CHAPTER IV.

Transcriber’s Note:

In this utf-8 text version of Fresh Leaves:

words in italics are marked with _underscores_

words in small capitals are shown in UPPER CASE

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FRESH LEAVES.

BY

FANNY FERN.

NEW YORK:

MASON BROTHERS.

1857.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by

MASON BROTHERS,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court, for the Southern District

of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY

THOMAS B. SMITH,

82 & 84 Beekman-st., N. Y.

PRINTED BY

C. A. ALVORD,

15 Vandewater-st., N. Y.

TO

GRACE ELDREDGE,

WITH

Her Mother’s Love.

PREFACE.

Every writer has his parish. To mine, I need offer no apology for

presenting,

First, a new story which has never before appeared in print;

Secondly, the “hundred-dollar-a-column story,” respecting the

remuneration of which, skeptical paragraphists have afforded me so much

amusement. (N. B.--My banker and I can afford to laugh!) This story

having been published when “The New York Ledger” was in the dawn of its

present unprecedented circulation, and never having appeared elsewhere,

will, of course, be new to many of my readers;

Thirdly, I offer them my late fugitive pieces, which have often been

requested, and which, with the other contents of this volume, I hope

will cement still stronger our friendly relations.

FANNY FERN.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

A BUSINESS MAN’S HOME; OR, A STORY FOR HUSBANDS, 9

VISITING AND VISITORS, 43

OUR FIRST NURSE, 47

THE SHADOW OF A GREAT ROCK IN A WEARY LAND, 52

TO LITERARY ASPIRANTS, 53

SUMMER TRAVEL, 56

A GENTLE HINT, 59

A STORY FOR OLD HUSBANDS WITH YOUNG WIVES, 59

BREAKFAST AT THE PAXES, 65

GIRLS’ BOARDING-SCHOOLS, 68

CLOSET MEDITATIONS, 71

FEMININE VIEW OF NAPOLEON AS A HUSBAND, 73

“FIRST PURE,” 79

HOLIDAY THOUGHTS, 82

A HEADACHE, 85

HAS A MOTHER A RIGHT TO HER CHILDREN? 87

“AND YE SHALL CALL THE SABBATH A DELIGHT,” 89

“COME ON, MACDUFF,” 93

LOOK ALOFT, 95

KNICKERBOCKER AND TRI-MOUNTAIN, 98

THE BOSTON WOMAN, 100

THE NEW YORK MALE, 101

THE BOSTON MALE, 102

MY OLD INKSTAND AND I, 103

THE SOUL AND THE STOMACH, 106

AWE-FUL THOUGHTS, 107

A WORD TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS, 108

LADY DOCTORS, 111

THE CHERUB IN THE OMNIBUS, 112

FANNY FORD, 114

MORAL MOLASSES, 210

A WORD TO SHOPKEEPERS, 212

A MUCH-NEEDED KIND OF MINISTER’S WIFE, 215

PARENT AND CHILD, 217

LAST BACHELOR HOURS OF TOM PAX, 220

TOM PAX’S CONJUGAL SOLILOQUY, 222

TEA AND DARNING-NEEDLES FOR TWO, 226

A HOUSE WITHOUT A BABY, 232

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA, NO. 1, 233

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA, NO. 2, 237

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA, NO. 3, 242

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA, NO. 4, 246

IN THE DUMPS, 249

PEEPS FROM UNDER A PARASOL, 252

THE CONFESSION BOX, 263

A WORD TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS, 266

BREAKFAST, 268

GREENWOOD AND MOUNT AUBURN, 269

GETTING UP THE WRONG WAY, 272

A HOT DAY, 277

FUNERAL NOTES, 278

THE “FAVORITE” CHILD, 282

A QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER, 283

WINTER, 284

A GAUNTLET FOR THE MEN, 286

SOLILOQUY OF A LITERARY HOUSEKEEPER, 289

A BREAKFAST-TABLE REVERIE, 290

A GLANCE AT A CHAMELEON SUBJECT, 295

FACTS FOR UNJUST CRITICS, 297

TRY AGAIN, 301

FAIR PLAY, 302

TO GENTLEMEN, 305

TO THE LADIES, 307

MATRIMONIAL ADVERTISEMENTS, 309

A SABLE SUBJECT, 310

NEW YORK, 313

AIRY COSTUMES, 315

A PEEP AT THE OPERA, 317

HARD TIMES, 318

COUNTER IRRITATION, 321

SUNDAY IN GOTHAM, 324

ANNIVERSARY TIME, 327

WAYSIDE WORDS, 330

CHARLOTTE BRONTE, 332

FRESH LEAVES.

A BUSINESS MAN’S HOME;

OR, A STORY FOR HUSBANDS.

CHAPTER I.

“There’s your father, children.”

The piano was immediately closed by the young performer, and the

music-stool put carefully away, that the new-comer might have an

unrestricted choice of seats; a wide space was immediately cleared

before the grate which had been carefully replenished with coal but half

an hour before; a stray cricket was hastily picked up and pushed beneath

the sofa, and an anxious glance was thrown around the room by Mrs. Wade

as her husband entered the room.

“Too much light here,” said the latter, as he turned down the gas

burner. “I hate such a glare. Waste of coal, too; fire enough to roast

an ox, and coal seven dollars a ton;” and Mr. Wade seized the poker and

gave the grate a vindictive poke.

Mrs. Wade sighed--she had too long been accustomed to such scenes to

do any thing else. It was not the first time, nor the second, nor the

hundredth, that her unwearied endeavors to make home cheerful had been

met with a similar repulse; the young people, so gay but a moment

before, skipped, one by one, out of the room, closing the door

noiselessly behind them as culprit-like they glided away.

“Heigh-ho,” muttered Mr. Wade, as he threw himself down, boots and

all, on the sofa, “heigh-ho.”

“Does your head ache?” asked his patient wife.

“I want my tea,” growled Mr. Wade, without deigning a reply.

Mrs. Wade might have answered--most women would--that it had been

ready this half-hour. She might also have said that she had just come up

from the kitchen, where she had been to see that his favorite dish of

toast was prepared to his liking. She might also have said that she did

not like to order tea till he had signified his wish for it--but as I

said before, Mrs. Wade had been too long in school not to have learned

her lesson well. So she merely touched her forefinger to the bell, for

Betty to bring in the tea.

It was strong and hot--Mr. Wade could not deny it;--the milk was

sweet; so was the butter, the toast was unexceptionable, and enough of

it; the cake light, and the sweetmeats unfermented. Poor, ill-used Mr.

Wade--he was in that most provoking of all dilemmas to a petulant

temper, there was nothing to fret about.

“There’s the door bell,” he exclaimed, inwardly relieved at the idea

of an escape-valve; “now I suppose I shall be talked deaf by that silly

Mrs. Jones and her daughter, or bored by that stupid Mr. Forney; it’s

very strange that a man can not enjoy his family one evening free from

interruption.”

No such thing--Mr. Wade was cheated out of a fresh growl; the new

arrival being a carpet-bag, and its accessory, Mr. John Doe, a

brother-growler, whom Mr. Wade would rather have seen, if possible, than

a new gold dollar. Mr. John Doe, as sallow as a badly-preserved pickle,

and about as sweet--a man all nerves and frowns--a walking

thunder-cloud, muttering vengeance against any thing animate, or

inanimate, which had the temerity to bask in the sunshine. Mr. John Doe,

a worse drug than any in his apothecary’s shop, who believed in the

eternal destruction of little dead babies; turned the world into one

vast charnel-house, and reversed the verdict of Him who pronounced it

“very good.”

“Ah--how d’ye do--how dy’e do?” said Mr. Wade, with an impromptu

lugubrious whine, as Mr. Doe ran his fingers through his grizzled locks,

and deposited his time-worn carpet-bag in the corner; “it is pleasant to

see a _friend_.”

“Thank you, thank you,” replied Mr. Doe, lowering himself as carefully

into his chair as if he was afraid his joints would become unriveted;

“there’s no knowing how many more times you may have to say that; these

sudden changes of weather are dreadful underminers of a man’s

constitution. Traveling, too, racks me to pieces; I can’t sleep in a

strange bed, nor get any thing I can eat when I wake, my appetite is so

delicate;--sometimes I think it don’t make much difference--we are poor

creatures--begin to die as soon as we are born--how do you do, Mr. Wade?

You look to me like a man who is going to have the jaundice, eye-balls

yellow, etc.--any appetite?”

“Not much,” said Mr. Wade, unbuttoning his lower vest button, under

which were snugly stowed away a pile of buttered toast, three cups of

tea, and preserved peaches enough to make a farmer sick--“not much;--a

man who works as hard as I do, gets too exhausted to eat when it comes

night, or if he does, his food does not digest; how’s your family?”

“So, so,” muttered Doe, with an expressive shrug; “children are a

great care, Mr. Wade, a great care--my John don’t take that interest in

the drug business that I wish he did; he always has some book or other

on hand, reading; I am afraid he never will be good for any thing; your

book-worms always go through the world, knocking their heads against

facts. I shouldn’t wonder, after all my care, if he turned out a poor

miserable author; sometimes I think what is to be, will be, and there’s

no use trying.”

“Is not that fatalism?” quietly interposed Mrs. Wade, blushing the

next moment that she had so far departed from “The Married Woman’s

Guide,” as to question an opinion which her husband had indorsed by his

silence. “Children are a great care, ’tis true, but it always seemed to

me that the care brought its own sweet reward.”

Mr. Doe wheeled round to look in the face this meek wife, whose

disappointed heart, turning to her children for that comfort which she

had in vain looked for from her husband, could ill brook that the value

of this coveted treasure should have such depreciating mention.

“Pshaw! what signify words?” said her husband. “I hate argument;

besides, women can’t argue--every body knows that; and every body knows

that if a man wants his children to do, or be, one thing, they are sure

to do, or be, just the opposite. I’ve no doubt it will turn out just so

with ours; there is no counting on ’em. In my day, if a man was a

farmer, his son was a farmer after him, and never thought of being any

thing else. Nowadays, children have to be consulted as to ‘their bent.’

Fudge--fiddlestick; their bent is for mischief and dodging work, and a

tight rein and a good smart rod is the best cure for it.”

Just at this point Mr. Doe gave a dismal groan, and doubled himself up

like a jack-knife. “A touch of my old complaint,” said he, holding on to

his waist-band. “Rheumatism--it will carry me off some day. Mrs. Wade,

if you will be so good as to look in my carpet-bag, you will find a

plaster which I never travel without; and I will trouble you, Mrs.

Wade, to have my bed warmed, and a fire in the room where you intend I

should sleep; and if there should be any cracks in the windows, will you

have the goodness to nail up a blanket over them? and I would like a

very warm comforter, if you please, and a jug of hot water at my feet,

if it would not be too much trouble.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Wade, settling himself very comfortably down

into his ample easy-chair; “of course not; Mrs. Wade, won’t you attend

to it?”

“And, Mrs. Wade, if you’d be so kind as to put the feather bed

uppermost, and give me cotton sheets instead of linen; I should also

prefer a hair to a feather pillow: I consider feathers too heating for

my head; I am obliged to be careful of my head.”

“Certainly,” repeated Mr. Wade. “Mrs. Wade will see to it.” And as she

moved out of the room to execute these orders, these two despondent

Siamese drew their chairs closer together, to bemoan the short-comings

of two of the most long-suffering wives who ever wore themselves to

skeletons, trying to please husbands who were foreordained not to be

pleased.

CHAPTER II.

Mother’s room! How we look back to it in after years, when she who

sanctified it is herself among the sanctified. How well we remember the

ample cushioned chair, with its all-embracing arms, none the worse in

our eyes for having rocked to sleep so many little forms now scattered

far and wide, divided from us, perhaps, by barriers more impassable than

the cold, blue sea. Mother’s room--where the sun shone in so cheerily

upon the flowering plants in the low, old-fashioned window-seats, which

seemed to bud and blossom at the least touch of her caressing fingers;

on which no blight or mildew ever came; no more than on the love which

outlived all our childish waywardness--all our childish folly. The cozy

sofa upon which childish feet were never forbidden to climb; upon which

curly heads could dream, unchidden, the fairy dreams of childhood. The

closet which garnered tops, and dolls, and kites, and whips, and toys,

and upon whose upper shelf was that infallible old-fashioned panacea for

infancy’s aches and pains--brimstone and molasses! The basket, too,

where was always the very string we wanted; the light-stand round which

we gathered, and threaded needles (would we had threaded thousands more)

for eyes dimmed in our service; and the cheerful face that smiled across

it such loving thanks.

Mother’s room! where our matronly feet returned when _we_ were

mothers; where we lifted our little ones to kiss the wrinkled face,

beautiful with its halo of goodness; where we looked on well pleased to

see the golden locks we worshiped, mingling lovingly with the silver

hairs; where, as the fond grand-mamma produced, in alarming profusion,

cakes and candies for the little pets, we laughingly reminded her of

_our_ baby days, when she wisely told us such things were “unwholesome;”

where _our_ baby caps, yellow with time, ferreted from some odd bag or

closet, were tried on our own babies’ heads, and we sat, wondering where

the months and years had flown between then and now; and looking

forward, half-sighing, to just such a picture, when we should play what

seemed to us now, with our smooth skins, round limbs, and glossy locks,

such an impossible part.

Mother’s room! where we watched beside her patient sick-bed through

the long night, gazing hopelessly at the flickering taper, listening to

the pain-extorted groan, which no human skill, no human love, could

avert or relieve; waiting with her the dawning of that eternal day, seen

through a mist of tears, bounded by no night.

Mother’s room! where the mocking light strayed in through the

half-opened shutters, upon her who, for the first time, was blind to our

tears, and deaf to our cries; where busy memory could bring back to us

no look, no word, no tone, no act of hers, not freighted with God-like

love. Alas!--alas for us then, if, turning the tablets, they showed us

this long debt of love unappreciated--unpaid!

No blossoming plants luxuriated in the windows of Mr. Wade’s house; no

picture attracted attention upon the walls; with the exception of a huge

map of the United States in the hall, their blank whiteness was

pitilessly unrelieved. The whole house seemed to be hopelessly given up

to the household god--utility. If Mrs. Wade ever had any womanish

leaning toward the ornamental, she had long since learned to suppress

it; and what woman, how poor soever she may be, does not make some

feeble attempt to brighten up the little spot she calls home? Beautiful

to me, for this reason, is the crude picture, the cheap plaster-cast, or

the china mug with its dried grass, or the blue ribbon which ties back

the coarse but clean white curtain under humble roofs. Who shall say

that such things have not a moral influence--a moral significance? Who

shall say that there is not more hope of that young man on the walls of

whose bachelor attic hangs a landscape, or a sweet female head, though

not “by an old master?” Who that has been so unfortunate as to sojourn

in that mockery of a home, called a boarding-house, has not, when

passing through the halls, and by the open doors of rooms, formed

favorable or unfavorable opinions of its occupants from these mute

indications of taste and character? Let no one, particularly if he has

children, wait till he can command the most costly adornments; have one

picture, have one statue, have one vase, if no more, for little eyes to

look at, for little tongues to prattle about.

If Mr. Wade had but understood this! If he had but brushed from his

heart the cobwebs of his counting-room--for he had a heart, buried as

it was under the world’s rubbish; if he had not circumscribed his

thoughts, wishes, hopes, aims, by the narrow horizon of his ledger.

If--If! Dying lips falter out that word regretfully;--alas! that we

should learn to live only when we come to die!

I have said Mr. Wade had a heart, ossified as it now was by the

all-absorbing love of gain. At the age of seven years, he was left, with

a younger brother, the only legacy to a heart-broken, invalid mother,

who found herself suddenly thrown upon the world for that charity that

she had been accustomed to bestow. To say that she found none, would be

false; the world is not all bad; but there were months in which Mr.

Wade, then a bright, handsome lad, was glad to carry home to her and his

little brother, the refuse food of the neighbors’ kitchens. They who

have felt in early youth the griping hand of poverty, unfortunately

learn to attach undue value to the possession of money. Day after day,

as the boy witnessed his feeble mother struggling vainly with her

fate--day after day the thought, for _her_ sake to become rich, haunted

his waking dreams and his boyish pillow. With his arms about her neck,

he would picture the blessings and comforts of a future home, which his

more hopeful eyes saw in the distance. The road to it, to be sure, was

rough and thorny, but still it was there; no cloud of adversity could

wholly obscure it to the boy’s vision; and even in the darkest night,

when he woke, in fancy the lamps gleamed brightly from its curtained

windows; and so the boy smothered down his swelling heart, when the

refuse food was tossed carelessly into his beggar’s basket, and was

thankful for the little job which brought him even a penny to place in

_her_ hand, as an earnest of what should come--God willing; and at

night, when the younger brother shivered with cold, John would chafe his

chilled feet, and, taking him in his arms, soothe him to blissful

slumbers. That the world should ever chill such a heart! That the armor

buckled over it in so righteous a cause, should contract around it and

prove but its shroud!

