IV

I have been wandering about to-day in an apparently aimless fashion, but

in reality "musing upon many things." Our horror of shiftlessness, and

our realization of the responsibilities of life, and of the important

work Providence has kept saving up for us, or perhaps "growing up" for

us, like Dick Swiviller's future mate, is expressed in the fact that if

we take an hour's leisure, anywhere betwixt sunrise and sunset, we feel

under bonds to explain the matter not only to our own souls, but also to

those other souls who live adjacent, and take an everlasting interest in

ours.

Consequently, I told myself this day that I was not well--that I had

been overdoing, and that I had best "go easy for a spell." After which

concession to my interior governor, I proceeded to apologize to my

neighbors; to call my dogs--not to apologize to them, but to solicit

their company--and then to hie me away to the lake, remembering to walk

feebly as long as I was in sight.

I didn't go down to the beach, but plunged into the cool, comforting

heart of a ravine; fathomed its depths, with a feeling of delightful

seclusion, and came out on the thither side, to find myself in the

glowing October woods.

Ill? I never felt better in my life! Good, rich streams of blood coursed

through my veins, and painted a warm tint in my cheeks. At that moment I

hope I looked a trifle like Nature, who was in the height of her being;

in a sort of tropical luxuriance, like a beautiful woman at the very

summit of maturity and perfection.

I put out my hands toward a clump of sumach--I was not cold, but its

brilliant warmth lured me as does a glowing fire. It permeated my very

being, and set my soul a-throbbing.

There had been rain, and then warmth, and October had caught all the

prismatic colors of the drops of water, and was giving them forth with

Southern prodigality. The birds bent over the swaying daisies, and sang

soft love-notes into their great, dark eyes, while I looked on in an

ecstasy of wonder and delight--the gold of the daisies, the gold of the

sunlight, and the glow in my heart, seeming in a way all one--part and

parcel of the munificence and cheering love of the Father. It is a

glorious world, and it is glorious to live therein. The very air about

me--the air I was breathing in, seemed to palpitate color and brilliant

beauty.

I talked to Duke about it, and he looked around him with a certain air

of admiration depicted on his noble, fond old face. Fanchon was

frivolous, as usual, and wanted to be running giddily about, hunting

rabbits and the like; but I made her sit beside me, for it seemed a

desecration every time the October silence of those woods was broken by

aught save the dropping of a ripened nut, or the whirr of a homing bird.

It was at the close of this mellow day that I sat in my library alone,

before a hickory fire. Alone, did I say? Nay, Mrs. Simpson sat before me

in the opposite rocker. You could not have seen her, or heard her, but

she was there, and was complaining of Mr. Simpson, saying he rarely ever

invited her to go anywhere; and as she talked I recalled a certain

evening when I had been her guest--included in an invitation to attend a

spectacular entertainment given by the country club, at a spot some

distance from our homes, and I said:

"Mrs. Simpson, I can offer you some recipes which I warrant you will

work infallibly; but they are like the recipe for determining the

interior condition of eggs, which says, put them in water; if they are

bad they will either sink or swim--I have forgotten which. Now try this

recipe I am about to give you, and it will either make Mr. Simpson

unwilling to take a step in the way of recreation without you, or it

will make him stalk forth by himself, as lonely as a crocus in early

March--I have forgotten which; but try it often enough, and you will

learn."

_Recipe._

"Fail to be ready at the appointed time, and keep him waiting until he

is either raging or sullen; cudgel or dragoon the children until their

tempers are well on edge. Then complain of the gait taken by Mr. Simpson

in order to catch the train; declare frequently when aboard that you are

tired out, and are sorry you came. After you reach the place, remark

every now and then that you don't think the entertainment amounts to

much, and that you do think it was a piece of extravagance to have

given such a price for tickets to so-inferior an exhibition. Next,

declare that you feel a draft, and are catching your 'death of cold;'

interlard all this with frequent directions to the children--admonitions

and complaints, and derogatory remarks about Mr. Simpson's appearance,

and wonder--oft-expressed and reiterated, and put in the form of

questions which you insist upon his answering, as to why he didn't wear

his other suit of clothes. Finally, wind up the whole affair, by wishing

you were in bed, and announcing your opinion that the trip didn't pay,

and you are sure it will make you and the children ill.

"Try this faithfully, and it won't fail to accomplish something

decided."

One more recipe.

