the
same thing as making a life.
—Maya Angelou
 Foreword

Welcome to Stephanie Land’s World

The price of admission requires that you abandon any stereotypes

of domestic workers, single parents, and media-derived images of
poverty you may be harboring. Stephanie is hardworking and
“articulate,” to use the condescending praise word bestowed by
elites on unexpectedly intelligent people who lack higher education.
Maid is about her journey as a mother, trying to provide a safe life
and home for her daughter Mia while surviving on pieced-together
bits of public assistance and the pathetically low income she earned
as a maid.
“Maid” is a dainty word, redolent of tea trays, starched uniforms,
Downton Abbey. But in reality, the maid’s world is encrusted with
grime and shit stains. These workers unclog our drains of pubic
hairs, they witness our dirty laundry literally and metaphorically. Yet,
they remain invisible—overlooked in our nation’s politics and policies,
looked down upon at our front doors. I know because I briefly
inhabited this life as a reporter working in low-wage jobs for my
book Nickel and Dimed. Unlike Stephanie, I could always go back to
my far-more-comfortable life as a writer. And unlike her, I was not
trying to support a child on my income. My children were grown and
had no interest in living with me in trailer parks as part of some
crazy journalistic endeavor. So I know about the work of cleaning
houses—the exhaustion and the contempt I faced when I wore my
company vest, emblazoned with “The Maids International,” in public.
But I could only guess at the anxiety and despair of so many of my
coworkers. Like Stephanie, many of these women were single
mothers who cleaned houses as a means of survival, who agonized
throughout the day about the children they sometimes had to leave
in dodgy situations in order to go to work.
With luck, you have never had to live in Stephanie’s world. In
Maid, you will see that it’s ruled by scarcity. There is never enough
money and sometimes not enough food; peanut butter and ramen
noodles loom large; McDonald’s is a rare treat. Nothing is reliable in
this world—not cars, not men, not housing. Food stamps are an
important pillar of her survival, and the recent legislation that people
be required to work for their food stamps will only make you clench
your fists. Without these government resources, these workers,
single parents, and beyond would not be able to survive. These are
not handouts. Like the rest of us, they want stable footing in our
society.
Perhaps the most hurtful feature of Stephanie’s world is the
antagonism beamed out toward her by the more fortunate. This is
class prejudice, and it is inflicted especially on manual laborers, who
are often judged to be morally and intellectually inferior to those
who wear suits or sit at desks. At the supermarket, other customers
eye Stephanie’s shopping cart judgmentally while she pays with food
stamps. One older man says, loudly, “You’re welcome!” as if he had
personally paid for her groceries. This mentality reaches far beyond
this one encounter Stephanie had and represents the views of much
of our society.
The story of Stephanie’s world has an arc that seems headed for
a disastrous breakdown. First, there is the physical wear and tear
that goes along with lifting, vacuuming, and scrubbing six-to-eight
hours a day. At the housecleaning company that I worked for, every
one of my coworkers, from the age of nineteen on, seemed to suffer
from some sort of neuromuscular damage—back pain, rotator cuff
injuries, knee and ankle problems. Stephanie copes with the
alarming number of ibuprofen she consumes per day. At one point,
she looks wistfully at the opioids stored in a customer’s bathroom,
but prescription drugs are not an option for her, nor are massages or
physical therapy or visits to a pain management specialist.
On top of, or intertwined with the physical exhaustion of her
lifestyle, is the emotional challenge Stephanie faces. She is the very
model of the “resilience” psychologists recommend for the poor.
When confronted with an obstacle, she figures out how to move
forward. But the onslaught of obstacles sometimes reaches levels of
overload. All that keeps her together is her bottomless love for her
daughter, which is the clear bright light that illuminates the entire
book.
It’s hardly a spoiler to say that this book has a happy ending.
Throughout the years of struggle and toil reported here, Stephanie
nourished a desire to become a writer. I met Stephanie years ago,
when she was in the early stages of her writing career. In addition to
being an author, I am the founder of the Economic Hardship
Reporting Project, an organization that promotes high-quality
journalism on economic inequality, especially by people who are
themselves struggling to get by. Stephanie sent us a query, and we
snatched her up, working with her to develop pitches, polish drafts,
and place them in the best outlets we could find, including the New
York Times and the New York Review of Books. She is exactly the
kind of person we exist for—an unknown working-class writer who
needed just a nudge to launch her career.
If this book inspires you, which it may, remember how close it
came to never being written. Stephanie might have given in to
despair or exhaustion; she might have suffered a disabling injury at
work. Think too of all the women who, for reasons like that, never
manage to get their stories told. Stephanie reminds us that they are
out there in the millions, each heroic in her own way, waiting for us
to listen.

—Barbara Ehrenreich
PART ONE
 1

THE CABIN

My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter.

