Phemie Frost's Experiences
by Ann S. Stephens · English · Gutenberg #30245 · 751,260 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Phemie Frost's Experiences
Author: Ann S. Stephens
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHEMIE FROST'S EXPERIENCES ***
Transcriber's Note:
Unexpected and alternative spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation
punctuation, possible typographer's errors and omitted words, and
incorrectly numbered chapters and page numbers have been retained
as they appear in the original publication.
PHEMIE FROST'S EXPERIENCES.
BY
MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.
AUTHOR OF "FASHION AND FAMINE," "REJECTED WIFE," "OLD HOMESTEAD," ETC.,
ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK:
_G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers._
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
M.DCCC.LXXIV.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Maclauchlan,
Stereotyper and Printer, 56, 58 and 60 Park Street, New York.
To
FRANK LESLIE, ESQ.,
ONE OF THE BEST-TRIED AND MOST VALUED FRIENDS I HAVE,
_THIS VOLUME_,
THE LIGHT AMUSEMENT OF MY LEISURE HOURS,
IS
Respectfully Dedicated.
ANN S. STEPHENS.
ST. CLOUD HOTEL, }
NEW YORK, _March_, 1874. }
PREFACE.
Thistle down, thistle down, cast to the wind
So lightly and wildly, you scarcely can find
A glimpse of it here, or a gleam of it there,
As it trembles, a silvery mist, on the air.
Like the wide thorny leaves whence the mother root threw
Up its crown of rich purple, bejewelled with dew,
These feathery nothings, barbed, sparsely, with seeds,
Must struggle for life with the brambles and weeds.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--Leaving Home. 11
II.--Phœmie's First Visit. 25
III.--About Girls. 28
IV.--More About Girls. 33
V.--Poor Children. 39
VI.--He Has Come. 41
VII.--The French Dress-maker. 45
VIII.--The Genuine Madame. 48
IX.--Ready to Land. 51
X.--Down the Bay. 54
XI.--The Grand Duke. 57
XII.--Tickets for the Ball. 60
XIII.--The Grand Duke's Ball. 63
XIV.--The Natural History Philanthropist. 67
XV.--Christmas in New York. 74
XVI.--The Night Before Christmas. 78
XVII.--Early Service. 81
XVIII.--High Church. 84
XIX.--Christmas Morning. 88
XX.--About Lions. 90
XXI.--Dining in the Dark. 95
XXII.--New Year's Day. 99
XXIII.--The New Year's Reception. 102
XXIV.--Mignon: A Night at the Grand Opera. 108
XXV.--The Black Crook. 114
XXVI.--Living Apart. 120
XXVII.--More About Fisk. 124
XXVIII.--She Would Go. 128
XXIX.--Mr. Greeley's Birthday Party. 132
XXX.--Leap Year. 135
XXXI.--A Man that Wouldn't Take Money. 140
XXXII.--A Democratic Lunch. 144
XXXIII.--Dempster Proposes a Trip. 149
XXXIV.--In Washington. 152
XXXV.--Getting Information. 157
XXXVI.--The Liederkranz Ball. 161
XXXVII.--How Did the Papers Know? 165
XXXVIII.--Reception of the Japanese. 168
XXXIX.--The Japanese. 171
XL.--That Diplomatic Stag Party. 174
XLI.--The Dinner. 179
XLII.--In the Basement of the Capitol. 182
XLIII.--Phœmie Dines with a Senator. 186
XLIV.--Marble Halls. 191
XLV.--Randolph Rogers' Bronze Doors. 194
XLVI.--Was it a Meeting-house? 197
XLVII.--Easter. 201
XLVIII.--A Church Higher Yet. 204
XLIX.--Easter Sunday. 206
L.--That Man with the Lantern. 211
LI.--Mrs. Grant's Reception. 215
LII.--Representative Women. 220
LIII.--A Literary Party. 223
LIV.--Dressing for a Party. 227
LV.--Foreign Ministers. 230
LVI.--Good Clothes. 237
LVII.--The Party of the Season. 241
LVIII.--Down the Potomac. 245
LIX.--Mount Vernon. 250
LX.--Mr. Greeley's Nomination. 253
LXI.--Women and Things. 258
LXII.--A Trip to Annapolis. 263
LXIII.--Among the Cadets. 267
LXIV.--American Authors. 271
LXV.--The Statue of Shakespeare. 275
LXVI.--Racing Dresses. 279
LXVII.--The First Horse-race. 282
LXVIII.--Off Again. 288
LXIX.--The Steeple-chase. 293
LXX.--Preparing for Sea. 296
LXXI.--Yacht-racing. 300
LXXII.--Music that is Music. 304
LXXIII.--Hubbishness. 306
LXXIV.--Thunders of Music. 308
LXXV.--Saratoga Trunks. 312
LXXVI.--The Dolly Varden. 314
LXXVII.--Starting for Long Branch. 320
LXXVIII.--That Hair-trunk. 323
LXXIX.--At the Branch. 326
LXXX.--The Race-course. 328
LXXXI.--Climbing Sea Cliff. 332
LXXXII.--Fighting for the Body. 335
LXXXIII.--Lions and Lambs. 337
LXXXIV.--Experiences. 240
LXXXV.--The Second Day. 342
LXXXVI.--The Blacksmith's Conversion. 347
LXXXVII.--That Ovation of Fire. 352
LXXXVIII.--Let Him Go. 359
LXXXIX.--Done Up in a Hurry. 362
XC.--The Yellow Flag. 367
XCI.--The Man that Saved Me. 370
XCII.--Pleasure Bay. 375
XCIII.--Netting Crabs. 379
XCIV.--Extra Politeness. 384
XCV.--The Clam-bake. 387
XCVI.--That Clam-bake. 390
XCVII.--One Hour of Heaven. 392
XCVIII.--C. O. D. 309
XCIX.--Taken In. 404
PHŒMIE FROST'S EXPERIENCES.
I.
LEAVING HOME.
I have made up my mind. Having put my hand to the plough, it isn't in me
to back out of a duty when duty and one's own wishes sail amicably in
the same canoe. I am going to give myself up to the good of mankind and
the dissemination of great moral ideas.
Selected by the Society of Infinite Progress as its travelling
missionary, with power to spread the most transcendental of New England
ideas throughout the world, I shall take up my cross and go forth.
The evening after the Society had crowned me with this honor, I asked
Aunt Kesiah and Uncle Ben Frost, who have been working the farm on
shares ever since my father died, if they could not make out to do
without me for some months, or weeks, or years, just as duty or my own
feelings took a notion to stay.
Aunt Kesiah sat right down in the rocking-chair, and looked straight in
my face for a whole minute without speaking.
"What," says she at last, "going away from home at your age--a female
woman all alone in the world! You and the Society just take my breath
away, Phœmie. Where on arth are you a going to?"
"Well," says I, "it seems to be my duty to seek a field where there is
the most sin and iniquity a going on, where dishonesty rides
rampagnatious as a roaring lion, and fashion flaunts herself like a
peacock with moons in every tail feather. First of all, the field of my
duty lies in York, that Babylon of cities."
"But whose a going to bear the expenses?" says Uncle Ben, who always was
'cute as a miser about money matters. "Duty is sumtimes rayther
expensive."
"The Society," answers I. "The members are a picking up produce now, I
shan't go empty-handed on my mission. All the members are wide awake
about that. Crops have been first-rate."
"Yes," says Uncle Ben, "I give in there."
"And hens never laid better since chickens were hatched," continued I.
"Jes' so," says Aunt Kesiah, "if the pesky creturs wouldn't run off and
hide their nests."
"Hams are plenty, smoked beef ditto, to say nothing of dried apples. I
mean to sell everything at a profit and settle accounts with the
Society."
"I reckon you'll get cut short; up to this time there has bin lots of
talking in that Society. When it comes to giving--but never mind--we
shall see!"
"There, there, Benjamin, don't you go to pouring cold water on our
Phœmie's missionary work. She is sot on going, so let her go."
"Is she sot?" says Uncle Ben, looking at me sort of anxious.
"Yes," says I, "my face is turned to the mark of the prize of the high
calling."
"Jes' so," says Uncle Ben, "got your hand on the prow with a hard grip?
That being the fact, old woman, the best thing is for you to lend a
helping hand and send her off comfortably. She can try anyhow, though I
have a notion that the world has got to be so wicked since the war, that
one female woman--"
"Girl!" says I.
"Well, girl--may fall short of regenerating the hull of it all to once.
Still there is no knowing what any one can do till they try."
"When do you lay out to start?" says Aunt Kesiah, all in a flutter.
"Right off," says I.
"By land or water?"
"Both," says I.
"Oh, dear! what if you should get shipwrecked, and all the produce and
garden sass with you!" says she.
"There now, don't skeer the girl, Kesiah," says Uncle Ben. "The Sound
don't rage to any great extent, neither are the engines alles a busting
as a general thing."
"Well, well, if she's sot on going, I'll do my best to help get her
off," says Aunt Kesiah, and she goes right to putting lard in a kettle,
and while it was a heating, rolled out a lot of doughnuts, which article
of food she excels in. For two whole days that good soul devoted herself
to making crullers, doughnuts, and turnover pies, as if she thought I
should not find anything to eat till I got home again.
Well, by and by the day came for me to start. That tea-party and a
prayer-meeting at Deacon Pettibone's house was a season that none of us
will ever forget. Mrs. Pettibone, our president, is a wonderfully gifted
woman, and that night she seized right hold of the horns of the altar
and fairly beat herself. Oh, sisters, it was a touching time when I
drove with Uncle Ben through Sprucehill a bowing from one window to
another, for every member of the Society seemed to rush heart and soul
to the windows; and when I found your executive committee on that
platform, the tears that had been standing in my eyes just burst out and
overflowed my soul.
There I sat on my trunk in your midst, with a bandbox at my feet, and a
new satchel, large, plump, and shiny, in my hand, ready to start, but
feeling the responsibility of my trust, and the danger of a young girl
going forth into the world all alone. No wonder some of you thought I
should give up and take my hand from the plough. It was a trying
situation. I felt it; I suffered; but, knowing that the eyes of all
Sprucehill were upon me, I was firm. Yes, even when Aunt Kesiah placed
that satchel in my lap, and told me with tears in her eyes to take
special care of it, for she did not know what I should do if it got
lost.
She said this so loud, and with such deep sobs, that a tall gentleman
who stood on the platform with a satchel in his hand, seemed to be
greatly affected by the touching scene, and kept close to us till the
train come lumbering and snorting in.
Then, sisters, you remember how we fell upon each other's neck, and wept
and kissed each other, then tore apart. How I went weeping into the cars
leaving the satchel behind, and how Uncle Ben pushed it through the
window, telling me to be awful careful of its precious contents so loud
that everybody heard, and I have no doubt wondered how many thousand
dollars it held. Well, the contents of that bag were miscellaneously
precious. I had seen Aunt Kesiah pack it, with a feeling that made me
homesick before I left the old farm. Doughnuts, crullers, turn-over
pies, with luscious peach juice breaking through the curves. A great
hunk of maple sugar, another of dried beef, some cheese, and a pint
bottle of cider. It nearly broke Aunt Kesiah's heart because she
couldn't top things off with a pot of preserves, but I wasn't sorry,
thinking they might be unhandy to carry.
Well, I took the satchel, set it upon my lap, and looked out of the
window at you all, as well as I could for crying, till the train gave a
jerk that made my teeth rattle, and moved on.
When I lost sight of you, sisters, I felt awfully lonesome and almost
'fraid to trust myself among so many masculine men as filled the cars.
Being an unprotected female, with a certain amount of promiscuous
property in my charge, I felt a commercial and moral responsibility that
weighed down my shoulders till I felt like a camel with an enormous load
to carry.
Had I been travelling with nothing but my own self to take care of, the
sense of responsibility would have been less; but I could not help
thinking that the dignity of our Society was in my keeping, and the
anxieties of all Sprucehill followed me swifter than the cars could run
or the snorting engine draw. So I pulled my dust-colored veil tight
over my face, and, with my feet planted firm on the floor, sat
bolt-upright, holding the satchel on my lap with both hands, kind of
shivering for fear some man might attempt to sit down by me. I couldn't
think of this without feeling as if I should sink right through the red
velvet cushions that I sat on.
I was so anxious that my heart jumped right into my mouth when that man
I had seen on the platform come my way. While he was looking around, the
breath stood still on my lips, and I gave my satchel a grip which would
have hurt it if such things have any feeling. I have no doubt that the
austerity of my countenance scared all the rest of them off, for most of
'em passed on, after giving me a regretful glance; but when he come in
swinging his new satchel, so independent, I moved a little; for I knew
he was a gentleman by the way he wore his hat--clear back on his
head--by the great seal, with a red stone in it, on his finger, and by
the heavy gold chain swinging across his breast.
When I saw this man's eyes fixed on my seat so beseeching, I kind of
moved a little more and then let my eyes droop downward, determined not
to help his presumptuous design to sit by me a single bit.
"Thank you," says he, sitting down close to me, and chucking his satchel
under the seat. "If there is a superior person in the car, I'm certain
to have the luck and the honor to sit beside her. Some people prefer to
look out of the window, but I would rather gaze on a sweet, pretty face,
by a long shot--especially if it does not belong to a girl with airs."
I felt myself blushing all over at this delicate compliment, and
observed, with becoming diffidence and great originality, that "beauty
was only skin-deep at the best, and not by any manner of means to be
compared with Christian piety and high intellect."
The man--he was a stalwart, handsome man; not pursey like Deacon
Pettibone, nor slim to bean-poleishness like the circuit preachers that
live about, and only pick up a little roundness at camp-meetings; but
tall, and what young ladies call imposing. Well, the man gave me another
long look at this, and says he:
"But when all these things jibe in together so beautifully, who is to
say which it is that captivates a man's fancy? Not I. It is my weakness
to take lovely woman into the core of my heart as a whole; but, if there
is one quality that I prize more than another, it is piety."
I blushed with thrilling consciousness of the grace that has been in me
so long that it has become a part of my being; but his praise did not
satisfy me. One hates to take sweet things in driblets, with a spoon,
when the soup-ladle is handy.
"Piety is a thing to be had for praying, fasting, and unlimited
devotion. Anybody can have it who grapples the horn of the altar in
deadly earnest. In short, if there is anything that everybody on earth
has a right to, it's religion. The only aristocracy there is about it,
comes when one reaches the high point of perfect sanctification--a state
that some people do reach, though it is sometimes so difficult to point
out the particular person."
"Ah, indeed!" said he. "But I have penetration, madam, great
penetration. Do not torture your sensitive modesty by an attempt to
conceal extraordinary perfection from one who can so fully appreciate
it, and who grieves to say how uncommon it is."
I said nothing, but dropped my eyes, and sat up straighter than ever.
"Permit me," says my polite fellow-traveller, gently laying his hand on
my satchel; "this is too heavy for the lap of a delicate female.
Supposing we place it side by side with mine under the seat?"
I held on to the satchel, afraid that he might mash one of the turn-over
pies.
"Do allow me. I really tremble to see a person so formed by nature borne
down by such a weight," says my fellow-traveller, with great
impressiveness. "It isn't to be thought of."
"But--but I don't feel the weight so very much," says I, loosening my
grip a trifle.
"But, my dear madam, remember that the life and health of a person like
you is of consequence to the whole universe. Remember the siotic nerve."
"The what nerve?" says I.
"Siotic," says he. "That nerve which is so tender in very pious people.
They say that the Pope has been suffering agonies with it."
"Dear me," says I, "is it anything mixed up with a heart disease?"
"Not at all; it is a strain upon the great sensitive nerve that runs
like a whip-cord from I don't know where down the back of the le--"
Oh! sisters, he almost had that terrible word out, but I gave such a
start and blushed so that he turned it right round on his tongue, and
says he with great emphasis, "limb."
"Oh!" says I, with a gasp of relief, "now you speak so that a modest New
England woman can understand. So there is a nerve!"
"Peculiarly susceptible in religious and intellectual persons," says he.
"Running down the limb!" says I.
"Both limbs," says he, "which a weight carried on the lap is sure to
exasperate if it does not end in kinking up the siotic and crippling the
l--limbs."
"Are you a doctor?" says I.
He smiled.
"A sort of one," says he, and, without more words, he took my satchel
and sat it down by his, under the seat, as sociable as could be.
After that, he took hold of my hand, as if he was a-going to feel my
pulse, looking sweetly anxious.
"Is there a siotic there?" says I.
He gave my hand a hard squeeze, and seemed to ruminate.
"It takes a little time to discover," says he, half closing his eyes.
"Be tranquil; there is no danger now. The arm has been in one position
rather too long; change was necessary. But this is a change."
Then he gave my hand another squeeze, and, leaning back, shut his eyes
entirely.
That minute the engine gave out a sharp yell that nearly scared me to
death. The cars heaved a jerk and a jolt, the man on the platform sung
out something, and before I could say Jack Robinson, my fellow-passenger
made a dive under the seat, dragged out his satchel, and made for the
door, bowing as he went, and hustling out something about its being his
station.
While I was a-staring after him with all the eyes in my head, the cars
gave another jerk, and, splash-bang, away we went, so fast that the man
scooting along that platform, waving his hand backwards, seemed to be
swimming in fog.
Sisters, I must say that a feeling of lonesomeness fell upon me after he
went; his conversation had been so scientific and interesting that I
felt the loss.
Besides that, I felt a little hungry, and thought I'd take a bite of
something to eat. So I stooped down, lifted the satchel to my lap, and
tried to open it.
The lock, it seemed to me, had got a stubborn twist, and wouldn't open;
just then the conductor came along, and I gave him a pitiful look.
"Please, sir, help me a little," says I; "it won't open all I can do."
The conductor came forward, snatched hold of the satchel, and wrenched
it open.
"Thank you," says I, lifting my eyes to his gaze, and diving my hand
down into the satchel, for I meant to give him a doughnut for his
politeness; but instead of that luscious cake, my hands sank into a half
peck of sawdust packed close in the satchel my fellow-passenger had left
behind.
"Look there," says I; "isn't it dreadful, and I an unprotected female?"
"Was your money in the bag?" asks the conductor.
"No," says I, putting one hand up to my bosom, to make sure it was safe.
"I always keep my money where--no matter, the--the handsome upstart will
have a splendid feast of turnovers and doughnuts, besides a lively drink
of cider; but as for money, that is in a safe place."
"And your ticket?"
"That," says I, "not being private property, like money, is kept
handier."
With that, I took the ticket from inside of my glove and handed it to
him.
"All right," says he, "the scamp hasn't made so much of a haul as he
expected."
"But he'll have a sumptuous meal," says I, a little down in the mouth;
for I was growing hungry, and not a bite left. Just then a boy came into
the cars with a basketful of popped corn on his arm. It looked awfully
tempting, for every kernel was turned wrong side out, white as snow. I
bought a popped corn of the boy, and pacified myself with that till the
cars stopped ten minutes, where there was a mean chance to get something
more substantial to eat. I went in with the crowd, helter skelter;
wrestled my way to a long counter, got a cup of tea which I swallowed
scalding hot, and, after a hard struggle for it, carried a wedge of
custard pie off with the palm of my hand for a plate, and skivered back
to the cars, nibbling it as I ran; for the bell was ringing and the
conductor yelling "all aboard!" so loud that half the passengers went
back coughing and choking, and muttering some kind of wickedness as they
went.
Well, all the rest of my car ride was just like this, only once in a
while a little more so, till I got onto the Sound. There a great large
steamboat, a quarter of a mile long, took a part of us in, and carried
us right out to sea.
HELL GATE.
I was just a little disappointed in that roaring element. The air that
came above it was salty and light, and the waves sparkled beautifully,
but they did not rage worth a cent. Still the shores away off on both
sides looked dreamy, and we cut through the water so swift that it made
me dizzy.
Two or three stylish sort of men seemed as if they were hankering to
speak to me as I sat there all alone on deck; but I didn't seem to see
it, and they contented themselves with looking at me as if I was the
most cruel creature on earth; which I meant to be. The loss of one
satchel full of doughnuts and things is as much as I can afford on one
trip.
By and by that part of the ocean we travelled on kept growing narrower
and narrower, till you could see houses on both shores, and
splendiferous houses they were, with great meadows a-sloping down to the
water; tall trees shading them, and bushes growing together in clumps.
Some were of stone, some of wood, with pointed roofs and cupolas, and
great wide stoops, in which you could see people sitting and moving
about. Some with spy-glasses in their hands, a-watching us sweep by them
like a house afire.
I felt lonesome and almost homesick, but for all that the sight was
exhilarating--very.
"Haven't we got almost to New York," says I to the captain; "it seems to
me as if the sea was shutting in."
"Oh, we are almost there," says he, "close on to Hell Gate now."
"To what?" says I, almost hopping from the stool I sat on.
"Hell Gate," says he.