I was talking to Mrs. Purblind now; Mrs. Simpson had had her fill, and

gone home; and Mrs. Purblind had taken her place.

You couldn't have seen her--but that doesn't matter.

_Recipe._

"This is for making a man love to stay at home with you, and inducing

him to be cheerful and companionable, or for making him flee your

presence as one would flee a plague-stricken city: I've forgotten which,

but you will soon discover, if you try it persistently.

"Talk on disagreeable themes, talk persistently and ceaselessly; never

let up; the more tired he may be the more steadily you must talk, and

the more irritating your theme must be. Go to the gadfly; consider her

ways and be wise. Buzz, buzz, buzz; sting, sting, sting.

"On his worst nights, always select his relatives for your theme; harp

upon their faults; their failures in life; their humiliations; the

unpleasant things people say of them. Then if he waxes irritable,

express surprise; remind him how he used to talk against these same

relatives, and how much trouble he gave them when he lived at home; add

that it's plain now that he has combined with his relatives against you,

and that you should be surprised if he and they didn't effect a

separation. If he is still in earshot, pass on to what he once told you,

beginning each remark with:

"You said that----

"And then proceed to point out wherein and howin he has utterly failed

to make good his promises. Further, if he is still in the house, enlarge

upon the change you have noted in his conduct toward you--how devoted he

used to be, and how selfish he has become. Next, tell him how

well-dressed other women are, and how little you have on.

"By this time, if not sooner, he will remember that he has night work

clamoring for him at the office, or that his presence at the club is

absolutely necessary, and it would be well for you to conclude your

remarks by observing that if he bangs the front door so hard every time

he goes out, he will loosen the hinges."

"Well now," said Mrs. Purblind--the invisible Mrs. Purblind (she always

would listen to reason, which is more than could be said for the visible

creature of that name), "well now, I know well enough when I go on that

way, that it isn't best to do it; but the Evil One seems to enter me,

and I get going, and I couldn't stop unless I bit my tongue off."

"Bite it then," I said, "and after that, jump into the lake; were you

once there, your virtues would float, and your husband would love them;

but alive, your virtues are beneath water, and your nagging is always on

top."

"But what is one to do? Supposing all these things are true--supposing

you suffer from all these wrongs."

"Did you ever right a wrong by setting it before your husband in this

way, and at these times?"

"No."

"Did you ever improve your condition?"

"No. But what would you do?"

"Shut up. Dip deep into silence. In the first place, when you find you

have poor material, take extra care in the cooking; study the art; use

all the skill you can acquire, and finally, if that won't do, if it

_positively_ won't--if you can't make a decent dish out of him, open the

kitchen door, and heave him into the ash-barrel, and the ash-man will

cart him away."

I have traveled a little in my life, and have been entertained in

various households. I have seen wives who deserve crowns of laurel, to

compensate for the crown of thorns they have worn for years; but I have

seen others, who had thorns about them indeed, but they themselves were

not on the sharp end. Some of these stupid, ignorant women fancied they

were doing everything possible to make home pleasant, and wondered at

their failure. There they sat, prodding their husbands with hat-pins,

and grieved over the poor wretches' irritability.

I recall a conversation I once overheard. The husband arrived just at

dinner time. The wife heard him come in, and called to him in a faint,

dying voice, from the top of the stairway--

"George, is that you?"

The answer was spiritless.

"Yes."

The wife came downstairs.

"Well, then, we can have dinner. I don't know that it's ready, though;

Bridget has had a toothache all day, and she's just good-for-nothing."

All this in the same faded tone of voice.

The husband passed into the parlor, and began to read the paper.

The weary tongue of his feminine partner wagged on, in a dreary sort of

way.

"I think these girls are so foolish; they haven't a bit of pluck. I've

been trying to persuade her to go to the dentist's and have her teeth

out, but she won't. I'm just tired to death to-night, and there's no

end to the work; Bridget has been moaning around all day--why her

teeth----"

"Oh, bother her teeth!"

"Why, don't you care to hear anything that goes on at home, George?"

"I don't care to hear about teeth that go on at home; Bridget's teeth

especially. I don't care a rap for the whole set."

"How cross you are to-night, George! when I'm so tired, too. Johnnie,

your face is dirty, go and wash it; be quick now, for it's time for

dinner. I don't know that Bridget will ever call us. She's probably

sitting out in the kitchen, nursing her teeth; why she has five roots

there, and all of them so inflamed that----"

"Bother her roots, I say!"

