I RECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH.
A day or two after, as I was sitting in my room, busy writing, I heard a
light footstep on the stairs, and a voice saying, "Oh yes! this is Mr.
Henderson's room--thank you," and the next moment a jaunty, dashing
young woman, with bold blue eyes, and curling brown hair, with a little
wicked looking cap with nodding cock's-feather set askew on her head,
came marching up and seated herself at my writing-table. I gazed in
blank amazement. The apparition burst out laughing, and seizing me
frankly by the hand, said--
"Look here, Hal! don't you know me? Well, my dear fellow, if you don't
it's time you did! I read your last 'thingumajig' in the _Milky Way_,
and came round to make your acquaintance."
I gazed in dumb amazement while she went on,
"My dear fellow, I have come to enlighten you,"--and as she said this
she drew somewhat near to me, and laid her arm confidingly on my
shoulder, and looked coaxingly in my face. The look of amazement which I
gave, under these circumstances, seemed to cause her great amusement.
"Ha! ha!" she said, "didn't I tell 'em so? You ain't half out of the
shell yet. You ain't really hatched. You go for the emancipation of
woman; but bless you, boy, you haven't the least idea what it means--not
a bit of it, sonny, have you now? Confess!" she said, stroking my
shoulder caressingly.
"Really, madam--I confess," I said, hesitatingly, "I haven't the
honor"--
[Illustration: _THE ADVANCED WOMAN OF THE PERIOD._
_"'You go for the emancipation of woman; but bless you, boy, you haven't
the least idea what it means--not a bit of it, sonny, have you now?
Confess?' she said, stroking my shoulder caressingly."_]
"Not the honor of my acquaintance, you was going to say; well, that's
exactly what you're getting now. I read your piece in the _Milky
Way_, and, said I, that boy's in heathen darkness yet, and I'm going
round to enlighten him. You mean well, Hal! but this is a great subject.
You haven't seen through it. Lord bless you, child! you ain't a woman,
and I am--that's just the difference."
Now, I ask any of my readers, what is a modest young man, in this
nineteenth century,--having been brought up to adore and reverence woman
as a goddess--to do, when he finds himself suddenly _vis-à-vis_ with
her, in such embarrassing relations as mine were becoming? I had heard
before of Miss Audacia Dangyereyes, as a somewhat noted character in New
York circles, but did not expect to be brought so unceremoniously, and
without the least preparation of mind, into such very intimate relations
with her.
"Now, look here, bub!" she said, "I'm just a-going to prove to you, in
five minutes, that you've been writing about what you don't know
anything about. You've been asserting, in your blind way, the rights of
woman to liberty and equality; the rights of women, in short, to do
anything that men do. Well, here comes a woman to your room who _takes_
her rights, practically, and does just what a man would do. I claim my
right to smoke, if I please, and to drink if I please; and to come up
into your room and make you a call, and have a good time with you, if I
please, and tell you that I like your looks, as I do. Furthermore, to
invite you to come and call on me at my room. Here's my card. You may
call me 'Dacia, if you like--I don't go on ceremony. Come round and take
a smoke with me, this evening, won't you? I've got the nicest little
chamber that ever you saw. What rent do you pay for yours? Say, will you
come round?"
"Indeed--thank you, miss--"
"Call me 'Dacia for short. I don't stand on ceremony. Just look on me as
another fellow. And now confess that you've been tied and fettered by
those vapid conventionalities which bind down women till there is no
strength in 'em. You visit in those false, artificial circles, where
women are slaves, kept like canary birds in gilded cages. And you are
afraid of your own principles when you see them carried out in a real
free woman. Now, I'm a woman that not only dares say, but I dare _do_.
Why hasn't a woman as much a right to go round and make herself
agreeable to men, as to sit still at home and wait for men to come and
make themselves agreeable to her? I know you don't like this, I can see
you don't, but it's only because you are a slave to old prejudices. But
I'm going to _make_ you like me in spite of yourself. Come, now, be
consistent with your principles; allow me my equality as a woman, a
human being."
I was in such a state of blank amazement by this time as seemed to
deprive me of all power of self-possession. At this moment the door
opened, and Jim Fellows appeared. A most ludicrous grimace passed over
his face as he saw the position and he cut a silent pirouette in the
air, behind her. She turned her head, and he advanced.
"Fairest of the sex! (with some slight exceptions)--to what happy
accident are we to attribute this meeting?"
"Hallo, Jim! is this you?" she replied.
"Oh, certainly, it's me," said Jim, seating himself familiarly. "How is
the brightest star of womanhood--the Northern Light; the Aurora
Borealis; the fairest of the fair? Bless its little heart, has it got
its rights yet? Did it want to drink and smoke? Come along with Jim,
now, and let's have a social cocktail."
"Keep your distance, sir," said she, giving him a slight box on his ear.
"I prefer to do my own courting. I have been trying to show your friend
here how little he knows of the true equality of women, and of the good
time coming, when we shall have our rights, and do just as we darn
please, as you do. I'll bet now there aint one of those Van Arsdel girls
that would dare to do as I'm doing. But we're opening the way sir, we're
opening the way. The time will come when all women will be just as free
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as men."