"Oh, mercy! you don't tell me it is so bad as that? I knew York was an
awful wicked place, but I didn't think an innocent missionary would have
to go in it through that gate!"
"It is a little dangerous for sail crafts," says he, smiling, I suppose,
to comfort me; "but you are safe. We shall go through with a rush."
I caught my breath.
"But supposing _He_ were on the watch?"
"_He!_ Who?"
"Don't ask me; I'd rather not mention his name, being a female who
abhors profanity."
All at once the captain's eyes began to sparkle as if he were just
longing for a tussle with the evil one.
"Don't be afraid," says he, "I reckon we shall make the gate without
much trouble. The blasting won't stop us yet awhile."
"Blasting?"
"Yes; they'll have the all-firedest upheave there, before long, that
ever tore a hole in the bottom of the sea."
"Blasting! with fire and brimstone?"
"And nitro-glycerine," says he, as calm as skim milk.
"And you mean to take this big steamboat right through it with me on
board?"
He laughed right there in my frightened and pale face.
"I really don't know any other way to reach New York," says he.
"Let me ashore," says I, a starting up, "me and my hair-trunk; I don't
care for the produce; it may serve to cool their tongues down there. But
put me and my hair trunk on any land. It is all I ask."
"It's impossible," says he.
"But I won't go through that in--that awful gate," says I.
"Why, we are in it now; don't you see the whirl of the waters?"
"In it now. Oh, mercy!"
I fell down upon my seat, and buried my face in my shawl, shaking from
head to foot.
Sisters, that cruel man laughed. O, how hardened he must have got, going
through that sulphurious gate.
"I say, madam, there is no danger, we are almost through now."
"Is _he_ there? Have you seen anything of his blasting hosts?" says I
under my breath. "Do they mean to fire up just yet?"
"No, no, we are all safe. Quite through--New York is in sight."
I let my shawl drop a little, and peeped out. There was no sign of a
gale; the water was a little bubbly and rough, as if it had been rushing
through a race-way, but that was all. That captain of ours must have
been on good terms with the old serpent that keeps the gate, or he never
could have got through so easy. Now that it was over, I almost wished I
had found grit enough to see how it was done. As it was, my eyes were
hid, and I did not even see the awful old gate.
Well, at last I rose up slowly and looked forward. There was New York
City, right before me; just one pile of roofs and walls with cupolas,
pointed fronts, and steeples; looking through the smoky haze acres and
acres of houses, miles and miles--a whole island laid down with stone.
All around it, just as far as I could see, the water was thick with
ships, steamboats, and small boats, all flying up and down and across,
like living things, each with an errand of its own. There, along the
edges of the city, was what seemed to me like a forest of dead trees,
without a leaf or a sign of greenness upon them.
"Well," says the captain, "you see that we have run the gate. Never been
here before, I reckon?"
"No, never," says I, "and hope I never shall be again."
"I thought things seemed a little green," says he.
"From the Green Mountains," says I.
"Exactly," says he. "Well, how do you like the looks of the city?"
"Hazy," says I; "dry as tinder. All stone walls, and too many dead trees
about for my notion."
"Dead trees? I have never seen any," says he, a-looking around.
"Must be awful short-sighted," says I. "Just look down there; it is like
a burnt faller."
He looked ahead where my finger was pointing, and laughed right out.
"Why, that is the shipping," says he.
"Shipping," says I. "Don't tell me that! I wasn't brought up in the
woods not to know tree trunks when I see them, dead or alive."
"But I assure you those are the masts of vessels. You can see the hulls
now."
I did see the hulls, and felt dreadfully; what would the captain think
of me! At once I looked up.
"Yes," says I. "There is no question about it. Those are the hulls of
ships, and the others are masts; but I was right."
He laughed: "But you said they were dead trees."
"Just so. Isn't a mast made out of a tree?"
"Certainly."
"And isn't the tree dead before it can be made into a mast?"
"Why, yes," says he, and now it was his turn to be down in the mouth.
"Well, then, isn't the edge of the water there chuck full of dead
trees?"
At first the captain sort of choked a little; but the next minute he
burst out a laughing.
"Do you want to know my opinion?" says he.
"Well, rather," says I.
"Well, it's this: Green Mountain or not, if anybody buys a certain lady
I know of for a fool, he'll get awfully taken in."
"Shouldn't wonder," says I.
With that, I picked up my umbrella, tied my bonnet a little tighter,
took my bandbox in one hand, and followed the crowd across a plank
bridge, and got into about the dirtiest road that my foot ever trod on.
"Want a carriage? Want a carriage?" I never saw men more polite than the
drivers with whips were. It seemed as if they couldn't do enough for me.
It really was a strife which should take me in his carriage. Their
attentions really were flattering. It was like a welcome in this strange
place.
It was like being in a little room all cushioned seats and windows when
I got into the great double carriage so kindly offered me.
The cushions were soft as down, and gave so, when I seated myself, that
I couldn't help catching my breath. "Where to," says the driver,
a-leaning through the window.
"First," says I, "if it won't be too much trouble, I will go somewhere
and buy a new satchel; I really don't feel at home without one. Then you
may take me to a boarding-house in Bleecker Street. You'll know where it
is by inquiring about a little. The name is Smith, and they come from
Vermont. Their daughter married and settled on Sprucehill. Smith. You
can't help but find them."
"Have you got a number?" says the man.
"No," answers I, "only one family."
"But the house."
"No," says I again. "I haven't got any house, but the old homestead on
Sprucehill."
"But Bleecker is a long street."
"Is it?"
"And I must have a number."
"Why, isn't one street of a name enough?" says I, getting out of
patience. "What on earth do you want?"
"I want the name of the people."
"Smith."
"And the number of the house they live in."
"Oh, then, houses go by numbers, not names, here in York, do they? Stop
a minute!"
Here I took a slip of paper from my pocket-book which Smith's daughter
had written, and gave it to him.
"All right," says he, hopping up the wheel, and going to his seat. Then
away we rolled, genteel as could be.
I bought the satchel at a store we drove by, and then we went on and on
and on, till at last he stopped before a brick house with a good deal of
iron about it.
The driver jumped down, ran up the steps, pulled a rusty knob fastened
to the door stone, and faced round towards his horses.
A girl I should consider as hired help opened the door.
"Is Mrs. Smith at home?" says I, a-putting my head out of the window.
"Yes," says she.
"I'll get out," says I.
The driver unfolded a lot of steps that had been hid away under the
windows. I went down them with a genteel trip. The man had been so
polite, I stopped to thank him.
"Three dollars," says he, a holding out his hand.
"Three dollars? What for?" says I, all in a flutter.
"For bringing you here," says he. "Stopping on the way, and so on."
"But you invited me."
The fellow grinned, and held out his hand harder than ever. The help on
top of the steps giggled.
"Come, look sharp, I can't wait all day," says he, as pert as a fox.
"Well," says I; "being an unprotected female in a strange place, I can't
help myself, I guess; but they do sell politeness awful dear in York. It
must be scarce."
I gave him three dollars without another word, feeling like a robbed
princess as I did it. Then I took the bandbox and new satchel in my
hand, and walked into Smith's boarding-house, about the homesickest
creature that ever bore a cross.
II.
PHŒMIE'S FIRST VISIT.
Sisters:--Some of you must remember my cousin Emily Elizabeth Frost,
that married a Dempster ten years ago when most of us were little mites
of things sewing our over-and-over seams. She was a smart creature
enough, and as her mother was a proper, nice woman, it was reasonable to
hope that she could be depended on to bring up her children; for her
father was a deacon in the church, and her mother just the salt of the
earth. Well, as soon as I got settled in my boarding-house, I took it
into my head to go and see Cousin Elizabeth. She hadn't been to Vermont
lately, and I'd rather lost track of her; so I gave one morning to
hunting her up.
Some useful things can be found in a great city like this. Now, I tell
you, amongst them is a great, fat dictionary, crowded full of names,
where everybody that keeps a decent house sets down the number, which is
a convenience for strangers like me.
I found the name of Cousin Elizabeth's husband, who keeps a bank
somewhere down town, the book said, and got into the first street car
that went towards the Central Park. After a while I got out and hunted
up the number, feeling awfully anxious, for the houses about there were
what the papers call palatial--a word we have not much use for in our
parts. I just stopped on the other side of the street and took a general
survey before I attempted to go in, feeling more and more fidgety every
minute, for that house just took me down with its sumptuousness. Such
great windows, with one monstrous pane in a sash, and lace and silk and
tassels shining through! The front was four stories high and ended off
with the steepest roof you ever saw, just sloping back a trifle, and
flattening off at the top, with windows in it, and all sorts of colors
in the shingles, which they call "tiles" here. Then the stone steps
wound up to a platform with a heavy stone railing on each side, and a
great shiny door, sunk deep into the wall, was wide open, and beyond it
was one of glass, frosted over like our windows on a snapping cold
morning, and under my feet was a checkered marble floor. I found the
knob of a bell sunk into the door jamb, and pulled it a little, feeling
half-scared to death. Then I just stepped in and waited in front of the
glass door.
A colored person of remarkably genteel appearance opened the door, and
gave me a look from head to foot that riled the old Adam in my bosom;
then he muttered something about the basement; but I put him down with
just that one lift of my finger.
"Is my cousin, Mrs. Dempster, at home?" says I.
"I--I'll inquire," says he, as meek as Moses; "walk in."
Walk in I did.
"Have you a card?" says he.
"No," says I; "as a general thing cards ain't desirable among relations,
nor moral under any circumstances with religious friends. Say that Miss
Frost is here--Miss Phœmie Frost, from the State of Vermont. No cards!"
The fellow opened a door on one side of the hall, and I went through.
Don't expect me to describe that room. It isn't in me to give the least
idea of it. Great chunks of glass like the hub of a wheel, with crooked
spokes of glass starting every way from it, and what seemed like
hundreds of icicles falling from them, dropped down from the ceiling.
When the negro opened the blinds and let in a drift of sunshine, they
turned into a snarl of rainbows that fairly blinded me. Then there was a
carpet soft as spring grass in a meadow, and bright as a flower-garden;
chairs shining with gold and silk; marble women, white as milk, with not
a thing on worth speaking of, and looking-glasses half as large as our
spring ponds.
I turned my looks away from the women without clothes, while that
colored person was by; but gave them a skimpy peep or two the minute he
was gone. Really, it was dreadful. I would not have believed such things
of Cousin Elizabeth.
Oh mercy on me! while I was looking, in came a gentleman, who bowed, and
took a chair, and sat smiling on those creatures just as if he was used
to it. Talk of blushing--my face was one blaze of fire.
While I was wondering what I should do, a girl, or what ought to have
been a little girl, came sidling into the room, gave me a look as if I'd
been a dog in the wrong place, and went up to the gentleman.
"Mamma will be down directly, and has sent me to entertain you," says
she, shaking out her short skirts, and almost sitting down on the
crimpy hair that half covered them behind. "Ah! I see you are admiring
our crouching Venus. Lovely, isn't it? The curving lines are so perfect.
The limbs--have you observed the foreshortening of that limb?"
The foreshortening of that limb? Mercy on me, I couldn't stand it.
Another minute and I should have boxed her ears, for all the blood that
burned in my face went tingling down to my fingers. That was too much;
so I up and said I would call again, and marched right out of the house.
Girls indeed!
III.
ABOUT GIRLS.
Dear Sisters:--You ask a puzzling and painful question--What kind of
girls do the children I write about make?
My dear friends, girls--modest, rosy, bright-eyed school-girls, such as
you are a-thinking of--are scarce as hen's teeth in this great city, and
not to be found in profuseness anywhere. They went out with pink calico
sun-bonnets, and ain't likely to come in again yet awhile, I tell you!
Republican institutions can be carried to a great extent; and our young
ones have found it out, and trample down all the good, wholesome old
fashions before their little feet quite get out of baby shoes. At this
moment I can't find a girl of twelve years old that don't know a
thousand times more than her mother, and wouldn't attempt to teach law
to her father if he was a judge in the Supreme Court. Yet, it's a
shocking truth, the little upstarts don't know how to read like
Christians, or spell half their words. The tip-top fashionable
school-marms here are quite above teaching such common things as reading
and spelling, and turn up their noses at any study that hasn't some
"ology" or "phy" at the end of it.
I should just like to have a string of the girls that walk in squads up
and down the Fifth Avenue, with short dresses and hair streaming loose
down their backs, in a district school-house, with no books but
Webster's Spelling-book and the Columbian Reader. Wouldn't I astonish
them with science? I guess they would understand the meaning of a
spelling-class by the time I got through with 'em!
As for arithmetic, they don't know what it is in these high-falutin
seminaries; mathematics is the word; A B roots and squaring circles, as
if circles ever would be square. Of course they can't, having been tried
and kept round as an O all the time. But these A's and B's, and roots
and such like, are considered as arithmetic for girls here; so the end
of it is, they can, maybe, tell you how many square feet there are in a
building lot, but couldn't add up ten shillings to save their lives; of
course they forget how to estimate the square feet for want of having
unlimited building lots to work on, while the washing bill and girl's
wages and such things, come up every day all through their lives.
What _do_ girls learn at the schools?
Oh, a mighty deal that some good women pass half through a lifetime
without knowing, and are just as likely as not all the better for it.
Some of the lessons are paid for, and some are given free gratis for
nothing by the scholars to each other, and what some of them don't know
in the way of flirting, drooping the eyes, and things you never dreamed
of, ain't worth keeping secret.
"A little leaven leavens the whole lump." That passage has always
relieved my feelings about the old patriarchs; for it's a proof that
they and their families had raised bread in those old Bible times; and
light bread, even if saleratus has to be used, is a blessing on the
domestic hearth. For that reason, I'm astonished that bread-making is
left to men-bakers here in York. But this passage sometimes puts you in
mind of something beside turnpike emptins. I should like to promulgate
some genuine old-fashioned ideas into these tip-top schools, where one
bold, forward girl with unwholesome ideas in her head, would set them
working like leaven in every innocent young soul in the seminary.
Somehow, more or less, girls always do manage to give a good deal of
knowledge that isn't set down in the bill, though that is generally long
enough, goodness knows.
I wish you could see one of these bills with the extras. Now in our
district schools, there isn't much chance for the scholars to get over
intimate. They don't sleep and eat and work together, like canary birds
crowded in one cage and huddled together on one roost; the weak don't
catch the faults of the strong, and if they did, the free breezes of our
hills would sweep them away before the poison struck in. Flirtations do
not become a science with them before they can spell "baker," and they
don't often learn such things from their New England mothers, anyhow.
Well, I would give a good deal to see a genuine girl who did not think
herself a marvel of superior knowledge at twelve, or had not plunged
into a heart disease at the sight of some hotel lounger at fourteen. I
tell you, sisters, these young creatures have too much liberty; they
have no wholesome growth either of body or mind. They know too much at
fifteen, and will know a great deal too little at forty.
The girl of twelve--which is about the age you are thinking of--has a
great deal more assurance than some of our church members at fifty. Baby
boys and girls haven't gone quite out of fashion, but they are getting
scarcer every year, people tell me; and regular-built, wholesome
children are as hard to find here as green gooseberries in October. I've
seen plenty of little men and women, that couldn't speak plain to save
their lives, dressed out like soldiers on a training day, with short
frocks or tunics, and legs as bare as bare could be; but such boys and
girls as we remember are not to be found anywhere nowadays, I tell you.
What does all this mean? Just this: Mothers don't trust their young ones
out of fashion long enough to grow. Besides, there isn't, only now and
then, one who gets acquainted with her own child well enough to know
what is good for it. Why, these city women would go crazy to see a
little girl, six years old, swing upon a gate or riding horseback on a
rusty old farm-horse, gripping the mane with both hands, and sending up
shouts of fun if she happened to tumble off. Children, in the natural
state, love water, like ducks and goslings. It used to be a sight to
watch them, knee-deep in the brooks, with their tenty-tointy feet
shining through the ripples, as they hunted for water-cresses and sweet
flag-root; but catch one of your new-fangled young ones at anything with
so much human nature in it. All the water they see is in the bottom of a
bath-tub, rubbed on their skimpy limbs by an Irish girl's hands. Not the
mother's. Oh, no! Care of one's own children is too much for a healthy
young woman nowadays. Being a professor and member of a church, I want
to speak accordingly, and just drop the mothers here. Christian language
isn't up to the occasion.
Well, as I was saying, the meanness of these mothers in hiving up their
young ones and cheating 'em out of the very best years of life, is
enough to make a saint mad. The rough-and-tumble season, which gives a
child sound lungs, strong limbs, and a brain that thinks of nothing but
high play, is just knocked out of their lives. It's an awful swindle on
the poor little things, and I'm not afraid to say it openly and
above-board here in my very first report.
If I haven't a right to speak on this subject, I should like to know who
has. That's all. I never had a child of my own, which is, perhaps,
natural to a state of single blessedness, and so had plenty of time to
make other people's children a speciality. Besides, haven't I kept
district school, and boarded round enough to get an inside view of a
good many family circles? Haven't I seen droves of young ones, in loose
calico slips or cosey-fitting jackets and trousers, coming miles to
school, only setting their dinner baskets down now and then to stone a
squirrel, or climb up among the burrs of some great chestnut limb which
offered to give them a ride to Boston or a trip to Canterbury.
Dear me, I think I see them now running "like split," as they said, to
catch up time, with such a lively color rushing through the tan on their
faces, hats off, and sun-bonnets flying out by the strings.
There, that's what I call childhood. You and I, sister, know something
about it; now don't we? Do you remember that little red school-house
where we learned our letters, and the old broken-limbed apple-tree
behind it? No wonder the limbs got scraggly; they couldn't stand horse
for a whole school, year after year, without some wear and tear, could
they?
Well, may be you and I owe to that old patriarch more than we know of.
The apples were so sour the pigs wouldn't eat 'em, but they never hurt
us. Then the limbs stretching out every which way--weren't they splendid
to swing on, and in a hot day the shade was like a tent.
You and I have been tough and hearty all our lives, just as like as not
on account of that old tree and the long road home, and the pine woods
it ran through, with the good wholesome samp and milk when we got there.
There was generally a little red light in the sky from the sunset when
we went to bed, and just a streak of rosy yellow when we got up, with
dew enough on the grass to wash our faces in before breakfast.
That's what I call life for a child; all out-doors for a playground,
good, sound sleep, plenty of wholesome food, three times a day, and
always hungry at that. Why, the few years after you begin to toddle, and
before you learn to read, if you're properly let alone, are choke-full
of happiness that ripples like a brook through your whole life. I say,
once more, it's a sin and a shame to cheat a child out of that which is
just God's portion of a human life.
Now I ask you, isn't it probable, between you and I, that the Saviour
picked out just such bright, happy little creatures as these, when He
took 'em in His arms and blessed 'em, and said of such is the kingdom of
heaven. If the apostles wanted to hunt up one of the kind now, they'd
have to catch it in the cradle. Just think of bringing forward one of
the little things we meet in the avenues here, to be held up as a
monument--all flutings and lace, kid gaiters, pink and blue sashes, long
white feathers, and parasols. Yes, believe it or not, I say parasols
about the size of a poppy. Oh, don't mention it! The whole thing makes
me sick. The children you meet here in York look like little barefooted
scarecrows, or else like motto papers afloat.
But are all the little folks you see painted like a dahlia, and pink as
hollyhocks. You are asking this question in the Society. I know it.
Well, I should rather think not. These whipper-snappers go tipping down
the avenues, and ride with their mothers' lap-dogs in the Park,
a-looking like their own French dolls, and are about as likely to make
men and women.
IV.
MORE ABOUT GIRLS.
Sisters:--My cousin's little girl has just upset me. Remember she is my
own flesh and blood; and genuine honest blood in Vermont is as pure as
the sap in our maple-trees, and ought to keep sweet as the sugar we make
from it, wherever it is found. Being my second cousin in her own right,
I expected to find her a model of what the rising generation ought to
be, and went to that house, exalting myself accordingly. I shall find,
thought I, a genteel, modest, seemly little lady, polite, and cordially
glad to see a relative that wants to love her and exalt her into a
pattern and a monument of female promise. But instead of that, just
read my last report, though it must fall short of giving you any idea
how heavy my heart was, and how my brain burned with disappointment.
_Has_ female modesty died out since you and I came into the world? or
was it burnt over during the war, like the great prairies, where the hot
flames parch up all the sweet green grass and the bright flowers,
killing them root and blossom, snakes likewise? One thing is certain, my
dear sisters in the cause, honesty among men and modesty among women go
hand in hand all over the earth. When women degenerate, it is because
the moral atmosphere which they breathe is tainted and unwholesome.
Something has gone awfully wrong both with the men and women of America
in these latter years. The fraud and demoralization of the thing they
call "shoddy" has settled down upon our social life everywhere. I
shudder to think of it! With a constitution made strong with fresh air
from the Green Mountains, and morals consolidated in the oldest
congregation of the State, I feel afraid of myself and almost weary of
well-doing. It has become so miserably unfashionable to be honest, that
people seem to think me crazy when I speak my mind.
