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Ginger-Snaps

by Fanny Fern · English · Gutenberg #40504 · 438,722 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Ginger-Snaps

Author: Fanny Fern


        
Release date: August 14, 2012 [eBook #40504]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GINGER-SNAPS ***

    GINGER-SNAPS.

    BY
    FANNY FERN,
    AUTHOR OF
    "FERN LEAVES,"--"FOLLY AS IT FLIES," &c.


    NEW YORK:
    _Carleton, Publisher, Madison Square._

    LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.

    MDCCCLXX.


    Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
    GEORGE W. CARLETON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
    of the United States for the Southern District of New York.


    Stereotyped at the
    WOMEN'S PRINTING HOUSE,
    Corner Avenue A and Eighth Street,
    New York.




    CONTENTS.


    Dinner-Parties
    The Bride's New House
    The Happy Lot of a Sexton
    Literary Aspirants
    What shall we do for the Little Children on Sunday?
    My House in the Country
    Why Wear Mourning?
    "Delightful Men"
    Choosing Presents
    A Bid for an Editorship
    A Sermon to Plymouth Pulpit
    Female Clerks
    Blue Monday
    The Fly in the Ointment
    Woman's Millennium
    English Notions about Women
    Rag-tag and Bob-tail Fashions
    Some Hints to Editors
    Help for the Helpful
    Women on the Platform
    Poverty and Independence
    The History of the Late War
    Two Kinds of Women
    Sunday Morning
    Justice for Clergymen
    The Old Maid of the Period
    The Nurse of the Period
    A Look Backward
    Varieties of Human Nature
    "A Good Mistress always makes a Good Servant"
    The Mother-Touch
    Some Gossip about Myself
    Hospitality
    Woman and Her Watch
    "My Doctor"
    A Woman at a Lecture
    Can't be Suited
    Autograph-Hunters
    The Etiquette of Hotel Piazzas
    Old Stockbridge in Massachusetts
    Sunday in the Village
    Sick in the Village
    Men and their Clothes
    Notes from Plymouth Rock
    No Beaux Anywhere
    Daniel Webster's Home
    A Trip to Richmond
    The Coming Landlord
    Out on the End of Cape Ann
    Country Diet
    From my Seat on the Rocks
    Wishings and Longings
    A Transition State
    What Mary thought of John
    Travel-Spoiled Americans
    Life's Illusions
    Jack Simpkins
    Biding the Lord's Time
    One Sort of Fool
    The First Baby




PREFACE.


When I was a little girl, I used to play "make ginger-snaps;" and I
always tossed in all the ginger in the spice-box, be it more or less;
so if you find these rather biting, attribute it to the force of early
habits. Beside, they are not intended for a "square meal;" only to
nibble at, in the steamboat, or railroad-car, or under the trees in
the country; or when your dear, but tardy John, is keeping you
waiting, with your gloves buttoned, and your bonnet-strings tied; or,
best of all, when you are sitting in your rocking-chair, nursing that
dear little baby. I do not think the milk of human kindness is wanting
in these Ginger-Snaps, and I trust they are--_kneaded_.

    FANNY FERN.




GINGER-SNAPS.




_DINNER-PARTIES._


To fasten as many drags as possible to the social machinery of to-day,
seems to be the first idea of hospitality, which, there is every
reason to fear, will gradually be smothered in the process.

Perhaps the lady who gives the dinner-party would really prefer a
plain dinner with her friend Mrs. Jones, than all the elaborate
dinners she is in the habit of giving and attending; but her husband
likes wines and French cookery, and would consider anything else a
poor compliment to a guest; and so there's an end.

And now, what are these fine dinners? Just this: a pleasant gleam of
silver and china; a lovely disposition of fruit and flowers; a great
deal of dress, or undress, on the part of the ladies; much
swallow-tail, and an exquisite bit of cravat and kid-glove, on the
part of the gentlemen. Brains--as the gods please; but always a
procession of dishes, marched on and marshalled off, for the requisite
number of tedious hours, during which you eat you know not what,
because you must be ready with your answer for your elbow neighbor, or
your _vis-a-vis_; during which, you taste much wine and nibble much
confectionery, and finish up with coffee; and under the combined
influence of all this you sink supinely into a soft chair or sofa, and
the "feed" is over.

Everybody there feels just as you do. Everybody would like to creep
into some quiet corner, and be let alone, till the process of
digestion has had a chance.

Instead--they throw a too transparent enthusiasm into the inquiry,
"How's your mother?" If the gods are kind, and there has been an
inroad of measles or fever, the narrator may possibly give you ten
minutes' reprieve from pumping up from beneath that dinner another
query about "the baby." But if he--or she, too--is laboring, like
yourself, with duck and quail, and paté and oyster, and wine and fruit
and bon-bons, then may a good Providence put it into the distracted
brain of the hostess to set some maiden a-foul of the piano!

Oh, but that is blessed! no matter what she plays, how hard she
thumps, or how loud she screeches. Blessed--to lean back, and fold
your kid gloves over your belt, and never move them till you applaud
the performance, of which you know, nor care, any more than who struck
Billy Patterson.

This over, you see a gentlemen coming towards you. You know by his
looks, he too is suffering the pangs of repletion. Good heavens! how
full of deceit is his smile, as he fastens on you, thinking _you_
will talk! Mistaken man! you smile too, and both together agree that
"the weather has been fine of late." This done, you look helplessly,
with the untold pain of dumb animals, in each other's faces, and then
glance furtively about to see if that piano-young-woman really means
to leave your anguish unassuaged. She does. Hum!--you make an errand
across the room to pick up a suppositious glove you dropped--and get
rid of the parasite.

At last!--relief--there is your husband. _How_ glad he is to see you!
It's really worth going to the dinner-party to witness that man's
affection for you at that moment. Now he can yawn behind his glove.
Now he takes a seat _so_ near, that no man or woman can interrupt his
lazy heaven. He even smiles at you from very gladness of heart, and in
thick utterance tells you, in order to keep you from going from his
side, that "he don't see but you look as well as any woman in the
room." You only needed that unwonted display of gallantry from the
hypocritical wretch, to rise immediately and leave him to his fate,
though you should, in doing it, rush madly on your own.

And this is "a dinner-party." For this men and women empty their
purses, and fill their decanters and wardrobes, and merge their brains
in their stomachs, and--are in the fashion!

Better is a leg of mutton and caper-sauce, and much lively talk,
whensoever and wheresoever a friend, with or without an invitation,
cares enough about you and yours with impromptu friendship to "drop
in." Best clothes, best dishes, best wine, best parlors!--what are
they, with rare exceptions, but extinguishers of wit and wisdom and
digestion and geniality. Who will inaugurate us a little common-sense?

Queen Victoria--how glad I am she had such a good, loving husband, to
compensate her for the misery of being a queen--tried her best to
abolish the custom, prevalent in England at dinner, of the gentlemen
remaining to guzzle wine after the ladies left. I am aware that guzzle
is an unladylike word; but, as no other fits in there, I shall use it.
Well--she succeeded only in shortening the guzzling period--not in
abolishing it; so those consistent men remained, to drink toasts to
"lovely women," whose backs they were so delighted to see retreating
through the door.

What of it? Why, simply this, that Queen Victoria did what she could
to civilize her own regal circle; and that she set a good precedent
for American women of to-day to follow. I fail to see why, when a
hostess has carefully watched the dishes and glasses come and go, at
her husband's dinner-party, to the obstruction of all rational
conversation, save by agonized spasms,--I fail to see why, when the
gentlemen guests have eaten to satiety, and conversation might be
supposed to be at last possible, why, at that precise, enjoyable
period, the lady of the house should be obliged to accompany the empty
plates to regions unknown and uncared for. This seems to me a
question well worthy of consideration in this year of our Lord, 1868.
It strikes me, rather an inglorious abdication for a woman of
intelligence, who may be supposed to understand and take an interest
in other things than the advance and retreat of salad, and ragouts,
oysters, and chicken. I call it a relic of barbarism, of which men of
intelligence should be ashamed. Then what advantage has the woman who
cultivates her mental powers, over the veriest fool? It is an insult
to her. But you say, all women are not thoughtful or intelligent. Very
true: and why should they be--save that they owe it to their own
self-respect--when gentlemen thus offer premiums for insipidity?--why
should they inform themselves upon any subjects but those of dressing
well and feeding well?

It is a satisfaction to know that there are gentlemen, who endorse the
other side of the question. There was lately a dinner given in New
York to a literary gentleman of distinction. One of the gentlemen
invited to attend it, said to his wife: "It is a shame that ladies
should not attend this dinner. _You_ ought to be there, and many other
ladies who are authors." Acting upon this impulse, he suggested to the
committee that ladies should be invited. The answer was: First--"It
would be so awkward for the ladies. Secondly--there were very few
literary ladies compared to the number of literary gentlemen." Now as
to the question of "awkwardness," the boot, I think, was on the other
foot; and if the ladies were awkward,--which was not a complimentary
supposition,--why should the gentlemen be to blame for it? And if
there were "few lady authoresses," why not ask the wives of the
_editors_ who were to be present?

No--this was not the reason.

What was it? _Tobacco_--yes, sir, tobacco! I don't add wine--but I
might. In short, these men would be obliged to conduct themselves as
gentlemen were ladies present; and they wanted a margin left for the
reverse. They preferred a bar-room atmosphere to the refining presence
of "lovely woman," about whom they wished to hiccup at a safe
distance.

Perhaps, in justice, I should add, that it was suggested that they
might perhaps see the animals feed from the "musicians' balcony," or
listen to the speeches "through the crack of a door," with the
servants, or in some such surreptitious and becoming and complimentary
manner, which a woman of spirit and intelligence would, of course, be
very likely to do.

To conclude, I trust those gentlemen who are in the habit of bemoaning
"the frivolity of our women, and their sad addictedness to long
milliner's bills," will reckon up the cost of cigars and wine at these
dinners, from which ladies are excluded; and while they are on the
anxious seat, on the economy question, ask themselves whether, putting
other reasons out of the question, the presence of ladies, on these
occasions, would not contribute greatly to _reduce their dinner
expenses_?

I lately read an article in a London paper, in which "the
woman-question" was treated in the following enlightened manner: The
writer avowed his dislike to the cultivation of woman's intellect;
since men had enough intellect, in their intercourse with each other;
and wanted only with woman that charming, childish prattle and
playfulness, which was so refreshing to the male creature, when he
needed relief and amusement!

The author of these advanced ideas didn't state whether he considered
these _childish_, _prattling_ women fit to be mothers and heads of
families; probably that was too puerile a question to consider in the
same breath with the amusement they might afford men by the total
absence of intelligence.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is a wonder that Christians of different denominations do not see,
that while they are spending the precious hours contending for the
non-essentials, which are but as the fringe to the "wedding-garment,"
that souls are slipping past them into eternity, uncared-for and
unprepared. One is often painfully struck with this thought, in
reading, or hearing, the acrid disputes of mistaken, but well-meaning,
zealots.




_THE BRIDE'S NEW HOUSE._


Spick and span, thorough and fresh, from attic to cellar. Pretty
carpets and pictures, and glass, and silver, and china, and
upholstery, and a pretty bride for the mistress! Receptions over, she
looks about her. Hark! what's that? A mutiny down stairs! She didn't
foresee so speedy a grapple with Intelligence offices, even if any at
all. She remembers, 'tis true, that the coachman came one day to
announce to mamma that "the cook was stiff drunk," and the dinner
consequently in a state of indefinite postponement; and she remembers
that a new cook soon took her place; and she has a misty recollection
of a chamber-maid who left suddenly because she was requested not to
use the cologne, and then fill up the bottle with water; and she knows
another chamber-maid arrived before night, who had so tender a
conscience that she couldn't say the ladies were "out," when they were
in the bath, or in bed, and yet would appropriate handkerchiefs and
ribbons and gloves without even winking. Still, she never thought of
being bothered in this way, when _she_ was married. It was all to be a
rosy dream of love and quiet and comfort, and immunity from vulgar
frets. "Well, she goes down into her kitchen, and inquires into the
mutiny, and finds that the chamber-maid has called the cook a 'nasty
thing;' and both are standing in the middle of the kitchen-floor like
two cats on top of a fence, neither of which will give way for the
other, snarling, spitting, and growling, and making the fur fly at
intervals. She tries to pacify them, but they out-scream each other,
till her head cracks, defending themselves. She goes up to George,
with both hands over her ears, and asks him 'if it isn't dreadful?'"
He says, with an executive wave of his conjugal hand, "Send them both
off, and go to an Intelligence-office, my dear, and get others." _He_
thinks "going to an Intelligence-office," and breathing the
concentration of "marasmus" in a little den ten feet square, for an
hour, is to be the end of it. He don't take into account the
"character" that is to be hunted up at the last place Sally lived in,
up in Twenty-thousandth street, the mistress of which will keep his
little wife waiting an hour to dress, before she comes down; while
Sally is meantime airing her heels in the Intelligence-office, whither
the new bride is to return and report, affirmatively or the reverse.
If affirmatively, George supposes again that there's an end of it. Not
a bit. Now, Biddy is to be instructed an hour or two every day, where
to find spoons, forks, knives, towels, napkins, brooms, dusters, and
where and how to use them, and at the end of a week's education, she
will never once set a table without harrowing mistakes, even if, at
the end of that time, her opinion of some other servant in the house
does not necessitate her "finding another place;" or because, though
ignorant of all she professed thoroughly to understand when she came,
she objects to being "followed 'round".

'Tis true the little bride might dodge the Intelligence(?) offices and
"advertise," thus holding a servant's levee for several days in her
parlors and hunting "characters" at immense distances afterwards; or,
she might take a list of advertisements, and scour the city in
disagreeable localities, up pairs of stairs innumerable, to find the
advertisers "just engaged," if she prefer that. Either way, _the
grapple_ is to be met, in the person of cook, chambermaid, or
waitress, or all three, every few weeks; and all this, though the
little bride may ask no questions of the speedy disappearance of the
household stores, or how many people unknown to her are fed at all
hours out of them. Although she may prefer not to see that her damask
table-napkins are used for dish-towels, or that the mattresses are
never turned over when the beds are made, or that the broom never
invades the corners of any apartment, but merely takes a _swish_
through the centre. She may also be silent when she is told that a
closet has been cleaned and put in order, although to her certain
knowledge it has never been touched; for is not the virtuous and
indignant rejoinder always ready, "D'ye think I'd _lie_, mum?"

Now, what comfort is her pretty silver, half cleaned, and bruised and
scratched in the process? What consolation her pretty dishes, with
the handles knocked off? What pleasure her china nicked at the edges?
Which way soever she turns, waste, ignorance, and obstinacy stare her
in the face. And is her life to be all this? Yes, except an interval
now and then, when she lies with a little one on her arm, with a
doctor and a nurse between her and the "grapple;" and the vision, as
she gets better, of hunting up a nurse-maid, who, horror of horrors!
will be "always under her nose."

I do not say there are not exceptions to this gloomy picture, but they
are rare. Sometimes a godsend of an aunt, or housekeeper, stands
between the mistress of the house and all this "how not to do it." But
till Intelligence-offices have something besides the raw material to
offer on the one hand, or on the other, servants who insist upon
performing your work "as Mrs. Jones did," and who resent as an insult
the mildest intimation that you prefer your own way, and object
totally to your going over your house in every part once a day, to see
if things are right--while this state of things continues, the
mistress, be she young or old, must needs take refuge from this
grapple in hotel life, or spend her existence watching the arrival of
emigrant ships.

No man has any call to speak or write on this subject, since they know
nothing about it. One of them recently explained the present
wastefulness of servants to be caused "by the extravagant way of
living indulged in by their mistresses." Waiving the truth or
falsehood of the charge, I rise to inquire, whether the dishonesty
and fast-living of clerks, be not attributable to the fashionable
vices and lavish expenditures of their business employers. Having
aired this little question, I proceed to say, that the dissatisfaction
with regard to servants is undoubtedly every day greatly on the
increase. In most instances, their utter disqualifications for the
high wages they demand, are patent to every observing housekeeper. If
the lady of the house wishes her work properly and systematically
done, she must, in addition to paying such wages, do half the work
herself; or, which amounts to the same thing, oversee these
incompetent servants; who, at the end of even two months' teaching,
either cannot, or will not, learn to do it faithfully. They who slight
their work the most, are of course most unwilling to have the
supervision. Indeed these very servants will often say, "that having
done chamber-work, or cooking, for such a number of years in New York,
they don't need _any_ lady to instruct them how!" So that the mistress
has to choose between a constant and irritating war of words, or a
mismanaged household. To preserve one's patience or serenity, under
such household friction, or to get time for anything else, is a very
difficult task indeed. Now every _right-minded_ mistress of a
household desires, not only to have it well ordered, but to feel an
interest in the welfare of those women who serve her: she would be
glad, if they have a sorrow, to lighten it; if they are sick, to nurse
them kindly; and in every way to help them to feel, that she does not
look upon them as "beasts of burden," but as human beings.

I affirm that the present generation of servants neither care for nor
understand this. All they want is, to be "let severely alone." Not to
be "followed up," as they phrase it. If you hear the area-bell ringing
punctually every day when your meals are served, they expect the fact,
quite ignored by you, that some big nephew, or cousin, or lover, or
uncle, with a robust appetite, comes at those times for his bowl of
tea, or coffee, or a bit of meat, with some warm vegetables. They
will, if found out, lie about it, with an unblushing effrontery which
is perfectly astounding; or, if well up to New York area ways, will,
with arms akimbo, inquire, "Well, what's a cup of tay, or a sup of
coffee, or a bit of mate, now and thin, to rich folks?" and that
although this may and does happen every day, and two or three times a
day. As to cultivating any good understanding, or feeling, with such
unscrupulous servants, it is simply impossible. There is no foundation
in them for any such superstructure. Not long since, one such servant
was requested at a time of sickness in the family, "to step about the
house softly in the morning, as the patient had a sleepless night."
She stared defiantly at the person making this gentle request, and
inquired in a loud voice, "_if this wasn't a free country?_" Not long
after this she smashed a very pretty butter-dish; and when told that
it just cost five dollars, she loftily inquired, "_Well, what's five
dollars?_"

Now what progress can even an intelligent, well-meaning,
kind-intentioned mistress make with such a savage element as this?

One replies, "Oh, don't keep them, of course; get others." Very
well--you wear out a pair of boots "_getting_ others." To your horror,
you discover that the new cook is subject "to attacks" which confine
her to her bed, with--a gin bottle! till she feels like convalescing.
The last lady she lived with, in the "recommendation" with which she
got her own neck out of the noose, put yours into it by omitting to
mention this little fact; so that again you must start on your travels
"_Intelligence_"-ward.

During these changes of programme, a house gets pretty well
demoralized; every servant who comes, expects to find nothing to do in
the way of putting it to rights; and often when her lazy dream in this
respect is realized, she will be very far, when _she_ leaves, from
putting her successor's mind, or bones either, at rest on this point.

All this is sufficiently rasping and vexatious. One lady remarked to
me, "Oh! as for me, I neither know nor see, anything that they do. I
have to choose between this or a lunatic asylum. I can't fight all the
time; and if you change, there's only a new _kind_ of misery."

"Your husband must have a long purse, my dear," I remarked. She
shrugged her shoulders, and asked me "where I bought my new bonnet?"

Now, this state of things is deplorable enough. I can very well
understand, and sympathize with, the disgust many right-minded women
arrive at, after a panorama of such Sallys and Betseys have passed
through their pretty houses, intent only on high wages, waste, and
plunder. To fight it, only sours one's temper, and wastes one's life.
There's no right feeling about them; they have neither conscience nor
industry. "I have done my best," said a lady to me, "to teach and
civilize and humanize them, but I tell you there's nothing to work
upon; so, after giving my orders in the morning, I will neither hear
nor see anything more about it."

Well, another lady will keep on her feet all day, trying to bring
things to a focus; trying the impossible task of putting brains where
there is nothing but a great void; trying to encourage--trying to
lighten burdens by shouldering half herself, or getting substitutes to
help; and thus by superhuman efforts she gets her husband's little
culinary comforts all attended to at the right time, and every
disagreeable thing put under lock and key before his return; but she
sits down opposite him at the table with no appetite, with not an idea
in her aching head; the well-ordered repast only representing
back-aches and vexation of spirit.

Now this is rather a steep price to pay for housekeeping, and that is
why the cunning little lady above referred to dodged it, and saved
incipient wrinkles.