It was an afternoon in June, the day before her first birthday. I
perched on the shelter’s threadbare love seat, holding up an old
digital camera to capture her first steps. Mia’s tangled hair and thinly
striped onesie contrasted with the determination in her brown eyes
as she flexed and curled her toes for balance. From behind the
camera, I took in the folds of her ankles, the rolls of her thighs, and
the roundness of her belly. She babbled as she made her way
toward me, barefoot across the tiled floor. Years of dirt were etched
into that floor. As hard as I scrubbed, I could never get it clean.
It was the final week of our ninety-day stay in a cabin unit on the
north side of town, allotted by the housing authority for those
without a home. Next, we’d move into transitional housing—an old,
run-down apartment complex with cement floors that doubled as a
halfway house. However temporary, I had done my best to make the
cabin a home for my daughter. I’d placed a yellow sheet over the
love seat not only to warm the looming white walls and gray floors,
but to offer something bright and cheerful during a dark time.
By the front door, I’d hung a small calendar on the wall. It was
filled with appointments with caseworkers at organizations where I
could get us help. I had looked under every stone, peered through
the window of every government assistance building, and joined the
long lines of people who carried haphazard folders of paperwork to
prove they didn’t have money. I was overwhelmed by how much
work it took to prove I was poor.
We weren’t allowed to have visitors, or to have very much at all.
We had one bag of belongings. Mia had a single basket of toys. I
had a small stack of books that I’d placed on the little shelves
separating the living area from the kitchen. There was a round table
that I clipped Mia’s high chair to, and a chair where I sat and
watched her eat, often drinking coffee to quell my hunger.
As I watched Mia take those first few steps, I tried to keep my
eyes from the green box behind her where I kept the court
documents detailing my fight with her father for custody. I fought to
keep my focus on her, smiling at her, as if everything was fine. Had I
turned the camera around, I wouldn’t have recognized myself. The
few photos of me showed almost a different person, possibly the
skinniest I had been in my whole life. I worked part-time as a
landscaper, where I spent several hours a week trimming shrubs,
fighting back overgrown blackberries, and picking tiny blades of
grass from places they weren’t supposed to be. Sometimes I cleaned
the floors and toilets of homes whose owners I knew, friends who
had heard I was desperate for money. They weren’t rich, but these
friends had financial cushions beneath them, something I didn’t. A
lost paycheck would be a hardship, not a start of events that would
end with living in a homeless shelter. They had parents or other
family members who could swoop in with money and save them
from all of that. No one was swooping in for us. It was just Mia and
me.
On the intake papers for the housing authority, when asked about
my personal goals for the next few months, I wrote about trying to
make it work with Mia’s dad, Jamie. I thought if I tried hard enough,
we could figure it out. Sometimes I would imagine moments when
we were a real family—a mother, a father, a beautiful baby girl. I’d
grasp onto those daydreams, like they were a string tied to a huge
balloon. The balloon would carry me over Jamie’s abuse and the
hardship of being left as a single parent. If I kept hold of that string,
I’d float above it all. If I focused on the portrait of the family I
wanted to be, I could pretend the bad parts weren’t real; like this
life was a temporary state of being, not a new existence.
Mia got new shoes for her birthday. I’d saved up for a month.
They were brown with little pink-and-blue birds embroidered on
them. I sent out party invitations like a normal mom and invited
Jamie like we were a normal co-parenting couple. We celebrated at a
picnic table overlooking the ocean on a grassy hillside at
Chetzemoka Park in Port Townsend, the city in Washington State
where we lived. People sat smiling on blankets they’d brought. I’d
bought lemonade and muffins with my remaining food stamp money
for that month. My dad and my grandfather had traveled for almost
two hours from opposite directions to attend. My brother and a few
friends came. One brought a guitar. I asked a friend to take pictures
of Mia, Jamie, and me, because it was so rare, the three of us sitting
together like that. I wanted Mia to have a good memory to look back
on. But Jamie’s face in the photos showed disinterest, anger.
My mom had flown in with her husband, William, all the way from
London, or France, or wherever they were living at the time. The
day after Mia’s party, they came over—violating the homeless
shelter’s “no visitors” rule—to help me move to the transitional
apartment. I shook my head a little at their outfits—William in his
skinny black jeans, black sweater, and black boots; Mom in a black-
and-white-striped dress that hugged her round hips too tight, black
leggings, and low-top Converse shoes. They looked ready for sipping
espresso, not moving. I hadn’t let anyone see where we’d been
living, so the intrusion of their British accents and Euro outfits made
the cabin, our home, feel even dirtier.
William seemed surprised to see that there was only one duffel
bag to move us out. He picked it up to bring it outside, and Mom
followed him. I turned back to take a final look at that floor, at the
ghosts of myself reading books on the love seat, of Mia rummaging
through her basket of toys, of her sitting in the built-in drawer under
the twin bed. I was happy to be gone. But it was a brief moment to
take in what I had survived, a bittersweet goodbye to the fragile
place of our beginning.
Half the residents in our new apartment building, the Northwest
Passage Transitional Family Housing Program, were like me, moving
out of homeless shelters, but the other half were people who had
just gotten out of jail. It was supposed to be a step up from the
shelter, but I already missed the seclusion of the cabin. Here, in this
building, my reality felt exposed for all to see, even me.
Mom and William waited behind me as I approached the door to
our new home. I struggled with the key, setting the box down to
fumble harder with the lock, until finally we were in. “Well, at least
that’s secure,” William joked.
We walked into a narrow entryway; the front door sat opposite
the bathroom. Right away I noticed the tub, where Mia and I could
take a bath together. We hadn’t had the luxury of a tub in a long
time. Our two bedrooms were on the right. Each had a window that
faced the road. In the tiny kitchen, the refrigerator door grazed the
cupboards on the opposite side. I walked across the large white
tiles, which resembled the floor at the shelter, and opened the door
to a small outdoor deck. It was just wide enough where I could sit
with my legs stretched out.
Julie, my caseworker, had briefly shown me the place in a walk-
through two weeks earlier. The last family who’d lived in the
apartment had stayed for twenty-four months, the maximum
amount of time possible. “You’re lucky this one opened up,” she said.
“Especially since your days were up at the shelter.”
When I first met with Julie, I sat across from her, stammering in
my attempts to answer questions about what my plans were, how I
planned to provide shelter for my child. What my path to financial
stability looked like. What jobs I could do. Julie seemed to
understand my bewilderment, offering some suggestions on how to
proceed. Moving into low-income housing seemed to be my only
option. The trouble was finding an empty slot. There were advocates
at the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services Center who
kept a protected shelter available for victims who had nowhere to
turn, but I had gotten lucky when the housing authority offered me
my own space and a path to stability.
Julie and I went over a four-page list of terse rules during that
first meeting, rules I’d have to agree to in order to stay at their
shelter.

Guest understands that this is an emergency shelter;

it is NOT your home.
RANDOM URINALYSIS may be requested
at any time.
Visitors are NOT allowed at the shelter.
NO EXCEPTIONS.

