Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern
by Fanny Fern · English · Gutenberg #40263 · 519,902 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Folly as It Flies; Hit at by Fanny Fern
Author: Fanny Fern
Release date: July 17, 2012 [eBook #40263]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLY AS IT FLIES; HIT AT BY FANNY FERN ***
FOLLY AS IT FLIES;
_HIT AT_
BY
FANNY FERN.
NEW YORK:
G. W. CARLETON & CO. PUBLISHERS.
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
MDCCCLXVIII.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,
for the Southern District of New York
LOVEJOY, SON & CO.,
ELECTROTYPERS & STEREOTYPERS,
15 Vandewater Street, N. Y.
To
MY FRIEND
Robert Bonner,
EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK LEDGER.
_For fourteen years, the team of Bonner and Fern, has trotted
over the road at 2.40 pace, without a snap
of the harness, or a hitch of the
wheels.--Plenty of oats, and
a skilful rein, the
secret._
PREFACE.
_Yours Truly_,
FANNY FERN.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
DISCOURSE UPON HUSBANDS 11
GRANDMOTHER'S CHAT ABOUT CHILDREN 33
WOMEN AND THEIR DISCONTENTS 50
WOMEN AND SOME OF THEIR MISTAKES 68
NOTES UPON PREACHERS AND PREACHING 88
BRIDGET AS SHE WAS, AND BRIDGET AS SHE IS 103
A CHAPTER ON TOBACCO 118
GIVE THE CONVICTS A CHANCE 127
A GLANCE AT WASHINGTON 133
GLIMPSES OF CAMP LIFE 142
UNWRITTEN HISTORY OF THE WAR 151
MY SUMMERS IN NEW ENGLAND 163
BOSTON AND NEW YORK 182
SOME THINGS IN NEW YORK 188
WORKING GIRLS OF NEW YORK 219
WASHING THE BABY 230
CHILDREN HAVE THEIR RIGHTS 232
MOURNING 240
TO YOUNG GIRLS 244
A LITTLE TALK WITH THE OTHER SEX 253
A CHAPTER ON MEN 269
LITERARY PEOPLE 274
SOME VARIETIES OF WOMEN 280
MISTAKES ABOUT OUR CHILDREN 295
THOUGHTS OF SOME EVERY DAY TOPICS 312
A TRIP TO THE NORTHERN LAKES 328
FOLLY AS IT FLIES.
_A DISCOURSE UPON HUSBANDS._
I wish every husband would copy into his memorandum book this
sentence, from a recently published work: "_Women must be constituted
very differently from men. A word said, a line written, and we are
happy; omitted, our hearts ache as if for a great misfortune. Men
cannot feel it, or guess at it; if they did, the most careless of them
would be slow to wound us so._"
The grave hides many a heart which has been stung to death, because
one who might, after all, have loved it after a certain careless
fashion, was deaf, dumb, and blind to the truth in the sentence we
have just quoted, or if not, was at least restive and impatient with
regard to it. Many men, marrying late in life, being accustomed only
to take care of _themselves_, and that in the most erratic, rambling,
exciting fashion, eating and drinking, sleeping and walking whenever
and wherever their fancy, or good cheer and amusement, questionable or
unquestionable, prompted; come at last, when they get tired of this,
with their selfish habits fixed as fate, to--matrimony. For a while it
is a novelty. Shortly, it is strange as irksome, this always being
obliged to consider the comfort and happiness of another. To have
something always hanging on the arm, which _used_ to swing free, or at
most, but twirl a cane. Then, they think their duty done if they
provide food and clothing, and refrain (possibly) from harsh words.
Ah--_is it_? Listen to that sigh as you close the door. Watch the
gradual fading of the eye, and paling of the cheek, not from age--she
should be yet young--but that gnawing pain at the heart, born of the
settled conviction that the great hungry craving of her soul, as far
as you are concerned, must go forever unsatisfied. God help such
wives, and keep them from attempting to slake their souls' thirst at
poisoned fountains.
_Think_, you, her husband, how little a kind word, a smile, a caress
to _you_, how much to _her_. If you call these things "childish" and
"beneath your notice," then you should never have married. There are
men who should remain forever single. You are one. You have no right
to require of a woman her health, strength, time and devotion, to mock
her with this shadowy, unsatisfying return. A new bonnet, a dress, a
shawl, a watch, anything, everything but what a _true_ woman's heart
most craves--sympathy, appreciation, love. She may be rich in
everything else; but if she be poor in these, and is a _good_ woman,
she had better die.
There are hard, unloving, cold monstrosities of women, (rare
exceptions,) who neither require love, nor know how to give it. We are
not speaking of these. That big-hearted, loving, noble men have
occasionally been thrown away upon such, does not disprove what we
have been saying. But even a man thus situated has greatly the
advantage of a woman in a similar position, because, over the needle a
woman may think herself into an Insane Asylum, while the active,
out-door turmoil of business life is at least a _sometime_ reprieve to
_him_.
Do you ask me, "Are there no happy wives?" God be praised, yes, and
glorious, lovable husbands, too, who know how to treat a woman, and
would have her neither fool nor drudge. Almost every wife would be a
good and happy wife, _were she only loved enough_. Let husbands,
present and prospective, think of this.
* * * * *
"Now, I am a clerk, with eight hundred dollars salary, and yet my wife
expects me to dress her in first-class style. What would you advise me
to do--leave her?"
These words I unintentionally overheard in a public conveyance. I went
home, pondering them over. "Leave her!" Were _you_ not to blame, sir,
in selecting a foolish, frivolous wife, and expecting her to confine
her desires, as a sensible woman ought, and would, within the limits
of your small salary? Have _you, yourself_, no "first-class" expenses,
in the way of rides, drinks and cigars, which it might be well for
you to consider while talking to her of retrenchment? Did it ever
occur to you, that under all that frivolity, which you admired in the
maid, but deplore and condemn in the wife, there may be, after all,
enough of the true woman, to appreciate and sympathize with a _kind,
loving_ statement of the case, in its parental as well as marital
relations? Did it ever occur to you, that if you require no more from
_her_, in the way of self-denial, than you are willing to endure
_yourself_--in short, if you were _just_ in this matter, as all
husbands are _not_--it might bring a pair of loving arms about your
neck, that would be a talisman amid future toil, and a pledge of
co-operation in it, that would give wings to effort? And should it not
be so immediately--should you encounter tears and frowns--would you
not do well to remember the hundreds of wives of drunken husbands,
who, through the length and breadth of the land, are thinking--_not_
of "_leaving_" them, but how, day by day, they shall more patiently
bear their burden, toiling with their own feeble hands, in a woman's
restricted sphere of effort, to make up their deficiencies, closing
their ears resolutely to any recital of a husband's failings, nor
asking advice of aught save their own faithful, wifely hearts, "_what
course they shall pursue_?"
And to all young men, whether "clerks" or otherwise, we would say, if
you marry a humming-bird, don't expect that marriage will instantly
convert it into an owl; and if you have caught it, and caged it,
without thought of consequences, don't, like a coward, shrink from
your self-assumed responsibility, and turn it loose in a dark wood, to
be devoured by the first vulture.
* * * * *
The other day I read in a paper, "Wanted--board for a young couple."
What a pity, I thought, that they should begin life in so unnatural
and artificial a manner! What a pity that in the sacredness of a home
of their own, they should not consecrate their life-long promise to
walk hand in hand, for joy or for sorrow! What a pity that the sweet
home-cares which sit so gracefully on the young wife and housekeeper,
should be waved aside for the stiff etiquette of a public table or
drawing-room! What a pity that the husband should not have a "_home_"
to return to when his day's toil is over, instead of a "room," as in
his lonely bachelor days!
* * * * *
"Oh, you little rascal" said a young father doubling up his fist at
his first baby, as it lay kicking its pink toes upon the bed; "oh, you
little rascal, precious little attention have I had from your mamma
since _you_ came to town. I don't know but I am very sorry you are
here."
Now, this is a subject upon which I have thought a great deal, and
often wished I had wisdom to write about. It is a very nice point for
a young wife to settle rightly--the respective claims of the helpless
little baby, and those of the young husband, who has hitherto been the
sole recipient of her caresses and care. The cry of that little baby
is painful to him. He has not yet adjusted himself to the position of
a father. It is a nice little creature, of course; but why need _she_
be so much in the nursery and so little in the parlor? Why can't she
delegate the washing, and dressing, and getting-to-sleep, to a nurse,
and go about with _him_, as she used before it came. It is very dull
to sit alone, waiting until all these processes have been gone
through; and, beside, it is plain to see that, when he does wait till
then, her vitality is so nearly exhausted that she has very little
left to entertain him, or to go abroad for entertainment; and if she
does the latter, she is so fearful that something may go wrong with
that experimental first baby in her absence, that her anxiety becomes
contagious, and _his_ pleasure is spoiled.
Now, to begin with: it takes two years for a young married couple to
adjust themselves to their new position. "_His_ mother never fussed
that way over _her_ babies, and is not _he_ a living example of the
virtue of neglect?" Now "_her_ mother preferred to do just as _she_ is
doing, and thought any other course heartless and unnatural, at least
while the baby is so very little." Now stop a bit, my dears, or you
never will get beyond that milestone on your journey. You have got,
both of you, to drop your respective mothers, as far as quoting their
practice is concerned. Never mention them to one another, if you can
possibly keep your mouths shut on their superior virtues, when you
wish to settle any such question; because it will always remain true,
to the end of time, that a husband's relations, like the king, can do
no wrong, though they may be in the constant practice of doing that in
their own families, which they consider highly improper in yours.
Now, do you and John--I suppose his name is John--two-thirds of the
men are named John, and the Johns are always great strapping
fellows--do you and John just paddle your own canoe, as they do. It is
yours, isn't it? Well, steer it, day by day, by the light you have, as
well as you know how. Mind that _you_ both pull together; shut down
outside interference, which is the cause of two-thirds of the
unhappiness of the newly married, and you will be certain to do well
enough, _at last_.
When a clergyman comes to a new congregation, or a school-teacher to
an untried school--when a new business partner enters a firm--nobody
expects things to go right immediately, without a hitch or two, till
matters adjust themselves. It is only in the cases of newly converted
persons, or the newly married, that people insist upon human nature
becoming immediately, and instantaneously, sublimated and fit for
heaven. Now in both cases, as I take it, time must be given, as in the
other relations, for assimilation.
This point being conceded,--and I am supposing, my dear reader, that
you are not quite a natural fool,--why should you or the young couple
consider the whole thing a failure, merely because this process
cannot be accomplished in a day and without a few mistakes, any more
than in the cases above cited?
But we have left that little experimental first baby kicking too long
on the bed--it is time we return to him. Now, I am very sorry that
John said what he did to that young mother, even "in joke." _She_ knew
well enough that he meant two-thirds of it. She is not quite strong
yet either, for the baby is but three months old; and it is very true
that it does cry a great deal; and though _she_ don't mind it, John
does; and really, she can't leave it much with a nurse, while it is so
very little. And yet, it _is_ dull for John to sit alone in the parlor
while she is soothing it; and what _shall_ she do? That's just
it,--what _shall_ she do? She really gets in quite a nervous tremble,
when it is time for him to come home--what with hoping baby will be on
its good behavior, and fearing that it may not. Not that, for one
instant, she has ever been sorry that she was a mother--oh no, no! You
may burn her flesh with a red-hot iron, and you can never make her say
that. God forbid!
Now, John, if your little wife loves her baby like that, is not it a
proof that you have chosen a wife wisely and well? and are you not
willing to face like a man--I _should_ say, like a woman,--the petty
disagreeables which are consequent upon the initiatory life of the
little creature in whose veins flows your own blood? Surely, you
cannot answer me no. When you married, you did not expect to live a
bachelor's life. If you did, then I have nothing more to say. I shall
pay that compliment to your manhood to suppose, that you did not so
deceive the young girl, who trusted her future in your hands, and that
you did not expect that _she alone_ was to practice the virtue of
self-abnegation.
Well, then, be patient with the wife who is so well worthy of your
sympathy and co-operation, in this, her conscientious attempt to bring
up rightly the first baby. When the next comes, and I know you will
have a next, or your name isn't John, she will not be so anxious. She
will not think it will die, every time it has the stomach-ache. But at
present it is cruel in you to say those things which distress her,
even "in joke," because, as I tell you, she is trying faithfully to
settle these important questions, which take time for each of you to
decide, so that you may not wrong the other. _Help_ her do it. Soothe
her when she is nervous and weary. _Love_ that little baby, though at
present it does not even smile at you. If you can't love it, _make
believe love it_, till the little thing knows enough to know you. Do
it for _her_ sake, who has earned your tenderest cherishing as the
mother of your child. _Begin_ right. Know that whatsoever people may
say, _that Love and Duty are all there is of life_. Out of these two
grow all the pleasure and happiness mortals can find this side of the
grave. So, John, don't wear out your boots trudging round elsewhere to
find them, for it will be a miserable failure.
* * * * *
I think every woman will agree with me, that it is perfectly
astonishing the "muss" (to use a New Yorkism) which a male pair of
hands can make in your room in the short space of five minutes. You
have put everything in that dainty order, without which you could not,
for the life of you, accomplish any work. There is not a particle of
dust on anything, in sight, or out of sight--which last is quite as
important. All your little pet things are in the right location;
pictures plumb on the wall, work-box and ink-stand tidy and within
hail. Mr. Smith comes in. He wants "a bit of string." Mr. Smith is
always wanting a bit of string. Mr. Smith says kindly (good fellow)
"don't get up, dear, I'll find it." That's just what you are afraid of,
but it won't do to say so; so you sit still and perspire, while Mr.
Smith looks for his "bit of string." First, he throws open the door of
the wrong closet, and knocks down all your dresses, which he catches up
with irreverent haste, and hangs in a heap on the first peg. Then he
says (innocently,) "Oh--h--I went to the wrong closet, didn't I?" Then
he proceeds to the right closet, and finds the "bit of string." In
taking it down he catches it on the neck of a phial. Down it comes
smash--with the contents on the floor. Mr. Smith says "D--estruction!"
in which remark you fully coincide. Then Mr. Smith wants a pair of
scissors to cut his "bit of string;" so he goes to your work-box, which
he upsets, scattering needles, literally at "sixes and sevens," all
over the floor, mixed with bodkins, spools, tape, and torment only
knows what. He gathers them up at one fell swoop, and ladles them back
into the box, in a manner peculiarly and eminently masculine; and asks
if--the--hinge--of--the--lid--of--that--box--was--broken--before, or if
"_he_ did it." As if the rascal didn't know! But of course you tell the
old fib, that it had been loose for some time, and that it was no
manner of consequence; all the while devoutly hoping that this might be
the last mischance. Not a bit of it. "He thinks he will take a little
brandy to set him right." So he uncorks the bottle on the spotless
white toilet-cover of your bureau, spills the brandy all over it,
powders the sugar on the covers of a nice book, and lays the sticky
spoon on a nice lace collar that has just been "done up." Then he
uncorks your cologne-bottle to anoint his smoky whiskers, and sets down
the bottle, leaving the cork out. Then he takes up your gold bracelet
and tries it on his wrist, "to see if it will fit." The "_fit_" need I
say, is _not_ in the bracelet--the fastening of which he breaks. Then
he throws up the window, "to see what sort of a day it is;" and over
goes a vase of flowers, which you have been arranging with all the
skill you were mistress of, to display the perfection of each blossom.
He looks at the vase, and says, "Miserable thing! it was always
ricketty; I must buy you a better one, dear," which you devoutly hope
he will do, though a long acquaintance with that gentleman's habits
does not authorize you in it. Then Mr. Smith goes to the glass and
takes a solemn survey of his beard. Did you ever notice the difference
between a man's and a woman's way of looking in the glass? It is
wonderfully characteristic! Woman perks her head on one side saucily
and well pleased like a bird; man strides in a lordly, dignified way up
to it as if it were a very _petty_ thing for him to do, but meantime
he'd like to catch that glass saying that he is not a fine-looking
fellow! Well--Mr. Smith takes a solemn survey of his beard, which he
fancies "needs clipping," and takes your sharpest and best pair of
scissors, for the wiry operation; the stray under-brush meanwhile
falling wheresoever it best pleases the laws of gravitation to send it.
Then Mr. Smith, says, "Really, dear, this is such a pleasant room, one
hates to leave it, but--alas! business--business."
"_Business!_" I should think so--business enough, to put that room to
rights, for the next three hours!
* * * * *
Did you ever hear an old maid talk about matrimony, or a girl who was
trembling on the brink of old-maidism, and feared to launch away? If
there is anything that effectually disgusts a married woman, it is
that. What can an old maid know about such things? As well might I
write an agricultural and horticultural description of a country by
looking on a map. What pitying compassion she has for married men,
every one of whom is victimized because he did not select _her_ to
make him "the happiest of men"--I believe that is the expression of a
lover when on his suppliant knees; if not, I stand ready to be
corrected--by anybody but an old maid. With what a languishing sigh
she marvels that Mrs. Jones could ever be so criminal, as to neglect
to sew on an ecstatic shirt-button for such a man as Jones; for whom
it would be glory enough to hold a shaving-box while he piled on the
soap-suds, which is her particular element. What a shame that Jones
cannot stifle his own baby, if he feels like it, by smoking in its
face, and leave his boots, and coat, and vest on the parlor floor, if
he takes a fancy to do it.
Ah--had Jones but a different wife! (And here imagine a sigh which,
for depth and pro-_fun_-dity, none but a sentimental old maid on the
anxious-seat can heave.) What pleasure to black his boots for him of a
morning; to get up in the middle of the night, and cook a tenderloin
beefsteak; to prove her devotion by standing on the front doorstep,
with chattering teeth, in a cold northeaster, waiting for the dear
coat to come home; to hang up his dear hat for him, to put away his
dear cane, to take him up gently with the sugar-tongs, and lay him on
the sofa till tea was ready, and then feed him like a sweet little
bird, bless his shirt-buttons!
How hot his toast should always be; how strong his tea and coffee; how
sweet his puddings; how mealy his potatoes; how punctually his clean
shirt should be taken out of his drawer for him to put on; how sweetly
his handkerchief should be cologn-ed with her own cologne, and his
cigar-case magnanimously placed by her own hands in his dear little
side-pocket, and how it should be the study of her life to find out
when he wanted to sneeze, and arrest a sunbeam for the purpose.
Do you know what I wish?
That all the die-away old maids, who go sighing through creation with
a rose-leaf to their noses, lecturing married women, and sniveling for
their little privileges, had but one neck, and that some muscular
coat-sleeve, equal to the occasion, would give them one satisfying
hug, and stop their nonsense.
* * * * *
I never witnessed an execution; but I saw a man the other day, married
he surely was, trying to select a lace collar from out a dainty cobweb
heap, sufficiently perplexing even to a practised female eye. The
clumsy way he poised the gauzy things on his forefinger, with his head
askew, trying to comprehend their respective merits! The long, weary
sigh he drew, as the shopman handed him new specimens. The look of
relief with which he heard _me_ inquire for lace collars, saying, as
plain as looks could say, "Ah! now, thank Heaven, I shall have a
woman's view of the subject!" The _disinterested_ manner in which,
with this view, he pushed a stool forward for me to sit down, to watch
upon which collar my eye fell complacently, all the while turning over
_his_ heap in the same idiotic way. Oh, it was funny! Of course, I
kept him on the anxious seat a little while, persistently holding my
tongue, the better to enjoy his dilemma. Didn't he fidget?
At length, fearful he might rush out for strychnine, I spake. I
descanted upon shape, and texture, and pattern, and upon the
probability of their "doing up" well, to all of which my rueful knight
listened like a criminal who scents a reprieve. Then I made my
selection; then he chose two exactly like mine, before you could wink,
and with a sublime gratitude, refused to let the shopman consider the
bill that was fluttering in his gloved fingers, "till he had made
change for the lady." We understood each other, for there are cases in
which words are superfluous. No doubt his wife thought his taste in
collars was excellent.