Do not start and say that Phœmie Frost is ready to give up her mission;
because she isn't of that sort. Her hand is on the plough--they spell it
_plow_ here, which takes away half the strength of that agricultural
word--on the plough, is she, a female, to turn back because rocks and
roots choke up the furrow? Not if Miss Frost knows anything of herself!
Speaking of female modesty, between my little cousin and that marble
girl, the poor naked creature seemed to have the most of it. She did
scrouch down and try to hide herself behind herself, as if she was
ashamed that the man who made her had forgot to cover her up a little.
But the live girl did not seem to feel for her a mite; in fact, I think
she enjoyed seeing her scrouch, because of the foreshortenings, you
know.
It's of no use denying it, I did feel down in the mouth about this girl;
and seeing my duty clear, determined to do it or perish in the attempt.
Once more I stood in front of that "palatial residence," and, with a
hand made firm by a powerful sense of duty, pulled the silver knob in
the jamb of the door. The same finified youngster came and asked me with
his saucy eyes what I wanted there. This time I had written out a square
piece of paper, on which he had the pleasure of reading: "Miss Phœmie
Frost, Home Missionary and Special Plenipotentiary from the Society of
Infinite Progress, Sprucehill, Vermont." "Think," says I, when I handed
him the paper, "if this don't fetch them all down a notch or two,
nothing will."
And it did!
Yes, I have the pleasure of saying pretension and pomposity do have a
wonderful effect here in New York. I don't know whether it was the
missionary or the plenipotentiary that brought my cousin to her oats,
but rather think it was the latter--having a foreign twang to it, of
course, it impressed her aristocratically.
The waiter-man took me into the drawing-room, as he called it, but why,
no human being could have told; for there wasn't a sign of drawing
paper, pencil, nor painting things in sight. In fact, it was the
self-same room that I went into the last time I was there. A little
darker and more sunsetty, because the red curtains swept close, and
blinds were rolled down under the lace. There was that marble girl, too,
a-looking at me as if half-scared to death; but in that light she seemed
dressed in a veil of pink gauze, and looked just lovely. There being no
man by I really could have kissed her, she seemed so sweet, and so
awfully ashamed of herself huddled down as if she longed to creep out of
sight.
The door opened, and that fellow came in simpering like a chessy cat,
and asked if I would be so good as to walk up to the boudor.
"To the what?" says I.
"To the ladies' boudor," says he, a turning his head, and trying to
choke off a laugh. "This way!"
I took my satchel from a table all framed in gold, and checkered with
precious stones, where I had laid it down. Then, bowing my head and
lifting my forefinger, told that servile creature to proceed, with an
air of command that quenched his saucy smile in no time.
Up the stairs he went, and I followed after; treading a carpet that gave
to the feet like a meadow in its first spring grass. Through an open
door I saw my cousin lifting herself up from a sofa, covered with blue
silk and open-worked lace. Then she dawdled towards me with one hand
out, and the laziest smile you ever saw about her mouth.
"Cousin Emily," says I, "how do you do?"
"My dear Miss Frost," says she, "I'm happy to make your acquaintance."
Happy to make my acquaintance, and I her first cousin. Did you ever?
At first I _was_ taken aback, and felt as if I should choke. Hadn't I
learned that great white creature her letters? Hadn't I spent dollars on
her for slates and pencils, besides taking her to the maple camps when
she was a little girl, and giving her no end of sweet sap to drink. Who
was it but me that turned down her first over-and-over seam, and gave
her a tentie-tointy silver thimble to take the stitches with. I wonder
what she did with it? Now she was happy to make my acquaintance, and
dragged a double winrow of worked flounces, topped off with a muslin
skirt and scarlet training jacket, across the room to tell me so. Our
mothers were sisters; pray remember that!
"Take that seat," says she, a-dropping down to the sofa as a great white
hen turkey settles onto its nest. "How long have you been in the city?
Do you make anything of a visit? So thoughtful and kind of you to give
me an early call."
There I sat, straight as a sign-post, with my satchel in my lap, and
both hands on that, riling up like an Irish girl's coffee, and feeling
the wrath within me grow stronger and stronger while she settled back
and half-shut her eyes, and seemed to be quite satisfied that she had
done her best. I could see that her half-shut eyes were turned on my
alpaca dress, which was a trifle dusty, and on my cotton gloves, that
were clean and whole, at any rate. While she examined them, I took an
observation of her. Mercy, how she has changed! Five times the hair she
ever had before hung in great, heavy braided loops down her back. There
must be some way of making the hair grow, 'specially here in York, that
we never heard of. And her figure, which was slim and graceful as the
droop of a willow when she married, has swelled out fearfully behind,
which makes her seem to stoop, and gives one the most humpy idea of a
camel in motion of anything I know, which, being Scriptural, is, I dare
say, the only religious idea she has kept firm to.
"You called the other day," says she. "I was so sorry not to have seen
you; but I was dressing to go out. Still, you saw my little girl?"
"Yes," says I, "I saw your little girl; and, to tell you the honest
truth, that is what brings me here now. I haven't had a minute's rest
since I was here. Why, Cousin Emily, I expected to see a child. Instead
of that--"
She roused up at this, opened her eyes wide, and interrupted me.
"Instead of that," says she, turning a great gold bracelet on her arm,
and smiling as if what she was saying swelled her out with
pride--"instead of that, you found a finished young lady. No wonder you
were surprised."
"A finished young lady!" says I, riling into strength. "That is what no
child ever can be; and let me tell you, the attempt to force one into
such an unnatural creature is abominable. You can polish every bit of
the modesty and innocence of childhood out of a little girl; but all
that you can get for it is affectation and self-sufficient impertinence,
becoming neither to the child nor the woman. Why, cousin, the little
creature I saw in your parlor--sent there, as she said, to _entertain a
gentleman_--was just an absurdity to him, and to me something dreadful.
I asked myself what a child like that would become at forty years of
age. Why, cousin, when she is at her meridian she will feel herself at
least a hundred and fifty. You have cut off all the bloom and richness
of a young life; you have made a dainty little monster of her--swept
away all companionship with children, and made it presumption and
impertinence when she attempts to force herself among her elders. I
could not be so cruel to a dog as you have been to that child."
Cousin Emily woke up now with a vengeance. Her sleepy eyes flashed
lightning. "Cruel!" says she. "I cruel to my only daughter? Why, there
is not a child in America who has had such care--such abundant chances
for improvement. She has been to the most expensive schools."
"Exactly," says I.
"She has had masters at home--music, dancing, the languages--"
"Exactly," says I.
"Things that I never thought of learning she has mastered."
"Just so," says I.
"She had a French nurse before she could speak. No expense has been
spared by her father. I never had such chances; and we are determined to
give her a splendid education. In fact, she might come out this season,
so far as that is concerned; but I have resolved to be rigid--not a day
before she is seventeen. Then her education will be complete."
"Her education complete at seventeen! Why, Cousin Emily, a woman's
education is _never_ complete. At the best schools we get but a dreamy
sort of idea of the things we must bring all the faculties of a
well-regulated mind to understand in after years. A well-educated woman
is one who studies and learns something every day of her life--who
thinks about what she sees, and acts upon what she knows."
Cousin Emily lifted up both hands, all covered with shining rings, as if
to choke me off. I stopped. Far be it from Phœmie Frost to force the
opinions of our Society upon unwilling ears; but I lifted my forefinger
in solemn admonishment, and says I:
"Oh, Cousin Emily, Cousin Emily, has it got so that you hold up both
hands against common-sense!"
"Not against common-sense," says she, "but against your uncommonly long
sentences. Why, Miss Frost, it is like our old-fashioned country
preaching."
"Which has died out of your heart, I dare say. Oh, Emily, Emily, what
would your sainted mother, my aunt, say?"
This brought the misguided woman to her tears. She sat up on that
lace-silk sofa, straight and listening, as I have seen her many a time
on the a b c bench at school, when her little feet couldn't touch the
floor.
"Cousin Phœmie," says she, "I am trying to do what is right."
"I hope so," says I, with tears of thankfulness in my eyes, for the
"Cousin Phœmie" went straight to my heart. "But my mind isn't quite
equal to more of this conversation this morning. The next time I come
this way we shall both be more like our natural selves."
With that I tightened my cotton gloves, took up my satchel, and left
that house, feeling that I had paved the way to a good work hereafter.
V.
POOR CHILDREN.
Are there no genuine children among the poor of New York?
Beloved sisters, your question wrings the heart in my bosom. I asked it
of myself this very morning, and resolved to investigate.
I hadn't found a child that could be called a child outside a
perambulator, which means a little carriage pushed by an Irish girl,
with a cap on, along the avenues. So I took my mission down among the
tenement-houses. There I found young ones on the sidewalks, the
doorsteps, and in the gutters, thick as grasshoppers in a dry pasture
lot, all hard at work, trying to play. But the play seemed more like
fighting than fun. Two girls stopped me on the sidewalk, swinging the
dirty end of a rope, while another tried to jump it, but only tripped
up, and went at it again. Shaking her loose hair, and--yes, I say it
with tears in my eyes--swearing at the other two.
I laid my hand on her head, and gently expostulated. She was a little
mite of a girl, with a sharp, knowing face. The first word she spoke
made my nerves creep. Why, that little thing had the wickedness of an
old sinner on her baby mouth, and couldn't speak it out plain yet.
Oh! my dear sister, and you, my friend, in the great course of infinite
progress and general perfection, had you been with me, almost
broken-hearted among that rabble of children, who will never, never know
what childhood is, the last pound of butter and dozen of eggs in our
village would be freely given to support my mission here. Barefooted,
bareheaded, barelegged, and, it seemed to be, bare of soul, these little
wretches swarmed around me when I kindly asked the baby girls not to
swear, all making faces at me. The boys, that sat with their feet in the
gutters, flung away the oyster-shells and lobster claws they had just
raked from an ash-barrel, and began to hoot at me. One little
wretch--forgive me for calling names--not more than five years old, had
a cigar in his mouth half as long as his own arm. When I stooped down to
take it from him, he gave a great puff right into my eyes, and scampered
off, with his dirty fingers twirling about his face like the handle of a
coffee-mill.
As a New England woman, whose duty, I take it, is to set everybody
right, I wasn't to be put down by a boy like that, but caught him by the
collar of his jacket, snatched the cigar from his lips, and flung it
into the gutter, where it sizzled itself out. Then I lifted my
forefinger as I do in Sunday-class, and began to admonish him. But
instead of listening, he got the skirt of my alpaca dress between his
teeth and ground a great hole in it, swearing like a trooper
betweenwhiles.
Oh, sister! that was a trying season! In less than three minutes the
sidewalk was swarming with dirty-faced children. I might as well have
been in a wasps' nest. The spiteful imps buzzed around me so--little
girls, with lank hair falling over their eyes; lazy boys, swaggering
like drunken men, and swearing like troopers; and a woman--the boy who
smoked called her mother--who stood on a doorstep, with a hand on each
hip, scolding like fury. I kept my finger up. They would not hear a word
I said, but I felt it my duty to do that much, when a very gentlemanly
man in blue regimentals touched my arm, and observed in the kindest way
that things were getting so mixed and unpleasant perhaps I would permit
him to escort me round the corner. You know, sister, I always had a
power in the lift of my finger. It was wonderfully manifest just as this
gentleman crossed the street, and must have astonished him, for the
children hushed up at once, and huddled back to the doorstep like a
flock of lambs, which was an evidence of moral suasion I take pride in
reporting to the Society.
VI.
HE HAS COME.
Sisters:--As a representative of your august body, I ought now to have
been in an atmosphere of royalty--Imperial royalty, which counts at A
No. 1, as kings are put down. The young potentate of all the Russias,
with all his ships and things, ought to have been on hand a week ago;
but he still lingers on the "rolling sea and briny deep," a prey, it is
dreadfully to be feared, to sea-sickness--which, they tell me, is
heart-rending--and storms which are liable to aggravate the
sea-sickness.
I sympathize with that young man in all the depths of my feminine
nature--which are getting bottomless from the great need of compassion
which human life exhibits to the thinking mind. He ought to have been
here when our enthusiasm was at its hottest point. Then he would have
had the stormiest sort of a welcome. The soldiers were ready to file out
any minute; the mouths of ever so many cannon were burning to let off
fire; all the ships would have burst into a storm of flags at the first
gun. People couldn't but just keep from shouting every time they met
each other. But the young man didn't come. He hasn't come yet, and all
the enthusiasm is burning down to cinders and ashes. When he does come,
I'm afraid it'll be like putting a mess of apples into an oven after the
pan of baked pork and beans has been drawn out--half roasted, and hard
at the core when you cut 'em.
This is a great country, my friends--in fact, very extensive--but you
can't wake it up to an earthquake of enthusiasm about the same person
more than once. That prince had better have struck when the iron was
red-hot. He didn't, and so I can't tell you anything about him, except
that he isn't more at sea than the rest of us. When he does come, depend
upon it, there will be an uprising among the females of this great city;
and foremost of her sex will be your representative, faithful to her
trust, and ready, with a modest helping hand, to lead this young person
into the paths of propriety.
He has come at last, but the bitter-sweet of hope and fear has been
given us as daily food for two weeks past, and the wormwood of ceaseless
apprehension took the place of the yellow berries, and nightshade
darkness settled down upon us. Lovely young girls cried over their
ball-dresses of illusion, and wondered if _their_ hopes would thin off
into the same slimpsy nothingness. Middle-aged ladies, whose hair needs
no powder, and whose teeth never ache, began to falter in the dancing
steps practised in the private recesses of their own palatial homes,
and wondered if their joints were to be twisted and racked into new-born
graces, only to settle down into rusty stiffness again without having
fascinated the Russian soul out of that princely bosom.
Of course it is right and proper that an opportunity to study the
antiquities of a nation should be offered to every potentate and prince
that honors our Republican shores by setting his high-born foot upon
them, and it is highly proper that first-class specimens should be in
readiness the moment he enters a ball-room. That is what people tell me
has always been the custom at balls given to princes, and it isn't
likely that new rules are to be laid down for the benefit of a lot of
girls, anyhow. Governors and mayors are not often so young as they have
been. As a general thing, their wives are not troubled with an epidemic
of youth and beauty. It is an awful omission in the laws, but these
dignified chaps can't get up young and dashing wives for the occasion,
when a great high potentate from over seas shines down upon us in the
dancing way. I haven't a doubt they would like to sacrifice themselves
and astonish the world by so doing, but common people would be apt to
call it bigamy. So they have to do the very best they can with such
wives as they have got, and furbish them up with diamonds, laces,
flounces, and a dancing-master, till they answer to begin with.
I don't mean to be hard or sarcastical on this subject, but in these
times, when it is so easy for a man to put away his wife, couldn't this
official potentate get a temporary divorce just for the occasion,
especially if the kingly visitor happens to be young and very fond of
dancing. It would give us young girls a chance.
Don't think that I am putting on airs, or that I don't feel reverential
when age is mentioned, but Emperors' sons don't come to our free land of
liberty every day, and girls are so plenty that old folks ought to stand
back. Far be it from Phœmie Frost, on her own humble merits, to build
upon opening that ball with the Imperial Duke of all the Russias; but a
Society like ours has its social, moral, and scientific claims. As for
literature, since my reports have been honored by publication, I must
maintain the dignity of the position. If dignity and age is to lead in
this grand ceremonial, I have kept school, and--well, yes--no, one could
say that I--in fact, as to years, am I not competent to open the ball
with any prince that can come across the ocean, be he boy or patriarch?
There, that sentence is off my mind, and I can go on without a hitch of
the pen.
In other respects I have been silently but surely preparing myself. The
Society has been liberal, and most of my savings were in the bank,
rolling up interest beautifully, when I came from my childhood's home.
Then there was a handsome profit on the donation of eggs and butter and
maple-sugar which came in the freight train before I started. I attended
to the sale myself at the market, and had nothing to do with that Mr.
Middleman people talk so awfully about as a cheat and a general grabber.
Well, I dickered the things off at a good price, as I was a-saying, and
have got the money safe in my bosom--a hiding-place sacred to myself
alone.
Thus lifted above all mercenary anxieties, I gave my attention entirely
to the self-improvement necessary to my appearance before his highness
as a representative character on whom the eyes of all Sprucehill were
fixed. I would say the world--only for the modest consciousness that
comes over me when I think of myself as a genius.
VII.
THE FRENCH DRESS-MAKER.
Alpaca does make a first-class dress for our social gatherings and
literary circles in Sprucehill, and when puffed out behind, and trimmed
promiscuously with flutings, it sometimes has a sumptuous appearance
elsewhere; but for a ball, in which one aims to dance with a great grand
Archduke of all the Russias--excuse me for saying it, but alpaca is not
quite the thing. Doubtful of my own imperfect judgment, I asked a
fashionable dress-maker in the Third Avenue, who had "Madame" spelt with
an E on her tin sign at the door, and she said: "It wasn't the thing for
a lady entirely, by no manner of means," and her tongue had a rich roll
to it, which satisfied me that Ireland had sympathized with France in
her troubles, to the extent of getting the language a little mixed.
"No," says she, a leaning both elbows on her counter, and a looking at
me from head to foot. "Madame should have a _robe de_ silk, very
complete, with flowers in her hair entirely, and an overskirt to the
fore, garnitured with Limerick point."
"An overskirt before," says I, lifting both hands, satchel and all.
"Why, every skirt that I've seen in the street, or anywhere else, was
puckered and bunched up behind," says I. "Excuse me, but I really
couldn't think of wearing 'em in any other way."
The French dress-maker--I know she was French by the letter E after
Madam, and because the sign said she was from Paris. Well, she colored
up, and looked every which way at first, but then she gave a skimping
laugh, and said that I didn't understand French. I--I didn't understand
French! I who had studied "French without a Master" as a speciality,
with the most intelligent member of our circle, and conversed in the
language as directed by that excellent book so fluently that the
pronunciation sounded almost like English nipped off a little! This was
too much.
The clear grit, which lies at the bottom of every New England woman's
heart, riled up in mine when that cherished accomplishment was cast into
disrepute.
"Madame," says I, putting a keen emphasis on that E, "I came here to
inquire about the most fashionable way of making a dress, not to give or
take a lesson in the languages. Permit me to say I never could submit to
wear an overskirt in the way you speak of--wrong side before--why, it
would look dreadfully."
"But Madame does not understand; I speak English so much in this country
that my own language gets knocked into smithereens. I beg pardon--into
confusion. Madame must be very perfect herself to detect it."
I felt a smile creeping over my lips. Really, sisters, I had been too
hard on the poor woman. It was not her fault if my ear was so very
correct that nothing but the purest accent could satisfy me. She saw
this look dawning upon my face, and I knew that she felt relieved by the
way her elbows settled down on the counter again.
"If madame will take a chair--that is, repose herself. Madame--"
"Excuse me," says I, benignly, for I didn't want to hurt her feelings
again. "_Mademoiselle_, if you please."
"Pardon me," says she, humbly.
"Just so," says I, benignly. "Now supposing we go on about this
ball-dress. How much silk will it take?"
The woman sat and thought to herself ever so long. Then she counted her
fingers over once or twice. Then she said she didn't exactly know how
much, which is the way with dress-makers all over the world, I do
believe.
"But one won't buy a dress without knowing how much to ask for," says I.
"Say twelve yards now?"
The woman lifted herself right off from the counter, and sat staring at
me.
"Twelve!" says she, "eighteen at the least."
I felt as if some one had struck me. Eighteen yards for a dress, and
gored all to pieces at that!
"Some of your dress-makers in Broadway would want more than that!" says
she, "and send for more and more after that."
I made no answer, but took up my satchel and walked straight out of the
door.
Eighteen yards of silk for a dress! The thought of it kept me awake all
night.
The next morning I went right up to the palatial residence of my cousin,
Emily Elizabeth Dempster, feeling that she would expect me to enter on
that subject about bringing up children, which was my duty; but I was so
down in the mouth about that dress, that everything like a moral idea
had just swamped itself in those eighteen yards of silk; and instead of
giving advice, I went into that house to beg for it, feeling all the
time as if somebody had dumped me down from a mighty high horse onto
that stone doorstep, and left me to travel home afoot. In fact, I felt
as if coming to that house to ask about ball-dresses, instead of giving
instruction, was a mean sort of business. But the ambition of a great,
worldly idea was burning in my bosom, and I resolved to press forward to
the mark of the prize of the high calling.
Mercy on me! it is a ball-dress, not a class-meeting, that I am writing
about. Oh, my sisters! is it true that black angels and white angels
ever do get to fighting in a human soul, just as they do down South? If
so, they had a tussle in my bosom that morning, and the black fellow
came out best, with a gorgeous silk dress a-floating and a-rustling out
from his triumphant right hand, and the splendid shadow of a great Grand
Duke following after.