Julie made clear they’d still do random checks to make sure the
daily household chore minimums were met, like cleaning the dishes,
not leaving food out on the counter, and keeping the floor tidy. I
again agreed to random urine analysis tests, random unit
inspections, and a ten p.m. curfew. Overnight visitors were not
allowed without permission, and for no more than three days. All
changes in income had to be reported immediately. Monthly
statements had to be submitted with details about what money
came in and how and why it went out.
Julie was always nice and kept smiling as she spoke. I appreciated
that she didn’t have that worn, drawn-out look that other
caseworkers in government offices seemed to have. She treated me
like a person, tucking her short, copper-red hair behind her ear as
she spoke. But my thoughts were stuck on when she called me
“lucky.” I didn’t feel lucky. Grateful, yes. Definitely. But having luck,
no. Not when I was moving into a place with rules that suggested
that I was an addict, dirty, or just so messed up in life that I needed
an enforced curfew and pee tests.
Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation—the
crime being a lack of means to survive.
* * *
William, Mom, and I moved things at a reasonable pace from the
pickup truck I’d borrowed to the stairs leading up to my door on the
second floor. We’d taken my stuff out of a storage unit my dad got
me before I moved into the cabin. Mom and William were so
overdressed I offered them t-shirts, but they declined. Mom had
been overweight my whole life, except during the period when she
divorced my dad. She had attributed her weight loss to the Atkins
Diet. Dad later discovered that her sudden gym motivation was not
fitness but an affair, along with a new desire to escape the
constraints of being a wife and mother. Mom’s metamorphosis was a
coming out or an awakening to the life she had always wanted but
sacrificed for her family. For me, it felt like she was suddenly a
stranger.
The spring my brother, Tyler, graduated from high school, my
parents divorced, and Mom moved to an apartment. By
Thanksgiving, she had shrunk down to half her previous dress size
and grown her hair long. We walked down to a bar, and I watched
her kiss men my age, then pass out in a diner booth. I was
embarrassed, but later that feeling transformed into a loss that I did
not know how to grieve. I wanted my mom back.
Dad had dissolved himself into a new family for a while, too. The
woman he dated right after the divorce was jealous and had three
boys. She didn’t like me coming around. “Take care of yourself,” he
said to me once after breakfast at a Denny’s near their house.
My parents had moved on, leaving me emotionally orphaned. I
vowed to never put the same amount of physical and emotional
space between Mia and me.
Now, staring at Mom, married to a British man who was only
seven years older than me, I saw she had ballooned several sizes
larger than she’d ever been, so much that she seemed
uncomfortable in her body. I couldn’t help but stare at her while she
stood next to me speaking in a fake British accent. It had been
maybe seven years since she’d moved to Europe, but I’d seen her
only a handful of times.
Halfway through moving my many boxes of books, she started
talking about how good a burger sounded. “And a beer,” she added
the next time we passed each other on the stairs. It was barely
noon, but she was in vacation mode, which meant drinking began
early. She suggested we go to Sirens, a bar downtown with outdoor
seating. My mouth watered. I hadn’t been out to eat in months.
 “I have to work after this, but I can go,” I said. I had a job
cleaning my friend’s preschool once a week for $45. I also needed to
return the truck and pick up Mia from Jamie’s.
That day Mom cleared out several huge bins of her own—old
photos and knickknacks she had stored in a friend’s garage. She
brought it all over to my new place as a gift. I took it willfully, with
nostalgia, and as evidence of our former life together. She’d kept
every school portrait, every Halloween photo. Me holding my first
fish. Cradling flowers after my school musical. Mom had been in the
audience, supporting me, smiling and holding up a camera. Now, in
the apartment, she looked at me only as another adult in the room,
an equal, while I stood there feeling more lost than I’d ever been. I
needed my family. I needed to see them nodding, smiling,
reassuring me that I was going to be okay.
When William got up to use the bathroom, I sat next to Mom on
the floor. “Hey,” I said.
“Yes?” she answered, like I was about to ask her for something. I
always got the feeling she worried I’d ask her for money, but I never
did. She and William lived a frugal life in Europe, renting out
William’s flat in London while they lived in a cottage in France, not
far from Bordeaux, which they would turn into a bed-and-breakfast.
“I wondered if maybe you and I could spend some time
together?” I asked. “Just the two of us?”
“Steph, I just don’t think that would be appropriate.”
“Why?” I asked, straightening.
“I mean, if you want to spend time with me, then you’ll have to
accept that William will be there, too,” she said.
At that moment, William walked toward us, loudly blowing his
nose into his handkerchief. She grabbed for his hand and looked at
me with her eyebrows raised, like she was proud of herself for
setting that boundary.
It was no secret that I didn’t like William. When I’d gone to visit
them in France a couple of years earlier, William and I had had a
fierce argument that upset my mother so much she went out to the
car to cry. This visit, I wished to gain back the lost relationship with
my mother, but not just as someone who could help me care for
Mia. I craved a mom, someone I could trust, who would accept me
unconditionally despite my living in a homeless shelter. If I had a
mom to talk to, maybe she could explain what was happening to
me, or make it easier, and help me not see myself as a failure. It
was hard, admitting that level of desperation, vying for the attention
of your own mother. So I laughed whenever William made jokes. I
smiled when he poked fun at American grammar. I didn’t comment