* * * * *
Men have _one_ virtue; for instance: How delicious is their blunt,
honest frankness toward each other, in their every-day intercourse,
(politicians excepted,) in contrast with the polite little subterfuges,
which form the basis of women-friendships. When one man goes to make a
man-call on another, he talks when he pleases, and puts up his heels,
and _don't_ talk when he don't please. He is free to take a nap, or to
take a book; and his host is as free, when he has had enough of him, or
has any call away, to put on his hat and go out to attend to it: nor
does the caller feel himself aggrieved. Now a woman's nose, under
similar circumstances, would be up in the air a month, with the
"slight" her female friend had put upon her. The more a woman _don't_
want her friend to stay, the more she is bound to urge her to do it;
and to ask her why she hadn't called before; and to wish that she might
never go away, and all that sort of thing. What she remarks to her
husband in private about it, afterward, is a thing you and I have
nothing to do with. When two men meet, after a long absence, ten to one
the first salutation is, "Old boy, how ugly you've grown." In the
female department we reverse this. "I never saw you look prettier,"
being the preface to the aside--(what a fright she has become).
Then--("blest be the tie that binds")--mark one man meet another in the
street--light his cigar at that other's nose, and pass on--without
knowing the important fact, whether he lives in "a brown-stone front"
or not. How instructive the free-and-easy-and-audacious-manner in
which, after this ceremony, they go their several ways to their
tombstones, without a spoken word. See them in the streets, my sisters,
exchanging passing remarks on any object of momentary street-interest,
looking over one another's shoulders at each other's "extras," all the
same as if they had been introduced in an orthodox Grundy fashion.
See them walk boldly up to a looking-glass, in a show window, and
honestly stare at their ridiculous solemn selves, whereas, you women,
pretend to be examining something else, when you are bent on a like
errand, intent on smoothing your ruffled feathers.
The other day, in an omnibus, a man took a seat near the door, and not
willing to step across the ladies' dresses, "nudged" a man above him
to hand up his fare. Now the nudged creature was out of sorts--wanted
his dinner or something--and so sat like an image, without responding;
another nudge--with no better success--not a muscle of the nudged
man's face moved. At last, with a heightened color, the new-comer
handed it up himself; but he _didn't_ talk to his next elbow-neighbor
about "_some_ people being _so_ disagreeable," or call him a "nasty
thing;" or try to look him into eternal annihilation, for what was
really an ungracious action. He only rubbed his left ear a little, and
put his mind on something else, and he looked very well while he was
doing it, too.
If one woman is visiting another at her house, and the latter goes up
stairs for anything, her female guest trots right after her, like a
little haunting dog. If she goes to the closet to get her gaiters, the
shadow follows; she must be present when they are laced on; and
discusses rights and lefts, and hosiery, etc. When her hostess goes to
the glass, to arrange her hair, or put on her bonnet, the shadow
follows, leaning both arms on the toilet-table to witness the
operation. Without this bandbox-freemason-confidence, you see at once
that female-friendship could not be that sacred intermingling of
congenial natures that it is. Your friend would weep, sirs, and ask
you "what she had done to be treated so."
A mouse and a woman! I know one of the latter, who always gets upon a
table if she sees either coming. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said a very
witty thing once. I am afraid that not even her discovery of
inoculation will cancel the sin of it. It was this: "The only comfort
I ever had in being a woman is, that I can never marry one."
The moral of all this is, that women need reforming in their
intercourse with one another. There should be less kissing among them,
and more sincerity; less "palaver," and more reticence. But if you
think I am going to tell them this in person, you _must_ needs suppose
that I have already arranged my sublunary affairs in case of accident.
This not being the case, I decline the office, except so far as I can
fill it at a safe distance on paper.
* * * * *
But then again what poor creatures are men when sick.
One might smile, were it not so pitiful, to see the impatience with
which strong, active men succumb to the necessity of lying a few weeks
on a bed of sickness. The petulance which they in vain try to smother,
at pills and potions, in place of their favorite dish, or drink, or
cigar. The many orders they give, and countermand, in the same breath,
to the wife and mother, who calmly accepts all this as part of her
woman lot, and who dare not, for the life of her, smile at the fuss
this caged lion is making, because his rations are cut off for a few
days. This "being sick patiently," is a lesson we think man has yet to
learn; but it is a good thing that they are sometimes laid on the
shelf awhile, that they may better appreciate the cheerful endurance
with which the feeble wife-mother bears the household cares all the
same--on the pillow where lies with her the newly-born. Pain and
weakness never interrupt her constant, careful forethought for her
family. Husbands are too apt to take these every-day heroisms as
matters of course. Therefore we say again, it is well sometimes that
their attention should be awakened to it, when the doctor has vetoed
for them awhile the office and the counting-room, and they are
childishly frantic at gruel and closed blinds.
* * * * *
A woman's education is generally considered to be finished when she is
married, whereas she has only arrived at A B C. If husbands took half
the thought for, or interest in, their wives' _minds_, that wives are
obliged to take for their husbands' _bodies_, women would be more
intelligent. A missing button or string is often the cause of a bitter
outcry; but what of the little woman who sits twiddling her thumbs in
the presence of her husband's intelligent visitors, because she has
not the slightest idea what they are all talking about, and because,
if she wouldn't mortify her husband, she must forever keep speechless?
The _intelligent_ husband, who, from fear of jeopardizing his
puddings or his coffee, rests contented with this state of things, is
guilty of an injustice toward that little woman, of which he ought to
be heartily ashamed. True, when he married her this difference did not
exist, or if it did, the glamour of youth and beauty, like a soft
mist-veil over a landscape, hid, or clothed with loveliness, even
defects. Because her youth and beauty have been uncomplainingly
transmitted to his many children, whose little mouths must be fed, and
little feet tended, _not_ always by a hireling, through the long day;
and whose little garments must be often planned and made, when she
would gladly rest, while they sleep: should he, who is free to read
and think, he who, coming in contact with strong, reflecting minds,
has left her far behind, _never_ turn a loving glance back, and with
his own strong hand and encouraging smile, beg her not to sit down
discouraged by the wayside--_she_, who "hath done what she could?" It
is a _shame_ for such a man to put on his soul's festival-dress for
everybody _but_ her who should be his soul's queen. It is a shame for
a man to be willing so to degrade the mother and teacher of his
children. It is a shame for him, while she sits sewing by his side,
never to raise her drooping self-respect, by addressing an intelligent
word to her about the book he is reading, or the subject upon which he
is thinking, as he sits looking into the fire. I marvel and wonder at
the God-like patience of these _upper housekeepers_, or I _should_,
had I not seen them dropping tears over the faces of their sleeping
children, to cool their hearts.
I want to hear no nonsense about the mental "equality or inequality of
the sexes." I am sick of it; that is a question men always start when
women ask for _justice_, to dodge a fair answer. They may be equal or
unequal--that's not what I am talking about. Napoleon the Third gives
his dear French people diversions, fête days, and folly of all kinds,
if they will only let _him_ manage the politics. Our domestic
Napoleons, too many of them, give flattery, bonnets and bracelets to
women, and everything else _but_--justice; _that_ question is one for
_them_ to decide, and many a gravestone records how it is done.
An intelligent man sometimes satisfies his conscience by saying of his
wife, Oh, she's a good little woman, but there is one chamber in my
soul through whose window she is not tall enough to peep. Get her but
a footstool to stand on, Mr. Selfishness, and see how quick she will
leap over that window sill! In short, _show but the disposition_ to
help her, and some manly, loving interest in her progress, instead of
striding on alone, as you do, in your seven league mental boots,
without a thought of her, and take my word for it, if you are thus
_just_ to her, and if she loves you, which last, by the way, all wives
would do, if husbands were truly _just_, and you will find that though
she has but average intellect, you will soon be astonished at the
progress of your pupil.
I am not unaware that there are men whom the tailor makes, and women
who are manufactured by the dress-maker, and that they often marry
each other. Let such fulfill their august destiny--to dress. I know
that there are women much more intelligent than their husbands; let
such show their intelligence by appearing not to know it. Still, it
remains as I have said, that there exist the wives and mothers whose
cause I now plead, fulfilling each day, not hopelessly--God forbid!
but sometimes with a sad sinking of heart, the duties which no true
wife or mother will neglect, even under circumstances rendered so
disheartening by the husband and father, of whose praise, perhaps, the
world is full. Let the latter see to it, that while the momentous
question, "What _shall_ I get for dinner?" may never, though the
heavens should fall, evade her daily and earnest consideration, that
_he_ would sometimes, by his intelligent conversation, _when there is
no company_, recognize the existence of the _soul_ of this married
housekeeper.
_GRANDMOTHER'S CHAT ABOUT CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD._
"What can fascinate you in that ugly beast?"
This question was addressed to me, while regarding intently a camel in
a collection of animals. "Ugly?" To me he was poetry itself. I was a
little girl again. I was kneeling down at my little chair at family
prayers. I didn't understand the prayers. "The Jews" were a sealed
book to me then. I didn't know why "a solemn awe" should fall upon me
either; or what _was_ a solemn awe, anyhow. For a long time, I know,
till I was quite a big girl, I thought it was one word--thus,
_solemnor_--owing to the rapid manner in which it was pronounced.
_Where_ the heathen were going to be "brought in," or what they were
coming for, I didn't understand; and as to "justification," and
"sanctification," and "election," it was no use trying. But the walls
of the pleasant room where family prayers were held, were papered with
"a Scripture paper." There were great feathery palm-trees. There were
stately females bearing pitchers on their heads. There were Isaac and
Rebecca at the well; and there were _camels_, humped, bearing heavy
burdens, with long flexile necks, resting under the curious, feathery
trees, with their turbaned attendants. I understood _that_. To be
sure, the blue was, as I now recollect it, sometimes on their noses as
well as on the sky; and the green was on their hair as well as on the
grass; but at the pinafore-age we are not hypercritical. To me it was
fairy-land; and often when "Amen" was said, I remained with my little
chin in my palms, staring at my beloved camels, unconscious of the
breakfast that was impending, for our morning prayers were said on an
empty stomach.
I hear, now, the soft rustle of my mother's dress, as she rose after
the "Amen." I see the roguish face of my baby brother, whose perfect
beauty was long since hid under the coffin lid. I see the servants,
disappearing through the door that led down to the kitchen, whence
came the fragrant odor of coming coffee. I see my mother's flowering
plants in the window, guiltless of dust or insect, blossoming like her
virtues and goodness, perennially. I see black curly heads, and flaxen
curly heads, of all sizes, but _all_ "curly," ranged round the
breakfast table; the names of many of their owners are on marble slabs
in Mount Auburn now.
So you understand why I "stood staring at that ugly beast," in the
collections of animals, and thinking of the changes, in all these long
years, that had passed so swiftly; for now I am fifty-four, if I am a
minute. And how wonderful it was, that after such a lapse of time, and
so thickly crowded with events, that this family-morning-prayer-hour
should come up with such astonishing vividness, at sight of that
camel. Oh! I shall always love a camel. He will never look "ugly" to
me. I am not sorry, nor ever have been, that I was brought up to
"family prayers," unintelligible though they _then_ were to me.
I hunted up those "Jews" after I got bigger, and many other things,
too, the names of which got wedged crosswise in my childish memory,
and stuck there. They never did me any harm, that ever I found out. I
have sent up many a prayer, both in joy and sorrow, since then, but
not always "on my knees," which was considered essential in those
days. As to the "solemn awe," I don't understand it now any better
than when I was a child. I can't feel it, in praying, any more than I
should when running to some dear, tried friend, with a burdened heart,
to sob my grief away there, till I grew peaceful again. And all this
came of a Camel.
* * * * *
And _now_ I am a grandmother! and here come the holidays again. As I
look into the crowded toyshops, I think, how lucky for their owners
that children will always keep on being born, and that every one of
them will have a grandmother. Uncles, and aunts, and cousins, are all
very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despised; but a
_grandmother_, at holiday time, is worth them all. She might have
given her own children crooked-necked squashes, and cucumbers, for
dolls; with old towels pinned on by way of dresses, and trusted to
their imaginations to supply all deficiencies. But this
grandchild--ah! that's quite another affair. Is there anything good
enough or costly enough for her? What if she smash her little china
tea-set the minute she gets it? What if she break her wax doll? What
if she maim and mutilate all the animals in her Noah's Ark? What if
she perforate her big India-rubber ball with the points of the
scissors? What if she tear the leaves from out her costly picture
books? They have made the little dear happy, five minutes, at least;
and grandmother has lived long enough to know that five minutes of
genuine happiness, in this world, is not to be despised. And that,
after all, is the secret of a grandmother's indulgence. It isn't a
weakness, as your puckery, sour people pretend. Grandmother has
_lived_. She knows what life amounts to. She knows it is nothing but
_broken toys_ from the cradle to the grave. She knows that happy,
chirping, radiant little creature before her, has all this experience
to go through; and so, ere it comes, she watches with jealous care
that nothing shall defraud her of one sunbeam of childhood. Childhood!
She strains her gaze far beyond that, away into misty womanhood. She
would fain live to stand between her and her first inevitable woman's
heartache. From under her feet she would extract every thorn, remove
every pebble. The winds that should blow upon her should be soft and
perfumed. Every drop of blood in her body, every pulse of her heart,
cries out, Oh! let her be happy. Alas! with all her knowledge, and
notwithstanding all her chastening, she forgets, and ever will forget,
when looking at that child, that the crown comes _after_ the cross.
Broken Toys! As I picked them up under my feet this morning, where
they had been tossed by careless little fingers, I fell thinking--just
what I have told you.
* * * * *
I wish some philosopher would tell me at what age a child's
naughtiness _really_ begins. I am led to make this remark because I am
subject to the unceasing ridicule of certain persons, who shall be
nameless, who sarcastically advise me "to practice what I preach." As
if, to begin with, anybody ever did _that_, from Adam's time down. You
see before I punish, or cause to be punished, a little child, I want
to be sure that it hasn't got the stomach-ache; or is not cutting some
tooth; or has not, through the indiscretion, or carelessness or
ignorance of those intrusted with it, partaken of some indigestible
mess, to cause its "naughtiness," as it is called. Then--I want those
people who counsel me to such strict justice with a mere baby, to
reflect how many times a day, according to this rule, _they_
themselves ought to be punished for impatient, cross words;
proceeding, it may be, from teeth, or stomach, or head, or nerves; but
just as detrimental as to the results as if they came from meditated,
adult naughtiness.
Scruples of conscience, you see--that's it. However, yesterday I said:
Perhaps I _am_ a little soft in this matter; perhaps it _is_ time I
began. So I stiffened up to it.
"Tittikins," said I to the cherub in question, "don't throw your hat
on the floor; bring it to me, dear."
"I san't," replied Tittikins, who has not yet compassed the letter
_h_. "I san't,"--with the most trusting, bewitching little smile, as
if I were only getting up a new play for her amusement, and
immediately commenced singing to herself:
"Baby bye,
Here's a fly--
Let us watch him,
You and I;"
adding, "Didn't I sing that pretty?"
Now I ask you, was I to get up a fight with that dear little happy
thing, just to carry my point? I tell you my "government" on that
occasion was a miserable failure; I made up my mind, after deep
reflection, that if it was not quite patent that a child was really
malicious, it was best not to worry it with petty matters; I made up
my mind that I would concentrate my strength on the first _lie_ it
told, and be conveniently blind to lesser peccadilloes. This course is
just what I get abused for. But, I stood over a little coffin once,
with part of my name on the silver plate; and somehow it always comes
between me and this governing business. I think I know what you'll
reply to this; and in order that you may have full justification for
abusing me, I will own that the other day, when I said to Tittikins,
"Now, dear, if you put your hands inside your cup of milk again, I
must really punish you," that little three-year-older replied, in the
_chirp-est_ voice, "No, you won't! I know better." And one day, when I
_really_ shut my teeth together, and with a great throb of martyrdom,
spanked the back of that dear little hand, she fixed her great, soft,
brown, unwinking eyes on me, and said, "I'm brave--I don't mind it!"
You can see for yourself that this practical application of the story
of the Spartan boy and the fox, which I had told her the day before,
was rather unexpected.
Tittikins has no idea of "the rule that won't work both ways." Not
long since, she wanted my pen and ink, which, for obvious reasons, I
declined giving. She acquiesced, apparently, and went on with her
play. Shortly after, I said, "Tittikins, bring me that newspaper, will
you?" "No," she replied, with Lilliputian dignity. "If you can't
please me, I can't please you." The other day she was making an
ear-splitting racket with some brass buttons, in a tin box, when I
said, "Can't you play with something else, dear, till I have done
writing?" "But I like this best," she replied. "It makes my head ache,
though," I said. "You poor dear, you," said Tittikins, patronizingly,
as she threw the obnoxious plaything down, and rushed across the room
to put her arms around my neck--"you _poor_ dear, you, of tourse I
won't do it, then."
I have given it up; with shame and confusion of face, I own that child
_governs me_. I know her _heart_ is all right; I know there's not a
grain of _badness_ in her; I know she would die to-day, if she hadn't
those few flaws to keep her alive. In short, she's _my grandchild_.
Isn't that enough?
But all this does not prevent my giving sensible advise to others. Now
I am perfectly well aware, that there comes a time in the life of
every little child, how beautiful, winning and pleasant soever it may
be, when it hoists with its tiny hand the rebel flag of defiance to
authority. You may walk round another way, and choose not to see it,
and fancy you will have no farther trouble. You may hug to your heart
all its sweet cunning ways, and say--after all, what does it matter?
it is but a child; it knows no better; it will outgrow all that; it is
best not to notice it; I can't bear to be harsh with it; it will be a
great deal of trouble to fight it out, should the child happen to be
persistent: it is a matter of no consequence; and such like
sophistries. I say you may try in this way to dodge a question that
has got some time or other to be met fair and square in the face; and
you may persuade yourself, all the while, that you are thus loving
your own ease, that you are loving your child; but both it and you,
will at some future day see the terrible mistake.
"Oh, why did my father, or my mother, _let_ me do thus and so?" has
been the anguished cry of many a shame-stricken man and woman whose
parents reasoned after this manner.
Now, the point at issue between the child and yourself may seem
trifling. It may be very early in its life that it is made. Perhaps
scarcely past the baby age, it may insist, when well and healthy,
upon being sung or rocked in the arms to sleep, and that by some one
particular person. Now, you are perfectly sure this is unnecessary,
and that it would be much better for the child, apart from the
inconvenience of the practice, to be laid quietly in its bed, with
only some trustful person to watch it. But you reason, it has always
been used to this, and I may have to hear it cry every night for a
week before I can teach it. Well--and what then? The child, to be good
for anything, must be taught some time or other that it cannot gain
its point by crying. Why not now? Of course it should not be placed in
bed till it is sufficiently weary; nor should it be frightened at
being left in a dark room alone, or left alone at all, while the trial
is being made. This attended to, if it cry--let it cry. It will be a
struggle of two or three nights and no more; perhaps not that; and the
moral lesson is learned; after that obedience comes easy.
It is a mistake to suppose, you who are so greedy of a child's love,
that it is more attached to that person who indulges its every whim,
than to the one who can firmly pronounce the monosyllable no, when
necessary. The most brutal word I ever heard spoken, was from a grown
man to a widowed mother, who belonged to that soul-destroying class of
parents who "could never deny a child anything" and whose whole life
had been one slavish endeavor to gratify his every whim without regard
to her own preferences or inclination; and whenever you see such a
man, you may know he had just such a mother; or, having one wiser,
that her attempts at government had been neutralized by one of the
don't-cry-dear-and-you-shall-have-it fathers. It is so strange that
parents who crave to be so fondly remembered by their children in
after years, should be thus short-sighted. It is so strange, that when
they desire next to this, that everybody else should consider their
children supremely lovely and winning, that they should take so direct
a method to render them perfectly disagreeable. Strange that they
should never reflect that some poor wife, in the future, will rue the
day she ever married that selfish, domineering tyrant, now in embryo
in that little boy. Strange that the mother of that blue-eyed little
girl never thinks that the latter may curse her own daughter with that
same passionate temper, which never knew paternal restraint. Stranger
still, that parents launching these little voyagers on the wide ocean
of time, without chart, rudder, or compass, should, when in after days
they suffer total shipwreck, close the doors of their hearts, and
homes, in their shamed and sorrowful faces.
* * * * *
I think there is nothing on earth so lovely as the first waking of a
little child in the morning. The gleeful, chirping voice. The bright
eye. The lovely rose-tint of the cheek. The perfect happiness--the
perfect faith in all future to-morrows!