Nobly the boy struggled: they who are not fastidious as to the means,

seldom fail of securing the result they aim at. John Wade’s pride never

stood like a lion in his path; he heeded not the supercilious glance or

careless tone of his employers, so that he received the hard-earned

reward of his toil. At length, from loving money for what it would

bring, he learned to love it for its own sake; and when death removed

from him those for whom he toiled, he toiled on for love of the

shining dross. Pity that gold should always bring with it the

canker--covetousness.

CHAPTER III.

“I have a great mind to go to bed,” said Susy Wade, yawning; “I’m not

sleepy, either, but I don’t know what do do with myself; there’s that

tiresome Mr. Doe down stairs--he croaks, and croaks, and croaks, till I

feel almost as sick as he pretends to. Now he will keep mother nursing

up his rheumatism, as he calls it, till ten o’clock, when he is no more

sick than she is, nor half so much; mother never complains when any

thing ails her; but I am not like mother; I am not patient a bit. Were

it not for mother, Neddy, I should like to sail way off across the

ocean, and never come back; I get so tired here at home, and I know she

does, too, though she never says any thing; sometimes she sighs such a

long sigh, when she thinks nobody hears her; I should rather she would

cry outright; it always makes me feel better to have a good cry. I wish

that our father was like Carey Hunt’s father.”

“So do I,” said Neddy, fixing his humming-top--“so do I--they have

such fun there. Tom told me that his father played games with them

evenings, and showed them how to make kites, and brought them home

story-books, and read them aloud, and sometimes the whole family go out

together to some place of amusement. I wonder what makes our father so

different from Tom Hunt’s father? Tommy always runs down street to meet

his father when he comes home, and tells him what has happened on the

play-ground; I wonder why our father never talks to us about such

things? I wonder how father felt when he was a boy--don’t you suppose he

ever played?”

“I don’t know,” said Susy, mournfully; “I’m only fifteen, but I mean

to get married just as soon as I can, and then I won’t have such a

gloomy house, and you shall come and live with me, Neddy.”

“But mother--” said Neddy.

“O, mother shall come to see us all the time,” said Susy; “won’t we

have fun?”

“But perhaps your husband will be a sober man, like father, and won’t

want company, only people like Mr. Doe.”

“But my husband will be young, you little goose,” said Susy.

“Well--wasn’t father young when mother married him?” said the

persistent Neddy, whirling off his top.

“I suppose so,” said Susy, with a sigh, “but it don’t seem as if he

ever was. Where’s the Arabian Nights, Neddy, that you borrowed of Tom

Hunt? let’s read a story.”

“Father made me carry it back,” said Neddy; “he said it was nonsense,

and I shouldn’t read it.”

“That’s just why I like it,” said Susy; “of course, nobody believes it

true--and I’m so tired of sense! Isn’t there any thing up in the

book-rack there, Neddy?”

“I’ll see,” said Neddy, stretching his neck up out of his clean white

collar--“I’ll see--here’s Moral Philosophy, Key to Daboll’s Arithmetic,

Sermons by Rev. John Pyne, Essays by Calvin Croaker, Guide to Young

Wives, Rules for Eating, Walking and Talking, Complete Letter Writer,

Treatise on Pneumatics, Buchan’s Domestic Medicine. Which will you

have?” asked Neddy, with a comical whine.

“Hush!” said Susy, “there’s father’s step.”

Mr. Wade had come up to get his soft lamb’s-wool slippers for Mr. Doe,

that gentleman having experienced a chill in his left toe joint.

“Playing top,” said he, contemptuously, looking at Neddy; “at your

age, sir, I was wheeling stone for a mason, in the day-time, and

studying arithmetic evenings. Where’s your Daboll, sir? Study your pound

and pence table; that’s what’s to be the making of you; how do you

expect to become a man of business without that? You’ll never drive a

good bargain--you’ll be cheated out of your eye-teeth. Get your Daboll,

sir, and Susy, do you hear him say it. Tops are for babies, sir; a boy

of your age ought to be almost as much a man as his father. How should I

look playing top? God didn’t make the world to play in.” And Mr. Wade

and his lamb’s-wool slippers slipped down stairs.

“He didn’t make it for a work-shop either,” thought Susy, as she took

down the offensive Daboll.

They to whom the word father comprises all that is reverent, tender,

companionable and sweet, may refuse to recognize the features of this

portrait as a true likeness of the relation for which it stands; they

may well doubt--they whose every childish hope and fear was freely

confided to a pitying, loving, sympathizing heart--they whose generous

impulses were never chilled by the undeserved breath of suspicion and

distrust--they whose overflowing love was never turned back in a lava

tide to devastate their fresh young hearts--happy they for whom memory

daguerreotypes no such mournful picture! Still, let them not for that

reason doubt, that through the length and breadth of the land, are men

and women who look back sorrowing on what they might have been, _but for

their blighted childhood_!

“Blessed night!” the words often fell from Mrs. Wade’s lips, as she

closed her chamber-door, and, laying her weary head upon her pillow,

sought oblivion in sleep.

“Blessed night;” the children did not hear it, for whose sakes she

often repressed the rising sigh, and sent back to their fountain the

scalding tears, and whose future, as her health and strength declined,

she would have trembled to contemplate, but for her faith in God.

He did not hear it--one kind word from whom, one look, or smile, to

say that he appreciated all her untiring efforts, would have brought

back the roses of health to that faded cheek. He did not hear it, as he

sat there over the midnight-fire, with groaning Mr. Doe, ringing the

changes on dollars and cents, dollars and cents, which had come between

him and the priceless love of those warm hearts.

Ay--Blessed night!

CHAPTER IV.

“I think it must be time for Henry to come home,” and the speaker

glanced at a little gold watch on the mantel. “What a noise those

children are making. I told them to keep still, but after all, I’m glad

that they didn’t mind me; the most pitiful sight on earth to me, is a

child with a feeble body and a large head, who never plays. Let them

romp--broken chairs are easier mended than broken spines; who would be a

slave to an upholstery shop, or a set of porcelain; who would keep awake

at night to watch the key which locks up a set of gold or silver? Who

would mew children up in the nursery for fear of a parlor carpet? My

parlor is not too good for my children to play in, and I hope it never

will be. Now I will go down and take out some cake for tea; how glad I

am Henry loves cake, because I know so well how to make it; who would

have thought I should have had such a good husband, and such a happy

home--poor mamma--and she deserves it so much better than I. Sometimes I

think I ought never to have left home while she lived, but have staid to

comfort her. Oh my children must be very--very happy; childhood comes

but once--but once.”

So said Mary Hereford, Mr. Wade’s married daughter, as she picked up

the toys, and picture-books, and strings, and marbles, with which her

romping children had strewed her chamber floor.

Mary Hereford was no beauty. She had neither golden brown, nor raven

hair; her skin was not transparently white, nor her eyes dazzlingly

bright, nor her foot and hand miraculously small. She was simply a

plump, healthy, rosy, cheerful little cricket of a woman--singing ever

at her own hearth-stone--proud of her husband--proud of her children,

knowing no weariness in their service. Many a beautiful woman has wrung

her white hands in vain for the love which lent wings to this

unhandsome, but still lovely little wife, dignified even the most

common-place employment, and made her heart a temple for sweet and holy

thoughts to gather.

“Yes, there comes Henry now,” said Mary, and before the words were

well out of her mouth, her husband held her at arm’s length, and looked

into her face.

“You have been sewing too steadily, little wife,” said he; “I must

take you out for a walk after tea. I shall get a sempstress to help you

if these children out-grow their clothes so fast.”

Mary laughed a merry little laugh; “No such thing--I am not tired a

bit--at least not now you are here; beside, don’t you work hard down in

that close counting-room, your poor head bothered with figures all day?

Do you suppose a wife is to fold her hands idly, that her husband may

get gray hairs? No--you and I will grow old together, but that is a long

way off yet, you know,” and Mary shook her brown hair about her face.

“Come--now for tea. I have such nice cakes for you; the children have

been so good and affectionate; to be sure they tear their aprons

occasionally, and perhaps break a cup or plate, but what is that, if we

are only kind and happy? Oh, it is blessed to be happy!” And Mary would

have thrown her arms around her husband’s neck, but unfortunately she

was too short.

The smoking tea and savory cakes were set upon the table--Followed the

children, bouncing and rosy--fairly brightening up the room like a gay

bouquet. With one on either knee, Henry Hereford listened, well pleased,

to tales of soaring kites, and sympathized with disastrous shipwrecks of

mimic boats, nor thought his dignity compromised in discussing the

question, whether black, blue, or striped marbles were prettiest, or

whether a doll whose eyes were not made to open and shut, could, by any

stretch of imagination, be supposed by its youthful mamma to go to

sleep. How priceless is the balm of sympathy to childhood! The certainty

that no joy is too minute, no grief too trivial to find an echo in the

parental heart. Blessed they--who, like little children, are neither too

wise, nor too old to lean thus on the Almighty Father!

“Where’s my umbrella, Susan?” said Mr. Wade, “it is raining, and I am

in a hurry to go to my business.”

“It is Sunday, Mr. Wade; did you forget it was Sunday?”

“Sunday!” ejaculated Mr. Wade, in well-feigned surprise, “we didn’t

have salt fish, I believe, for dinner yesterday.”

“No,” replied his wife, penitently, “but I believe it is the first

time it has been omitted since our marriage.”

“It _was_ an omission,” said Mr. Wade, solemnly, as he laid aside his

hat and coat. “Sunday, is it, Mrs. Wade, I wish I hadn’t got up so

early--I suppose you are going to take the children off to church, are

you not? I’d like to be quiet, and go to sleep till dinner time.”

“Perhaps you would step over to Mary’s some part of the day,”

suggested his wife. “She came here yesterday to leave some nice jelly

that she had been making for me, and said you had not been there for

nearly two months.”

“No,” replied Mr. Wade, “I had as lief encounter a hornet’s nest as

those children of Mary’s; they are just like eels, slipping up and

slipping down; slipping in, and slipping out; never still. Mary is

spoiling them. The last time I was there I found her playing puss in the

corner with them; puss in the corner, Mrs. Wade!--how does she expect to

keep them at a proper distance, and make them reverence her, as your

Bible calls it, if she is going to frolic with them that way? and Henry

is not a whit better; they are neither fit to bring up a family. Mary

used to be a sedate, steady girl, before she was married; I don’t know

that I remember having ever heard her laugh in her life, while she was

at home; I can’t think what has changed her so.”

His wife drooped her head, but made no answer.

The cold, hard man before her had no key with which to unlock the

buried sorrows of those long weary years which Susan Wade was at that

moment passing in review.

“Yes; I can’t think what has changed her so,” resumed Mr. Wade; “I

think it must be Henry’s fault--she was brought up so carefully; but

after all, a great deal depends upon the sort of man a woman marries. I

dare say,” added he, complacently, “_you_ would have been a very

different woman had you married any body but me.”

“Very likely,” answered his wife, mournfully.

“To be sure, you would; I am glad you have the good sense to see it; I

consider that a woman is but a cipher up to the time she is married--her

husband then invests her with a certain importance, always subservient

to his, of course. Then a great deal depends, too, on the way a man

begins with his wife. Now I always had a great respect for Dr. Johnson,

for the sensible manner in which he settled matters on his wedding day;

it seems that he and his wife were to ride horseback to the church where

they were to be married. Soon after starting his bride told him, first,

that they rode too fast, then, too slow. ‘This won’t do,’ said he to

himself; ‘I must begin with this woman as I mean to go on; she must keep

my pace, not I hers:’ and so, putting spurs to his horse, he galloped

out of sight; when she rejoined him at the church-door, she was in

tears--in a proper state of submission--he never had any trouble with

her afterward; it was more necessary as she was a widow; they need an

uncommon tight rein. Sensible old fellow, that Johnson. I don’t know

that I ever enjoyed any thing more than his answer to a lady who was

going into ecstasies at some performance she had seen, and wondered that

the doctor did not agree with her; ‘My dear,’ said he, ‘you must

remember that you are a dunce, and, therefore, very easily pleased.’

Very good, upon my word--ha--ha--very good; ‘Doctor Johnson’s Life’ is

the only book I ever had patience to read; he understood the sex;

ha--ha--upon my word, very good”--and Mr. Wade rubbed his spectacles

with such animation that he rubbed out one of the glasses.

“Two and sixpence for getting excited!” said he, as he picked up the

fragments; “well--it is a little luxury I don’t often indulge in; but

really that old Johnson was such a fine old fellow--I like him. Now take

the children off to church, Susan; I want to go sleep.”

“I hope he may never be sorry for sending that pale, sickly woman out

in such a driving rain as this,” muttered Betty, as her mistress walked

over the wet pavements to church. “If there’s a selfisher man than Mr.

Wade, I’d like to know it; well, he won’t have her long, and then maybe

he’ll think of it. I would have left here long ago if it had not been

for her; it’s work--work--work--with him, and no thanks, and that’s what

is fretting the soul out of her; she can’t please him with all her

trying. And Miss Susan and Neddy--cooped up here like birds in a cage,

and never allowed to speak above their breath; they’ll fly through the

bars sometime, if he don’t open the door wider; and Miss Susan getting

to be a young lady, too--looking as solemn as a sexton, when she ought

to be frisking and frolicking about like all other innocent young

creturs. I used to get her down here, and make molasses candy for her,

but she has out-grown candy, now--well, I don’t know what will come of

it all. At her age I was going to husking and quilting frolics, and

singing-school; bless me--what a time I used to have coming through the

snow-drifts. I really believe Isaiah Pettibone used to upset the sleigh

on purpose. I suppose I might have married him if I had been as forrard

as some girls--leastways I know he gave me a paper heart, with a dart

stuck through it; but when I look at Mr. Wade, I say it is all

right--ten to one he might have turned out just such a cranky

curmudgeon. People say that for every bad husband in the world, there’s

a bad wife somewhere to balance it; I don’t believe it--but, anyhow, if

there is, I wish they’d each torment their own kind, and not be killing

off such patient creturs as Mrs. Wade. I’ll go up stairs and put her

slippers to the fire, and then get something nice and hot for her to

take when she comes back. I used to think that a poor servant-girl was

not of much account in the world--I don’t think so since I came here to

live; I know it is a comfort to Mrs. Wade to feel that somebody in the

house is caring for her, who is always doing for other people; and

though she never says a word about her troubles, and I am not the girl

to let her know that I see them, yet the way in which she says, ‘Thank

you, Betty; you are always kind and thoughtful,’ shows me that, humble

as I am, she leans on me, and pays me a hundred times over for any

little thing I do for her. I think, after all, that God made nobody of

so little account that he could not at some time or other help somebody

else. There’s the bell, now! Mercy on us! there’s that croaking raven,

Mr. Doe, coming here to dinner; he will be sure to eat up every thing

good that I make for Mrs. Wade. I wonder how a man who is eternally

grumbling and growling at every thing the Lord has made, can have the

face to gormandize His good things, as Mr. Doe does. I’d either let ’em

alone, or say Thank you--he don’t do nary one.”

CHAPTER V.

The bleak winds of March were abroad, causing even the healthy and

rugged to shrink from their piercing breath, and fold more closely

around their shivering limbs the warm garments of winter; while the

delicate invalid, warned by his irritated lungs, ventured not beyond

the equable temperature of his closely-curtained chamber.

Mrs. Wade’s accustomed place at the table was vacant; her busy fingers

no longer kept the domestic treadmill in motion. Ah! how seldom we feel

till the “mother” is stricken down, how never-ceasing is the vigilance,

how tireless the patience that ministers to our daily wants;--dropping

noiseless, like the gentle dew, too common and unobtrusive a blessing to

be noticed--till absence teaches us its value.

Death had no terrors for Mrs. Wade. It was only when looking upon the

children whom she must leave behind, that she prayed, with quivering

lips--“Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!”

If in the thorny path her woman’s feet had trod, her daughter’s

trembling feet must walk! What human arm would sustain her? what human

voice whisper words of cheer? And Neddy--the impulsive, generous,

warm-hearted Neddy; quick to err--as quick to repent--what human hand

would weigh justly in the scales of praise and blame, his daily deeds?