on my mother’s new accent or the fact that she now acted uppity, as
if Grandma didn’t make salad from cans of fruit and containers of
Cool Whip.
Mom and Dad grew up in different parts of Skagit County, an area
known for its fields of tulips, located about an hour north of Seattle.
Both their families had lived in poverty for generations. Dad’s family
was rooted deep in the wooded hillsides above Clear Lake. His
distant relatives were rumored to still make moonshine. Mom lived
down in the valley, where farmers grew fields of peas and spinach.
Grandma and Grandpa had been married for close to forty years.
My earliest memories are of them in their trailer home in the woods
that sat next to a creek. I stayed with them during the day while my
parents worked. Grandpa would make us mayonnaise and butter
sandwiches on Wonder bread for lunch. They didn’t have much
money, but my memories of my maternal grandparents were filled
with love and warmth: Grandma stirring Campbell’s tomato soup on
the stove, she’d have a soda in one hand and stand on one foot with
the other tucked into her thigh like a flamingo, and there was always
a cigarette burning in an ashtray nearby.
They’d moved to the city to an old house next to downtown
Anacortes that became so run-down over the years it was nearly
inhospitable. Grandpa was a real estate agent and would pop in
between showing houses and burst through the door with little toys
he’d found for me or won from the claw machine at the bowling
alley.
As a child, when I wasn’t at their house, I’d call Grandma on the
telephone. I spent so much time talking to her that in the bin of
photos were several of me at four and five years old standing in the
kitchen with a large yellow phone pressed to my ear.
 Grandma had paranoid schizophrenia, and over time it became
nearly impossible to have a conversation with her. She had grown
delusional. The last time Mia and I visited, I’d brought her a Papa
Murphy’s pizza that I purchased with my food stamps. Grandma,
with thick black eyeliner and hot pink lipstick, stood outside smoking
most of the visit. We had to wait for Grandpa to get home so we
could eat. When he did, Grandma then said she wasn’t hungry
anymore and accused Grandpa of having an affair, even of flirting
with me.
But Anacortes was the keeper of my childhood memories. Though
I had fewer and fewer ties to my family, I always told Mia about
Bowman Bay, an area of Deception Pass—a crevasse in the ocean
dividing Fidalgo and Whidbey islands, where my dad took me hiking
as a little girl. That small pocket of Washington State, with its
towering evergreens and madronas, was the only place that felt like
home to me. I’d explored every nook of it, knew its trails and the
nuances of the ocean currents, and had carved my initials into the
twisted reddish-orange trunk of a madrona tree and could point out
exactly where it was. Whenever I returned to Anacortes to visit my
family, I found myself walking the beaches below Deception Pass
Bridge, taking the long way home through Rosario Road, past the
large houses on bluffs.
I missed my family but took solace that Mom and Grandma still
talked every Sunday. Mom called her from wherever she was in
Europe. It consoled me, like I hadn’t lost Mom entirely, that she still
had some remembrance inside of the people she’d left behind.
* * *
Mom ordered another beer when the bill came for our lunch at
Sirens. I checked the time. I needed to give myself two hours to
clean the preschool before I picked up Mia. After watching Mom and
William amuse themselves with outlandish anecdotes about their
neighbors in France for fifteen more minutes, I admitted that I had
to leave.
“Oh,” William said, his eyebrows rising. “Do you want me to get
the waitress’s attention so you can pay for lunch?”
I stared at him. “I don’t,” I said. We looked at each other, in some
kind of standoff. “I don’t have money to pay.”
It would have been appropriate for me to buy them lunch, since
they were visiting and had helped me move, but they were
supposed to be my parents. I wanted to remind him that he just
moved me out of a homeless shelter, but I didn’t and turned to my
mom with pleading eyes. “I can put the beer on my credit card,” she
offered.
“I only have ten bucks in my account,” I said. The knots in my
throat were growing in size.
“That barely pays for your burger,” William blurted out.
He was right. My burger was $10.59. I had ordered an item
exactly twenty-eight cents less than what I had in my bank account.
Shame pounded inside my chest. Any triumph I felt that day about
my move out of the shelter was shattered. I could not afford a damn
burger.
I looked from my mom to William and then excused myself to use
the bathroom. I didn’t have to pee. I needed to cry.
My reflection in the mirror showed a rail-thin figure, wearing a
kid-sized t-shirt and tight-fitting jeans that I’d rolled up at the
bottom to hide that they were too short. In the mirror, there was
that woman—overworked but without any money to show for it,
someone who couldn’t afford a fucking burger. I was often too
stressed to eat, and many mealtimes with Mia were just me
watching her spoon food into her mouth, thankful for each bite she
took. My body looked sinewy and sunken, and all I had left in me
was to cry it out in that bathroom.
Years ago, when I thought about my future, poverty seemed
inconceivable, so far away from my reality. I never thought I would
end up here. But now, after one kid and a breakup, I was smack in
the middle of a reality that I didn’t know how to get out of.
When I returned, William still sat with his nostrils flared, like some
kind of miniature dragon. Mom leaned toward him, whispering
something, and he shook his head in disapproval.
“I can pay ten dollars,” I said, sitting down.
 “Okay,” Mom said.
I hadn’t expected her to accept my offer. It’d be days before I’d
get a paycheck. I fumbled in my bag for my wallet and then handed
my card to include with hers. After signing the check, I stood and
stuffed my card into my back pocket and barely gave her a hug
goodbye as I walked out. I was only a few steps from the table
when William said, “Well, I’ve never seen someone act more
entitled!”
 2