We who have lain our heads on our pillows so often, with great sorrows
for company; who have tossed, and turned, and writhed, and counted
the lagging hours, and prayed even for the briefest respite in
forgetfulness; who have mercifully slept at last, and our dead have
come back to us, with their smiles and their love, strong enough to
cover any shortcomings of ours. We who have awoke in the morning, with
a sharp shuddering cry at the awful reality, and closed our eyes again
wearily upon the sweet morning light, and the song of birds, and the
scent of flowers, every one of which have given us pangs keener than
death; we who have risen, and with a dead, dull weight at the heart,
moved about mechanically like one walking in sleep, through the gray,
colorless treadmill routine of to-day, a wonder to ourselves;--ah!
with what infinite love and pity do we look upon the blithe waking of
the little child! As it leaps trustfully into our arms, with its
morning caress and its soft cheek to our face, how hard it is
sometimes to keep the eyes from overflowing with the pent-up pain of
the slow years. Oh, the sweet beguilement of that caress! The
trustful, lisping question, which shames us out of our tears, for that
which tears may never bring back. The unconscious bits of wisdom
stammeringly voiced, and left disjointed, and half expressed, in favor
of some childish quip or prank of the moment, which makes us doubt
whether we have most sage or most baby before us. The saucy little
challenge "to play!"
_We_ play? We swallow a great sob and get obediently down on the
carpet to "build block-houses;" and when the little one laughs, as the
tall structure reels, and topples, and finally falls over, and
merrily stands there, showing the little white teeth, clapping hands,
and peeping into our faces, and says reproachfully, "What are you
thinking about? Why don't _you_ laugh?"--we thank God she has so long
a time before she finds out that grieving "_why_." We thank God that
deep and keen as the child is at one moment, she is so ridiculously
butter-fly-ish the next.
And then, at its bidding, we set up the chairs and tables in the
baby-house, and locate the numerous families of dolls, in cradles and
beds, and in parlors; and answer the mimic questions about how "live
people" keep house; and play "doctor," and play "nurse," and "play
have them die," and see them twitched out of bed five minutes after
they have departed this life, to be dressed for a party. And in spite
of ourselves, we laugh at the absurd whimsicalities carried out with
such adult earnestness and gravity.
And yet there are people in the world who don't see a child's mission
in a household; who look upon it as a doll to be dressed, or an animal
to be fed, or a nuisance to be kept out of sight as much as possible.
Heaven bless us, when no other voice or touch or presence can be
borne, a child is often the unconscious Saviour who whispers to the
troubled elements of the soul, "Peace, be still!"
* * * * *
Has it ever happened to you that life's contrasts were so sharply
presented, that you were smitten with shamed pain at being housed,
and clad, and fed, and comfortable, as if you had been guilty of a
great wrong, or injustice, that should be immediately wiped out.
Soon after a deep fall of snow, when fleet horses were flying in all
directions to the tune of merry bells, and the sharp, crisp air was
like wine to the fur-robed riders, I saw a little creature, muffled to
the tip of her pretty nose by the careful hand of love, led down the
steps of a nice house, to a little gaily-painted sleigh, with
cushioned seat, and pretty bells, and soft, warm wrappings, to take
her first ride in the new present "Santa-Claus" had brought her. Three
grown persons were in waiting, to see that she was lifted gently in,
and tucked up, and her hands and feet comfortably bestowed, before
starting on this, her first sleigh-ride. Her bright eyes sparkled with
delight, her voice was merrier than the bells, and the bright rose of
her cheek told of warmth and happiness and plenty. Just three years
old: and as far as _she_ had ever known, _life was all just like
that_. Just at that minute came along another little creature, also
just three years old, and stood by the side of the gaily-painted
little sleigh, looking at its laughing little occupant. _Her_ face was
blue and pinched. A ragged handkerchief was tied over her tangled
brown hair. _Her_ thin cotton dress scarce covered the little purple
knees. _Her_ blue, small fingers held the inevitable beggar's basket,
and the shawl for which the cold wind was contending, left her little
breast and shoulders quite bare. And there she stood, and gazed at
her happier little sister. Merciful Heaven! the horrible contrast, the
terrible mystery of it! Only three years of her sad life gone! So
_much_ of this to endure! and so much still more dreadful that "three
years" could not _yet_ dream of. What had the one child more than the
other done, that each should stand--one with steady, one with
tottering feet--on either side of that dreadful gulf, eying one
another in that guileless, silent way, more terrible to witness than
pen of mine can ever tell?
Well, the little painted sleigh slid away with its merry freight, and
"three years old" stood still and looked after it. She could not
comprehend, had she been told, the sad thoughts that sent down the
shower of pennies from the window above on her little beggar's basket.
But she looked up and said, timidly, "Thank you," with a shy, little
happy smile, as she scrambled them up out of the snow at her feet.
Poor, little baby!--for she was nothing more. And there are hundreds
just like her in New York. There's the pity of it. Your _men_ beggars
don't fret me, unless crippled. If a _woman_ can earn an honest living
in the face of so many society and custom-dragons, surely a _man_
ought, or starve. But these babies--oh! it is dreadful. And the more
pitiful you are to them, the harder their lot is; since the more
_substantial_ pity they excite, the more profitable they become to the
callous wretches who live by it.
And after all, these two little "three years old" may yet change
places. God knows. Often I meet, in my walks, a lady elegantly
apparelled--sometimes in her own carriage, sometimes walking--who
once stood shivering at area doors, like that little owner of the
beggar's basket--_now_ an honored and happy wife and mother. They
don't _all_ go down--down--as inexorable time grinds on. Still the
exceptions are so rare, unless they are snatched away by the
sheltering arms of death, or love, before pollution becomes indelible,
that they are easily counted.
Back comes the gay little sleigh and the rosy "three years old!" Now
she is taken carefully into the house, and some warm milk prepared for
her, and slippers are warmed for her feet, and her face covered with
kisses; and playthings, which are legion, spread before her; and the
whole house is on its knees, listening to her prattle, and rejoicing
in her presence, that fills the house like the perfume of a sweet
flower, like the warm rays of the sun, like the song of a bird. And
the other? Read this from the daily paper: "Yesterday, a little
beggar-girl, three years old, was run over by the street-car,
at ---- street, while attempting to cross, and instantly killed." Better
so. One short pang, and all the suffering over.
* * * * *
Walking behind a father and his prattling child--a fairy little
girl--the other day, I heard a bit of human nature. "I mean to have a
tea-party," lisped the little thing; "a tea-party, papa." "Do you?"
said the father; "Well, whom shall you invite?" "I shan't ask anybody
who don't have tea at _their_ houses," replied the little woman.
"There's worldly wisdom," thought we, "in pantalettes. _So young and
so calculating!_" We smiled--who could help it?--at the little mite;
but we sighed, also. We would rather have heard those infantile lips
say: "I shall ask everybody who _don't_ have tea at their
houses,"--not as a mocking-bird or parrot would say it, as a lesson
taught, but because it was the out-gushing of a warm little unspoiled
heart. That child but echoed, probably, what she had listened to
unobserved, from mamma's lips, on the eve of some party or dinner. The
child who sits playing with its doll, be it remembered, oh mothers, is
not always deaf, dumb, and blind to what is passing around, though it
may seem so. The seed dropped carelessly then, may take root, and
develop into a tree, under whose withering influence your every
earthly hope shall perish.
* * * * *
Sometimes one thinks what a pity children should ever grow up. The
other day, passing through an entry of one of our public buildings, I
saw two little boys, of the ages of six and eight, with their arms
about each other's neck, exchanging kiss after kiss. It was such a
pretty sight, in that noisy den of business, that one could but stop
to look. The younger of the children, noticing this, looked up with
such a heaven of love in his face, and said, in explanation, "_he is
my brother_!" Pity they should ever grow up, thought we, as we passed
along. Pity that the world, with its clashing interests of business,
love, and politics, should ever come between them. Pity that they
should ever coldly exchange finger-tips, or, more wretched still, not
even exchange glances. Pity that one should sorrow, and grieve, and
hunger, and thirst, and yearn for sympathy, while the other should
sleep, and eat, and drink, unmindful of his fate. Pity that one with
meek-folded hands should pass into the land of silence, and no tear of
repentance and affection fall upon his marble face from the eyes of
his "brother." Such things have been. That is why we thought, pity
they should ever grow up!--"_Heaven lies so near us in our infancy._"
_WOMEN AND THEIR DISCONTENTS._
A gentleman asked me the other day, "Why are the women of the present
day so discontented with their lot?" Now there was no denying the
fact, staring, as it does, from every page of "women's books," peeping
out under the flimsy veil of a jest in their conversation, or boldly
challenging your attention in some rasping sarcasm, according to the
taste or humor of the writer or speaker. "Men _can't_ be such devils
as these women seem to suppose," said a gentleman anxious for the
credit of his sex; "and women ought to be able to fulfill the duties
of wives and mothers without such constant complaint. Now my
grandmother"--Here I laid a finger on his lip. Do you know, said I,
that you have this very minute, to use a slang phrase--unladylike,
perhaps, but expressive--do you know that you have this very minute
"put your foot in it?" Do you know that if there is anything in the
world that makes a woman discontented and discouraged, it is to have
some piece of ossified female perfection, in the shape of a relative,
held up to her imitation by her husband--some woman, with chalk and
water in her veins, instead of blood, who is "good" merely because she
is _petrified_? Now, how would a man like his wife constantly to
remind him of the very superior manner in which her grandfather
conducted his business matters? how superior to his was his way of
book-keeping, and of managing his various clerks and subordinates? how
like clockwork he always arranged everything?--and suppose she says
this, too, at moments when her husband had done his very best to be
true to his duties. I wonder how long before he would exclaim, Oh!
bother your grandfather; he did business _his_ way, and I shall do my
business mine.
Now you see how I have lost patience, as well as what I was going to
say, by the vision of your grandmother, sir. What I was going to
remark when you interrupted me, was this: that, in my opinion, the
root of all this discontent is the prevailing physical inability of
women to face the inevitable cares and duties of married life. Added
to this, the want of magnanimity and _un_wisdom that men show, in
lifting the eyebrow of indifference, or ill-disguised vexation, when
the very fragility they fell in love with, staggers and falls under
the burdens of life. Now were these husbands about to possess a horse,
they would consider first whether they wanted a farm-horse or a fancy
horse--a working animal or an ornamental one. Having chosen the
latter, they would be very careful to choose a carriage of _light
weight_ for it to draw, and not finding one sufficiently light, would
be very apt to have one manufactured on purpose, rather than run the
risk of overtasking the animal's powers. They would treat him
carefully, feed him well, see that he rested sufficiently when weary;
pat him, coax him, instead of lashing and goading him, when, for some
unknown reason, his steps seemed to falter. Now is a man's wife of
less consequence than his horse? Is it less necessary he should stop
to consider, before he marries her, _why_ he wants her? and having
settled that question, make his choice accordingly, after having also
considered what means are at his disposal to carry out his intentions
as to their mutual comfort? In old times, many men married only to get
their butter churned, their cheese made, their clothes mended, and
their meals prepared, their wives raising pigs and children in the
intervals. By this humanitarian process, all that was left of a wife
at thirty, was a horn-comb, inserted in six hairs, on the top of her
head, and a figure resembling the letter _C_. The men of the present
day seemed to have learned no better how to _husband_ their wives.
Their eye is caught by a pretty pink-and-white creature, who steps
about gracefully and gleefully in her father's comfortable,
well-appointed house. They never consider _has she good health_? _Will
she make a healthy Mother?_ nor the good sense to turn resolutely
away, and say, it would be cruelty in me to take her feeble prettiness
from that warmly lined nest, to a home in the performance of whose
duties she would inevitably break down. Nor do they say, when they
have made the irretrievable mistake of marrying her, and find this
weary, discouraged little woman crying over it, "Poor child, I ought
to have foreseen all this, but as I didn't, I must love and comfort
you all the more." Not a bit of it. The more they have been to blame,
the more they blame _her_, and point with exacting finger to that
horrid, stereotyped piece of perfection, "_my_ grandmother." Then they
prate to her about patience--"Job's patience." Now if there _is_ a
proverb that needs re-vamping, it is "_The patience of Job_." In the
first place, Job _wasn't_ patient. Like all the rest of his sex, from
that day to the present, he could be heroic only for a little while at
a time. He _began_ bravely; but ended, as most of them do under
annoyance, by cursing and swearing. Patient as Job! Did Job ever try,
when he was hungry, to eat shad with a frisky baby in his lap? Did Job
ever, after nursing one all night, and upon taking his seat at the
breakfast-table the morning after, pour out coffee for six people, and
second cups after that, before he had a chance to take a mouthful
himself? Pshaw! I've no patience with "Job's patience." It is of no
use to multiply instances; but there's not a faithful house-mother in
the land who does not out-distance him in the sight of men and angels,
every hour in the twenty-four.
Think of the case of our farmers' wives. Now, just consider it a
little. Next to being a minister's wife, I think I should dread being
the wife of a farmer. Sometimes, indeed, the terms are synonymous.
Raising children and chickens, _ad infinitum_; making butter, cheese,
bread, and the national and omnipresent pie; cutting, making and
mending the clothes for a whole household, not to speak of doing
their washing and ironing; taking care of the pigs and the vegetable
garden; making winter-apple sauce by the barrel, and pickling myriads
of cucumbers; drying fruits and herbs; putting all the twins through
the measles, whooping-cough, mumps, scarlet-fever and chicken-pox;
besides keeping a perpetual river of hot grease on the kitchen table,
in which is to float potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips for the
ravenous maws of the "farm-hands."
No wonder that the poor things look harassed, jaded and toil-worn,
long before they arrive at middle age. No wonder that a life so hard
and angular, should obliterate all the graces of femininity--when no
margin is left, year after year, for those little refinements which a
woman under any pressure of circumstances, naturally and rightly
desires, and lacking which, she is inevitably unhappy and coarsened.
Now your farmer is a round, stalwart, comfortable animal. There is no
baby wailing at _his_ pantaloons while he ploughs or makes fences.
_He_ lies down under the nearest tree and rests, or sleeps, when he
can no longer work with profit. He comes in to his dinner with the
appetite of a hyena, and the digestion of a rhinoceros, and goes forth
again to the hayfield till called home to supper. _There_ is his wife,
and too often with the same frowsy head with which she rose in the
morning, darting hither and thither for whatever is wanted, or helping
the hungry, children or the farm-hands. After the supper is finished
come the dish-washing, and milking, and the thought for to-morrow's
breakfast; and then perhaps all night she sleeps with one eye open for
a baby or a sick child, and rises again to pursue the same unrelieved,
treadmill, wearing round, the next day.
Now the uppermost idea in the minds of too many farmers is, _how to
get the greatest possible amount of work out of their wives_. A poorer
policy than this can scarcely be. They treat their cattle better. If
they are about to be presented with a fine calf or colt, they take
pains that the prospective mother is well cared for, both before and
after the event. The farmer who would not do this would be considered
extremely short-sighted. Their cattle are not allowed to be
overworked, or underfed, or abused in any way. Now, pray, is not a
farmer's wife as valuable an animal as a cow, or a horse, even looking
at the practical side of it? Is it not as important to have a sound,
healthy mother of children, as to have a healthy mare or cow? You may
say that no woman should marry a farmer, who does not _expect to
work_. I say, in reply, that woman was never intended to split or
carry wood, or to carry heavy pails or buckets of water. And yet how
many farmers can we count who ever think of the women of the house, in
regard to the distance or proximity of the wood or the water to the
kitchen? while too many grudge to these overworked women that
labor-saving apparatus in every department of their work, which would
prolong their lives years, to a family of growing children. Then, to
grudge such an industrious wife decent raiment, wherewith to make
herself and her children neat and comfortable, is a shame. To oblige
_such_ a woman to plead like a beggar for the dollar she has earned a
thousand times over _in any family but his own_, should make him
blush. Look at our farmers' wives all over the land, and see if, with
rare exceptions, their toil-worn, harassed faces do not indorse my
statement. Every mother should have time to _talk_ with her
children--to acquaint herself with their souls as well as their
bodies--to do something besides wash their faces and clothes. And how
are these hurried, weary women to find it? Of what avail is it to
those children who _come up_, but who are not _brought up_, that
another meadow, or another barn, is added to the family inheritance,
when the grass waves over the mother's tombstone before their
childhood and youth is past? or when they can remember her only as a
fretted, querulous, care-burdened, over-tasked creature, who was
always jostling them out of the way to catch up some burden which she
dare not drop, though she drop by the way herself.
* * * * *
Sunday, "the Day of Rest," so called, to many mothers of families, is
the most toilsome day of the whole week. Children, too young to go to
church, must of course be cared for at home; domestics on that day, of
all others, expect their liberty. The father of the family, also, in
many cases, thinks it hard if, after a week's labor, he too cannot
roam _without_ his family; never remembering that his wife, for the
same reason, needs rest equally with himself, instead of shouldering
on that day a double burden. Weary with family cares, she remembers
the good word of cheer to which she has in days gone by listened from
some clergyman, not too library-read to remember that he was _human_.
The good, sympathetic word that sent her home strengthened for another
week's duties. The good word, which men think they can do without; but
which women, with the petty be-littling every day annoyances of their
monotonous life, long for, as does a tired child to lay its head on
its mother's breast. A mother may feel thus and yet have no desire to
evade the responsible duties of her office. Indeed, had she not often
her oratory in her own heart, she would sink discouraged oftener than
she does, lacking the human sympathy which is often withheld by those
upon whom she has the nearest claim for it. To such a woman it is not
a mere form to "go to church;" it is not to her a fashion exchange;
she _really_ desires the spiritual help she seeks. _You_ may find
nothing in the words that come to her like the cool hand on the
fevered brow. The psalm which is discord to your ear, may soothe her,
like a mother's murmured lullaby. The prayer, which to you is an
offence, brings her face to face with One who is touched by our
infirmities. If an "undevout astronomer is mad," it seems to me that
an undevout woman is still more so. Our insane asylums are full of
women, who, leaning on some human heart for love and sympathy, and
meeting only misappreciation, have gone there, past the Cross, where
alone they could have laid down burdens too heavy to bear unshared. A
great book is unwritten on this theme. When men become less gross and
unspiritual than they now are, they will see the great wrong of which
they are guilty, in their impatience of women's keenest sufferings
because they "are only mental."
* * * * *
Ladies, many of you attempt too much. I am convinced that there are
times in everybody's experience when there is so much to be done, that
the only way to do it is to sit down and do nothing. This sounds
paradoxical, but it is not. For instance: the overtasked mother of a
family, in moderate circumstances, who must be brains, hands, stomach
and feet for a dozen little children, and their father, who counts
full another dozen. Do the best she may, plan the wisest she may, her
work accumulates fearfully on her hands. One day's labor laps over on
the next, till she cannot sleep at night for fear she shall oversleep
in the morning. And though she works hard all day, and gives herself
no relaxation, she cannot see any result at the close, save that she
"hath done what she could." Of course you say, let her be satisfied
with that, and not worry about it. That is only another proof how easy
it is for some people to bear the troubles of _other_ people. Suppose
her nervous system has been strained to the utmost, so that every
step is a weariness, and every fresh and unexpected demand sets her
"all of a tremble," as women express it, what is the use of reasoning
then about not working? The more she can't work, the more she will try
to, till she drops in her tracks, unless, catching sight of her
prospective coffin, she stops in time. Now there are self-sacrificing
mothers who need somebody to say to them, "Stop! you have just to make
your choice now, between death and life. You have expended all the
strength you have on hand--and must lay in a new stock before any more
work can be done by you. So don't go near your kitchen; if your cook
goes to sleep in the sink on washing-day, let her; if your chambermaid
spends the most of her time on ironing-day with the grocer-boy in the
area, don't _you_ know anything about it. Get right into bed, and lie
there, just as a man would do if he didn't feel one quarter as bad as
you do; and ring every bell in the house, every five minutes, for
everything you want, or think you want; and my word for it, the world
will keep on going round just the same, as if you were spinning a
spasmodic tee-totum, as hens do, long after their heads have been cut
off. Yes--just lie there till you get rested; and they all find out,
by picking up the burdens you have dropped, what a load you have been
uncomplainingly shouldering. Yes--just lie there; and tell them to
bring you something nice to eat and drink--yes, _drink_; and forbid,
under dreadful penalties, anybody asking you what the family are to
have for dinner. Let them eat what they like, so that they don't
trouble you, and season it to their tastes; and here's hoping it will
do them good."