In conclusion, I beg leave to suggest to ladies that they must stop
"recommending" dishonest or incapable servants, merely because "they
don't want a quarrel with them." In the next place, if it be true
that the keepers of intelligence-offices, for a stipulated sum, will
furnish "a character" for any kind of girl able to furnish the money,
is it not time something were done about this?

Finally, in the name of all the New York ladies, _I_ know, or have
heard speak, in private, on the subject, let China, or Africa, or
Professor Blot with his travelling cook-shop, and all the laundry
establishments, come speedily to the rescue, and find us a way of
escape. If you ask, by way of postscript, if there are _no_ exceptions
to the kind of servants I have described above, I answer by asking
you, how often you find a four-leaved clover, or a black holly-hock,
or a green rose?

       *       *       *       *       *

Let the poor wretch, smarting under the lash of the critic, remember
that indigestion has lent point and bitterness to many a sentence
which would else have been kindly. He can add to this, that critics
are subject, like others, to envy, ambition, and little
uncharitablenesses, which grow out of them. Also, that "mutual
admiration" societies are _not_ extinct. Also, that some critics look
through political, some through religious, and some through
atheistical spectacles; and if this don't assuage his anguish, let him
remember that a thousand years hence both the critic and himself will
have passed into happy oblivion.




_THE HAPPY LOT OF A SEXTON._


Not a bad thing to be the sexton of a church. In the first place, he
gets a conspicuous start in life, by advertising on the outer wall of
the church, his perfect willingness to bury all the parish in which he
carries on his cheerful business,--a business which can never be dull
with him, because somebody is always dying, and somebody else is
always being born for the same end. Then Sunday comes regularly once a
week, so that his "shop" never closes, and consequently always wants
his broom of reform. Then the sexton has his little alleviations, when
he has had enough of the sermon: he can make an errand out in the
vestibule, after imaginary bad children, who might disturb the
minister, or to see that the outer door don't creak or bang
un-Sabbatically. When he gets tired of that, he can sit comfortably
down on his stool near the door, which he can tilt back on its hind
legs, out of view of all critical worshippers (except _me_), and then,
and there, he can draw out that omnipresent and national jack-knife,
which is his ever-present solace in every time of need. First--he can
clean his nails, and pare them, varying the performance by biting off
their refractory edges. Then he can commence scratching off any
little spots on his trousers or coat with the point of the same. When
this little exercise is concluded, and the sermon is _not_, he can
draw from another pocket a case-comb, and put those fine touches to
his hair which the early church-bell had interfered with. It is
tiresome on him then for a few minutes, unless some impertinent
sunbeam gilds the minister's sacerdotal nose, and gives him an excuse
for going up in the gallery to lower a curtain, in that dexterous
manner which only a professional can compass. By this time
"seventeenthly" having been concluded by the minister, the sexton
hurries to the church-door, doubling up with a dexterous twist any
aisle-chairs which have done duty _pro tem_. and tucking them in their
appropriate corner, and then takes his position in the porch, the most
important personage present save the minister himself. To the
questions, "Is it the clergymen of this church who has just preached?"
addressed him by some stranger, and "Is there to be an afternoon or an
evening service?" and "Can you tell me where is the clergyman's
residence?" and "Will you hand this note to the clergyman?" etc.,
etc., he returns a prompt and proud answer. And, even when Miss
Belinda Jones steps to his elbow, and requests that he will pay a
little more attention to ventilating the church between the services,
and in fact during the week, in order that she may escape the
infliction of her usual Sunday headache; and when she expatiates
touchingly on the blessing and healthfulness and cheapness of fresh
air, and his Christian duty to apportion a sufficient quantity to
each individual to sustain life, and that meek and quiet spirit that
is enjoined; even then, he bows respectfully, nor mentions that, were
ventilation thus insured by open windows, and the life of the audience
prolonged, it might make him a little more trouble in dusting the
cushions, which he could by no means permit. The polite sexton does
not mention this, nor that he "hates fidgetty females" but he bows
politely and affirmatively, locks up the bad air in the church all the
same, and goes home to his roast-beef and his babies.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upon his box the hackman sits and reads the newspaper, while his
blanketed horses wait for the coming customer. In the cars the
mechanic holds it, hastily running over its columns at this his only
time for reading. Even in the ferry-boat the clerk and school-girl
bend their heads, absorbed and well pleased. At places of amusement,
before the curtain rises, the audience beguile the time by conning its
pages; and even early comers to church improve the minutes by perusing
the Sunday-school papers before the services begin. With these facts
before us, who shall estimate the influence, for good or evil, of the
newspaper? Who shall question the dignity of an editor's position, or
measure his responsibilities?




_LITERARY ASPIRANTS._


It is the most astonishing thing that persons who have not sufficient
education to spell correctly, to punctuate properly, to place capital
letters in the right places, should, when other means of support fail,
send MSS. for publication. Now before me lies just such a MS.,
accompanying which is a letter requesting me to read it, give the
writer my opinion of it, and hand the same to some publisher.

Now, here is my opinion. In the first place, every editor is crowded
with offered MSS. from all sources. Secondly, many of the writers
would not mind not receiving pay for the same, could they only see
that MS. in print in a certain journal that they have selected. In
fact, many times they would rather _pay for having it inserted_ than
to have it declined. This much for the glut in the market.

Then, after this, an editor makes his own selections. It may be he has
already a sufficient corps of contributors, and does not care for, and
will not entertain, any fresh applications. But suppose this is not
the case. Suppose he looks over, or employs a person to look over,
these various MSS. What chance, I ask you, among the myriads, has a
MS., every other word of which is misspelt, and which is wrongly
punctuated, and without paragraphs or capitals, and illegibly written
beside, and, _crowning bother of all_, written on _both_ sides of the
page, over those which are just the reverse; which are no trouble to
read, which require no revision, and which contain _ideas_ as well as
words?

Very well: after all that, an editor has to decide, among even these
_properly prepared_ MSS., which is best suited to _his_ individual
paper, about which he has, and very properly, his own notions and
ideas. Now an article may be well written, and yet not be the thing he
wishes for his paper, although it might be the very thing desired for
another. Well--he of course rejects it, as he has an undoubted right
to do. He could not carry on his paper or magazine successfully on any
other principle. You would not ask a grocer to buy a piece of calico
because you wanted money for that calico. He would immediately say,
"It is not in my line of business; I can make no use of it. I am sorry
you are in want of money; but business is business. I will make you a
_present_ of three or four dollars, as the case may be; but your
calico is of no use to me."

Now you could see the force of _that_: why can't you be made to
understand that it is just so, only a _great deal more so_, with an
editor?

Perhaps you say to me, "Ah, you forget the time when _you_ began." I
beg your pardon, but I do not. Many a weary tramp I had; much pride I
put in my pocket, and few pennies, even with the advantage of a good
education, and a properly prepared MS., and the initiation "of reading
proof"--for my father, who was an editor, when I was not more than
twelve years old--before I succeeded.

It is _because_ I know; it is because I have been behind the scenes,
that I tell you plainly the preliminary steps to be taken before you
"send MSS. for publication," to any one.

Then, don't you see, it is not agreeable to write thus to a person who
quite puts these preliminary steps out of sight, either through
ignorance or conceit: My Dear Sir, or my Dear Madam, this wont do! you
have neither education nor ideas. This appears to them unfeeling; but
it is not. It is doing such persons a much greater kindness than you
could do them by luring them on with the idea of reward, thus wasting
their time, which might be used _successfully_ in other directions,
only to end in mortification and disappointment.

History and Biography show--perhaps you say to me--that many great men
and great writers are deficient in spelling and chirography. Yes, that
is true; but have you not admitted that they were "_great_ writers"?
An editor may be content to keep on sifting, if he is sure of finding
_wheat_; but when the result is _only_ chaff, life is too short for
it; and his necessity to live, equally with your own, too pressing.

One specimen is as good as a thousand. My last was from a young
person, who tells me that she is tired of sewing for a living, and
wants to write; also, that she wants to write for a certain editor.
Also, that this editor would do much better, were he to take the large
sums he pays to his favorite contributors, who do _not_ need it, and
"assist struggling genius." Also, that "she wishes me to remember that
_I_ once struggled myself." Also, that she wishes me to inform her how
I went to work to get a publisher.

Now, to begin with, this young woman misspelt every other word in her
letter, besides entirely ignoring capitals and punctuation. This of
course settled in the outset the question of her present literary
possibilities. Editors do not expect to find these things for their
correspondents; at least I know one who don't; and when he "pays large
sums of money to his favorite contributors" for supplying this very
lack, with ideas included, I presume he knows what he is about, and I
think he has the same right to prefer good spelling in his paper that
the writer of this letter has to prefer literary work to sewing.

Now as to "how I got a publisher." _I didn't get him. He got me._ And
when this young woman produces anything a publisher wants, or thinks
he wants, she will probably have a call from one too.

Next, I don't forget "that I once struggled myself." It adds zest to
my life every hour to remember it. I love the little cosey house I
live in, as I never else could do, because I earned the money to buy
it myself; and I thank God that, if I lost it to-day, and coupons and
banks also gave out, that I am hale and strong enough, and have the
will and the courage, even at this late day, to begin anew. So much
for that. But I do _not_ believe it to be kindness to advise this
uneducated young woman to throw up her present means of support, how
disagreeable soever it may be, for one, that in her present illiterate
state is utterly hopeless.

Scores of such letters I get, so that I have sometimes thought I would
have a printed circular, embodying the above obvious difficulties in
the way of "literary aspirants," and mail it on receipt of their
epistles. To-day I concluded that I would, once for all, air my views
on the subject. After this, every letter from a "literary aspirant"
_which is misspelled_ goes into my waste-paper basket.

Having said all this, I may, in justice to myself, own up to the fact,
that time and again I have given up my own most imperative writing to
correct, and _try_ to make presentable, MSS. for which I was requested
to "_find a publisher_," and which I knew had not the ghost of a
chance, and all because _I did not_, as this young woman advises me,
"forget that I once struggled myself." I never received one word of
thanks for it, but instead dissatisfaction that "_somehow_" I had not
insured success. I remember, in one instance, having spent nearly a
month over a book in MS., laying aside a book of my own, then in
process of preparation; often sitting up late at night, because I
could not else get time enough to devote to it; the writer of this
MS. repaying me only with abuse and defamation, as I afterwards
learned.

So my conscience is quite clear on the subject of remembering, and in
the best way too, my own early struggles. I have tried, in this
article to express myself so as not to be misunderstood. Still I have
no doubt that some "literary aspirant," feeling himself or herself
aggrieved, will haste to set me down an unfeeling wretch. I can stand
it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The man with good, firm health is rich.

So is the man with a clear conscience.

So is the parent of vigorous, happy children.

So is the editor of a _good_ paper, with a big subscription list.

So is the clergyman whose coat the little children of his parish
pluck, as he passes them on their play.

So is that wife who has the whole heart of a good husband.

So is the maiden whose horizon is not bounded by the "coming man," but
who has a purpose in life, whether she ever meet him or not.

So is the young man who, laying his hand on his heart, can say, "I
have treated every woman I ever saw as I should wish my sister treated
by other men."

So is the little child who goes to sleep with a kiss on its lips, and
for whose waking a blessing waits.




_WHAT SHALL WE DO FOR THE LITTLE CHILDREN ON SUNDAY?_


"Take them to church, of course," says one. Now, I don't think it is
"of course," when I look about, and see little things of four and six
years old, and sometimes younger, fidgetting and squirming in their
out-door wrappings, in a hot, crowded, badly ventilated church, to
whom the services are a dead language, and who prevent those around
them from worship, through pity for their evident uncomfortableness. I
don't think it is "of course" when I see this. To be sure, there are
mothers whose pockets contain alleviations for this juvenile
restlessness, in the shape of sugar-plums, or picture-books; but all
the time they are being applied, the mother's eye must be on the child
instead of the clergymen, lest sticky fingers intrude upon silk or
velvet, or a too hasty rattling of leaves in reading the book drown
the sound of the preacher's voice. "They should be taught to behave,"
gravely asserts some person, who, perhaps, has forgotten his own
childhood, or has never been a parent. That is true: we only differ as
to the question whether church is the place to pursue that education.
"Well, suppose you keep a child of that age at home?" asks another.
"Of course he ought not to play with his toys as on other days, and
he can't read all day, and no one can read or talk all day to him, and
what are you going to do then?" In the first place, I, for one, should
never "take away its toys" before I could enable it to pass Sunday
pleasantly without them; and, of course, I should not allow them
directly to interfere with other persons' enjoyment of quiet on
Sunday. It is a very difficult problem to solve, I know; but I am
sure, to make Sunday a tedium and disgust, is not the way; we have all
known too many sad instances of the terrible rebound of adult years
from this un-wisdom. We have all known instances where "going to
meeting" was _not_ prematurely forced upon the restless little limbs
of children, who have, when a little older, asked to accompany the
family to worship, and been pleased to go. Nor would I deprive a child
of its accustomed walk in the fresh air on that day; on the contrary,
I should be most anxious that it should as usual enjoy the out-door
brightness. I would also always have for that day some little pleasure
which belonged especially to it. It may be some plain little cakes or
nuts of which it was fond. I would always have on hand some stories to
read, or to tell it, on that day. If possible, I would have flowers on
Sunday placed at the child's plate; I would strive that Sunday should
be the _cheerfullest_ day of all the week to it--not a bugbear. I
believe all this might be done, without disturbing any Christian's
church-membership, or perilling any child's salvation. In the country
it is much easier to make Sunday pleasant for children than in the
city. You have only to let them stray into the garden or field, and be
happy in the best way a little unformed mind can he. Or, if the
weather interferes with this, the barn and the animals are a
never-failing source of pleasure to it.

There are those who might think it "wicked" to do this. The
wickedness, to me, consists in making Sunday, which should be a
delight, such a tedium, that, in after years, whenever the word
strikes upon the ear, or the day returns, the first impulse is to shun
and evade it. Oh, let Sunday be what the memory of "mother's room" is
to us all--radiant with perfume of flowers and sunshine. The bright
spot to look back upon, when old age sits in the chimney-corner, with
the sweet psalm from voices hushed by death, or far removed, still
sounding in the ears; with the memory of happy faces over the Sunday
meal; the glad "Good-morning" and the soft "Good-night."

Surely the God who opens the flowers on Sunday, and lets the birds
sing, did not mean that we should close our eyes to the one or our
ears to the other, or that we should throw a pall over the little
children.




_MY HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY._


When I live in the country, the front door of my house shall be made
for use, and not for show; and the blinds and windows shall be thrown
wide open from sunrise until sunset; and I will issue invitations to
the bees and birds and butterflies to come in and out at their own
convenience, without fear of molestation from me, or of danger to my
furniture or belongings. If a few mosquitoes follow suit, I will
accept them as a necessary evil, and not to be compared, in the way of
annoyance, with that air of sepulchral gloom which, like a wet blanket
of mist, surrounds the exterior of most country dwellings, where the
men, women, and children skulk round like burglars to the _back_ of
the house to effect an entrance, and the closed door and blinds are
suggestive of a corpse awaiting burial. And yet I think I understand
how this bad custom came about. It was from many babies and much
darning and baking, and the dread of impending fly-specks on the gilt
frame encircling General Washington and the large looking-glass. But,
dear friends, put a mahogany frame round the General, and banish the
looking-glass, which will, in a few years, if you neglect all that
makes home cheerful, reflect only the imprint of life's cares,
instead of its pleasures and contents. "_They_ are so very few," you
say. Well, then the more necessity for letting in the sunshine. As I
walk about, I notice the careworn, pallid faces of the wives and
mothers about many of these country homes, and the careless untidiness
of dress which, in a woman, means that she has given the whole thing
up, either from overwork or lack of sympathy from the one person for
whom the shining hair was once neatly combed, and the strip of white
collar carefully pinned, although it might be late in the day before
time was found to do these things. When I see these women at
nightfall, in this neglectful dress, sitting alone upon the back
door-step, while the husband and father has strolled off to some
neighbor's, and lies flat on his stomach on the grass, with half a
dozen other husbands and fathers, browsing like so many cattle,
without a thought of those weary women, I fall to thinking how much
life would be worth to me reduced to this utilitarian standard of cow
and cabbage. Then I wonder if those women were to throw open the
blinds and doors and windows of the front of the house, and smooth
their hair a bit, and let one of the children pick some grasses and
wild flowers for the mantel, and then tell their respective Johns and
Toms to bring into the house the men they like to talk to at that
hour, so that all could be jolly together, whether it wouldn't change
things for the better. If that plan didn't work, do you know what I
would do? I would shoulder my baby, and trot down the road to the
nearest neighbor's, and let the old coffin of a house take care of
itself. I _wouldn't_ rust, anyhow.

Now, it may be that these women wouldn't know how miserable they were,
if I didn't tell them of it. So much the worse, then. I only know that
if life were _all work_ to me, it should go hard but I would try to
catch a sunbeam now and then, if it were only that the children might
not be demoralized by growing up to look at me in the light of a
dray-horse; if it were only that my boys need not expect _their_ wives
to close their eyes and ears to the beauty and harmony which God had
scattered so lavishly about them. Because there are rocks, shall there
be no roses? Because there is dust, shall there be no dew?

Do you do well, my sisters, to make your houses so gloomy that your
husbands would rather roost outside upon the stone fences, than stay
in them? Don't _have_ a "best carpet;" don't _have_ a "best sofa." Let
in the sun, and the birds, and the children, though it involve bare
floors and wooden chairs, and the total banishment of General
Washington and that best looking-glass. _Eat_ in your "best parlor,"
and laugh in it; don't save it up to be laid out in! Try it now, and
see if life isn't a different thing to you all. As to your "work," a
great deal of it is unnecessary. John and the children would be much
better without pies, cakes, and doughnuts. Make it your religion to
give them wholesome bread and meat, and then stop and take a little
breath. Nobody will thank you for turning yourself into a machine.
When you drop in your tracks, they will just shovel the earth over
you, and get Jerusha Ann Somebody to step into your shoes. They wont
cry a bit. You never stopped to say a word to them except "_get out of
my way_." To be sure, you were working hard for them all the while,
but that wont be remembered. So you just take a little comfort
yourself as you go along, and look after "No 1." Laugh more and darn
less; they will like you twice as well. If there is more work than you
can consistently do, _don't do it_. Sometimes there is a little
blossom of a daughter in a family who makes everything bright with her
finger-tips; if there is none in yours, do _you_ be that blossom.
Don't, even for John, let your children remember home as a
charnel-house, and you as its female sexton.




_WHY WEAR MOURNING?_


I wish that a few sensible, intelligent, _wealthy_ people would cease
draping and festooning themselves like engine-houses, when a death
occurs in the family. I use word "_wealthy_" advisedly; because it is
only that class who can really effect a reformation, for the reason
that _they_ will not be supposed unable "to pay a proper respect," as
the phrase runs, to the deceased. Proper respect! Do yards of crape
and bombazine never express the opposite emotion? Is real
heart-breaking grief to be gauged by the width of a hem, or the length
or thickness of a veil? Have not many a widow and orphan woke up, the
morning after a funeral, to find the little left by the deceased,
expended in funereal carriages, for people who would not lift a
helping finger if it would keep them out of the almshouse? We all know
that, or if we don't, we may wake up to the fact, some future day,
when the sunshine of prosperity is clouded over. That point disposed
of, it must also be remembered that a black dress now is hardly
"mourning;" since that color is so fashionable for street and home,
and even festive wear, that it is hard to distinguish the lady who
affects "all black," because "it is so stylish," from a bereaved
person. Another objection to "mourning" is, that it is the most
expensive dress that can be worn, because most easily spoiled by rain,
or dampness, or dust; and as "proper respect for the deceased"
requires such voluminous folds of it, and so often renewed to be
presentable, or else many changes of mourning to keep the "best suit"
up to the proper grief requirement, that the tax on a limited purse
may be easily calculated.

Said a lady to me one day, "This heavy crape-vail, over my face and
down to my knees, keeps out the air, and gives me a constant
sick-headache."--"Why, then, wear it?" asked I.--"Because it wouldn't
be _decent_ to omit it," she replied. This remark, of course, requires
no comment.

Then, again, the little children--death must be made as horrible as
possible to _them_ too, at the biding of custom! They must be swathed
in sackcloth although only two or three years of sunshine have put the
golden gleam in their hair. Is it not enough that papa or mamma, or
sister or brother, may never answer again when their bird-like voices
call them! Is it Christian or even humane, so to surround them with
gloom that "death" shall be a never-ceasing nightmare? I never see a
little creature so habited, that I do not long to hang a garland of
roses about its neck, and point to the blue heavens as an emblem of
that serene rest which has come to the sleeper.

