[IN WHICH THE YOUNG MEN OF THE PERIOD ARE TAKEN IN HAND.]
Forty-four is going to talk (with a pen) to Fourteen. I am a female; and
forty-four, as just hinted, is my age. Fourteen is also a female--just
the age I was once. How I recollect that day! I was full of romance and
hope; now I've no romance, little hope, and some wrinkles. It is a fine
thing to be fourteen. I should like to go back there, and make a long
visit. But that can't be. How much I wish it could! If only there were
life-renewers as well as hair-renewers! They called me pretty at
fourteen--said I had pretty ways, (one of them was one hundred and
thirty-five avoirdupois,) and would certainly be a belle. But I proved
too much for that. One hundred and seventy-five cut off all hope. I
sighed, ate nothing, studied poetry, did a good deal of melancholy by
moonlight and otherwise, but nothing came of it. I made myself as
agreeable as possible; but it was the old story--I was too much for
'em--I mean the young men of the period. I dressed and gave parties. I
took lessons in singing of Sig. Folderol, and in dancing of Mons.
Pigeonwing, and could sing cavatinas and galop galops with the best of
them. Ma said I was an angel, and Pa declared I was perfect. But none of
the young men said so. My dear Fourteen, it may be just so with you.
Your ma and pa may say you are angelic and perfect; but where's the use
of it, if nobody else can be made to see it? I tried my best to catch
the young men in my net. But, provoking things, they wouldn't be caught.
Between ourselves--mind, don't blab it out--young men are the greatest
noodles that were ever put upon the face of the earth. I never yet saw
one that could be depended upon to stand by. I am sure, as you know, no
one ever stood by me--when there was a parson at hand. At fourteen I
didn't much care where they stood, if it wasn't on my corns. Twenty
years later I shouldn't have been so particular. But I don't much mind
now, bless you! _You_ wont at forty-four. There's nothing to these young
men. All talk, pretence, audacity, and paper collar, I assure you. I've
studied all of them. They are the same now as then. Human nature, you
know, my dear Fourteen, is the same yesterday, to-day, and week after
next. I used to think it wasn't; now I know it is. These young
men--monsters that they are--will pour the nectar of compliments over
your face, and the acid and canker of abuse down your back; and all in
the same breath, if they get a chance. Pray have an eye and an ear out
for them. If you go to Long Branch, or Newport, or Saratoga, or the
White Mountains this summer, just look out for them. They are dreadful
creatures at home in the cities, but doubly dreadful at these resorts.
You are young, simple, unsophisticated. I was at your age. But I soon
got over such weaknesses. You must very soon, or be a ninny. "Simple,"
"artless," "unsophisticated," and such terms mean simply softness.
Whatever else you are, or are not, don't be soft. The mistake of my
fruitless life has been that I believed, in other years, all that was
told me by the other sex. They said to my face that I was a beauty; at
Mr. Jones's, they said I was a fright. They said I sang like a Patti; at
Brown's, I screeched like an owl. They said I danced like Terpsichore;
at Smith's, they declared I wabbled round like any other lame duck. They
said my taste in dress was the pink of perfection; at the Duzenbury's, I
was scandalously deficient in every thing of the sort. It's a way the
young men of that day had with all the girls; and they go the same vile
way now. Pray don't have any thing to do with them. I don't, and I
wouldn't for the world. Folks say I'm prejudiced against em; but it
isn't so--I hate 'em. It is healthy to hate what is hateful. It is
healthy to hate a bundle of broadcloth, kerseymere, buttons, and brass,
and it's my delight by day and dream by night. I'm forty-four--you're
fourteen. I've seen the world--you haven't. You look through rosy
glasses; I through the clear, naked eye. My advice to you on the young
men question is this: Discount nine words in every ten spoken to you as
absolute trash--the gush of mere evaporative sentiment. If you are
called pretty, graceful, accomplished, neat in dress, comely in person,
that your eyes sparkle like diamonds, and your lips are poetic, with
whole volumes of such, just make up your mind that there are plenty of
fools around trying to make a sillier one than themselves. It may seem
very fine for the moment, but it will realize something very different
afterward. Suppose you are _not_ caught up? All the better. I'm
forty-four, independent, free, a slave to no man nor monkey. Better
live, to write your own tale than be the abject one to another. Better
be forty-four and yourself, than a cipher belonging to some body else.
Far better beware of the young men than be worn by them. At least so
thinks and says