Cousin Emily Elizabeth was just coming downstairs, flounced and puffed
and tucked up about the waist, till she was all over in a flutter of
silk, and lace, and black beads, with a dashing bonnet on her head high
enough for a trooper's training-cap, all shivery with lace and bows,
with one long feather curling half way round it, and a white tuft
sticking up straight on the top, looking so 'cute and saucy.
Emily Elizabeth looked a little scared when she saw me coming in with my
satchel; but when I told her what I wanted, her eyes brightened up, and
she laughed as easy as a blackbird sings. "Oh, is that all!" says she.
"I thought it was about the children. I'll give you a note to my
dress-maker. Styles all French, and _so recherché_." Look in the
dictionary, sisters, and you will discover that this means something
first-class.
She took out a pencil and a square piece of paper with her name printed
on it, and wrote something French, with the number of a house, which I
won't give, not wanting any of my friends to be talked out of a year's
growth, as I was.
"There," says she. "The cream-on-cream all go to her. She'll fit you out
splendidly. Leave it all to her. Good-morning, cousin; I must go; but my
daughter is in the drawing-room--she will entertain you."
"Just so," says I, putting the card in my satchel, and making swift
tracks for the out-door; "but I haven't time to be entertained."
VIII.
THE GENUINE MADAME.
Well, I went straight down to that dress-maker's house, and handed the
square paper cousin had written on to a lady who was fluttering round
among a lot of girls, all hard at work sewing, like bumble-bees in a
rose-bush.
She looked at the paper; then she gave my alpaca dress an overhauling
with her scornful eyes. Then she began to talk; but, my goodness, her
French was awful. I couldn't understand a word of it. Once in a while
she would chuck an English word in, and rush on again like a mill-dam.
When I tried to put in a word of genuine French or pure English, she
lifted her hands, hitched up her shoulders, and seemed as if she was
swearing at me one minute and wanted to kiss me the next. I couldn't
stand that.
"How much will you ask--how many yards will it take. _La pre la pre?_"
says I, bursting into French.
The woman looked around on her girls, spread her hands as if praying for
help, and then, all red in the face, she burst into English. Then I knew
she did not understand her own native tongue, and gave her a sarcastic
smile.
"I find everything. How many yards? Oh, that depends on the idea, the
invention. I have it here growing in my brain. The price? Ah, I cannot
tell. When the work is complete then we know. There will be crêpe and
point--"
"But I don't want points," says I. "Talk in English if you don't
understand your own language. The price, the price!"
"Oh, very well, it shall be to your own satisfaction--perfect," says
she, and then the creature shook out her hands as if she was shewing
chickens from a corn-crib, and before I could say another word she
shewed me on to the steps and shut the door.
Well, I went back to my boarding-house, beat out and worried almost to
death. Figures are satisfactory to the New England mind; but when you
have only a whirlpool of broken words, ending with satisfaction, with a
woman's hands spread out on her bosom, and nothing more, it is
tantalizing. But I reckon the figures will come by and by, only I
_should_ like to have an idea of what they will count up to.
As I was saying in the beginning of my report, ten thousand anxious
female bosoms thrilled with expectations every night, and existence
dragged wofully in literary and fashionable circles until that
auspicious moment arrived when the son of an Imperial Emperor cast
refulgence on our Western Hemisphere. But the waiting of us young girls
was lonesome, very.
I had done my best. For the first time in my life I had twisted my
front hair into little wire tongs they call crimping-pins; maybe it was
their tightness that held my eyes so wide open last night. I was trying
with all my strength to shut them, when the sound of a cannon, ever so
far off, brought me up in the bed, with my hand clasped and the heart in
my bosom trembling like a frightened chicken.
"He has come," says I to myself. "Alexis has come. To-morrow we shall
see him--handsome, young, filled with Imperial royalty from the crown of
his noble head to the soles of his patent-leather boots. But will he
wear his crown in the procession, or only keep it for the grand ball.
What if he should rest that crown on the head of some distinguished
American, selecting a literary lady?" This thought impressed me; both
hands went up to my lofty brow. Alas! they only sent the crimping-pins
ploughing across my head with a thorny sharpness that filled my throat
with screeches.
My dress has come home--I am stunned:
Thirty yards of silk, $10 per yard $300.00
One piece French crape 25.00
Ten yards Brussels point 100.00
Linings 10.00
Making 50.00
Materials 35.00
Silk buttons 12.00
Passementerie, etc. 15.50
-------
$547.50
I have just recovered from a long fainting fit. They have taken the
crimping-pins out of my hair and deluged it with crystal water. I am
lying on my couch faint and exhausted. Oh, my sisters, the paths of
royalty are beautiful, but full of thorns. That bill has been enough to
destroy all my pleasure in the visit of the Grand Duke Alexis.
IX.
READY TO LAND.
The great Grand Duke of all the Russias has been thrown upon our shore
by an upheaving of the mighty deep, and is now rocking at his ease in
the iron-clad cradle of a great nation. Oh, he had a terrible time.
Winds tossed him, storms pitched that noble vessel end foremost into the
very bowels of the sea, then hove it up on great mountain waves, where
it rocked and tottered and trembled, while the rain washed its
decks--rendering mops useless--and the lightning got so tangled in the
spars and rigging that you couldn't tell which was rope and which was
fire.
Out of all this danger the great Grand Duke was blown upon our shore,
with a good deal less fuss than Jonah had when he took to his life-boat
with fins and tail, and discharged cargo on a desert shore, without the
first chance of an imperial reception, and nothing but an upstart guard
to offer him the hospitalities of the country.
Before daylight, Sunday morning, the vessel which bore that noble youth,
all weather-beaten as a rusty potash kettle, but grand and majestic
after its tussle with the storms, shot out her anchor in the lower
bay--for New York has two bays, and two fine old rivers empty into them.
The squadron--which means three or four other ships from Russia--had
been waiting there till their great iron hearts nearly burst with fear
that the imperial vessel had foundered; and when they saw it careering
in amongst 'em, they set up a shout that made the very fishes in the bay
rest on their fins and wonder what it could mean, for they had never
heard Russians before, and it seemed as if the alphabet had been shaken
ten thousand times over from as many pepper-boxes, and rained down on
the water in one great shout.
Nobody has told me yet how his imperial dukeship took this, and I
haven't liked to inquire too closely. Supposing him asleep in the sweet
privacy of his own upper berth, it wouldn't be quite proper, you know,
but it must have been soul-stirring to hear those native syllables
raining down blessings like tacks and brad-awls on his noble head.
How our imperial guest spent the Sabbath-day is a mystery that Russia
and the Russians only can solve. But I am credibly informed that ten
thousand upper-crust females betook themselves to secret devotions in
their own rooms, in crimping-pins and curl papers, the moment we got
news that he was here.
As for myself, I confess--no, our Society is not a confessional, and the
secrets of a lady's get-up don't belong to a report for the public eye.
So I say nothing on that point.
Sunday night I couldn't sleep a wink; my heart was full of noble
aspirations, and it seemed as if some wild Indian of the forest had got
his grip in my hair and might scalp me any minute, everything was
twisted so tight in that direction. In fact, to say nothing of sleeping,
I couldn't have winked to save my life. But I bore it with Christian
fortitude, determined to press forward to the mark of the prize. Oh,
dear! will I ever remember that this report isn't a class-meeting
confession? Well, the morning came, and oh, my sisters, it was pouring
cats and dogs. When I heard this, I rose up in bed, covered my face with
both hands, and just boo-hooed out a crying. I knew well enough that ten
thousand other young girls were weeping like the skies; but that only
made me feel worse and worse, for mine has always been a sympathetic
heart, and I felt for them--I did indeed.
I did not know what on earth to do. Cousin Emily Elizabeth Dempster had
promised to come and take me down to the _Mary Powell_, a steamboat
which the committee had engaged to take itself and all its wives and
their friends, down to welcome the great Grand Duke, and bring him up to
the city.
Cousin Emily Elizabeth's husband was a head cockalorum in this
committee, which being the _crême on crême_--excuse French, it will
break in somehow in spite of me--well, which being the _crême on crême_
that had skimmed itself off from all the common milk of New York
society, puffed Cousin E. E. up like--like a ripe button-ball.
Since my reports have appeared in what the newspapers call the world of
letters--I say it modestly, but truth is truth--Cousin E. E. has been
sweet as maple-sugar to me, I can tell you. She had her eye teeth cut in
Vermont, and understood that Queen Victoria knew there was one notch
above the crown when she took to writing books. I say nothing; but there
is an aristocracy that cuts its own way through all social flummery,
like an eagle among chippen birds. That is real live genius; and if New
England hasn't got her share of that, I don't know where its
head-quarters are.
Well, I and the clouds shed tears together for a good while; then I
started up. "What if it does pour?" says I to myself; "the Grand Duke
has been in storms before this; he ain't sugar nor salt, to melt at
anything less than the glance of a loving eye. What's the good of being
down in the mouth about a little rain? I'll get up--I'll unskewer my
hair--I'll put on _that dress_, if I die for it." I started out of bed;
I stood before the looking-glass; I began to untwist, to unroll; I did
the corkscrew movement; I jerked--I shook my hair out--ripple, ripple,
ripple, it fell over my shoulders. Then I rested awhile, and winked my
eyes with exquisite satisfaction--for freedom is sweet both to the head
and heart.
I felt like a new creature--a delicious looseness settled on my
temples--a feeling of feminine triumph swelled my soul. Could he resist
the fleecy softness of that hair--the thousand ripples breaking up the
sunshine--only there wasn't any sunshine to break. Not a silver thread
was visible; if there had been several the night before, it was nobody's
business but my own. My arms were tired with continual undoing; but,
sisters, am I one to faint by the way? No, no, a thousand times no.
I began to roll, to braid, to puff; I planted hair-pins in my head as
thick as bean-poles in a garden. Heavy braids--expensive but
lovely--fell down the back of my head; fluff on fluff shaded my lofty
forehead. I say nothing; but my literary success, great as it is, has
not been more satisfactory than this.
I put on that dress in a great hurry, for Cousin E. E. was at the door
in her carriage. How it glistened in the glass! How it swept out on the
carpet, a peacock's tail is a trifle compared to it! I tucked it up; I
turned the lining inside out, pinned it, puckered it round the waist,
and then put on my new bonnet, which looked like a black beehive with a
bird perched on the top. Then, with a burning heart, that fairly turned
against it, I put on my waterproof cloak and pulled the hood over my
poor bonnet.
I opened my cotton umbrella, and went down. Cousin E. E. was waiting,
and a tall fellow in half regimentals held the door open. I jumped in as
spry as a cricket, and away we went.
X.
DOWN THE BAY.
The _Mary Powell_ lay huddled up close to the wharf, with a great white
flag crossed with blue stripes at one end, and the glorious old
star-spangled banner at the other. In fact, she was all dressed out in
flags. They were soaked through and through till their slimpsiness was
distressing. In fact, the steamboat looked like a draggled rooster with
no fence or cart to hide under.
The committee were all there, with a whole swarm of ladies in waterproof
cloaks, huddled together like chickens in a coop. There were generals,
too, with gold epaulets on their shoulders: one that I'd heard of in the
war, General McDowell, and some others, that lighted up the deck a
little with their gold lace and sword-handles.
She moved--I mean the _Mary Powell_. The sea was gray, the sky was
black. Now and then I saw a flag fluttering by on some vessel, like a
poor frightened bird searching for shelter, and pitied it. Then all at
once bang went a gun. I hopped right up, and screamed out:
"What's that?"
"The salute," says a gentleman close by me. "A salute for the Grand
Duke."
I sat down astonished.
"Sir," says I, "I can't believe it. I--I've been saluted myself before
this, and I know what it is. No human lips could have made that noise."
The man looked at me, and puckered up his lips a trifle, as if he were
trying to choke back a laugh.
"I'm speaking of guns," says he, "not the sweet little salutes in your
mind."
"Oh," says I, "that makes a difference, though I never heard firing off
guns by that name before."
"The Grand Duke will have twenty-two of 'em," says he.
"Well, then, I'm glad it's only the guns," says I, and a great big sigh
of relief came up from my jealous bosom.
Then we all went on again, till I heard some one call out that we'd got
to heave-to. This scared me dreadfully. I looked around. Which two of
all these females did they mean to heave into the vasty deep? Not me for
one. If Russia is barbarous enough to want that sort of cannibal
hospitality, I'm counted out.
Shivering with fear, I drew back into the crowd, but watched things like
a cat. Drifting through the fog, I saw a little vessel coming close to
us, as if she had something to do with this heathen ceremony. The ladies
in their waterproofs crowded to the side of the steamboat, as if they
rather panted for the glory of being drowned then and there for the
pleasure of the great Grand Duke.
I heard a splash, but could not see if any one had been flung over, and
when I got up to look, there was a magnificent old fellow, with ribbons
in his coat and brooches set thick with shining stones on his bosom,
a-coming up the side of the boat. He looks so proud and puffy, that I
should have took him for the great Grand Duke, only that he wasn't near
young enough.
"Who is it?" says I to the old gentleman.
"Catacazy," says he.
"Cat--what?" says I, categorically.
"Catacazy, the Russian Minister," says he.
"Minister," says I; "do they mean to get up a prayer-meeting on board?"
The old gentleman simmered down the laugh that was on his lips into a
smile, and said he thought not.
This pacified me, and I sat still while we went down through the upper
bay, which seemed wrapped in waterproofs too, and into the lower bay,
which heaved and rolled as if it was half-choked up with sweltering wet
blankets. Then we came in sight of the ships, and saw the flags
a-battling with the storm; but no one on board seemed to care a
continental cent whether New York sent out her _crême on crême_ or not.
This silence made my heart sink.
Then the minister went to the side of the vessel, leaned over, and swung
his hat. By and by a boat came from the great Grand Duke's vessel, in
which an imperial-looking man stood upright, like a high-born monarch,
and lifted his cap as if it had been a crown.
"It is--it is--oh, yes, it is the Duke!"
This was on every lip but mine. I could not speak; exquisite emotion
forbade it.
No one came on board; but the minister with that catish name got into
the boat, and then some of the committee, which skimmed itself again,
and thickened up its cream considerably.
There we waited and waited.
They came back at last. That young gentleman was not the great Grand
Duke. He wasn't coming till next day.
Oh, how we wilted! Some of us almost burst out a-crying. I did not
speak; I could not. Ever since we reached the lower bay, I had felt
dreadfully discouraged; now a strange sinking of the heart seized upon
me--a faint dizziness, an agony of disappointment seemed raging in my
stomach. Oh, my sisters! these exquisite sensibilities are a proof of
greatness, I know, but the sufferings they bring, no human being but the
creature of genius can tell.
I am better. The glorious sight which followed that stormy day has
relieved me. I have seen ten thousand flags blazing along Broadway--I
have seen three times ten thousand republican worshippers waving their
hats and handkerchiefs in acclamations for the son of an imperial
despot. I have heard the glorious music of an imperial serenade--I have
seen HIM.
XI.
THE GRAND DUKE.
Sisters:--I have seen him. This hand has been pressed--significantly
pressed--by the soft, rosy palm of imperial royalty. If a tablet to my
memory should ever be sunk in the walls of our meeting-house, I charge
you, dear sisters in the cause, to have this honor cut in Roman capitals
deep into the marble; for what is an exaltation to me is glory to the
Society, and, in fact, to all Vermont.
I have been on the same steamboat with the great Grand Duke; his
splendid blue eyes have looked into mine, and in that glance we grappled
each other, soul to soul. He has smiled upon me through the yellow glory
of that silky mustache, under which his plump, red lips shone like
cherries, ripe enough to swallow, stones and all. He speaks English;
reveres genius, and knows that it can never grow old.
I saw him in Broadway, when all the New York militia turned out, which
was a training day worth looking at. A snow-storm of handkerchiefs
burst out of the windows; ten thousand female hands waved him forward.
Shouts rose from the multitude; little children were crowded back into
the gutters; women were jammed together on doorsteps and curbstones. In
fact, the skim milk of society was compelled to flow in awful narrow
channels, while the _crême on crême_--excuse French once more--rolled
smoothly through the city in carriages, with royalty leading the way, a
regiment of trainers leading him, and a band of music leading the whole.
I saw the whole glorious procession. From block to block I flitted, like
some aspiring bird on the crest of a wave. My heart was full, my eyes
fixed on one object--that tall, noble figure, with a blue watered silk
scarf across his royal bosom, and a half-moon hat, with dipping points,
gracefully lifted from his head. He must have been dazzled; he must have
been impressed by this proof that republics scorn monarchies and trample
them under foot.
I flitted onward through the crowd, waving my handkerchief from a
doorstep now and then. That handkerchief the idol of this august
occasion seemed to follow eagerly with his eyes, as a sort of beacon
light which kindred sympathy impelled him to recognize, for wherever I
went he lifted that half-moon hat from his royal brow and smiled. I felt
this compliment to the depths of my soul--it thrilled me.
When I lifted myself out of the skim milk, and flowed in with the cream
of cream on that stand in Union Square with my cousin and the _élite_ of
society, he saw me again and recognized me once more, which irritated my
cousin's jealousy a little, for she insisted that he lifted his black
half-moon to the whole of us. But I know!
I watched the carriage that bore him with a blushing cheek and a beating
heart. There was General Dix, a real nice-looking old gentleman, sitting
in front of him; there was Catacazy, the ambassador of all Russia, also
a nice gentleman as you want to see, with _his_ hat off, a-bowing and
a-bowing. We flung up our handkerchiefs--we clapped our hands.
The Clarendon Hotel stands near one corner of the Union Square; it has a
skimpy piazza in front made of iron, and I've seen bigger hotels anyhow.
But it is considered tip-top, and is always brimming over with the cream
of cream. That is why Mr. Catacazy took my Grand Duke there. There was
such a crowd of folks and trainers that I lost sight of him. By and by
out he came into the piazza, and stood right before our aristocratic
stand, which was fringed round with red cloth, and over which the
star-spangled banner waved itself meekly to the nest of black eagles
that streamed out over that noble scion of all the Russias.
I could not see _him_ plainly, as my heart panted to, so I borrowed my
cousin's glass--a little spy-glass, understand--not specs, which I
haven't come to by a long way. Well, I unscrewed the eye-glass, wound it
up to the right notch, and brought him almost to my face; and there I
stood, choke-full of heavenly satisfaction, all the while _he_ looked
down on the general training of soldiers that marched stream on stream
between him and me.
While my soul was going out luminously through these eyes, Cousin Emma
Elizabeth Dempster touched my elbow, and says she:
"Miss Frost, if you've got through with my glass, I should like to try
it a little."
I gave it up. Not being long-sighted, the whole pageant was a blank to
me after that cruel deprivation, for I could no longer see that imperial
figure on the piazza.
My reports are making a tremendous sensation, and I--well, being modest
by nature, I say nothing, but a committee, skimmed daintily off from the
cream of cream, called at my boarding-house, and wanted me, as a rising
star in the literary hemisphere of writers, to invite the great Grand
Duke to a private reception, or entertainment, or something, where some
that hadn't been on the steamboat could shake hands with him, and others
might just touch the extremity of his coat, which they gave me their
honor they wouldn't pull--as some high-bred ladies did when he was going
from the boat.
I received this committee with dignity, and promised to take their
request into mature consideration, as soon as I could learn personally
from the great Grand Duke whether he should prefer to have this homage
paid by my own sex to the extremities of his coat, or not. I felt for
these young ladies. I had experienced the yearning desire that possessed
them, and knew how truly irrepressible it was. Had it not inspired the
whole committee of reception, their wives, and their children to the
third generation? Had it not disturbed fashionable life to its very
dregs, and given spice to our weekly literature? Yes, I felt for these
young persons, and in a little speech, remarkable for its graceful
elocution, gave them encouragement.
XII.
TICKETS FOR THE BALL.
Tickets for the ball! Sent, no doubt, at the Grand Duke's request.
Cousin Emily Elizabeth has got tickets too. We shall go together in the
same carriage, and leaning on her husband's arm. Dempster is a handsome
man, and really _distingué_ looking. Excuse French; an educated person
will break into it now and then.
The day has come. Cousin Emily has just sent me a bundle of things, with
her compliments--a little box with a cake of lovely white chalk in it;
another, smaller yet, filled with a pink powder that looks like ground
rose-leaves, and a bottle with something liquid and dark in it, which
does not seem as if it was good to drink. What on earth does Cousin E.
E. expect me to do with these things?
Ah! pinned to the bundle, I find a letter, beginning "Dear Cousin
Phœmie," and asking me to excuse her, but she sends the things, thinking
that I may want to rejuvenate, and perhaps dye, before I go to the ball.
Rejuvenate! Does she mean to say that I'm not young enough? and if I
wasn't, how are these things a-going to help me? I know that girls in
school sometimes eat chalk and chew gum, but never heard that they got
the younger for it. Then the pink powder--well, it's no use calculating
about it, especially as she wants me to die after it. I wish Cousin E.