What hand, save a mother’s, in uprooting the weeds, would crush not the

tender flowers? Oh, what mother, while pondering these things in her

heart, and looking round upon the dear faces, in the near or distant

prospect of dissolution, has not felt her heart-tendrils tighten around

them, with a vice-like clasp that almost defied separation? Nature’s

voice is clamorous; but over, and above, and through its importunate

pleadings, comes there to the Christian mother, the still, small

whisper, “My grace is sufficient for thee!”

Mr. Wade at first refused to believe in the reality of his wife’s

sickness. Women, he said, were always ailing, and fancying themselves

dying. But, as the parlor was vacated for the chamber, and the

easy-chair for the bed, and the doctor’s chaise stopped twice a day

before the door, and Mrs. Hereford left her own little family to sit

beside her mother, and Betty wiped her eyes with her apron every time

she left the chamber door--and, more than all, when Mr. Wade’s toast was

not browned as _she_ used to brown it, and his favorite pudding was

wanting, and the lamp burned dimly on the lonely tea-table, and his

slippers were not always in the right place--he resigned himself to what

seemed inevitable, with the air of a deeply-injured man; and slept as

soundly at night, in the room next his wife’s, as if death’s shadow had

not even then fallen across the threshold.

At breakfast he drove Betty distracted with orders and counter-orders

about egg-boiling and toast-making, after eating which, he drew on a

pair of creaking boots and an overcoat, and mounted to his wife’s room,

to go through the ceremony of inquiring “how she was,” holding the door

open for the cold wind to blow upon the invalid, while he received the

faint “Easy, thank you,” from lips that contracted with pain, as the

door closed after him in no gentle manner.

No thought of his children disturbed Mr. Wade’s equanimity. He did not

see, day by day, the sorrowful face of his daughter lifted to his, as if

in search of sympathy; nor notice the tip-toe steps of the playful

little Neddy, as he passed to and fro, with messages from Mrs. Hereford

to Betty.

“It’s infamous!” said the latter, slamming herself down in one of the

kitchen chairs. “_Is_ that man made of flesh and blood, or is he not?

All last night, Mrs. Wade sat up in bed, with that dreadful distress for

breath, tossing her arms up over her head, and that man snoring away

like the seven sleepers. It’s infamous! Now, I’m no eaves-dropper: I

scorn it; but I was in the kitchen this morning, and the slide was open

through the closet into the basement, and I heard Mrs. Hereford say to

her husband, who had called to inquire after Mrs. Wade: ‘Oh, James,

James, how can I love or respect my father?’ and she sobbed as if her

heart would break; and then she told him that the doctor had ordered

some kind of drugs to be burned in Mrs. Wade’s room to help her

breathing--something expensive--I don’t remember the name, and Mr. Wade

said the doctor was an old granny, and it was a useless expense, and

wouldn’t give his daughter the money for it. When Mrs. Hereford had

finished telling, I heard her husband say a word I never expected to

hear out of his mouth, and he kissed his wife, and handing her his

pocket-book, told her to get whatever was necessary. Oh, dear; the Bible

says, ‘Honor your parents;’ but whether such a man as that _is_ a

parent? that’s the question. Some of the ministers must settle it; I

can’t. But it never will be clear to me that bringing a child into the

world makes a parent. I don’t care what they say; it’s clear as

day-light that the Lord meant that after that they should see ’em safe

through it, no matter how much trouble turns up for ’em. When I’m

married, if I ever am, I’ll say this to my young ones: ‘Now look here;

tell me every thing. If you are sorry, tell me; if you are glad, tell

me; if you are wicked, tell me; and I never, never, will turn away from

you, no more than I want God to turn away from me. And if you break

God’s laws and man’s laws, as I hope you won’t--if you love Him and

me--still, I never will shut my door in your face, _no matter what you

do_, no more than I want my Maker to shut heaven’s door in mine.’ Now,

that’s my notion of a parent. Whether I shall ever have a chance to

carry it out or not--that’s another thing; but as sure as I do, there’s

where you’ll find me; and it’s my belief that many a man has swung on a

gibbet, and many a woman has cursed God and man with her last breath,

for want of just that. As if food, and drink, and clothes was all a

child wanted, or a wife either, for that matter; as if that was all a

husband or a father was bound to furnish; as if that was all the Lord

would hold him accountable for; as if that was--gracious Gradgrind,

there’s my toast burnt all to a crisp.”

* * * * *

Thanks to Mrs. Hereford, who procured the herbs ordered by the doctor,

the poor sufferer was temporarily relieved.

“Who is that, Mary?” she asked, as she distinguished a strange

footstep in the hall.

“It is Miss Alsop,” replied Mary.

No reply from the invalid, but a weary turning of the pale face toward

the pillow, and a gathering moisture in the eyes.

“Come here, Mary--nearer--nearer”--Mrs. Hereford bent her head so low

that her brown curls swept her mother’s pillow.

“That--woman--will--be--your--father’s--wife

when--I--am--scarcely--cold.”

“God forbid--don’t, mother--don’t;” and poor Mary’s tears and kisses

covered the emaciated face before her.

“You have a home--and a husband--and a kind one, Mary, but Susan and

Neddy--it is hard to leave my children to her keeping. If I could but

take them with me.”

As she said this, Betty beckoned Mrs. Hereford out of the room, saying

“that Miss Alsop wished to see her, to inquire how dear Mrs. Wade had

passed the night.”

“Tell her,” said Mary, “that she is very ill, and that I can not leave

her to receive visitors.”

“If you please,” said Betty, returning, “Miss Alsop says she is so

weary that she will sit and rest for half an hour.”

“Just half an hour before father comes home; then, of course, he will

invite her to partake his solitary dinner; that’s just what she came

for; mother is right; how strange that I never should have thought of

all this before!” and a thousand little things now flashed upon her mind

in confirmation of what her mother had just said.

Miss Alsop was an unmarried woman of forty, and presented that strange

anomaly, a fat old maid. Her teeth were good, her hair thick and glossy,

and her voice softer than the cooing of a dove; one of those voices

which are the never-failing herald of deceit and hypocrisy to the keen

observer of human nature. For years she had had her eye upon Mr. Alsop,

and actually claimed a sort of cousinly relationship, which she never

had been able very clearly to establish, but upon the strength of which

she had come, self-invited, twice a month, to spend the day. The first

moment Mrs. Wade saw her, she was conscious of an instinctive aversion

to her; but as she was never in the habit of consulting her own tastes

or inclinations, she endured the infliction with her own gentle

sweetness. No one who witnessed her offering Miss Alsop the easiest

chair, or helping her to the daintiest bit on the table, would have

supposed that she read the wily woman’s secret heart. Not a look, not a

word, not a tone betrayed it; but when the weary day was over, and Miss

Alsop had exhausted all her vapid nothings, and, tying on her bonnet,

regretted that she must trouble Mr. Wade to wait upon her home, Mrs.

Wade, as they passed through the door, and out into the darkness, would

lean her cheek upon her hand, while tears, which no human eye had ever

seen, fell thick and fast.

Not that Mr. Wade had any affection for Miss Alsop--not at all--he was

incapable of affection for any thing but himself and his money; but Miss

Alsop had a way of saying little complimentary things to which the most

sensible man alive never yet was insensible, from the stupidest and

silliest of women. What wonder that the profound Mr. Wade walked into

the trap with his betters? and though he would not, for one of his

money-bags, have owned it, he always left her doubly impressed with the

value of his own consequence. Then--Miss Alsop knew how to be an

excellent listener when occasion required, and Mr. Wade was, like all

egregious stupidities, fond of hearing himself talk; and occasionally

Miss Alsop would ask him to repeat some remark he had made, as if

peculiarly struck with its acuteness, or its adaptation to her

single-blessed-needs, upon which Mr. Wade would afterward pleasantly

reflect, with the mental exclamation, “Sensible woman, that Miss Alsop!”

Let it not be supposed that this depth of cunning was at all

incompatible with obtuseness of intellect--not at all--there is no

cunning like the cunning of a fool. Yes--Miss Alsop knew her man. She

knew she could afford to bide her time; besides, were personal charms

insufficient, had she not a most potent auxiliary in her bank-book,

which placed to her spinster credit twenty thousand dollars in the

“People’s Bank?”

CHAPTER VI.

Mrs. Wade sat propped up in bed by pillows, for the nature of her

disease rendered repose impossible; dreadful spasms--the forerunners of

dissolution--at intervals convulsed her frame. Pale, but firm, the

gentle Mary Hereford glided about her, now supporting the worn-out

frame--now holding to her lips the cup meant for healing--now opening a

door, or slightly raising a window, to facilitate the invalid’s labored

breathing.

The fire had burned low in the grate, and when the gray light of

morning stole in through the half open shutter, and the invalid would

have replenished it, Mrs. Wade’s low whispered, “I shall not need it,

Mary,” gave expression to the fearful certainty which her own heart had

silently throbbed out through the long watches of that agonized night.

Not a murmur escaped the sufferer’s lips--there was no request for the

presence of the absent sleeper, who had promised “to cherish through

sickness and health;” no mention was made of the children, who had been

trustingly placed in the hands of Him who doeth all things well, and

who wearily slumbered on, unconscious that the brightness of their

childhood’s sky was fading out forever. The thin arms were wound around

the neck of the first-born, about whom such happy hopes had once so

thickly clustered, and peacefully as an infant drops asleep. Susan Wade

closed her eyes forever; so peacefully that the daughter knew not the

moment in which the desolate word--“motherless”--was written over

against her name.

Motherless!--that in that little word should be compressed such weary

weight of woe! It were sad to be written fatherless--but God and his

ministering angels only know how dark this earth may be, when she who

was never weary of us with all our frailties--she, to whom our very

weaknesses clamored more loudly for love, lies careless of our tears.

* * * * *

“Henry!” said Mr. Wade to Mr. Hereford, “I had no idea, in fact--I

didn’t think”--and the embarrassed man tried to rub open his still

sleepy eyes--“I didn’t suppose, really, that Mrs. Wade would die yet;

women are so notional, and that doctor seemed to be encouraging Mrs.

Wade to be sick, as doctors always do--really I am quite taken by

surprise, as one may say; I don’t know any thing about these things--I

should like to have you do what is necessary. I suppose it will not be

considered the thing for me to go to the store to-day,” and he looked

for encouragement to do so in the face of his disgusted son-in-law.

“I should think not, decidedly,” said Mr. Hereford, dryly.

“Of course it would not be my wish,” said Mr. Wade, “when poor Susan

lies dead; but one’s duty, you know, sometimes runs a different way from

one’s inclination.”

And _vice versâ_, thought Henry, but he merely remarked that he would

take any message for him to his place of business.

Mr. Wade could do no less than accept his offer, so, after eating his

usual breakfast with his usual appetite, he paced up and down the

parlor; got up and sat down; and looked out at the window, and tried in

various ways to stifle certain uncomfortable feelings which began to

disturb his digestion. It was uncomfortable--very. The awe-struck face

of Betty as she stole in and out, the swollen eyes of the children, the

pallid face of Mrs. Hereford, who was trying to give them the

consolation she so much needed herself, and the heavy step of the

undertaker over-head performing his repulsive office. And so the day

wore away; and the form, that a child might have lifted, was laid in the

coffin, and no trace of pain or sorrow lay upon the face upon which the

death-angel had written Peace!

Why did _he_ fear to look upon its placid sweetness? No reproach ever

came from the living lips--did he fear it from the dead?

How still lay the once busy fingers! What a mockery seemed the usual

signs and sounds of domestic life! How empty, purposeless, aimless,

seemed life’s petty cares and needs. How chilling this total eclipse of

light, and love, and warmth! Blessed they, who can ease their pained

hearts by sobbing all this out to the listening ear of sympathy. But

what if the great agony be pent up within the swelling heart till it is

nigh bursting? What if it be pent up thus in the gushing heart of

childhood? What if no father’s arms be outstretched to enfold the

motherless? What if the paternal hand never rests lovingly on the bowed

young head? What if the moistening eye must send back to its source the

welling tear? What if the choking sob be an offense? What if childhood’s

ark of refuge--mother’s room--echo back only its own restless footsteps?

O, how many houses that present only to the careless eye, a blank

surface of brick and mortar, are inscribed all over with the

handwriting, legible only to those whose baptism has been--tears!

But why count over the tears of the orphans, why tell of their weary

days and sleepless nights--of honest Betty’s home-spun attempts at

consolation--of Mr. Wade’s repeated refusals of Mrs. Hereford’s

invitation for them to spend that part of the day with her in which he

was absent at his business? Why tell of the invisible web the cunning

Miss Alsop was weaving? Why tell of her speedy success? Why tell of the

soft-eyed dove transformed by Hymen to the vulture? Why tell of _his_

astonishment, who prided himself upon his lynx-eyed and infallible

penetration of the sex, at being forced to drain to the dregs that

bitter cup he had held so unsparingly to the meek lips upon which death

had set his seal of silence? Why tell of that pitiful old age, which,

having garnered the chaff, and thrown away the wheat of a life-time,

finds itself on the grave’s brink with no desire for repentance,

clutching with palsied hands the treasure of which Death stands ready to

rob it!

VISITING AND VISITORS.

“When are you coming to spend the day with us?” asked a lady of my

acquaintance of another. “Spend the day with you, my dear!” replied the

latter; “I should be tired to death spending the day with you; maybe

I’ll take tea with you sometime.”

I have often pleased myself imagining how the wheels of society would

creak greased with such honesty as that! and yet how many, if they but

dared to speak their real sentiments, would make a similar response.

Now, I respect that old lady; she had made good use of her years; she

probably knew what it was to talk at a mark for hours on the stretch, to

some one-idea-d statue, who, with crossed hands and starched attitude,

seemed remorselessly exacting of her weary tongue--Give--Give! She knew

what it was to long for dinner to reprieve her aching jaws, or, at

least, afford them a diversion of labor. She knew what it was to be

gladder to see one’s husband home on such a day, than on any other day

in the year; and she knew what it was to have those hopes dashed to

earth by that inglorious sneak selfishly retreating behind his

newspaper, instead of shouldering the conversation as he ought. She knew

what it was to have the hour arrive for her afternoon nap (I _won’t_

call it “siesta,”) instead of which, with leaden lids, and a great

goneness of brain and diaphragm, she must still keep on ringing changes

on the alphabet, for the edification of the monosyllabic statue,

who--horror of horrors!--had “concluded to stay to tea.” She knew what

it was in a fit of despair to present a book of engravings to the

statue, and to hear that interesting functionary remark as she returned

it, that “her eyes were weak.” She knew what it was to send in for a

merry little chatterbox of a neighbor to relieve guard, and receive for

answer, “that she had gone out of town!” She knew what it was to wish

that she had forty babies up stairs, with forty pains under their

aprons, if need be, that she might have an excuse for leaving the statue

for at least one blessed half-hour. She knew what it was to have the

inglorious sneak later to tea on that wearisome day than ever before;

and on his entrance, blandly and coolly to unfurl a business letter,

which, with a Chesterfieldian bow, he hoped the statue would excuse him

for retiring to answer; and she knew what it was, five minutes later, to

spy the wretch on the back piazza reveling in solitude and a cigar. She

knew what it was, when the statue finally--(for every thing comes to an

end _some time_, thank heaven)--took protracted leave--to cry

hysterically from sheer weariness, and a recollection of pressing family

duties indefinitely postponed, and to think for the forty-eleventh time,

what propriety there was in calling her the _weaker_ sex, who had daily

to shoulder burdens which the strongest man either couldn’t

or--_wouldn’t_ bear. And so again, I say--sensible old lady--would there

were more like her!

And yet we would fain hope that, like ours, this is but one side of

her experience. We would hope that she knew what it was to throw her

arms about the neck of a friend from whom she had no disguises; whose

loving eyes scanned--not the wall for possible cobwebs, nor yet the

carpet for darns, nor yet the mirror for fly-specks; but _her face_, to

see what sorrow Time, in his flight, had registered there, which by

sympathy she could lighten; what joy, which, by sharing, she could

increase. We hope she knew what it was to sit side by side with such a

one at the frugal meal--sweeter far than the stalled ox, for the love

that seasoned it. We hope she knew what it was to lounge, or sit, or

stand, or walk, or read, or sew, or doze even, in that friend’s

presence, with that perfect love which casteth out fear. We hope she

knew what it was to count the hours as they passed, not for their

irksomeness, but as a miser tells his hoarded gold; jealous, lest even

the smallest fraction should escape. We hope she knew what it was when

she unwillingly closed the door upon her retreating form, that shutting

it never so securely, kind words, good deeds, loving looks and tones,

came flocking in to people the voiceless solitude as with shining troops

of white-robed angels.