And now having located you comfortably under the quilt, out of harm's
way, let me tell you that if you think you are doing God service, or
anybody else, by using up a year's strength in a week, you have made a
sinful mistake. I don't care anything about that basket of unmended
stockings, or unmade pinafores, or any other nursery nightmare which
haunts the dreams of these "Martha" mothers. You have but one life to
live, that's plain; and when you are dead, all the king's men can't
make you stand on your feet again, that's plain. Well, then--don't be
dead. In the first place, go out a part of every day, rain or shine,
for the fresh air, and don't tell me you can't; at least not while you
can stop to embroider your children's clothes. As to "dressing to go
out," don't dress. If you are clean and whole, that's enough; have
boots with elastics at the side, instead of those long mile Balmorals
that take so long to "lace up,"--in short, _simplify your dressing_,
and then stop every wheel in the house if necessary in order to go
out, but go; fifteen minutes is better than nothing; if you can't get
out in the day-time, run out in the evening; and if your husband can't
see the necessity of it, perhaps he will on reflection after you have
gone out. The moral of all which is, that if nobody else will take
care of you, you must just take care of yourself. As to the
children--I might write a long book on this head, or those heads,
bless 'em! THEY can't help being born, poor things, though they often
get slapped for that, and nothing else, as far as I can see. It is a
pity you hadn't three instead of six, so that the care of them might
be a pleasure instead of a weariness; but "that's none of my
business," as people say after they have been unusually meddlesome and
impertinent. Still I repeat it, I wish you _had_ three instead of six,
and I don't care if you _do_ go and tell John.
* * * * *
Women can relieve their minds, now-a-days, in one way that was
formerly denied them: they can write! a woman who wrote, used to be
considered a sort of monster--At this day it is difficult to find one
who does not write, or has not written, or who has not, at least, a
strong desire to do so. Gridirons and darning-needles are getting
monotonous. A part of their time the women of to-day are content to
devote to their consideration when necessary; but you will rarely find
one--at least among women who _think_--who does not silently rebel
against allowing them a monopoly.
What? you inquire, would you encourage, in the present overcrowded
state of the literary market, any more women scribblers? Stop a bit.
It does not follow that she should wish or seek to give to the world
what she has written. I look around and see innumerable women, to
whose barren, loveless life this would be improvement and solace, and
I say to them, write! Write, if it will make that life brighter, or
happier, or less monotonous. Write! it will be a safe outlet for
thoughts and feelings, that maybe the nearest friend you have, has
never dreamed had place in your heart and brain. You should have read
the letters I have received; you should have talked with the women I
have talked with; in short, you should have walked this earth with
your eyes open, instead of shut, as far as its women are concerned, to
indorse this advice. Nor do I qualify what I have said on account of
social position, or age, or even education. It is not _safe_ for the
women of 1868 to shut down so much that cries out for sympathy and
expression, because life is such a maelstrom of business or folly, or
both, that those to whom they have bound themselves, body and soul,
recognize only the needs of the former. _Let them write_ if they will.
One of these days, when that diary is found, when the hand that penned
it shall be dust, with what amazement and remorse will many a husband,
or father, exclaim, I never knew my wife, or my child, till this
moment; all these years she has sat by my hearth, and slumbered by my
side, and I have been a stranger to her. And you sit there, and you
read sentence after sentence, and recall the day, the month, the week,
when she moved calmly, and you thought happily, or, at least,
contentedly, about the house, all the while her heart was aching, when
a kind word from you, or even a touch of your hand upon her head, as
you passed out to business, or pleasure, would have cheered her, oh so
much! When had you sat down by her side after the day's work for both
was over, and talked with her just a few moments of something besides
the price of groceries, and the number of shoes Tommy had kicked out,
all of which, proper and necessary in their place, need not of
necessity form the stable of conversation between a married pair; had
you done this; had you recognized that she had a _soul_ as well as
yourself, how much sunshine you might have thrown over her colorless
life!
"Perhaps, sir," you reply; "but I have left my wife far behind in the
region of thought. It would only distress her to do this!" How do you
know that? And if it were so, are you content to leave her--the mother
of your children--so far behind? _Ought_ you to do it? Should you not,
by raising the self-respect you have well nigh crushed by your
indifference and neglect, extend a manly hand to her help? _I_ think
so. The pink cheeks which first won you may have faded, but remember
that it was in your service, when you quietly accept the fact that
"you have left your wife far behind you in mental improvement." Oh! it
is pitiable this growing apart of man and wife, for lack of a little
generous consideration and magnanimity! It is pitiable to see a
husband without a thought that he might and should occasionally, have
given his wife a lift out of the petty, harrowing details of her
woman's life, turn from her, in company, to address his conversation
to some woman who, happier than she, has had time and opportunity for
mental culture. You do not see, sir--you will not see--you do not
desire to see, how her cheek flushes, and her eye moistens, and her
heart sinks like lead as you thus wound her self-respect. You think
her "cross and ill-natured," if when, the next morning, you converse
with her on the price of butter, she answers you listlessly and with a
total want of interest in the treadmill-subject.
I say to such women: Write! Rescue a part of each week at least for
reading, and putting down on paper, for your own private benefit, your
thoughts and feelings. Not for the _world's_ eye, unless you choose,
but to lift yourselves out the dead-level of your lives; to keep off
inanition; to lessen the number who are yearly added to our lunatic
asylums from the ranks of misappreciated, unhappy womanhood, narrowed
by lives made up of details. Fight it! oppose it, for your own sakes
and your children's! Do not be _mentally_ annihilated by it. It is all
very well to sneer at this and raise the old cry of "a woman's sphere
being home"--which, by the way, you hear oftenest from men whose home
is only a place to feed and sleep in. You might as well say that a
man's sphere is his shop or his counting-room. How many of them, think
you, would be contented, year in and year out, to eat, drink, and
sleep as well as to transact business there, and _never desire_ or
_take_, at all costs, some let-up from its monotonous grind? How many
would like to forego the walk to and from the place of business?
forego the opportunities for conversation, which chance thus throws in
their way, with other men bent on the same or other errands? Have,
literally, _no_ variety in their lives? Oh, if you could be a woman
but one year and try it! A woman--but not necessarily a butterfly--not
necessarily a machine, which, once wound up by the marriage ceremony,
is expected to click on with undeviating monotony till Death stops the
hands.
* * * * *
I am often asked the question, "Do I believe that women should vote?"
Most assuredly. I am heart and soul with the women-speakers and
lecturers, and workers in public and private, who are trying to bring
this thing about. I have heard and read all the pros and cons on this
subject; and I have never yet heard, or read, any argument in its
_dis_favor, which is worth considering by whomsoever uttered, or
written. Everything must have a beginning, and no noble enterprise was
ever yet undertaken that did not find its objectors and assailants.
That is to be expected. These women-pioneers are prepared for this. It
is not pleasant, to be sure, to see those men in their audiences, who
should give them a hearty, manly support, making flippant, foolish,
shallow remarks on the subject; or thanking God that _their_ wives and
daughters are not "mixed up in it." Meantime their wives and daughters
may be "mixed up" in many things much less to their credit, and much
more to the detriment of their relations as mothers and wives. And
when I hear a woman making fun of this subject, or languidly declaring
that, for her part, she wouldn't give a fig to vote, and she is only
glad enough to be rid of the whole bothering thing, I feel only pity,
that in this glorious year of our Lord, 1869, she should still prefer
going back to the dark ages. I feel only pity, that, torpidly and
selfishly content with her ribbons and dresses, she may never see or
think of those other women, who may be lifted out of their wretched
condition, of low wages and starvation, by this very lever of power.
As to the principal objection urged against voting, I think a woman
may vote and yet be a refined, and lady-like, and intelligent person,
and worthy of all respect from those who hold womanhood in the highest
estimation. I think she may go to the ballot-box without receiving
contamination, just as I believe that she may walk in the public
thoroughfares, and pass the most desperate characters, of both sexes,
without a spot on her spiritual raiment. Nay, more--I believe that
_through her_ the ballot-box is to become regenerated. Nor do I
believe that any man, educated or uneducated, unless under the
influence of liquor, would in any way make that errand a disagreeable
one to her. You tell me, but they _are_ under that influence more or
less on election day. Very well--the remedy for that is in closing the
liquor-shops till it is over.
As to women "voting as their husbands tell them," I have my own
opinion, which I think results would prove to be correct. I think, for
instance, that no wife of a drunkard would vote that any drunkard
should hold office, howsoever her husband himself might vote, or tell
her to vote. Then, why is it any worse for a _woman_ "to vote as she
is bid," than for an ignorant _male_ voter to vote as he is bid. And
as to the "soil and stain on woman's purity," which timidity, and
conservatism, and selfishness insists shall follow the act, it might
be well, in answer, to draw aside the veil from many homes in New
York, _not_ in the vicinity of the Five Points either, where
long-suffering, uncomplaining wives and mothers, endure a defilement
and brutality on legal compulsion, to which this, at the worst
estimate ever made by its opponents, would be spotlessness itself.
No--no. Not one, or all of these reasons together, is the _true_
reason for this opposition; and what is more, not one, or all of these
reasons together, will _eventually_ prevent women from having the
franchise. It is only a question of time; that's one comfort.
_WOMEN AND SOME OF THEIR MISTAKES._
But, then, it is not altogether the fault of men, that women have so
poor a time in this world.
If I had a boy, my chief aim would be to make him yield to his
sisters. Why? _Because_ so many boys have been taught a contrary
lesson; their selfishness every day growing stronger and stronger,
till the day when they marry some woman, who is expected to "fall into
line"--toes out, head erect, shoulders squared--at the word of
command, like their sisters. It is a very common thing to hear a
mother say to her daughters, you must do this, or that, or omit doing
this, or that, or some day you will cause the unhappiness of the man
you marry. When was a parent ever known to say this to a _boy_ about
his future wife? The idea, I have no doubt, would be considered quite
ludicrous. But I have yet to learn why it is not as necessary in one
case as in the other. Now, to oblige the girls of a family to be
punctual to their meals, on penalty of displeasure, and cold food, and
to save a warm breakfast for the _boy_, whenever he chooses to lie in
bed an hour or two later than the rest of the family, is making a
fatal mistake, so far as the boy is concerned, and educating a selfish
husband for some unfortunate girl who may be entrapped by him. _Then_
this foolish mother will be the very first to lament to her circle of
sympathizing friends, that "_her_ John" should have married a woman
who is so exacting and unyielding. _Then_, these sisters will mourn
publicly that dear "John" should have made such a terrible matrimonial
blunder as to marry a woman who was not enamored of mending his
stockings every evening in the week, which he spent out doors, in any
kind of amusement that the whim of the hour suggested. _Then_--aunts,
and cousins, and uncles, of the hundredth degree, will join and swell
the chorus, till "dear John," if he has not sense enough to see the
discrepancy between their preaching and their practice, as exemplified
in their exactions towards their own husbands, will believe himself
entitled to honorable mention in "Fox's Book of Martyrs."
The evil, I have said, _begins_ with the boy's home education.
"Sister" must mend his gloves and stockings, and alter his shirts,
whenever he wishes; but "brother" may altogether decline waiting upon
his sisters to evening visits, or amusements, in favor of other
ladies, or may, in any other way, show his utter selfishness and
disregard of their natural claims upon him.
This is all wrong, and boys so brought up must of necessity resist,
when matrimony presents any other side of the question than that of
blind, unswerving obedience.
Now, imagine this selfishness intensified a thousand fold by solitary
years of bachelorhood, and you have a creature to whom "The Happy
Family" would forever be a myth.
Perhaps you think that I imagine selfishness to be peculiarly the vice
of the other sex. Not at all. There are women who are most
disgustingly selfish; wives and mothers unworthy both these titles;
but I shall find you ten selfish husbands to one selfish wife, and
therefore I call the attention of parents to this part of their sons'
education. If half the admonitions bestowed so lavishly upon girls
were addressed to their brothers, the family estate and the public
would be the gainers.
There is one class of women that in my opinion need extinguishing. I
think I hear some male voice exclaim, _One_? I wish there were not a
great many! Sir! know that the foolishest woman who was ever born is
better than most men; but I am not treating of that branch of the
subject now. As I was about to remark, there is a class of sentimental
women who use up the whole dictionary in speaking of a pin, and
circumlocute about the alphabet in such a way, every time they open
their mincing lips, that nobody but themselves can know what they are
talking about, and truth to say, I should have been safe not to admit
even that exception. Their "_ske-iy_" must always be heavenly
"_ble-u_;" to touch household matters with so much as the end of a
taper finger would be "beneneath them," and that though Astor may have
considerable more money in the bank than themselves. To sweep, to
dust, to make a bed, to look into a kitchen-closet, to superintend a
dinner--was a woman made for that? they indignantly exclaim. Now,
while I as indignantly deny that she was born with a gridiron round
her neck, I repudiate the idea that any one of these duties is beneath
any woman, if it be necessary or best that she should perform them. I
could count you a dozen women on my fingers' ends, whom the reading
world has delighted to honor, who held no such flimsy, sickly,
hot-house views as these. Because a woman can appreciate a good book,
or even write one, or talk or think intelligently, is she not to be a
breezy, stirring, wide-awake, efficient, thorough, capable
housekeeper? Is she not to be a soulful wife and a loving, judicious
mother? Is she to disdain to comb a little tumbled head, or to wash a
pair of sticky little paws, or to mend a rent in a pinafore or little
pair of trousers? I tell you there's a false ring about women who talk
that way. No woman of true intellect ever felt such duties _beneath_
her. She may like much better to read an interesting book, or write
out her own thoughts when she feels the inspiration, than to be _much_
employed this way, but she will never, never disdain it, and she will
faithfully stand at her post if there can be no responsible
relief-guard. You will never find her sentimentally whining about
moonshine, while her neglected children are running loose in the
neighbors' houses, or through the streets. You may be sure she is the
wrong sort of woman who does this; she has neither head enough to
attain to that which she is counterfeiting, nor heart enough really to
care for the children she has so thoughtlessly launched upon the
troubled sea of life. I sincerely believe that there are few women
with a desire for intellectual improvement, who cannot secure it if
they will. To be honest, they find plenty of time to put no end of
embroidery on their children's clothes; plenty of time to keep up the
neck-and-neck race of fashion, though it may be in third-rate
imitations. They will sit up till midnight, but they will trim a dress
or bonnet in the latest style, if they cannot hire it done, when the
same energy would, if they felt inclined, furnish the _inside_ of
their heads much more profitably; for mark you, these women who are
above household cares will run their feet off to match a trimming, or
chase down a coveted color in a ribbon. _That_ isn't "belittling!"
_That_ isn't "trivial!" _That_ isn't "beneath them!"
It is very funny how such women will fancy they are recommending
themselves by this kind of talk, to persons whose approbation they
sometimes seek. If they only knew what a sensible, rational person may
be thinking about while they are patiently but politely listening to
such befogged nonsense; how pity is dominant where they suppose
admiration to be the while; how the listener longs to break out and
say, My dear woman, _I_ have washed and ironed, and baked and brewed,
and swept and dusted, and washed children, and made bonnets, and cut
and made dresses, and mended old coats, and cleaned house, and made
carpets, and nailed them down, and cleaned windows, and washed dishes,
and tended the door-bell, and done every "menial" thing you can think
of, when it came to me to do, and I'm none the worse for it, though
perhaps you would not have complimented my "intellect," as you call
it, had you known it. Lord bless me! there's nothing like one's _own_
hands and feet. Bells are very good institutions when one is sick, but
I never found that person who, when I had the use of my feet, could do
a thing as quick as myself, and as a general thing the more you pay
them the slower they move; and as I'm of the comet order, I quite
forget it is "_beneath me_" to do things, till I've done them. So you
see, after all, so far as I am concerned, it is no great credit to me,
although it _is_ very shocking to know that a woman who writes isn't
always dressed in sky blue, and employed in smelling a violet.
* * * * *
Then there is another subject to which I wish women would give a
little consideration; and that is the reason for the decline of the
good old-fashioned hospitality. I think the abolition of the good old
"tea" of our ancestors has a great deal to do with it, and the
prevalent and absurd idea that hospitality is not hospitality, unless
indorsed by a French cook, and a brown-stone front. Now, _dinner_
takes the place of this meal. Dinner! which involves half a dozen
courses, with dessert and wines to match. That is an affair which
requires the close supervision of the wife and mother of the family,
even though she may have a cook well-skilled, and attendants
well-drilled. Now, as most American wives and mothers, have about as
much strain on their vitality from day to day as they can possibly,
with their fragile constitutions, endure, they naturally prefer as few
of these domestic upheavings as they can get along with, and retain
their social footing; nor for one do I blame them for this. The blame,
is in a system which subordinates everything lovely and desirable in
the way of hospitality, to the coarse pleasures of show and gluttony.
Who shall be the bold lady pioneer of reform in this matter?
Certainly, ladies have a personal interest in abolishing this state of
things, when gentlemen's dinner-parties, including half a dozen
invitations, to the exclusion of every lady, except the hostess, are
becoming so common. Make your dinners more simple, fair dames, and
make your dress as simple as your dinners. Restore in this way the
power to invite your friends oftener, and let your and your husband's
invitations to dinner, include gentlemen _and their wives_. If the
latter are fools, they will not become less so by being excluded from
rational conversation. If they are _not_ fools, it is an outrage to
treat them as if they were. It would be useless, of course, to hint
that dinner had better be at midday. Fashion would turn up her nose at
the idea. And yet you know very well that _that_ is the natural and
most wholesome time to dine. As to gentlemen "not being able to leave
their business," to do this, I might suggest that they go to bed
earlier, to enable them to go earlier to that business in the morning.
I might also add, that gentlemen generally can find time to do
anything which they greatly desire to do. I might also add, that for
one child or young person who eats this heartiest meal of the day, and
goes directly to bed upon it without harm, thousands bring on an
indigestion, which makes life a curse instead of the blessing it ought
to be.
Where do you ever hear now, the frank, hearty invitation, "Come in any
time and see us?" How is it possible, when a table preparation that
involves so much thought and expense, is considered the proper way to
honor a guest, and conversation and cordiality are secondary matters,
if not altogether ignored? Of what use is it to have a fine house, and
well-stocked wine-cellar, and drilled servants, when the passion for
show has reached such a pitch, that public saloons and suites of rooms
in vast hotels, must be hired, and a man leave his own house, be it
ever so fine, because he must have more room and more parade, than any
private house can by any possibility furnish, without pitching the
whole family into inextricable chaos and confusion for a month.
This is all false and wrong, and demoralizing. It is death to social
life--death to the true happiness and well-being of the family, and in
my opinion, ladies are to blame for it, and ladies only can effect a
reform.
Simplify your toilets--simplify your dinners, ladies. There are many
of you who have sufficient good sense to indorse this view of the
case; how many are there with sufficient courage to defy the tyranny
of omnipotent fashion and carry it out?
* * * * *
Now, let me tell you how it was in good old-fashioned New England
towns; when people enjoyed life five times as well as now. Then
husbands, wives, and children had not each a separate circle of
acquaintances, and their chief aim was not to regulate matters, with a
view to be in each other's society as little as possible. That fatal
death-blow to the purity, happiness, and love of home.
_Then_ you went at dark to tea. I am speaking of the old-fashioned New
England parties. You and your husband, and your eldest boy or girl;
the latter being instructed not to pull over the cake to get the best
piece, or otherwise to misbehave themselves. There were assembled the
principal members of the church, and, above all, its pastor and
spouse, and deacons ditto. The married women had on their best caps
and collars, and the regulation black-silk-company-dress, which, in my
opinion, has never been improved upon by profane modern fingers. The
young girls wore a merino of bright hue, if it were winter, with a
little frill of lace about the shoulders; or a white cambric dress if
the mildness of the weather admitted. The men always in black, laity
or clergy, with flesh-colored gloves, of Nature's own making,
warranted to fit.
All assembled, the buzz of talk was soon agreeably interrupted by the
entrance of a servant bearing a heavily-laden tray of cups and
saucers, filled with tea and coffee, cream and sugar. This tray was
rested on a table; and the host, rising, requested Rev. Mr. ---- to
ask a blessing. He did it, and the youngsters, eying the cake, wished
it had been shorter. So did the girl in charge of the tray. "Blessing"
at last over, the tea and coffee were distributed. The matrons
charging their initiatory fledglings "not to spill over," often wisely
pouring a spoonful of coffee or tea, from the cup into the saucer, to
prevent the former from any china-gymnastics unfavorable to the best
gown or carpet. The men turned their toes in till they met; spread
their red silk handkerchiefs over their bony knees, and on that risky,
improvised, graceful lap, placed the hot cup of tea, with an awful
sense of responsibility, which interfered with the half-finished
account of the last "revival." Then came a tray of thinly-sliced bread
and butter, delicate and tempting; rich cake, guiltless of hartshorn
or soda, with delicate sandwiches, and tiny tarts.