E. would ever learn to spell. When a woman dies she does not do it with
a "y" as a general thing.
Now what _does_ all this mean?
I was doing my hair at the looking-glass, when Cousin E. E. came in,
looking like a queen; her blue silk dress was all spotted with gold
flowers, and it streamed out half across my bedroom. Over that she wore
a long white cloak, with tassels to it, and her hair was looped in with
pink roses that were not redder than her cheeks, which would have
satisfied me that her health was first-rate, if it hadn't been for the
shadows that lay around her eyes, which had grown awfully dark since I
saw her at home.
"Oh!" says she, "I am just in time. Came early, thinking you might want
help. Sit down; that will do. Now where is the you-know-what--those
boxes--you understand?"
Here E. E. flung off her cloak and came to the glass. I declare to you
the creature's neck was white as any snow-drift but uncovered to an
extent that frightened me out of a week's growth. Her arms, too, were
the same, and bare as her neck. She had a narrow pink shoulder-strap,
and some lace between them, and that was all; only a string of white
stones, that shone like a rainbow now and then, was around her neck and
one arm; two or three of the same kind of stones hung down from her
ears, and shot out light from her hair.
The whiteness of that neck astonished me, and made me look every which
way.
E. E. didn't seem to mind that, but took off her long white gloves and
laid them on the table; then she snatched up one of the boxes, and began
to rub a handkerchief that lay on the bureau in it.
"There now; hold back your head a little," says she; "shut your eyes."
Here she began to rub my face and neck and arms with the handkerchief
till they looked white as her own. Then she changed boxes, and I could
feel her making soft dabs at my cheeks, which tickled a little.
"Now open your eyes," says she.
I opened them wide, she astonished me so; and, as true as you live, she
began to tickle them with a tenty-tointy brush. After that she titivated
my hair a little, washed her hands with some Cologne water, and
snatching up my pink silk dress, which lay across the bed, just buried
me in it. I declare it was scrumptious to feel the silk a-rustling round
me, and a-settling down on the floor, wave on wave. Well, the bill was a
damper, but I couldn't help enjoying it for all that.
"Now," says E. E., a-drawing on her long, white gloves, "just take a
look, and let us be off--Dempster is waiting."
I did take a look, right straight in the glass, and couldn't help doing
it again and again, the lady I saw there seemed so much like a
magnificent stranger to me--so white, so blooming--so--. Forgive me,
sisters--I forgot that modesty is a tender blossom that should be
encouraged--and I will say no more, only this, Cousin Dempster's neck
had a good deal more of it than mine, and that French dress-maker had
given me a little chance of sleeves, while her's left them out
altogether.
When she spread out my skirt, it half covered the room. All at once she
saw just one little spot of rain on it, and held up both her hands.
"Why, you haven't worn this before? Good gracious! no lady in our set
ever wears the same dress twice. The idea!"
I felt myself wilting, for she was sarcastic in her speech. Then I up
and spoke for myself.
"Yes, I wore it once," says I; "but it was tucked up under my
waterproof cloak, with the lining turned inside out, and nobody saw
it--especially the great Grand Duke, who didn't come out of his own
vessel."
"Oh," says she, "then it won't be an absolute disgrace to the family if
you wear it. I began to be afraid to go with you. There, now, don't look
pins and needles at me, but just put something round you, and let us be
off, or _he_ will be there before us."
That was enough. I huddled up that pink silk in my arms, and in less
than two minutes Cousin Dempster's carriage was so choke full of his
wife and me, that he took a seat with the driver.
XIII.
THE GRAND DUKE'S BALL.
Oh, my! wasn't that ball-room a sight to see? Seats piled on seats, all
cushioned with red velvet, and one end curving round like a great red
horseshoe, with flags and flowers and shields running below the
bottommost tier; a great swinging balloon of sparkling glass poured its
light, like July sunshine, down on a crowd of people, that looked more
like born angels than human creatures. It fairly made me dizzy to look
at 'em from Cousin Dempster's box-seat, which was right in the end of
the circle.
After a while I got my senses back, and looked out for _him_. He wasn't
there yet, and that gave me a chance to see things. Four more heaps of
glass, that seemed as if they had caught fire, hung in the other end of
the room, and beyond them was a fountain of water, a-sparkling and
a-flashing and a-tinkling in a make-believe garden by moonlight, with
live fish swimming in it, and live flowers blooming in piles and heaps
around it, and make-believe trees. Half running round the room was a
lot of marble posts, with white flower-pots running over with sweetness,
and linked together with running vines, that made you feel yourself
almost out of doors.
All this was splendid; but there was one spot that everybody looked
towards, and I most of all. Three boxes, cushioned with red velvet, were
just chained together with great wreaths of flowers such as I never saw
in a garden; but I knew they were genuine because of the scent, which
was delicious. Banners set full of stars and stripes of red and white
silk, all tangled in with flowers, hung over these boxes, and right in
the centre streamed a white silk banner, on which our old bald eagle and
the black eagles of all the Russias flocked together as sociable as
robins in a nest.
"There he is! There he is!"
I started. I caught my breath, for back of the white flag _he_ stood
with the light a-shining on his beautiful yellow hair, and a smile on
his lips. Oh, how grand, how tall, how gorgeous! Everybody was a-looking
at him. The girls around me--always forward, and _so_ silly--began
twittering together, and looking that way as if he would ever think of
dancing with them. They swarmed around me, as a representative person.
They forgot their own trivialities, and rendered me such homage as
genius commands from commonplace minds.
"You are an author," said they. "You belong to the great aristocracy of
the world. Speak for us. He cannot dance with all of us, but he can look
this way through his opera-glass, and give us all a chance of being put
in the papers as the beautiful young lady he admired so much. We appoint
you a committee of one. Address him in our behalf. Get some memento of
him that we may leave to future generations."
The entreaties of these young creatures went to my heart. I raised my
forefinger, which was like an oath to them, and says I:
"Thanks for this honor. Like a Roman matron I will do my duty. Wait."
I arose from my seat, and swept, with a dignity and grace that must
have done the Society I represent great honor, around the gallery, and
found my way into the private retiring-room of our illustrious guest. It
was small but beautifully furnished. My pink silk, as it trailed in,
seemed to fill the whole room. In the looking-glass I saw a figure,
tall, commanding; I may say queenly--but enough of that.
A person stood near the door and looked in. I lifted my finger; he
approached.
"Go," says I, "to the great Grand Duke of all the Russias, and tell him
that Miss Phœmie Frost, a committee lady, awaits his presence here."
He started--he smiled--he went.
I drew back and stood against the wall opposite the door. _He_ entered,
looking a little puzzled. I advanced one foot, then the other, three
long paces, as queens do when they act on the stage. Then I sunk down in
a profound curtsey, wound myself up again into a royal position, and
held out my right hand.
"Great Grand Duke Alexis," says I, "son of an illustrious father and an
imperial mother, whom all women love to honor, welcome to our
shores--welcome to the fashion, genius, and beauty embodied in the
females of America."
Before I could finish the address to which duty and ever-burning genius
inspired me, the great Grand Duke quenched my ardor by a heavenly smile
that danced in his blue eyes, and almost broke into a laugh on his red
lips. His voice was like over-ripe strawberries when he spoke and said:
"The ladies did him great honor; he had not English to express his
pleasure, and no power to repay their kindness." This was my time.
"Being the head of a committee of so many young ladies that it is
impossible for your Imperial Majesty to dance with the whole, I--that
is, these ladies--wish to be represented in the festive cotillon by a
person worthy of the occasion. Not the wife of an American potentate,
who may or may not have any claims of her own, but a potentate in
herself. Not crowned with the shadow of a man's laurels, but wearing
her own bay leaves as Tasso did."
Here I felt my eyes a-drooping, and my tall figure bent like a weeping
willow. The great Grand Duke saw my confusion, and his smile deepened
audibly.
"Say to the lovely committee of ladies," says he--
But I interrupted him, and putting one hand on my heart, observed, with
a gentle bow:
"Embodied in me."
Then he smiled out loud again, and says he:
"If the Committee of Arrangement permit, I shall have much pleasure."
With that he bowed and prepared to go out. I drew back toward the wall
till the pink silk skirt began to tangle up my feet, and kept my eyes
lifted to his face, which was still bathed in blushing smiles. Another
step, a low curtsey, and I lifted myself up with dignity while he passed
through the door.
I was alone, with nothing but the looking-glass to gaze on my delight.
The young ladies had begged of me for a memento of royalty. I looked
around. An ivory-handled hair-brush lay on a marble shelf under the
glass. I seized upon it, knowing that it had touched his head. I
examined it. Imagine my joy--six bright yellow-brown hairs clung to the
bristles! Carefully, daintily I picked them out, and, laying them in the
palm of my white glove, formed a tiny tress of them--tiny, but oh! how
exquisitely precious!
With this treasure in my hand I went back to my constituency. They
crowded round me; sparkling eyes gazed upon the glorious prize I had
secured; cherry lips kissed it with gushing fervor, and pleaded with me
for just a morsel. I secured one lovely hair for myself, and, cutting
the rest into tiny bits, distributed them generously. Oh, sisters! this
act endowed me with wonderful popularity among my young companions. We
girls should be generous to each other. I was generous, and an orchard
full of spring robins could not have chirped more happily than they did
while flocking around me. But the dancing began. I stood ready, with my
long pink silk skirt gathered half way from the floor. But all at once
it dropped from my hand--_he_ was on the floor, and another lady clung
to his arm. The jealousy of that committee of gentlemen had prevailed.
He danced with the Governor's wife.
Did I stand ready to play second fiddle to her? No, no! a thousand times
no! Was I not a New England lady? Did I not feel that the literature of
the country had its eyes upon me? _He_ couldn't help it; the deploring
glance that he cast upon me was enough to satisfy me of that. Indeed,
his feelings were so hurt that he really could not go through the
figures of the cotillon, but kept dancing every which way, like a man
torn with distractions. My heart ached for him. I could not bear to see
his distress, and retired with dignity to my seat upstairs and looked
on, while my proud New England heart burned with indignation. If I live,
that committee of gentlemen shall hear from me again.
XIV.
THE NATURAL HISTORY PHILANTHROPIST.
Sisters:--He has gone! The luminous star that has shone upon us with
such refulgence for the last few weeks, has gone to our beloved "Hub of
the Universe," where poets, governors, and other distinguished men of
New England are now revolving around him like the spokes of a cart
wheel. Mr. Holmes has written him some sweet verses; Mr. Longfellow has
greeted him with welcomes. They have given him balls, dinners, and a
cold in his face. In short, New England has been true to itself and its
climate. When the hub turns on its axle, the spokes whirl and the tires
revolve, giving a swift throb to the whole universe. As a New England
woman--I beg pardon--young lady, I am proud of Boston, proud of the
honor they are doing to _Him_. But after all, the Hub must imitate. We
took the crown off.
Before he left, a new and exquisite idea came into my head--some people
may think it a little flighty, but you will understand all the poetry it
contains. I have a canary bird--for I love birds with all the inborn
intensity of genius--so old that his feathers are nothing more than a
creamy white. In that particular he--I should say she--being a female,
that never sings beyond a chirp, has the gift of silence peculiar to the
sex. I got her cheaper on that account. Well, she is almost dove-like in
color and in sweetness of disposition. No more lovely messenger from
heart to heart could be found in the whole world.
Well, sisters, I took this bird from its cage with my own hands, and I
smothered it with kisses from my own lips, which quivered with intensity
of emotion. Then I tied a blue ribbon about its neck, and attached to
that a tenty-tointy note which contained these lines:
Farewell, noble prince, my fond heart is gushing
With thoughts that no language can ever reveal;
With the sweetest affection this warm cheek is blushing,
And hopes to my maidenly bosom will steal,
Of a time when our souls, with united expression,
Shall mingle with harmony more than divine;
And the priest--be he Greek, or of any profession--
Shall bless this poor hand as it clings unto thine.
The paper was of an exquisite rose-color on which I indited this gem. I
flatter myself that genius can sometimes write beautifully. It is not
just the thing to particularize here, but if that Grand Duke _can_ read
English he must have admired the sweet morsel which that lovely songster
bore to him on the wings--well, of a canary.
I would not send my bird in a cage, because handsome cages are
expensive, and do not carry an idea of freedom with them, which our
spread eagle might have led the great Grand Duke to expect. Neither
would I trust her with a street boy whose hands might be dirty and
unsafe. No, I put on my bonnet, locked the bird with his blue ribbon in
a box covered with gilt paper, and walked straight down to the Clarendon
Tavern, and asked for one of the committee-men.
A tall, grave-looking gentleman came into the room, where I sat waiting,
and said he was Mr. Bergh, one of the committee-men, and then stood a
minute, as if he was waiting to know what I wanted.
I had heard a great deal about the gentleman's goodness to the poor dumb
beasts that are so abused and trampled on, and my heart rose right into
my mouth.
"Mr. Bergh," says I, reaching out my hand, "in the name of New England,
permit me to shake hands, and thank you for the good you are a-doing to
so many of God's own creatures."
The gentleman smiled, and reached out his hand.
"I am glad to hear," says I, "that some old bachelor has left a lot of
money to your society. It is just what I would do myself if I hadn't a
hope--that is, it may be possible that all the money I have will be
needed for a special occasion--as no free-born New England woman would
be beholden to a foreign nation for her setting out."
Here Mr. Bergh smiled. You have no idea how much younger he looked when
he did smile; the benevolence that made him a Natural History
Philanthropist just shone out from his eyes, and beamed all over his
face, till I longed to be--well, say a duck, or something of that
sort--that he might save me from oppression.
"Thank you," says he; "most men want some object in life. You ladies
have done so much for humanity that we are content to leave it in your
hands, but the poor animals have up to this time escaped compassion."
"Not compassion, but assistance," says I. "Cruelty to animals is mostly
confined to men."
"Not exactly," says he. "I have sometimes seen kittens and pet dogs
treated more unmercifully than omnibus-horses, and by innocent children
too."
I did not answer. How could I? The remembrance of a trout-brook, with
birch-trees hanging over it, and great red-seeded brake-leaves growing
thick on the bank, made me shudder. Hadn't I held ever so many kittens
under water in that very spot, and shouted and laughed to the other
girls--some of you, my sisters, among them--while the poor little things
kicked and struggled for life, that was just as dear to them as it is to
me? Hadn't I hunted up birds' nests, and driven the pretty creatures
distracted by handling their eggs, till at last the nests were broken
up? Then didn't I string the cold eggs into a chain, and hang them in
triumph over the looking-glass in our keeping-room?
You will tell me, out of the kindness of your hearts, that these were
sins of ignorance. Just so; and it is this ignorance, which is sometimes
cruel as the grave, that Mr. Bergh is trying his best to enlighten. No
child would do a cruel thing if it were made to understand the pain it
is giving. Yet, sticking pins through flies, and spearing wasps to the
wall, are about the first thing a smart baby learns to do.
Did you ever see a lot of boys going home from school, when a
garter-snake, or any other harmless serpent, crosses their path? They
know well enough that the poor things do no harm, and are as afraid as
death of them; but see the great stones they heave upon the miserable
reptile; the shouts they send up, as it writhes, and coils, and fills
the air with feeble hisses, trying, poor thing, to save its bruised and
broken life to the last.
Does anybody tell the boys that this is brutal cruelty? No, even the
Christian mother, who would not do an unkind thing to save her life,
forgets that God makes snakes as well as ringdoves, and that pain is
just as bitter to the snake as to the cooing bird.
Sisters, we are all wrong in leaving these things to men only. If we did
our duty, and taught little children that even thoughtless cruelty is a
sin, and that the fun which comes out of pain to any of God's creatures
is a crime, there would not be much for Mr. Bergh and his noble society
to do. The cruel instincts of a child become ferocious in the man. With
such, men can best deal. I thank God that one brave spirit is found
ready and able to protect the dumb creatures that are given us for
blessings, not for victims.
While I am writing this, picture after picture comes up from my own past
girlhood, and my heart stands still as I remember how ferocious a thirst
for fun and ignorance can be in a child. How many sleepy-looking toads I
have seen, with their backs all jewels, and their throats yellow gold,
that asked nothing but a burdock leaf for shelter, and a few flies for
food, crushed to death by boys who thought no harm, and only liked the
sport of killing something.
Since then, I have learned that these little creatures are a great help
to gardeners, and that wise men foster them with kindness and care.
Once, down by the trout-brook we know of, I saw a lot of children, busy
as bees, doing something on the bank, where two or three boys were
kneeling, and the rest looking on. Of course I went down to the brook,
and, being a little mite of a creature, looked on, half frightened, half
wondering.
The boys had caught a great frog, green as grass. He was, I have no
doubt, one of those hoarse old croakers, that make one timid about going
by ponds and marshy ground in the night, up in our State. Well, they had
him down in the grass, and one held him while the other ran a pin
through both jaws and twisted it there. There was no fun in this. A lot
of doctors cutting off an arm couldn't have been more gravely in
earnest. Some of the boys were eight and ten years old; but not one of
them seemed to feel that they were doing a hideous thing. I remember
feeling very sorry for the poor frog, but it was not till years and
years after that I understood the horrible, lingering death these
ignorant boys had tortured him with. Since then I have never thought of
that sparkling trout stream, without a pain at my heart.
"Childish ignorance," I hear you say--for some of these boys were your
own brothers, and meant no harm. But what right had they to be ignorant?
They knew well enough that it was against the law to kill one another.
Why were they not taught that the life that God gives to His meanest
creature is as sacred as a good man's prayers; unless necessity calls
for it, and then it must be taken with as little suffering as death can
give?
Sisters, I am in earnest; the missionary spirit is strong upon me. I
wish our Society to take up this subject with interest. What Mr. Bergh
has been doing among men, we must do among the children of this
generation. When ignorance is an excuse for cruelty, you and I and every
woman of the land are wretches if we allow a child to sin because it
knows no better. There is no great study necessary to work out a reform
here. The mother who knows what is right knows how to impress it on her
children; and if they play at death and destruction, she is the person
most to blame.
Don't say that I am writing out one of my popular addresses before the
Society--I never thought of such a thing; but when I saw the great
Natural History Philanthropist, my heart and mind went right back to you
and my duties as a missionary of universal progress, and I sat there in
silence thinking over these things till I forgot that he was there.
At last he spoke, and said, kindly enough, "Is there anything I can help
you in?"
I started and reached out my hand.
"Mr. Bergh," says I, enthusiastically, "I can help you! All the world
over we women work best in the primary department. You have begun a
grand and a noble work among men. We will begin at the other end, and in
that way cut your work down to nothing. I see a clear path before us.
Henceforth I will belong to your Society, and you shall belong to mine.
Is it agreed?"
He sat down by me; his eyes grew bright; his earnestness of purpose
inspired me to press forward to the mark of the prize--I beg pardon, the
old prayer-meeting spirit will manifest itself in spite of me when my
soul is full of a great purpose.
After we had talked on the great subject satisfactorily, he said, all at
once, "But you came for some purpose in which I may have the pleasure of
serving you."
Then I remembered my bird and its imperial object. Revealing my
gold-paper box, I opened it carefully, fearing a sudden flight. Nothing
moved. Trembling with dread, I put in my hand; it touched a soft fluff
of feathers that did not stir.
My heart sank like a lead weight in my bosom. I looked in; the poor
little thing lay in the bottom of the box, with its wings spread out,
and its head lying sideways. I touched it with my hand; it was limp and
dead. While I had been talking with so much feeling about cruelty to
animals, my own little songster--no, being a female she was not
that--but my poor pet had been smothered to death in that gorgeous
little receptacle.
With my heart swelling like a puff-ball, I turned my shoulder on that
good man, and closed my satchel solemnly, as if it had been a tomb.
"Sir," says I, in a voice full of touching penitence, "I feel myself
just at this minute wholly unworthy of the mark of the high calling to
which I have offered myself. A young lady who puts herself forward to
teach thoughtful kindness to the young, should be above reproach in that
respect herself."
The good gentleman looked awfully puzzled, for how would he guess at the
crime I had locked up in that box?
"Good-morning," says I, walking away; "the time may come when I shall
feel a new exaltation, but just now--well, good-morning."
I went away meek and humble as a pussy cat. When I looked down at the
box in my hand it seemed as if I was carrying a coffin.
Well, I buried my poor little pet in that identical box, with the blue
ribbon about its neck; but the poem I forwarded to _him_ in Boston. I
may be meek and humbly conscious of my own shortcomings, but the Grand
Duke of all the Russias shall never go home with the idea that Vermont
hasn't got poets as well as Boston, and that young ladies cannot put as
much vim and likewise maple-sugar into their poetry as that smart
fellow, Dr. Holmes, simmered down in his.
Just read mine and his, that's all!