"George, you are extremely irascible, but that's the way; I get no

sympathy at all."

"Not when you want it by the wholesale for Bridget's roots."

"Well, what should we talk about? I don't see how we can ever have

conversation in the home, if you won't listen to anything."

And so they went on--the tired husband, moody and irritable, and the

tired wife, loquacious about matters of no interest. I felt sorry for

her who spake, and him who heard.

A husband worn out with the cares and worries of an unsatisfactory

business day, and a wife harrassed and fretted by overwork and petty

annoyances, could succeed in talking pleasantly together only by the use

of will-power and principle. It would require a big effort, but the

effort would pay. It would be one of the best investments a married pair

could make. The returns would be quick and large. I wonder more don't

deposit in this bank.

V

I had not forgotten Mr. Chance. This fact annoyed me excessively, since

I saw that he had forgotten me. A forgotten man may remember a woman,

and preserve his self-respect, if not his merriment; but when a

forgotten woman remembers a man, that is quite another thing. Not that I

was brooding over Mr. Chance--far from it; I thought very little of him,

in one way, for I frequently saw him with Miss Sprig; but in spite of

all that, I could not quite forget the impression he made upon me the

day those boys killed the gay little squirrel, and again the day the

poor mother went down into the deep, dark water with her child held

close to her agonized heart. The feeling I experienced for him on that

awful day, was unique in my history. I had never been an impressionable

girl as far as men were concerned--I was not an impressionable woman. For

me to carry the thought of a man home with me--for me to dwell upon this

thought, and above all to take pleasure in dwelling upon it, meant more

than it would have meant for some women. That was as far as the matter

had gone, but it was far enough--too far, considering his evident

indifference, and I was humiliated, for the first time in my life, over

my attitude toward a man. This mortification induced me to treat Mr.

Chance even more coldly than I should have done ordinarily, though his

trifling with Miss Sprig would have called forth some coolness of

conduct under any circumstances.

I had abundant opportunity to express myself in this way, for Mr.

Chance's night work necessitated late rising, and I saw him to speak to

him almost every morning. Indeed, I took some pains to be in my garden

during the forenoon, and from this vantage ground I could not only see

much that took place between himself and Miss Sprig, but I also had

opportunity to speak with him as he passed my house, on his way to the

train.

Sometimes Miss Sprig walked to the station with him. He evidently

absorbed much of her time and thought, and she evidently regarded him as

her latest victim, for she made him a common subject of talk, and her

entire acquaintance had the pleasure of hearing the foolish things he

did and said. She always represented him as deeply in love with her; I

have no doubt she really thought that he was.

For my own part, I cared very little whether he was in love, as it is

called, or not. If he had succumbed to such a shallow-pated, bold,

common girl, I felt contempt for him, and this contempt was deepened

when I realized that he might be trifling with her. In any event it

mortified and angered me to think he had been seen with me; (he had

often called upon me and we had been out together several times), and

that the old neighborhood gossips had coupled our names. Now it would be

reported that Miss Sprig had cut me out; if I was pleasant toward him,

they would wag their foolish old heads, and whisper about my efforts to

win him back; if I was cool, they would shake these same empty pates,

and prattle about my wounded affections. It was one of those cases where

you can't possibly do the right thing--I mean the thing that will silence

the clacking tongue: consequently, as luck would have it, I plunged into

the worst possible course I could have taken, for when Mrs. Catlin, who

lived catacorner from me, and who watched me as a cat watches a mouse,

said something one day about Mr. Chance's feeling bound to pay attention

to Mr. Purblind's cousin, as long as she was visiting there, and that

she knew such a girl wasn't to his taste, and she was sure he would

come to his senses soon, I was so angry that I lost control of my

temper, and all control of my wits, and blazed out with:

"It's none of my business or concern whom he pays attention to, and for

my part I think they're well mated."

Whereupon, realizing I had made a perfect fool of myself, and that this

speech of mine would go the rounds of the suburb, and I could never

erase it from the village mind--not if I lived a hundred sensible years,

I had much ado to withhold myself from seizing a pot of bachelors'

buttons that stood near, and breaking the whole thing over Mrs. Catlin's

idiotic skull.

It was on top of this pleasant interview with Mrs. Catlin, that Mr.

Chance came over, and asked me to attend a concert that evening with

himself and Miss Sprig, and he very narrowly avoided receiving the

bachelors' buttons that Mrs. Catlin had but just escaped.