This ceremony gone through, the young people crawled from the maternal
wing, and laughed and talked in corners, as freely and hilariously as
if they were not "children of damnation," destined to eternal torment
if they did not indorse the creed of their forefathers. Their elders,
with satisfied stomachs, and cheerful voices and faces, seemed to have
merged the awful "hell," too, for the time being; and nobody would
have supposed them capable of bringing children into the world, to be
scared through it with a claw-footed devil constantly at their backs.
As the evening went on, the buzz and noise increased. The youngsters
giggled and pushed about, keeping jealous watch the while, for the
nine o'clock tray of goodies, which was to delight their eyes and
feast their palates. This tray contained the biggest oranges and
apples, the freshest cluster-raisins, and almonds, hickory nuts,
three-cornered nuts, filberts and grapes. After this came a tray of
preserved quinces, or plums, or peaches, with little pitchers of
_real_ cream. Then, to wind up, little cunning glasses filled with
lemonade, made of _lemons_.
_Now_ the youngsters had plenty to do. So absorbed were they, cracking
nuts and jokes, that when the minister, seizing the back of a chair in
the middle of the room, said, "Let us pray," the difficulty of cutting
a laugh off short in the middle, and disposing of their plates,
presented itself in such an hysterical manner, that a pinch of the
ear, or a shake of the shoulders, had to be resorted to, to bring
things to a spiritual focus. After prayers came speedy cloakings,
shawlings, and kind farewells and greetings; and by _ten_, or shortly
after, the hour at which modern parties _begin_, visitors and visited
were all tucked comfortably between the sheets.
_Now._ Nobody can give a party that does not involve the expenditure
of hundreds of dollars. Dinner, or evening party, it is all the same.
The hostess muddles her brain about "devilled fowl," "frozen
puddings," "meringue" things, of every shape--floral pyramids, for
which she has _my_ forgiveness, for fashion never had a more
pardonable sin than this. She must have dozens of hired silver, and
chairs, and hired waiters, and the mantua-maker must be driven wild
for dress trimmings, and the interior of the house must be thrown off
of the family track for days, before and after. And the good man of it
must have a dozen kinds of wines, and as many kinds of cigars; and
there must be more "courses," if it is a dinner, than you could count;
and you must sit tedious hours, while these are trotted on and trotted
off, by skilled skirmishers; and what with the necessity of all this
restaurant-business, and the stupidity that comes of over-feeding, one
might as well leave his brains at home when he goes into modern
"society." Not to speak of the host and hostess, whose attempts at
conversation are fettered, and spasmodic in consequence; for, have as
many servants as you may, mistakes _will_ happen, _crushing_ mistakes,
such as a dish located east instead of west, or wine wrongly placed,
or the wrong wine rightly placed, or a dish tardy, that should be
speedy; all of which momentous things, to the scholastic mind of the
host, or the intelligent brain of the hostess, being sufficient to
make them forget that "the chief end of man" was not to cultivate his
stomach. Now, if one must needs lure one's friends with a vulgar bill
of fare, like a hotel, in order to ensure their presence; if one must
think of the subject days beforehand, in one shape and another, and be
bored, and worried, and badgered with these material things; if
_bellies_, to speak politely, are to domineer over _brains_ this way,
then I say that "society," at such a price, isn't worth having. For
one, I had rather go back to the weak lemonade and strong prayers of
our forefathers.
* * * * *
Then, as to the dress of women. If there is one phrase more
universally misapplied than another, it is the phrase "well-dressed."
The first thing to be considered in this connection, is _fitness_. A
superb and costly silk, resting upon the questionable straw in the
bottom of an omnibus, excites only pity for the bad taste of the
luckless wearer. A pair of tight-fitting, light kid gloves, on female
fingers, on a day when the windows are crusted with frost, strikes us
as an uncalled-for martyrdom under the circumstances; also a pair of
high-heeled new boots, with polished soles, constantly threatening the
wearer with a humiliating downfall, and necessitating slow and careful
locomotion, on icy pavements, in company with a very pink nose. Bows
of ribbon, jewelled combs and head-pins at breakfast, either at a
hotel table or at home, do not convey to me an idea of _fitness_;
also, white or pink parasols for promenade or shopping excursions,
whether the remainder of the dress is in keeping or not, and more
often it is the latter. A rich velvet outer garment over a common
dress; a handsome set of furs with a soiled bonnet; diamond earrings
with shabby gloves; gold watch and trinkets, and a silk dress
ornamented with grease pots; sloppy, muddy pavements and pink silk
hose--all these strike the beholder as incongruous.
There are women who are slow to understand these things. The season,
the atmosphere and the hour of the day have no bearing at all upon
their decisions as to costume. A woman with restricted means, and
unable to indulge in changes of apparel, instead of selecting fabrics
or trimmings which will not invite attention to this fact, will often
select such a stunning, glaring outfit, that the truth she would
conceal, is patent to every beholder; an inexpensive dress, provided
it be whole, clean, well-fitting and harmonious in its accessories,
conveys the idea of being "well-dressed" quite as emphatically as a
toilette five times more costly. But what is the use of talking? One
woman shall go into her room, and, without study or thought,
instinctively harmonize her whole attire, so that the most fastidious
critic shall find no fault with her selection. Another shall put on
the same things, and then neutralize the whole by some flaring,
incongruous, idiotic "last touch" which she imagines her crowning
success. She can't do it! and, what is worse, she can't be persuaded
that she can't do it.
After all, what does it matter? growls some believer in "Watts on the
Mind;" what does it matter what a woman _wears_? It is a free country.
So it is; and yet I am glad the trees and the grass in it are green,
not red. I am glad that the beautiful snow is not black. I am glad
that every flower is not yellow, and that the sky is not a pea-green.
Woman is by nature a neat and tidy creature; grace and beauty she
strives for, be it ever so dimly. All that intelligently helps to
this, I affirm to be a means of grace. It would not be amiss to
inquire how much moral pollution and loss of self-respect among the
women in our tenement houses is consequent upon their inability, amid
such miserable surroundings, to appear in anything but their unwomanly
rags. If a woman has a husband who is indifferent whether her hair is
smoothed once a day or once a year, still let her, for her children's
sake, strive to look as attractive as she can. "My mother is not so
pretty as yours," said one child to another. The keen little eyes had
noted the rumpled hair, the untidy wrapper, the slipshod shoe, which
were considered good enough for the nursery, unless company was
expected. Sickness excepted, this is wrong and unnecessary. Nothing
that tends to make home bright is a matter of inconsequence, and this
least of all. How many young mothers, sitting in their nurseries, love
to recall the pleasant picture of _their_ mother in hers. The neat
dress--the shining hair, the beaming face. So let your children
remember you. Be not pretty and tidy, _only_ when company comes.
Then there is the school question, which is never long out of my mind.
The papers are full of "school advertisements," of every kind, "_Which
is the best?_" ask the bewildered parents as they look over the
thousand-and-one Prospectus-es and read the formidable list of
"branches" taught in each, between the hours of nine and three, for
each day, Sundays excepted. They look at their little daughter. "It is
time, they say, that she learned something;" and that is true; but
they do not consider that is not yet time for her to learn
_everything_; and that in the attempt she will probably break down
before the experiment is half made. They do not consider, in their
anxiety, that she should be educated with the railroad speed so
unhappily prevalent; that to keep a growing child in school from nine
till three is simply torture; and to add to that lessons out of
school, an offence, which should come under the head of "Cruelty to
Animals," and punished accordingly by the city authorities; who, in
their zeal to decide upon the most humane manner in which to kill
calves and sheep, seem quite to overlook the slow process by which the
children of New York are daily murdered. That "everybody does so;"
that "all schools" keep these absurd hours; that "teachers want the
afternoons to themselves,"--seem to me puerile reasons, when I meet
each day, at three o'clock, the great army of children, bearing in
their bent shoulders, narrow chests and pale faces, the unmistakable
marks of this overstrain of the brain, at a critical age. And when I
see, in addition, the piles of books under their arms, effectually to
prevent the only alleviation of so grave a mistake, in the out-door
exercise that their cramped limbs, and tired brains so loudly call
for, after school hours, I have no words to express my sorrow and
disgust of our present school system.
It is not teachers, but _parents_, who are to right this matter. The
former but echo the wishes of the latter. If parents think physical
education a matter of no consequence, why should teachers love those
children better than the parents themselves? If parents are so anxious
for the cramming process, which is filling our church-yards so fast,
why should teachers, who "must live," interfere? Now and then, one
more humane, less self-seeking, than the majority, will venture to
suggest that the pupil has already quite as much mental strain as is
safe for its tender years; but when the reply is in the form of a
request from the parent that "another branch will not make much
difference," what encouragement has the teacher to continue to oppose
such stupidity? Not long since, I heard of a mother who was boasting
to a friend of the smartness and precocity of her little daughter of
seven years, "who attended school from nine till three each day, and
studied most of the intervening time; and was so fond of her books
_that all night, in her sleep, she was saying over her geography
lessons and doing her sums in arithmetic_." Comment on such folly is
unnecessary. I throw out these few hints, hoping that one mother, at
least, may pause long enough to give so important a subject a
moment's thought. That she may ask, whether it would not be wise
occasionally to visit the school-room where her child spends so much
of its time; and examine the state of ventilation in the apartment,
and see if the desk, at which the child sits so long, is so contrived
that it might have been handed down from the days of the Inquisition,
as a model instrument of torture. I will venture to say, that her
husband takes far better care, and expends more pains-taking thought,
with his favorite horse, if he has one, than she ever has on the
physical well-being of her child. What _right_, I ask, has she to
bring children into the world, who is too indolent, or too
thoughtless, or too pleasure-loving to guide their steps safely,
happily, and above all, _healthily_ through it?
* * * * *
There is another topic on which I wish to speak to women. I hope to
live to see the time when they will consider it a _disgrace_ to be
sick. When women, and men too, with flat chests and stooping
shoulders, will creep round the back way, like other violators of
known laws. Those who _inherit_ sickly constitutions have my sincerest
pity. I only request one favor of them, that they cease perpetuating
themselves till they are physically on a sound basis. But a woman who
laces so tightly that she breathes only by a rare accident; who
vibrates constantly between the confectioner's shop and the dentist's
office; who has ball-robes and jewels in plenty, but who owns neither
an umbrella, nor a water-proof cloak, nor a pair of thick boots; who
lies in bed till noon, never exercises, and complains of "total want
of appetite," save for pastry and pickles, is simply a disgusting
nuisance. Sentiment is all very nice; but, were I a man, I would
beware of a woman who "couldn't eat." Why don't she take care of
herself? Why don't she take a nice little bit of beefsteak with her
breakfast, and a nice _walk_--not _ride_--after it? Why don't she stop
munching sweet stuff between meals? Why don't she go to bed at a
decent time, and lead a clean, healthy life? The doctors and
confectioners have ridden in their carriages long enough; let the
butchers and shoemakers take a turn at it. A man or woman who "can't
eat" is never sound on any question. It is waste breath to converse
with them. They take hold of everything by the wrong handle. Of course
it makes them very angry to whisper pityingly, "dyspepsia," when they
advance some distorted opinion; but I always do it. They are not going
to muddle my brain with their theories, because their internal works
are in a state of physical disorganization. Let them go into a Lunatic
Asylum and be properly treated till they can learn how they are put
together, and how to manage themselves sensibly.
How I _rejoice_ in a man or woman with a chest; who can look the sun
in the eye, and step off as if they had not wooden legs. It is a rare
sight. If a woman now has an errand round the corner, she must have a
carriage to go there; and the men, more dead than alive, so lethargic
are they with constant smoking, creep into cars and omnibuses, and
curl up in a corner, dreading nothing so much as a little wholesome
exertion. The more "tired" they are, the more diligently they smoke,
like the women who drink perpetual _tea_ "to keep them up."
Keep them up! Heavens! I am fifty-five, and I feel half the time as if
I were just made. To be sure I was born in Maine, where the timber and
the human race last; but I do not eat pastry, nor candy, nor
ice-cream. I do not drink tea! I walk, not ride. I own stout
boots--pretty ones, too! I have a water-proof cloak, and no diamonds.
I like a nice bit of beefsteak and a glass of ale, and anybody else
who wants it may eat pap. I go to bed at ten, and get up at six. I
dash out in the rain, because it feels good on my face. I don't care
for my clothes, but I _will_ be well; and after I am buried, I warn
you, don't let any fresh air or sunlight down on my coffin, if you
don't want me to get up.
_NOTES UPON PREACHERS AND PREACHING._
I can imagine nothing more disheartening to a clergyman, than to go to
church, with an excellent sermon in his coat-pocket, and find an
audience of twenty-five people. I was one of twenty-five, the other
night, who can bear witness, that having turned out, in a pelting
rain, to evening service, the clergyman preached to us with as much
eloquence, good sense and zeal as if his audience numbered twenty-five
hundred. You may ask why shouldn't he? If he believes _one_ soul is
more value than all the world, why shouldn't he? Merely because there
is as much human nature in a clergyman as in anybody else. Merely
because he is, like other people, affected by outward influences; and
a row of empty seats might well have a depressing physical effect,
notwithstanding his "belief."
When I go to church I want to carry something back with me wherewithal
to fight the devil through the week. I don't want the ancestry of
Jeroboam and Ezekiel, and Keranhappuck raked up and commented on; or
any other fossil dodge, to cover up the speaker's barrenness of head
or heart. I want something for _to-day_--for over-burdened men and
women in this year of our Lord 1869. Something _live_; something that
has some bearing on our daily work; something that recognizes the
seething elements about us, and their bearings on the questions of
conscience and duty we are all hourly called on to settle. I want a
minister who won't forever take refuge in "the Ark," for fear of
saying something that conservatism will hum! and ha! over.
One day I heard this remark, coming out of church where that style of
sermon was preached: "Well--what has all that to do with _me_?" Now
that's just it. It expresses my idea better than a whole library
could. What has that to do with me? _Me_ individually--bothered,
perplexed, sore-hearted, weary _me_, hungry for soul-comfort. I think
this is the trouble; ministers live too much in their libraries. If
they would set fire to them, and study human nature more, the world
would be the gainer. They need to get out of the old time-crusted
groove. To stir round a bit, and see something besides Jeroboam; to
know the tragedies that are going on in the lives of their
parishioners, and find out the alleviations and the remedy. We have
got to live on earth a while before we "get to heaven." It might be as
well to consider that occasionally. It is quite as important to show
us how to live here as how to get there.
I don't believe in a person's eyes being so fixed on heaven, that he
goes blundering over everybody's corns on the way there. If that's his
Christianity, the sooner he gets tripped up the better. _I_ saw "a
Christian" the other day. It was a workingman, who, noticing across
the street a little girl of seven years, trying to lift with her
little cold fingers a bundle, and poise it on her head, put down his
box of tools, went across the street and lifted it up for her, and
with a cheery "there now, my dear," went smiling on his way.
* * * * *
Oh, if clergymen would only study their fellow men more. If they would
less often try to unravel some double-twisted theological knot, which,
if pulled out straight, would never carry one drop of balm to a
suffering fellow-being, or teach him how to bear bravely and patiently
the trials, under which soul and body are ready to faint. If, looking
into some yearning face before them on a Sunday, they would preach
only to its wistful asking for spiritual help, in words easy to be
understood--in heart-tones not to be mistaken--how different would
Sundays seem, to many _women_, at least, whose heart-aches, and
unshared burdens, none but their Maker knows. "Heavy laden!" Let our
clergymen never forget that phrase in their abstruse examination of
text and context. Let them not forget that as Lazarus watched for the
falling crumbs from Dives' table, so some poor harassed soul before
them may be sitting with expectant ear, for the hopeful words, that
shall give courage to shoulder again the weary burden. I sometimes
wonder, were I a clergyman, _could_ I preach in this way to nodding
plumes, and flashing jewels, and rustling silks? Would not my very
soul be paralyzed within me, as theirs seems to be? And then I wish
that _nobody_ could own a velvet cushioned pew in church; that the
doors of all churches were open to every man and woman, in whatsoever
garb they might chance to wear in passing, and _not_ parcelled and
divided off for the reception of certain classes, and the exclusion
(for it amounts to that) of those who most need spiritual help and
teaching. You tell me that there are places provided for such people.
So there are cars for colored people to ride in. _My_ Christianity, if
I have any, builds up no such walls of separation. How often have I
seen a face loitering at a church threshold, listening to the swelling
notes of the organ, and longing to go in, were it not for the wide
social gulf between itself and those who assembled--I will not say
worshipped--there, and I know if that clergyman, inside that church,
spoke as his Master spake when on earth, that he would soon preach to
empty walls. They _want_ husks; they pay handsomely for husks, and
they get them, I say in my vexation, as the door swings on its hinges
in some poor creature's face, and he wanders forth to struggle unaided
as best he may with a poor man's temptations. Our Roman Catholic
brethren are wiser. Their creed is not my creed, save this part of it:
"That the rich and the poor meet here together, and the Lord is the
Maker of them all." I often go there to see it. I am glad when the
poor servant drops on her knees in the aisle, and makes the sign of
the cross, that nobody bids her rise, to make way for a silken robe
that may be waiting behind her. I am glad the mother of many little
children may drop in for a brief moment, before the altar, to
recognize her spiritual needs, and then pass out to the cares she may
not longer lose sight of. I do not believe as they do, but it gladdens
my heart all the same, that one man is as good as his neighbor at
least _there_--before God. I breathe freer at the thought. I can sit
in a corner and watch them pass in and out, and rejoice that every
one, how humble soever, _feels_ that he or she _is_ that church, just
as much as the richest foreigner from the cathedrals of the old world,
whom they may jostle in passing out. Said one poor girl to me--"I
don't care what happens to me, or how hard I work through the week, if
I can get away to my Sunday morning mass." She was a woman to be sure,
and women, high and low, have more spirituality than men. _They_ can't
do without their church--sometimes, I am sorry to say, not even with
it; for, as the same servant solemnly and truthfully remarked to me,
"Even then the devil is sometimes too strong for 'em!"
* * * * *
A fashionable church is more distasteful to me because memory always
conjures up certain pleasant country Sundays of long ago. Ah! that walk
through the shady sweet-briar roads, full of perfume, and song, and
dew, to the village church, in whose ample shed were tied Dobbins of
every shape and color, switching the flies with their long tails, and
neighing friendly acquaintance with each other. Oh! the wide open
windows of the church, guiltless of painted apostles and dropsical
cherubs, where the breeze played through, bringing with it the sweet
odor of clover and honeysuckle and new-mown hay, and the drowsy hum of
happy insect life, and now and then a little bird, who sang his little
song _without pay_, and flitted out again. Oh! the good old snow-haired
patriarchs--who _didn't_ dye their hair or whiskers--leaning on their
sticks, followed by chubby little grandchildren, whose cheeks rivalled
the reddest apples in their orchards. Then the farmers' wives, with
belts they could breathe under, with ample chests and sunny glances of
content at Susan, and Nancy, and Tommy, in their best Sunday clothes.
Then the good old-fashioned singing, with which nobody found fault,
though a crack-voiced old deacon did join in, because he was too happy
to keep silent about "Jordan." Then the hand-shaking after service, and
the hearty good-will to "the minister and his folks." Then the
adjournment to the grove near by, to pass the intermission till the
afternoon service, and the selection of the sweetest and shadiest spot
to unpack the lunch baskets. The shifting light through the branches,
upon the pretty heads of the country girls, with their fresh cheeks and
shining hair and blue ribbons. And after doughnuts and cheese and
apple-pie, were shared and eaten, the ramble after wild-flowers round
the roots of the mossy old trees, or the selection of the prettiest
oak leaves to make wreaths for pretty heads, and the shy looks of
admiration of the rustic beaux as they were severally adjusted. Then
the little group under the trees, singing psalm tunes, as the matrons
wandered over to the grave-yard to read for the hundredth time the
little word "Anna," or "Joseph," or "Samuel," inscribed on some
headstone, from which they pulled away the intrusive grass or clover,
plucking a little leaf as they left, and hiding it in their ample,
motherly bosoms.