THE CAMPER

For Christmas in 1983, I got a Cabbage Patch Kid from my parents.

Mom had waited for hours in lines at JCPenney before the doors
opened. The department store managers held baseball bats over the
shoppers’ heads to keep the mobs from rushing the counter. Mom
elbowed shoppers from left to right like a fighter and grabbed the
last box from the shelf right before a woman tried to snatch it. Or
that was how she told the story. I listened with wide eyes, relishing
the fact that she had fought for me. My mom, the hero. The
champion. Bringer of sought-after dolls.
On Christmas morning, I held my new Cabbage Patch Kid on my
small hip. She had short, looped blond hair and green eyes. I stood
in front of Mom, raised my right hand, and pledged, “After meeting
this Cabbage Patch Kid, and learning of her needs, I want to make
the major commitment of becoming a good parent to Angelica
Marie.” Then I signed the adoption papers, which was the key part
of the Cabbage Patch Kid phenomenon. It expressed family values
and encouraged responsibility. When I received the doll’s birth
certificate with my name printed on it, Mom wrapped both me and
Angelica, who was carefully cleaned and dressed for the occasion, in
a proud embrace.
* * *
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer.
Growing up, I wrote stories and disappeared with books like they
were old friends. Some of my favorite days off were the rainy ones,
when I’d start a new book in the morning at a coffee shop, finishing
it late that evening in a bar. It was during that first summer in my
late twenties with Jamie that the University of Montana in Missoula
began wooing me with postcards for their creative writing program. I
imagined myself inside the photos, walking through the pastoral
landscapes of Montana, somewhere beneath the quotes from
Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley scrawled above in scripted fonts: “…
but with Montana it is love,” he’d written simply. They were words
that brought me to the “Big Sky Country” of Montana, in my search
for a home in the next phase of my life.
I met Jamie walking home from a bar, where my coworkers and I
went after our closing shift. It was close to midnight, and the
midsummer crickets hummed from the grass. My hooded sweatshirt
had been tied around my waist while I sweated and danced all night.
Now I grabbed for it in anticipation of a long bike ride home. The
front of my Carhartt pants still had little drips of espresso from the
café where I worked, and I could still taste that last sip of whiskey in
my mouth.
Outside into the refreshing breeze, I heard the wafted sound of a
guitar coming from a park bench and the unmistakable voice of John
Prine. I paused long enough to recognize the song and noticed a
guy holding an MP3 player and portable speakers in his lap. He wore
a red flannel coat and a brown fedora and sat hunched over, gently
nodding his head, taking in the music.
Without thinking, I sat down next to him. The warmth of the
whiskey stirred in my chest. “Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said, and smiled at me.
We sat like that for a while, listening to his favorite songs,
breathing in the night air on the banks of Port Townsend’s downtown
strip. Brick Victorian buildings towered above the waves lapping
against the docks.
When I stood up to leave, in the excitement of meeting a new
boy, I scrawled my phone number across a page of my journal and
then ripped it out.
“You wanna go out sometime?” I asked, handing him the page.
He looked up at me, then glanced toward the sound of laughter as
people stumbled out of Sirens. He took the slip of paper from my
hand, looked at me, and nodded.
The next evening, while I was driving into town, my phone rang.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Downtown.” I swerved my car, failing to downshift, steer, and
hold the phone at the same time.
“Meet me outside the Penny Saver Market,” he said, and hung up.
About five minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot. Jamie
leaned against the back of a red, pieced-together Volkswagen Bug,
wearing the same clothes from the night before, waiting for me. He
smiled at me coolly, showing crooked teeth that I hadn’t noticed in
the darkness.
“Let’s get some beer,” he said, throwing the butt of a rolled
cigarette onto the pavement.
He paid for two bottles of Samuel Smith stout, and then we
climbed into his Volkswagen and drove to a bluff to watch the
sunset. While he talked, I thumbed through a New York Times Book
Review that I found on the passenger seat. He told me about a bike
trip he had planned—down the Pacific Coast on Highway 101 all the
way to San Francisco.
“I already got the time off work,” he said, glancing at me. His
eyes were a darker brown than mine.
“Where do you work?” I asked, realizing that I knew nothing
about him other than his music preferences.
“The Fountain Café.” He took a drag of his cigarette. “I used to be
a sous chef. But now I just make the desserts there.” He exhaled,
and a plume of smoke disappeared over the bluff.
“You make the tiramisu?” I asked, pausing in my feeble attempt
to roll a cigarette of my own.
He nodded, and I knew I’d go to bed with him. The tiramisu was
that good.
Later that week, Jamie brought me to his camper trailer for the
first time. I stood in the tiny space, taking in the wood paneling, the
orange beanbag, and the shelves lined with books.
Jamie apologized when he noticed me looking around and
fumbled to explain that the trailer was just to save money for his
bike trip. But I’d seen Bukowski and Jean-Paul Sartre in a line of
books above the table and couldn’t care less about the trailer’s
appearance. I turned immediately to kiss him.
He pushed me slowly to the white down of his bed. We kissed for
hours, as though nothing else in the world existed. He encased me.
Eventually, Jamie and I planned to go our separate ways—me to
Missoula, and him to Portland, Oregon. When he suggested that I
move into his trailer to save money, I did so immediately. We lived in
a twenty-foot camper trailer, but the rent was only $150 apiece. Our
relationship was one with a definitive end, each of us helping the
other toward the goal of getting out of town.
Port Townsend’s work force was mainly that of the service
industry, catering to tourists and those with disposable incomes who
arrived in droves during the warmer months. The ferries were
packed with them, crawling over the waters between the mainland
and the peninsula, the gateway to the rain forests and hot springs
on the coast. The Victorian mansions, shops, and cafés on the
waterfront brought the city money and in turn provided livelihoods
for many residents. Still, it wasn’t a ton of money pouring in. Unless
a Port Townsend resident started a business, there wasn’t much
more the average worker could do to build a future.
Many of the core residents already had their futures firmly set in
place. In the late sixties or early seventies, a band of hippies had
moved into Port Townsend, then a near ghost town barely surviving,
thanks to a paper mill that employed most of its residents. The town
had been built on the promise of being one of the biggest western
seaports and failed when lack of funding from the Depression
rerouted railroads to Seattle and Tacoma. The hippies, some of
whom were now my employers and loyal customers, bought the
Victorian mansions, which loomed with decay from a near century of
abandonment. They spent years working on the buildings,
preserving them as historical landmarks, improving the town,
building bakeries, cafés, breweries, bars, restaurants, grocery stores,
and hotels. Port Townsend became known for harboring wooden
boats, with interest evolving into a formal school and yearly festival.
Now that core group who’d worked to revive the town kicked back,
slowed their pace, and settled into being the bourgeoisie. All of us
service workers catered to them, worked for them in our various
ways, living in tiny cabins, yurts, or studio apartments. We were
there for the weather—the rain shadow the Olympic Mountains
provided—and for the hidden artsy community that was only a ferry
ride from Seattle. We were there for the calm ocean water in the
bay and the sweaty work and lifestyle bustling kitchens provided.
Jamie and I both worked at cafés, relishing the youth and
freedom to do so. We both knew we were on to bigger and better
things. He helped out with his friend’s catering business and did
whatever side work he could find that paid under the table. In
addition to the café, I worked at a doggy day care and sold bread at
farmers’ markets. Neither of us had college degrees—Jamie admitted
that he hadn’t even graduated from high school—and we did
whatever work we could to make money.
Jamie had typical restaurant shifts, from the late afternoon well
into the night, so most of the time I was already asleep by the time
he came home, a little drunk after hanging out at the bar.
Sometimes I’d go down and meet him, spending my tips on a few
beers.
Then I found out I was pregnant. Through a wall of morning
sickness, my stomach dropped, and the world suddenly started
shrinking until it seemed to stop. I stood in front of the bathroom
mirror for a long time with my sweatshirt lifted to examine my
stomach. We’d conceived on my twenty-eighth birthday, the day
before Jamie left for his bike trip.
In choosing to keep the baby, I would be choosing to stay in Port
Townsend. I wanted to keep the pregnancy a secret and continue
with my plan to move to Missoula, but that didn’t seem possible. I
needed to give Jamie a chance to be a father—it felt wrong to deny
him that opportunity. But staying would mean delaying my dreams
of becoming a writer. Delaying the person I expected myself to be.
The person who would move on, become someone great. I wasn’t
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Miscellanies
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
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laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Miscellanies

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Editor: Edward Waldo Emerson

Release date: October 5, 2023 [eBook #71812]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company,

