If there are only two or three, I am pretty sure of a sympathetic
hearing. If there were two-and-twenty, I should be much more doubtful:
for only last night, on being introduced to a tall lady in deep
mourning, and assured that she had been "a terrible sufferer," that her
life, indeed, had been "one long tragedy," I may as well confess, that,
so far from being interested in this tall long tragedy, merely as such,
I stepped a little aside on the instant, on some frivolous pretence, and
took an early opportunity to get out of the way. Why this was I leave to
persons who understand the wrong side of human nature. I am ashamed
of it; but there it is,--neither worse nor better. And I can't expect
others to be more compassionate than I am myself.
One of my troubles grew out of a pleasure, but was not less a trouble
for the time. The other was not an excrescence, but ingrained with the
material: not necessarily, indeed,--far from it; but, from the nature of
the case, hopelessly so.
The penny-postman had brought me a letter from my Aunt Allen, from
Albany. This letter contained, in three lines, a desire that her
dear niece would buy something with the inclosed, and accept it as a
wedding-gift, with the tenderest wishes for her life-long happiness,
from the undersigned.
"The inclosed" fell on the floor, and Laura picked it up.
"Fifty dollars!--hum!--Metropolitan Bank."
"Oh, now, that is charming! Good old soul she is!"
"Yes. Very well. I'm glad she sent it in money."
"So am I. 'T isn't a butter-knife, anyhow."
"How do you mean?" inquired Laura.
"Why, Mr. Lang was telling last night about his clerk. He said he bought
a pair of butter-knives for his clerk Hillman, hearing that he was to be
married, and got them marked. A good substantial present he thought it
was,--cost only seven dollars for a good article, and couldn't fail to
be useful to Hillman. He took them himself, so as to be doubly gracious,
and met his clerk at the store-door.
"'Good morning!--good morning! Wish you joy, Hillman! I've got a pair of
butter-knives for your wife.--Hey? got any?'
"'Eleven, Sir.'
"Eleven butter-knives! and all marked _Marcia Ann Hillman, from A.B.,
from C.D._, and so on!"
Laura laughed, and said she hoped my friends would all be as considerate
as Aunt Allen, or else consult her. Suppose eleven tea-pots, for
instance, or eleven silver salvers, all in a row! Ridiculous!
"Now, Del, I will tell you what it is," said Laura, gravely.
Laura was the sensible one, like Laura in Miss Edgeworth's "Moral
Tales," and never made any mistake. I was like the naughty horse that
is always rearing and jumping, but kept on the track by the good steady
one. Of course, I was far more interesting, and was to be married in
three weeks.
"Now, Del, I'll tell you what it is. Are you going to have all your
presents paraded on the study-table, for everybody to pull over and
compare values,--and have one mortified, and another elated, and all
uncomfortable?"
"Why, what can I do?"
"I know what I wouldn't do."
"You wouldn't do it, Laura?" said I, looking steadily at the
fifty-dollar note.
"Never, Del! I told Mrs. Harris so, when we were coming home from Ellis
Hall's wedding. It looked absolutely vulgar."
We all swore by Mrs. Harris in that part of Boynton, and it was
something to know that Mrs. Harris had received the shock of such a
heterodox opinion.
"And what did Mrs. Harris say, Laura?"
"She said she agreed with me entirely."
"Did she really?" said I, drawing a good long breath.
"Yes,--and she said she would as soon, and sooner, go to a silversmith's
and pull over all the things on the counter. There were knives and
forks, tea-spoons and table-spoons, fish-knives and pie-knives,
strawberry-shovels and ice-shovels, large silver salvers and small
silver salvers and medium silver salvers. Everything useful, and nothing
you want to look at. There wasn't a thing that was in good taste to
show, but just a good photograph of the minister that married them,--and
a beautiful little wreath of sea-weed, that one of her Sunday-school
scholars made for her. As to everything else, I would, as far as good
taste goes, have just as soon had a collection of all Waterman's
kitchen-furniture."
Laura stopped at last, indignant, and out of breath.
"There was a tremendous display of silver, I allow," said I; "the piano
and sideboard were covered with it."
"Yes, and thoroughly vulgar, for that reason. A wedding-gift should be
something appropriate,--not merely useful. As soon as it is only that,
it sinks at once. It should speak of the bride, or to the bride, or
of and from the friend,--intimately associating the gift with past
impressions, with personal tastes, and future hopes felt by both.
The gift should always be a dear reminder of the giver; a
picture,--Evangeline or Beatrice; something you have both of you loved
to look at, or would love to. But think of the delight of cutting your
meat with Edward's present! forking ditto with Mary's! a crumb-scraper
reminding you of this one, table-bell of that one; large salver,
Uncle,--rich; small salver, Uncle,--mean; gold thimble, Cousin,--meanest
of all. Table cleared, ditto mind and memory, of the whole of them--till
next meal, _perhaps!_"
Laura ceased talking, but rocked herself swiftly to and fro in her
chair. It is not necessary to say we were in our chambers,--as, since
our British cousins have ridiculed our rocking-chairs, they are all
banished from the parlor. Consequently we remain in our chambers to rock
and be useful, and come into the parlor to be useless and uncomfortable
in _fauteuils_, made, as the chair-makers tell us, "after the line of
beauty." Laura and I both detest them, and Polly says, "Nothing can be
worse for the spine of a person's back." To be
"Stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair,"
let anybody try a modern drawing-room. So Laura and I have cane
sewing-chairs, which, it is needless to add, rock,--rock eloquently,
too. They wave, as the boat waves with the impetus of the sea, gently,
calmly, slowly,--or, as conversation grows animated, as disputes arise,
as good stories are told, one after another, so do the sympathizing and
eloquent rocking-chairs keep pace with our conversation, stimulating or
soothing, as it chances.