All this came to me as I sat in that hot, stifled, painted-window,
fashionable church, listening to the dull monotone about the Hittites,
from which I reaped nothing but irritation; and I wished I was a
school-girl again, back in that lovely village in New Hampshire, where
Sundays were not opening days for millinery; where people went to
church because they _loved_ it, and not because it was "respectable"
to be seen there once a day; where heaven's light was not excluded for
any dim taper of man's lighting, and one could sing though he had not
performed during the week at the opera; and the doxology rang out as
only farmers' lungs can make it. I am glad I had this school-girl
experience of lovely, balmy, country Sundays, though it spoils me for
the formal, city Sunday. Every summer, when I go to the country, I
hunt up some old church like this, which all the winter I have longed
for. Though, truth to tell, what with city boarders who infest them,
with their perfume and point-lace, and rustling silks, my country
church is getting more difficult every year to find. How it spoils it
all, when some grand city dame comes sailing in, with her astounding
millinery devices, to profane my simple country church and astonish
its simple worshippers! My dear madam, for _my_ sake, please this
summer "_say_ your prayers" on the piazza of the grand hotel,
afflicted by yourself and your seven mammoth travelling trunks.
* * * * *
I strayed into a strange church not long since, chose my seat, and sat
down. Sextons are polite; but they have a way of marching one up,
through a long aisle, under the very shadow of the pulpit, and under
the noses of an expectant congregation, when unfortunately I have a
fancy for a quiet, out of the way corner. The church was plain and
neat, and nicely dressed, with its shining bunches of holly, and its
stars, and its green wreathed-pillars. The temperature of the place
was pleasant, and the bright lights, and the sweet tones of the organ,
were all promotive of serenity and cheerfulness. The congregation
dropped in, in groups and families, and took their places. They were
not fashionable people; evidently they were workers on week-days. The
men and the women, and even the children, had that look, in spite of
their Sunday clothes. So much the more glad was I that they had such a
bright, cheerful church to come to. By and by the minister came in.
Now, thought I, God grant his sermon be cheerful too; for these are
people who lead no holiday lives, and all the more need a lift out of
it on Sunday. The burden of the first hymn he chose was "death's cold
arms;" read in a tone studiedly corresponding to its cheerful
sentiment. A wail from the organ preceded the singing, whose dolor
affected me like a toss-out into a snow-drift. Then the minister rose.
His first salutation was "My _dying_ friends." Then he proceeded to
inform them that the old year was dying. That there it lay, with its
great hands crossed over its mighty heart, and the sepulchre yawning
for its last pulsation. Then he reminded them that very likely many of
those present would be in that very condition before the close of the
new year. Then he told the young folks a frightful story about a dying
young man whose friends sent for him (the speaker.) A young man who
_hadn't_ joined the church. When he got there, he said, "reason had
deserted its throne;" which was his way of saying that the young man
was crazy, and his way of inferring that it was a judgment on him for
not "having joined the church." Then he said, that though they waited
and waited for his reason to come back, his soul fled away without,
and the inference was that _it fled to hell_. He didn't recognize any
charitable possibility that much _might_ have passed between that
young man's soul and its Maker, though _not_ expressed either to
friends or pastor, which might savor of _heaven_ instead of _hell_,
and that--although he had not joined the church;--not a clue was left
for the faintest hope for any of his friends that might happen to be
present, that this young man's soul was not eternally dammed.
What right, indeed, _had_ the Almighty to know more of one of his
congregation than he himself? What right had He to pardon a fleeting
soul, with no shriving from its pastoral keeper? I say this in no
spirit of irreverence. But, oh! why _will_ clergymen persist in
_scaring_ people to heaven? Why darken lives heavily laden with toil,
discouragement, and care through the six days of the week, by adding
to its depressing weight on Sunday? Has "Come unto me ye heavy laden"
no place in their Bible? Is "God is Love" blotted from out its pages?
Is the human heart--especially the _youthful_ heart--untouchable by
any appeal save the cowardly one of fear? Would those young people,
when out of leading-strings, _continue_ to look upon life through the
charnel-house spectacles of this spiritual teacher? Would there come
no dreadful rebound to those young men and young women, from this
perpetual gloom? These were questions I there asked myself; wisely, or
unwisely, you shall be the judge.
"Like as a father pitieth his children," I talismanically murmured to
myself, as I left the church, with the last dolorous hymn ringing in
my ear--
"When cold in death I lie."
* * * * *
How great the change in the temporal condition of the Minister of Old
and Modern Times. The half-fed, ill-paid, scantily-clothed,
over-worked, discouraged "minister" of the olden time is--where is he?
The "minister," before whose pen and paper came the troubled faces of
wife and children; who dreaded the knock of a parishioner, lest it
should involve the diminution of a "salary" which a common day-laborer
might well refuse for its pitiful inadequacy; the minister whose body
was expected to be so Siamesed to his soul, that the "heavenly manna"
would answer equally the demands of both. The minister who must plant
and hoe his own potatoes, but always in a black coat and white
neckcloth. The minister whose children must come up miniature saints,
while all their father's spare time was spent in driving his
parishioners' children safe to heaven. The minister who, when he was
disabled for farther service, was turned out like an old horse to
browse on thistles by the road-side;--_that_ minister, to the credit
of humanity be it said, is among the things that were. Instead--nobody
is astonished at, or finds fault with, paragraphs in the papers
announcing that the Rev. Rufus Rusk was presented by the board of
trustees, in the name of many friends of his congregation, with a
costly autograph album; upon every page of which was found a $10
greenback, amounting in all to $1,000; and that afterward he was
invited to partake of an elegant collation. Or--that the Rev. Silas
Sands received from his church and congregation securities to the
amount of $10,000, as a testimonial of their esteem for his faithful
services for many years. Or, that the Rev. Henry Cook had a gift of a
commodious and pleasant residence from his church; or, that his
health seeming to require a voyage to Europe, the necessary funds were
promptly and cheerfully placed in his hands by his affectionate
people.
The community do not faint away at these announcements, as far as I
can find out. They seem to have come to the unanimous conclusion that
the "minister," like other laborers, is "worthy of his hire." For one,
I could wish this knowledge had come sooner; for I bethink me, in my
day, of the good men and true, who have staggered to their graves
without a sympathizing word, or the slightest token of recognition for
services under which soul and body were fainting; and whose bitterest
death-pang was the thought that their children, too young to help
themselves, must, after all this serfdom, be the recipients of a
grudging charity.
The presence of a clergyman is not now the signal for small children
to be seized with mortal terror; he no longer sits like a night-mare
on the panting chest of merriment. He is merry _himself_. The more
Christianity he has the more cheerful he is, and _ought to be_. He
talks upon other things than the ten commandments. He joins in
innocent games and amusements. If he has an opinion, he dares express
it, though it _may_ differ from that of some "prominent man." He can
fish and shoot, and drive and row, and take a milk punch, like other
free agents without damaging his clerical robe or his usefulness. He
can have beautiful things to make his home attractive, without being
accused of "worldliness." He can wear a nicely fitting coat, or boot,
or hat, without peril to anybody's salvation. He can give a good
dinner, or go to one. He can go to the circus. He can attend the
opera. He can own and drive a fast horse. His stomach consequently
does not, as of yore, cling to his miserable backbone; nor are his
cheeks cavernous; since he draws a free breath, and sneezes when he
see fit, like the laymen. Every day I thank God that the clergyman's
millennium has begun. That his wife looks no longer like a piece of
worn-out old fur, nor his children like spring chickens. That
congregations now feel a pride in their minister, and an honest shame
when he really needs anything which _they_ have, and _he_ has not.
That they no longer hurt his self-respect by their manner of
"_giving_" what he has _earned_ a thousand times over. In short, "the
minister" is no longer a cringing creature, creeping close to the
wall, lest he offend by the mere fact of his existence; but a
brisk-stepping, square-shouldered, broad-chested, round human being,
whom it is pleasant to look at and comforting to listen to, since his
theology is no longer as pinched as his larder.
* * * * *
As to "the minister's wife" of the olden time, where is _she_? The
ubiquitous "minister's wife," who must make and mend, and bake and
brew, and churn, and have children, and nurse and educate them, and
receive calls at all hours, with a sweet smile on her face, and thank
everybody for reminding her of what they consider her short-comings;
who must attend funerals, and weddings, and births, and social
prayer-meetings, and "neighborhood-meetings," and "maternal meetings;"
and contribute calico aprons for the Fejee Islanders, and sew flannel
nightcaps for the Choctaw infants, and cut and make her husband's
trousers; and call as often on Mrs. Deacon Smith, and stay as long to
the minute, as she did on Mrs. Deacon Jones; and who must call a
parish meeting to sit on her new bonnet, if so be that the old one was
pronounced by all the Grundys unfit for farther service. The
minister's wife, who was hunted through the weeks and months and
years, by a carping, stingy parish, till she looked like a worn-out
old piece of fur; behold her now!
For one, _I_ like to see her pretty bonnet, _I_ like to see her
children shouting in the sunshine, all the same as if their "Pa"
wasn't a minister. I like her daughters to play on the piano, and her
boys to kick round independently and generally like the boys of other
men. I like to see them live in a comfortable house, hung with
pictures and filled with pretty things. I like their table to have
nice cups and saucers, and table-cloths and napkins, and good things
to eat on it. I am glad the minister's wife can stay at home when she
feels like it; and not be trotted out with the toothache of a wet day
to see if there is not danger of Squire Smith's baby sneezing because
the wind is east; under penalty of her husband's dismissal from his
pastoral charge. It does me good to see modern ministers' spouses
hold up their heads and face the daylight like other men's wives,
instead of creeping round on all fours, apologizing for their
existence, and inviting cuffs from people who, born without souls,
consequently can have no call for "a minister."
_BRIDGET AS SHE WAS, AND BRIDGET AS SHE IS._
A square, solid form, innocent of corsets; a thick, dark
"stuff"-dress, raised high above ankles which are shaped for use;
stout leather shoes; hands red and gloveless; a bonnet of obsolete
shape and trimmings; a face round as the moon, from which the rich red
blood, made of potatoes and pure air, seems ready to burst; great,
honest eyes, always downcast when addressed by those whom the old
country styles "superiors." Such is Bridget when she first steps from
the deck of the good ship "Maria," at Castle Garden.
Bridget goes to a "place." The pert house-maid titters when she
appears, square and wholesome, like a human cow. Bridget's ears catch
the word "greenhorn," and "she might as well be a grandmother as to be
only seventeen." Bridget looks furtively at the smart, though cheap
dress of the chambermaid, with its inevitable flimsy ruffled skirt and
tinsel buttons, and then at her despised "best dress," which she has
been wont to keep so tidy for Sundays and holidays. She looks at the
thin, paper-soled gaiters of the critical housemaid, and then at her
stout, dew-defying brogans. She looks at her own thick masses of hair,
fastened up with only one idea--to keep it out of the way--and then
at the housemaid's elaborate parlor-imitation of puff and braid and
curl. The view subdues her. She is for the first time ashamed of her
own thick natural tresses. She looks at her peony-red cheeks, and
contrasts them with the sickly but "genteel" pallor of the
housemaid's, and gradually it dawns upon her why they whispered
"greenhorn" when she stepped into the kitchen that first day. But the
housemaid, overpowering as she is to Bridget, suffers a total eclipse
when the lady of the house sweeps past, in full dress. Bridget
looks--marvels, adores, and vows to imitate. _That_ hair! _Those_
jewels! _That_ long, trailing silk skirt and embroidered petticoat!
_Did_ anybody _ever_? _Could_ Bridget in any way herself reach such
perfection? She blushes to think that only last night in her
home-sickness she actually longed to milk once more the old red cow in
the cherished barn-yard. How ridiculous! She doubts whether that
sumptuous lady ever saw a cow. The idea that she--Bridget--had been
contented all her life to have only cows look at her! By the way--why
should that curly-headed grocer-boy talk so much to the housemaid,
when he brings parcels, and never to her? A light dawns on her dormant
brain. She will fix her hair the way to catch grocer-boys. She too
will have a ruffled skirt to drag through the gutter, though she may
never own any underclothes. She will have some brass ear-rings and
bracelets and things, and some paper-soled boots, with her very first
wages; and as to her bonnet, it is true, she can afford only one for
market and for "mass;" for rain and shine; for heat and for cold; but
by St. Patrick, it shall be a fourteen-dollar "dress-hat," anyhow,
though she may never own a pair of India-rubbers, or a flannel
petticoat, or a pocket-handkerchief, or an umbrella. Just as if this
wasn't a "free country?" Just as if that spiteful housemaid was going
to have all the grocer-boys to herself? Bridget will see about that!
Her eyes are a pretty blue; and as to her hair, it is at least her
own; yes, ma'am; no "rats" will be necessary for _her_; that will save
something.
And so the brogans, and the dark "stuff"-dress, and the thick
stockings, and shawl, come to grief; and in two months' time flash is
written all over Bridget, from the crown of her showy hat to the tips
of her crucified toes, squeezed into narrow, paper-soled, fashionable,
high-heeled gaiters. And as to her "superiors," gracious goodness!
America is not Ireland, nor England either, I'd have you to know. You
had better just mention that word in Bridget's hearing now, and see
what will come of it!
* * * * *
Stealing is a rough, out-and-out word, generally most obnoxious to
those, who are in the daily and hourly practice of it. Now domestics
too often consider that everything that drops upon the carpet is their
personal property, from a common pin to a pair of diamond ear-rings.
"_I found it on the floor_," is considered by them sufficient excuse
when detected in any felonious appropriation.
Now the laws of gravitation being fixed, this view of the case is
rather startling to mistresses; particularly as childish fingers will
pull at belts till buckles and clasps drop off; at chains till
trinkets are dissevered; at hair till ornamental combs or head pins
tumble out; at fingers till rings slip off on sofas or chairs.
When dropped, "has Bridget seen them?" _No!_ though she may have swept
the room ten minutes after. _No!_--though you are sure of having them
on when you came into that room, and of not having them on when you
left. No!--Bridget confronts you sturdily--No! You bite your lips and
pocket the loss, with the pleasant recollection that the missing
article was a gift from some dear, perhaps dead friend. Once in a
while, to be sure, you may be fortunate enough, by making a sudden and
successful foray among her goods and chattels, to seize the lost
treasure; but as a general rule, you may as well turn your thoughts
upon some less irritating subject. According to Bridget's code, it is
not "stealing," constantly to use your thread, needles, spools, silk,
tape, thimble and scissors, unlimitedly, to make or mend her own
clothes. Is it not just so much saved from her pocket, toward the
purchase of a brass breast-pin, or a flashy dress-bonnet?
India-rubbers and umbrellas, too, being merely useful articles, she
cannot be expected to provide them for her own use; therefore yours,
one after another, travel off in new and unknown directions, until
you are quite weary of providing substitutes. Occasionally, your
spangled opera-fan spends an evening out, where you yourself never had
the felicity of an introduction; or--your gloves take a short journey,
and return as travellers are apt to do, in rather a soiled and
dilapidated condition. As to cologne and perfumes of all kinds, pomade
and hair-pins, they disappear like dew before the rising sun. "_Where
all the pins go_" is also no longer a mystery. Of course "real ladies"
never notice these little thefts; but accept them in the light of
Bridget's perquisites, only too thankful if she leaves to them the
private and unshared use of their head-brush and tooth-brush. To sum
up the whole thing, there would seem to be only two ways at present of
getting along with servants. One is to be deaf, dumb and blind to
everything that is out of the way; or else to live in a state of
perpetual warfare with their general shortcomings. A man's ultimatum
is, "just step into an Intelligence Office and get another." Alas!
what this "getting another" implies, with all its initiatory
vexations, is known only to the _mistress_ of the house. To make the
moon-struck _master_ of it comprehend that his wife cannot at once,
upon the entrance of a bran new Bridget, dismiss dull care, would take
more breath than most mothers of young and rising families are able to
spare.
* * * * *
Then again, if there is anything calculated to "rile" the mistress of
a family, it is this common rejoinder of domestics to any attempt to
regulate the household work. "When I lived with Mrs. Smith I did thus
and so." Will they _never_ be made to understand, be they English,
Irish, German, or Yankee, that Mrs. Smith's way of managing _her_
family affairs can have no possible connection with Mrs. Jones's plans
for the same. That, on the contrary, Mrs. Jones does not care a
d----ime what hour of the day Mrs Smith breakfasts, dines, or sups;
what days she goes out, or stays in; or in what manner she has her
washing, clear-starching and cooking done. In short, that it is not
only totally irrelevant to the subject to mention her, but a nuisance
and an irritation. _Can_ Betty, or Sally, or Bridget ever comprehend
that, when they engaged to work for Mrs. Jones, they were not engaged
to work according to Mrs. Smith's programme, or their own, or that of
any mistress who has ever existed since Eve, who, blessed be her name,
lived on grapes and things that involved no servants. And can any
phrenologist inform us whether a kitchen-bump exists, which, if
patiently manipulated for a series of months, might in time convey the
idea, that while roast-beef, done to leather, may be palatable to Mrs.
Smith, rare beef may be equally palatable to Mrs. Jones? Also, if by
any elaborate and painstaking process of instruction, Sally, or
Bridget, or Betty might be taught, that the hours for meals in
different families may be allowed to vary, according to the different
tastes and occupations of each, and that without endangering the
Constitution of the United States. In short, that it is about time
that the kitchen-traditions, with which domestics usually swathe
themselves round, like so many mummies, were abolished; and every
family-tub be allowed quietly to repose on its own independent bottom.
We often wonder how Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith would fancy it, should Tom
Tiddler, their clerk, answer their orders by informing them
gratuitously of the manner in which the firm of Jenkins & Co.
conducted their mercantile business; and how they would stand being
harrowed within an inch of their lives while busily taking an account
of stock, by any such irrelevant nonsense.
Also: I would respectfully submit whether the petty, every-day
irritations over which Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith smoke themselves stupid,
or explode in naughty words, should not, in the case of Mrs. Jones and
Mrs. Smith, be allowed some other escape-valve than that of the
"Woman's Guide Book's"--_sweet smile_.
* * * * *
The other day, in running my eye over a daily paper, I read this
advertisement: "A _genteel_ girl wishes a situation as chambermaid."
Now if there is one word in the English language that I hate more than
another, it is the word _genteel_. No matter where, or how, or to
whom, or by whom it is applied, my very soul sickens at it. It is the
universal and never-failing indorser of every sham ever foisted upon
disgusted human nature. From the "genteel" cabbage-scented
boarding-house, where tobacco emasculated young men "feed," and
mindless, be-flounced, cheap jewel-ried married and unmarried women
smile sweetly on them, to the seventh-rate dry-goods store in some
obscure street, whose clerk sells only the most "genteel" goods at a
shilling per yard; to the "genteel" school-girl who, owning one greasy
silk dress, imagines that she understands her geography better in that
attire than in a quiet, clean, modest "de laine;" to the "genteel"
shop-girl who, pitiably destitute of comfortable underclothes, yet
always owns a "dress hat," and swings about the last showy fashion in
trimming, on some cheap fabric; to the "genteel" cook who goes to
market with her hair dressed as near as may be like her mistress,
fastening it up with a brassy imitation of her gold comb; to the
"genteel" seminary for young ladies, who ride to school in a carriage
with liveried servants, their papa having formerly been one himself.
But a "genteel" chambermaid! Now, why should this patrician creature
seek such a prosaic, vulgar occupation? Could she be aware that
chambermaids must wield brooms, and dust-pans, and scrubbing-brushes,
and handle pokers, and shovel, and tongs, and ashes. That they may
even be asked to stand at the wash-tub, and be seen by the neighbors
in the disgraceful occupation of hanging out clothes. That they may
occasionally have to answer the door-bell in an apron, and usher
finely-dressed ladies into the parlor; or be asked to take a baby out
for an airing, and be stamped at once by the public as a person who
"works for a living." How can a "genteel" chambermaid calmly
contemplate such degradation, least of all perform such duties
faithfully and well? Would not any sensible lady, wishing a
chambermaid, see at once that the thing was impossible? Would she not
know that she might ring her bell till the wire gave out, before this
"genteel" young woman would think it expedient to answer it till she
was ready? And when she sent her up stairs to tidy her chamber, would
she not be sure that this "genteel" creature would probably spend the
time in trying on her mistress' last new opera-hat before the
toilet-glass? And if she sent her out on an errand, involving even a
moderately sized bundle, would not this "genteel" young woman probably
take a circuitous route through back streets to hide her ignominy?