And we hope she knew what it was to give the cup of cold water to the

humble disciple for the Master’s sake. We hope that the door of her

house and heart were opened as widely for the destitute orphan, in whose

veins her own blood flowed--who could repay it only with tearful

thanks--as for those who could return feast for feast, and whose tongues

were as smooth as their wine. And finally and lastly, lest we ourselves

should be making too long a visit--we hope the old lady had no “best

chamber,” with closed blinds; pillows as ruffled as the chambermaid’s

temper; forbiddingly polished sheets; smothering canopy; counterpane all

too dainty for tumbling; and pincushion, whose lettered words one must

not invade, even at the most buttonless extremity! Blessings on the old

lady: we trust her carpets were made to be trod on--her chairs to sit

down upon--and her windows to open. We hope her house was too small to

hold half of her friends, and too hot to hold one of her enemies.

OUR FIRST NURSE.

Now sit down, and I will tell you all about it. Charley and I were

engaged. Youth comes but once, you know, and if we waited to be married

until we could furnish a house in fashionable style--well, you see, we

knew too much for that; we got married, and left other couples to grow

gray, if they liked, on the distant prospect of damask curtains, gold

salt-cellars, and trains of innumerable servants.

Charley did not know the meaning of a “club-house,” and the

shopkeepers flashed their diamonds and satins in vain in my face; I

never gave them a thought. We had some nice books, and some choice

engravings, presented to Charley by an old antiquary who had taken a

fancy to him. You might have gone into many a parlor on which thousands

had been lavished, and liked ours all the better when you came back.

Still, it wanted something--that we both agreed; for no house can be

said to be properly furnished without a baby. Santa Claus, good soul,

understood that, and Christmas day he brought us one, weighing the usual

eight pounds, and as lively as a cricket. Such lungs as it had! Charley

said it was intended for a minister.

Well, now it was all right, or would have been, if the baby had not

involved a nurse. We had, to be sure, a vague idea that we must have

one, and _as_ vague an idea of what a nurse was. We thought her a good

kind of creature who understood baby-dom, and never interfered with any

little family arrangements.

Not a bit of it!

The very first thing she did was to make preparation to sleep in my

room, and send Charley off into a desolate spare chamber. Charley! _my_

Charley! whose shaving operations I had watched with the intensest

interest; mixing up little foam seas of “lather” for him, handing him

little square bits of paper to wipe his razor upon, and applying nice

bits of courtplaster, when he accidentally cut his chin while we were

laughing. Charley! whose cravats I had tied to suit my fancy every

blessed morning, whose hair I had brushed up in elegant confusion, whose

whiskers I had coaxed and trimmed, and--well, any one, unless a bachelor

or old maid, who reads this, can see that it was perfectly ridiculous.

Charley looked at me, and I looked at him, and then we both looked at

the bran new baby--and there’s where she had us. You might have seen it

with half an eye, as she folded her hands complacently over her

apron-strings, and sat down in my little rocking-chair, opposite the

bed. I felt as though I was sold to the Evil One, as she fixed her

basilisk eyes on me when Charley left the room. Poor Charley! He did not

want to go. He neither smoked, nor drank, nor played billiards; he loved

home and--me; so he wandered up stairs and down, sat with his hands in

his pockets staring at the parlor fire till he could bear it no longer,

and then came up stairs to get comforted. If you’ll believe it, that

woman came fussing round the bed after him, just as if he were

infringing some of her rights and immunities.

What if he did bring me a sly piece of cake in his pocket? Who likes

to live on gruel forever? What if he did open the blinds and let a

little blessed sunlight in, when she tried to humbug us into the belief

that “it would hurt the baby’s eyes,” because she was too lazy to wipe

the dust from the furniture? What if he did steal one of her knitting

needles, when she sat there, evening after evening, knitting round, and

round, and round that interminable old gray stocking, my eyes following

her with a horrid sort of fascination, till my nerves were wound up to

the screaming point? What if I did tell him that she always set her

rocking-chair on that loose board on the floor, which sent forth that

little crucifying squeak, and that she always said “Bless me!” and was

always sure to get on to it again the very next time she sat down? What

if I did tell him that when she had eaten too much dinner, and wanted to

take a sly nap, she would muffle the baby up in so many blankets that it

could not cry if it wanted to, and then would draw the curtains closely

round my bed, and tell me that “it was high time I took a nap?” I, who

neither by stratagem or persuasion, could ever be induced to sleep in

the daytime? I, who felt as if my eye-lashes were fastened up to the

roots of my hair, and as if legions of little ants were crawling all

over me?

What if I did tell him that she got up a skirmish with me every night,

because I would not wear a nuisance called a night-cap? What if I did

tell him that she insisted upon putting a sticky pitch-plaster upon my

neck, for a little ghost of a cough (occasioned by her stirring the

ashes in the grate too furiously), and that when I outgeneraled her, and

clapped it round the bed-post instead, she muttered, spitefully, that “a

handsome neck would not keep me out of my coffin?” What if I did tell

him that she tried on my nice little lace collars, when she thought I

was asleep at night, and insisted on my drinking detestable porter, that

its second-hand influence might “make the baby sleep?” What if I did,

was he not my husband? Did I not tell him every thing? laugh with him?

cry with him? eat out of _his_ plate? drink out of _his_ cup of tea,

because being his, I fancied they tasted better than mine? and didn’t

_he like it, too?_ Of course he did!

What if I did tell him all this? Poor Charley! _he_ was forlorn, too;

his cravats were tied like a fright all the time I was sick, his hair

looked like any other man’s, the buttons were off his pretty velvet

vest, and he had not even the heart to get his boots blacked. Poor

Charley!

Well; that nurse had the impudence to tell us one evening “that we

acted like two children.” “_Children!_” _We!_ _Us!_ the parents of that

eight-pound baby! That was the last drop in our cup. Charley paid her,

and I was so glad when she went, that I laughed till I cried.

Then we both drew a long breath and sat down and looked at the new

baby--_our_ baby; and Charley asked me about its little sleeping habits,

and I told him, with a shake of the head, that I could not speak

definitely on that point; and then we discussed, in a whisper, the

respective merits of cribs and cradles, and the propriety of teaching

it, at an early period, that impressive line of Mrs. Hemans:

“Night is the time for sleep;”

and then Charley got up, and exchanged his musical boots for a noiseless

pair of slippers, and changed the position of the shovel, tongs, and

poker, and oiled the creaking hinge of the closet door, and laid a chair

over the squeaking board in the floor, that he might not tread on it,

and with one eye on the baby, gently shaded the lamp; and then he looked

at me, and gave a little sort of congratulatory nod, and then he drew

off his vest and hung it over a chair, and then--out rattled a perfect

tempest of half dollars, quarters, shillings, and sixpences, on the

hearth! Of course, the baby woke (frightened out of a year’s growth),

and screamed until it was black in the face. In vain its poor,

inexperienced papa kissed it, scratching its little velvet face with his

rough whiskers the while! In vain we both walked the floor with it. The

fire went out, the lamp went; and just at daybreak it came to us like a

revelation, the sarcastic tone of that hateful old nurse, as she said,

“Good-by; I hope you’ll get along _comfortably_ with the dear baby!”

And so we did. Do you suppose one night’s watching was going to quench

our love, either for the baby, or for each other? No--nor a thousand

like it! for, as Dr. Watts, or Saxe, hath it, “it was one of the kind

that was not born to die.”

THE SHADOW OF A GREAT ROCK IN A WEARY LAND.

Man may turn his back upon Revelation, and feed upon the dry husks of

infidelity, if he will; but sure I am, that _woman_ can not do without

her Saviour. In her happiest estate, she has sorrows that can only be

intrusted to an Almighty ear; responsibilities that no human aid can

give her strength to meet. But what if earthly love be poisoned at the

fountain?--what if her feeble shoulders bend unsupported under the

weight of her daily cross?--what if her life-sky be black with gathering

gloom?--what if her foes be they of her own household?--what if

treachery sit down at her hearth-stone, and calumny await her without,

with extended finger? What then--if no Saviour’s arms be outstretched

to enfold her? What if it be “absurd” (as some tell her) that the God

who governs the universe should stoop to interest himself in her petty

concerns? What if the Bible to which she flies be “a dead letter?” and

“Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden”--only “a metaphor?”

What earthly accents can fall upon her ear as sweet as these--“A bruised

reed will I not break?” Woman may be “weak;” but blessed be the weakness

which leads her to lean on that Almighty arm, which man in his pride

rejects; listening rather in his extremity, to the demon whisper--“Curse

God and die.”

Woman may be “weak;” you may confuse her with your sophistries, deafen

her with your arguments, and standing before her in your false strength,

exclaim like the unbelievers of old--“Away with him!” and still her

yearning soul cries out, with a voice no subtlety of yours can satisfy

or stifle--“_My_ Lord and _my_ God!”

TO LITERARY ASPIRANTS.

My heart aches at the letters I am daily receiving from persons who

wish to support themselves by their pens; many of these letters,

mis-spelt and ungrammatical, show their writers to be totally unfit for

the vocation they have chosen; and yet, alas! their necessities are for

that reason none the less pressing. Others, unexceptionable in these

respects, see no preliminary steps to be taken between avowing this

their determination, and at once securing the remuneration accorded to

long-practiced writers, who, by patient toil and waiting, have secured a

remunerative name. They see a short article in print, by some writer; it

reads easy--they doubt not it was written easily; this may or may not be

the case; if so--what enabled the writer to produce it in so short a

space of time? Long habit of patient, trained thinking, which the

beginner has yet to acquire.

You are taken sick; you send for a physician; he comes in, stays ten

minutes, prescribes for you a healing medicine, and charges you three or

four dollars. You call this “extortionate”--forgetting the medical books

he must have waded through, the revolting dissections he must have

witnessed and participated in, and the medical lectures he must have

digested, to have enabled him to pronounce on your case so summarily and

satisfactorily. To return to our subject. These practiced writers have

gone through (as you must do), the purgatorial furnace which separates

the literary dross from the pure ore. That all who do this should come

out fine gold, is impossible; but I maintain, that if there is any thing

in a literary aspirant, this process will develop it, spite of

discouragement--spite of depression--nay, on that very account.

Now what I would say is this. Let none enter this field of labor,

least of all shrinking, destitute women, unless they are prepared for

this long, tedious ordeal, and have also the self-sustaining conviction

that they have a God-given talent. The reading community is not what it

once was. The world is teeming with books--good, bad, and indifferent.

Publishers have a wide field from which to cull. There is a great feast

to sit down to; and the cloyed and fastidious taste demands dishes

daintily and skillfully prepared. How shall an unpracticed aspirant,

whose lips perhaps have not been touched with the live coal from the

altar, successfully contend with these? How shall the halt and maimed

win in such a race?

Every editor’s drawer is crammed--every newspaper office besieged--by

hundreds doomed to disappointment; not two thirds of the present surfeit

of writers, born of the success of a few, obtain even a hearing. Editors

have any quantity of MSS. on hand, which they know will answer their

purpose; and they have, they say, when I have applied to them for those

who have written me to do so, neither time nor inclination to paragraph,

punctuate, revise and correct the inevitable mistakes of beginners, even

though there may possibly be some grains of wheat for the seeking.

To women, therefore, who are destitute, and rely upon their pen for a

support, I would say, again, Do any thing that is honest that your hands

find to do, but make not authorship, at least, your _sole_ dependence

in the present state of things.

Now, having performed this ungrateful task, and mapped out faithfully

the shoals and quicksands, if there are among you those whose mental and

physical muscle will stand the strain with this army of

competitors--and, above all, who have the “barrel of meal and cruse of

oil” to fall back upon--I wish you God speed! and none will be happier

than she, who has herself borne the burden and heat of the day, to see

you crowned victor.

SUMMER TRAVEL.

Take a journey at this elevation of the thermometer! Not I. Think of

the breakfastless start before daybreak--think of a twelve hours’ ride

on the sunny side of the cars, in the neighborhood of some persistent

talker, rattling untranslatable jargon into your aching ears; think of a

hurried repast, in some barbarous half-way house; amid a heterogeneous

assortment of men, women, and children, beef, pork, and mutton; minus

forks, minus spoons, minus castor, minus come-atable waiters, and four

shillings and indigestion to pay. Think of a “collision”--disemboweled

trunks, and a wooden leg; think of an arrival at a crowded hotel;

jammed, jaded, dusty, and dolorous; think of your closetless sentry-box

of a room, infested by mosquitoes and Red Rovers; bed too narrow,

window too small, candle too short, all the world and his wife a-bed,

and the geography of the house an unexplained riddle. Think of your

unrefreshing, vapor-bath sleep; think of the next morning, as seated on

a dusty trunk, with your hair drooping about your ears, through which

the whistle of the cars, and the jiggle-joggle of the brakeman, are

still resounding; you try to remember, with your hand on your bewildered

forehead, whether your breakfast robe is in the yellow trunk, or the

black trunk, and if in either, whether it is at the top, bottom, or in

the middle of the same, where your muslins and laces were deposited,

what on earth you did with your dressing comb, and where amid your

luggage, your toilet slippers may be possibly located. Think of a

summons to breakfast at this interesting moment, the sun meanwhile

streaming in through the blind chinks, with volcanic power. Think of all

that, I say.

Now if I could travel _incog._ in masculine attire, no dresses to look

after, no muslins to rumple, no bonnet to soil, no tresses to keep

smooth, with only a hat and things, a neck-tie or two, a change of--of

shirts--nothing but a moustache to twist into a horn when the dinner

bell rings; just a dip into a wash-basin, a clean dicky, a jump into a

pair of--trowsers, and above all, liberty to go where I liked, without

being stared at or questioned; a seat in a chair on its hind-legs, on a

breezy door-step, a seat on the stairs in a wide hall, “taking notes;” a

peep everywhere I chose, by lordly right of my pantaloons; nobody

nudging somebody, to inquire why Miss Spinks the authoress wore her hair

in curls instead of plaits; or making the astounding discovery that it

was hips, not hoops, that made her dress stand out--that now, would be

worth talking about: I’ll do it.

But stop--I should have to cut my hair short--I should have to shave

every morning, or at any rate call for hot water and go through the

motions; men would jostle rudely past me, just as if they never had said

such pretty things to me in flounces; I should be obliged, just as I had

secured a nice seat in the cars, to get up, and give it to some

imperious woman, who would not even say “thank you;” I should have to

look on with hungry eyes till “the ladies” were all served at table; I

should have to pick up their fans, and reticules, and handkerchiefs

whenever they chose to drop them; I should have to give up the

rocking-chairs, arm-chairs, and sofas for their use, and be called “a

brute” at that; I should have to rush out of the cars, with five

minutes’ grace, at some stopping place, to get a glass of milk, for some

“crying baby,” with a contracted swallowing apparatus, and be pursued

for life by the curses of its owner, because the whistle sounded while

his two shilling tumbler was yet in the voracious baby’s tight grip.

No--no--I’ll stay a woman, and what’s more, I’ll stay at home.

A GENTLE HINT.

In most of the New York shop windows, one reads: “Here we speak

French;” “Here we speak Spanish;” “Here we speak German;” “Here we speak

Italian.” I suggest an improvement--“Here we speak the _Truth_.”

A STORY FOR OLD HUSBANDS WITH YOUNG WIVES.

“I was an old fool! Yes--I was an old fool; that’s all there is about

it. I ought to have known better; _she_ was not to blame, poor thing;

she is but a child yet; and these baubles pleased her ambitious mother’s

eye. It was not the old man, but his _money_--his _money_--I might have

known it. May and December--May and December--pshaw! how could I ever

have believed, that Mary Terry could _love_ an old fellow like me?” and

Mark Ware surveyed himself in the large parlor mirror.

“See!--it reflects a portly old man of sixty, with ruddy face,

snow-white hair, and eyes from which the light of youth has long since

departed.” And yet there is fire in the old man’s veins too; see how he

strides across the carpet, ejaculating, with fresh emphasis, “Yes, I was

an old fool!--an old fool! But I will be kind to her; I’m not the man to

tyrannize over a young girl, because her mother took her out of the

nursery to make her my wife. I see now it is not in reason for a young

girl like her to stay contentedly at home with my frosty head and gouty

feet. Poor little Mary! No--I’ll not punish her because she can not love

me; she shall have what she wants, and go where she likes; her mother is

only too proud to trot her out, as the wife of the rich Mark Ware. If

that will make them both happy, let them do it; may be”--and Mark Ware

paused--“may be, after she has seen what that Dead Sea apple--the

world--is made of, she will come back and love the old man a little--may

be--who knows? No woman who is believed in, and well treated, ever makes

a bad wife; there never was a bad wife yet, but there was a bad husband

_first_; that’s gospel--Mark’s gospel, anyhow, and Mark Ware is going to

act upon it. Mary shall go to the ball to-night, with her mother, and I

will stay at home and nurse my patience and my gouty leg. There’s no

evil in her; she’s as pure as a lily, and if she wants to see the world,

why--she shall see it; and though I can’t go dancing round with her, I

never will dim her bright eyes--no--no!”