"Good heavens!" said I, under my breath.
"My beloved Audacia," said Jim, "allow me to remark one little thing,
and that is, that _men also_ must be left free to the pursuit of
happiness, and also, as the Scripture says, new wine must _not_ be put
into old bottles. Now my friend Hal--begging his pardon--is an old
bottle, and I think you have already put as much new wine into him as
his constitution will bear. And as he and I both have got to make our
living by scratching, and _tempus fugit_, and we've got articles to
write, and there is always, so to speak, _the devil_ after us folks that
write for the press, may I humbly request that you will withdraw the
confusing light of your bright eyes from us for the present, and, in
short, take your divine self somewhere else?"
As Jim spoke these words, he passed his arm round Miss Audacia's waist,
and drew her to the door of the apartment, which he threw open, and
handed her out, bowing with great ceremony.
"Stop!" she cried, "I aint going to be put out that way. I haven't done
what I came for. You both of you have got to subscribe for my paper,
_The Emancipated Woman_."
"Couldn't do it, divinest charmer," said Jim, "couldn't do it; too poor;
mill runs low; no water; modest merit not rewarded. Wait till my ship
comes in, and I'll subscribe for anything you like."
"Well, now, you don't get rid of me that way. I tell you I came in to
get a subscription, and I am going to stay till I get one," said Miss
Audacia. "Come, Hal," she said, crossing once more to me, and sitting
down by me and taking my hand, "write your name there, there's a good
fellow."
I wrote my name in desperation, while Jim stood by, laughing.
"Jim," I said, "come, put yours down quick, and let's have it over."
"Well, now," said she, "fork out the stamps--five dollars each."
We both obeyed mechanically.
"Well, well," said she, good naturally, "that'll do for this time, good
morning," and she vanished from the apartment with a jaunty toss of the
head and a nod of the cock's feathers in her hat.
Jim closed the door smartly after her.
"Mercy upon us! Jim," said I, "who, and what is this creature?"
"Oh, one of the harbingers of the new millennium," said Jim. "Won't it
be jolly when all the girls are like her? But we shall have to keep our
doors locked then."
"But," said I, "is it possible, Jim, that this is a respectable woman?"
"She's precisely what you see," said Jim; "whether that's respectable,
is a matter of opinion. There's a woman that's undertaken, in good
faith, to run and jostle in all the ways that men run in. Her principle
is, that whatever a young fellow in New York could do, she'll do."
"Good heavens!" said I, "what _would_ the Van Arsdels think of us, if
they should know that she had been in our company?"
"It's lucky that they don't, and can't," said Jim. "But you see what you
get for belonging to the new dispensation."
"Boys, what's all this fuss?" said Bolton, coming in at this moment.
"Oh, nothing, only Dacia Dangyeeyes has been here," said Jim, "and poor
Hal is ready to faint away and sink through the floor. He isn't up to
snuff yet, for all he writes such magnificent articles about the
nineteenth century."
"Well," said I, "it was woman _as_ woman that I was speaking of, and not
this kind of creature. If I believed that granting larger liberty and
wider opportunities was going to change the women we reverence to things
like these, you would never find me advocating it."
"Well, my dear Hal," said Bolton, "be comforted; you're not the first
reformer that has had to cry out, 'Deliver me from my friends.' Always
when the waters of any noble, generous enthusiasm rise and overflow
their banks, there must come down the drift-wood--the wood, hay, and
stubble. Luther had more trouble with the fanatics of his day, who ran
his principles into the ground, as they say, than he had with the Pope
and the Emperor, both together. As to this Miss Audacia, she is one of
the phenomenal creations of our times; this time, when every kind of
practical experiment in life has got to be tried, and stand or fall on
its own merits. So don't be ashamed of having spoken the truth, because
crazy people and fools caricature it. It is true, as you have said, that
women ought to be allowed a freer, stronger, and more generous education
and scope for their faculties. It is true that they ought, everywhere,
to have equal privileges with men; and because some crack-brained women
draw false inferences from this, it is none the less true. For my part,
I always said that one must have a strong conviction for a cause, if he
could stand the things its friends say for it, or read a weekly paper
devoted to it. If I could have been made a pro-slavery man, it would
have been by reading anti-slavery papers, and _vice versa_. I had to
keep myself on a good diet of pro-slavery papers, to keep my zeal up."
"But," said I, anxiously, to Jim, "do you suppose that we're going to be
exposed to the visits of this young woman?"
"Well," said Jim, "as you've subscribed for her paper, perhaps she'll
let us alone till she has some other point to carry."
"Subscribe!" said I; "I did it from compulsion, to get her out of the
office; I didn't think the situation respectable; and yet I don't want
her paper, and I don't want my name on her subscription list. What if
the Van Arsdels should find it out? People are apt enough to think that
our doctrines lead to all sorts of _outré_ consequences; and if Mrs.
Wouverman, their Aunt Maria, should once get hold of this, and it should
get all through the circle in which they move, how disagreeable it would
be."
"Oh, never fear," said Jim; "I guess we can manage to keep our own
secrets; and as to any of them ever knowing, or seeing, anything about
that paper, it's out of the question. Bless you! they wouldn't touch it
with a pair of tongs!"