1878

Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

MISCELLANIES ***
 MISCELLANIES

BY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
 COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
COPYRIGHT, 1883, 1904, AND 1906, BY EDWARD W. EMERSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 PREFACE
The year after Mr. Emerson’s death, Mr. Cabot, in editing his
works, gathered into a volume the occasional writings which had
never been included in previous editions, although six of them had
been printed, either as pamphlets or in periodicals, long before, by
the author. These were the Sermon on The Lord’s Supper, the
Historical Address at Concord in 1835, that at the dedication of the
Soldiers’ Monument there in 1867, and that on Emancipation in the
British West Indies, the Essay on War, and the Editors’ Address in
the Massachusetts Quarterly Review. “American Civilization” had
been a portion of the article of that name in the Atlantic in 1862. “The
Fortune of the Republic” also had been printed as a pamphlet in
1874. Mr. Cabot said in his prefatory note, “In none was any change
from the original form made by me, except in the ‘Fortune of the
Republic,’ which was made up of several lectures, for the occasion
upon which it was read.” This was after Mr. Emerson was no longer
able to arrange his work and his friends had come to his aid.
The speeches at the John Brown, the Walter Scott, and the Free
Religious Association meetings had been printed, probably with Mr.
Emerson’s consent. The other pieces included by Mr. Cabot, namely,
the speeches on Theodore Parker, the Emancipation Proclamation,
Abraham Lincoln, at the Harvard Commemoration, “Woman,” the
addresses to Kossuth, and at the Burns Festival, had not been
published.
All that were in Mr. Cabot’s collection will be found here, although
the order has been slightly changed. To these I have added Mr.
Emerson’s letter to President Van Buren in 1838, his speech on the
Fugitive Slave Law in Concord soon after its enactment, that on
Shakspeare to the Saturday Club, and his remarks at the Humboldt
Centennial, and at the dinner to the Chinese Embassy; also the
addresses at the consecration of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and at the
opening of the Concord Free Public Library. The oration before the
New England Society of New York in 1870, printed by them in their
recent volume, is not included, as most of the matter may be found
in the Historical Discourse at Concord and in the essay “Boston,” in
Natural History of Intellect.
I have given to the chapters mottoes, the most of them drawn from
Mr. Emerson’s writings.
EDWARD W. EMERSON.
 CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE LORD’S SUPPER 1
II. HISTORICAL DISCOURSE AT CONCORD 27
III. LETTER TO PRESIDENT VAN BUREN 87
IV. EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES 97
V. WAR 149
VI. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW—ADDRESS AT
CONCORD 177
VII. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW—LECTURE AT NEW
YORK 215
VIII. THE ASSAULT UPON MR. SUMNER 245
IX. SPEECH ON AFFAIRS IN KANSAS 253
X. JOHN BROWN—SPEECH AT BOSTON 265
XI. JOHN BROWN—SPEECH AT SALEM 275
XII. THEODORE PARKER 283
XIII. AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 295
XIV. THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 313
XV. ABRAHAM LINCOLN 327
XVI. HARVARD COMMEMORATION SPEECH 339
XVII. DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT IN
CONCORD 347
XVIII. EDITORS’ ADDRESS 381
XIX. ADDRESS TO KOSSUTH 395
XX. WOMAN 403
XXI. CONSECRATION OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
CEMETERY 427
XXII. ROBERT BURNS 437
XXIII. SHAKSPEARE 445
XXIV. HUMBOLDT 455
 XXV. WALTER SCOTT 461
XXVI. SPEECH AT BANQUET IN HONOR OF CHINESE
EMBASSY 469
XXVII. REMARKS AT ORGANIZATION OF FREE
RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 475
XXVIII. SPEECH AT SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF
FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION 483
XXIX. ADDRESS AT OPENING OF CONCORD FREE
PUBLIC LIBRARY 493
XXX. THE FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC 509
NOTES 545
 I
THE LORD’S SUPPER

SERMON DELIVERED BEFORE THE SECOND

CHURCH IN BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 9, 1832

I like a church; I like a cowl,

I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowlèd churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?

The word unto the prophet spoken

Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.