But you may ask, "Would you give _no_ sign, _no_ token that the
footprints of the Destroyer are over your threshold?" Yes, the same
that is used by military men when their chief has departed--a crape
upon the arm. This simple token--no more; since, as I say, multiplied
bombazine and crape do _not_ always express either grief or respect;
since they often represent the contrary, and mostly an expense which
can ill be borne by the survivors even when grief is sincere; and
since this already recognized military badge of bereavement answers
all the purpose--why not?

The white ribbon tied upon the door-handle, with rosebuds attached,
when the baby's lids are forever closed--oh! that is beautiful. There
are, and must be, breaking hearts inside that door; but I know by
experience that the moment will surely come, after nature shall have
had its saving flow of tears, when, in the sense of perfect peace, and
safety for the little song-bird, now far above the clouds of earth,
they will forget themselves and remember only that.

Then away with all these heathenish insignia; they certainly stand no
more for grief or respect than a flashing diamond on the neck or
finger, denotes wealth or social position, or even respectability.
Above all, away with this bugaboo nightmare of little children, who
will have enough, God knows, to contend with, as they grow older,
without prematurely draping with the blackness of darkness, the
entrance to a portal through which they are certainly destined to
pass, and which the light of faith in their maturer years may gild, as
the shining gate to the Celestial City.




"_DELIGHTFUL MEN._"


Isn't he a delightful man? This question was addressed to me by a lady
in company concerning a gentleman who had rendered himself during the
evening, peculiarly agreeable. Before I answer that question, I said,
I would like to see him at home. I would like to know if, when he jars
his wife's feelings, he says, "Beg pardon" as willingly and promptly
as when he stepped upon yonder lady's dress. I would like to know if,
when he comes home at night, he has some pleasant little things to
say, such as he has scattered about so lavishly since he entered this
room this evening; and whether if the badly cooked dish, which he
gallantly declared to the hostess at the table, "could not have been
improved," would have found a similar verdict on his own table, and to
his own wife. _That is the test._ I am sorry to say that some of the
most agreeable society-men, who could, by no possibility, be guilty of
a rudeness abroad, could never be suspected in their own homes of ever
doing anything else. The man who will invariably meet other ladies
with "How very well you are looking!" will often never, from one day
to another, take notice of his own wife's appearance, or, if so, only
to find fault. How bright that home would be to his wife with one
half the courtesy and toleration he invariably shows to strangers.
"Allow me to differ"--he blandly remarks to an opponent with whom he
argues in company. "Pshaw! what do _you_ know about it?" he says at
his own fireside and to his wife. Children are "angels" when they
belong to his neighbors; his own are sent out of the room whenever he
enters it, or receive so little recognition that they are glad to
leave. "Permit me," says the gallant male _vis-a-vis_ in the omnibus
or car, as he takes your fare; while _his_ wife often hands up her own
fare, even with her husband by her side. No wonder she is not "looking
well" when she sees politeness is for every place but for
home-consumption.

"Oh, how men miss it in disregarding these little matters," said a
sad-eyed wife to me one day. And she said truly; for these little
kindnesses are like a breath of fresh air from an open window in a
stifled room; we lift our drooping heads and breathe again! "Little!"
did I say! _Can_ that be little which makes or mars the happiness of a
human being? A man says a rough, rude word, or neglects the golden
opportunity to say a kind one, and goes his selfish way and thinks it
of no account. Then he marvels when he comes back,--in sublime
forgetfulness of the past,--that the familiar eye does not brighten at
his coming, or the familiar tongue voice a welcome. Then, on inquiry,
if he is told of the rough word, he says: "O-o-h! _that's_ it--is it?
Now it isn't possible that you gave _that_ a second thought? Why, _I_
forgot all about it!" as if this last were really a palliation and a
merit.

It would be ludicrous, this masculine obtuseness, were it not for the
tragic consequences--were it not for the loving hearts that are
chilled--the homes that are darkened--the lives that are blighted--and
the dew and promise of the morning that are so needlessly turned into
sombre night.

"Little things!" There _are_ no little things. "Little things," so
called, are the hinges of the universe. They are happiness, or misery;
they are poverty, or riches; they are prosperity or adversity; they
are life, or death. Not a human being of us all, can afford to despise
"the day of _small_ things."

Yes, husbands, _be cheerful at home_. I daresay, sir, _your_ Bible may
belong to an expurgated edition; but this sentiment is in mine. I have
unfortunately loaned it to a neighbor, so that I cannot at this minute
point to the exact chapter, but that's neither here nor there.

In every "Guide for Wives" I find "cheerfulness" the first article set
down in the creed; with no margin left for crying babies, or sleepless
nights, or incompetent "help," or any of the small miseries which men
wave off with their hands as "not worth minding, my dear!" So when the
time comes for John's return from the shop or office, they begin the
cheerful dodge, just as they are bid, by the _single_ men and women,
who usually write these "Guides for Wives." They hurry to wash the
children's faces, or to have them washed, and stagger round, though
they may not have had a breath of fresh air for a week, to make things
"cheerful" for John. John's beef and vegetables and dessert are all
right. He accepts them, and eats them. Then he lies down on the sofa
to digest them, which he does silently--cow-fashion. The children, one
by one, are sent to bed. Now, does it occur to John that he might try
_his_ hand at a little "cheerfulness"? Not a bit. He asks his wife,
coolly, if there's anything in the evening paper.

She is so tired of the house and its cares, which have cobwebbed her
all over till she is half smothered, soul and body, that this question
seems the cruelest one that could be put, in her nervous condition.
She _ought_ to answer as he does, when she asks him what is in the
_morning_ paper, the while she is feeding Tommy--_his_ Tommy as well
as hers: "Read it, my dear; it is full of interest!"

Instead, she takes up the evening paper wearily; and though the
tell-tale, exhausted tones of her voice as she reads, are sufficiently
suggestive of her inability for reading aloud, yet he graciously
listens well pleased, and goes to sleep just as she gets down to the
advertisements, which is a good place!

Now that woman _ought_ just then, quietly to put on her bonnet and
shawl, and run into one of the neighbors', and stay till _she_ has got
a little "cheerfulness;" but the "Guide to Wives" insists that,
instead, she sit down and look at her John, so that no unlucky noise
may disturb his slumber; and half the wives do it too, and that's the
way they make, and perpetuate, these very Johns.

The way men nurse up _their_ frail bodies is curious to witness, in
contrast with the little care they take of their wives. Now it never
occurs to most wives that being "tired," is an excuse for not doing
anything that, half dead, they are drummed up to do. Now there's just
where I blame them. If they wait for their Johns to _see_ it, or to
_say_ it, they may wait till the millennium. There's no need of a
fight about it either. _He_ wants to lie there and be read to.
Well--let him lie there; but don't you read to him, or talk to him
either, when you feel that way. If he is so stupid or indifferent, as
not to see that you can't begin another day of worry like that,
without a reprieve of some kind, bid him a pleasant good-evening, and
go to some pleasant neighbor's, as he would do, if he felt like it,
for the same reason--as he _did_ do the evening before, without
consulting your preference or tiredness.

Now this may sound vixenish, but it is simply _justice_; and it is
time women learned that, as mothers of families, it is just as much
their duty to consult their physical needs, as it is for the fathers
of families to consult theirs, and more too, since the nervous
organization of women is more delicate, and the pettiness of their
household cares more exhaustive and wearing, than a man's can possibly
be; and this I will insist on, spite of Todd and Bushnell, and every
clerical pussy-cat who ever mewed "Let us have peace!" Peace, reverend
sirs, is of no sex. _We_ like it too; but too dear a price may be
paid even for "peace."

Now I know there are instances, for I have seen them, in which the
husband is the only cheerful element in the house--when his step, his
countenance, like the sunrise, irradiates and warms every nook and
corner. But ah! how rare is this! I know too that cheerfulness is
greatly a thing of temperament; but I also know, that it is just as
much a man's duty to cultivate it by reading to his wife, and
conversing with his wife, as it is hers to amuse and cheer him when
the day's cares are over. And in this regard I must say that men, as a
general thing, are disgustingly selfish. Absorbing, but never giving
out--accepting, but seldom returning. It is for women to assert their
right to fresh air, to relaxation, to relief from care, whenever the
physical system breaks down, just as men always do; for the
Johns seldom wake up to it till a coffin is ordered--and
pocket-handkerchiefs are too late!

And, speaking of that, nothing is more comical to me, in my
journeyings to and fro in the earth, than the blundering way in which
most men legislate their domestic affairs. Mr. Jones, for instance, is
attracted to a delicate, timid, nervous little lady, and moves heaven
and earth, and upsets several families who have a special objection to
her becoming Mrs. Jones, in order to bring about this desirable
result. After an immense besieging outlay, he gets her. We will leave
a margin for the honeymoon. Then commences life in earnest. The
little wife stands aghast to find that her husband's whole aim, is to
transform her into the direct opposite to that which he formerly
admired. In short, that to retain his love and respect, she must make
herself, by some process or other only known to herself, entirely
over. For instance, she is so constituted that the sight of blood has
always given her a deadly faintness, and she never was able to assist,
in any emergency or accident, where physicial pain was involved. Now
this is not an affectation with her--she _really can not_ do it. Now
Mr. Jones, with masculine acumen, immediately sets in motion a series
of little tyrannies, to force what a lifetime could never bring about,
no more than it could change his wife's hair from jet to flaxen color.
Does their child break a leg, or arm, he insists, although other aid
is at hand, that she shall not only be present, but assist in the
dressing and binding up of the same, by way of eradicating and
overcoming what he calls a "folly." To this end he uses sarcasm,
ridicule, threats, every thing which he thinks the "head of the
family" is justified in using, to force this child-woman's nature,
which once had such fragile attractions for him, into an up-hill
course, in which it is impossible for it ever to go, with all the
tyranny he can bring to bear upon it; and thus he keeps on
trying,--year after year,--with an amount of persistence which should
entitle him to a lunatic's cell, and which is gradually preparing his
wife for one, through mortification and wounded affection.

Again--a man is attracted to a woman of marked individuality of
character. He admires her decision and self-poise, her energy and
self-reliance, and stamps them, with one hand on his heart, with the
conjugal seal. Directly upon possession, that which seemed to him so
admirable conflicts with his opinions, wounds his self-love, and even
though gradually and properly expressed, seems to breathe defiance.
Now _this_ woman he, too, strives to _make over_. He disputes her
positions and opinions with acidity, because they differ from his own,
and therefore must be wrong. Perhaps he looks at her, and at them,
more through the eyes of impertinent outsiders who have nothing to do
with it, than through his own spectacles. Many a man will perpetrate a
great injustice in his own household, rather than bear the slightest
meddling imputation that he is not its master. So, year after year,
this fruitless effort goes on, to transform a full-grown tree to a
little sapling, capable of being bent in any and every direction,
according to the moulder's capricious whim or fancy, with not the
ghost of a result, so far as success is concerned.

I might cite many other instances to illustrate the absurd manner in
which men persist in marring their own happiness; committing those
flagrant injustices of which women either die, and make no sign, or
break into what is called "_unwomanly_" rebellion, when their sense of
justice is outraged, by the _love_ which has proved weaker than
_pride_.

It is pitiful to think how frequent are these life-mistakes, and more
pitiful still to think, that women themselves are responsible in a
great measure for them. Let parents see to it, especially let
_mothers_ see to it, that the little boy is to yield equally with his
sisters in their games and plays. Let the maxim, "Give it to your
_sister_," issue as often from your lips as "Give it to your
_brother_." Let the father say as often to his son, "Prepare to become
the excellent husband of some good woman," as the mother to her
daughter, "Prepare to be the worthy wife of some good man." In other
words, begin at the fireside. Remember that you are training that
little boy to make or mar the happiness of some woman, according as
you teach him self-government--justice--and the contrary. This is an
idea which even abused wives seldom think of. It might be well for
them, and some now happy girl, who may lose through that boy, heart
and hope in the future, did they do so.




_CHOOSING PRESENTS._


"Which would you prefer," asked a friend of me,--"a pretty useless
present, or an ugly useful one?" I had to stop and think before
replying. I knew it was a trap sprung for my halting; so, woman-like,
I dodged my weak side by saying, "There is no necessity, as I see, for
either extreme."

One of our first biographers has remarked of me, that if he brings
home an _ugly-looking_ book, and lays it upon the table, I very soon
transfer it to a less conspicuous locality. This may or may not be
true; meantime I am not going to blink the fact that I adore pretty
things. Butter tastes better to me from a dainty little dish. So do
vegetables. Nor, to compass this, does one need the purse of
Fortunatus. Pretty shapes in vases, pitchers, plates, and the like,
have commended themselves to me, though not of silver. In fact, since
the burglars relieved me of my silver while in the country last
summer, I resolutely set my face against any further invitations to
them in that shape. This is to certify that henceforth only plated
ware, but very _pretty_ plated ware, shall cross my threshold.

But, not to digress, what a "mess" people generally make of holiday
presents! Some houses contain only silver soup-ladles, others a
superabundance of butter-knives. Some babies, again, have silver cups
enough so furnish all their descendants, be they more or less. The
most harrowing present I know of is a "picture annual," all over gilt,
with wide margins inside, and with common-sense at a discount. It is a
type of a pretty mouth from whence issues only folly. Worsted cats and
dogs come next, in the shape of mats, chair-covers, etc. Now a dozen
of handkerchiefs or gloves, may be both pretty and sensible as a
present. So is a flower-stand, without which, in my opinion, no parlor
is furnished, how plentifully soever satin and gilt may abound. I am
frivolous enough to like rings, brooches, ear-rings, and bracelets, of
lovely, but above all, _odd_ forms and designs, if worn at the proper
time and place. But, dear! dear! I shouldn't make a good Quaker, for a
bit of scarlet somewhere in my room, is quite necessary to my peace of
mind. I look at that elaborate little bird-house for sparrows,
fronting the Quaker meeting-house, and I think I see a symptom of the
coming millennium for Quakers. I frankly own to exchanging a white
syrup-pitcher the other day, in favor of a white one with a scarlet
handle. I like these little touches of color to a degree, that, if
Heaven depended on their absence, might possibly peril my chances of
Paradise.

Now I am not apologizing for this--not a bit! I am only sorry
for those of you who trudge along whether from choice or
necessity--through life's dusty highway, without stopping to notice,
or to cull, the flowers hidden in its hedge-rows, and place them as
you go, in your hair, or in your bosom.

Pretty things are humanizing. I wish every work-room could have its
flowers and its pictures. _My_ God don't turn His back on either. Even
in the dull old yard of a tenement house, He sends up through the
chinks tiny blades of grass and dandelion, and chickweed blossoms. And
does not the pure white snow come sifting down over the garbage-heaps
and ash-barrels before the door of poverty which man, less merciful,
would doom to have all the year round before their disgusted vision?

Meantime, let us hope that "the minister's" holiday present may be a
pair of boxing-gloves instead of a hymn-book, of which latter he has a
surfeit. As to his wife--for goodness' sake, send her the same thing
you would, were she the wife of a layman. And if you order her a cake,
don't surmount it with a cross, of which ministers' wives have already
too many in their parishioners. Give an editor a new subscriber and
you can't miss it. Send a lawyer no bones to pick, unless--well
covered with meat! And don't make a _pup_ of your husband by giving
him a velvet dressing-gown. And as to you, sir, don't pick out for
_your_ wife just what your friend Jenkins does for _his_; because,
though men are all alike, and cigars are always acceptable to them,
yet a man can never be certain whether his wife, on the receipt of a
present from her husband, will box his ears, or fall to kissing him;
and since Variety is the god of most men, I suppose this is all right.

It must be owned, that of all perplexing things on earth, the greatest
is the perplexity of choosing a present. After you have considered,
first your purse; then the multifarious demands upon it; then the age,
desires, and taste of the recipient--comes the weary tramp in hot,
crowded stores for the desired article; comes the known incivility of
_most_ women bent on shopping errands, to their fellow-women; of
addressing the clerk, upon whom you, as first-comer, have a prior
claim, or even drawing from your and his fingers the very article you
have under distracted consideration. Of course I don't mean _you_, my
dear; didn't I say _most_ women? You will always find that I leave a
door of escape open, before I insinuate that my sex are not all
seraphs. Well--you make your purchase, and perspire in your furs,
while "cash" performs his gymnastics through feminine feet and hoops,
to get it _parcelled_ and return your change. But, alas! this is only
one present, and it has taken an entire morning to get it, and when
you get home Aunt Jemima whispers confidentially "that she overheard
John say that _he_ had bought that very article for the same person
for whom yours was intended;" and, what is worse, you can't transfer
it, because there is no other member of the family for whom it would
be suitable. You wonder if it wouldn't do to enclose so many dollars
to each member of the family, and let them make their own selection.
Sentiment would have to "go under," of course; but don't it when a
recipient wonders "how much you paid for your gift"? Time was, when a
present was acceptable, or on the contrary, according to the love
which prompted it, and not according to the value of the gift. Now,
young ladies expect diamonds, and pearls, and rubies, and quite turn
up their pretty noses at a book, or a work-box, or a writing-desk.
What with "golden weddings" and "silver weddings," and other bids for
gold and silver in various shapes, what with the bugbear word "mean"
in such connection, bankruptcy, or an inglorious exit, is the only
alternative to many. I have been some time coming to my moral, which
is this: that the "present" system is, to use a slang expression, "run
into the ground." I except the present a husband gives his wife, for
whom nothing of course is too good, or too tasteful, or too costly;
and who can, while receiving it, ask him to give her a hundred dollars
or so, to go out and _buy him one_! Also, in all heartiness, and
without joking, I except the little children, whose lovely dream of
Santa Claus vanishes with the flossy, golden-tipped curls of babyhood.
Pile up for them the dolls, and tops, and whistles, and wagons, and
kaleidoscopes, and velocipedes, that they may always when old age
seats them in the chimney-corner have this bright spot to look back
upon, over the graves of buried hopes and hearts, which could not else
bear thinking of.




_A BID FOR AN EDITORSHIP._


I think I should like to be an editor, if somebody would do all the
disagreeable, hard work for me, and leave me only the fancy touches. I
don't know how profound my political articles would be, but they would
be _mine_. I think my book reviews would be pleasant reading, at least
to everybody but some of the authors. I should have a high railing
round my editorial desk, and "through the lattice" microscopically and
leisurely regard the row of expectant men waiting outside for a
hearing. I should not need a spittoon in my office. Nobody should
contribute to my paper who smoked, or chewed, or snuffed tobacco; that
would diminish my contributors' list about right. I should discard
Webster and Walker, and inaugurate a dictionary of my own. I should
allow anybody who felt inclined to send me samples of big strawberries
and peaches, and bunches of flowers; and I should get a fine library,
free gratis, out of the books sent me to review. As to grinding the
axes of the givers in return, why that, of course, should always be
left to the option of the editor. Before I commenced an editor's life,
I should secure money enough in some way to be able to snap my
fingers in the face of that grim ogre, "Stop my Paper!" I tell you I
_wouldn't_ stop it. It is a free country. I'd keep on sending it to
him. I'd always have something in every number about him, so that he
couldn't do without having it, how much soever he might want to.

Then you should see my desk. It should be dusted once a year, to show
editors what a desk _might_ be. My editorial chair shouldn't pivot;
there should be no shadow of turning about that. Gibraltar should be a
circumstance to it. The windows of my editorial den should be scraped
with a sharp knife occasionally, to take off sufficient dirt to enable
me to write legibly. I should keep my best bonnet in a bandbox under
my desk, for any sudden dress emergency, as do editors their
go-to-meetin' hat. Like them, too, I should have a small looking-glass
for--visitors! also a bottle of--"medicine" for--visitors! I don't
think I should need a safe, as the principles upon which my paper
would be conducted would render it unnecessary. My object would be to
amuse _myself_, and say just what came uppermost, not by any means to
please or edify my species. Now, I have examined all the papers that
cross my threshold, and I am very sure that I have hit on quite an
original idea.

If it stormed badly on publication day, I wouldn't send the poor
devils in my employ out with my paper, just because my subscribers
fancied they wanted it. Let 'em wait. The first fair day they'd have
it, of course. In the meantime, the printer's devil, and the
compositors, and the rest of 'em, could play chequers till the sky
cleared up.

If anybody sued me for libel, I'd--I'd whine out, "Aint you
ashamed to annoy a female? Why don't you strike one of your
own size?" I should insist on being treated with the deference
due to a woman, though in all respects I should demand the
untrammeled-seven-leagued-boots-freedom of a man. My object would be
to hit everybody smack between the eyes, when I felt like it; and when
I saw brutal retribution coming, to throw my silk apron over my head
and whimper.