Heavens! what a relief it is to see people self-poised and satisfied
with their honest occupations, making no attempt to veneer them over
with a thin polish of gentility. Such I am happy to say there still
are, in humble circumstances, notwithstanding the bad example
constantly set them by the moneyed class in our country, who are
servilely and snobbishly bent on aping all the aristocratic
absurdities of the old country. "_Genteel!_" Faugh! even the
detestable expression-word "FUST-rate" is music to my ears after it.
* * * * *
After all, I am not sure that my sympathies are not enlisted much more
strongly on the side of servants than of their mistresses, who at any
moment can show them the door at their capricious will, without a
passport to any other place of shelter. Their lot is often at best a
hard one;--the best wages being a very inadequate equivalent for the
great gulf which, in many cases, separates the servant from her
employer as effectually, as if her woman's nature had no need of human
love and human sympathy; as if she did not often bear her secret
burden of sorrow with a heroism, which should cause a blush on the
cheek of her who sits with folded hands in the parlor, all neglectful
of woman's mission to her dependent sister. They who have listened
vainly for kind words know how much they may lighten toil. They who
have shut up in their aching hearts the grief which no friendly look
or tone has ever unlocked, know how it will fester and rankle. They
who have felt every ounce of their flesh taxed unrelentingly day by
day to the utmost, with no approving "well done" to lighten slumber
when the heavy yoke is nightly cast down, know what is servitude of
_soul_, as well as body.
I could wish that mistresses oftener thought of this; oftener sat down
in the gloomy, underground kitchen or basement, and inquired after the
absent mother, or brother, or sister, in the old country; oftener
placed in the toil-hardened hand the book or paper, or pamphlet, to
shorten the tedious evening in the comfortless kitchen, while the
merry laugh in which the servant has no share, resounds from the
cheerful parlor above.
I do not forget that there are bad servants, as that there are
unfeeling, inhuman mistresses who make them. I know that some are
wasteful and improvident; and I know, from experience, that there are
cases where the sympathy and kindness I speak of are repaid with
ingratitude; but these are exceptional cases; and think how much hard
usage from the world such an one must have received, ere all her sweet
and womanly feelings could be thus blunted. I must think that a humane
mistress generally makes a good servant. I know that some of the
servants of the present day dress ridiculously above their
station,--so does often the mistress; and why is a poor, unenlightened
girl more reproachable, for spending the wages of a month on a flimsy,
gaudy bonnet, or dress, than is her employer, for trailing a
seventy-five or one hundred dollar robe through ferryboats and
omnibuses, while her grocer and milliner dun in vain for their bills?
Let the reform in this and other respects begin in the parlor. Our
mothers and grandmothers were not always changing servants. _They_ did
not disdain to lend a helping hand, when a press of work, or company,
made the burden of servitude too heavy. A headache in the kitchen, to
them, meant the same as a headache in the parlor, and, God be thanked,
a heart-ache too. The soul of a servant was of as much account as that
of her mistress; her creed was respected, and no elaborate dinner came
between her and the church-door. How can you expect such unfaltering,
unswerving devotion to your interests, when you so wholly ignore
theirs?--when you spur and goad them on like beasts of burden, and
with as little thought for their human wants and needs? No wonder if
you have poor service--eye-service. I would like to see you do better
in their place. Lift up the cloud, and let the sun shine through into
their underground homes, if it is not a mockery to use the word home.
We exact too much--we give too little,--too little sympathy--too
little kindness--too little encouragement. "Love thy neighbor as
thyself" would settle it all. You don't do it--I don't do it, though I
try to. Human laws may require only of the mistress that she pay her
servant's wages punctually; God's law requires much more--let
conscience be its interpreter;--then, and not till then, we shall have
good servants.
* * * * *
I suppose the most jealous fault-finders on this subject will concede
that mistresses themselves are not quite perfect; of course, they have
often real causes of irritation and vexation apart from the kitchen,
which, we are afraid, do not dispose them to look leniently upon any
additional trouble there. A "flare up" with Betty or Bridget, is apt
to be the last drop in the bucket, the last feather in the balance.
But, unfortunately, it is not taken into account that Betty and
Bridget, being human, may have their little world of hopes and joys,
fears and sorrows, quite disconnected with your gridiron, and
dustpan, and ash-barrel. They also have heads and backs to ache, and
hearts too, though this may not always be taken into the account, by
employers, who, satisfied with punctually paying the stipulated wages
when due, and getting as much as possible out of them as an
equivalent, consider their duty ended. Some day your dinner is over or
under cooked; that day Bridget received a letter from the "old
country" with a "black seal." She did not come to you with her
trouble; why should she? when she might have been a mere machine for
any sympathetic word or look that has ever passed from your woman's
heart or eyes to hers. All you know is that your dinner is overcooked,
and a sharp rebuke follows, and from the fulness of a tried spirit an
"impertinent" answer comes, and you show Bridget the door, preaching a
sermon on the neglectfulness and insolence of servants. Had you been
the mistress you should have been, Bridget would naturally have come
to you with her trouble, and you would willingly have excused at such
a time any little oversight in her duty to you, even though on that
day you "had company to dinner." Take another case. On some day in the
week, when the heaviest family labor falls due, your girl whose
province it is to accomplish it, rises with an aching head, or limbs,
as you sometimes do yourself, and as you do not, she rises from bed
all the same as if she were well. As you have no use for your lips in
the kitchen, save to give an order, and no eyes, save to look after
defects of economy or carefulness, you do not see her languid eyes, or
ask the cause of any apparent dilatoriness; you simply "hurry up"
things generally, and go up stairs. Now, suppose you had kindly asked
the girl if she felt quite well, and finding she did not, offered to
lift from her aching shoulders that day's burden; _suppose_ that? why,
ten to one, it would have done her more good than could any doctor who
ever took a degree, and the poor thing, under its inspiration, might
actually have staggered through the day's work, had you been so cruel
as to allow her.
I wish mistresses would sometimes ask themselves how long, under the
depressing conditions and circumstances of servitude above alluded to,
_they_ could render faithful conscientious labor? Feeling that doing
well, there was no word of praise; and that doing ill, there was no
excuse or palliation; that falling sick or disabled, from over work or
natural causes, there was no sympathy, but only nervous anxiety for a
speedy substitute.
Again. Many mistresses utterly object to "a beau" in the kitchen. Now
could anything be more unnatural and absurd than this? though, of
course, there should be limitations as to late hours. Marriage, with
many of these domestics, is the heaven of rest and independence to
which they look forward; and even if they are to work quite as hard
"for a living," as a poor man's wife, as they have for you, they may
possibly have, as wives--heaven help them--a little love to sweeten
it; and surely no wife or mother should shut her heart utterly to
this view of the case. As to the girl's "bettering herself," let her
take the chances, if she chooses, as you have. Possibly, some lady who
reads this may say, oh, all this talk about servants is nonsense. I've
often petted girls till I have spoiled them, and it is of no use. Very
true, madam, "petting" is of no use; but it _is_ of use to treat them
at all times kindly, and humanely, and above all things _justly_, as
we--women--in their places, should wish to be treated ourselves. It
_is_ of use to make a little sunshine in those gloomy kitchens, by a
kind good night, or good morning, or some such recognition of their
presence, other than a desire to be waited upon. It _is_ of use, when
they are sick or down-hearted, to turn _to_, not _from_ them. All this
can be done, and not "spoil" them. And how much better, even as far as
yourself is concerned, to feel that their service is that of love and
good-will, instead of mere "eye-service." A lady once asked a servant
for her references. There was more justice and less "impertinence,"
than appears at the first blush, in her reply, "and where are _yours_,
ma'am?"
_A CHAPTER ON TOBACCO._
I hate Tobacco. I _don't_ hate all its devotees. Oh, no. In its ranks
are men who would gladly die for their country if need be; and yet no
slave whom they would lay down a life to free, shall be more truly a
slave, than are these patriots to the tyrant Tobacco.
Well--what then? manhood inquires, with his hat cocked defiantly, and
his arms a-kimbo. What then? Only this: we women so wish you hadn't so
disgusting and dirty a habit. Now reach out your hand, take a seat
beside me, and let me talk to you about it.
In the first place, bear with a little egotism. I am not six feet
high; I belong to no Woman's Rights Convention, if that be a crime in
your eyes. I'm just a merry woman, four feet in stature, who would
much rather love than hate everything and everybody in this lovely
world, if I could; who had much rather have friends than enemies if I
could, without muzzling my thoughts, or my pen.
If not--I am going to shut up my umbrella, and let the shower come. _I
hate tobacco._ I am a clean creature, and it smells bad. Smells is a
mild word; but I will use it, being a woman. I deny your right to
smell bad in my presence, or the presence of any of our clean
sisterhood. I deny your right to poison the air of our parlors, or our
bed-rooms, with your breath, or your tobacco-saturated clothing, even
though you _may_ be our husbands. Terrible creature! I think I hear
you say; I am glad you are not my wife. So am I. How would you like
it, had you arranged your parlor with dainty fingers, and were
rejoicing in the sweet-scented mignonette, and violets, and
heliotrope, in the pretty vase on your table--forgetting in your
happiness that Bridget and Biddy had vexed your soul the greater part
of the day--and in your nicely-cushioned chair, were resting your
spirit even more than your body, to have a man enter, with that
detestable bar-room odor, and spoil it all? Or worse: light a cigar or
pipe in your very presence, and puff away as if it were the heaven to
you which it appears to be to him. The "Guide to Women" would tell you
that you should "let him smoke, for fear he might do worse." Suppose
we try that boot on the other foot, and let women drink for the same
reason? Of course you see, to begin with, that I consider woman as
much an individual as her husband. With just as much right to an
opinion, a taste, a smell, or a preference of any kind, as himself;
and just as much right to express and maintain it, if she see fit.
Now, to my belief, drinking would brutify her physically and morally
no quicker than tobacco does him. Because a man is able to stand on
his two legs, it does not follow that his perceptions are clear; that
his temper is not irritable, or morose; that his vitality by long
abuse is _not_ nearly exhausted, and that, when he should be in the
prime and vigor of a glorious manhood. It does not follow that there
are not empty chairs around his table, and little graves in the
churchyard, for which he is responsible. It does not follow that a
sharp answer, a careless indifference, has not taken the place of
loving words and an earnest desire to contribute his share of sunlight
in his home. When I say that tobacco _brutifies_ its devotees, I know
what I am talking about. When a man carries his lighted pipe, or
cigar, into the bed-room of a sick child, to whom pure air is life or
death, we may infer that his selfishness in this regard has reached
its climax. Or when he continues to smoke in the presence of his wife,
knowing that sick headache is the sure result, we may draw the same
inference. Not to mention that your smoker always selects the
pleasantest window, or the best seat on a piazza, or the shadiest seat
under a tree, forcing the ladies of the family, or the circle,
wherever he is, to breathe this bad odor, or remove to some other
locality. Nor does the bland "_I trust this is not unpleasant to you_"
help the matter; while women, so much more magnanimous than men,
receive this reward for their "polite" evasion of the subject.
* * * * *
I go into a newspaper store to purchase a magazine; there stands a
gentleman (?) at my side with a lighted cigar in his mouth, coolly
looking over the papers at his leisure. If I beat a hasty retreat to
another establishment of the same kind, I find other gentlemen (?)
similarly employed. If I get into a street car, even if no one is
"smoking upon the platform," five out of ten of the male passengers
will have parted with their cigars only at the moment of entering,
poisoning still further the close car-atmosphere with this hated
effluvia. At places of evening amusement, concerts, lectures and the
like, the same thing occurs; indeed, they often repeat the horror by
renewing the tobacco-smoke in the intervals during the performance. If
I walk in the street, vile breaths are puffed in my face from pipes or
cigars by every second gentleman (?) who passes. I am getting sick of
"_gentlemen_;" it would be a relief if the great showman would
advertise us a _man_. If a "gentleman" comes in to make an evening
call, he deposits his cigar stump on your front steps just before
entering, and very likely lights another in your front entry before
departing. The man who brings you a parcel, often stands in the entry
smoking, while waiting further orders. The emissary of the butcher, or
grocer, perfumes your kitchen and area in the same manner. Your cook's
male "cousin" smokes when he makes his evening calls. In the railroad
car you are stifled with the remains of tobacco-smoke. In steamboats,
in hotels, it is the same, whensoever a male creature enters. If a
lady exerts herself to get up, or oversee, or engineer, a nice dinner
for some gentleman (?) friends of her husband's, they prove their
appreciation of her good dinner and her good company, by retiring to
another room than that the hostess is in, the moment they have eaten
to satiety, in order that they may smoke till it is time to leave her
very hospitable house.
Said a prominent editor one day to me: "You are right, madam, the
moment a man becomes wedded to tobacco he becomes a--hog!" This is a
strong way of putting it, but the subject is _strong_ in every sense.
Physicians will tell you that men who would resent the imputation that
they were not good husbands and fathers, will selfishly poison the air
of a sick-room and distress the breathing of the invalid without
remorse. I repeat it, I am firmly of the opinion, that tobacco
brutifies equally with drink. The process may be slower, but it is
just as sure. A drunkard will sometimes own that drink hurts him; or
that he drinks too much; or would be better without it; a smoker
_never_. 'Tis true, he will admit that Tom Jones, or Sam Smith, smokes
too much; but not that _he_ ever did, or shall. In fact, he is sure
that in _his_ case tobacco is beneficial; "it soothes him when he is
irritable," which, thanks to tobacco, is so often, that the soothing
process is perpetual. A man said one day to his comrade in the street
cars, "Tom, I really think I should have given up smoking long since,
had not my wife constantly said it was so disagreeable." What better
proof could he have given of its brutalizing tendency?
I know no place where "smoking not allowed," is not a dead letter,
except in church. Even there the cigar stump is often tossed away at
the church porch, and men sit impatiently fingering the vile weed
which is destined to console them, the minute the benediction shall
have been pronounced; now, when a gentleman (?) becomes so enslaved by
this bad habit, that neither the disgust of the female inmates of his
own house, or other houses, who suffer by it, fails to move him, even
though they may not, for the sake of peace, complain; and when the
terrible sight of this smoker's own little son, already going to and
from school with cigar and satchel in company, does not shame him;
when any society, how intelligent soever, is distasteful, nay,
_unbearable_ to him, where tobacco is not permitted, for one I would
not toss up a pin for the choice between that man and a drunkard.
* * * * *
People say: Whence all these matinées of all kinds, operatic and
other, that are springing up in our cities? I answer--Tobacco! "No
smoking allowed here"--if over the entrance of Paradise--and the men
would prefer their pipe with the accompaniment of the infernal
regions. A man can't very well talk with a pipe in his mouth. If a
pipe he prefers to all things else, from the time he returns to his
house at night till he goes to bed, his wife naturally wearies of
watching that smoke curl, though she may be an angel in his eyes in
every other respect. It is dull music, after the petty little
musquito-stinging household cares of the day, to which even the best
mothers and most capable housekeepers are subject, in a greater or
less degree. "When he lights that cigar every night I want to scream,"
said a lovely woman to me. "I am _so_ tired of the house at night; I
want him to talk to me, or go out with me; I should take hold of my
cares and duties the next day with so much more heart if he did. I
love my home; I love my babies; I love my husband; but oh, he _don't_
know how tired and nervous I often get by night, and that silence, and
that suffocating smoke, are so intolerable to me then." Why don't she
_say_ so? you ask. Why? because women are so hungry for a little love,
and find it so impossible to live without it, that they often endure
any amount of this kind of selfishness rather than hazard its loss for
a day. Now, _is_ this right? Is it what a wife is entitled to, after
trying all day to make home bright and happy for her husband?
"And all this fuss about a little smoke," I hear Tom exclaim.
Not exactly. _It is the injustice of men toward women_ for which it
stands the horrible, nauseating symbol. Suppose your wife, fancying
the smell of asafoetida, should keep an uncorked phial of it in her
parlor and bed-room? How long would _you_ stand it? Suppose she should
smoke _herself_ or "dip" in self-defence? Suppose that sweet breath
were to become nauseous? her curls unbearable in near proximity?
Suppose she grew slatternly in her habits in consequence, as all
smokers eventually do? Suppose her little baby's clothes were
saturated with tobacco? In short, that you were disgusted with its
presence or results every hour in the twenty-four, as you would be in
your wife's case.
Now I ask, isn't it just as much a man's duty to be clean and
presentable and inviting to his wife, as it is hers toward him? Well,
replies Tom, men don't look at the subject in that way, and never
will, and now, what are you going to do about it?
Me? nothing. The men will continue to put up their heels at night, and
smoke till bed-time, and think it a bore to go out, _i. e._ with their
wives, and the disgusted women, who really _want_ to be good wives,
and would, if their husbands were more just and manly, will go as they
have begun to do, to the next day's operatic matinée for relaxation;
and after the matinée, a cup of chocolate or an ice-cream tastes well;
and sometimes one meets an agreeable _male_ friend there, who does
_not_ prefer a solitary pipe or a cigar to a little bright and
enlivening conversation with this tired lady.
Women have a right to protest against that which withdraws husbands,
fathers and brothers from their society as soon as they cross the
threshold of home, or else dooms them to inhale a nauseous atmosphere,
and watch the unsocial puff--puff--which is monotonous enough to drive
any woman crazy who already has had quite too much monotony during the
day, and finds little variety enough, in watching the curl from that
eternal pipe. I blame no woman whose only evening amusement is this,
after her children are put to sleep, for protesting, and roundly too,
against such unmitigated selfishness; I blame no woman, whose husband,
when he does occasionally drum up sufficient vitality to wait upon her
out, for requesting that the omnipresent pipe or cigar may for once be
dispensed with, as she takes his arm, on that memorable occasion. As I
said before, men become so utterly brutified by this disgusting habit,
that they lose all sense of politeness and cleanliness. It is quite
time they were reminded of it.
_GIVE THE CONVICTS A CHANCE._
It seems to me that of all the charities in our great city, none is
more deserving of the attention of the benevolent, than that which
takes the little children of our poor, from the moral and physical
filth of their wretched surroundings, and places them in healthy, pure
homes in the country. No one, who has ever had heart and courage to
penetrate the terrible lanes, alleys and by-ways of poverty and crime
in New York, but asks himself with a shudder, as he looks at the
little ones there, what sort of men and women will these children be?
How far will He who counteth the fall of the sparrow, hold _them_
responsible for the dreadful teachings of their infancy? Infancy? the
word is a mockery. They have none. To feign--to cheat--to steal--this
is their alphabet. As to the fathers and mothers, who fold their lazy
hands and sit down in these pestiferous places to await the "penny"
pittances their children may collect, or their little pilferings which
may be turned into "pennies," the sooner the doors of our jails and
penitentiaries close on _them_ the better. _Their_ case is hopeless;
since sin has reached its climax when it deliberately and
systematically debauches childhood. But the little ones? _They_ might
be saved. They _are_ being saved; that's a comfort to know. Daily they
are being collected, by good men who make it their chief occupation to
wash, feed, clothe and transplant these sickly shoots of poverty, into
the fair garden of the West. Many a farmer's family there has a rosy
face by its hearth, which you would never recognize to be the squalid
little creature, whose shivering palm was extended to you at midnight,
as you returned home from some place of amusement in the city. There
it is being taught useful and _happy_ labor. There is pure air--sweet
food, and enough of it. Good company and good books. _There_ are
Sundays. Blessed be Sundays! for injudiciously as they are sometimes
observed even by good people, be sure that sweet old hymn will go
singing through the future life of these children, like a golden
thread, gleaming out from the dark woof of care and trouble:
"Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee;
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee."
No matter where they go, this hymn, and others like it, shall go with
them; cleansing and purifying, like a breath of sweet air, all the
dreadful remembrances of that foul home from which they were rescued.
Think what it were to change the life, temporal and eternal, of _one_
such child! And God be praised, the number of the saved is Legion.
How like a dreadful dream to the girl, in a happy home of her own,
with her own innocent baby on its father's knee, will be the pit of
degradation, where, but for this charity, _she_ might have been lost.