I strode indoors, and began packing some of my effects, for I was

resolved to move that day, or the next. Not because I had discovered I

had such fools for neighbors--I had always known that--but because I had

just discovered that they had a fool for a neighbor.

Worldly considerations prevailed with me, and I took out the Penates

that I had slammed into a trunk, mended their broken noses, and set them

in place once more; but I hid myself away for several days, much as

Moses was hidden, but for a less dignified reason.

After a time, I cooled off, and decided to accept the world as it stood,

and not to rage because the millennium did not come before I was fitted

to enjoy it.

Mrs. Purblind ran over one afternoon, and I could see that she was far

from happy. I had noticed for some weeks various changes in the

direction of improvement, in her care of her husband and household. I

had also noticed that Mr. Purblind's conduct did not keep pace with

these improvements, but I fancied Mrs. Purblind was not sharp enough to

see or sensitive enough to care. In this it seems I erred, as I have in

one, or perhaps two, other directions during my life.

As Mrs. Purblind, for the first time since I have known her, didn't seem

to care to talk, I took up a book at random, and began reading aloud. As

luck would have it, I stumbled into some passages descriptive of the

ideal home, and before I could stumble out again, the poor woman burst

into tears. I suppose that tender little sentence served as the key that

unlocked the floodgates. As soon as her grief had spent itself, she

apologized, and ascribed her tears to bad news in a letter or something,

and shortly afterward left. I watched her walking down the street, until

my eyes were too dim to see her. It grieved me sorely that the cause of

her sorrow was so deep, and so delicate that I could not offer her my

sympathy. Her tears were piteous to me, and I wanted to take her to my

heart, and tell her how sorry I was for her; but to do that would have

been to take advantage of her moment of weakness, and that I could

not--must not do. So I let her go from me with merely a few commonplace

expressions of regret that she had received disturbing news, while all

the time my heart was aching in unison with hers, and I kept her with me

in thought, all day.

I went down to the lake directly after dinner; several things were

troubling me, and I wanted to lay my puzzled head on Mother Nature's

bosom.

My run down the steep sides of the bluff set the blood to coursing

smartly through my veins, and a new and more cheerful stream of thought

to flowing.

I was tired that night, and it was a luxury to lie flat upon my back on

the beach, listening to the rhythmical thud of the big, long wave at my

feet, and the song of the stars overhead. There is something unspeakably

tranquillizing in the studded dome of heaven; there is also something

unspeakably sad. It bends over the struggling, yearning, aching human

heart, as a mother, who has attained that peace which is the outgrowth

of suffering, bends over the passion, the sobbing, and the despair of

her child.

"Hush, hush, it is all for the best."

"I cannot--will not bear it!"

"Hush, you know not what you say. God's hand is in it all."

"There is no God in this, or if there is, He hates me!"

"Ah, my child, He loves you with unutterable love, and pities with

unutterable pity. Yet a little while, and the day shall shine upon you;

then you will know--a little while."

I turned from the great vault above me, and looked out upon the restive

waters, and as I turned I saw a shadowy Mrs. Purblind sitting beside me

on the beach, and questioning with sad eyes and heart, the stars that

bent to listen.

"I have tried," she said; her face, usually so thoughtless,

tear-stained, and quivering.

"Yes, I know you have tried," I answered; "I have seen that!"

"But he is just the same."

"Yes, and will be for a long time, and you will have to go on trying for

years, if you want to carry him back to the old days," I said.

"That's one of the hardest things in all the world!" she cried

passionately, "if we stop doing right--the right stops with us, but if we

stop doing wrong and begin to do right, the wrong goes on."

"Not for always," I said, looking up to the stars.

"Oh, for so long!"

The great dome rich with gems, and deep with peace, bent over her, and

by and by her sobs ceased.

"You are trying, I know," I reiterated, "but you don't understand--you

can't, for you have only a woman's nature."

"What should I have, pray?"

"A woman's, and a man's, and a child's, to be a perfect wife and mother;

that is, you must be able to comprehend them all. Your husband came home

cross to-night."

"Yes, irritable toward us all, and I so hoped to have everything

pleasant this evening."

"He, too, had his hopes to-day, and they were flung to the ground, and

broken before his eyes."

"What do you mean?"

"The special agent of a company that he has for a year been working to

get, has been in town."

"Yes, I know."

"Yesterday this agent led him to suppose he was to be the favored one.