I have not yet decided upon the title of my paper. Children are not
generally baptized until after they are born. Nor do I know who will
stand sponsor. All that is in the misty future. As to the price, I
should nail up a cash-box at the foot of the stairs, and people could
drop in whatever they liked. I should, by that means, not only show my
unshaken confidence in human nature, but also learn in what estimation
the general public held my services. There's nothing so dear to my
heart as spontaneity.




_A SERMON TO PLYMOUTH PULPIT._


O Mr. Beecher! that you should recommend "candy," or "sugar plums," it
is all the same, for the youngsters. That _you_ should be quoted
through the length and breadth of the land as having done so, to the
delight of these youngsters, and the candy-merchants, and the
dentists, and the doctors generally! To be _candid_, I am ashamed of
you.

Do you suppose that you are the only grandparent in the land? The only
loving, the only proud grandparent? I am a grandparent. I can love as
hard as you can. I can show just as bewildering a grandchild as you
can. It is just as hard for me to say No to that grandchild as it is
for you to say No to yours; but--excuse me--_I_ can do it. She is five
years old, but never touches candy. When she was three, a lady in an
omnibus gave her a red and white peppermint stick, and she turned to
me and asked "if it were not a pretty _toy_?" She knows now that candy
is to eat; but when it is given her, whether in my presence or not,
she says, "I am not allowed to eat candy." Meantime, she loves
beefsteak, she loves potatoes, she drinks milk and eats bread, with a
relish that candy-fed children never know. Either you are very right,
or I am very wrong. You see I am touchy on this subject, having worn
out several pens and distributed much ink in the crusade against it;
and here _you_, in the _Ledger_, right under my very nose, with one
frisk of your magic pen, cover me with indelible ignominy!

"Mr. _Beecher_ says children should have candy;" and, what is more, he
thinks they should be _bought_ to be good by it! Oh, fie!

Well, now, I reply: Mr. Beecher is a _man_. If his grandchild has the
stomach-ache, it is the _women_ of the family who will soothe it, and
bear its cries and its wakeful nights. If the little teeth prematurely
decay and ache, it is _the women_ who will accompany it to the
dentist's for the heart-rending wrench of cold iron. Mr. Beecher, in
short, decided this candy question from a _man's_ standpoint. He took
the popular side of the question with the children, who will always
shout hosanna to him for the same. But, my dear sir, the mothers who,
going home after shopping through Broadway, stop each day for the
poisonous parcel of sweets for Johnny and Susy, need restraint, not
encouragement, from you. They "can't imagine what ails Susy or Johnny,
to be so fretful" after eating it. Of course they never for a moment
suppose it to be candy. Didn't _they_ eat candy? And are they buried
yet? _I_ ask another question: What is the state of their teeth and
digestion to-day? What their powers of endurance as mothers? What, in
short, do they annually contribute to enable the fat family doctor to
ride in his carriage and live in Fifth Avenue? _That's_ what _I_ want
to know.

O Mr. Beecher! well as I like you, I don't know what to say to you;
and what makes the case more aggravating, I know I shall keep on
liking you, whatever you say. That's the worst of it, and you know it.
And I am going to send this right off to the _Ledger_ office without a
second reading, lest I should qualify it, or trim it up, or make it
more respectful because you are "a minister."

No, sir; I won't do it; I'll take example by a rampant female at a
public meeting the other night, who was scolding her husband for not
getting her a better seat. The distressed man laid his hand on her
arm, saying, "Hush! here's Fanny Fern; she will hear you." With
distended nostrils, that admirable woman replied, "I don't care for
six hundred Fanny Ferns!"

My dear sir, your hand is too well accustomed to drawing a moral, for
me to presume to do it for you in this case! Adieu.




_FEMALE CLERKS._


I have heard the objection made, by women, to female clerks in stores,
that they are less civil and attentive to their own sex than are male
clerks. I can only answer for myself, that I have never found any
reason to complain of them in this regard. In fact, I often wonder at
their patience and civility under very trying circumstances. I suppose
gallantry supplies the place of patience in male clerks. With so many
fresh, pretty, dimpled young faces to look at, a young man need not be
so very churlish, though he be not christened Job.

Female clerks, it always seemed to me, must necessarily give out first
_in their feet_. That incessant standing, from morning to night, must
be more trying to them than to men. Many women, I know, can _walk_
miles more easily than they could stand for half an hour.

After making a purchase at a store quite late in the afternoon, I said
to the young girl who waited upon me,--

"How very tired you must get of us women, day after day!"

"There is a great difference in them," she civilly replied.

"But don't your feet ache sadly?" I asked. "That always seemed to me
the most trying part of it."

She smiled as she pulled from under the seat, behind the counter, a
stool.

"I thought that mitigation of weariness was against all regulations in
stores," I replied.

"Not in _this_," was her answer. "Mr. ---- has always allowed his
female clerks to sit down when they were tired."

Now, I was so pleased at this that I should like to give that
employer's name in full on this page. Here was a man who was wise
enough, and, above all, humane enough, to look on _their_ side of the
question. In doing so, of course, he did not overlook his own. In
doing so, he may also have known that there is a point when even a
woman's india-rubber patience, may be stretched too far. He may have
known that, when soul and body gave out, and a customer came in at
that trying moment, and the "last ounce" having been "laid on the
camel's back," the article inquired for _they_ "_did not keep_!" I say
he _might_ have been keen enough to have known this. _I_ prefer to
believe, that being a good, kind-hearted man, he tried to make service
for these young girls as light as he would wish it made for his own
young daughters, were they in that position. It is very certain that,
which way soever we look at it, it is an example which other employers
would do well to follow.

It wont do the male clerks any harm to stand still; but I would be
very glad to have inaugurated this humane consideration for the young
women. I heard one of them tell a friend, the other day, that she had
to go directly to bed each evening on her return home, because her
feet and back ached so intolerably.

Another suggestion: When employers have any occasion to reprove these
young women, if they would not mortify them by doing it in the
presence and in the hearing of customers, it would not only be more
pleasant for the latter, but would be more likely to have its proper
effect on the offender. I have sometimes heard such brutal things said
by employers to a blushing young girl, whose eyes filled with tears at
her helplessness to avert it, or to reply to it, that I never could
enter the store again, for fear of a repetition of the distressing
scene, although, so far as I personally was concerned, I had nothing
to complain of.

The moral of all this is, that men in the family, and in the store
too, must look upon women in a different light from that to which they
are accustomed; before, to use a detestable phrase, but one which will
appeal most strongly to the majority, they "can get the most work out
of them." Physicians understand this. Every man is not a physician,
but he ought at least to know that backaches and headaches, and
heartaches too, are not confined to his own sex.




_BLUE MONDAY._


"Blue Monday." By this name clergymen designate the day. Preaching as
they do, two sermons on the Sabbath, sometimes three--not to mention
Sunday-school exhortations, and possible funerals and marriages; of
course, I take no account of what may have happened, on Sunday, in
_their own_ families, no more than does the outside world. "The
minister" must, like a conductor of a railroad train, be "up to
time,"--hence "Blue Monday." Flesh and blood is flesh and blood,
although covered by a surplice or a cassock, and will get _tired_,
even in a good cause. Therefore the worn-out clergyman takes Monday
for a day of rest, for truly the Sabbath is none. He wanders about and
tries to give his brains a holiday--I say _tries_, because he often
misses it by wandering into the book-stores, or going to see a
publisher, instead of taking a drive, or a ramble in the fields, or
wooing nature, who never fails to lay a healing hand on her children.

But Blue Monday does not belong exclusively to clergymen--oh, mother
of many children! as you can testify. True, you call it by another
name--"Washing-day,"--but it is all one, as far as exhaustion is its
characteristic. May the gods grant that on that day, when your
assistant in nursery-labor must often make up the deficiencies
involved in the terrible "family-wash," that no "plumber" or
"gas-fitter" send in his bill, to "rile" the good man of the house, to
exclaim against the "expenses of housekeeping," and send you into your
Babel of a nursery, with moist eyes and a heavy heart? It is poor
comfort, after you have cried it out, to try to pacify yourself by
saying, Well, he didn't _mean_ to say I'm sorry I ever was married,
yet it hurts me all the same; men are so thoughtless about such
things, and they go out after hurling such a poisoned arrow, and
forget, even if they ever knew it, that they have left it there to
rankle all day; and are quite astonished, and, perhaps, disgusted when
they come back that the good lady is not in excellent spirits, as they
are, and wonder what _she_, with a comfortable home, and nothing but
house matters to attend to, can find to worry her. Now, Mrs. Jones,
and Mrs. Jenkins, and Mrs. Smith, I'll lay a wager with each of you,
that your husbands have done that very thing, more times than you can
count, and on "Blue Monday" too.

Ah! these "chance words," and the _thick_-skinned utterers of them.
Ah! the pity that the needle is no hindrance to the bitter thoughts
they bring; but that over the little torn apron or frock, the tears of
discouragement fall; the bitterest of all--that _he_ hasn't the least
idea "he has said anything," but is, very likely, inviting some fellow
that very minute to "take a drink" with him, or to smoke a dozen
cigars more or less, spite the "expense." My dears, wipe your eyes. If
you look for consistency in the male creature, you'll need a
microscope to find it. _Your_ expenses hurt him dreadfully; when I say
yours, I mean not only your _personal_ expenses, but the _house_
expenses; for don't you see, had he staid a bachelor, he wouldn't have
had a plumber's bill to pay--and that's all your fault, because you
said "yes," when he got on his knees to implore you that he _might_
have the felicity of paying your mutual plumber's bill.

But _that_ was _then_, and _this_ is _now_!

But isn't it perfectly delicious when those men come home, after
making some such blundering speech, the innocent way, after hanging up
their hats, that they'll walk into your presence, rubbing their hands,
and fetch up standing in the middle of the room with, "Why! _what's_
the matter?" as they catch sight of their wives' lugubrious faces. I
tell you, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jenkins, whatsoever else
you do, _don't_ hold your _wives_ responsible for that which they are
no more to blame for than yourselves. Or if you will insist upon going
over their hearts with a cart-wheel, in this manner, have the
manliness when you come home, not to pooh-pooh the resentful tears you
have caused.

The fact is, you are but blunderers as far as women are concerned. You
are elephants trying with your huge paws to pat humming-birds. Nine
out of every ten you demolish. Only physicians understand a woman; and
they don't always act up to the light they have.

I would like to write a book on some kinds of legal murder; that is if
really _good_ people had not such moonshine notions about "delicacy."
This class are really the drags on the wheel of reform. I don't say
that sometimes it is not necessary, and even right, to drive
rough-shod right over them, if they will persist in walking in such a
narrow path; but one does it after all with regret, because they so
sincerely believe themselves to be in the "path of duty," as they call
it. Dear me! if there ever was a perverted phrase, this is one! It
makes me sick to hear it.

What do I mean by "legal murders"? Well, if a woman is knocked on the
head with a flat-iron by her husband and killed, or if arsenic is
mixed with her food, or if a bullet is sent through her brain, the law
takes cognizance of it. But what of the cruel words that just as
surely kill, by constant repetition? What of the neglect? What of the
diseased children of a pure, healthy mother? What of the ten or
twelve, even healthy children, "who come," one after another, into the
weary arms of a really good woman, who yet never knows the meaning of
the word _rest_ till the coffin-lid shuts her in from all earthly care
and pain? Is the self-sacrifice and self-abnegation all to be on one
side? Is the "weaker" always to be the stronger in this regard? I
could write flaming words about "the inscrutable Providence which has
seen fit to remove our dear sister in her youth from the bosom of her
young family," as the funeral prayer phrases it.

Providence did nothing of the sort. Poor Providence! It is astonishing
how busy people are making up bundles to lay on _His_ shoulders! I
imagine Providence meant that women, as well as men, should have a
right to their own lives. That they, equally with men, should rest
when they can go no further on the road without dying. That while the
father sits down to smoke the tobacco which "Providence" always seems
to furnish him with, although his family may not have bread to eat,
his wife should not stagger to her feet, and try to shoulder again her
family cares and expenses.

Sometimes--nay, often--in view of all this, I rejoice in regarding the
serene Mrs. Calla-Lily. _She_ goes on just like a man. When she is
tired she lies down, and stays there till she is rested, and lets the
domestic world wag. If she don't feel like talking, she reads. If the
children are noisy, she sweetly and cunningly gets out of the way, on
that convenient male pretext, "putting a letter in the post-office."
She don't "smoke," but she has her little comforts all the same, and
at the right time, although the heavens should fall, and little
Tommy's shoes give out. She looks as sleek and smooth and fair as if
she were _really_ a lily; and everybody says, "What a delightful
person she is! and how bright and charming at all times!"

Now this spectacle soothes me, after seeing the long procession of
bent, hollow-eyed, broken-spirited women who are _legally_ murdered.

I exclaim, Good! and think of the old rhyme:

    "Look out for thyself,
    And take care of thyself,
      For nobody cares for thee."

Of course this is very "unamiable" in me, but amiability is not the
only or the best quality in the world. I have seen people without a
particle of it, as the phrase is often understood, who were the
world's real saviours; and I have seen those human oysters, "amiable"
people, till sea-sickness was not a circumstance to the condition of
my mental and moral stomach.

What a millennial world this would be, if every one were placed in the
niche for which he or she were best fitted. Now I know a capital
architect who was spoiled, when he became a minister. A dreadful mess
he makes of it working on the spiritual temple, as pastor of a country
church; whose worshippers each insist upon shaping every brick and
lath to their minds before he puts them together; and then they doubt
if his cement will do. Poor man!--I know of a merchant, helplessly
fastened to the yardstick, who should be an editor. I know of a
lawyer, who has _peace_ written all over him, and yet whose life is
one interminable fight. I know scores of bright, intelligent women,
alive to their finger-tips to everything progressive, good and noble,
whose lives, hedged in by custom and conservatism, remind me of that
suggestive picture in all our Broadway artist-windows, of the woman
with dripping hair and raiment, clinging to the fragment of rock
overhead, while the dark waters are surging round her feet. I know
little sensitive plants of children, who are no more understood by
those who are daily in their angel presence, than the Saviour was by
his crucifiers. Children who, mentally, morally, and physically, are
being tortured in their several Gethsemanes to the death; and I know
sweet and beautiful homes, where plenty, and intelligence, and
Christianity dwell, where no little child's laugh has ever been heard,
and no baby smile shall ever fill it with blessed sunshine. I know
coarse-natured men and women who curse the earth with their presence,
whose thoughts and lives are wholly base and ignoble, and yet who fill
high places; and I know heaven's own children--patient, toiling,
hopeful--sowing seeds which coarse, hurrying feet trample in the earth
as they go, little heeding the harvest which shall come after their
careless footsteps.

_Life's discipline!_ That is all we can say of it.

How any one with eyes to see all this, can doubt Immortality, and yet
bear their life from one day to another, I cannot tell. How persons
can say, in view of all these cross-purposes, I am satisfied with
_this_ life, and--had I my way--would never leave it, is indeed, a
mystery. It must be that the soul were left out of them.

But this doleful talk wont do--will it? I should not dispel
illusions--should I? Now, that last is a question I can't settle:
whether it were better, if you see a friend crossing a lovely meadow,
rejoicing in the butterflies, and flowers, and lovely odors, to warn
him that there is a ditch between him and the road, into which he will
presently fall; or to let him enjoy himself while he can, and plump
into it, without anticipatory fears? What do you think? Anyhow, it is
no harm to _wish_ you all a happy summer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Would it not be well for those who report the "dress" of ladies at a
public dinner to instruct themselves in advance as to _color_? One can
always tell whether a man or a woman is the reporter, by the blunders
of the former in mistaking blue for green, lilac for rose, and black
for pink. The world moves on, to be sure, in either case; but since
reporting must be done on such infinitesimal matters, it were better
it were well done. A lady who studiously avoids flashy apparel does
not care to read in the morning paper that "she appeared in a yellow
gown trimmed with pink." Perhaps the avoidance of the "flowing bowl"
by male reporters would conduce to greater correctness of millinery
statement.




_THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT._


I do not know who writes the editorials on the "Woman Question" in its
various aspects, in our more prominent New York papers. I read them
from day to day, with real disappointment at their immaturity, their
flippancy, their total lack of manliness, and respect for, or
appreciation of, true womanhood. I say this in no spirit of
bitterness, but of real sorrow, that men stepping into the responsible
position they hold on those papers, have not better considered the
subjects of which they treat. That the writers are not known outside
the office, seems to me a very unmanly reason for their
misrepresentations. Every morning I ask, over my coffee, Have these
men mothers, sisters, wives, who so persistently misrepresent the
doings of self-respecting, self-supporting, intelligent women? Does
_Congress_ make no mistakes, that women should be expected, in their
pioneering, to have arrived at absolute perfection? Is there no heat,
in debate, on _its_ floor; no uncourteousness of language? Did not one
member, a short time since, call out there to have another member
"spanked"? Does the speaker's mallet never call to order, men selected
by their constituents, because supposed most intelligently to
represent the various local and other interests of the country? Does
the cut of a man's hair or coat injuriously or approbatively affect
his speech upon the floors? Does anybody care what color it is, or how
worn? I ask myself these questions when I read reports of
"strong-minded women's meetings," as they are sneeringly termed, which
consist mainly on the absence of a "long train" to their dresses, or
the presence of it; on the straightness of their hair, or the frizzing
of it; on the lack of ornamentation, or the redundance of it. This
mocking, Mephistopheles-dodging of the real questions at issue, behind
flimsy screens, seems to me not only most unworthy of these writers,
but most unworthy of, and prejudicial to, the prominent journals in
which they appear.

If they think that women make such grave mistakes,--mistakes
prejudicial to the great interests they seek publicly to promote, the
great wrongs they seek to right,--would it not be kinder and more
manly, courteously to point them out, if so be that they themselves
know "a more excellent way"? Among all these women, are there _none_
who are intelligent, intellectual, earnest, _and modest withal_? Have
the editors of these very papers in which these attacks appear, never
gladly employed just such, to lend grace, wit, and spirit to their own
columns, that they have only sneers and taunts for the cause they
espouse, and never a brave, kind, sympathetic recognition of their
philanthropic efforts? Is the cause so utterly Quixotic, espoused by
such women, who make their own homes bright with good cheer,
neatness, taste, and wholesome food, that they cannot gallantly extend
a manly hand after it and help them _over_ those bright thresholds,
and out into a world full of pain and misery, to lift the burden from
their less favored sisters?

If they have the misfortune not to know such women among "the
strong-minded," would it not be well to seek them out, and better
inform themselves on the subjects upon which they daily write?

The pioneer women who have bravely gone forward, and still keep
"marching on," undaunted in the face of this unmanly and ungenerous
dealing, have, doubtless, counted the cost, and will not be hindered
by it. I do not fear that; but I _do_ regret that any editor of a
prominent paper in New York should belittle it and himself, by
allowing any of his employés to keep up this boyish pop-gun firing
into the air.

The other night, I attended a lecture, the proceeds of which were to
be devoted to a charitable institution for women.

Now here was a man willing to do this for the particular women's
charity to be benefited by it, but he couldn't do it without stepping
out of his way to sneer at female suffrage and kindred movements which
are advocated and engineered by pure, intelligent, cultivated, earnest
women, or fixing his seal of approbation on this particular branch of
philanthropy, as the only remedy for all the ills that come of an
empty purse and a grieved heart.

And just here is the fly in all these philanthropic ointments. Mix
your medicines in _my_ shop, or they will turn out poisons. That is
the spirit. Now I don't believe that one society, or one man or woman,
is the pivot on which this universe turns; and wishing well, as I do
every progressive, humanitarian movement, I deplore that its leaders
will not keep this fact in mind. I don't say that I wish _women_ would
keep it in mind, for I am a diligent reader of newspapers, and I see
men every day ignoring this broad foundation of civilization. I see
them making mouths at each other over a political bone or religious
fence; or I hear naughty names called, because one man grabbed a bit
of news for his paper, and scampered off with it to the dear public,
before his editorial neighbor got scent of it. Oh, women don't do all
the gossip and slander and back-biting in the world. They don't make
all the silly or stupid speeches either. Nor do they "rush into
print," any oftener than certain unquiet male spirits, "thirsting for
notoriety," as the phrase goes, who think they know when a colt is a
horse, and _vice versa_, better than any other man, because they
studied Greek at Oxford. Humbug is not always a female, but when
humbug _is_ a female, she generally hails from the top round of the
ladder! I am happy to say that, though I may be putting a stone into
the hands of mine adversary by the admission!