I do think that nothing can equal the forwardness of some New York
girls. Would you believe it, one stuck-up thing has just stolen my
beautiful idea, and sent her card to the great Grand Duke tied round a
bird's neck; but it was like stealing a fiddle and forgetting the
fiddlestick. A card isn't poetry. There is no accounting for the vanity
of some people; but the best proof of genius is imitation.
XV.
CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK.
Dear sisters:--Thanksgiving is the great Yankee jubilee of New England.
Then every living thing makes itself happy, except the turkeys, and
geese, and chickens. They, poor martyrs, have been scared into the
middle of next week by the yells, and shrieks, and awful cackling of the
whole army of winged creatures that sit in ten thousand ovens, with
their legs tied, their wings twisted, and the gravy a-dripping down
their sides and bosoms, like rain from the eaves of a house. Of course,
for that day, every barn-yard in New England goes into mourning. The
poor hen is afraid to cackle when she lays an egg, for fear of having a
gun cracked at her. Even the fat hogs look melancholy in their pens, for
a smell of roasting spare-ribs comes over them, and they seem to
ruminate mournfully on some means of saving their own bacon.
Of course, there must be some unhappiness even on a New England
Thanksgiving, or earth would forget itself and turn into heaven all at
once. Besides, who thinks of the scared gobblers, when he has a plump
turkey roasted brown as a berry, scenting the whole house with richness?
I for one could not bring myself to the foul contemplation--excuse the
wit--spontaneity is perhaps my fault.
Well, what Thanksgiving is to New England, Christmas-day is to New York.
Everybody goes to meeting in the morning, and everybody takes dinner
with everybody else after that. For days before it comes the streets are
full of covered wagons, and men and boys, loaded down with bundles,
crowd against each other on every doorstep. In fact, half New York just
throws itself away in presents on the other half, which pitches just as
many back. Thus every street and house is a hubbub of gifts and a blaze
of light, from Christmas Eve till after Christmas dinner.
Christmas Eve, dear sisters, belongs to the children. What there is of
'em in these parts, and the jubilation they have, rich and poor, black
and white, is enough to warm the heart in one's bosom. There is a
gorgeous old Dutch ghost that they think comes prowling over roofs and
down chimneys in the night, to bring them presents. This comical old
fellow sets up Christmas trees for the rich, and fills woollen stockings
for the poor, and makes himself a magnificent old humbug that every
child in the city worships and will believe in, though the little
misguided souls know at the bottom of their hearts that, somehow or
another, this Santa Claus and their own parents have a mysterious
understanding and private moneyed transactions, that mix things
terribly. Still, they really do believe in the old fellow, just as you
and I believe in dreams. It is the last thing a little girl gives up,
unless it is her dolls.
Speaking of dolls, I wish you could see the scrumptious little ladies
that have been sold here this week. You and I were awful proud if we
could get a rag-baby, with drops of ink for eyes, and its cheeks
reddened with a little pokeberry juice; but the dolls they sell here are
such beauties!--yellow hair, frizzed around the face like thistle-down;
rosy cheeks, and eyes that shut with such sweet laziness if you lay the
little things down. I declare, it's enough to make one long to be a
child again, to take one of these dainty creatures in your arms.
The Saturday before Christmas I went out with Cousin E. E. Dempster, to
buy presents. She came in her carriage, with the driver and another chap
in regimentals on the front seat, outside, and a great white bear-skin
inside that just swallowed us up to the waist, as if we had settled down
in a snow-bank of fur. Under that was a muff for your feet, and some
contrivance that must have been a foot-stove hid away, for it was as
warm as toast.
Well, sisters, such things may be extravagant, I know; but they are
nice, if it wasn't for one's conscience.
The carriage turned down Broadway, which is the street where the most
splendid stores are found. It really was worth while to see how that
driver--with his fur gloves that made his hands look like a bear's
claw--guided them horses in and out, among the omnibus-stages, the
carriages, and carts, that just turned the street into Bedlam. It fairly
made me catch my breath to see how near the wheel would come to some
other wheel, and then just miss it. Every stage that went lumbering by
made me give a little scream, it came so near to running us down. But
Cousin E. E. sat there buried in the white fur, as cosey as a goose on
her nest. It aggravated me, and I asked her if she wasn't afraid nor
nothing.
"Oh no," says she, a-leaning back and half shutting her eyes; "it is the
coachman's business. I should discharge him if anything happened."
"But you couldn't discharge him after you were mashed to death under
them great omnibus wheels," says I.
E. E. smiled. What a calm, lazy smile she has!
"No," says she; "but there would be a fuss, and my name would get into
the paper. Everything has its compensation, Cousin Frost."
Before I could answer, the carriage stopped in front of a large, high
store, with great, tall windows, all one shiny sheet of glass on each
side of the door, through which you could see lots on lots of silver and
gold and precious stones, all in confusion, but, oh, how gorgeous!
"This is Ball, Black & Co.'s," says she, a-going up to the door, which
seemed to open of itself, and in we went.
You have read the "Arabian Nights' Entertainment." I remember the time
well, because we all got "kept in" after school for being caught at it.
Well, that cave wasn't to be compared to what I saw in Messrs. Ball &
Black's store. From floor to roof, all was one dazzle. Gold clocks, with
silver horses tramping over 'em; colored men and women--reconstructed
figures, I reckon; white stone women, a-standing, sitting down,
scrouching themselves together, or riding lions a-horseback, bold as
brass, filled one long room, like a regiment of military trainers. Then
there were chandeliers of glass, in which no end of rainbows seemed to
be tangled; dishes of sparkling glass, set in a frostwork of silver or
gold, and--I may as well stop; no genius could give you an idea of the
gorgeous things it was my privilege to see in those long rooms.
When we had wandered upstairs and downstairs again, Cousin E. E. stopped
at one of the counters, and wanted to look at some rings. As for me I
wanted to look at everything. What was one ring compared to whole stars,
and bands, and clusters of shiny, white stones, that seemed to have been
dug out of a rainbow--all mixed up with other stones, red as blood,
green as spring grass, blue as the sky, and white as snow-crust. Why,
sisters, that counter was just one bed of burning sunshine. It dazzled
my eyes so that I can hardly remember anything distinct enough to
describe it to you.
Well, Cousin E. E. bought her ring, which had a green stone set in it. I
saw her hand a lot of money over the counter to pay for it, which riled
my conscience a little; but I said nothing, the money being hers, not
mine; still, how much good it might have done some missionary society.
Well, out of this store of gorgeousness we went, and got into the
carriage again.
Cousin E. E. said she had bought so many things that this was about the
last place she had to go to, and, as it was getting pretty near dark, I
must go home with her and help fill up the Christmas tree. Cecilia would
be dreadfully disappointed if it was not splendid, and they all thought
so much of my taste.
I made no objections; why should I? Christmas Day in a boarding-house
isn't full of ravishing promises, so I just snuggled down into the white
fur again, and let the fellow with bear-skin claws drive me where he had
a mind to.
XVI.
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
Oh, sisters! there is something touching and splendid in a Christmas
tree. Just fancy one of our mountain spruces, towering almost to the
ceiling of a room, green as when it was cut from the woods. Think of
this tree, hung all over with little wax candles, bunches of pale-green
and purple grapes, teinty red apples, golden horns and baskets chuck
full of sugar things. Stuffed humming-birds, looking chipper as life.
Butterflies, that seem to be flying through the green of the trees, and
a whole camp-meeting of dolls sitting around the roots, and then tell me
if the Christmas time of a New York child isn't like living among the
people of a fairy book.
This was the sort of tree set up at Cousin Dempster's, Sunday night
before this last Christmas day. Of course, we couldn't think of
breaking the Sabbath, but the minute it was sundown, at it we went. Of
course, we didn't want the little girl to know what we were a-doing; but
the first we knew, in she hopped, as chipper as a humming-bird, and
would keep interfering and changing things, in spite of all we could do.
At last, her mother got her dander up and told her to march right off to
bed, just as a woman born in Vermont ought to order her own child; but
the tantalizing thing just hitched up her shoulder, and said, "She
wouldn't go, nor touch to the tree was for her own self. The house was
her par's, and she'd do just as she'd a mind to in it."
With that, Cousin E. E. blazed into a passion, and took her child by the
arm, with a jerk that sent her flying into the hall. Then I heard a
screeching and a scrambling up the stairs, and it seemed to me a slap or
two--I hope I wasn't mistaken about that--then a door slammed, and
Cousin E. E. came downstairs like a house o' fire, with both eyes
blazing, and one cheek red as flame. Could it be that the slap I heard
was from the other side, or had it been a free fight?
"That girl will be the death of me," says she, walking about like a lion
in its cage. "I never knew a worse child."
"I'm sure I never did," says I, with more than my usual spontaneity, for
I felt it.
"You never made a greater mistake," says E. E., fierce as a hen hawk.
"It is because she has so much more brains--spirit--genius than any
other children. A more splendid character never lived than my daughter
Cecilia."
I said nothing; maybe it would have been just as well if I had held my
tongue before.
"She is a favorite everywhere," E. E. went on, cooling down like a brick
oven after the coals are hauled out.
I said nothing.
"Ahead of girls twice her age," E. E. went on. "She speaks French like a
native."
"Is there anything more to put on?" says I.
"Yes," says she, "we will have the presents ready for the morning. I
meant to have some of Cecelia's friends here to-morrow night, but she
wanted the tree to herself."
With this, E. E. brought an armful of boxes and things from the next
room. The first thing she set up against the stem of the tree was a
doll, dressed in a splendid silk ball-dress, with a long, sweeping
train, and teinty rose-buds in her yellow curls. The blue eyes were
natural as life, and her face was just lovely. Then she brought out a
Saratoga trunk about as big as a foot-stool, which was crowded full of
dolls' dresses, just such as a live young lady would be proud to wear.
"Isn't it beautiful?" says E. E.
"I should think so," says I; "how much did it cost?"
"A hundred and twenty-five dollars," says she. "I sent to Paris for it."
"A hundred and twenty-five dollars?" says I, lifting up both hands;
"that would keep a poor family how long?"
"I don't know," says she, short as pie-crust, "but a poor family
wouldn't amuse my Cecilia, and these will."
"Just so," says I; "what is this for?"
"Oh, that is her father's present--pink coral--hang it across one of the
limbs," says she.
I hung the beads among the spruce leaves, and enjoyed the sight; they
seemed like a string of rose-buds twisted in with the green.
"There now, we will finish in the morning," says E. E. "I wish Cecilia
had invited her little friends; it will seem rather lonesome."
With this, Cousin E. E. gave a little sigh, and we went off to bed,
telling me that I must be sure to get up in time for early service,
which she wouldn't miss for anything.
XVII.
EARLY SERVICE.
Dear sisters:--Before daylight on Christmas morning, I went to early
service at the highest church in New York city, which, after all, isn't
anything to brag of in the way of steeple.
There is a brick meeting-house on Murray Hill that beats it all to
nothing, for that has just the longest and pointedest steeple that I
ever set eyes on. Still, everybody allows that the little Episcopal
church I went to, Christmas morning, is the very highest in all America;
and, though in my heart I don't believe it, having eyes in my
head--there is no chance for me to take a measurement, and what can I
say against the word of everybody else? Still, to you in confidence, for
I don't want to get into a schismatic controversy, I dare take an oath
that the brick church on Murray Hill is twice as high, to say nothing of
the sharp-pointedness of the steeple and the hilly ground.
Cousin E. E. Dempster says she is high church from the crown of her head
to the sole of her foot, which I didn't dispute, for she always had high
notions. She gave me strict charge, when I went to bed, Christmas Eve
night, not to sleep late, and be sure to be ready for an early start.
Well, I went to bed feeling as if I had got to start by some swift
railway train every hour of the night, and must be ready for them all.
It was Sunday night, you know, and I woke up twice with a start, before
it was next week; got up, felt for the matches I had laid handy, and
went to bed again, and dreamed that I was trying to get into a steamboat
with two steeples, which put off, and left me freezing on the dock.
Like one of the wise virgins, I had brought a candle upstairs, and some
matches, which was an improvement on their old lamps, I dare say; but I
wasn't much afraid of the dark, and didn't keep it burning, only left
everything ready.
After that dream, I started up, struck a match, and found that I had
been just fifteen minutes in getting that steam church under way. So I
went on dreaming, starting up, and lighting matches all night, till at
last I hadn't but one left, and with that I lighted the candle, and a
gas-burner by the bureau, and began to dress myself.
Before I got through, Cousin E. E. was at the door, with her beehive
bonnet on, and wrapped up in fur.
"Almost ready? I am so glad, for the day is just beginning to break, and
I wouldn't have it broad light when we get there, for anything," says
she. "Wrap up warm, for it has blown up awful cold in the night."
I did wrap up warm; put on a veil, and tied my mink-skin victorine, with
three tails on each tab, close around my neck.
We went downstairs carefully, for only one burner was twinkling in the
hall, and the whole house was dark and shivery.
"Come in here," says Cousin E. E., opening the dining-room door.
Under the glass globe, in which two or three chilly lights seemed
longing to go out, the ghost of a table was spread, with a great deal of
silver, and very little to eat.
"Just a cup of coffee and a mouthful of toast before we start," says E.
E., sitting down behind a great silver urn in her furs and her beehive;
"for my own part, I could do without that."
She poured me out a cup of coffee--it was half cold and awfully
riley--and asked me to help myself to a piece of toast, which had black
bars across it, as if it had been striped on a gridiron.
"Things are getting cold," says E. E., "they have been standing so long.
The cook has been out an hour; but she knows I consider this my
penance."
"Out where?" says I.
"Oh, to early service."
"An hour?" says I; "why I thought we were going to early service. It
isn't daylight yet."
"I know," says Cousin E. E., with a sigh, "but her church is a little
higher than ours."
"Higher," says I; "then there is some meeting-house a notch above
yours?"
"Yes, cousin," says she, mournfully, "but we are creeping up. Every year
brings us a step nearer."
"Just so," says I, wondering what she meant.
"By and by we shall have confession," says she.
"Oh," says I, "there isn't a meeting-house on Sprucehill that would take
in a member till she had made a confession of religion."
Cousin E. E. shook her head, and observed that I didn't understand,
which riled me a little, having been a member--well, no matter how long.
"Even now we have humiliation and penance."
I was trying to swallow a mouthful of the bitter toast and riley coffee,
and couldn't in my heart contradict her.
"To that end we get up early, cast aside sleep, and, in all weather, go
on foot to the altar. Each year the church is opened, and the candles
lighted earlier and earlier, as souls more clearly see their way to the
true faith."
"Just so," says I; "by and by they will be good enough to light up, and
open the day before, I suppose."
The clock on the mantel-shelf struck. Cousin E. E. started up, and put
both hands in her muff. I followed her out of the door, and into the
street.
Well, sisters, if there is a desolate spot on earth, it can be found in
the streets of a great city after the lights have been put out, and
while the sky is gray. To pass by houses in which thousands and
thousands are sleeping, is like wandering through the lonesomeness of a
graveyard. The morning was awful cold; before we got to Lexington Avenue
the veil was stiff on my face. I felt the tears a-freezing on my cheeks,
and my teeth chattered so that I couldn't speak. When we reached St.
Albans--that is the name of Cousin E. E.'s church--two such shivery
mortals you never saw. I say, sisters, there wouldn't have been much use
in warming us against a good fire in any place just then. I don't mean
to be satirical or irreverent, but when you go to early service at the
break of day, and in the depths of winter, I think ice-water and
snow-drifts might make a solemn impression on the sinful heart.
XVIII.
HIGH CHURCH.
St. Albans may be a High Church, though I couldn't see it; but it
certainly isn't very sizeable; and as for coldness, the very curls on my
head shivered as if they grew there.
Cold, yes; I should think that church was cold; but you never saw
anything more beautiful than the picture it made when we went in. Right
before us was a white altar--not a communion table like ours at home,
but a little platform with steps to it, set thick with candles, and
loaded down with wreaths of white flowers. I tell you, sisters, it
seemed to me as if the angels must have been down overnight, and moulded
those flowers out of the drifted snow, and breathed life into them, they
looked so pure.
On each side of this altar was a great, large candle, five feet high,
and thick as a young tree, burning with a slow, steady fire, and some of
the smaller candles twinkled like stars among the flowers.
All overhead and down the walls of this little meeting-house were great
wreaths of ground pine, ivy and hemlock, crowded with lights and
sprinkled with flowers, and these flung shadows on the walls more lovely
than the wreaths themselves.
I was chilled through and through, but I don't think it was that which
brought all these solemn feelings into my mind, for the tears that had
frozen on my cheeks ran freely now, and my eyes kept filling again. I'm
sure I can't tell the reason, only that everything was so still and
beautiful.
The pews in St. Albans have no cushions, and everybody can sit in them,
only there is a placard on each, inviting the poor to sit down for
nothing, but telling those that have money to give it, to support the
church; which is just what our meeting-houses do, though they only chuck
the plate at you, without a written warning.
Cousin E. E. and I sat down in one of the pews, and slid our knees to a
board running along in front, to kneel on, and covered up our faces a
minute or two; then we looked up, and there, close by the altar, stood
the minister; but, oh, goodness! how he was dressed out. He had on,
first, a black silk gown, with great bishop-sleeves, then a white linen
dress, that I should think was a night-gown, only it was on a man, and
it isn't many women who would like to lend such things to be used in
meeting-time. Over that he wore a white satin cape.
Cousin E. E. pronounces it cope, but she does finefy her words so since
she came to York.
On that was worked a cross, in gold and silk, like a Free Mason's apron
in some respects. He held a book open in his hand. I could see that he
was shaking with chilliness, and the words rattled like icicles from his
lips. Close by him stood a boy, dressed in a red frock, with a white one
over it.
I whispered and asked Cousin E. E. what his name was; she answered
back--"Acolyte," which was a name I never heard before.
After a while the congregation began to move out of the pews, a few at a
time, and crowd up to the minister. Then they knelt down before him, and
he gave them bread and wine close to the altar, instead of having it
handed about as they do in our Presbyterian meeting-houses. Cousin E. E.
went up with the rest, and wanted me to go with her, but I could not
bring myself to partake of the Lord's Supper from a man in his
shirt-sleeves, and with a silk cape on; so I shook my head and sat
still, watching the altar.
After they had done coming up to him, the minister knelt down and prayed
awhile; then he got up, and the boy in red shirt and white frock handed
him a black hat, with four corners, which he put on his head; then he
took something from the altar and walked through a side door, still
wearing his double-cocked hat. The boy followed him out, and then a man
came round among the pews with a plate, in which Cousin E. E. dropped a
gold piece with a ringing noise that made people look round. I followed
up with five cents, and was astonished to see how little ring it had
after the gold; nobody looked round at me.
It was broad daylight when we came out of that little meeting-house, and
not quite so cold as it had been; but still I was glad to keep my muff
up to my face, and we walked toward home like a house afire.
"Well, how did you like the service?" says Cousin E. E., as we shivered
along--"impressive, isn't it?"
"Very," says I; "only do tell me what it was all about. This getting up
and sitting down and bowing at nothing is more than I can understand."
"Oh," says she, "I ought to remember you came from a Congregational part
of the country."
"And Methodist--to say nothing of Baptists and Quakers," says I.
"Yes, I mean all that," says she; "but the church, as a church, is but
little understood among you."
"Well, as you came from the same place, you ought to know," says I,
rebuking her city airs in my most austere manner.
"Well, yes," says she; "but one doesn't hear much of the true church so
far in the mountains. Even you seemed puzzled by a good many things this
morning."
"Well, yes," says I--"the four-cornered cocked hat, for instance."
"The four-cornered cocked hat!" says she, stopping short on the
sidewalk. "What do you mean? That was the barette."
"Oh," says I, "that is what they call it! Well, then, the four-cornered
cocked barette--what does the minister wear that for? It isn't generally
considered good manners for men to wear hats in meeting."
"Oh, there is a clerical reason I can't quite explain, but it is a part
of the ceremony."
"Just so," says I--"and the night-gown."
"Surplice, you mean," says E. E.; "oh, that is worn everywhere, in High
and Low Church alike."
"Well," says I, "there may be a reason for such things, but a
respectable black coat is what I've been used to."
"Yes, I know," says she; "but some people prefer the surplice and cope."
"Now tell me," says I, "what on earth has a minister to do with a
woman's satin _cape_, all crimlicued off with gold and silk work?" I put
an emphasis on the word cape, to rebuke her finefied way of pronouncing
it.
"It is a part of the clerical paraphernalia, and gives richness to the
vestments," says she. "But the altar--I felt sure that you would be
pleased with that."
"Yes," says I; "the white flowers, the candles, and the evergreens were
beautiful. But the red and white boy was too much for me; then his
name--Acolyte--I never heard anything like it."