She realizes it fully now, when she looks into her little baby's face,
and grows chill with fear as she kisses it. And her brother! the hale,
sturdy-honest, well-to-do farmer, who comes in of an evening to talk
about _his_ farm and _his_ crops, and _his_ barns full of plenty--can
that be Johnny? once with the hat guiltless of a brim, the coat with
one flap, the trousers with half a leg, and the mouth full of oaths
and obscenity! Can that be Johnny, who dodged policemen so adroitly,
and was on the high road to the gallows in short jackets? This is not
fiction. This is not imagination. The biographies of great men and
women will yet adorn your library shelves, whose childhood had such
rescuing as this. One gets the heart-ache at every step in New York,
if he has eyes or ears for aught save Mammon; and yet how like
sun-beams, now and then, across this darkness, comes some noble
charity, of whose existence you knew nothing, till some unpretentious
sign arrests the eye, in some street never before travelled by you in
your daily rounds--some "Asylum," or "Retreat," or "Home," or
Hospital, at whose gate Mercy stands with outstretched arms, nor asks
the poor unfortunate whom it shelters, its creed or its nationality,
but says only--Here is comfort and help.
This much concerning _organized_ Charities. But of the noble women,
and men, too, who daily and quietly stretch out helping hands, giving
time and money, without other reward than the satisfaction such acts
bring to a kind heart--of them, surely there is One who will keep
record.
* * * * *
I see other signs of the millennium. In Massachusetts they have
Evening Lectures for the benefit of the convicts in the State Prison.
I shall never forget my tour through a State Prison, one bright summer
day. The hopeless faces of the men in the workshops. Their sullen
looks when by twos they marched in long procession across the yard,
under guard, to their dinner. I shall never forget the poor wretches
in the carding-room, breathing all day, and every day, the little
fuzzy, floating particles, which set me coughing painfully the moment
I entered the door; and when I asked the attendant if it did not
injure their lungs, the cool matter-of-fact manner in which he
answered, "Yes--they didn't live very long." I remember well the
horrid, contracted cells, against whose walls I know I should have
dashed out my brains, were I locked in long enough. And well too could
I understand what a horror Sunday must be, imprisoned there, _all_
day, with only the interval of an hour of church; alone with torturing
memories; till they prayed for the light of Monday morning and
work--work!--ever so _hard_ work, so that it only brought contact and
companionship with their kind, speechless though it were.
I remember, too, being told, on inquiry, that the convicts were
allowed books to read in their cells on Sunday; but on examination of
the cells, I found many so dark that even at midday the offer of
"books to read" would have been a mere mockery. I remember, too, the
emaciated, hollow-eyed sick men, lounging on benches in the yard, and,
when I pitied them, being told that they often "feigned sickness."
Heaven knows I should not have blamed them for feigning anything, when
humanity so slept that visitors were told _in their hearing_ of their
crimes, as they were severally pointed out, and their names and former
professions and places of residence given; here a doctor, there a
minister, who had fallen from grace.
Surely, thought I, there _must_ come a time when a better way than
this shall be found to "_reform_" men. Surely it can never be done by
driving them mad with unrelieved severity like this. For I remembered
a letter I received from a convict, to whom some printed word of mine
had accidentally floated through his prison bars, and "helped him," so
he wrote me, "to bear up till the time for his release came, when he
hoped to be a better man."
Had I never written but that one word, I am glad to have lived for
that man's sake.
And now what a change! These poor creatures, instead of darkness and
solitude--with hate, and revenge, and despair maddening them--have
evening lectures for their profit and encouragement. Something to
_think_ about in the long hours of wakefulness and sickness;
something to look forward to when the day's unrewarded toil is done;
something to rout the demons that crouch in their cells and wait their
coming at night, till any other hell than this would seem heaven. Let
us hope that the example of good old Massachusetts in this and many
other praiseworthy regards may be widely imitated.
Surely as God lives, there is a window in the soul of every debased
man and woman, at which Love and Mercy may knock and whisper, and be
heard. Nor can warden or overseer or chaplain ever be sure that from
those convict cells is not issuing the stifled cry--No man cares for
_my_ soul.
_A GLANCE AT WASHINGTON._
I have no means of judging what Washington may look like in sunny
weather; sleet and rain having combined on my visit there, for a
"spell" of the most detestable weather ever encountered by a
traveller. The streets were a quaking jelly of mud, filled with a
motley procession of dirt-incrusted army-wagons, drawn by
wretched-looking horses, the original color of whose hide was known
only to their owners. Military men swarmed on the sidewalks, gossipped
on the steps of public buildings, filled hotel entries, parlors and
dining-rooms, and splashed through mud-puddles with a recklessness
born of camp-initiation. To escape from wet sidewalks into street-cars
was to wade to them literally ankle-deep in mud-jelly. To the
resolute, however, all things are possible; especially when millinery
and dry-goods are counted as naught; I went there to see what was to
be seen, and I saw it.
The night before I visited the Capitol there came a heavy fall of
snow; the long avenues of trees leading to it looked very beautiful,
bending under their pure white burden, or tossing it lightly off, as
the wind swept by. Every garden seat had a round white cushion, every
statue a snow-crown. No art of man could have improved upon this
festal adorning of nature. The "prospect from the dome" we had to
take, by faith, more's the pity, the snow-king having drawn a veil
over it. Of course I stared about the Rotunda, like my betters. As I
have never "been abroad," I suppose I am not entitled to an opinion
upon the pictures I saw there; but it _did_ strike me that De Soto,
the discoverer of the Mississippi River, who travelled through the
wilderness for that purpose, thousands of miles, exposed to all
dangers and weathers; who lost cattle and men by fatigue and famine,
and was otherwise harassed to the verge of dissolution, could not, at
the moment, when success crowned his efforts, have been found in a
rich crimson jacket with slashed Spanish sleeves, and silk stockings
drawn over well-rounded calves, and an immaculate head of hair,
looking as if it had just emerged from a fashionable barber's shop. I
say it struck _me_ so, but then I'm "only a woman," and have never
been to Italy. It struck me also that their rags, and their dirt, and
their uncombed locks, and their jaded horses, would have looked quite
as picturesque, and had the added advantage of being true to nature.
It occurred to me also that some of the horses of the victorious
generals in the other pictures were very impossible animals, but that
may be owing to some defect in my early education. I could not help
thinking that our great-great-great-grand children might possibly wish
that we had left the _art-selection_ to themselves. It won't matter
much to us then, however.
How patriotic I felt when I stood on the floor of the Senate! A minute
more, and I should have forgotten my bonnet, and made a speech myself.
It might not have been "in order," but I think it would have been
listened to while it lasted, though when my enthusiasm was over, I
should probably have collapsed into shamefaced consciousness, very
much as do the restored breathers of "the laughing gas." I never heard
a more eloquent or appropriate prayer than was offered at the opening
of the Senate, that day, by a clergyman, whose name I did not learn.
Years ago, and what clergyman would have dared utter such bold words
in such a place? There were no speeches made that morning; and there
was no need; the place itself was inspiration. My breath came quick as
I looked about me.
As to the "White House," I have no doubt that the upholstery and
carpets are all right--also the chandeliers. For myself I coveted the
green-house and garden, and the fine piazza at the back of the house,
with its view of Arlington Heights and the white tents of the
encampment in the distance. The "East Room," with its Parisian carpet,
would have astonished the ghost of Mrs. John Adams, who used to dry
her clothes there, when it was in an unfinished state. How very
strange it looked to see sentinels on duty before the doors; one
realizes that there "is war," when in Washington and its surroundings,
where railroad gates and public buildings are guarded, and at every
few miles of road up starts a sentinel, and camps are so plentiful
that one ceases to regard them with a curious eye.
* * * * *
After walking through the Patent Office at Washington, I had several
reflections. First, a feeling of thankfulness that our innocent
ancestors died without knowing how uncomfortable they were,--minus
these modern improvements. Secondly, how many heads must have ached,
hatching out the ideas there practically perfected. Thirdly, did the
_real_ inventors themselves reap any reward, pecuniary or otherwise,
or, having died "making an effort," did some charlatan, with more
money than brains, filch their discovery and, attaching his name to
it, secure both fame and gold?
Leaving these vexed questions unsettled, the place is of rare interest
even to the ordinary curiosity-hunter, destitute either of
philosophical or mechanical proclivities. Looking at General
Washington's relics, one cannot but be struck with the simple tastes
of that time. The plates, knives and chairs, which formed part of his
household furniture, would--apart from their associations--be sniffed
at in any fashionable mansion of the present day. And as to his
camp-chest and writing-desk, every mother's 1862-pet, whose budding
moustache is half demolished by parting kisses, is provided with a
better as he goes to "the war." And Washington's coat, waistcoat and
breeches are of a fabric so coarse, that our present officials would
decline wearing the like except under compulsion. The same may be said
of the coat worn by the immortal General Jackson; at the mention of
whose name I will forever remove my bonnet, for his unswerving loyalty
toward, and manly defence of, his zealously slandered wife. Alas for
some of the pluck and spirit that animated the sometime wearers of
those faded old military clothes. But it is too aggravating a theme;
though I _did_ linger over those military buttons, with divers little
thoughts which I should like to have whispered into the President's
ear, and which, if properly carried out, would no doubt save this
nation!
As to the fifteen flashy silk robes presented by the Japanese
government to ours, I had no desire to get into them. A strange
soldier standing near while I was gazing, stepped up, and with camp
frankness said to me: "now I suppose, being a lady, you can form some
idea of the value of those things." "Oh, yes," said I, "they are like
the bonnets of to-day, expensive in proportion to their ugliness."
Penetrated by the wisdom of my reply, he answered feelingly, "_Just
so_,"--and touching his cap, passed on. Among General Washington's
relics I saw a cane presented to him by Franklin, and a chandelier
presented to Washington by some French magnate, so awkward, inferior
and crude, compared with the splendid affairs of the present day, that
one compassionately wishes, for the donor's sake, that his name were
withheld. I saw also, under glass, the original treaties of several
foreign nations, French and others, with our government. The
autographic signatures of great potentates, yellow with time, was
suggestive. The models of steam-engines, revolvers, torpedoes,
mowing-machines and excavators, were "too many for me;" I might have
looked wise over them, to be sure, like other folks, but had I stood
staring till the millennium I couldn't have comprehended them, so
where was the use of shamming? I just said, that's not in my line, and
inspected the different varieties of hoop-skirts; and though the
masculine mind may not recognize the fact, the perfection to which
those things have arrived by gradual stages is comforting to
contemplate. I say "comforting" advisedly; because if one _must_ drag
round so many yards of dry goods, a cage is better adapted to hang
them on than the human hips. It is my opinion that notwithstanding the
torrent of abuse to which the hoop is and has been subjected, it will
never be _dropped_--save at bed-time.
* * * * *
It is a melancholy affair to visit public institutions that have
sprung from the legacies of wealthy persons, so often do they fail to
carry out the philanthropic results so enthusiastically programmed by
the donors. This reflection seemed to me not out of place when leaving
the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. The building itself is fine,
and favorably located, and the grounds about it very attractive; but
dust-covered statues, cobwebs, and a general and indescribable air of
inefficiency in the interior, were painfully palpable, and stood as a
type of other posthumous charities which have come under my notice. In
fact, "_wills_" oftener turn out, "_wonts_" than one imagines,
codiciled and guarded as they may be by the best human ingenuity and
foresight. Snakes are not the only wriggling animals, and dead men are
happy in not being able to return to their old haunts. Some of the
pictured celebrities in the place would have leaped from their frames,
had they heard the irreverent bystanders, who here "doing" the lions,
asking who they were, and gaping at the guide-book recital of their
greatness and goodness, from some companion; or turning an indifferent
joke, in the middle of the narration, upon the cut of the pictured
coat, or hair, or beard. It was an excellent comment upon the wearing,
toil and fret of ambition, which eats the heart out of life, and often
sets aside everything worth living for, to gain--_a name_. The
collection of animals there would be interesting doubtless to the
naturalist; but we often wonder who _but_ he, could take pleasure in
bottled snakes, sprawling, impaled bugs, and stuffed monkeys and
baboons. As to the latter, they are too painful a burlesque upon human
beings, to be regarded with complacency. Their horrible and fiendish
exaggeration of some faces, which all of us have, once or more, in our
lives met, is anything but agreeable. The collection of stuffed birds
in this place is exquisitely beautiful. One lingers _there_, oblivious
of wide-mouthed, hungry-looking bears, standing on their hind legs, or
grinning skulls of Indians, or other delightful monstrosities. These
brilliant birds, orange with black wings, or scarlet wings with black
bodies, or drab with bright little heads, or with the whole body of
the loveliest blue, were beautiful as the most brilliant hued
bouquet. So perfectly were they prepared and mounted, that one waited
expectant for a sweet trill, or an upward flight. There was also a
very curious and pretty exhibition of bird's eggs, of every size and
color, some of them "cuddled" comfortably in little nests. I would
have agreed to leave to the Institution the numerous and precious
volumes of "De Bow's Review" which graced it, for the liberty of
appropriating those bright birds and those pretty eggs.
One feature in the place was quite novel. Specimens framed under glass
of the hair of some of the Presidents of the United States. Either
these gentlemen were not liberally endowed with this commodity, or
inveterate lion-hunters had taught them a niggardly caution on the
distribution of this article, in view of baldness or a future wig; for
under the names of some of them were only four or six hairs. Most of
them were white or grey; suggestive of rather equivalent repose, for
the craniums from whence they sprang. Of course, one's organ of
reverence would not admit in this case the possibility of the trick
adopted by "pestered" celebrities--attacked in the hair--viz: wickedly
substituting something else for the original coveted article. Of
course not! As to the soldiers and military men passing through
Washington, they must be pleased to know how comfortably they can be
"embalmed," should a chance shot render it necessary. Large signs to
this effect, conspicuously placed, and running the whole length of a
block, stare them remindingly in the face, at every turn. As to
Jackson's equestrian statue, fronting the President's house, I opine
that nobody _but_ General Jackson could have sat on a horse's back in
that rearing condition, without slipping backward over the tail.
However, one forgives everything to an admirer of General Jackson; and
the sculptor evidently had strong faith in his omnipotence, as well as
in the wonderful upward, danger-defying curve of his unique horse's
tail!
_GLIMPSES OF CAMP LIFE IN WAR TIME._
A visit to the head-quarters of an executive General is a means of
grace. I recommend it to all ladies who, year after year, closing
their disgusted ears to what limpingly passes below stairs, accept its
dawdling results as inevitable. For my own part, my back is up. So
imbued am I with the moral beauty of military discipline, that unless
I can inaugurate its counterpart from garret to cellar, I shall return
in disgust to army-life.
The idea struck me forcibly one morning before breakfast as I stepped
out into the bright sunshine, to behold a captain drilling his company
for the day. As each musket was presented for inspection, turned
quickly from one side to the other, and tossed lightly back into its
owner's waiting hands, I rushed back to tent and exclaimed: "General,
can you give any reason why we ladies shouldn't do with our pots, pans
and gridirons, each day, what your captain is doing yonder with the
muskets of his men; and with a 'guard-house' to back us up in case of
default or impertinence." "Why--_don't_ you ladies inspect your pots,
pans and gridirons?" inquired General Butler. "When our cooks are
_out_, never for our lives else," I replied. "Poor slaves!" was his
feeling reply.
"Poor slaves!" I echoed, as I returned to my lovely "drill" and grew
more righteously mad each minute. As I stood there, my dears, I for
one resolved never again to be the pusillanimous wretch to say, "If
you please, Martha," or "will you please, Bridget, bring me this or
that." No--instead, I boldly propose: "Orderly! bring me that baby!"
and when Bridget comes in, with a well-feigned sorrow for the decease
of that stereotyped "friend" who is always waiting to be "waked," and
begs leave of absence, let us answer, _à la militaire_, "Yes--you can
go for awhile; but your 'friend' is not dead, neither are you going to
a wake. I want you to understand that I am not deceived." And when,
after repeated instructions, the roast-beef is still overdone, with
executive forefinger let us touch the bell, and in the _lowest_ but
firmest of tones remark, "Orderly! put the cook in the guard-house."
But stay--women can never manage women that way. They are too cat-ty.
Let us have _men_-cooks, my dears, and science as well as civility
with our sauce. Yea--_men_-cooks, who will not "answer back;"
_men_-cooks who will not need to be an hour at the glass "prinking"
before they can look a tomato in the face; men-cooks, who, having once
done a thing "your way," can ever after reproduce it, and not, with
feminine caprice, or heedlessness, each time lessen the sugar and
double the salt, and vice-versa; _men_-cooks, whose "beaux" are not
always occupying the extra kitchen chair; _men_-cooks, who understand
the economy of space, and do not need a whole closet for every
tumbler, or a bureau-drawer for each towel.
Oh! I have not been "to camp" for nothing. There are no carpets
_there_ to spot with grease. There are no pictures whose golden frames
are wiped with a wet dish-cloth. There are no velvet chairs, or
ottomans, upon which they can lay red-hot pokers or entry-mats. There
is no pet china they can electrify the parlor with smashing, to the
tune of hundreds of dollars. But instead, there are little tents
dotted about, furnished with brave men; and for pictures, long lines
of army wagons trailing their slow length along; and yonder, against
the burnished sunset sky, gallop the cavalry, with glittering arms;
and there are "squads" of secesh coming into the lines, with most
astounding hats and trowsers and no shoes, who hold up the _wrong
hand_ when they take the oath of allegiance, and make their "mark" in
the registry book instead of writing their names, and some of whose
"profession," when questioned, is--"to shoemake;" and there are
grotesque-looking contrabands; and rat-ty looking, useful mules; and
in the evening there are fire-fly lamps gleaming from the little
tents; and of a cool evening lovely, blazing camp-fires, round which
you can sit and talk with intelligent men till the small hours, about
other things than "bonnets;" and there's reveille, and--good heavens!
_why_ did I come back to New York, with its "peace-men" and its tame
monkeys.
* * * * *
While waiting at City Point for the "flag-of-truce boat," we sauntered
up from the wharf. There was an encampment not far from the river, and
the first thing that attracted my notice was a sutler's
establishment--in other words, a little shed with a counter, two men
behind it, and a little bit of everything displayed inside. "Now,"
said I, "I will just bother that man asking him for something which I
am sure he has not for sale." "Do it," answered my companion; "I will
wager something he will have it." With triumph in my step, I
inquired--"Have you ladies' fans?" "Yes ma'am," was the reply; "here
is one, made in prison by a Union soldier." In my eagerness to secure
it, for it was a marvel of ingenuity, apart from the interest attached
to it, I forgot to collapse at my defeat--doubly defeated, too, alas!
"as it was not for sale." But there were books, and tobacco, and
combs, and suspenders, and pocket looking-glasses, and everything,
except "crying babies." A little farther on was a soda-fountain, then
a watch-maker, then an ice-cream shanty. Still I was not surprised;
for I lost my capability for a new sensation while staying in General
Butler's encampment. Strolling off, one lovely morning, in the woods,
for wild-flowers, I was overtaken by a shower of rain. Spying a little
shed at a distance under the trees, I made for it with all speed; and
found it full of bottles and a young man. The latter politely rose and
offered me the only stool in the establishment, and when I and my
hoop-skirt had entered, I regret to say that there was no room left,
save for the bottles above alluded to; and _their_ safety consisted in
my remaining quite stationary. "What is this place?" asked I, staring
about me. With a pitying smile the youth drew from a corner some fine
photographic views of "Dutch Gap," the site of General Butler's canal;
and then proposed my sitting for my picture. Had he produced a French
dress-maker from the trunk of one of the trees, I should not have been
more astonished. When the fickle Virginia sun again shone out, and I
had said the pretties, in the way of thanks, I resumed my walk; and
though on my way home I stopped to witness the fascinating operation
of felling trees, and to admire the vigorous strokes of the woodman's
axe, and listen to its far-off echoes through the woods, I still kept
on saying to myself--Well, I _never_! a photographic establishment in
these woods!
While wandering round at the landing at City Point, waiting to take
passage for Annapolis, I saw at a distance some tents, exquisitely
trimmed with green boughs. "How very pretty!" I exclaimed; "I must go
up there and have a peep." "But it won't do to go nearer," suggested
my companion. "I must," said I; "I never saw anything half so pretty.
I must see them nearer." Gradually approaching, I saw that the floor
of the tent was ingeniously carpeted with small pine boughs. In the
middle of it was a round table covered with green in the same manner;
while in either corner stood a small rustic sofa, cushioned with
green leaves. No upholsterer could have improved the effect "How
_very_ pretty!" I again exclaimed, growing bolder as I saw it
temporarily unoccupied. As I said this, two officers made their
appearance from a tent near, and said--"Walk in, madam, and look at
it; it is not often that we see ladies at our encampment." So we
accepted the invitation, and then and there I penitently and publicly
dropped a theory I had hugged for years--viz., that a man, left to
himself, and depr
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