All to-day he has been working toward that end, and near night he heard

that this man had gone, without even saying good-by. You remember that

Mr. Purblind left home in a hurry this morning, with scarcely a bite of

breakfast; he took very little luncheon, and----"

"Well, we had dinner at the usual time, if he'd said he was hungry, I'd

have hurried it."

"He was not hungry--he was much more than that. Did you ever see a vessel

whose fuel is well-nigh exhausted drag herself into port? What is the

first thing to be done?"

"I don't know--replenish her?"

"Yes, put coal on board. Now when I saw your husband walk up to his

front door, I said to myself, he needs coaling. A good home should be a

good coaling station; remember that."

"But what of me?" she asked with some impatience, "I, too, have my

worries and exertions--do I never need coaling?"

"Frequently," I answered.

"Well, who is to coal me, I should like to know?"

"Yourself."

"That's rather one-sided, I think. Why shouldn't my husband look to

that?"

"My dear," I said earnestly, "I never knew but one man who saw when his

wife needed coaling, and attended to her wants. When he died (for the

gods loved him), it was found that his shoulder-blades were abnormally

large--at least so the doctors said, but I knew all the time that his

wings had budded."

"Well, this life is too much for me," murmured Mrs. Purblind drearily.

"Then don't attempt the next."

"I shan't, if I can help it, and yet I'm like to soon, for Mr.

Purblind's mother is coming on a visit to us, and I know she'll worry

the breath out of me."

"Don't let her."

"How can I help it?"

"By keeping the peace with her."

"Oh, I've tried that before; I've done everything I could for her, and

deferred to her, and ignored myself until I seemed to fade out of

existence, but it didn't work."

"Oh, yes, it did, for it made her ten times as troublesome as before."

"It certainly did, but what do you mean?"

"I mean that a mother-in-law is like a child, in that she is spoiled by

having her own way."

"But what can I do?"

"Walk calmly on, doing the best you can, but recognizing your own

authority and dignity, and finally she will come to recognize it. Be

mistress of your own household, and director of your own children--all

this quietly and pleasantly, but without wavering, and in the end she

will respect and probably admire you, though she will never think you do

just right, or are just the woman who ought to have married her son."

"But I've always been in hopes of making her love me as she loves her

own daughter."

"That is what every romantic woman starts out with, but by and by, in

the storm and stress of domestic life, that ideal is cast overboard, as

a struggling ship throws its extra cargo over the rail."

"Why is it, I wonder, a man never fights with his father-in-law. Men

are said to be naturally pugnacious."

"That's a mistake, my dear; a man would go several miles any day to

avoid a fuss; it is we women who delight in scraps. A man occasionally

has a little set-to with the girl's father, before he gains his consent

to the engagement, but once he's married, it's the old lady he has to

train for, or I should say who trains for him, because as a general

thing it is she who gives battle, not he. The real conflict, however,

takes place between the two women--the wife and her mother-in-law. If you

want to see 'de fur fly,' as the darkies say, you must always come over

to the feminine side of the house. Then you'll have your fill of

explanations, expostulations, and recriminations."

"Well, certainly I never had any trouble with my father-in-law."

"Trouble! Do you know what I'd do, if I had a troublesome

father-in-law?"

"No--murder him?"

"Murder him, indeed! Woman, have you no mercantile instinct? That would

be like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Why, the first

showman would take the old gentleman off my hands, and pay me a handsome

price for him. You must know that a troublesome father-in-law is so rare

that the public would flock to see him. But you couldn't get anything

for a troublesome mother-in-law. There are too many families trying to

get rid of them, at any price. The sale of parents-in-law is governed by

the same laws as other commodities, and these interfering,

mischief-making mothers-in-law have become a drug in the market."

"Well, there is Mrs. Earnest, her mother-in-law is a jewel."

"Ah, now you mention a most valuable piece of property, for a woman like

that--who models her conduct on the pattern of Aunt Betsey Trotwood, in

David Copperfield's household, is a jewel of such magnitude and

brilliancy, that she will some day be seen sparkling in Abraham's bosom,

from a distance of millions of miles."

"Well, how would you cook mothers-in-law?"

"Make a delicious dish of your husband and then take a pinch--a good

pinch--of mother-in-law, and throw her in as 'sass.' Speaking of this,

remember that too many cooks spoil the broth, and wife and mother-in-law

combined generally make a pretty mess of the husband."