Just then we reached home, and shivered into the house to warm
ourselves. Cousin Dempster was not up yet, and that child was sound
asleep. It seemed to me as if we had been downstairs a week; but there
was the Christmas tree, just loaded with presents; and there was the
marble man and woman, looking cold as we were. And there we stood,
hungry and shivering, for the help had all gone out to "early service,"
and forgot to heap coal on the furnace; and the end was, we just got
into our cold beds again, and shivered ourselves to sleep. I dreamed
that a man, all in black and white, with a four-cornered hat on--one
tassel hanging over his eyes, and another down his back--with something
like a flash of fire about his neck, was burying me ten thousand feet
deep in a snow-drift, and pounding me down with a candle as big round as
my waist. Then it seemed to me that I got out, somehow, and was trying
to warm my hands by the red frock of that boy, Acolyte, who faded into
nothing before my eyes, and left me sound asleep as if I had never been
to early service in my life.
XIX.
CHRISTMAS MORNING.
We had a good long sleep after early service, and were all up bright as
larks the next morning, wishing each other a merry Christmas, and
waiting for that child to come down and see what Santa Claus had brought
her. By and by we heard her coming. Mr. Dempster looked at his wife and
smiled, as much as to say, "Won't our presents surprise her!" Cousin E.
E. went to the door and opened it, looking pleased, and so like her old
self that I could have kissed her.
At last Cecilia came in, sour as vinegar, with her hair half combed, and
her sash trailing.
"Why, this is what I saw last night," says she, crossly.
"Look at the foot of the tree!" says E. E., eagerly.
Cecilia looked, and saw the doll and the open trunk. Her lips drooped at
the corners, her right shoulder lifted itself.
"A doll for me! The idea!" says she.
Cousin E. E. turned away, I think, to hide the tears that swelled to her
eyes. Mr. Dempster saw it, and says he:
"Cecilia, your mother spent a great deal of money for the doll--don't be
ungrateful."
"Just as if I wanted her to do it. Baby things!"
"Well," says Cousin E. E., trying to brighten up her face, "there is
your father's present."
Cecilia untwisted the string of coral, and looked at it.
"Coral is for babies! That is worse yet! I just wish there hadn't been
any Christmas at all," says she, a-flinging the beads in a lovely pink
heap on the floor. "There now--I'll just go up-stairs and stay there!"
"Wait a minute, my darling," says E. E.; "mother has got something
else."
Cecilia turned back a step, but scorned to let her sullen face brighten,
though her eyes grew eager when Cousin E. E. took a little paper box
from one of the baskets, and opened it.
"See here!"
Cecilia edged up to her mother, saw the emerald ring, and snatched at
it.
"I bought it for Cousin Phœmie," says E. E., a-looking sort of
pleadingly at me; "but as you are so disappointed, I'm sure she won't
care."
"Cousin Phœmie! The idea!" Cecilia muttered to herself, as she tried the
ring, first on one finger, then on another. "Of course she don't want
it--old as the hills!"
I did not say one word while that creature carried off the first
Christmas present I ever had in my life; but it seemed as if I should
choke. Isn't it hard that a spoiled child like that should have the
power to destroy the happiness of three grown people? But she did it.
The Christmas dinner was enough to make your mouths water, from this
distance--the noblest sort of a turkey, stuffed with oysters, and
everything to match--but none of us had much appetite for it. You can
judge what my feelings amounted to, when I have lived one whole month in
a boarding-house and couldn't get up an appetite--no, not even for the
whitest meat of the breast! Old as the hills, indeed!
XX.
ABOUT LIONS.
Dear sisters:--Cousin E. E. had invited a lot of her friends to a
stupendous dinner-party on Christmas Day, and she wanted me there for a
lion, she said, though what on earth a great roaring lion had to do at a
dinner-table I couldn't begin to think. The idea made me fidgety; but I
didn't think it consistent with the dignity of our Society to ask
questions, or let any one know that I didn't understand everything just
as well as folks that have lived in York all their lives. Still I
couldn't help trying to circumvent Cousin E. E. into telling me what I
wanted to know in a way that some people might call femininely
surreptitious.
"A lion!" says I. "Are such animals invited to a city dinner as a
general thing?"
"Oh! not at all," says she; "the most difficult thing in the world to
get hold of is a real, genuine lion; that is, one the whole world knows
about, and wants to see."
"Why," says I, "if folks are so anxious about it, why don't they go up
to the Rink and see Mr. Barnum's great monster animal. It don't cost
much; besides, there are camels and monkeys, and lots and lots of
things, thrown in."
Cousin Emily Elizabeth laughed till tears come into her eyes.
"Oh! Cousin Phœmie," says she, "you are so delightfully satirical."
"Do you think so?" says I, awfully puzzled.
"Yes," says she, "I do; but to me the eccentricities of genius are
always interesting. To be an attractive lion one must say bright things,
no matter how hard they cut."
"I wasn't aware," says I, "that lions were given to much talking."
"Oh!" says she, "that depends. There is your talkative lion, your
learned lion, your silent lion--"
"That is the sort that I've always seen," says I; "now and then a growl,
but nothing beyond that."
Cousin E. E. began to laugh again, till she had to hold one hand to her
side.
"Oh! cousin, paws, paws," says she; "you just kill me with laughing."
"Yes," says I, "I don't deny that lions have paws, but it was speech we
were talking about, and that I do deny."
Cousin E. E. just shrieked out laughing, though for the life of me I
couldn't tell what it was all about.
"Now, don't you understand me--honest now--don't you?" says she.
"Why, of course I do; only nothing could be more ridiculous than the
idea of a great, big, magnificent wild beast, with a swinging walk, and
a tuft on the end of his tail, being showed off at a dinner-table. I for
one shouldn't have a mite of appetite with such a creature prowling
round."
"My dear, dear cousin, I'm speaking of human lions."
"Human lions! I always thought the creatures were awfully inhuman," says
I; "nothing but a jackal can be worse."
"I mean great people--celebrated for something--bravery, literature, the
arts, sciences," says she.
"Well, what of them?" says I.
"In society we sometimes call them lions."
"O--oh!" says I, drawing the word out to give myself time. "So you
really thought I didn't understand. Why, of course. Dear me! cousin, how
easy it is to cheat you!"
"Oh!" says she, "one must get up early to match you women of genius, I'm
aware of that. What dry humor you have, now, looking so innocent and
earnest, too!"
I smiled benignly upon Cousin E. E.; if she could find any humor in what
we'd been a-talking about, it was more than I could. Lions! Where does
the joke come in, when human beings are called such names as that? Wild
beasts, indeed!
"How really modest you are!" says Cousin E. E. "Anybody else, who could
write as you do, would have known that she was meant when I mentioned
lions."
I dropped my eyes, and folded both hands.
"It will be the great feature of our party," says she. "Our friends will
know that you are a blood relation, and that pleases Dempster; besides,
you converse so beautifully, too."
"Do I?" says I, folding one hand over the other, and back again.
"And look so--so distinguished."
I drew my figure upright, and looked into the glass opposite. My cousin
had chosen her words well; there was something imposing in the bend of
that head. I say nothing; but she was right. Indeed, so far as I am
concerned, she generally is.
Early in the morning I sent down for my pink silk dress. Cousin E. E.
looked as if she was going to say something against it, at first; but,
after a little, her face cleared up, and I heard her muttering:
"This is the third time. Nothing on earth but a woman of genius could
stand that; but she has got enough to carry it off."
I said nothing, but thought of that bill, and just made a calculation of
how much it would cost a woman to rig herself out if she went to many
parties, and only wore a dress that cost five hundred dollars once.
Well, sisters, Christmas Day came, and we were up by daylight, for
Cousin Emily Elizabeth is, as I have told you, a High Church woman and
an Episcopalian. We haven't got any meeting-house of that denomination
in our neighborhood, and I don't exactly know what high and low church
means, without it is that one set hold to meeting-houses with a belfry,
and the others stand up for a high steeple--a thing that I told Cousin
E. E. we common people didn't aspire to; at which she laughed again, as
if I had said something awfully witty.
Well, in another report I have given you an account of this daybreak
meeting in the High Church, but just now I am taken up with the
Christmas dinner.
Now don't calculate, because we eat dinner punctually at noon in
Vermont, that people here do the same thing, because it is nothing of
the sort. Poor working people do that in this city, and nobody else. The
more genteel and the richer you are, the later you eat your meals. Most
of the well-to-do merchants eat dinner at six. Men that have got above
earning their own living dine later yet, and some have got so
disgustingly genteel and rich, that I don't suppose they dine till next
day.
Cousin Dempster attends to business yet, so he settled down on eight
o'clock for his dinner, and a splendid affair it was.
When Cousin E. E. and I came rustling downstairs with a cataract of silk
rolling after us, I just screamed right out. The sight of that table was
so exhilarating, glass a-shining--silver dishes and things
a-sparkling--flowers heaped up in flower-pots and twisted in wreaths
around the glass globe overhead, which flashed, and sparkled, and
glittered as if it had been frozen up with ten thousand icicles that
flung back all the light without melting a drop. The silk curtains were
all let down. The carpet looked like a flower-bed, and the whole room
was a sight to behold.
Cousin E. E. shut the glass doors that looked as if a sharp frost had
crept over 'em, and we sat down on the round sofa in the front room,
ready for company, with nothing but those two marble folks to hear what
we said.
But peace and quietness will never come to a house that has a fast child
like Miss Dempster, as the creature calls herself, in it. We had hardly
sat down and got our trains spread, when in she came, all in a fluff of
white muslin, and a flutteration of red ribbons, with her hair a flowing
down her back, crinkle, crinkle, and her--well--limbs just strained into
silk stockings and kid boots laced down ever so far below her frock, and
looking so impudent. Down she sat on the round sofa, and begun to swing
her heels against the silk cushions.
"Why, daughter," says Cousin E. E., "what is the meaning of this?"
The child laughed and flung back her head.
"It means," says she, "that I'm not to be cheated into staying upstairs
when a Christmas dinner is on hand. I'm ready for it, and I wish the
company would come."
"But, my child, you are too young."
"If I'm too young, where do you find your old folks?" says the saucy
thing, shaking out her ribbons.
"Cousin E. E., I would not permit it," says I, for I couldn't help
speaking to save my life. "She isn't of an age to go into company."
"Well, you are old enough, and a good deal to spare," says the impudent
thing. "No mistake about that!"
I drew up the train of my pink silk dress, and walked across the room in
a way that spoke my indignation, without words. When I turned to go back
that creature was right behind me, with her head up, measuring off the
carpet, step by step, with me.
Sisters, I confess it, the strangling of that child would have done me a
world of good; my fingers quivered to begin. But she just burst out
a-laughing, and, would you believe it? her mother laughed too, but
turned red as fire when I caught her at it.
Before anything more could be said, Cousin Dempster came in, and the
door-bell kept up such a ringing, that we were in a flutteration till,
one after another, the company came in; ladies and gentlemen dressed up
as if it had been a ball they were invited to.
XXI.
DINING IN THE DARK.
Sisters, I'm afraid you would be taken aback by such dresses as filled
Cousin Dempster's parlors that night. Such necks, such arms, no sleeves
to speak of, nothing but a skimpy band across the shoulders; heads
loaded down with braids and puffs, and great, long curls, which fell on
those bare necks and covered them up into a little decency. Then the
figures--mercy, how the dresses stood out behind; every lady seemed to
be humpbacked below the waist. It takes time to get used to genteel
society, I can tell you, and any amount of blushing has to be gone
through.
Well, when we had all got together, Cousin Dempster came up to me and
crooked his elbow. I put my hand on his arm. The glass doors opened as
if of themselves, and into the dining-room we went. The other ladies and
gentlemen all locked arms, and followed us in good order. Cousin
Dempster whispered to me as I went in,
"The dinner is _given_ to you, remember."
I said yes, I would remember. I hadn't even thought of paying for it,
but I suppose he wanted to set my mind at rest on that point, which was
kind, but unnecessary, as we never charge for meals in Vermont, except
at taverns.
"They were all invited to meet you," says he, at which I just turned
round and made a low curtsey to the whole lot of 'em, before I took my
seat, which was at Cousin Dempster's right hand.
On the other side was a proper, pretty girl, with a neck like
water-lilies, and cheeks like ever-blooming roses. She was a girl that
laughed very low, when she did laugh, and looked at gentlemen sideways
from under her eyelashes. One of those girls that speak as if ice cream
would not melt in their mouths. An awful handsome young fellow came with
her.
Well, we all stood up waiting for Cousin E. E. to sit down, which she
did. Then the rest of us rustled into our places, and half a dozen
waiters went circumventing round us with little oysters, shells and all,
on plates, which they set down before each of us, with a teinty silver
pitchfork to eat 'em with. Then they brought plates with a few spoonfuls
of soup in them, which they cleared away the minute we laid down our
spoons. After that, came plate after plate, and the waiters kept filling
the glasses that stood before us--pink, green, yellow, and white--with
cider that bubbled and sparkled, and made the blood come faster and
warmer into my face every time I tasted it.
At first there hadn't been much talking; but now the ladies grew
chipper, as so many canary birds, and the men followed suit.
Such soft, low laughing, and such sweet voices I never heard at one
table in my life.
But while we were all enjoying ourselves so much, the lights in the
glass balloon above us began to flash up and down, as if a high wind was
rushing over them. Then all at once they quivered--winked furiously, as
if they were joking with us--and went out, leaving us all in stone
darkness.
Then the ladies shrieked faintly, or laughed; some of them jumped up, I
among the rest, wondering if the Day of Judgment had come.
Cousin Dempster called out for the waiters to go and see what ailed the
gas, and all was rustle and bustle and confusion.
Perhaps I moved from my seat and dropped into some other without knowing
it. I can't be certain about that or anything else; but all at once I
felt an arm around my waist, and while I was holding my breath, with
astonishment, some one kissed me.
I gave a little scream, and pushed away that impudent arm with all my
might.
The arm wore a coat-sleeve--I can take my oath to that--and if I was
used to such things I should say that there was a beard about the lips
that touched my face.
Sisters, it seemed to me for a minute as if Cousin E. E. really had got
a roaring lion in her dining-room.
While I sat there breathless and wondering if he would have the
impudence to repeat that audacious conduct, a soft hand took hold of
mine, and a sweet voice whispered in my ear:
"Forgive me, dearest, I did not mean to be rude."
I did not speak, but his penitence touched me with compassion. Softly I
pressed the hand, in token of a relenting heart. How could I be hard on
a man who meant no real harm, considering the temptation.
He whispered something more, but I could not hear distinctly; for just
then a waiter came in with a candle in his hand. Says he, "The gas works
are blown up, and all Murray Hill, and more too, is in total darkness."
Then there was a burst of voices; everybody laughed and everybody had
something to say, which no one listened to.
"Bring candles," Cousin Dempster sung out.
"But the candlesticks--we have not got one in the house," says his wife.
Then everybody laughed, and Cousin Dempster laughed loudest of all.
"Find something," says he, "for we must have light."
The waiter, says he, "Yes, sir, we'll do our best," and out he went.
By and by he comes back, and all the rest of the waiters with him. Every
one had a stone beer bottle in each hand, from which a tall white candle
rose like a steeple to a church. There was not a smile on their faces.
City waiters are never expected to smile, but each man set his two
bottles down on the table, and drew back.
Dempster burst out laughing; the rest burst out too; some giggled, some
choked, some pealed out the fun that was in them like wedding bells.
Everybody laughed except me and an elegant young gentleman, with blue
eyes and a soft beard, that sat next me. He stared in my face, and I
would have stared in his, only I couldn't bring myself to look in his
eyes.
Oh, sisters, it was dreadful! I had got into that young girl's place and
she was in mine, and a teinty bit of court-plaster that I had put on the
corner of my mouth, where the skin had been a trifle rubbed, was
sticking right on the plumpest part of his under lip.
Oh, sisters! I thought that I should have died with shame.
He looked from me to the young lady, and she looked at him. I looked
first at one, then at the other, from under my drooping lashes.
She smiled, she touched her lip with one finger; he touched his, the
mite of court-plaster stuck on his finger. Then she began to laugh, and
so did he; the chairs shook under them. They made no noise, and the
redness of their faces was lost in the shadow cast by the beer-bottles
to every one but me.
Cousin Dempster was busy trying to crowd an extra candle into one of the
wine-bottles that had just been emptied, while he sat before the chair I
ought to have been sitting in.
"We must have a little more elegance at this end of the table," says he.
"Wax candles and champagne bottles for this lady."
He stooped down, expecting me to answer him; when he saw _her_ face all
glowing with blushes.
"Ah!" says he, laughing, "we have got a little mixed here, Cousin Frost.
It will never answer to come between man and wife in this fashion,
especially when they have been only three weeks married. Supposing we
change round again?"
I arose--she arose--we exchanged glances, then exchanged seats.
The lights from these beer bottles were numerous, but not brilliant.
Under the shadows we concealed the emotions which disturbed us.
He looked funnily penitent, whenever his eyes caught mine, which was
often, for somehow I could not keep looking on my plate all the time.
As for that young creature, she seemed to be brimming over with fun.
After a little, I began to feel myself smiling. It really was droll, but
not so _very_ unpleasant.
XXII.
NEW YEAR'S DAY.
Dear sisters:--After all, this city of New York is a wonderful
institution. Vermont has its specialties, such as maple-sugar, pine
shingles, and education; but in such things as style, fashion, and
general gentilities, I must say this great Empire City isn't to be
sneezed at, even by a Green Mountainer. Of course we are ahead in
religion, morality, decorum, and a kind of politics that consolidates
all these things into great moral ideas--as rusticoats, greenings and
Spitzenbergen apples are ground down into one barrel of such sweet cider
as we used to steal through the bunghole with a straw. You will
recollect the straws--a Down-east invention, which these degenerated
Yorkers have stolen, and are now using unblushingly for mint-juleps,
sherry-cobblers, and such awful drinks as New England has put her foot
down against with a stamp that makes inebriating individuals shake in
their boots. But New York won't put her foot down, and the encroachment
upon our patent-right for straws is just winked at.
Dear me, how one thing does lead a person's mind into another! I took up
my pen to write about New Year's Day in New York, and here I am, back in
that old cider-mill behind our orchard, with heaps of red and yellow
apples piled up in the grass, and the old blind horse moving round and
round in the mill-ring, dragging along that great wooden wheel, under
which we could hear the soft-gushing squelch of the apples, while all
the air smelt rich and fruity with them.
Do you remember the luscious juice dropping from the press, and the full
barrels lying about, with the sweetness beginning to yeast through the
bungholes? Then it was we pounced down upon them with our straws, and it
was these straws that brought New Year's Day in New York and the old
cider-mill at home into my mind at once. Thus it is, my sisters, with us
children of genius; thought is born of thought, feeling springs out of
feeling, till creation and re-creation become spontaneosities.
Some people have said of Phœmie Frost that she lacks philosophy and that
transcendental essence which becomes the highest female type in New
England. If any such caviler should reach our Society, have the moral
courage to point out that last paragraph, and see if the wretches have
forgotten to blush for themselves.
Christmas Day isn't anything very particular outside of the Episcopal
Church, in our parts. Somehow the Pilgrim Fathers took a notion against
it when they cut away from the old country, and built square
meeting-houses all over New England. But they set up the same thing
under a new-fangled name. Thanksgiving was just the same to them, and
showed their independence; so they roasted and baked and stewed, and
made pumpkin-pies a specialty--because the cavaliers in England couldn't
get pumkins to compete with them--and went into their meeting-houses to
thank God that they had good crops, instead of going down on their
knees--which they didn't, because of standing up to pray--in solemn
gratitude that the blessed Lord was born upon earth.
Sisters, as a New England female, it would be against nature to say that
the Pilgrim Fathers wasn't right in sinking Christmas in Thanksgiving,
and thanking God for full crops, because the corn and potatoes were
things they all could understand and accept with universal thankfulness;
but about the birth of Christ, and its merciful object, no two sects
that I ever heard of could agree, much less the Old Church and the New
Covenanters.
There it is again; my pen is getting demoralized. Christmas has come and
gone. What more have I got to say about it? Why, just nothing. Wise
people accept the past and look forward.
Cousin Dempster insisted upon it, that I should come up and spend New
Year's Day with them. Cousin E. E. was going to receive calls, and
wanted some distinguished friend to help her entertain.
I went.
Early in the morning the empty carriage came down to my boarding-house,
with those two regimental chaps on the out seat.
I was all ready, with my pink silk dress on, and my front hair all in
one lovely friz; but I just let the carriage wait that the boarders and
people, with their faces against the window opposite, might have a good
chance to look at it. Then I walked down the stairs with queenly
slowness; the long skirt of my dress came a-rustling after, with a rich
sound that must have penetrated to the boarding-house parlor, for the
door was just a trifle open as I went by, and three faces, I could swear
to, were peeping out as if they had never seen a long-trailed, pink silk
dress before. Then I heard a scuttling toward the window, and, while I
stood on the upper step, gathering up the back cataract of my dress,
those same faces flattened themselves plump against the glass.