* * * * *

“That will do, Tiffy; another pin in this lace; now move that rose in

my hair a little to the left; so--that will do.”

“That will _do_!” Tame praise, for that small Grecian head, with its

crown of braided tresses; for the full, round throat, and snowy,

sloping shoulders; for the round, ivory arms, and tapering, rose-tipped

fingers; for the lovely bosom, and dainty waist. Well might such beauty

dazzle Mark Ware’s eyes, till he failed to discern the distance betwixt

May and December.

Mark Ware had rightly read Mary. She was guileless and pure, as he had

said; and child as she was, there was that in her manner, before which

the most libidinous eye would have shrunk abashed.

When the young bride first realized the import of those words she had

been made to utter, “till death do us part,” she looked forward, with

shuddering horror, at the long, monotonous, weary years before her. Her

home seemed a prison, and Mark Ware the keeper; its very splendor

oppressed her; and she chafed and fretted in her gilded fetters, while

her restless heart cried out--anywhere but home! Must she sit there, in

her prison-house, day after day, listening only to the repinings of her

own troubled heart? Must the bee and the butterfly only be free to revel

in the bright sunshine? Had God made her beauty to fade in the stifling

atmosphere of darkened parlors, listening to the complaints of querulous

old age? Every pulse of her heart rebelled. How could her mother have

thus sold her? How could Mark Ware have so unmagnanimously accepted the

compulsory sacrifice? Why not have shown her the world and let her

choose for herself? O anywhere--anywhere--from such a home!

There was no lack of invitations abroad; for Mary had flashed across

the fashionable horizon, like some bright comet; eclipsing all the

reigning beauties. No ball, no party, no dinner, was thought a success

without her. Night after night found her _en route_ to some gay

assemblage. To her own astonishment and her foolish mother’s delight,

her husband never remonstrated; on the contrary, she often found upon

her dressing-table, some choice little ornament, which he had provided

for the occasion; and Mary, as she fastened it in her hair, or bosom,

would say, bitterly, “He is anxious that I, like the other appendages of

his establishment, should reflect credit on his faultless taste.”

Mistaken Mary!

Time passed on. Mark Ware _was_ “patient,” as he promised himself to

be. His evenings were not so lonely now, for his little babe kept him

company; the reprieved nurse, only too glad to escape to her pink

ribbons and a “chat with John at the back gate.” It was a pretty

sight--Mark and the babe! Old age and infancy are always a touching

sight together. Not a smile or a cloud passed over that little face,

that did not wake up all the father in Mark Ware’s heart; and he paced

the room with it, or rocked it to sleep on his breast, talking to it, as

if it could understand the strong, deep love, of which it was the

unconscious object.

* * * * *

“I am weary of all this,” said Mark’s young wife, as she stepped into

her carriage, at the close of a brilliant ball. “I am weary of seeing

the same faces, and hearing the same stupid nonsense, night after night.

I wonder shall I _ever_ be happy? I wonder shall I ever _love_ any

thing, or anybody? Mamma is proud of me, because I am beautiful and

rich, but she does not _love_ me. Mark is proud of me”--and Mary’s

pretty lip curled scornfully. “Life is so weary, and I am only

eighteen!” and Mary sighed heavily.

On whirled the carriage through the deserted streets; deserted--save

by some inveterate pleasure-seeker like herself, from whom pleasure

forever flees. Occasionally a lamp twinkled from some upper window,

where a half-starved seamstress sat stitching her life away, or a

heart-broken mother bent over the dead form of a babe, which her

mother’s heart could ill spare, although she knew not where to find

bread for the remaining babes who wept beside her. Now and then, a

woman, lost to all that makes woman lovely, flaunted under the

flickering street-lamps, while her mocking laugh rang out on the night

air. Mary shuddered, and drew back--there was that in its hollowness

which might make even devils tremble. Overhead the sentinel stars kept

their tireless watch, and Mary’s heart grew soft under their gentle

influence, and tears stole from beneath her lashes, and lay like pearls

upon her bosom.

“You need not wait to undress me,” said Mary to the weary-looking

waiting-maid, as she averted her swollen eyes from her gaze--and taking

the lamp from her hand, Mary passed up to her chamber. So noiseless was

the fall of her light foot upon the carpet, that Mark did not know she

had entered. He sat with his back to the door, bending over the cradle

of his child, till his snow-white locks rested on its rosy cheeks;

talking to it, as was his wont, to beguile his loneliness.

“Mary’s forehead--Mary’s eyes--Mary’s mouth--no more like your old

father than a rosebud is like a chestnut-burr. _You_ will love the

lonely old man, little one, and perhaps _she_ will, by-and-by; who

knows?” and Mark’s voice trembled.

“She will--she does”--said Mary, dropping on her knees at the cradle

of her child, and burying her face in Mark’s hands; “my noble, patient

husband!”

“You don’t mean that?” said Mark, holding her off at arm’s-length, and

looking at her through a mist of tears; “you don’t mean that you will

love an old fellow like me? God bless you, Mary--God forever bless you!

I have been very--very lonely,”--and Mark wept for sheer happiness.

* * * * *

The gaping world, the far-sighted world, the charitable world, shook

its wise head, when the star of fashion became a fixed star. Some said

“her health must be failing;” others, that “her husband had become

jealous at last;” while old stagers maliciously insinuated that it were

wise to retire on _fresh_ laurels. But none said--what _I_ say--that a

true woman’s heart may always be won--ay, and kept, too--by any husband

who does not consider it beneath him to step off the pedestal of his

“_dignity_” to learn how.

BREAKFAST AT THE PAXES’.

“Morning paper, John?”

“Didn’t come this morning, mem; I inquired at the office as I came up

with the breakfast, mem; none there, mem.”

How provoking! What is breakfast without the morning paper? Coffee and

eggs are well enough, but they don’t tell a body whether the Pacific has

arrived, or Greeley’s head is safe on his non-resistant shoulders (I

wish that man _could_ fight); or whether breadstuffs have “riz,” as

every housekeeper knows they ought to; or whether Olmsted’s new book is

selling as it deserves (were it only for that racy little morceau about

his ride with Jenny, the mare); or whether the “Onguent warranted to

raise a moustache and whiskers in six weeks” is still on the sprout; or

whether Griswold is proven a saint or a sinner; or whether the amiable

young man, who advertised the other day for “board in a family where

there are no babies,” has found his desert-s; or whether the

philanthropic firm of M‘Mush & Co. are still persisting in that

“ruinous sacrifice,” for the benefit of a credulous public in general,

and themselves in particular; or whether Barnum’s head is _really_ under

water, or whether he has only made a dive to grab some new mermaid; or

whether the Regular Male Line viâ (nobody knows where), is an heir line;

or whether there are any lectures to be delivered to-night worth

foregoing a cosy fireside, and freezing the tip of one’s nose to hear.

How am I going to find out all this, I should like to know, without the

morning paper? (Long life to the inventor of it!)

Oh! here comes Mr. Pax with one--good soul--he has been out in his

slippers, and bought one. Now I shall find out all about every thing,

and--who did what. See what a thing it is to have a husband! No, I

shan’t either: may I be kissed if Pax has not sat down to read that

paper himself, instead of giving it to me. Now I like that; I dare say

he thinks because he is connected with the Press that he should have the

first reading of it. Am not I connected with the Press I’d like to know?

I guess you’d have thought so, had you seen me squeezing into the Opera

House the other night to hear Everett’s lecture.

Perhaps he is going to read it aloud to me--I’ll sip my coffee and

wait a bit. Good Pax! how I have maligned him; what an impatient wretch

I am. I think impatience is a fault of mine. I wonder is it a fault? I

wonder if I can help it, if it is? I wonder if people weren’t made that

way the year I was born? Yes; Pax must be going to read me the paper;

that’s it. Good Pax--how well he looks in that Turkish breakfast-jacket;

he has really a nice profile and pretty hand. I can’t say that he has a

very saintly under lip, but I have known more saintly _looking_ ones do

naughtier things! Yes; I’ll sip my coffee--he is undoubtedly going to

read the paper to me; no, he isn’t either; he means to devour the whole

of it solus. I won’t stand it--hem--no reply--hem--none so deaf as those

who won’t hear.

“Pax!”

“Well, dear” (without raising his eyes).

“Pax! what is there interesting in that paper?”

(Pax still reading intently.) “Nothing, my dear, absolutely nothing.”

Humph! wonder if it takes a man a whole hour to read “nothing?”

Now, do you suppose I whined about that? cried till my eyes looked as

though they were bound with pink tape? Not I. I just sat down and wrote

an article about it for the “WEEKLY MONOPOLIZER,” and when it is

published, as published it will be, I shall be disinterested enough to

hand Pax my paper to read first! Then--when he reads the article, and

looking up reproachfully, says: “Mrs. Pax!” it will be _my_ turn not to

hear, you know; and when he gets up, and laying his connubial paw on my

shoulder, says: “Mrs. Pax, do you know any thing about this article in

the Weekly Monopolizer?” I shall reply, with lamb-like innocence:

“Nothing, my dear, absolutely nothing!”

Won’t that floor him?

GIRLS’ BOARDING-SCHOOLS.

Had I twenty daughters, which I regret to say I have not, not one of

them should ever enter a “Boarding-school.” I beg pardon; I should say

“Institute;” schools are exploded; every two-year-older learns his A B C

now at an “Institute,” though that institute, when hunted down, may

consist of a ten-feet-square basement room. But this is a digression.

To every mother who is contemplating sending her daughter to a

boarding-school I would say: Let neither your indolence, nor the

omnipotent voice of fashion, nor high-sounding circulars, induce you to

remove her from under your own personal care and supervision, at a time

when the physique of this future wife and mother requires a lynx-eyed

watchfulness on your part, which no institute ever has--ever will

supply. This is a point which I am astonished that parents seem so

utterly to overlook. Every mother knows how fatal wet feet, or

insufficient clothing, may be to a young girl at the critical age at

which they are generally sent away to school. It is not enough that you

place India-rubbers, thick-soled shoes, and flannels in the trunk which

bears the little exile company; they will not insure her from disease

_there_. It is not enough that you say to her, “My dear, be careful of

your choice of companions,” when she _has_ no choice; when her

bed-fellows and room-mates--the latter often three or four in

number--are what chance and the railroads send; for what teacher, with

the best intentions, ever gives this subject the attention which it

deserves, or which a mother’s anxious heart asks? That the distant home

of her daughter’s room-mates is located within the charmed limits of

fashion; that a carriage with liveried servants (that disgusting libel

on republicanism), stands daily before their door; that the dresses of

these room-mates are made in the latest style, and their wrists and ears

decked with gold and precious stones--is an affirmative answer to these

questions to satisfy a true mother?

No--and it is not the blushing country maiden, with her simple

wardrobe, and simpler manners, whom that mother has to fear for her

child’s companion or bed-fellow. It is the over-dressed, vain, vapid,

brainless offshoot of upstart aristocracy, who would ridicule the simple

gingham in which that country girl’s mother studied geography, and which

fabric she very properly considers quite good enough for her child, and

which is much more appropriate in the school-room than silk or satin. It

is this child of the upstart rich mother, whose priceless infancy and

childhood have been spent with illiterate servants; with the exception

of the hour after dessert, when she was reminded that she had a mother,

by being taken in an embroidered robe to be exhibited for a brief space

to her guests. It is this girl, whose childhood, as I said, has been

passed with servants, peeping into the doubtful books with which

doubtful servants often beguile the tedious hours (for there are bad

servants as well as bad masters and mistresses)--this girl, lying awake

in her little bed, hearing unguarded details of servants’ amours, while

her mother dances away the hours so pregnant with fate to that listening

child. It is such a girl, more to be pitied than blamed, whose existence

is to be recognized by her thoughtless mother only, when her “coming

out,” delayed till the latest possible period, forces her reluctantly to

yield to a younger aspirant her own claims to admiration. This girl

whose wealth, and the social position arising from it, so dazzles the

eyes of proprietors of “Institutes” that they are incapable of

perceiving, or unwilling to admit, her great moral and mental

delinquencies; it is _such_ a companion that a true mother has to fear

for her pure-minded, simple-hearted young daughter, leaving for the

first time the guarded threshold and healthful atmosphere of home.

And when after months have passed--and insufficient exercise,[A]

imperfect ventilation, and improper companionship, have transformed her

rosy, healthy, simple-hearted child, to a pale, languid, _spineless_,

dressy young woman, with a smattering of fashionable accomplishments,

and an incurable distaste of simple, home pleasures--will it restore the

bloom to her cheek, the spring to her step, the fresh innocence to her

heart, to say, “but the school was fashionable and _so_ well

recommended?”

[A] Is a formal, listless walk, in a half-mile procession, to answer the

purpose of _exercise_ for young, growing girls confined at least ten

hours a day over their lessons, and crowded at night into insufficient

sleeping-rooms?--from which the highest prices paid for tuition, so far

as my observation extends, furnish no immunity.

CLOSET MEDITATIONS,

NOT FOUND IN JAY OR DODDRIDGE.

Shall I ever be unhappy again? Six big closets with shelves and

drawers! What a Godsend! You laugh! you are unable to comprehend how

such joyful emotions can spring from so trivial a cause.

Trivial! Did you ever board out? Did you ever stand in the midst of

your gas-lighted, damask-curtained, velvet-chaired, _closetless_ hotel

(yes--_hotel_) apartments, with a six-cent ink-bottle between your

perplexed thumb and finger, taxing your brain, as it was never taxed

before, to discover an oasis where to deposit it, when not in use?

Trivial? Did you ever live for a series of years with your head in a

trunk? Did you ever see your ghost-like habiliments dangling day after

day from pegs in the wall? Did you ever turn away your disgusted eyes,

as the remorseless chambermaid whirled clouds of dust over their

unprotected fabrics? Did you ever, as you lay in bed of a morning,

exhaust your ingenuity in devising some means of relief? Did you ever,

exulting in your superior acumen, rush out, and purchase at your own

expense, a curtain to cover them? Did you ever jam off all your finger

nails trying to drive it up? (for what woman ever yet hit a nail on the

head?) Did you ever have that dusty curtain drop down on your

nicely-smoothed hair, nine times out of ten when you went to it for a

dress? Did you ever set fire to it with a candle, when in an abstracted

state of mind?

Trivial? Did you ever implore a white-aproned waiter, with tears in

your eyes, and twenty-five cents in your hand, to bring you an empty

cigar-box to keep your truant slippers in? Did you ever stifle with

closed windows, because if you threw them up, you would throw out your

books, which were piled on the window lodge? Were you ever startled in

the middle of the night, by the giving way of a solitary nail, on which

were hung a bag of buttons, a bag of hooks and eyes, a child’s satchel,

a child’s slate, a basket of oyster crackers, a bag of chess-men,

and--your hoops?

Trivial? Did you ever partially carry out the curse which was passed

on Eden’s tempter, the serpent, as, with a long-handled umbrella, you

explored, for some missing shoe, the unknown regions under the bed? Did

you ever sit on your best bonnet? Did you ever step into your husband’s

hat? Did you ever tear a zig-zag rent in your favorite dress, and find,

on looking for pieces of the same to mend it, that you had given them

away to your washwoman, with other uncounted needfuls, because you had

no place to keep them? Did you ever stand in dismay over your furs and

woolens in spring, and your muslins, grenadines, and bareges, in autumn?

Trivial? Ah!--you never witnessed the cold-blooded indifference with

which hotel-keepers, and landlords generally, shrug their shoulders, as

surveying your rooms, and taking a _coup d’œil_ of your feminine

effects, you pathetically exclaim, with dropped hands and

intonation--“No closets!”

A FEMININE VIEW OF NAPOLEON AS A HUSBAND.

It is said that writers of books seldom read many. The “Confidential

Letters of Napoleon and Josephine” had not been published when that

remark was made. The Napoleon-mad author, Mr. Abbot, says, in his

Preface: “We are familiar with him as the warrior, the statesman, the

great administrator--but here we behold him as the husband, the father,

the brother, moving freely amid all the tender relations of domestic

life. His _heart_ is here revealed,” etc. I suggest to Mr. Abbot (for

whom, apart from this extraordinary hallucination, I have a great

respect), the following amendment of the above sentence, viz.: his _want

of heart_ is here revealed; but let that pass.