Human nature might be improved, even in the year 1869. How glad the
pop-gun clergyman of a small parish is, when some clerical big-gun is
supposed to make a false move on the sacerdotal chequer-board! How he
rushes publicly to "deplore" that his "dear brother in Christ should
lay himself open to the world's censure in this manner"! His "dear
brother's" popularity and big salary were not the animus of _that_
criticism--oh, no! Now I'm not one of those who believe that "a
minister" is certainly a saint, above his fellows; or that
Christianity is benefited by refusing to admit the shortcomings of
church-members. I once heard Rev. Dr. Hall preach a sermon on this
subject, every word of which was pure gold and ought to be printed in
pamphlet form and placed in the pews of all our churches.

"Mix your medicines in my shop, or they will be poisons"! How sick I
am of it! There is so much elbow room in the world, why fight only for
one corner? But men, set us "weak women" such a terrible example,
fighting and squabbling about straws, and whining when they are
defeated. Now, if instead of wasting their time this way, or idling it
away as fashionable loungers,--I speak after the manner of the New
York--to women,--if instead of belonging to useless up-town clubs,
where with the heads of their canes in their mouths, they sit in the
day-time, measuring passing female ankles, or drinking and talking
male scandal, or betting;--if instead they would--each butter-fly son
of them--take some good, interesting book, and finding some tenement
house, sit down of an evening and amuse some laboring man, who would
else flee from the discomforts of such a place to the nearest
grog-shop, how noble would this male butterfly of Fifth Avenue then
appear! In fact, this particular form of benevolence commends itself
to me as the only one that could rescue him from the butterfly
existence of up-town clubs.

A thought strikes me! As the "New York ----" remarks, when advising
women to teach sewing to poor girls, "but perhaps these female
butterflies of Fifth Avenue don't know themselves how to sew." Alas!
should these male butterflies of the Fifth Avenue club-houses not know
how to read, when they get to the tenement house of their poor
brother!

Now, to conclude, I see nothing antagonistic to a sewing-machine in a
woman's vote, but the Editor of the New York ---- is always throwing a
blanket over a woman's head, for fear she will see a ballot-box. You
may make soup, my dear, graciously says he, for poor women; or flannel
shirts for very little paupers, if you'll promise not to burn your
fingers in politics. That never'll do, my dear! It is _not_ coarse for
you to scramble at a matinee for seats, and elbow and jostle, and push
men's hats awry--oh, no! that's legitimate--but to subject yourself to
this kind of thing at the ballot-box, would be to forfeit man's love,
and soil both your skirts and reputation.




_WOMAN'S MILLENNIUM._


Hurrah for Massachusetts! Read this:

     "Chief Justice Bigelow, of Massachusetts, made short work with
     a divorce case which came before him at Springfield a day or
     two ago. It was an application of a wife for a divorce from her
     husband, on the ground of extreme cruelty. It coming up in
     testimony that the woman had been beaten and otherwise ill-used
     by her husband, the Judge at once decided the case in her
     favor, taking occasion to remark that in case of any violence
     by a husband to the wife, he should not hear all the points
     before deciding in favor of the latter. The woman might forgive
     cruelty toward herself, but the court would not."

Now _that's_ what I call a righteous decision. Let all the wives with
bruised shoulders, and arms, and backs, and eyes, (bruised _hearts_
are too common to talk about!) emigrate forthwith to this enlightened
State. Here's a man who is _just_ to a woman. Think of the rarity of
the thing! Compliments, and flattery, and gifts we can all have, till
we get to be old women, and some of us afterwards; but _justice_,
Messieurs! ah! that's quite another thing. Female eyes have grown dim
looking for _that_, all through the ages. Men start up from their
tobacco-torpor nowadays and ask, angrily, what means this present
restlessness of American women? This wide and deep-spread discontent,
which heaves to and fro, developing itself in a thousand different
forms? _My_ grandmother was contented enough. _My_ aunt never looked
beyond her own family. Are you quite sure of the first, and does the
latter deserve praise or blame for the pin-measure view of the world
to which she, the God-appointed instructor and guide of future men and
women, chooses to limit herself? Has she a _right_ to launch them on
the turbulent ocean of life, with only one poor miserable broken oar
to paddle their way? Such women are not praiseworthy; no more than
they who, busying themselves in public affairs, leave their children
to "come up" as chance or accident dictates. Are you quite sure, too,
that because only lately this "wail of discontent" has reached your
ear, that it has not been stifled under thousands of tombstones? Ah,
well I remember when too young to know what life _meant for a woman_,
hearing one who I have since learned had suffered and forgiven much,
murmur to herself as she wearily laid her head upon her pillow, "God
be thanked for sleep and forgetfulness!" and yet not one who saw her
smiling face, or heard her cheerful voice, or was charmed with her
intelligent conversation, ever dreamed that she was not "a contented
wife," as the phrase runs.

And just in this connection I would quote a remark which, for its
truth, should be inscribed on the _pipe_ (for there he would oftenest
meet it) of every man in the land.

"Only so far as a man is happily _married to himself_ is he fit for
married life, and family life in general. Unless he has 'cleared
himself up,' as the Germans say, he can at best but enter into
ambiguous relations to another. When a man is discordant in himself,
he makes all that he comes in contact with discordant."

Now, candidly I ask you, oughtn't that remark to be in the Holy
Scriptures? Perhaps you ask if the same is not true of women? I am not
such an idiot as to deny that, either; but what I marvel at is
this--that it should be such a perfectly natural and eminently
righteous thing for a _man_ to halloo to high heaven that _his_ mate
is not to his mind, after he has compassed heaven and earth to get
her, and such a crime for a woman to be "discontented and restless
under similar circumstances".

Nevertheless, I think woman's millennium is to come out
of all this unquiet and chaos. Here's a remark made at a
royal-literary-fund-dinner in England,--as true as I live, in
_England_, and in London at that,--and by Charles Kingsley at
that,--in response to a toast:

"As for imaginative literature," he said, "if the world continued to
go on as it was proceeding, _ladies_ must be called upon to fulfil
this duty. Where would they find among men such poets as Mrs.
Rossetti, Mrs. Jean Ingelow, or Miss A. Procter? Or who could write
such works of prose fiction as the authors of 'John Halifax' or
'Romola'? In former times _men_ only dealt with literature, but the
more delicate the weapon became, the more delicate were the hands
which wielded it. If he could give any advice to young men how they
might escape the trials and troubles that might beset their path in
the literary profession--how escape Whitecross Street prison and the
workhouse--it would be by marrying a literary lady, and setting
himself down to the humble and chivalrous duty of reviewing his wife's
books."

The picture of that sublime bit of majesty, a _British husband_,
performing such a feat, is so impossible to contemplate, that I must
stop, that my readers and myself may take breath.

I am inclined to believe that there are a great many kinds of women,
both in England and America. This idea seems to be lost sight of, by
the writers of both nations, who have lately undertaken to describe
the feminine element, under such titles as "the Girl of the Period,"
or "The Woman of the Time;" presenting to our view monstrosities,
which no doubt exist, but which are no more to be taken specimens of
the whole, than is the Bearded Woman, or the Mammoth Fat Girl.

New York, for instance, is not wholly given over to the feminine
devil. Angels walk our streets, discernible to eyes that _wish_ to
see. Noble, thoughtful, earnest women; sick of shams and pretence;
striving each so far as in her lies, to abate both, and to diminish
the amount of physical and moral suffering. Then, I never go into the
country for a few weeks' summer holiday, that I do not find
large-hearted, large-brained women, stowed away among the green
hills, in little cottages, which are glorified inside and outside by
their presence; women who, amid the press of house and garden work,
find time for mental culture; whose little book-shelves hold well-read
copies of our best authors. Women--sound physically, mentally,
morally; women, whom the _Man of the Period_, who most surely exists,
has never found. Now and then, some man, fit to be her mate, in his
rambles in the sweet summer time, is struck as I am by these gems
hidden amid the green hills, and appropriates them for his own. But
for the most part, the more sensible a man is, the bigger the fool he
marries. This is especially true of biographers! What a wrong, then,
to the great army of sensible, earnest women in either country to pick
out a butterfly as the national type. Because a few men in New York
and London and Paris wear corsets, and dye their whiskers and hair,
and pad out their hollow cheeks and shrunken calves, it does not
follow that Victor Hugo, and John Bright, and the great army of brave
men who won our late victory, are all popinjays. For every female fool
I will find you a male mate. So when the inventory of the former is
taken, the roll-call of the latter might as well be voiced. Are women
so "fond of gossip"? Pray, what is the staple of after-dinner
conversation when the wine comes on and the women go off? Do women
"lavish money on personal adornment"? How many men are there who would
be willing to tell on what, and on whom, their money was worse than
lavished? Do women "leave their nursery altogether to hirelings"? How
many corresponding men are there, whose own children under their own
roofs, are almost entire strangers to their club-frequenting fathers?
And yet what good, noble men are to be seen for the looking? Faithful
to their trusts, faithful to themselves, unmoved by the waves of folly
and sin that dash around them, as is the rock of Gibraltar.

I claim that justice be done by these writers on both sides of the
water, to both sexes. Fools, like the poor, we shall have always with
us; but, thank God, the "just" man and the "just" woman "still live"
to redeem the race. Men worthy to be fathers, and large-brained women,
who do not even in this degenerate day, disdain to look well after
their own households.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is but seldom that a child needs the rod, especially if taken from
the time it is able to understand language, and firmly yet kindly
treated, and given to know that No and Yes _mean_ No and Yes, without
any shadow of turning. It is a question, too, whether those who have
unfortunately _come up_, instead of being judiciously _brought up_,
are ever made better by harshness, under the name of discipline.




_ENGLISH NOTIONS ABOUT WOMEN._


Our neighbors over the water, judging from an article in one of their
leading papers, seem to be greatly exercised at present on "The Woman
Question." The old model Englishwoman who sneezed exactly at the same
hour her great grandmother did, and sat down, and rose up, and went
out, and came in whenever her husband bade her,--and made no
objection, at the same time, to any irregularity either in his hours
or habits,--it seems, has disappeared. Instead, we have that
horror,--the English female-physician; the English female would-be
voter; in short, the English female who asserts her right to
individuality, in action and opinion, equally with her husband.

John Bull sets down his mug of beer, and says that the thing is
monstrous. He says that he no longer can lounge off by himself, as in
bachelor days, although he is a married--and, therefore, a more
important--member of society. He says that he is not allowed, as
formerly, to spend every evening with his bachelor cronies,--Tom,
Dick, and Harry. He says that his wife positively expects him to act
as if he were married. He says that, when he tells her decidedly that
he wont do this, that she pays no more attention to this refusal than
as if he hadn't made it; but quietly returns to the same point of
disputation the next day, and every day, and every month, and all
through the year, with a terrible and feline pertinacity. He says that
it is like the slow dropping of water on some sensitive part of the
frame; he says he don't like it, and don't know what to do about it.
He says, besides, that marriage is not at all favorable to largeness
of mind, or breadth of view, which is very obvious, in his own case,
in the remarks above quoted! He says that all she says and does "has
the stamp of Lilliput;" and that should she even have the right of
suffrage, she would barter away her vote for a new gown. He says
justice is a quality unknown to woman; which is very true, and I want
him to understand that is just what she is contending for. He says, to
make a long matter short, that when he married he expected to live
just exactly the same life that he did before, and that he finds he
can't; and, moreover, he says, with a sweeping wave of his John Bull
hand, that no husband was ever made more large-hearted, or tolerant,
or in any way benefited by marriage.

Now if a man will marry, with such absurd ideas of what marriage ought
to be, and if he will marry a _fool_, I advise him not to go whining
round the world about it: he deserves the consequences. But let him
not insist that _all_ women are fools, because he got on his knees to
obtain one. I will always maintain that there are twenty bad husbands
to one bad wife; and that, that one would seldom continue bad if her
husband were just and kind to her. As to marriage "narrowing a man's
mind," that which never had any breadth cannot be narrowed. And
history abundantly shows how wise in counsel, how judicious in
influence, how helpful in sympathy and co-operation have been many
such wives.

Now it is often said that a wife, to a literary man, is only a
hindrance. Provided she is not a fool, it would pay him, in my
opinion, to give her a regular salary, if he could not obtain it
otherwise, to give him the _feminine side_ of every great question of
the day, as it comes up--which by the way, she does unconsciously, and
which has anything but a "narrowing" effect either on his mind or his
writings, whether he acknowledges it or not.

It is no small thing to be able to toss her a book and say, "I want to
know what is in that book, but I haven't time to read it; run it over,
will you, and tell me what you think of it?"--or to get from her the
condensation of newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, in the same way;
or translations; or to have her assistance in answering letters,
without prompting, when pressed for time; to ask her where such and
such a passage may be found in certain authors, which have escaped
_his_ memory. Is contact with such a woman narrowing?

It is horrible for a man of sense to be yoked to a fool, and _vice
versa_. No one denies it. But the whole kernel of the woman matter is
just this: Men no longer are what they were. There _are_ no _young_
men now. Before they have ceased to be young men, the majority of
them, by a total disregard of Nature's laws, have unfitted themselves
for contact with, and companionship and appreciation of, pure, _good_
women. It is as if a baby should be fed from birth with highly-spiced
condiments; and then, at maturity, be expected to have a relish for
pure, wholesome food. The fault is _not_ in women, but in the men, who
bring to the healthful, simple, sweet pleasures of matrimony, diseased
minds and dilapidated bodies.

It is perfectly amazing the quantity of insulting advice volunteered
in this day to women. Now here is an extract, I am happy to say, in
this instance, from an English journal; the land, _par excellence_, of
wife-beating, and kindred abominations in "high" and "low" life, in
which the wife is advised if she would "wind her husband around her
finger,"--though why that amusement is particularly desirable I fail
to see,--if she would do this, "she must carefully study the
cookery-book; so that his meals need not be monotonous." How many of
his children she must attend to, during this interesting perusal, and
while perfecting the results of such study, our writer does not state;
nor does he throw any light upon the question--whether, when this
delicate animal is gorged like the anaconda, he will, as does the
anaconda, go immediately into a state of stupor, and be comparatively
harmless until other re-enforcements are needed.

Also he tells the wife that "opposition and contradiction always make
him furious; then he stamps and roars and becomes dangerous: she must
by all means avoid that." It is so strange, this Solomon says, "that
when a wife _knows_ that a certain line of conduct is sure to produce
this effect, she will do it, though victory is easy provided"--well,
in short, provided she allows him to stamp and roar and become
dangerous, like his son Tommy, when he can't have another stick of
candy, and whom he himself would severely punish, for imitating his
gentlemanly papa.

Are there no lines of conduct a husband persistently pursues towards
his wife, though he "knows they are sure to wound and give offence?"
And would he think "stamping and roaring and being dangerous" any
excuse for a dislike of it? Is the man who sends his dear little child
for that which will intoxicate him, or takes that child to bar-rooms
and drinking-places to obtain it, never to be remonstrated with by the
mother, lest he should be "angry"? Is the man who allows his relatives
constantly to interfere with and slander his wife, who never write him
letters without containing sly insinuations, intended--howsoever they
may fail--to disturb conjugal and family harmony; who institute a
court of inquiry into family expenses, probable journeys, &c.,
location of residence, and insist upon all these things being settled
according to _their_ means and standard, is this husband never to be
told that such interference is insufferable, "because he will be
angry"?

Is there a husband living who would permit a wife's father or brother
to insist on managing his business affairs in such a clandestine,
down-cellar, surreptitious manner through the wife? If he preferred
going to spend the summer at one place rather than another, how would
he like that matter settled by a conclave of his wife's relatives, and
determined by _their_ probable locality? I do not say that the latter,
too, has not happened. In either case, it is a monstrous impertinence,
and to be resented. I might multiply other instances of abuse to
women, but these will suffice.

_Let men, above all, ask themselves with regard to women--to
wives--this question--and answer it in a manly, honest manner, whether
it is condemnatory of their own "line of conduct" or the contrary:
Should I be willing to endure what I expect my wife to bear, were I a
woman and a wife?_ If not--is it just, or right, or manly, then, for
me to expect it of her?

It is needless to say that this is the last question asked; and this
is the root of all the evil. This making by men a broad easy road of
license for themselves, while women are clogged, fettered, penned in,
worried, harassed and unjustly treated, till even they--"become
dangerous." And though the author above quoted seems to entertain no
such possibility, our lunatic asylums and tomb-stones, if they stated
the actual causes of insanity and death, might convince the most
skeptical.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a kind of sentimental preaching to which an audience is
sometimes treated, which is very repulsive to the hearty, sincere
worshipper. Preaching which is full of poetical quotations; preaching
where some of the words are clipped of their syllables, and others
_chewed_, so to speak, indefinitely. Egotistical, drawling preaching,
under which people go to sleep, or smile derisively, according to
their humor; but from which none come away with the good seed which
will spring up and bear fruit a hundred-fold. Essay preaching--walking
gingerly round duty, and flattering self-love; milk-and-water
preaching--colorless, flavorless, and thin.




_RAG-TAG AND BOB-TAIL FASHIONS._


When I say that the street-dress of the majority of _respectable_
women of New York today is disgusting, I but feebly express my
emotions. I say the _respectable_ women, and yet, save to those who
know them to be such, their appearance leaves a wide margin for doubt.
The clown at a circus wears not a more stunning or parti-colored
costume; in fact, his has the advantage of being sufficiently
"taut,"--to use a nautical phrase,--not to interfere with locomotion;
while theirs--what with disgusting humps upon their backs, and big
rosettes upon their sides and shoulders, and loops, and folds, and
buttons, and tassels, and clasps, and bows upon their skirts, and
striped satin petticoats, all too short to hide often clumsy
ankles,--and more colors and shades of colors heaped upon one poor
little fashion-ridden body than ever were gathered in one rainbow--and
all this worn without regard to temperature, or time, or place--I say
this presents a spectacle which is too disheartening even to be
comical.

One cannot smile at the young girls who are, one day--Heaven help
them!--to be wives and mothers. _Wives and mothers!_ I say to myself,
as I see the throat and neck with only the protection of a gold
locket between itself and the cold autumnal winds. Wives and mothers!
I say, as I see them ruining their feet and throwing their ankles out
of shape, in the vain endeavor to walk on heels like corks, fastened
far into the middle of the soles of their boots; and those boots so
high upon the calf of the leg, and so tightly buttoned across it, that
circulation is stopped, and violent headaches follow. Wives and
mothers! I say, as I see the heating and burdensome panier tackled on
the most delicate portion of a woman's frame, to make still surer
confirmed invalidism. What fathers, husbands, brothers, lovers can be
thinking about, to be willing that the women they respect and love,
should appear in public, looking like women whom they despise, is a
marvel to me. Why they do not _say_ this to them, and _shame_ them
into a decent appearance--if their glasses cannot effect it--I do not
know. Oh, the relief it is to meet a _lady_, instead of a ballet-girl!
Oh, the relief it is to see a healthy, firm-stepping, rosy,
broad-chested, bright-eyed woman, clad simply and free from bunches
and tags! I turn to look at such an one with true respect, that she
has the good sense and courage and _good taste_ to appear on the
street in a dress befitting the street; leaving to those poor wretched
women whose business it is to advertise their persons, a free field
without competition. If I seem to speak harshly, it is because I feel
earnestly on this subject. I _had_ hoped that the women of 1868 would
have been worthy of the day in which they live. I had hoped that
_all_ their time would not have been spent in keeping up with the
chameleon changes of fashions too ugly, too absurd for toleration. It
is because I want them to _be_ something, to _do_ something higher and
nobler than a peacock might aim at, that I turn heart-sick away from
these infinitesimal fripperies that narrow the soul and purse, and
leave nothing in their wake but emptiness. Nor is it necessary, in
avoiding all this, that a woman should look "strong-minded," as the
bugbear-phrase goes. It is not necessary she should dress like her
grandmother, in order to look like a decent woman. It is not necessary
she should forswear ornamentation, because it were better and more
respectable to have it confined to festal and home occasions and less
to the public promenade. She is not driven to the alternative of
muffling herself like an omnibus driver in January, or catching
consumption with her throat protected only by a gold locket!

Oh, how I wish that a bevy of young, handsome girls, of good social
position, would inaugurate a plain lady-like costume for street and
_church_ wear. I say young and handsome, because if an old woman does
this, the little chits toss their heads and say, "Oh! she has had
_her_ day, and don't care now--and we want ours."