Of course I did not hurry myself on that account, but took an
observation up and down the street while I tightened the buttons of my
glove, though one of the regimental chaps was a-standing there and
holding the door wide open.
"Why shouldn't I give the poor things just this one glimpse of the
fashionable life to which genius has lifted me," says I to myself.
Influenced by this idea, I paused, perhaps, half a minute, with my foot
on the iron step, and asked the regimental chap, with the air of a queen
giving directions, if it was very cold? and if Mrs. Dempster was quite
well, that morning?
He bowed when he answered both these questions, with the greatest
respect; which was satisfactory, as the people on both sides must have
seen him do it.
Then I stepped gracefully into the carriage and sat down, buried to my
knees in billows of pink silk. Over that I drew the robe of white fur,
and waved my hand, as much as to say: I am seated; you can close the
door. Which he did.
One thing is curious about the streets of New York on New Year's Day.
Not a woman or girl is to be seen on the sidewalks.
The garden of Eden, before Adam went into the spare-rib business,
wouldn't have been more completely given up to the desolation of
manhood, unrefined by sweet female influence.
But every man that I saw, going up or down, looked bright and smiling,
as if he expected to find an Eve of his own before the day was over, and
I shouldn't wonder if a good many of them did.
XXIII.
THE NEW YEAR'S RECEPTION.
Cousin E. E. Dempster was all ready, and standing as large as life in
one end of her long parlor, when I went in. The first sight of that room
made me start back and scream right out. I had left daylight outside,
but found night there. The blinds were shut close to every window. Over
them fell a snow-storm of white lace, and over that a cataract of silk
that seemed to have been dyed in wine, its redness was so rich and
wavy.
The two great glass balloons were just running over with brightness that
scattered itself everywhere--on the chairs, the cushions, the carpet,
and a great round sofa which stood, like a giant cheese, in the middle
of the room, all covered with silk, and with a tall flower-pot standing
up from the centre, running over with flowers, and vines, and things.
This queer sofa, that seemed to have burst out into blossom for the
occasion, was a New Year's present, Cousin E. E. said, and quite a
surprise. "Then there is another," says she, a-pointing towards a marble
man, dressed in a grape leaf, that seemed to have been firing something
at the stone girl, and was watching to see if it had hit. "Of course you
have seen the Apollo before?"
I looked at the stone fellow sideways, then dropped my eyes.
"I--I don't know," says I; "maybe I should know him better if he had his
clothes on."
"Look again. You must have seen him," says she.
"No," says I, a-turning my head away; "I--I'd rather not till he goes
out and fixes himself up a little."
Cousin E. E. laughed till her face was red. While she was tittering like
a chirping bird, that little creature Cecilia came tripping into the
room, with a blue silk dress, ruffled over with white lace, just
reaching to her knees, her yellow hair a-rippling over that, clear down
behind, and a wreath of pink roses on her head. She looked at me from
top to toe, gave her head a toss, and went up to her mother with the air
of an injured princess.
"That old pink silk again! What did you let her wear it for? New Year's
Day, too. The idea!"
I heard every word of it, for the stuck-up thing didn't trouble herself
to speak low. My face had been hot enough before, but it burned like
fire now, and my bosom heaved till it stormed against my dress and
almost burst it.
"Hush!" said Cousin E. E., looking scared; "she will hear."
"Well, let her. As if I cared! The idea!"
I stepped forward, with my finger lifted, and my dress sweeping. It must
have been an imposing sight, for E. E. raised both hands, imploringly,
and says she, "Cecilia, come and see your father's present."
"Oh, isn't it gorgeous?" sang out the child, clasping her hands, and
turning her back square on me while she went up to the stone fellow.
"Such a splendid mate for Venus!"
"Yes, I should think so," says I sarcastically; "only Miss Venus does
seem ashamed of herself; but the fellow is bold as brass."
The girl's lip curled like an opening rose-bud; she gave a nipping
laugh, and I just heard "old fogy" break through it so saucily that my
blood riled.
"Did you apply that to me?" says I, a-lifting my finger.
"No, no, nothing of the kind," says Cousin E. E., catching her breath.
"You quite misunderstand Cecilia. Dear me, that is a carriage; people
are beginning to call. Cecilia, my love, do try and make yourself
agreeable."
"Just as much as to say that I could be anything else," says the
aggravating creature, a-hitching up her shoulders.
Sure enough, some one was coming, and no three canary birds in a cage
ever fluttered into their places quicker than we did. Cousin E. E.
seated herself in a great cosey chair, all cushions, spread out her
dress on the floor, and leaned a little sideways as if she was sitting
to Brady for a picture. I gave my pink silk a wide swoop, and let it
settle down on the carpet in ridges; then I leaned my elbow on the silk
cushions of the great round sofa, and drooped my head a little as if
breathing the scent of so many flowers had made me a trifle faint. That
child ran to the glass, shook out her lace ruffles, and stepped back
again to admire--well, her limbs--just as if she had been a stone girl,
and was in love with herself. I swan to man she made me sick and faint,
if the flowers didn't.
There was a noise in the hall-way, and I caught a peep at a handsome
young fellow prinking himself in the great looking-glass set in the
hat-stand. Then he came in, tripping along with his hand held out to
Cousin E. E., who went forward with her train following after, took his
lilac glove in her hand, smiled up in his face, and said how glad she
was to see him.
Before he could answer, that forward child came up and held out _her_
hand. She, too, was delighted; wondered he hadn't been there lately.
Indeed, she began to think he was never coming again.
The young fellow did seem to be taken aback a minute, for the forward
creature had just cut her mother out; but he soon began to talk and
laugh with her as chipper as could be, and only stopped to give me a nip
of a bow when Cousin E. E. introduced him.
Well, my opinion is I gave him as good as he sent; but short measure at
that; for I just lifted my head as if taking a sniff at the flowers, and
that was all. If that young man thought I was brought up in the woods to
be scared by owls, he found out his mistake. He was standing with his
back towards me when I heard E. E. say, in one of those whispers that
cut to the ear keener than a scream:
"It is Miss Phœmie Frost, the celebrated writer."
"What," says he, "Miss Frost, the person on whom the Grand Duke levelled
his eye-glass at the opera three times, and who was prevented opening
the ball with him by the machinations of the committee?"
"The same," says Cousin E. E.
Before she could put in another word, that young gentleman had wheeled
round in his patent leather boots, and was making me a bow that went so
near the floor that his lilac gloves fell below his knees. Then he rose
slowly, like a jack-knife that opens hard, and stood there a-smiling in
my face as if I had just treated him to a quart of maple molasses fresh
from the kettle.
"Miss Frost," says he, "I'm happy to make your acquaintance; your
writings have been my delight--in fact, a household word in our
family--for years."
"Years?" says I.
"That is, ever since you began to honor the world with the emanations of
your genius," says he, with an open wave of both hands.
I bowed. I half rose from that round sofa. I knew by the soft, quivering
sensation that smiles were creeping to my lips, and giving them a lovely
redness.
"Sir," says I, "you are complimentary. I am but a young beginner in the
paths of literature--a timid worker in the great harvest field of
thought."
He smiled; he moved the billowy folds of my dress with infinite
reverence, and seated himself timidly beside me. Then he talked books to
me--broken and fragmentary, but exquisite. He could understand why the
Grand Duke was so anxious to get back to New York. That poetry of mine
must have lifted him right off from his feet. What a lovely talent
poetry was!
I sat upright, but looked downward, hiding the pleasure in my eyes by my
drooping lashes. Faithful, heart and soul, to one noble being, I refused
to look into the admiring eyes of another. His insidious praises of my
genius made no impression. The image of a man six feet two, with a
sky-blue scarf across his princely bosom, stood at the portal of my
heart, and the young gentleman with curled hair and that light-colored
mustache sighed, and sighed in vain.
That forward little creature, Cecilia, saved me from temptation. Up she
came, with her frock and her hair all in a flutter.
"You haven't seen our new statue," says she, a-pulling at his hand.
The young gentleman arose from my side with a look that went to my
heart. As he stood before that pre-Adamite stone man, I got one good,
long look at his face. As true as I live, he had found out some of
Cousin E. E.'s ways of making herself beautiful! for his eyes had
shadows under them, and his cheeks were like roses. Now, sisters, did
you ever? Only think of a Green Mountain fellow doing that!
But now another lot of men came in, dressed up to kill. Some had yellow
kid gloves on, some lilac, and some gray. Their patent-leather boots
shone like looking-glasses, and some of 'em tipped along as if they were
treading over eggs and didn't mean to break 'em. Cousin E. E. introduced
them all, and I had to rise, and bow, and make long, sweeping curtsies
till my back ached, and my poor mouth felt dry with trying to look
unconscious when so many of 'em told me I was a household word in their
families.
When the first lot of 'em were going out, Cousin E. E. just put back the
red curtains at one end of the room, and behind 'em was a table all set
off with silver, and glass, and flowers, and great, tall dishes crowded
full of fruit and mottoes, all standing under the hot sunshine of one of
those glass balloons, a-glittering and a-flashing like a house afire.
I couldn't help giving a little scream, it was all so rich and
beautiful--with two colored waiters in white gloves, ready to help
everybody.
Cousin E. E. stood at one end of the table--for it was a stand-up
meal--and asked her visitors to take birds, and oysters, and terrapin.
What the dickens is terrapin? Have you any idea, sisters? I ate some,
and it had a stewy sort of taste, as if it had been kind of burnt in
cooking.
Well, one took one thing, and one another. Then each fellow wiped his
mustaches, and the waiters came round with cider bottles, loaded over
and chained up with silver, and the cider hissed and bubbled and
sparkled as they poured it out into the glasses, that started narrow at
the bottom, but spread out into dishes at the top, giving a chance for
little whirlpools to the cider--which _was_ cider, I can tell you; it
had vim enough in it to make your eyes snap.
When the glasses were full we all took them up. The gentlemen muttered
"Compliments of the season," and we answered "Compliments of the season"
Cecilia and all--who just had the impudence to stand on tip-toe, and
knock her glass against that of the fellow with lilac gloves and curly
hair. Then we all drank and sipped, and, as that party went off,
another came in--stream after stream--till night. It was the same thing
over and over again, till ten o'clock at night, when Mr. Dempster came
home, looking awfully tired out; then we just gave up. Sisters, this has
been the hardest and most confusing day that I have known in New York.
It seems as if my joints never would get limber again. But then I had a
real good time, though the cider did begin to get into my head towards
night. It couldn't have been made out of Vermont apples, I feel
certain--they haven't got so much dizziness in 'em.
XXIV.
MIGNON: A NIGHT AT THE GRAND OPERA.
Sisters, we went to the opera--that is, dear sisters in the cause, the
Grand Duke and I were there; both of us seated on red cushions, and so
near that we could exchange glances through our eye-glasses, which draw
a beloved object close to you. They are a great invention which has not
yet reached that portion of the country where prayer-meetings take the
place of operas.
I felt in my bones that he would meet me there; and when Cousin Emily
Elizabeth sent me word that she had got a loge--which means a little
square pen in the gallery, cushioned off like a first-class pew--and
wanted me to go with her to hear the great primer-donner, I just got
that dress out again, and set the frizzing-pins to work, and did myself
up so scrumptiously that I don't believe that a creature on Sprucehill
would have known me. Don't say this is extravagant, and flying in the
face of Providence. If He don't want silk dresses worn by the elect,
what on earth does He make silk-worms and mulberry-leaves for? That is a
question that we'll have debated over in the Society some day. Until
then, oblige me by not saying, openly, that I'm a free-thinker, because
I'm nothing of the sort. Not that my taste, since coming to the opera,
has not got a notch above Greenbank or Old Hundred, in the way of music;
I am free to own that it has.
Well, Cousin Emily Elizabeth had sent word that I mustn't wear a bonnet,
or think of such a thing; and she sent me down a fur mantle, made of
white kitten-skins, I reckon, with little black tails dropping all over
it--just the tips, which needn't have hurt the black kittens much, if it
_was_ all day to the white ones. So, when I come down, holding up my
long skirts with one hand, and folding this fur across my innocent
bosom, she just screamed out from the carriage that I looked gorgeous
enough to turn the great Grand Duke's head, which I felt to be true--for
women are not given to praising each other for nothing, anyhow.
The opera-house in New York would take in our biggest meeting-house, and
leave room for a wide strip of carpeting all round it. It has got three
galleries, and ever so many places, that look like pulpits and deacon's
seats, all cushioned and curtained off beautifully.
We went up to the first gallery, and got into Cousin Dempster's
loge-pew, which was just big enough for four people. This was fortunate,
for our skirts and fur mantles took up every mite of room that Cousin D.
did not want; but he put up with it beautifully, and just scrouched down
behind us, with his head rising above our shoulders, which would have
been rather uncovered if it had not been for the fur, which tickled mine
a little; but I bore it with fortitude. You who know me will understand
that.
The opera-house was crowded full; every pew was crammed, and the benches
down below couldn't be seen, the people were so thick. The pew loges
were running over with handsome girls, and old ladies that tried their
best to look like girls, and couldn't, not having the country freshness
that some people bring with them from the mountains.
But the three pulpits on the second gallery were empty yet--all empty,
and gorgeously red, waiting for _him_.
At last, a great green curtain that hung just beyond this sacred place
rolled up. The lights in a great glittering balloon, all hung with ropes
of shiny glass beads which fell down from the centre of the roof, blazed
up, and when I dropped my head from looking at it, all the other end of
the room was crowded with a gang of the queerest-looking people--men,
women, children, and dogs--that ever you did see. That was the opera,
Cousin E. E. said; though how an opera could have a house and a cart in
it, beat me.
Well, sisters, I give up. Roll every singing-school in Vermont into one
crowd, and they couldn't begin to burst out like that; men, women, and
girls, just went in for a splendid time, and they had it. First, a pew
full of fiddlers, drummers, tromboners, and bas-violers, let themselves
out in a storm of music that made the ten millions of beads on the glass
balloons tremble like hailstones. Then the whole gang lifted up their
voices, and the music rolled out just as I reckon the water does at
Niagara Falls. Such a general training of music was enough to wake the
dead out of a New England grave, where they sleep sound, I guess, if
they do anywhere.
By and by they rose up, and began to wander about, making their funny
little white dogs play, and some of the girls began to dance about. It
was a travelling-show, you see, and some of the upper-crust people came
out of the house I spoke of, and listened. One was a lady, dressed out
to kill in a striped skirt, black velvet, and yellow silk; another
yellow skirt bunched over that, and then a blue dress puffed above both,
and her hair just splendid. I tell you she was a dasher!
But the people were all busy unloading the cart; they took out bundles
and baskets and things. Finally a girl, that had been lying asleep on
the load, jumped down, with her shoulders hitched up, and looking cross
as fire at everybody that came near her. She was barefooted and
bareheaded, and had nothing but an under night-gown and petticoat on,
which seemed to aggravate her, for she looked scowling enough at the
handsome young lady, and would not double-shuffle worth a cent, though
all the men and women were trying to make her.
The moment she jumped off from the cart, the folks in the seats just ran
crazy, and began clapping their hands and stamping their feet like a
house afire; I never saw people act so in my life. It was enough to
frighten the poor thing half to death. Instead of that, it seemed to
tickle her mightily, for she came forward, with her bare feet, and made
a little mincing bow, and almost laughed.
Then the strangest thing happened. First one, and then another, of the
show-people, instead of reasoning with the wilful creature, just went to
waving their arms and singing at her. I declare it was enough to have
made a minister laugh when she turned, and began to sing back at them,
sometimes spiteful, and then, again, with tears melting through her
voice. An old man in gray clothes, that looked crazy as a coot, sung at
her, sort of hoarse, and mournfully. Then a young fellow, in a green
coat and high boots, dropped into the affair, and he sung at her. Then
the handsome lady in blue and yellow burst out and sang at her too,
filling the whole opera-house with music. By watching and listening, I
found out this much. This girl was an orphan, picked up by the band of
players, that made her dance and sing for her keeping. The fellow with
the green coat and boots felt sorry for her, and bought her up, short
gown and all, from the tribe of players. Then she put on the dress of a
pretty boy, and waited on the handsome woman in yellow, who was one of
them actress-women, and dead in love with the young fellow in boots. He
was awfully in love with the actress woman too, which just aggravated
that girl-boy out of her seven senses, poor thing! When she happened to
watch them together, you should have seen her fling down her cap, and
kick it about. There was some human nature in that, but singing love out
before folks beats me. I couldn't bring myself to anything of the
kind--not if the Grand Duke were standing before me with his arms out,
shouting Old Hundred.
Goodness gracious! that girl-boy had taken up my thoughts, so that I
didn't know when the Grand Duke came into his pulpit loge. But there he
was, standing up, and looking right toward me, so pleasant.
I threw back my fur mantle a trifle, and taking Cousin E. E.'s fan,
waved it gracefully, hoping thus to cool off the blushes that bathed my
cheeks with a rosiness that I feared might not harmonize with the tints
already there.
Still he looked my way earnestly, and with the fire of admiration in his
blue eyes. A young thing sitting in the loge-pew behind me began to turn
away her head and hide behind her fan, as if she had anything to do with
it. The conceit of some people is astonishing!
Cousin E. E.'s little spy-glass lay in her lap. I took it up; I held it
to my eyes, and devoured him with one burning glance. His heart seemed
leaping to mine through the glass. I knew it. I felt it. Indeed he won't
be the first of his noble race that has lost heart and soul to a country
girl.
The Prince sat down, and when there was a lull in the music, clapped his
hands with joy. Oh, my sisters! it is something to have given such
supreme pleasure to the Grand Ducal soul.
He looked at the play; I looked too. Souls in sympathy have but one
thought. I pitied that poor girl-boy with all my heart--my own happiness
made me compassionate. How she suffered when that woman with the yellow
skirts and the young fellow in boots were singing love to each other!
Once she got wild, and dressed herself in a pink silk, and--well, she
made one of those toilets that Cousin E. E. understands so well. I was
sorry to see her exposing one or two little things that should be a
secret with the sex. But she did, and the yellow lady caught her at it,
and sung awfully provoking things at her.
Well, she just tore off the dress, scattered the lace trimmings about,
put on her old duds, and ran away.
Then the house got on fire: the whole swarm of people come out
helter-skelter, singing to the flames that didn't mind the music more
than if it had been buckets full of water. Firemen came running with
ladders that nobody climbed, and pails of water, that the firemen
carried round and round, in and out, like crazy creatures. I am sure I
saw one fellow, with a white pail, pitch through the same window into
the red-hot flames fifty times. The poor girl-boy, being desperate, just
pitched in, determined to burn herself, while the woman in yellow and
the man in boots looked on.
This went right to the cruel man's heart; he jumped in after her,
carried her away from the devouring flames, and fell in love with her
like a man. Of course, being a decent kind of a fellow, he couldn't keep
on singing out his love to both girls at once with enthusiasm, and began
to neglect the yellow girl in a way that brought tears into her voice
whenever she came pleading to him under the window--which she did, not
having the pride of all the Frost family in her veins.
Of course this did no good; men never come back to women that whine. The
girl--for she had given up boys' clothes--had got him safe; he didn't
care a chestnut-burr for all the other's singing, but took to the little
vagabondess with all his heart and soul.
Now something else happened. The old man in gray got his mind again and
turned out to be Mignon's father (have I told you that was her name?).
He was a rich old fellow, with a house furnished with gilt chairs, and
everything sumptuous--so, of course, the fellow in boots stuck to her
more than ever.
I don't know what became of the woman in yellow, but as for this other
girl, she came out first best in every respect; especially at the end,
when ever so many flowers and baskets and things were just poured down
upon her. For my part, I thought the yellow girl ought to have had full
half of these things, for I liked her quite as well, if not better than
the vagabondess.
Well, the green curtain went down for good, and the whole congregation
got up to go out.
"How do you like Nilsson?" says Cousin E. E., as she was fastening her
fur mantle.
"Nilsson!" says I, "I haven't seen her yet."
"Why, yes you have--she just came out."
"What!--that girl-boy?"
"Yes, Mignon."
"You don't say so," says I. "Who then was the girl in yellow?"
"Oh! she is Duval."
"Well, I like her at any rate, poor thing; it was a shame to treat her
so."
That moment I felt that the great Grand Duke was gone. Not one more
glance. It was hard!
XXV.
THE BLACK CROOK.
Sisters:--Since my intimacy with Imperial Royalty, Cousin Emily
Elizabeth Dempster has been as proud as a peacock of our relationship,
and speaks about the Court of all the Russias as if she expected to have
an ice-palace built on the Neva for her, every winter, for the rest of
her life. This may be natural--I dare say it is; but I'm afraid that
Russia--being an awful despotism--wouldn't stand too many of one's
relations crowding into the Imperial corn-crib, that being a free-born
institution peculiar to high moral ideas which my great Grand Duke did
not stay in Boston long enough to im
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