And now I come to my first trouble,--first, and, as it happened, of long
standing now; insomuch that, when Laura asked me once, gravely, why I
had not made it a vital objection, in the first place, I had not a word
to reply, but just--rocked.
She, Laura, was stitching on some shirts for "him." They were intended
as a wedding-gift from herself, and were beautifully made. Laura
despised a Wheeler-and-Wilson, and all its kindred,--and the shirts
looked like shirts, consequently.
I linger a little, shivering on the brink. Somehow I always say
"_him_,"--nowadays, of course, Mr. Sampson,--but then I always said "he"
and "him." I know why country-folk say so, now. Though sentimentalists
say, it is because there is only one "he" for "her," I don't believe it.
It is because their names are Jotham, or Adoniram, or Jehiel, or Asher,
or some of those names, and so they say "he," for short. But there
was no short for me. So I may as well come to it. "His" name was
America,--America Sampson. It is four years and a half since I knew this
for a fact, yet my surprise is not lessened. Epithets are weak trash for
such an occasion, or I should vituperate even now the odious practice
of saddling children with one's own folly or prejudice in the shape of
names.
There was no help for it. There was no hope. My lover had not received
his name from any rich uncle, with the condition of a handsome fortune;
so he had no chance of indignantly asserting his choice to be Herbert
barefoot rather than Hog's-flesh with gold shoes. His father and mother
had given his name,--not at the baptismal font, for they were Baptists,
and didn't baptize so,--but they had given it to him. They were both
alive and well, and so were seventeen uncles and aunts who would all
know,--in good health, and bad taste, all of them.
"He" had four brothers to keep him in countenance, all with worse names
than his: Washington, Philip Massasoit, Scipio, and Hiram Yaw Byron!
There was the excuse, in this last name, of its being a family one,
as far as Yaw went; but----However, as I said, language is wholly
inadequate and weak for some purposes. There was a lower deep than
America,--that was some comfort.
Hiram Yaw wasn't sent to college, but to Ashtabula, wherever that is,
and I never wish to see him. But to college was America sent,--to be
"hazed," and taunted, and called "E Plury," and his beak and claws
inquired after, through the freshman year. I never knew how he went
through,--I mean, with what feelings. Of course, he was the first
scholar. But that, even, must have been but a small consolation.
The worst of all was, he was sensitive about his name,--whether because
it had been used to torment him, and so, like poor worn-out Nessus,
he wrapped more closely his poisoned scarf, (I like scarf better than
shirt,)--or whether he had, in the course of his law-studies and
men-studies, come to think it really mattered very little what a man's
name was in the beginning; at all events, he had no notion of dismissing
his own.
My own secret hope had been, that, by an Act of the Legislature, which
that very season had changed Pontifex Parker to Charles Alfred Parker,
Mr. Sampson might be accommodated with a name less unspeakably national.
Dear me! Alfred, Arthur, Albert,--if he must begin with A.
"A was an Archer, and shot at a frog."
I should even prefer Archer. It needn't be Insatiate Archer. So I kept
turning over and over the painful subject, one evening,--I mean, of
course, in my mind, for I had not really broached this matter of
legislative action. Luckily, "he" had brought in the new edition of
George Herbert's Works. We were reading aloud, and "he" read the chapter
of "The Parson in Sacraments." At the foot was an extract from "The
Parish Register" of Crabbe, which he read, unconscious of the way in
which I mentally applied it. Indeed, I think he scarcely thought of his
own name at that time. But I did, twenty-four times in every day. This
was the note:--
"Pride lives with all; strange names our rustics give
To helpless infants, that their own may live;
Pleased to be known, they'll some attention claim,
And find some by-way to the house of fame.
'Why Lonicera wilt thou name thy child?'
I asked the gardener's wife, in accents mild.
'We have a right,' replied the sturdy dame;
And Lonicera was the infant's name."
He stopped reading just here, to look at the evening paper, which had
been brought in. I read something in it, and then we all went to sit on
the piazza, with the street-lamp shining through the bitter-sweet vine,
as good as the moon, and the conversation naturally and easily turned
on odd names. I told what I had read in the paper: that our country
rivalled Dickens's in queer names, and that it wasn't for a land that
had Boggs and Bigger and Bragg for governors, and Stubbs, Snoggles,
Scroggs, and Pugh among its respectable citizens, to accuse Dickens
of caricature. I turned, a little tremulously, I confess, to "him,"
saying,--
"If you had been so unfortunate as to have for a name Darius Snoggles,
now, for instance, wouldn't you have it changed by the Legislature?"