Now that's perfectly natural, and right too, that you should have your
youth; that you should, as girls say, "make the most of yourselves;"
but in doing so don't you think it would be well not to _lessen_ or
cheapen yourselves? and I submit, with all deference to your
dress-makers and mammas, that every one of you who appear in public in
the manner I have described, are doing this very thing--are defiling
womanhood, and are bringing it into derision and contempt, whether you
believe it or not.

       *       *       *       *       *

Blessed be sleep! We are all young then; we are all happy. _Then_ our
dead are living. Then, the flowers bloom, though the snow may at that
moment be beating against our windows. Then, the ships that have been
wrecked are gaily sailing on the seas. Then houses are built and
furnished, and, above all, bills are paid. Then, editors have full
subscription lists and clergymen big salaries, and scribblers plenty
of ideas. Then, ladies have "something to wear," although they may not
have it on. Then, Sammy has his coveted velocipede, and Susy her big
doll, and Frank his boat, and Fanny a lover, and Grandpa has no
rheumatism, and Grandma has _not_ lost her spectacles. Blessed be
sleep!




_SOME HINTS TO EDITORS._


What a pity when editors review a woman's book, that they so often
fall into the error of reviewing the _woman_ instead. For instance,
"she is young and attractive, and will probably before long find her
legitimate sphere in matrimony; or she is an old maid--what can she
know of life except through a distorted medium? Let her wait, if so
she be able, till some man is deluded into inviting her to change her
name. That appears to be her present need. Or she has the affectation
of writing over a _nom de plume_--and must, perforce, be a fool. Or
she _did_ write a preface to her book; or she _omitted_ writing a
preface to her book, as one might expect of a woman. Or we hear she is
a widow; and notoriety is probably her object in writing."

I introduced this article by saying what a pity that editors in
reviewing a woman's book should so often only review the woman.
Perhaps I should have said, what a pity all editors are not
_gentlemen_. It is very easy to determine this question, if one keeps
the general run of editorial articles. Not that it does not sometimes
happen that, in the editor's necessary absence, some substitute may
get him into "hot water;" or, as a foreigner who once tried to use
this expression, called it "_dirty water_,"--but taking the general
tone of editorial articles, from one day or one week to another, the
want of courtesy and self-respect, or the lack of it, are patent to
the intelligent reader.

It is a pity that an editor should not be a gentleman, _for his own
sake_, and because no position can be more honorable than his, if he
choose to make it so, nor more influential for good or evil. Think of
the multitude he addresses--the thinking men and women who pass his
columns under critical review. Surely, this is a career not to be
lightly esteemed, not to be slurred over bunglingly. Surely, this
messenger crossing the sacred threshold of home, might well step
carefully, reverentially, discreetly, and discuss fairly, justly,
all topics especially connected with home duties and home
responsibilities. Surely, his advertising list, if he have one, should
be a _clean_ one, such as any frank-browed, hitherto innocent young
boy, might read. Surely, the maiden, whose horizon is not bounded by a
strip of ribbon or silk, or even the marriage altar; should have the
great questions of the day, relating to the future of her sex, not
brushed aside with a contemptuous sniff, or treated with flippant
ridicule, because this is the shortest and easiest way of disposing of
that which requires thought and fair deliberation.

It seems so strange to me, who hold in such exalted estimation an
editor's calling, that one should ever be found willing to belittle
it; it is also a great comfort to know that there are those who hold
this their position, for honor and interest second to none, and in
this light conscientiously conduct their paper, so far as their
strength and means allow.

This would be a very stupid world, I grant, if individuality were not
allowed in the editorial chair as well as elsewhere; but leaving a
wide margin for this, is there not still room in many newspapers for
more justice, manliness, courtesy, and, above all, respectful mention
of woman, even though the exigencies of her life may compel her to
address the public.

There is a practice of certain penny-a-liners which cannot be too
severely reprehended. We do not refer to their personal descriptions
of public persons, male and female, which are often wholly false--they
having mistaken some one else for the individual they wished to
describe; and if certain of the identity, generally "doing" the
description in the worst possible taste. All this is bad enough; but
we refer now to cases where a forgery or a murder is committed. Not
contented with working up these cases in all their harrowing and often
disgusting details, your barren penny-a-liner, catching at the least
straw of an idea to secure another penny for another line, states that
the criminal in question is son of the Hon. Samuel So-and-so, nephew
of Mr. So-and-so, a gentlemen well known in the fashionable world, and
brother of the beautiful Miss Smith who was so much admired in society
last winter. Now, to say that a man who would recklessly carry
distress to innocent persons, already sufficiently crushed by their
calamity, should be horse-whipped, is a mild way of putting it. No
dictionary could do such cold-blooded atrocity justice. Of course such
items help sell a paper; but, alas, how low must be that editor's
standard of journalism who permits his employés to pander to so
corrupt and ghoul-like a taste! I think, could he sometimes look in
upon the sorrowing family circle, which he has assisted to drag into
this kennel publicity, or if he could suffer in his own family that
which he so remorselessly deals out to another, he might realize the
deadly nature of these poisoned arrows which he aims at his neighbor's
heart.

Again, because the victims so assailed have not the prefix of "Hon."
to their names, and have no "fashionable and beautiful sister," or
"prominent and wealthy uncle," shall we therefore excuse this cowardly
attack upon their poor hearths and homes? Let any one run over certain
police reports of the day, if he would see how misery and misfortune
are treated as a jest, by these small, brainless wits hard up for a
subject. One's blood boils, that the human being exists who could
regard such things from the standpoint of a circus clown. In fact, a
circus clown is respectable in comparison, since his jests are
legitimate and harmless.

These gentry never did me any personal harm.

True, black hair has often been awarded me, instead of light, by these
scribblers, "who were on very intimate terms with me," and I have
measured six feet in height, instead of four and a half; and I have
"a stylish carriage and footmen," which I fervently wish the
international copyright law would drive up to my door, bating the
usual vulgar livery; also, half the things which they have asserted I
"waste my earnings upon" would be agreeable to possess, and of course
I grieve to take them down a single peg on all these statements; but
lying did not die with the serpent in Eden, for his slimy trail is all
through newspaperdom, save and except the ---- now don't you wish you
knew?

No humane or decent person, can read the police reports in some of the
papers in New York, without feeling unutterable loathing and contempt
for the writers. Is it not enough that these poor wretches, in their
downward course, have lost almost the faintest impress of immortality,
that one who at least bears the semblance of manhood, can stand over
them and manufacture coarse jibes by the yard, to be perused by young
people at the family hearth-stone? It is a disgrace to our
civilization, and to the paper in whose columns they appear.

How would these writers like it, if the sister who once shared their
cradle--having, in some mad moment, thrown away all in life that is
pure and sweet to women--should she be brought up among that wretched
crowd for sentence, how would he like it, to have her spoken of in
this manner?--

"Miss Josephine Jones, a frail sister, with a bruised nose that once
had been prettier, and a bonnet that did _not_ originate in Paris, was
charged with getting drunk, and tearing the hair from Miss Alice
Carr's red head. The hair was produced in court, but for some
inexplicable reason the clerk of the court seemed disinclined to touch
it. Miss Josephine was found guilty, and gathering up the remnant of a
greasy silk gown in her fair hand, she walked gracefully forth, to be
provided with lodgings and grub, free of expense, on Blackwell's
Island, where so many of her sex rusticate for the pleasant winter
months."

Or, suppose he had a young brother, who had recklessly thrown off home
influences, and, before reaching maturity, was brought into court as a
common drunkard, how would he relish, having him spoken of in this
manner?--

"An infant of twenty-one, named Harry Dexter, with blear eyes, and
torn hat slouched over his swollen mug, was next called up. His boots
and the blacking-brush seemed not to have had a very intimate
acquaintance of late, and the laundress had evidently, for some cause
or other, neglected his linen. His youthful hands also would have been
improved by a dexterous use of soap and water. Young Harry had no
occasion to inquire the way to his future boarding house, having often
ridden down on previous occasions in that accommodating omnibus called
the Black Maria, to take a sail at the city's expense to Pauper's
Island."

We might multiply instances of this heartless and disgusting way of
speaking of the faults and vices of our fellow-creatures, but this
specimen will suffice to show the spirit in which they are penned.
Nor is it any excuse, that many of the friends of these wretched
beings can neither read or write, nor by any possibility ever be
wounded by these so-called _jocular_ allusions. I insist that the
effect on the young people of our community is demoralizing. God knows
that in the crowded city, with its whirling life, we have hard work
enough to avoid jostling aside the urgent claims of the erring and
unfortunate around us, without such help as this from the devil. It is
bad enough "to pass by on the other side" when Christian charity
challenges pity and help; but what must that man be made of, who would
stand over a crushed fellow-being, and, for a few dollars, make merry
with his misery? Surely, it seems to me, that the editors of the
papers where these disgraceful items appear, cannot be aware how
disgusting they have become, to those who would else gladly welcome
their daily issues in the family.

       *       *       *       *       *

Burlesquing a drunkard! Why not burlesque a funeral? with the coffin
and the mourners, with their sobs and tears and grieving hearts? Do
those who get up such a painful exhibition ever think that there may
be amid their audience some persons who have had, day after day, their
lives saddened and imbittered by the dreadful reality? Is it a
legitimate theme for mirth or ridicule? We think not.




_HELP FOR THE HELPFUL._


I have never, in any temperance discussion, written or spoken, heard
or seen any mention of this class of inebriates; and yet the drunkards
on tea are just as surely sapping the foundations of life, as the
devourers of whiskey or gin. That women only, or mostly, are the
victims, does not lessen the importance of my statement. I say mostly,
for I have in my recollection at least two literary men of note, who
primed themselves on strong green tea, without sugar or milk, for any
literary effort, when overtasked nature flagged. One of them became in
consequence subject to distressing fits, and has since deceased.

But it is the women who practise this form of inebriation of whom I
would now speak. The working-girls, the sempstresses, the tenders in
shops, who, being able to pay but slender price for board, get
badly-cooked, poor food, and, in consequence, often three times a day,
call for the fatal "cup of tea," which, for the moment, "sets them
up," as they call it, and enables them to shoulder again the load they
have dropped, till another fit of exhaustion overtakes them, worse
than the preceding, to be followed by a repetition of the same
_pro-tem._ remedy. Then follow indigestion, headaches, sleepless
nights, and the usual long train of miseries, which any physician who
has ever been called upon to prescribe for these overworked, underfed
unfortunates, will immediately endorse. Tea to the working-girl, taken
in this way, is like the "corner-grocery-drink" to the working-man,
and just as deadly in its results as if it sent her reeling through
the streets, as rum does him; although she neither sees, knows, nor
would admit it, any more than he would. Sometimes, when you speak to
them about it, they reply, "But I must have something to keep me up; I
have no appetite for food; I am so tired all the time, and tea makes
me feel so good."

The old plea of the drunkard the world over. Look at these weary
women, with dark circles about their eyes, nervous almost to insanity,
ready to "cry" at the slightest notice, the blue veins on their
temples looking as if they were painted _outside_ the skin. Look at
their long, thin, _sick_-looking fingers, and their slow, weary steps,
from which all the spring and elasticity of youth has long since
departed. See them swallowing "pills" by the dozen, and trying every
quack medicine afloat, instead of resisting the enemy which has done
all or two-thirds the mischief.

Of course, the world over, _bad food_ is the sworn ally of drunkenness
in every shape, and these poor girls have much to contend against in
that shape.

Then, again, I think few women can long preserve their self-respect
amid dirty surroundings. One often sees with a pained pleasure--if
this expression is not paradoxical--their faint attempts to make light
out of darkness, and beauty out of deformity, in the solitary plant,
struggling for life, and its one slant ray of sunshine, outside some
tenement-house window. Or, if you enter, a rude print upon the soiled
wall, of some saint, or child, or some scene in nature; upon which
latter the weary eyes often turn with a vain longing at realization.
These sights, to the humanitarian, who is trying to solve life's great
problem for the benefit of those on whom it bears so heavily, are
suggestive. It is clear, at least, that woman, from choice, would not
be amid dirt or noisome odors. What _man_ would become, without her
refining influence, and the touch of her reformatory fingers, and her
unpolluted sense of smell, of which tobacco has deprived him, it is
not my purpose now to consider, although I have very firmly rooted
ideas on this subject. But there is a class of women among those whom
adverse circumstances have thrown into such places, upon whom it bears
the more hardly, because they have been accustomed all their life to
the reverse of this.

Hundreds so situated, sunk out of sight of former acquaintances by
cruel want, bear it bravely, heroically, while struggling hopefully
and one-handed, against discouraging odds, for better days. Some,
alas! go _down_, soul-sick, body-weary, under the unequal contest, as
we who live in this great, swarming city know. Benevolent ladies in
New York are awake to this; and the question arising, What can we do
for such? has been answered, by energetic and Christian ladies, by the
establishment of boarding-houses, in respectable and pleasant
neighborhoods; with board at prices but little higher than those which
they were obliged to pay in the disagreeable localities above
mentioned. Indeed, in some urgent and genuine cases, upon application,
the applicant has been received upon merely nominal board, in
recognition of the Bible fact that "bricks cannot be made without
straw." In one such institution, I lately spent a most profitable and
delightful morning. It is located on Washington square--one of the
most delightful as well as central spots in New York City--by ladies
of wealth and position in society, and, better still, ladies of
intelligence and piety,--executive ladies, who do something beside
_talk_, and know how, and when, and where to act for this great and
humane object.

With such a good and solid foundation, they have moved on, as their
strength and means have permitted. I passed from one to another of the
pleasant rooms of the young ladies, who occupied apartments here, and
who were, at that hour in the forenoon, scattered far and wide over
the city; some as teachers in schools and in families, some as pupils
in the School of Design, or the ward schools, while many were occupied
as dress-makers, sempstresses, copyists, &c. I looked around me at the
clean white little beds, at the books, at the prints upon the walls,
at the climbing ivy and flowering plants, upon which the sun was
shining as if in blessing, at the innumerable little tokens of
personality, which are so suggestive to the stranger on entering an
unoccupied apartment; those _little_ things which say to you as you
read the title of a genuine and well-thumbed book, "Ah! here lives one
who _thinks_;" or you see by the thousand little refined touches, and
orderly and wise arrangement of clothing and furniture, the neat
thrift of woman expressed, and you feel thankful that they will not
come home, when the day's toil is over, to unholy sounds, and unclean
sights, and bad air, and loathsome food. You thank God that such women
can keep up heart for their exhaustive and unaccustomed toil, by the
_certainty_ of a safe and respectable shelter over their heads, when
night draws its curtain over the temptations and the wickedness of
this great city. You are thankful that their self-respect is not only
preserved in this most important way, but by intercourse and contact
with the ladies of worth and refinement who have the institution in
charge and at heart.

If this is not a noble institution, what is? I do not call it a
charity. It were wrong so to designate it. From out that threshold
pass noble, _self-supporting_ girls, putting to shame the useless
lives of the idle, paniered ladies who remorselessly wear out the
souls of husbands, fathers, and brothers, in the vain struggle for
fashionable supremacy. No: this Institution is a _help_, not a
_charity_. Its object is to help those who wish to help themselves.

Upon one of the walls of a little room there I saw a representation of
the "Grecian Bend." I looked on this picture, and on that, and my eyes
were moist with gratitude for one, and with womanly shame for the
other.

       *       *       *       *       *

Do you ever think how much work a little child does in a day? How,
from sunrise to sunset, the dear little feet patter round--to us--so
aimlessly. Climbing up here, kneeling down there, running to another
place, but never still. Twisting and turning, rolling and reaching and
doubling, as if testing every bone and muscle for their future uses.
It is very curious to watch it. One who does so may well understand
the deep breathing of the rosy little sleeper, as, with one arm tossed
over its curly head, it prepares for the next day's gymnastics. A busy
creature is a little child.




_WOMEN ON THE PLATFORM._


     "Miss Marianna Thompson, now a student at the Theological
     school, received, during her summer vacation two invitations to
     settle with good societies, each of which offered her twelve
     hundred dollars per year. Pretty good for a school-girl, I
     think."

     Yes, that is very good; and we trust Miss Thompson will accept
     one of these (or a better) and do great good to her hearers.
     And, should some excellent young man ask her to "settle" with
     him as wife, _at no salary at all_, we advise her to heed that
     "call" as well.--_N. Y. Tribune._

Well, now, Mr. _Tribune_, I don't. I have seen too many women, quite
as capable as Miss Thompson of being self-supporting individuals,
exhausting the last remnant of their strength in the family, and
carefully saving every penny for a husband, who never doled out
twenty-five cents, without asking the purpose for which it was needed,
and reiterating the stale advice to spend it judiciously. I have seen
such women, too proud to complain or remonstrate, turn away with a
crimson cheek, and a moist eye, to dicker, and haggle, and contrive
for this end, when the husband who gave this advice, had effectually
blotted out the word self-denial from his own dictionary.

No, Mr. _Tribune_, I differ from you entirely. I advise no woman to
refuse twelve hundred independent dollars a year for good, honest
labor, to become such a serf as this.

And while we are on this subject, I would like to air the disgust with
which I am nauseated, at the idea of any decent, intelligent,
self-respecting, capable wife, ever being obliged _to ask_ for that
which she so laboriously earns, and which is just as much hers by
right, as the money that her husband receives from his customers is
_his_, instead of his next-door--dry-goods--neighbor's.

No man should thus humiliate a woman; no woman should permit herself
to be thus humiliated. I am not now speaking of those foolish women,
to whom a ribbon, or a necklace, is dearer than their husband's
strength, life, or mercantile honor. I put such women entirely out of
the question; only remarking, that if a man marries a fool in the hope
of her being pliant, and easily ruled by him, he will find too late
that he is mistaken. But that's his affair. Men always have, and
always will keep on admiring their own perspicacity in reading female
character, when not one in ten knows any more what his wife is
spiritually made of, than what sheep furnished the coat for his own
back.

Sary Gamp advised her comrade--nurse--to put the mutual bottle on the
shelf, and "_look the other way_!"

That's just what I would advise the husbands of intelligent wives to
do with regard to the money which they "allow" them, and which one
would imagine was rightly theirs, by virtue of risking their lives
every Friday to become the mother of twins; by virtue of, when lying
faint and weak beside them, giving out orders for the comfort and
well-being of the family down-stairs before they are able to get
about; by virtue of _never_ being able for one moment, day or night,
sick or well, to drop, or to shake, off the responsibility which a
_good_ wife and mother must always feel, whether present or absent
from her family.

Oh! treat such a woman generously. Make up your mind what in justice
she should receive in the money way, and don't above all things, wait
for her to _ask_ you for it, and never, never be mean enough to charge
a woman of this kind "to spend it carefully."

I daresay you have done it, and _you_, and _you_; I daresay you are
real good fellows too, and _mean_ to do what is right. And I know you
"love" your wives--_i.e._, as _men_ love--thus--wounding a sensitive
spirit, without the least notion you are doing it; thus--charging the
tear that follows to a coming toothache or stomach-ache! Great
blundering creatures! I sometimes don't know whether to box your ears
or hug you. Because the very next minute you will say, or do, some
such perfectly lovely thing, that, woman fashion, I exclaim,
"Well--well;" but I wont tell you what I do say, because you'll hop
right off the stool of repentance, and go to your normal occupation of
crowing and bragging.

But, seriously, I do wish you would consider a little this same money
question, and when the time comes for payment, don't, as I tell you,
open your pocket-book, heave a deep sigh, as you spread a bill on your
knee, and give it a despairing glance of love, as you dump it in your
wife's outstretched hand. No, sir! follow Sary Gamp's advice: "Put it
on the shelf, and look the other way, and don't trouble yourself to
tell her to '_make it go as far as she can_,'" because she will
naturally do that, and there's where you are a fool again. I should
think you'd know by this time, that it will go so far _you_ wont see
it again your natural lifetime. And why shouldn't it? Does she require
to know whether you pay fifteen cents apiece for your cigars; whether
you couldn't buy a cheaper kind, and how many a day you smoke? Come
now, be honest--would _you_ like that?

As I have always declined all requests to lecture, or to speak in
public, I may be allowed to make a few remarks on the treatment of
those who do.