I have devoured the book at a sitting, and it has given me, as do

stimulants generally, mental or otherwise, a villainous headache. With

the sad fate of the peerless Josephine fresh in my mind, I read with an

impatient pshaw! the burning billet-doux, addressed to her by the man

who could coolly thrust her aside for his mad ambition. Hear what he

once said:

“Death alone can break the union, which love, sentiment, and sympathy

have formed. A thousand and a thousand kisses.”

Also,

“I hope very soon to be in your arms; I love you most passionately (_à

la fureur_).”

Also,

“I hope in a little time to fold you in my arms, and cover you with

kisses burning as the equator.”

Also, this consistent lover begs from her whom he afterward deserted,

“Love without bounds, and _fidelity without limit_.”

How very like a man!

Well, I turned over the pages, and read with moistened eyes, for the

hundredth time, the wretched state farce enacted at the divorce; and

with fresh admiration perused the magnanimous and memorable reply of the

queenly Josephine, to the brilliant but cold, intellectual but selfish,

imperious yet fascinating Napoleon. Ah! then I would have led away his

victim, spite of herself, out of sight, sound, and hearing of this cold,

cruel man, who, when it suited his whim, caprice, or convenience; who,

when weary of the tame, spiritless Maria Louise, returned secretly to

the intoxicating presence of the bewitching Josephine; whom, though

repudiating, he yet controlled, down to the lowest menial in her

household, down to the color of their jackets and hose; quite safe, in

always appending, with gracious condescension, permission “to please

herself,” to one whose greatest pleasure, he well knew, was to kiss his

imperial shoe-tie.

My love and pity for her merge (momentarily) into contempt, when she

abjectly begs for the crumbs of his favor, that fall from happier

favorites; for (to quote the touching words of her who would have shared

his exile had not death prevented, when the woman for whom she had been

cast aside, by a retributive justice, deserted him in his extremity) “he

could forget me _when he was happy_!” Ay, it was when pleasure palled,

when friends proved false, when the star of his destiny paled, when he

_needed_ the noble Josephine, that he sought her.

And _she_? When pealing bells and roaring cannon announced to France

that her rival had presented her husband the long-desired heir; _she_,

upon whose quivering heart every stroke of those joyous bells must have

smitten like a death-knell; _she_, the deserted wife, hung festal

wreaths over the grave of her hopes, gave jewels to the messenger who

brought her the news of _his_ happiness, and ordered a _fête_ in honor

of the young heir. Match me that, who can, in the wide annals of _man’s_

history? But, oh! when midnight came on, and garlands drooped, and

bright eyes closed, and tripping feet were stilled, when the farce was

played out, and the iron hand of court etiquette was lifted from off

that loving, throbbing, bursting heart, it thus poured itself out to

Napoleon:

“She (Maria Louise), can not be more tenderly devoted to you than I;

but she has been enabled to contribute more to your happiness, by

securing that of France. She has then a right to your first feelings, to

all your cares; and I, who was but your companion in times of

difficulty, I can not ask more than a place in your affections far

removed from that occupied by the Empress Louise. _Not till you shall

have ceased to watch by her bed, not till you are weary of embracing

your son, will you take the pen to converse with your best friend. I

will wait._”

The answer to the touching letter, from which this is an extract (and

every _woman_ with a heart, who reads it, can measure the height and

depth of its anguish), was the following _verbal_, the following

_delicate_ message, through Eugene!

“Tell your mother I would have written to her already, _had I not been

completely absorbed in the pleasure of looking upon my son_.”

About eleven o’clock that evening she received the much-coveted line

from his own hand; in which he seemed to have been able at last to

remember somebody beside himself; and for which the all-enduring,

all-forgiving Josephine adores as a god, “the man who, _when he willed_,

could be the most delightful of men.” Nobody will deny the matchless

tact of the lines which dried poor Josephine’s tears:

“This infant, _in concert with our Eugene_, will constitute my

happiness, and that of France.”

But the man “who could be so delightful when he willed,” did not, any

more than the rest of his sex, always will it. Motes and butterflies

seek the sunbeams, and the friends of poor Josephine’s happier days,

forsook her for those whom Fortune smiled upon. Malice, always on tiptoe

to whisper into the tortured ear, told her of the “happiness” of the

inconstant Napoleon; and with the birds, flowers, and fountains of

Malmaison mocking her tears, her crushed heart thus sobs itself out to

the emperor:

“I limit myself in asking one favor; it is, that you, yourself, will

seek means, _sometimes to convince me, and those who surround

me_”--(mark how strong and deathless must be the love that could thus

abjectly sue)--“that I have still a place in your memory, and a large

share of your esteem and friendship. These means, whatever they may be,

will soothe my anguish, without the danger, as it seems to me, of

compromising that _which is more important than all together, the

happiness of your majesty_.”

Well, what was the answer of “his majesty” to the tortured Josephine,

in whose heart, his majesty boasted that “he held the first place, and

her children by a former husband next, and that she did right thus to

love him!” What was his majesty’s answer to her, whom he wished to

“cover with kisses burning as the equator,” “whom he would wish to

imprison in his heart, lest she should escape;” “the beautiful, the good

one, all unequaled, all divine,” to whom he had “sent thousands of

kisses, burning as his heart, pure as her own,” whom “he loved _à la

fureur_?” What was his majesty’s answer to the weary, weeping, faithful

watcher at Malmaison?

“I have received your letter of the 19th of April; it _is in a very

bad style_.”

Could any thing be more coolly diabolical? O, foolish Josephine! with

all your tact and wisdom, not to have found out that man (with rare

exceptions) is unmagnanimous; that to pet and fondle him is to forge

your own chains; that the love which is sure is to him worthless; that

variety is as necessary to his existence, as a looking-glass and a

cigar; and that his vows are made, like women’s hearts, to break.

And yet, how surely, even in this world, retribution follows. The

dreary rock of St. Helena; the dilapidated, vermin-infested lodgings;

the petty, grinding, un-let-up-able tyranny of the lynx-eyed foe; the

unalloyed, unassuaged anguish of hydra-headed disease; the merciless

separation from the child, who had dug poor Josephine’s premature grave;

the heaped up, viper, newspaper obloquy which had always free pass to

Longwood, when bristling bayonets kept at bay the voices which the ear

of its captive ached to hear; the dreary, comfortless death-bed; the

last faltering request denied; as if malice still hungered for vengeance

when the weary heart it would torture had lost all power to feel.

Josephine! Josephine! thou wert indeed avenged!

“FIRST PURE.”

I would that I had time to answer the many kind letters I receive from

my unknown friends, or power, as they seem to imagine, to reform the

abuses to which they call my attention. The subject of licentiousness,

upon which I have just received a letter, is one upon which I have

thought much and often since my residence in New York. I could not, if I

would, ignore it, when at every step its victims rustle past me in the

gay livery of shame, or stretch out to me, from beneath tattered

garments, the hand, prematurely old, which should, alas! wear the golden

pledge of honorable love. But they tell me this is a subject a woman can

not understand, and should not write about. Perhaps so; but woman can

understand it when, like a blighting mildew, it strips bud, blossom, and

verdure, from her household olive-plants; woman can understand it when

she weeps in secret over the wrong which she may not whisper even to

herself; woman can understand it when the children of the man whom she

thought worthy of her maidenly love and honor, sink into early graves,

under the inherited taint of his “youthful follies.”

And yet they are right; virtuous woman does _not_ understand it; would

that she did--would that she sometimes paused to think of her share of

blame in this matter; would that she know how much her ready smile, and

_indiscriminate hand of welcome_ has to do in perpetuating it; how often

it blunts the sting of conscience, and confirms the immoral man in that

detestable club-house creed, that woman’s virtue depends upon

opportunity. Would that mothers would sometimes ask, not--is he a

gentleman, or is he accomplished? but, is he moral? is he pure? Pure!

Young New York holds its sides in derision at the word. Pure! is he in

leading strings? Pure! it is a contemptible reflection on his manhood

and free will. Pure! it is a word for old women and priests.

I once expressed my astonishment to a lady, that she should permit the

calls of a gentleman whom she knew to be licentious. “That is none of my

business, you know, my dear,” she replied, “so long as he behaves

himself properly in my presence;” and this answer, I am afraid, would be

endorsed by too many of my readers. As well might she have said, that it

was none of her business that her neighbor’s house was in flames, or

that they had the yellow fever or the plague. That a man sings well,

dresses well, or talks well, is, I am sorry to say, too often sufficient

to outweigh his moral delinquency. This is poor encouragement to young

men who, not having yet learned to think lightly of the sex to which

their mothers and sisters belong, are old-fashioned enough to wish to

lead virtuous lives; and some of whom, notwithstanding, have the courage

and manhood in these degenerate days to _dare_ to do it.

As to a reform in this matter, I think virtuous women must begin it,

by turning the cold shoulder to every man of their acquaintance whom

they know to be immoral, and I think a woman of penetration will not be

at fault, if she takes pains to sift a man’s sentiments in conversation.

Perhaps you will tell me (though I hope it is not so), that this would

exclude two thirds of every lady’s gentlemen acquaintance. Be it so;

better for those ladies, better for their daughters, if they have any,

better for the cause of virtue; at least, it would not take long, at

that rate, to thin the ranks of vice.

I wonder does man never think, in his better moments, how much nobler

it were to protect than to debase woman?--ay, protect her--if need

be--_even from herself_, and ignoring the selfish creed that she has a

right to, and is alone responsible for, her own self-disposal, withdraw

her, as with a brother’s hand, from the precipice over which misery or

inclination would plunge her, and prove to the “weaker sex” that he is

in the noblest sense the stronger. That, indeed, were God-like.

HOLIDAY THOUGHTS.

Well--New Year’s and Christmas are both over: there is a lull equal to

that after a Presidential election. What is to be done for an excitement

now? Every body is yawning: the men on account of the number of

complimentary fibs that they foolishly felt themselves called upon to

tell the ladies, on their New Year’s calls; and the ladies, because they

were obliged to listen as if they did not know them all stereotyped, to

be repeated, _ad infinitum_, at every house on their visiting rounds;

the matron, because her handsome carpet is inch-deep in cake crumbs; and

her husband, because bills are pouring in from butchers, bakers,

grocers, milkmen, tailors, dressmakers, and jewelers, like the locusts

of Egypt. Well--we shall not say any thing against New Year’s and its

jollities, while it frees the poor hack of a clerk, and gives him one

day of happiness and rest; while it throws over the indefatigable cook’s

shoulders the cloak for which she has been vainly toiling and hoping;

while it wings the feet of so many bright-eyed children, and lights up

the prim parlor of so many hopeless old maids. We shall not say any

thing against New Year’s, when, after long months of wrong and

estrangement, it stretches out the tardy hand of repentance, for which

even the Bible bids us to wait, ere we forgive; we shall not say any

thing against New Year’s, though it reminds us that hands we used to

grasp so warmly, are crossed forever over pulseless hearts; though

memories sad, but sweet, come thronging thick and fast, of “Happy New

Years,” from lips upon which Death has set his final seal. And yet _not_

final; thank Him who giveth, and Him who taketh, _not_ final; for even

here we trace their noiseless footsteps--even here we see the flitting

of their shadowy garments--even here we smile in dreams, at the

overshadowing wings of the angels who “have charge to keep us.” No,

no--_not_ final: our love o’erleaps the dark river, to greet the sister,

amid whose orange wreath there crept the cypress vine; to clasp the

child, who quickened our heart-throbs ere we saw the lips that called us

(alas, for so brief a space), by that blessed name--“Mother.” No,

no--_not_ final;--else were this fair earth to us a satisfying

birth-right; else had the midnight stars no eyes of flame to search the

guilty conscience; else had the shimmer of the moonbeam, the ripple of

the wave, the crash of the thunder, the flash of the lightning, the

ceaseless moan of the vexed sea, no voice to waken the never-dying echo

of the immortal in our nature. No--God be praised--_not_ final!

But we had not intended a homily. To return to the observance of New

Year’s: for our own taste, we should prefer the sugar, which custom so

lavishly heaps upon New Year’s cake, spread more sparingly upon our

slices of “daily bread;” in other words, we should prefer to distribute

the compressed courtesies of our friends on this day, equally, through

the weeks and months of the year. As to the absurd custom of excluding

the daylight, to receive one’s visitors by the glare of gas, it is a

tacit admission of artificial charms, which one would think even

“fashion” would be slow to make. The inordinate display of edibles on

such occasions, seems to us as useless as it is disgusting; a cup of

coffee, a slice of cake, or a sandwich, being, in our humble estimation,

sufficient for any gentleman who is able to distinguish between a

private house and a restaurant.

A HEADACHE.

Now I am in for it, with one of my unappeasable headaches. Don’t talk

to me of doctors; it is incurable as a love-fit; nothing on earth will

stop it; you may put that down in your memorandum-book. Now, I suppose

every body in the house to-day will put on their creakingest shoes; and

every body will go up and down stairs humming all the tunes they ever

heard, especially those I most dislike; and I suppose every thing that

is cooked in the kitchen will boil and stew over, and the odor will come

up to me; and I have _such_ a nose! And I suppose all the little boys in

the neighborhood, bless their little restless souls, will play duets on

tin-pans and tin-kettles; and I suppose every body who comes into my

room to ask me how I do, will squeak that horrid door, and _keep_

squeaking it; and I suppose that unhappy dog confined over in that

four-square-feet yard, will howl more deliriously than ever; and Mr.

Jones’s obnoxious blind will flap and bang till I am as crazy as an

omnibus-driver who has a baulky horse, and whose passengers are hopping

out behind without paying their fare; and I suppose some poor little

child will be running under the window every now and then, screaming

“Mother,” and whenever I hear that, I think somebody wants _me_; and

I’ve no doubt there will be “proof” to read to-day, and that that

pertinacious and stentorian rag-man will lumber past on his crazy old

cart, and insist on having some of my dry goods; and I feel it in my

bones that oysters and oranges, and tape, and blacking, and brooms, and

mats, and tin-ware, will settle and congregate on this side-walk, and

assert their respective claims to my notice, till the sight of an

undertaker would be a positive blessing.

Whack! how my head snaps! Don’t tell me any living woman ever had such a

headache before--because it will fill me with disgust. What o’clock is

it? “Twelve.” Merciful man! only twelve o’clock! I thought it was five.

How am I to get through the day, I would like to know, for this headache

won’t let up till sundown; it never does. “Read to me.” What’ll you

read? “Tom Moore!” as if I were not sick enough already! Moore! with his

nightingales, and bulbuls, and jessamines; and loves and doves, and

roses and poesies--till the introduction of an uneducated wildcat, or

the tearingest kind of a hyena in his everlasting gardens, would be an

untold relief. No--I hate Moore. Beside--he is the fellow who said,

“When away from the lips that we love, we’ll make love to the lips that

are near.” No wonder he was baptized _more_--carnivorous old profligate.

“Will I have a cup of tea?” No; of course I won’t. I’m not an old maid.

Tea! I’d like a dose of strychnine. There goes my head again--I should

think a string of fire-crackers was fastened to each hair. Now the pain

is in my left temple; now it is in my eyeballs; now--oh dear--it is

everywhere. Sit down beside me, on the bed--don’t jar it; now put your

cold hand on my forehead--so--good gracious! There’s a hand-organ! I

knew it--the very one I moved here to get rid of. Playing the same old

tune, too, composed of three notes: “tweedle--dum--tweedle--dee!”

Now if that organ-man would pull each of my finger and toe-nails out

by the roots, one by one, I wouldn’t object, but that everlasting

“tweedle--” oh dear!--Or if a cat’s tail were to be irretrievably shut

into yonder door--or a shirt-sleeve should be suddenly and unexpectedly

thrown around an old maid’s neck in this room, any thing--every thing

but that eternal, die-away “tweedle.” What’s the use of a city

government? What is the use of any thing? What is the use of _me_?

HAS A MOTHER A RIGHT TO HER CHILDREN?

Most unquestionably, law or no law. Let us begin at the beginning. Let

us take into consideration the physical prostration of mind and body

endured by mothers antecedent to the birth of their offspring; their

extreme nervousness and restlessness, without the ability for

locomotion; the great nameless horror which hangs over those who, for

the first time, are called upon to endure agonies that no man living

would have fortitude to bear more than once, even at their shortest

period of duration; and which, to those who have passed through it, is

intensified by the vivid recollection (the only verse in the Bible which

I call in question being this--“She remembereth no more her pains, for

joy that a man-child is born into the world”). Granted that the mother’s

life is spared through this terrible ordeal, she rises from her

sick-bed, after weeks of prostration, with the precious burden in her

arms which she carried so long and so patiently beneath her heart. Oh,

the continuous, tireless watching necessary to preserve the life and

limbs of this fragile little thing! At a time, too, of all times, when

the mother most needs relaxation and repose. It is known only to those

who have passed through it. Its reward is with Him who seeth in secret.

