up while Flirt is at large, and the parrot must be kept away from the
pigeons. The parrot can take care of herself as to the cats; but how
about the canaries and the blackcap? Eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty, and the only safety of slavery.
And yet these enforced duties: do they not fit the boys for the cares
of government? Do they not tell the future politician what he is to do?
Are they not, after all, a part of that great education which Home,
and only Home, can give us?
We shall have few friends so faithful as Blossom, few who will impose
upon us so gently, and who will really impose upon us to our advantage.
We shall have few such friends as Carlo and Flirt, who love us, faults
and all; who never ask what wrong we have committed, or how unworthy
we are, but who are, without doubt, the most flattering of worshipers,
loving us simply because we are _ourselves_. How few love us for that,
and that alone!
XXII.
IN CONCLUSION.
In looking over our list of Home Amusements--the private theatricals,
the tableaux vivants, the brain games, the fortune-telling, the making
of screens, the painting of fans, etc.; the games at cards, the
etching, the lawn tennis, the dancing, the garden party, the window
gardens, the birds, the picnics, the plaque-painting, the archery, the
parlor and the kitchen--we can only feel how much we have left out.
Why have we not spoken more fully of the library, with its quiet and
respectable arm-chairs, its green table, its shelves filled with those
silent friends who never desert us, its paper-cutter, its wood-fire,
its latest magazine, its quiet, and the heavy curtain dropped at
evening? How did we happen to so slight this delightful room, wherein
so many of the best amusements of home are always arranging themselves?
Perhaps because the story told itself, and we did not need to tell it.
How could we have forgotten the quest for green apples and
choke-cherries in the spring, or the subsequent repentance? the
bird-snaring and nesting? and in summer the search for wild flowers?
the attempts at making an herbarium? the berry-picking? the nutting
in the fall? that cracking of butternuts by the winter fire? that
arrangement of the autumn-leaves?
Simply because the record of Home Amusements is endless. It is almost
all of life which is worth remembering.
But we can not leave the reader here, particularly if that kindly
personage be a young lady, without congratulating her upon the age in
which she exists. She finds vastly more to amuse her in her home-life
than her mother or her grandmother did before her. They were content
to receive once a month “The Lady’s Book,” with a few hints as to
lace-work, worsted-work, patterns for the embroidering of slippers
or sofa-cushions. A new suggestion for embroidery on white cambric,
or, through a friend in some great mart of fashion, the cut pattern
of an article of dress--think of that, ye who get the fashions by
telegraph. Dress itself was a crude thing compared to what it is now.
There was not even at Newport the slightest approximation to the luxury
of to-day. A “London-made” habit, for instance, was almost unknown.
There was no “riding to hounds,” no skating rink, no casino; there
were quiet dinners, and very many “Germans,” but they were conducted
inexpensively, at the hotels almost universally.
Of course, New York and Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, offered
an exciting life to the prominent and fashionable women of the day for
a few weeks of the season. But the long life at home of the rank and
file, the severe winters, during whose rigors the ardent and ambitious
and pleasure-loving were shut up for months behind four dreary walls,
were not illumined by patterns of artistic fancy-work from South
Kensington, or by the delightful knowledge of china painting. No
ingenious boy or girl thought of cutting or carving in wood beyond the
vulgar whittling, which all good housekeepers condemned. The elderly
lady sat about with her knitting--very plain knitting at that. The
crochet-needle had not then begun that endless chain which has since
united our vast continent in a network of elaborate tidies, and covered
our babies with delicate flannel Josies, or given us, for the head
and neck, the softest of wraps. The sewing-machine had not begun its
prodigious march down our long seams. People did much “plain sewing,”
but knew not of artistic curtains made of cheesecloth, or of unbleached
muslin elaborated into Roman scarfs--a singular marriage, by the way,
of Lowell and its looms with the Eternal City, all of which they know
now.
Young ladies had not then been taught to draw and paint artistically,
sincerely, as they are taught to-day. The education in music was
infinitely less thorough. It was an age when the person who aspired
to the accomplishments had much to contend against. There were but
few railroads which penetrated to the remote villages; and it must be
confessed that life had its dull evenings.
But around the one astral lamp which then shed its uncertain rays upon
the family circle there were the same elements of which human society
is now composed, and there was one amusement present whose absence we
now sometimes have to regret. We refer to that lost art of conversation
which has, it would seem, departed from our busy last half of the
nineteenth century. Indeed, it has left the whole world, if we can
believe Cornelius O’Dowd, Mrs. Stowe, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and
even some French writers. Mrs. Stowe, in one of her books of early New
England life, referring to the art of conversation, speaks feelingly
of the change. Young ladies were driven by the very dullness of their
lives to be readers of good books. There were many admirable historical
scholars and Shakespeareans among the New England girls of a past
generation. They read Milton and John Bunyan, and the early essayists
and poets. Their novels had been written for them by Walter Scott and
Miss Austen, and they were an education in themselves.
And conversation, such as we do not hear often, lighted up those
long winter evenings. Perhaps, too, this very quiet and dullness was
helping to forge the armor of some heroine who was to take her part
in civilizing the West. Certainly it made some great women. However,
as we take account of what little we may have lost, we are very
grateful for all we have gained. Our present civilization rubs out
individuality, no doubt. Life is smothered in appliances.
What is called the higher education of women, and the very superior
culture now possible, may not have yet made a race of good talkers, but
it has undoubtedly made an army of thinkers.
It certainly has helped to fill the country with refined and happy
girls, who have no reason to complain of repression. It would seem
almost impossible to find now the repressed, morbid, undeveloped, and
crushed natures which a gloomy religion and a lingering of Puritan
prejudice made almost too common in early New England. Many of those
women still live, and have found expression in literature to tell us
how devoid their homes were of amusement.
The world is not filled with geniuses, or with those fortunate people
who can evolve an amusing life from out of the depths of their inner
consciousness. We may, therefore, be very grateful for every innocent
amusement. Indeed, we may be very grateful that amateur concerts,
little operettas, cantatas, musical clubs, are now common, and that
the performers, young ladies of all ranks and classes, are admirably
trained in music; that in decorative art industries they are no longer
novices, but deserving of the higher name of artist.
All these better developments of the mind and power of each inmate can
not but render home interesting, gay, cheerful, happy, blessed.
And all the Home Amusements should be made, or studied to be made, the
amusements of the whole.
No pursuit or pleasure can be carried on in the best spirit without
being in some measure unselfish if it conduces to the amusement of
home. Thus the indulgence of a favorite taste may have the beauty of
philanthropy in it, if it is made to help along the cheerfulness of
home.
There are some trades which are solitary and exclusive. Authorship
is one of these; and perhaps the author is not always a very amusing
inmate. But the actor in the private play, the clever and ready wit
who makes the charade lively, the musician, the embroideress, the
fortune-teller, the good partner at whist, the clever amateur cook, and
the artistic member--these can all add to Home Amusements.
THE END.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] This was the invention of a poor poet named Dulot, who found rhymes
for other poets.
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Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible. Some minor corrections of spelling have been made.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.