THE LORD’S SUPPER

The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but

righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.—
Romans xiv. 17.
 In the history of the Church no subject has been more fruitful of
controversy than the Lord’s Supper. There never has been any
unanimity in the understanding of its nature, nor any uniformity in the
mode of celebrating it. Without considering the frivolous questions
which have been lately debated as to the posture in which men
should partake of it; whether mixed or unmixed wine should be
served; whether leavened or unleavened bread should be broken;—
the questions have been settled differently in every church, who
should be admitted to the feast, and how often it should be prepared.
In the Catholic Church, infants were at one time permitted and then
forbidden to partake; and since the ninth century the laity receive the
bread only, the cup being reserved to the priesthood. So, as to the
time of the solemnity. In the Fourth Lateran Council, it was decreed
that any believer should communicate at least once in a year,—at
Easter. Afterwards it was determined that this Sacrament should be
received three times in the year,—at Easter, Whitsuntide and
Christmas. But more important controversies have arisen respecting
its nature. The famous question of the Real Presence was the main
controversy between the Church of England and the Church of
Rome. The doctrine of the Consubstantiation taught by Luther was
denied by Calvin. In the Church of England, Archbishops Laud and
Wake maintained that the elements were an Eucharist, or sacrifice of
Thanksgiving to God; Cudworth and Warburton, that this was not a
sacrifice, but a sacrificial feast; and Bishop Hoadley, that it was
neither a sacrifice nor a feast after sacrifice, but a simple
commemoration. And finally, it is now near two hundred years since
the Society of Quakers denied the authority of the rite altogether, and
gave good reasons for disusing it.
I allude to these facts only to show that, so far from the Supper
being a tradition in which men are fully agreed, there has always
been the widest room for difference of opinion upon this particular.
Having recently given particular attention to this subject, I was led to
the conclusion that Jesus did not intend to establish an institution for
perpetual observance when he ate the Passover with his disciples;
and further, to the opinion that it is not expedient to celebrate it as we
do. I shall now endeavor to state distinctly my reasons for these two
opinions.
 I. The authority of the rite.
An account of the Last Supper of Christ with his disciples is given
by the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In St. Matthew’s Gospel (Matt. xxvi. 26-30) are recorded the words
of Jesus in giving bread and wine on that occasion to his disciples,
but no expression occurs intimating that this feast was hereafter to
be commemorated. In St. Mark (Mark xiv. 22-25) the same words are
recorded, and still with no intimation that the occasion was to be
remembered. St. Luke (Luke xxii. 19), after relating the breaking of
the bread, has these words: “This do in remembrance of me.” In St.
John, although other occurrences of the same evening are related,
this whole transaction is passed over without notice.
Now observe the facts. Two of the Evangelists, namely, Matthew
and John, were of the twelve disciples, and were present on that
occasion. Neither of them drops the slightest intimation of any
intention on the part of Jesus to set up anything permanent. John
especially, the beloved disciple, who has recorded with minuteness
the conversation and the transactions of that memorable evening,
has quite omitted such a notice. Neither does it appear to have come
to the knowledge of Mark, who, though not an eye-witness, relates
the other facts. This material fact, that the occasion was to be
remembered, is found in Luke alone, who was not present. There is
no reason, however, that we know, for rejecting the account of Luke.
I doubt not, the expression was used by Jesus. I shall presently
consider its meaning. I have only brought these accounts together,
that you may judge whether it is likely that a solemn institution, to be
continued to the end of time by all mankind, as they should come,
nation after nation, within the influence of the Christian religion,
would have been established in this slight manner—in a manner so
slight, that the intention of commemorating it should not appear, from
their narrative, to have caught the ear or dwelt in the mind of the only
two among the twelve who wrote down what happened.
Still we must suppose that the expression, “This do in
remembrance of me,” had come to the ear of Luke from some
disciple who was present. What did it really signify? It is a prophetic
and an affectionate expression. Jesus is a Jew, sitting with his
countrymen, celebrating their national feast. He thinks of his own
impending death, and wishes the minds of his disciples to be
prepared for it. “When hereafter,” he says to them, “you shall keep
the Passover, it will have an altered aspect to your eyes. It is now a
historical covenant of God with the Jewish nation. Hereafter it will
remind you of a new covenant sealed with my blood. In years to
come, as long as your people shall come up to Jerusalem to keep
this feast, the connection which has subsisted between us will give a
new meaning in your eyes to the national festival, as the anniversary
of my death.” I see natural feeling and beauty in the use of such
language from Jesus, a friend to his friends; I can readily imagine
that he was willing and desirous, when his disciples met, his memory
should hallow their intercourse; but I cannot bring myself to believe
that in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the living
generation, beyond the abolition of the festival he was celebrating,
and the scattering of the nation, and meant to impose a memorial
feast upon the whole world.
Without presuming to fix precisely the purpose in the mind of
Jesus, you will see that many opinions may be entertained of his
intention, all consistent with the opinion that he did not design a
perpetual ordinance. He may have foreseen that his disciples would
meet to remember him, and that with good effect. It may have
crossed his mind that this would be easily continued a hundred or a
thousand years,—as men more easily transmit a form than a virtue,
—and yet have been altogether out of his purpose to fasten it upon
men in all times and all countries.
But though the words, “Do this in remembrance of me,” do not
occur in Matthew, Mark or John, and although it should be granted
us that, taken alone, they do not necessarily import so much as is
usually thought, yet many persons are apt to imagine that the very
striking and personal manner in which the eating and drinking is
described, indicates a striking and formal purpose to found a festival.
And I admit that this impression might probably be left upon the mind
of one who read only the passages under consideration in the New
Testament. But this impression is removed by reading any narrative
of the mode in which the ancient or the modern Jews have kept the
Passover. It is then perceived that the leading circumstances in the
Gospels are only a faithful account of that ceremony. Jesus did not
celebrate the Passover, and afterwards the Supper, but the Supper
was the Passover. He did with his disciples exactly what every
master of a family in Jerusalem was doing at the same hour with his
household. It appears that the Jews ate the lamb and the
unleavened bread and drank wine after a prescribed manner. It was
the custom for the master of the feast to break the bread and to
bless it, using this formula, which the Talmudists have preserved to
us, “Blessed be Thou, O Lord, our God, who givest us the fruit of the
vine,”—and then to give the cup to all. Among the modern Jews, who
in their dispersion retain the Passover, a hymn is also sung after this
ceremony, specifying the twelve great works done by God for the
deliverance of their fathers out of Egypt.
But still it may be asked, Why did Jesus make expressions so
extraordinary and emphatic as these—“This is my body which is
broken for you. Take; eat. This is my blood which is shed for you.
Drink it”?—I reply they are not extraordinary expressions from him.
They were familiar in his mouth. He always taught by parables and
symbols. It was the national way of teaching, and was largely used
by him. Remember the readiness which he always showed to
spiritualize every occurrence. He stopped and wrote on the sand. He
admonished his disciples respecting the leaven of the Pharisees. He
instructed the woman of Samaria respecting living water. He
permitted himself to be anointed, declaring that it was for his
interment. He washed the feet of his disciples. These are admitted to
be symbolical actions and expressions. Here, in like manner, he calls
the bread his body, and bids the disciples eat. He had used the
same expression repeatedly before. The reason why St. John does
not repeat his words on this occasion seems to be that he had
reported a similar discourse of Jesus to the people of Capernaum
more at length already (John vi. 27-60). He there tells the Jews,
“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye
have no life in you.” And when the Jews on that occasion
complained that they did not comprehend what he meant, he added
for their better understanding, and as if for our understanding, that
we might not think his body was to be actually eaten, that he only
meant we should live by his commandment. He closed his discourse
with these explanatory expressions: “The flesh profiteth nothing; the
words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.”
Whilst I am upon this topic, I cannot help remarking that it is not a
little singular that we should have preserved this rite and insisted
upon perpetuating one symbolical act of Christ whilst we have totally
neglected all others,—particularly one other which had at least an
equal claim to our observance. Jesus washed the feet of his
disciples and told them that, as he had washed their feet, they ought
to wash one another’s feet; for he had given them an example, that
they should do as he had done to them. I ask any person who
believes the Supper to have been designed by Jesus to be
commemorated forever, to go and read the account of it in the other
Gospels, and then compare with it the account of this transaction in
St. John, and tell me if this be not much more explicitly authorized