I speak now only of _good_ mothers; mothers who deserve the high and

holy name. Mothers who in their unselfish devotion look not at their

capacity to endure, but the duties allotted to them (would that husbands

and fathers did not so often leave it to the tombstone to call their

attention to the former). Mothers, whose fragile hands keep the domestic

treadmill in as unerring motion as if no new care was superadded in the

feeble wail of the new-born infant. Mothers whose work is literally

_never_ done; who sleep with one eye open, intrusting to no careless

hireling the precious little life. Mothers who can scarce secure to

themselves five minutes of the morning hours free from interruption, to

ask God’s help that a feeble, tried woman may hold evenly the scales of

domestic justice amid the conflicting elements of human needs and human

frailties. Now I ask you--shall any human law, for any conceivable

reason, wrest the child of such a mother from her frenzied clasp?

Shall any human law give into a man’s hand, though that man be the

child’s own father, the sole right to its direction and disposal? Has

not she, who suffered, martyr-like, these crucifying pains--these

wearisome days and sleepless nights, _earned_ this her sweet reward?

Shall any virtuous woman, who is in the full possession of her mental

faculties, how poor soever she may be, be _beggared_ by robbing her of

that which has been, and, thank God! will be the salvation of many a

down-trodden wife?

“AND YE SHALL CALL THE SABBATH A DELIGHT.”

I like to throw open the windows of my soul on Sabbath morning--air it

of the week’s fret, and toil, and care--and beckon in the white-winged

dove of Peace to sing me a song of heaven. I like to go to church; it is

to me like turning from the dusty highway of life into green fields,

and, under the friendly shade of some sheltering tree, gazing, through

its leafy canopy, into the serene blue depths above. The holy hymn

soothes me like a mother’s lullaby to her weary child. I care not to

read the words of the book which custom places in my hands. I would

listen, with closed eyes, while my soul syllables its own secret burden;

floating away on that melody to Him who has given us this blessed day of

rest; and as the last note dies away, I would cross the sacred

threshold, hugging to my heart this holy peace; nor stay to listen to

the cold, theoretical, charnel-house sermons to which, Sunday after

Sunday--vary the church as I may--I feel myself, unless I do this, a

disappointed, disheartened, and wearied listener. No earnestness, no

life, no soul; long, dry, windy, wordy skeleton-discourses; tame

platitudes, disgusting rant, a school-boy’s parrot-lesson, injudicious

depreciation of a world which is sweet to live in, and fair to see;

injudicious denunciation of innocent, youthful pleasures--proper and

healthful for life’s young spring-time; an ascetic rendering of that

Blessed Book which is, has been, and will be, the soul’s life-boat,

spite of its listless and blundering clerical expositors--many of whom

offer us a Procrustean bed of theology, too short for any healthy

creature of God to stretch himself upon. Who can wonder at the rebound?

Who can wonder that our young people pass by the church-door, or cross

its threshold compulsorily? or that their decorous seniors enter it but

to sleep?

A few Sabbaths since I chanced into a church where a hundred and fifty

children were assembled for the afternoon service, to be addressed as

Sunday-school scholars. The out-door air was a luxury to breathe--it was

one of those lovely spring days, which woo every living thing to bask in

the warm sunshine. These children, many of them under four, none over

fifteen, perspiring in their out-door clothing, were closely packed in

those high-backed, uncomfortable seats--their cheeks at fever heat, and

every pore in their crucified bodies crying out for ventilation and

common sense--neither of which they had for a mortal hour-and-a-half, to

speak within bounds. In vain did teachers frown, and nudge, and poke--in

vain did the well-meaning but stupidest of possible ministers pound the

pulpit cushions, to impress upon their memories, by gesticulation, his

long-winded sentences; they were all written--as they deserved to be--in

water. Flesh and blood couldn’t stand it--_least of all that most

unperverted, critical, and discerning of audiences--childhood_!

That preacher, in my opinion (and I ached to tell him so), did more

harm in that hour and a half than he can remedy in a life-time. This may

seem a bold assertion. _I_ think not. One hundred and fifty little

children to carry away with them from that church (not only for that

afternoon, but for a long life of Sundays), a disgust of that blessed

day, and what _should_ be its sweet and holy services. But what is the

use of talking? Every great and good cause is sure to be knocked in the

head by some blunderbuss. Why didn’t that man tell those children some

_short_, simple story that the youngest child there could understand,

appreciate, and be interested in? Why didn’t he open wide the

church-doors before their attention and interest flagged? Why so

enamored of the sound of his own voice, as to keep those steaming,

par-boiled little victims in that sacerdotal vapor-bath, after he had

said all he could think of to them, to address their teachers, who, if

necessary, should have had a meeting by themselves for that infliction?

And why--(I ask all of you who have not forgotten how _your_ restless

limbs ached when _you_ were children)--must _another_ minister get up

after that, and torture common-sense, and his fainting, frying auditors,

by another aimless, inflated, meaningless, and last-drop-in-the-bucket,

but (thanks to a kind Providence), _final_ address? And why didn’t

somebody seize the sexton of that church, who had compelled a hundred

and fifty children to breathe the foul air which the morning worshipers

had bequeathed, and which he was too lazy to let out the windows--why

didn’t somebody, I say, seize that sexton, and place him in an exhausted

receiver, long enough to give him some _faint_ notion of what he made

those par-boiled children suffer in that “protracted meeting?”

“COME ON, MACDUFF.”

A correspondent wishes us to “oblige a lady,” by publishing a

communication containing strictures on Fanny Fern. But, why should

we “oblige a lady” whom we do not know, and at the same time

disoblige a lady whom all the world knows?--_New York Evening

Mirror._

“Oblige a lady.” She is not the first, or the only lady, who has tried

to be “obliged,” and _obliging_, in this way. Dear creatures! how they

love me! There was Miss Moses, _proper_ Miss Moses, who had been for a

year or more writing for the _Scribetown Gazette_, when I commenced. How

delighted she was at my advent--how pleased she was with my

articles--how many things she said about me, personally and literarily,

to the editor of the _Gazette_--what an interest she took in my

progress. _She_ never tried to keep my articles out of the paper,

(benevolent soul!) “lest they should injure its reputation”--not she;

she never, when looking over the exchanges, hid away those in which my

articles were copied, and commended--not she, she never, when she found

one containing a personal attack on me (written at her own suggestion),

marked it with a double row of ink marks, and laid it in a conspicuous

place on the editor’s table--not she. She _liked_ my articles--liked

them so well, that, on several occasions, she appropriated whole

sentences and paragraphs; omitting (probably through forgetfulness), to

make the necessary quotation marks! Dove-like Miss Moses! I think I see

her now looking as though she was going to be translated (which by the

way, her works never have been.) Pious Miss Moses, who rang threadbare

changes on the ten commandments, and was addicted to meetings and

melancholy; she tried hard to extinguish me, but success makes one

magnanimous. I forgive her.

And there was Miss Fox, who “never could see any thing to like in

Fanny Fern’s articles,” who knew her to have come from a family, “who

_always_ fizzled out”--(on this point this deponent saith nothing)--but

who, when she (Miss Fox) had occasion to write a newspaper story, got

some kind friend to say in print, “that the story by Rosa, was probably

written by Fanny Fern.” Sweet Miss Fox!

Then there was Miss Briar, who “wondered if Mr. Bonner, of the New

York _Ledger_, gave Fanny Fern, _who had never been out of sight of

America_, $100 a column for her stupid trash, what he would give _her_,

Miss Briar, who had crossed the big pond, when _she_ touched pen to

paper! Fanny Fern, indeed! Humph!”

Lovely creatures! I adore the whole sex. I always prefer hotels, ferry

boats, and omnibusses, where they predominate, and abound; how courteous

they are to each other, in case of a squeeze! Lord bless ’em! How truly

Burns says:

“Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears

Her noblest work she classes, O:

Her ’prentice han’ she tried on man,

And then she made the lasses, O.

_The sweetest hours that e’er I spend

Are spent amang the lasses, O._”

LOOK ALOFT.

You are “discouraged!” _You?_ with strong limbs, good health, the

green earth beneath your feet, and the broad blue sky above?

“Discouraged?” and why? You are poor, unknown, friendless, obscure,

unrecognized, and alone in this great swarming metropolis; the rich man

suffocates you with the dust of his pretentious chariot wheels.

As you are now, so once was he. Did he waste time whining about it?

No, by the rood! or he would not now be President of the Bank before

which he once sold beer at a penny a glass, to thirsty cabmen and

newsboys. For shame, man! get up and shake yourself, if you are not

afraid such a mass of inanity will fall to pieces. Cock your hat on your

head, torn rim and all; elbow your way through the crowd; if they don’t

move for you, _make_ them do it; push past them; you have as much right

in the world as your neighbor. If you wait for him to take you by the

hand, the grass will grow over your grave. Rush past him and get

employment. “You have tried, and failed.” So have thousands before you,

who, to-day, are pecuniarily independent. I have the most unqualified

disgust of a man who folds his hands at every obstacle, instead of

leaping over it; or who dare not do any thing under heaven, unless it be

to blaspheme God, wrong his neighbor, or dishonor woman.

I tell you, if you are determined, you _can_ get employment; but you

won’t get it by cringing round the doors of rich relations; you won’t

get it if you can’t dine on a crust, month after month, and year after

year, if need be, with hope for a dessert; you won’t get it if you stand

with your lazy hands in your pockets, listening to croakers; you won’t

do it if you don’t raise your head above every billow of discouragement

which dashes over you, and halloo to Fate, with a stout heart: “Try

again, old fellow!” No--and it is not right you should--you are good for

nothing but to go sniveling through the world, making wry faces at the

good fortune of other people. Bah! I’m disgusted with you.

* * * * *

_You_ despair. Why? “You are a widow.” Of how much sorrow is that

little word the voice? Oh! I know, poor mourner, how dark earth looks to

you. I know that sun and stars mock you with their brightness. I know

that you shut out the placid moonbeams, and pray to die. Listen! Are

there no bleeding hearts but yours? Your dead sleep peacefully; their

tears are all shed; their sighs all heaved; their weary hands folded

over quiet hearts; but oh, repiner! the _living_ sorrows that are

masked beneath the smiling faces you envy! the corroding bitterness of a

_dishonored_ hearth-stone; the mantle all too narrow, all too scant, to

hide from prying, malignant eyes, the torturing secret!--bone of your

bone, flesh of your flesh, and yet, stranger to you than the savage of

the desert--colder to you than the dead for whom you so repiningly

grieve. Ah! are there no bleeding hearts save yours? Is the “last vial”

emptied on your shrinking head?

But your little children stand looking into your tear-stained face,

imploring you for bread--bread that you know not where to procure; your

ear aches for the kind words which never come to you. Oh, where is your

faith in God? Who says to you in accents sweeter than ever fell from

human lips: “A bruised reed will I not break;” “Let your widows trust in

me.” No kind words? Is it nothing, that those musical little voices call

you “mother?” Is the clasp of those soft arms, the touch of those velvet

lips, nothing? Is it thus you teach them to put their little hands into

that of the Almighty Father, and say, “Give us this day our daily

bread?” Oh, get on your knees before those sweet little teachers, who

know no danger--no harm, who fear no evil while “mother” is near, and

learn of them to watch, and hope, and trust; for sure as the sun shines

above your and their heads, so sure is _His_ promise to those who

believingly claim it.

“Lonely,” are you? Oh, above all loneliness is his, who, having thrown

away his faith in God, and bereft of earthly idols, stands like some

lightning-reft tree, blossomless, verdureless, scathed, and blasted!

KNICKERBOCKER AND TRI-MOUNTAIN.

The New York woman doteth on rainbow hats and dresses, confectionery,

the theater, the opera, and flirtation. She stareth gentlemen in the

street out of countenance, in a way that puzzleth a stranger to decide

the question of her respectability. The New York woman thinketh it

well-bred to criticise _in an audible tone_ the dress and appearance of

every chance lady near her, in the street, shop, ferry-boat, car, or

omnibus. If doubtful of the material of which her dress is composed, she

draweth near, examineth it microscopically, and pronounceth it--“after

all--silk.” The New York woman never appeareth without a dress-hat and

flounces, though the time be nine o’clock in the morning, and her

destination the grocer’s, to order some superfine tea. She delighteth in

embroidered petticoats, which she liberally displayeth to curious bipeds

of the opposite sex. She turneth up her nose at a delaine, wipeth up the

pavement with a thousand-dollar silk, and believeth point-lace collars

and handkerchiefs essential to salvation. She scorneth to ride in an

omnibus, and if driven by an impertinent shower therein, sniffeth up

her aristocratic nose at the plebeian occupants, pulleth out her costly

gold watch to--ascertain the time! and draweth off her gloves to show

her diamonds. Arrived at Snob avenue, she shaketh off the dust of her

silken flounces against her fellow-travelers, trippeth up her

aristocratic steps, and holding up her dress sufficiently high to

display to the retreating passengers her silken hose, and dainty boot,

resigneth her parasolette to black John, and maketh her triumphant exit.

At the opera, the New York woman taketh the most conspicuous box,

spreadeth out her flounces to their fullest circumference, and

betrayeth a constant and vulgar consciousness that she is in her

go-to-meetin-fixins, by arranging her bracelets and shawl, settling her

rings, and fiddling at her coiffure, and the lace kerchief on her neck.

She also talketh incessantly during the opera, to show that she is not a

novice to be amused by it; and leaveth with much bustle, just before the

last act, for the same reason, and also to display her toilette.

On Sunday morning, the New York woman taketh all the jewelry she can

collect, and in her flashiest silk and bonnet, taketh her velvet-bound,

gilt-clasped prayer-book out for an airing. Arrived at Dives’ church,

she straightway kneeleth and boweth her head; not, as the uninitiated

may suppose, to pray, but privately to arrange her curls; this done, and

raising her head, she sayeth, “we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord!”

while she taketh a minute inventory of the Hon. Mrs. Peters’s Parisian

toilette. After church, she taketh a turn or two in Fifth Avenue, to

display her elaborate dress, and to wonder “why vulgar people don’t

confine themselves to the Bowery.”

THE BOSTON WOMAN.

The Boston woman draweth down her mouth, rolleth up her eyes, foldeth

her hands, and walketh on a crack. She rejoiceth in anatomical and

chemical lectures. She prateth of Macaulay and Carlyle; belongeth to

many and divers reading-classes, and smileth in a chaste, moonlight kind

of way on literary men. She dresseth (to her praise be it spoken)

plainly in the street, and considereth india-rubbers, a straw bonnet,

and a thick shawl, the fittest costume for damp and cloudy weather. She

dresseth her children more for comfort than show, and bringeth them up

also to walk on a crack. She maketh the tour of the Common twice or

three times a day, without regard to the barometer. She goeth to church

twice or three times on Sunday, sandwiched with Bible-classes and

Sabbath-schools. She thinketh London, Vienna, or Paris--fools to Boston;

and the “Boulevards” and “Tuilleries” not to be mentioned with the Frog

Pond and the Common. She is well posted up as to politics--thinketh,

“as Pa does,” and sticketh to it through thunder and lightning. When

asked to take a gentleman’s arm, she hooketh the tip of her little

finger circumspectly on to his male coat-sleeve. She is as prim as a

bolster, as stiff as a ram-rod, as frigid as an icicle, and not even

matrimony with a New Yorker could thaw her.

THE NEW YORK MALE.

The New York male exulteth in fast horses, stylish women, long-legged

hounds, a coat-of-arms, and liveried servants. Beside, or behind him,

may be seen his servant, with folded arms and white gloves, driven out

daily by his master, to inhale the gutter breezes of Broadway, to excite

the wonder of the curious, and to curl the lips of republicanism. The

New York male hath many and divers garments; some of which he weareth

bob-tailed; some shanghai, some with velvet collars, some with silk;

anon turned up; anon turned down; and some carelessly a-la-flap. The New

York male breakfasteth late, owing to pressing engagements which keep

him abroad after midnight. About twelve the next morning he lighteth a

cigar to assist his blear-eyes to find the way down-town; and with his

hands in his pockets, and arms akimbo, he navigateth tortuously around

locomotive “hoops;”--indefatigably pursueth a bonnet for several blocks,

to get a peep it its owner; nor getteth discouraged at intervening

parasols, or impromptu shopping errands; nor thinketh his time or shoe

leather wasted. The New York male belongeth to the most ruinous club and

military company; is a connoisseur in gold sleeve-buttons, and

seal-rings, and diamond studs. He cometh into the world with an

eye-glass and black ribbon winked into his left eye, and prideth himself

upon having broken all the commandments before he arrived at the dignity

of coat-tails.