Can anybody tell me why reporters, in making mention of lady speakers,
always consider it to be necessary to report, fully and _firstly_, the
dresses worn by them? When John Jones or Senator Rouser frees his mind
in public, we are left in painful ignorance of the color and fit of
his pants, coat, necktie and vest--and worse still, the shape of his
boots. This seems to me a great omission. How can we possibly judge of
his oratorical powers, of the strength or weakness of his logic, or
of his fitness in any way to mount the platform, when these important
points are left unsolved to our feeble feminine imaginations? For one,
I respectfully request reporters to ease my mind on these subjects--to
tell me decidedly whether a dress, or a frock-coat, or a bob-tailed
jacket was worn by these masculine orators; whether their pants had a
stripe down the side, and whether the dress lapels of their coats were
faced with silk, or disappointed the anxious and inquiring eye of the
public by presenting only a broadcloth surface. I have looked in vain
for any satisfaction on these points.

I propose that the present staff of male reporters should be
remodelled, and that some enterprising journal should send to Paris
for the man-milliner Worth, in order that this necessary branch of
reportorial business be more minutely and correctly attended to.

Speaking of reporters, I was present the other night at a
female-suffrage meeting, where many distinguished men made eloquent
speeches in favor thereof. At the reporters' table sat two young lady
reporters side by side with the brethren of the same craft. Truly,
remarked I to my companion, it is very well to plead for women's
rights, but more delicious to me is the sight of those two girls
_taking them_! But, rejoined my cautious male friend, you see, Fanny,
a woman couldn't go to report a rat-fight, or a prize-fight, or a
dog-fight. _But_, replied I, just let the women go "marching on" as
they have begun, and there will soon _be_ no rat-fights, dog-fights,
or prize-fights to report. It will appear from this, that I believe in
the woman _that is to be_. I do--although she has as yet had to
struggle with both hands tied, and then had her ears boxed for not
doing more execution. Cut the string, gentlemen, and see what you
shall see! "Pooh! you are afraid" to knock that chip off our shoulder.

How strange it all seems to me, the more I ponder it, that men can't,
or don't, or wont see that woman's enlightenment is man's millennium.
"My wife don't understand so and so, and it's no use talking to
her."--"My wife will have just so many dresses, and don't care for
anything else."--"My wife wont look after my children, but leaves them
to nurses, she is so fond of pleasure." So it would seem that these
Adams and the "wife thou gavest to be with me," even now find their
respective and flowery Edens full of thorns, even _without_ that
serpent, female suffrage, whose slimy trail is so deprecated.

Put _this_ in the crown of your hats, gentlemen! _A fool of either sex
is the hardest animal to drive that ever required a bit. Better one
who jumps a fence now and then, than your sulky, stupid donkey, whose
rhinoceros back feels neither pat or goad._




_POVERTY AND INDEPENDENCE._


"I don't like those sewing-girls," remarked a friend to me. "Why don't
they go into some respectable family as chamber-maids, or nurses, or
cooks? If they are too proud to to do this, I have no pity for them."
Now there is just where the speaker and myself differ. _I_ pity them,
_because_ they are too proud to do this. Besides, I do not think it is
altogether because the name or position of "servant" is so obnoxious
to them. It is the confinement of their position. It is the duration
of their hours of labor--extending into the evening, and often till
late in the evening, week after week, to which they object; whereas
the working-girl in most other departments of service is released at
nightfall, and is her own mistress till another day of toil begins.
Now, answer me: Were you, and you, similarly placed, would you not
desire, even in the face of the drawbacks attending it, your
_evenings_ to yourself? I think so. It is true, from "these evenings
to themselves," have dated the perdition of many of this class. Still,
_young_ eyes will never see with old spectacles. Young blood will
never course so sluggishly that all work, and no respite, will be
accepted without nature's strong protest. "_One_ evening out in a
week," that is the general holiday for a house servant: would not
_your_ youth have rebelled, madam, at this? even though your remainder
evenings were passed in the bright parlor, with loving eyes resting
upon you, instead of the underground kitchen, rebelliously watching
the bell-wire? You must look at this subject with their eyes, instead
of your own; through their privations, instead of through your
privileges, if you would be just.

Said a merry matron, apologetically, to me, who had passed life's
meridian, "I never had any youth, and I am taking it now." That is
just it! _The heart demands its youth, and, some time or other, it
must and will have it._ God grant that to these poor girls, it may
come harmlessly,--innocently! But I, for one, can never wonder or
condemn, though I often deplore, that, driven at bay, like hunted
animals, and many of them with limited knowledge and intelligence,
they should snatch at the passing sunbeam, lest another should never
gild their lonesome path.

We need a wider charity for these girls; for all those on whom life
bears so hardly. We who are well-fed, well-clothed, well-educated, how
illy do we, with all these helps to virtue and goodness, perform our
part. Let us remember this in our hasty judgment of them, in our
disgust that they do not choose for themselves more wisely. Let us not
in church, or elsewhere, ask to be forgiven _our_ shortcomings, with
all these helps, when, if one less enlightened stumbles and falls by
the way, we "do not pity them,"--nay, more, because they have done so,
we refuse to help them again to their feet.

I have alluded, in a former article, to the cheap and comfortable
boarding-houses, as a refuge to the working-girl from the horrors of
their tenement-house home. I was descanting upon their advantages not
long since to one who has herself been through many of the most
distressing phases of the sewing-girl's life. She heard me silently,
and to my surprise, without enthusiasm, when I spoke of the wholesome
food, pure air, refreshing baths, free reading-room, and laundry.
"What?" asked I--"do you not consider this a blessed asylum for these
girls?"

With an emphasis which I cannot convey on paper, she said, as her eye
kindled, "Give me rather my poor room, even in the tenement-house,
where, if I had a grief, I could cry it out, with no eye but that of
my Maker to witness it. I could never be happy to go to my bed at
night in company with a dozen others, in ever so clean or spacious an
apartment, where there was no privacy. I had rather work ever so hard,
and _earn_ all I had, than to feel that I was in any measure a
recipient of charity,--that I _was in an Institution_, and labelled as
an inmate when I passed in and out."

Now there are those who, reading this, will only express disgust. I
confess, although it surprised me, that I have a strong sympathy with
the self-respect which prompted this frank avowal; and, excellent as
is the embryo Institution above alluded to, I yet hope that as its
means increase each inmate may have an apartment to herself, be it
ever so small, that the poor heart which "knoweth its own bitterness"
may not be "intermeddled with" by any stranger.

       *       *       *       *       *

Never apply the word "tomboy" to a girl who is taking healthy and
innocent exercise. Are there not mincing misses enough about us, who
pervert girlhood by adult nonsense, till the whole head is sick, and
the whole heart is faint? Better, a thousandfold, be "tomboys" than
such _things_ as these. "Tomboys" have lungs and chests and rosy
cheeks, and grow up to be healthy mothers of healthy children.
_Doctors_ may not like them, but common-sense and husbands do; though,
truth to say, these terms are not always synonymous.




_THE HISTORY OF OUR LATE WAR._


Many able works have already appeared on this subject, and many more
will doubtless follow. But _my_ History of the War is yet to be
written; not indeed _by_ me, but _for_ me. A history which shall
record, not the deeds of our Commanders and Generals, noble and great
as they were, because these will scarcely fail of historical record
and prominence; but _my_ history shall preserve for the descendants of
those who fought for our flag, the noble deeds of our _privates_, who
shared the danger but missed the glory. Scattered far and wide in our
remote villages--hidden away amid our mountains--struggling for daily
bread in our swarming cities, are these unrecognized heroes.
Travelling through our land, one meets them everywhere; but only as
accident, or chance, leads to conversation with them, does the plain
man by your side become transfigured in your eyes, till you feel like
uncovering your head in his presence, as when one stands upon holy
ground. Not only because they were brave upon the battle-field, but
for their sublime self-abnegation under circumstances when the best of
us might be forgiven our selfishness; in the tortures of the ambulance
and hospital--quivering through the laggard hours, that might or
might not bring peace and rest and health. Oh! what a book might be
written upon the noble unselfishness _there_ displayed; not only
towards those who fought _for_ our flag, but _against_ it. The coveted
drop of water, handed by one dying man to another, whose sufferings
seemed the greater. The simple request to the physician to pass _his_
wounds by, till those of another, whose existence was unknown to him a
moment before, should have been alleviated. Who shall embalm us these?

Last summer, when I was away in the country, I was accustomed to row
every evening at sunset on a lovely lake near by. The boatman who went
with me was a sunburnt, pleasant-faced young man, whose stroke at the
oar it was poetry to see. He made no conversation unless addressed,
save occasionally to little Bright-Eyes, who sometimes accompanied me.
One evening, as the sun set gloriously and the moon rose, and the
aurora borealis was sending up flashes of rose and silver, I said,
"Oh, this is too beautiful to leave. I _must_ cross the lake again." I
made some remark about the brilliance of the North Star, when he
remarked simply, "That star was a good friend to me in the war." "Were
you in the war?" asked I; "and all these evenings you have rowed a
loyal woman like me about this lake, and I knew nothing of it!" Then,
at my request, came the story of Andersonville, and its horrors, told
simply, and without a revengeful word; then the thrilling attempt at
escape, through a country absolutely unknown, and swarming with
danger, during which the North Star, of which I had just spoken, was
his only guide. Then came a dark night, when the friendly star, alas!
disappeared. But a watch, which he had saved his money to obtain, had
a compass on the back of it. Still of what use was that without a
light? Our boatman was a Yankee. He caught a glowworm and pinched it.
It flashed light sufficient for him to see that he was heading for one
of our camps, where, after many hours of travel, he at last found
safety, sinking down insensible from fatigue and hunger, as soon as he
reached it. So ravenously did he eat, when food was brought, that a
raging fever followed; and when he was carried, a mere skeleton, to
his home on the borders of the lovely lake where we were rowing, whose
peaceful flow had mocked him in dreams in that seething, noisome
prison pen, he did not even recognize it. For months his mother
watched his sick-bed, till reason and partial health returned--till by
degrees he became what he then was.

When he had finished, I said, "Give me your hand--_both of 'em_--and
God bless you!"--and--then I _mentioned_ his jailers! Not a word of
bitterness passed his lips--only this: "I used to gasp in the foul air
at Andersonville, and think of this quiet, smooth lake, and our little
house with the trees near it, and long so to see them again, and row
my little boat here. But," he added, quietly, "_they_ thought they
were as right as we, and they _did_ fight well!"

I swallowed a big lump in my throat--as our boat neared the shore, and
he handed me out--and said, penitently, "Well, if _you_ can forgive
them, I am sure I ought to; but it will be the hardest work I ever
did."--"Well, it is strange," said he: "I have often noticed it, since
my return, that you who stayed at home feel more bitter about it, than
we who came so near dying there of foul air and starvation."

       *       *       *       *       *

A rich man, just stepping into the grave, burdened with more money
than he has known all his life what to do with, is extolled to the
skies for his legacies and bequests here and there--at home and
abroad. Now, why all this laudation? Is not the poor servant girl, who
can scarce keep herself comfortably clothed, and yet every Sunday puts
her pittance religiously into the contribution box, more deserving of
praise? And yet who ever takes this other than as a matter of course,
save Him who seeth even the widow's mite?




_TWO KINDS OF WOMEN._


Mrs. Jones--do you know her? She looks well to the ways of her
household. She knows how every ounce of butter, and every spoonful of
tea and coffee are disposed of. She is posted as to the sugar, and
milk and potatoes, and calculates to a moment how long-lived must be a
joint of meat, or what is the weight of a loaf of bread. She
understands what should be the perpetuity of kindling wood, and knows
when it is diverted from its original purpose as an _auxiliary_, by a
dilatory cook, and used as a principal, to hurry up a late breakfast.
You can't cheat Mrs. Jones. Every pot, pan, basin, knife, fork, spoon,
in her establishment, serves its legitimate purpose, and no other; and
never loses its edge or polish, or disappears "unbeknownst" into the
ash-barrel. She scorns to buy preserves or pickles, how well soever
made, and though she may encounter no pecuniary loss in doing so; she
thinks it an excellent use of her time, although they are "well off,"
to prepare them with her own deft hands. She is at home when her
husband leaves, and she is at home when her husband comes back. She
does much of the sewing and fitting of family garments, and all the
mending; and she often calls upon the minister to baptize a new baby.
She is cheerful and content in her snuggery of a house, and every
saucepan in it is surrounded with a halo. "Woman's Rights" simply sets
her giggling, when mentioned. Her own family tub sets firm on its
bottom--isn't that enough? Year after year passes. The freshness has
left her face, and the features have sharpened, as she whirls round
and round in this little maelstrom, with no desire to catch breath for
one single moment. Occasionally she goes outside of her own door, but
feels better inside, and hurries home as if she had committed a crime,
in letting up her martinet superintendence for one moment.

As to books and newspapers, she never looks at either. "She says she
has no time." I don't know whether she ever thinks that her children
will some day grow up, and may ask questions which it were a pity
their mother should be too ignorant to answer. I don't know whether
she ever thinks her husband may weary at evening, of the history of
the family potato. Since it is cooked invariably to his liking, it may
be that is all he requires. But after he has eaten his dinner, and is
satisfied--such is man--that I wouldn't like to dismiss Mrs. Jones to
the nursery and put a bright woman in her place, unless "ma" lived
round the corner.

Now Mrs. Smith lives opposite Mrs. Jones. The devil might fly away
with _her_ saucepans, and she wouldn't care. Why does she hire
servants, if she herself is to superintend saucepans? Is Mr. Smith
always home to dinner, that _she_ need be? Has a woman no rights? Is
it for her to be absorbed by the miserable family potato, when many
women have no potato at all? Her answer is on the public platform.
Smith indeed turns pale to think of it; but who or what is Smith? He's
only a man,--a tyrannical, overbearing man, possibly of the worst
type, who believes in "whipping females." Her "mission" is to reform
such men--peaceably, if she can; belligerently, if she must; but it
has got to "come off" somehow. Meantime the nurse rubs her children's
noses _up_ instead of down; fills their eyes with soap-suds, and then
boxes their ears for "whining about it;" eats _their_ lunch and tosses
them _hers_. She tells the youngest child of the "black man who
swallows little children whole" when she wants it to be still in bed,
so that she may converse with her "cousin" in the area; and then
wonders "what _can_ ail the little dear," when its progressive mother
returns from her public speech-making, to find it in a stiff fit. As
to Mr. Smith, he hates women's rights--he wants something to eat.

Now here are two female extremists. I don't see the necessity of
either; but after saying this, I frankly declare that, had I to
choose, Mrs. Jones has my preference. _Her_ children have a home at
least. They have good wholesome food, and clothes suitable to the
weather. If they are sick, they have watchful care. And no mother,
unless she first secure all this to their helplessness, has any right,
in my opinion, on the public platform. This much Mrs. Jones hath
done. Possibly Jones, her husband, takes it, like sunshine, as a
matter of course, and needing no special thanks. Men are more stupid,
and ignorant, than ugly, on this and kindred points. _They_ don't
dream, unless in very exceptionable cases, how a wife longs sometimes
to have a husband testify his pleasure at her invariable good cheer in
some other way than by gobbling it up, till he is as torpid as an
anaconda, until next feeding time. _He_ never feels the need of such
recognition; and so, if his attention is called to it by a
half-smothered, weary sigh from some little wife who can't do without
it, why, he thinks it "babyish." _Such a man ought to marry a
man_--that's my verdict. Where's the sense of plucking a flower to put
your foot on it? Better take a stone post for better, or worse, and
have done with it. You can't dam--n up a woman's feelings as you would
a village stream. You can't choose her for her tender, womanly ways,
and then expect when you get her home that she will "heads up" with an
unwinking stare at you for further orders the rest of her life. If
that's the wife you wanted, why not take one of those figures outside
the store-doors in Broadway, with a dress pinned on, which, when
twirled round, stand stock still till they get another twirl? _They_
are _headless_, to be sure, but they are _so_ docile!




_SUNDAY MORNING._


How many pleasant breakfast-tables it looks down upon! No need to
hurry away to office, or store, or counting-room. Fathers come
leisurely down in dressing-gown and slippers, and sip their coffee
without danger of choking. They have time to look round and see how
tall the children are growing, and that nothing in this world is so
beautiful as a rosy baby fresh from slumber. Mother, too, has the old
girlish smile, that comes not often on a week-day, or if it does,
father has not time to notice it, and that, perhaps, after all, is the
reason it comes so seldom. It is pleasant, after eggs and coffee, to
sit comfortably down, the centre of a ring of happy faces, and hear
the church-bells chime. Time enough yet to go, for this is the first
bell.

Church-bells are not, to my ear, an "impertinence." One is a free
agent. I am free to go, which I like to do; you are free to stay, if
you prefer; though I may think you make a mistake. I don't say that I
should go every Sunday to hear a man who was always binding doctrines
together like bundles of dry sticks, and thrusting them at his yawning
hearers. I want to hear a sermon that any poor soul who straggles
into church, from any by-lane or alley, can understand, and carry home
with him to his cellar or garret; not a sermon that comes on chariot
wheels, but afoot, and with a warm, life-like grasp for every honest,
aye, and _dis_honest, hand in the assembly, defaulter or Magdalen; for
who bade you slam heaven's gate in their faces?

I want a _human_ sermon. I don't care what Melchisedek, or Zerubbabel,
or Kerenhappuk did, ages ago; I want to know what _I_ am to do, and I
want somebody besides a theological bookworm to tell me; somebody who
is sometimes tempted and tried, and is not too dignified to own it;
somebody like me, who is always sinning and repenting; somebody who is
glad and sorry, and cries and laughs, and eats and drinks, and _wants_
to fight when they are trodden on, and _don't_! That's the minister
for me. I don't want a spiritual abstraction, with stony eyes and
petrified fingers, and no blood to battle with. What credit is it to
_him_ to be proper? How can he understand _me_? Were there only such
ministers in the pulpit, I wouldn't go to church either, because my
impatient feet would only beat a tattoo on the pew floor till service
was over: but, thank God! there are! and while they preach I shall go
to hear them, and come home better and happier for having done it.

So I pray you don't abolish _my_ Sunday, whatever you may do with
yours. Don't take away my blessed Sunday breakfast, when we all have
time to love one another. Don't take away the Sabbath bells, which I
so love to hear. Don't take away my human minister, whose God is no
tyrant, and is better pleased to see us go smiling home from church,
than bowing our heads like a bulrush, and groaning back to our
dinners, till all you anti-Sabbatarians are mad to abolish
Sunday,--and no wonder.

Our Catholic brethren have set us, at least one good example; their
churches are not silent as the tomb on week-days. Their worshippers do
not do up all their religion on Sunday. It may be only for a few
moments they step in through that open church-door, on a week-day, to
kneel and lay down burdens too heavy else to be borne. I like the
custom. I should rather say, I like the reminder, and the opportunity
thus afforded them; and I heartily wish that all our Protestant
churches could be thus opened. If rich Christians object to the
promiscuous use of their velvet cushions and gilded prayer-books, at
least let the aisles and altar be free for those who need God on the
week-days; for the poor, the tried, the tempted; for those who shrink,
in their shabby habiliments, from the Sunday exhibition of fine
toilettes and superfine Christianity. Were I a minister, and obliged
to preach to paniers and diamonds and satins, on Sunday, I think I
should _have_ to ease my heart in some such way as this, to make my
pastoral life endurable, else my office would seem to me the most
hollow of all mockeries. "The rich and the poor meet together, and
the Lord is the Maker of them all," should be inscribed outside my
church door, had I one. I could not preach to those paniers and their
owners. My tongue would be paralyzed at those kneeling distortions of
womanhood, bearing such a resemblance to organ-grinders' monkeys. I am
not sure that I should not grow hysterical over it, and laugh and cry
in the same breath, instead of preaching. I can never tell what vent
my disgust would take; but I am sure it must have some escape-valve.
You may say that such worshippers (Heaven save the mark!) _need_
preaching to. I tell you that women, so given over to "the devil and
all his works," are past praying for; "having eyes, they see not;
having ears, they hear not." They are ossified, impervious; they are
Dead-Sea apples, full of ashes. There! now I feel better.

Having alluded to our Roman Catholic friends, allow me to ask leave of
them to have the cross surmount all our _Protestant_ churches, unless
they have taken out a patent for the same. It is lovely to me, this
symbol, as I pass along our streets. It rests my heart to look at it,
amid the turmoil, and din, and hurry, and anxious faces, and sorrowful
faces, and, worse than all, empty faces, that I meet. I say to myself,
there is truth _there_; there is hope and comfort there, and this
tangle of life is _not_ the end. When I am a Protestant minister, the
dear cross shall be on my church, and nobody shall stay away from it
because they are ragged or poor, or because the cushions are too nice.
Oh, I like Catholicism for _that_. They are nearer heaven than
Protestants on this point.