than the Supper. It only differs in this, that we have found the Supper
used in New England and the washing of the feet not. But if we had
found it an established rite in our churches, on grounds of mere
authority, it would have been impossible to have argued against it.
That rite is used by the Church of Rome, and by the Sandemanians.
It has been very properly dropped by other Christians. Why? For two
reasons: (1) because it was a local custom, and unsuitable in
western countries; and (2) because it was typical, and all understood
that humility is the thing signified. But the Passover was local too,
and does not concern us, and its bread and wine were typical, and
do not help us to understand the redemption which they signified.
These views of the original account of the Lord’s Supper lead me to
esteem it an occasion full of solemn and prophetic interest, but never
intended by Jesus to be the foundation of a perpetual institution.
It appears, however, in Christian history that the disciples had very
early taken advantage of these impressive words of Christ to hold
religious meetings, where they broke bread and drank wine as
symbols. I look upon this fact as very natural in the circumstances of
the Church. The disciples lived together; they threw all their property
into a common stock; they were bound together by the memory of
Christ, and nothing could be more natural than that this eventful
evening should be affectionately remembered by them; that they,
Jews like Jesus, should adopt his expressions and his types, and
furthermore, that what was done with peculiar propriety by them, his
personal friends, with less propriety should come to be extended to
their companions also. In this way religious feasts grew up among
the early Christians. They were readily adopted by the Jewish
converts, who were familiar with religious feasts, and also by the
Pagan converts, whose idolatrous worship had been made up of
sacred festivals, and who very readily abused these to gross riot, as
appears from the censures of St. Paul. Many persons consider this
fact, the observance of such a memorial feast by the early disciples,
decisive of the question whether it ought to be observed by us.
There was good reason for his personal friends to remember their
friend and repeat his words. It was only too probable that among the
half-converted Pagans and Jews, any rite, any form, would find
favor, whilst yet unable to comprehend the spiritual character of
Christianity.
The circumstance, however, that St. Paul adopts these views, has
seemed to many persons conclusive in favor of the institution. I am
of opinion that it is wholly upon the Epistle to the Corinthians, and
not upon the Gospels, that the ordinance stands. Upon this matter of
St. Paul’s view of the Supper, a few important considerations must
be stated.
The end which he has in view, in the eleventh chapter of the first
Epistle, is not to enjoin upon his friends to observe the Supper, but to
censure their abuse of it. We quote the passage nowadays as if it
enjoined attendance upon the Supper; but he wrote it merely to
chide them for drunkenness. To make their enormity plainer, he goes
back to the origin of this religious feast to show what sort of feast
that was, out of which this riot of theirs came, and so relates the
transactions of the Last Supper. “I have received of the Lord,” he
says, “that which I delivered to you.” By this expression it is often
thought that a miraculous communication is implied; but certainly
without good reason, if it is remembered that St. Paul was living in
the lifetime of all the apostles who could give him an account of the
transaction; and it is contrary to all reason to suppose that God
should work a miracle to convey information that could so easily be
got by natural means. So that the import of the expression is that he
had received the story of an eye-witness such as we also possess.
But there is a material circumstance which diminishes our
confidence in the correctness of the Apostle’s view; and that is, the
observation that his mind had not escaped the prevalent error of the
primitive Church, the belief, namely, that the second coming of Christ
would shortly occur, until which time, he tells them, this feast was to
be kept. Elsewhere he tells them that at that time the world would be
burnt up with fire, and a new government established, in which the
Saints would sit on thrones; so slow were the disciples, during the
life and after the ascension of Christ, to receive the idea which we
receive, that his second coming was a spiritual kingdom, the
dominion of his religion in the hearts of men, to be extended
gradually over the whole world. In this manner we may see clearly
enough how this ancient ordinance got its footing among the early
Christians, and this single expectation of a speedy reappearance of
a temporal Messiah, which kept its influence even over so spiritual a
man as St. Paul, would naturally tend to preserve the use of the rite
when once established.
We arrive, then, at this conclusion: first, that it does not appear,
from a careful examination of the account of the Last Supper in the
Evangelists, that it was designed by Jesus to be perpetual; secondly,
that it does not appear that the opinion of St. Paul, all things
considered, ought to alter our opinion derived from the Evangelists.
One general remark before quitting this branch of this subject. We
ought to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions
and practices of the primitive Church for our own. If it could be
satisfactorily shown that they esteemed it authorized and to be
transmitted forever, that does not settle the question for us. We know
how inveterately they were attached to their Jewish prejudices, and
how often even the influence of Christ failed to enlarge their views.
On every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a
judgment more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was
the practice of the early ages.
 II. But it is said: “Admit that the rite was not designed to be
perpetual. What harm doth it? Here it stands, generally accepted,
under some form, by the Christian world, the undoubted occasion of
much good; is it not better it should remain?” This is the question of
expediency.
I proceed to state a few objections that in my judgment lie against
its use in its present form.
1. If the view which I have taken of the history of the institution be
correct, then the claim of authority should be dropped in
administering it. You say, every time you celebrate the rite, that
Jesus enjoined it; and the whole language you use conveys that
impression. But if you read the New Testament as I do, you do not
believe he did.
2. It has seemed to me that the use of this ordinance tends to
produce confusion in our views of the relation of the soul to God. It is
the old objection to the doctrine of the Trinity,—that the true worship
was transferred from God to Christ, or that such confusion was
introduced into the soul that an undivided worship was given
nowhere. Is not that the effect of the Lord’s Supper? I appeal now to
the convictions of communicants, and ask such persons whether
they have not been occasionally conscious of a painful confusion of
thought between the worship due to God and the commemoration
due to Christ. For the service does not stand upon the basis of a
voluntary act, but is imposed by authority. It is an expression of
gratitude to Christ, enjoined by Christ. There is an endeavor to keep
Jesus in mind, whilst yet the prayers are addressed to God. I fear it
is the effect of this ordinance to clothe Jesus with an authority which
he never claimed and which distracts the mind of the worshipper. I
know our opinions differ much respecting the nature and offices of
Christ, and the degree of veneration to which he is entitled. I am so
much a Unitarian as this: that I believe the human mind can admit
but one God, and that every effort to pay religious homage to more
than one being goes to take away all right ideas. I appeal, brethren,
to your individual experience. In the moment when you make the
least petition to God, though it be but a silent wish that he may
approve you, or add one moment to your life,—do you not, in the
very act, necessarily exclude all other beings from your thought? In
that act, the soul stands alone with God, and Jesus is no more
present to your mind than your brother or your child.[1]
But is not Jesus called in Scripture the Mediator? He is the
mediator in that only sense in which possibly any being can mediate
between God and man,—that is, an instructor of man. He teaches us
how to become like God. And a true disciple of Jesus will receive the
light he gives most thankfully; but the thanks he offers, and which an
exalted being will accept, are not compliments, commemorations,
but the use of that instruction.
3. Passing other objections, I come to this, that the use of the
elements, however suitable to the people and the modes of thought
in the East, where it originated, is foreign and unsuited to affect us.
Whatever long usage and strong association may have done in
some individuals to deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their use
is rather tolerated than loved by any of us. We are not accustomed
to express our thoughts or emotions by symbolical actions. Most
men find the bread and wine no aid to devotion, and to some it is a
painful impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of
Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another.[2]
The statement of this objection leads me to say that I think this
difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled to the greatest weight. It is
alone a sufficient objection to the ordinance. It is my own objection.
This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is
reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed it was enjoined
by Jesus on his disciples, and that he even contemplated making
permanent this mode of commemoration, every way agreeable to an
Eastern mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own
feelings, I should not adopt it. I should choose other ways which, as
more effectual upon me, he would approve more. For I choose that
my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I
will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and
not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do those whom they fear.
A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works
like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a