I am very glad for the Protestant noonday prayer-meetings, wheresoever
held. One may have a great spiritual need on other days than Sunday.
One may happen in here--if such things ever _happen_, which I
doubt--and _there_ learn that need, and the way to satisfy it. The
devil is cunningly and wisely busy _every day_ and every night in the
week. Why should good Christians think to circumvent this skilful
diplomatist in one?--on _Sunday_ only? The devil makes _easy_ all the
paths leading to perdition. Christians make hard and difficult the
road to heaven, with their fine churches, and fine worshippers, and
empty preaching once a week. And all around us pitiful hands are
outstretched, and hungry hearts are waiting for the loving Christian
word of help, temporal and spiritual; and men and women go down into
the maelstrom of despair, folly, and sin; and we open our churches and
let _well-dressed_ Christians in to pray for them on Sunday. Sunday!
the word has no meaning. Call it Monday or Tuesday, or Fourth of July,
or anything you will, but not "Sunday." _That_ once meant something.

Let me give you a postscript to a sermon I once heard. "Middle age is
inevitable routine, but keep your _souls_ above it," I heard a
clergyman remark the other night. He "knew that it was difficult," he
said, "not to merge one's self at that crisis in the shop, in the
store, in the office; difficult _not_ to become a mere drudge and a
machine; but still, avoiding it was the only hope for this life." Oh,
how my heart echoed these words--not for men, but for my own sex, of
whose routine life the clergyman said nothing. I wanted to get up and
say to him, "My dear sir, your address is eloquent, and true,
scholarly, and sound, so far as it goes. It _is_ the only hope for
this life that these men of business should not become mere tools."
But I wanted to ask him if men, with their freedom of action--men who,
out in the world, inevitably come into collision with _stirring_, not
_stagnant_ life--find this difficult, what of their wives? With twenty
nerves where men have one to be jarred and agonized, with the pin and
needle fret, of every minute, which they may never hope to escape or
get away from; tied hand and foot, day and night, week after week,
with the ten thousand cords, invisible often to the dull eye of
husband and father, who accepts at evening the neat and pleasant
result, without a thought of how it was accomplished--without a
thought of the weariness of that inexorable grind of detail necessary
to it--without a thought that a change of scene is either necessary or
desirable for the wife and mother who is surely under its benumbing
influence, merging _her_ "soul" till she is a mere machine.

I wanted to hear this clergyman say something about that. I wanted to
know of him whether these women were doing God and their husbands
service, by so sinking the spiritual part of them that one could
hardly tell that it had existence. I wanted to ask him whether, if
their husbands, through indifference or selfishness, or both, gave no
thought to this matter, if he--set in a high place to teach the
people--had no word of advice to such men, that they look as well to
the spiritual deterioration of the _mothers_ of their children as to
their own--the fathers. Nay, I insist that for the mother it is of
_more_ consequence, as having infinitely more to do with the forming
years of these children. And what time, pray, have many of these
"routine" mothers for "thought," properly so called? What time for
reading even the daily papers, to keep up intelligently with the great
issues of the day, of which it is a shame and disgrace for any
American wife and mother to be ignorant? How can they in this way be
fit companions for their children's future? How can they answer their
questions, on this subject and on that, while their vision is for ever
bounded by the horizon of the physical wants of the household? You may
preach "woman's duty" to me till you are hoarse; and I will preach to
you the lust and the selfishness, which is ever repeating the dilemma
of "the old woman in the shoe," till she has not an interval to think
whether she or her brood _have_ souls. "Routine life" of _men_! Men
can and do get out of it--"business takes them away from home on
journeys." "Business" takes him out pleasant evenings; on rainy ones,
he never has "business;" then he goes early to bed, to prepare for a
long evening of "business" when the sky clears.

His wife--well, "she don't seem to need it; or if she does, she don't
say so;" and I might add, in the language of Dickens's nurse, Sary
Gamp, "it is little she needs, and that little she don't get," at
least from him.

Routine men! Oh, bah! "Routine men" have a result to show for their
"routine." They have clerks--not from Intelligence-offices either--who
have to do as they bid them. They also lock up shop at dark. They also
walk or ride home in the fresh air, and talk with their male friends
while doing it. They also are not dependent on the whim or caprice of
any man to take them out for a breath of fresh air at night, after an
exhaustive day of indoor stifling detail. And so, though the sermon to
which I listened was excellent _from a man to men_, I made up my mind
to add this little Appendix to women, from a woman, on the
routine-woman's side of the question. You may talk of the selfishness
of women till your head is white; there never lived that selfish woman
so execrably selfish as a selfish man can be. I don't say _you_ are
so, sir: though at this distance, I venture to inquire whether, were
you in your wife's place, you wouldn't occasionally like to climb up
on the edge of the peck-measure in which she daily revolves, and look
about outside, even if it should tip over on the whole brood of young
ones in the process?




_JUSTICE FOR CLERGYMEN._


Can anybody tell why clergymen should not receive fees for attending
funerals? They receive fees, and generous ones often, for performing
the marriage-ceremony, which is very unnecessary in comparison; a
wedding being a joyful, happy, inspiriting occasion, with its bright
faces, sweet flowers, and happy congratulations of friends; the
exceptions to which are so few as not to need enumerating; and it must
needs rest a man instead of wearying him, cobwebbed all over with
theological tangles as he is, to witness all this; for no matter what
vicissitudes fate and the future have in store for the two he has made
one, at least for _that_ hour they are supremely blessed, and he has
made them so. But a _funeral_! with all its present unnecessary and
dreadful accumulation of horrors; with its closed blinds, its piling
up of sable garments, its pale dead face, which needs no such
auxiliaries of gloom. Imagine a clergyman, already worn out, mentally
and physically, entering such a room, filled with mourning friends, to
whom even the Saviour's own sweet words would seem cold, who must each
for himself tread the wine-press _alone_, till such time as they can
find _Him_. Imagine this minister trying, by prayer and exhortation,
to lift that heavy load of sorrow which all who have grieved know,
that time and faith alone can lighten. Then he goes and looks into the
face of the dead--oh! how many dead faces has he looked at, through
the eyes of others, in the same way!--then he offers a friendly hand
to the widow, or the orphan, as the case may be, and then with this
immense draft on his sympathies, with those heart-rending sobs still
sounding in his ears, perhaps within that very hour, he is called to a
repetition of the sad scene. I am very sure that any clergymen of
experience and sensibility will say, that I have not overstated this
wear and tear of feeling in the delicate endeavor to say just the
right thing, to the differing faiths of the craving, sorrowing hearts
present.

Now why, I ask, should clergymen, in addition to their other
exhaustive duties, be expected to go through this most exhaustive
service of all, without remuneration? More especially, when one
considers the often danger of contagious atmospheric influences, at
such times and places, upon his tired frame.

I have often pondered, without yet being able to find a shadow of a
reason for this unjust demand upon clerical strength. If you say it is
the custom, I only say it is time that, with other bad customs, it
were reformed; and more--since clergymen themselves have their lips
delicately closed on this especial subject, while on others they might
be considered at liberty to speak. That's why _I_ have spoken for
them.

I like ministers. I was brought up with them. My father's house was a
minister's tavern, lacking the sign swinging before the door. I was a
wild slip in those days; that's why they always "wanted a little
conversation with Sarah." It was philanthropic, but thrown away. I had
been told so often that I was "a child of wrath," that I had it at my
fingers' ends--I might have said, at my toes' ends, for it was they
who helped me out the nearest door after meals, lest I should hear the
stale announcement again. I persisted I "loved God," when I was asked.
Why shouldn't I? for no bugaboo of anybody's raising could have made
me believe I was born by him to be tormented. The flowers, the clouds,
the ocean, the sun, moon, and stars--what priceless gifts were they!
No "doctrine" or "creed" could rob me of them; and didn't _he_ make
them, and give me a soul to enjoy them? It was of no use telling me I
was a "child of wrath" under circumstances like these! One soft sweet
breath from my flower-garden knocked that idea "all to smithereens."

Now I didn't hate those ministers for trying to darken what should
have been, and what _was_, in spite of them, youth's festival hour. I
knew they _thought_ they were right, and I believe them to be truly
good, though mistaken, men. They didn't know that, child as I was, if
_I_ ever went to Heaven, it would be taking hold of my Heavenly
Father's hand, not cowering before him through fear of "hell." So
they fired over my curls, when they got me in a corner, and talked to
me that way. They didn't make me hate "meetin'" either; though I was
driven there to hear so many "seventeenth-lies" at the point of the
bayonet; and when skewered up on the seat between rows of big folks, I
felt as if little ants were creeping out from under my finger-nails,
so fidgety did I get for the blessed outdoors.

But I have not outgrown "meetin'" yet, and I count no Sunday a Sunday
when I don't go there some part of the day. Oh, had they only known
_how_ to talk to me, instead of driving me within myself, and making
me put my worst religious foot foremost. But clergymen have found a
better way since, thank God! Still I often smile at the bits of the
old leaven in the ministerial make up. How they will wonder at it all,
when eternity's light shines down on their life-path, and shows them
these mistakes. For I make no apology here for boldly asserting that a
minister can, and does, and always will, make an occasional mistake;
although I was once pounced down upon by an evangelical critic, who
talked to me about "wounding the Lord in the house of his friends,"
when I said so. It is just such stuff as that, that drives everybody
_from_ the "Lord." Better face the music, and own up, that even
ministers are _human_. For my part, were I a minister, and fenced in,
and badgered about, and cross-questioned and interfered with, and
expected to be a sound, rounded, well-disposed human being, morally,
mentally, and physically, all the same as if a coroner's inquest
wasn't squatting on my free-agency every hour in the day, I'll warrant
you I should make a great many more mistakes than they do. Old Adam in
me, would soon see that they didn't want material for a verdict to
suit their narrowness.

And now I hope I have shown you that I am a friend to ministers. So
that without getting a boxed ear, I must tell you here, what a laugh I
got out of a lot of them yesterday. You see, I was in an omnibus
alone, save one lady, when a meeting of some sort in one of our
churches "bust up,"--excuse the expression--"bust up." Five ministers
emerging from the church porch, hailed the omnibus and got in, and
decorously seated themselves. Now, some ministers look jolly, and as
if they were alive. These were thin, cavernous, and had the ten
commandments written all over them. They had heard of New York
Delilahs evidently, for they wouldn't see the _fare_ of the lady or
myself between our gloved fingers waiting for the driver--not a bit of
it! Catch them at it! They looked straight past us both, safely out
the window at an innocent brick wall. Oh, heavens! how I laughed! It
carried me back to the days I was a curly-headed little sinner,
rebelling at being called "a child of wrath." I wanted to say,
"Brethren, I too am a Christian"--and I will persist that I am; so
don't be afraid of my innocent female pennies, nor "cross" yourselves
because your foot accidentally touched the hem of my robe when you got
in; for though I believe in ministers, I _don't_ like to have the
devil laugh in his sleeve at their queer, poky, solemn ways, and say
to himself, "Aha! so would I have it."

May clergymen sneeze? Well--not exactly that; but a question quite as
foolish, I saw gravely propounded and treated, the other day, in a
religious paper. The debate was upon this highly important point:
"Whether it was right for ministers to play croquet." Now I really
_had_ hoped that the day had gone by when the only amusement allowed
to ministers was counting the scores of little heads that surrounded
their table. I did hope that they might wash their faces on a towel,
though it had not a funereal urn embroidered in the corners. And that
they need not of necessity plant a cypress, or weeping willow, at
their front door, to designate their raven-like calling; or banish
every plant from their garden save the funereal rue and rosemary. It
seems I was mistaken; more's the pity. Now if there is anything the
devil likes, it is fine-spun, wire-drawn distinctions, on unimportant
questions like these. If there is anything he likes, it is this
ascetic rendering of religious things, to disgust the young, and throw
a pall over that which _should_ attract them by a wise recognition of
their human needs. When we place a young plant down cellar and shut
out light and sunshine, though it may put out shoots, we all know that
they are white, sickly, and destined early to perish; just so with
this misnamed "godliness" which the well-meaning but over-zealous
religionist would thrust upon us and persuade us was doing
God-service. I tell you it is _not_. I tell you that a minister, above
all others, needs innocent and proper recreation, like croquet. Every
summer, in my travels to and fro, I meet "ministers" enjoying their
brief respite of a summer-vacation; most of them bearing unmistakable
evidence in their pale faces and narrow chests, of their great
necessity for it. I have watched them, sympathetically, as they sat on
the piazzas of the hotels and boarding-houses where we were thrown
together. I have seen them commit this unpardonable sin of "playing
croquet" on a nice green lawn, while the fresh mountain air tinged
their pale cheeks, and their eyes grew brighter, and their tones grew
cheerful, and I blessed God for the sight. I said to myself, _that's_
the way to foil the devil, when the young people found, day after day,
that even a "_minister_" could be cheerful himself and promote
cheerfulness; and that religion, after all, was not death to innocent
happiness. I have been with ministers to the ten-pin alley, in company
with their wives, children, and friends; I have climbed mountains with
them, when I had a better frolic than I ever had with any of the
laymen; and after a three-hours climb, and we all sat upon the top and
enjoyed the view of the surrounding country, and, seated upon the
grass, ate our luncheon, I never perceived that religion suffered by
it. I _have_ often, on the contrary, heard young people of the party
say, "Well, this is the first time I ever _really_ liked a minister. I
thought they were all stiff and solemn, and--to use a juvenile but
expressive epithet--'poky'"! Nor when the following Sunday, sweet as
Sunday always dawns on the hills and valleys, dawned on us, in some
such lovely spot, and these same clergymen were requested to preach,
sometimes in the parlor of the hotel, sometimes, which was better, in
a grove near the house, did _I_ for one perceive anything incongruous
in his doing so, though the audience was the very same merry party of
the day before. And when they have joined in the sweet hymn under the
trees, where he stood with uncovered head, as in God's best temple, I
confess to much more devotion than I am apt to feel, when surrounded
and hedged in, and, allow me to say, sometimes _stifled_ with all the
clerical city paraphernalia, whose husk often seems to me so to shut
in and compress the kernel, that one almost doubts if it has
existence.

Ministers play croquet? I wish every minister had a violin and a brisk
saddle-horse. Away with this bogus sanctity. Take a lesson from our
Roman Catholic friends in the virtue of cheerfulness. Drive not _from_
you, but draw soothingly, caressingly to you the lambs of the flock.
Terror never yet made a true Christian. Frigidity never yet glorified
God. The world is not a charnel-house. Else the blue sky would have
been as black as some of these ascetics fain would make it. No! It is
full of perfume and song and color, and you can never shut the eyes
of young people to it with your distorted views of life. Oh, be wiser,
lest the sad rebound of the atheist come, and they find only at the
end of a life misspent, that in their zeal to prove your detested
"religion" a sham, they had overlooked the fact that the counterfeit
presupposes the _true coin_.

       *       *       *       *       *

How seldom, in judging of those who excite our anger or contempt, do
we judge them, as the Almighty does, by the extenuating circumstances
of birth and education, and the lack of spiritual light! "Nobody ever
told me;" "I did not know it was wrong;" "Nobody cared whether I was
good or bad." What pitiful words are these! The Saviour recognized
these facts when he said, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no
more."




_THE OLD MAID OF THE PERIOD._


She don't shuffle round in "skimpt" raiment, and awkward shoes, and
cotton gloves, with horn side-combs fastening six hairs to her
temples; nor has she a sharp nose, and angular jaw, and hollow cheeks,
and only two front teeth. She don't read "Law's Serious Call," or keep
a cat, or a snuff-box, or go to bed at dark, save on vestry-meeting
nights, nor scowl at little children, or gather catnip, or apply a
broomstick to astonished dogs.

Not a bit of it. The modern "old maid" is round and jolly, and has her
full complement of hair and teeth, and two dimples in her cheek, and
has a laugh as musical as a bobolink's song. She wears pretty, nicely
fitting dresses too, and cunning little ornaments around her plump
throat, and becoming bits of color in her hair, and at her breast, in
the shape of little knots and bows; and her waist is shapely, and her
hands have sparkling rings, and no knuckles; and her foot is cunning,
and is prisoned in a bewildering boot; and she goes to concerts and
parties and suppers and lectures and matinees, and she don't go alone
either; and she lives in a nice house, earned by herself, and gives
jolly little teas in it. She don't care whether she is married or not,
nor need she. She can afford to wait, as men often do, till they have
"seen life," and when their bones are full of aches, and their blood
tamed down to water, and they have done going out, and want somebody
to swear at and to nurse them--then marry!

Ah! the modern old maid has her eye-teeth cut. She takes care of
herself, instead of her sister's nine children, through mumps, and
measles, and croup, and chicken-pox, and lung fever and leprosy, and
what not.

_She_ don't work that way for no wages and bare toleration, day and
night. No, sir! If she has no money, she teaches, or she lectures, or
she writes books or poems, or she is a book-keeper, or she sets types,
or she does anything but hang on to the skirts of somebody's else
husband, and she feels well and independent in consequence, and holds
up her head with the best, and asks no favors, and "_Woman's Rights_"
has done it!

That awful bugbear, "Woman's Rights"! which small-souled men, and, I
am sorry to say, narrow _women_ too, burlesque and ridicule, and wont
believe in, till the Juggernaut of Progress knocks them down and rides
over them, because they will neither climb up on it, nor get out of
the way.

The fact is, the _Modern_ Old Maid is as good as the Modern Young
Maid, and a great deal better, to those who have outgrown bread and
butter. She has sense as well as freshness, and conversation and
repartee as well as dimples and curves.

She carries a dainty parasol, and a natty little umbrella, and wears
killing bonnets, and has live poets and sages and philosophers in her
train, and knows how to use her eyes, and don't care if she never sees
a cat, and couldn't tell a snuff-box from a patent reaper, and has a
bank-book and dividends: yes, sir! and her name is Phoebe or Alice;
and Woman's Rights has done it.

       *       *       *       *       *

A newspaper lately announced that the fashion of blue coats and brass
buttons for gentlemen had received its death-blow. Now, listen, ye men
who are constantly preaching to us women, about our "slavery to
fashion." It was done by Prince Arthur, who _didn't_ wear it at a
recent great public ball. Deadly stab! We hope the gentlemen who did
appear in that costume will not commit suicide. But if we might give
them a little bit of advice, it would be, that they should keep on
wearing blue coats and brass buttons, just _because_ "the Prince"
didn't. Show yourself superior to fashion, gentlemen, as you so often
advise ladies to do. Try the boot on _that_ foot. Don't throw aside a
good coat for the puerile reason that it is out of fashion! Oh, no!




_THE NURSE OF THE PERIOD._


All honor to Mr. Bergh for his remedial measures to prevent cruelty to
animals. Cats, they say, have nine lives; so, with this in their
favor, will the gentleman above mentioned let them wriggle a while,
and devote that portion of his time to an animal which has only one
life. I refer to the New York child--the _rich_ New York child. If he
will take a walk through any of our city parks with his eyes open, he
cannot fail to see suffering enough among this class to enlist his
warmest sympathies. I often stroll through the parks to hear the birds
sing, and to see the children. One day last week I saw a bright little
boy of four years amusing himself by picking up little twigs that had
fallen from the trees, while his nurse was engaged in interminable
gossip with one of her class. Turning her head suddenly, she perceived
him engaged in this harmless and natural amusement. Snatching them
from his hand, she took each little twig separately and struck him
with each across his happy little face; then, throwing them away out
of his reach, left him standing there, sobbing, with nothing to do,
while she continued her chapter of gossip. Walking on a little
farther, I saw a little girl who had strayed across the path to look
at a "dolly" which another child was drawing in a little wagon. It was
a wonderful "dolly;" with flaxen curls, and pink boots, and a muslin
dress; and its eyes were closed in slumber, after the fashion of the
doll of the period, while in a recumbent position. Oh! the sweet
little face, as it peered into the tiny wagon, and the precocious
_mother_ look of adoration at the "dolly"! Instantly came darting
after her the Gorgon nurse, and with a smart slap upon her head and a
shake of her little shoulders, till her bright hair flew quite over
the frightened little face, she tore her violently away, and seating
herself upon a bench, where she had been talking with a coarse-looking
man, set the sobbing child so hard upon her knee that I could
distinctly hear it catch its breath. I mention here only these two
instances of brutal treatment, which I could multiply by dozens. Why
do not mothers take pains to follow their nurses occasionally, to see
if all is right with their children when out of doors? And why could
not Mr. Bergh order some _backs_ placed to the torturing benches in
our parks where the little children sit? The Central Park benches are
a good model in this regard, as many a weary pedestrian ca

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