THE BOSTON MALE.

The Boston male is respectable all over; from the crown of his glossy

hat to the soles of his shiny shoes; and huggeth his mantle of

self-esteem inseparably about him, that he may avoid contaminating

contact with the non-elect of his “set.” The Boston male is for the most

part good-looking; and a stanch devotee of starch and buckram; he

patronizeth jewelry but sparingly, and _never discerneth a diamond in

the rough_. If, as Goethe sayeth, “the unconscious is the alone

complete,” then is the male Bostonian yet in embryo. He taketh, and

readeth all the newspapers and magazines, foreign and domestic; and yet,

strange to say, sweareth by the little tea-table “Transcript.” When the

Boston male traveleth he weareth his best clothes; arrived at his

destination he putteth up at the most showy hotel, ordereth the most

expensive rooms and edibles, and maketh an unwonted “splurge” generally.

He then droppeth the proprieties--_pro tem._--being seized with an

anatomical desire to dissect the great sores of the city; fancying, like

the ostrich, that if his head only be hidden, he is undiscernible.

The Boston male is conservative as a citizen, prosaic as a lover;

hum-drum as a husband, and hath no sins--_to speak of_!

MY OLD INK-STAND AND I;

OR, THE FIRST ARTICLE IN THE NEW HOUSE.

Well, old Ink-stand, what do you think of this? Haven’t we got well

through the woods, hey? A few scratches and bruises we have had, to be

sure, but what of that? Didn’t you whisper where we should come out, the

first morning I dipped my pen in your sable depths, in the sky-parlor of

that hyena-like Mrs. Griffin? With what an eagle glance she discovered

that my bonnet-ribbon was undeniably guilty of two distinct washings,

and, emboldened by my shilling de laine, and the shabby shoes of little

Nell, inquired “if I intended taking in slop-work into _her_

apartments?” How distinctly I was made to understand that Nell was not

to speak above a whisper, or in any way infringe upon the rights of her

uncombed, unwashed, unbaptized, uncomfortable little Griffins. Poor

little Nell, who clung to my gown with childhood’s instinctive

appreciation of the hard face and wiry voice of our jailor. With what

venom I overheard her inform Mr. Griffin that “they must look sharp for

the rent of their sky-parlor, as its tenant lived on bread and milk, and

wore her under-clothes rough-dry, because she could not afford to pay

for ironing them!” Do you remember _that_, old Ink-stand? And do you

remember the morning she informed me, as you and I were busily engaged

in out first article, that I must “come and scrub the stairs which led

up to my room;” and when I ventured humbly to mention, that this was not

spoken of in our agreement, do you remember the Siddons-like air with

which she thundered in our astonished ears--“Do it, or tramp!” And do

you remember how you vowed “if I did tramp,” you would stand by me, and

help me out of the scrape? and haven’t you _done_ it, old Ink-stand? And

don’t you wish old Griffin, and all the little Griffins, and their

likes, both big and little, here and elsewhere, could see this bran-new

house that you have helped me into, and the dainty little table upon

which I have installed you, untempted by any new papier-mache modern

marvel?

Turn my back on _you_, old Ink-stand! Not I. Throw you aside, for your

shabby exterior, as we were thrown aside, when it was like drawing

teeth to get a solitary shilling to buy you at a second-hand shop?

Perish the thought!

Yes, old Ink-stand, Griffin and all that crew, should see us now.

Couldn’t we take the wind out of their sails? Couldn’t we come into

their front door, instead of their “back gate?” Didn’t they “_always

know_ that there was something in us?” We can forgive them, though,

can’t we? By the title deed, and insurance policy, of this bran-new

pretty house, which their sneers have helped us into, and whose doors

shall always be open to those who have cheered us on, we’ll do it.

Dropped many a tear into you, have I? Well--who cares? You know, very

well, that every rough word aimed at my quivering ears, was an extra

dollar in my purse; every rude touch of my little Nell, strength and

sinew to my unstrung nerves and flagging muscles. I say, old Ink-stand,

look at Nell now! Does any landlady lay rough hands on those plump

shoulders? Dare she sing and run, and jump and play to her heart’s

content? Didn’t you yourself buy her that hoop and stick, and those

dolls, and that globe of gold-fish? Don’t you feed and clothe her, every

day of her sunshiny life? Haven’t you agreed to do it, long years to

come? and won’t you teach her, as you have me, to defy false friends,

and ill-fortune? And won’t you be to my little Nell a talisman, when my

eyes grow dim, and hers brighten? Say, old Ink-stand?

THE SOUL--AND THE STOMACH.

There is a good old man. His head is white--his form is bent--his step

slow and tremulous. Life has no charms for him, and the opening grave is

full of terrors; he wanders up and down--up and down--wringing his

withered hands, and says, “I have committed the unpardonable sin; I am

lost--lost--lost.” They who love him, and their name is Legion, look on

dismayed at this good father, good husband, good neighbor, good

Christian; and one of them says to me, “Why, if your God be merciful,

does he afflict his faithful servant thus? God is not good!”

God is good, though all else fail, and we, like insects, creep and

complain; God is good. It is not religion that makes the old man

gloomy--it is not that the Word of God shall not stand forever; but He

who has bid us care for the soul, bids us also care for the body. “If

one member suffer, all the other members suffer with it.” If we neglect

the laws of health, and abuse our bodies, _even in His service_, he does

not guaranty to the delinquent, a strong mind, an unperverted spiritual

vision--clouds and darkness will come between us and the Sun of

Righteousness, and though we shall feel after Him, we shall grope like

children in the dark. It is an earthly physician which such as that old

man needs; a tonic for the body, not a sermon from the pulpit. Let him

lean upon your arm; lead him forth to the green fields, where every

little bird sings God is good; where waving trees and blossoming flowers

pass the whisper round with myriad voices; take away the old man’s

psalm-book, and let him listen to that anthem, and as the soft breath of

spring lifts his white locks from his troubled brow, the film of disease

will fall from his eyes, and he, too, shall sing that God is _good_.

Never lay upon the back of Religion what Dyspepsia should shoulder.

The Christian warrior, no more than any other, can afford to neglect or

gorge his “rations” when preparing for battle; nor if either faint by

the way, in consequence, is it to be laid to the commander.

AWE-FUL THOUGHTS.

“This had, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, induced

in her that _awe_, which is the most delicious feeling a wife can

have toward her husband.”

“Awe!”--awe of a man whose whiskers you have trimmed, whose hair you

have cut, whose cravats you have tied, whose shirts you have “put into

the wash,” whose boots and shoes you have kicked into the closet, whose

dressing-gown you have worn while combing your hair; who has been down

cellar with you at eleven o’clock at night, to hunt for a chicken-bone;

who has hooked your dresses, unlaced your boots, fastened your

bracelets, and tied on your bonnet; who has stood before your

looking-glass, with thumb and finger on his proboscis, scraping his

chin; whom you have buttered, and sugared, and toasted, and tea-ed; whom

have seen asleep with his mouth wide open! Ri--diculous!

A WORD TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS.

Why _will_ New York women be eternally munching cake and

confectionery? What is more disgusting than to see a lady devouring at a

sitting, ounces of burnt almonds, and sugared wine and brandy-drops, or

packing away, in her rosy mouth, uncounted platesful of jelly-cake or

maccaroons? “But shopping is hungry business;” that is true, and many a

shopper comes hungry distances to perform it; but are cake and

confectionery wholesome diet between meals? and is not ice-cream at such

a time rank poison? Call for a sandwich or a roll, and you may not be

considered suicidal.

Every body knows that young girls are foreordained to go through a

regular experience in eating slate-pencils, burnt quills, pickles, and

chalk; but this green age passed, one looks for a little common sense. I

have often seen New York women, not content with ruining their own

constitution in this way (and consequently periling their prospective

offspring), buy, before leaving the confectioner’s shop, five or six

pounds of candy for _nursery distribution_, and ask Betty, the next day

(the sapient mother!), “what can ail those children to fret so?” It were

more merciful to purchase a dose of strychnine, and put an immediate end

to their misery, than thus murder them by inches. Are the rosy, robust,

beautiful English children, candy-fed? Are they suffered to gorge

themselves on hot bread, preserves, cake and pastry, _ad libitum_? Do

they have any thing but the plainest puddings, the stalest bread, and

the most unmitigated roast and boiled meat, unpoisoned by those

dyspepsia-breeding gravies of ours?

It is pitiful, this dwarfing of American children with improper food,

want of exercise, and cork-screw clothes. It is inhuman to require of

their enfeebled minds and bodies, in ill-ventilated schoolrooms, tasks

which the most vigorous child should never have imposed upon his tender

years. As if a child’s physique were not of the first importance!--as if

all the learning in the world could be put to any practical use by an

enfeebled body! As if a parent _had a right_, year after year, thus to

murder the innocents.

Think of one of those candy-and-cake-fed young girls, bending over her

tasks in school, from nine o’clock till three, with perhaps ten or

fifteen minutes intermission (spent in the close air of the

school-room) and two days out of a week at three, after another ten

minutes’ intermission, and another cake-and-candy feed, commencing

drawing, or music lessons, to last till five; her mother, meanwhile,

rocking away as comfortably, in her chair at home, as if her daughter’s

spine were not crooking irretrievably. I will not speak of the utter

impossibility that this young girl should have a _steady hand_ for

drawing, under such circumstances, because any fool can understand that

to be impossible.

I ask what _right_ have you to require of your child, your growing,

restless child, what it would be impossible for you to do yourself? You

know very well that you could not keep your mind on the stretch for so

many hours to any profit; or your body in one position for such a length

of time, without excessive pain and untold weariness. Then add to this

the tasks which must be conned on the return home for the next day’s

lesson, and one marvels no longer at the sickly, sallow, narrow-chested,

leaden-eyed young girls we are in the habit of meeting.

What _would_ I have? I would have teachers less selfishly consult

their own convenience, in insisting upon squeezing into the forenoon

what should be divided between forenoon and afternoon, as in the good

old-fashioned way of keeping school, with time to eat a wholesome dinner

between. A teacher’s established constitution may possibly stand this

modern nonsense (though I am told not long); but that _children_ should

be thus victimized, without at least a remonstrance on the part of their

natural guardians, I can only ascribe to the criminal indifference of

parents to the welfare of their offspring.

LADY DOCTORS.

And so the female doctors are prospering and getting practice. I am

sure I am heartily glad of it, for several reasons; one of which is,

that it is an honest and honorable deliverance from the everlasting,

non-remunerating, consumptive-provoking, monotonous needle. Another is,

that it is a more excellent way of support, than by the mercenary and

un-retraceable road, through the church-door to the altar, into which so

many non-reliant women are driven. Having said this I feel at liberty to

remark that we all have our little fancies, and one of mine is, that a

hat is a pleasanter object of contemplation in a sick-room than a

bonnet. I think, too, that my wrist reposes more comfortably in a big

hand than a little one, and if my mouth is to be inspected, I prefer

submitting it to a beard than to a flounce. Still, this may be a narrow

prejudice--I dare say it is--but like most of my prejudices, I am afraid

no amount of fire will burn it out of me.

A female doctor! Great Esculapius! Before swallowing her pills (of

which she would be the first), I should want to make sure that I had

never come between her and a lover, or a new bonnet, or been the

innocent recipient of a gracious smile from her husband. If I desired

her undivided attention to my case, I should first remove the

looking-glass, and if a consultation seemed advisable, I should wish to

arm myself with a gridiron, or a darning-needle, or some other

appropriate weapon, before expressing such a wish. If my female doctor

recommended a blister on my head, I should strongly doubt its necessity

if my hair happened to be handsome, also the expediency of a

scar-defacing plaster for my neck, if it happened to be plump and white.

Still, these may be little prejudices; very like they are; but this I

will say, before the breath is taken out of me by any female doctor,

that while I am in my senses I will never exchange my gentlemanly,

soft-voiced, soft-stepping, experienced, intelligent, handsome doctor,

for all the female M. D.’s who ever carved up dead bodies or live

characters--or tore each other’s caps.

THE CHERUB IN THE OMNIBUS.

They stepped in together--the man and his wife--honest, healthy

country-folk. She--rosy and plump; he--stalwart, broad-chested, and

strong-limbed, as God intended man and woman to be. I might not have

noticed them particularly, but they had a baby; and such a baby! None

of your flabby city abortions; but a flesh-and-blood baby--a baby to

make one’s mouth water--ay, and _eyes, too_! Such a baby as might have

been born in the Garden of Eden, had the serpent never crept in; born of

parents fed on strawberries and pomegranates--pure in soul, pure in

body, and healthy and vigorous as purity _alone_ can be.

Such a baby! such eyes--such a skin--such bewildering lips--such a

heaven-born smile; my eyes overflowed as I looked at it. I was not

worthy to hold that baby, but my heart yearned for it, and I held out my

hands invitingly.

See! the little trusting thing leaps from its father’s arms and sits

smiling on my knee. Ah! little baby, turn away those soft blue eyes from

mine; is it not enough that my soul is on its knees to you? Is it not

enough, that for every bitter word wrung from my tortured soul by wrong

and suffering, I could cry: “God be merciful to me a sinner?”

And yet, little baby, I was once like thee. Like thee, I stretched out

the trusting hand to those who----ah, little baby--I am not like thee

now; yet stay with me, and perhaps I shall be. Jesus “took a little

child and set him in the midst.” Take hold of my hand, and lead me to

heaven.

Going? then God be with thee, as surely as he has been with me, in thy

pure presence. I shall see thee again, little baby, if I heed thy

teachings; thou hast done thy silent mission.

FANNY FORD.

CHAPTER I.

It was a mad freak of dame Nature to fashion Mary Ford after so dainty a

model, and then open her blue eyes in a tumble-down house in Peck-lane.

But Mary cares little for that. Fortune has given her wheel a whirl

since then, and Jacob Ford is now on the top. Mary sees the young and

the old, the grave and the gay, the wise and the ignorant, smile on her

sweet face; as she passes, men murmur “beautiful,” and women pick flaws

in her face and figure. She can not sleep for serenades, and her little

room is perfumed, from May to January, with the rarest of hot-house

flowers. Lovers, too, come wooing by the score. And yet, Mary is no

coquette; no more than the sweet flower, which nods, and sways, and

sends forth its perfume for very joy that it blossoms in the bright

sunshine, all unconscious how it tempts the passer-by to pluck it for

his own wearing. A queenly girl was the tailor’s daughter, with her

Juno-like figure, her small, well-shaped head, poised so daintily on the

fair white throat; with her large blue eyes, by turns brilliant as the

lightning’s flash, then soft as a moonbeam; with her pretty mouth, and

the dimple which lay _perdu_ in the corner, with the flossy waves of her

dark brown hair; with her soft, white hands, and twinkling little feet;

with her winsome smile, and floating grace of motion.

Percy Lee was conquered. Percy--who had withstood blue eyes and black,

gray eyes and hazel. Percy--for whom many a fair girl had smiled and

pouted in vain. Percy the bookworm. Percy--handsome as Apollo, cold as

Mont Blanc. Percy Lee was fettered at last, and right merrily did

mischievous Cupid forge, one by one, his chains for the stoic. No poor

fish ever so writhed and twisted on the hook, till the little word was

whispered which made him in lover’s parlance, “the happiest of men.”

Of course, distanced competitors wondered what Mary Ford could see to

admire in that book-worm of a Percy. Of course, managing mammas, with

marriageable daughters, were shocked that Miss Ford should have angled

for him so transparently; and the young ladies themselves marveled that

the aristocratic Percy should fancy a tailor’s daughter; of course the

lovers, in the seventh heaven of their felicity, could afford to let

them think and say what they pleased.

The torpid sexagenarian, or frigid egotist, may sneer; but how

beautiful is this measureless first love, before distrust has chilled,

or selfishness blighted, or the scorching sun of worldliness evaporated

the heart’s dew; when we trust with childhood’s sweet faith, because we

love; when care and sorrow are undiscernible shapes in the distance;

when at every footstep we ring the chime of joy from out the flowers.

What can earth offer after this sparkling draught has been quaffed? How

stale its after spiritless effervescences!

Percy’s love for Mary was all the more pure and intense, that he had

hitherto kept his heart free from youthful entanglements. Fastidious and

refined to a degree, perhaps this with him was as much a matter of

necessity as of choice. In Mary both his heart and taste were satisfied;

true, he sometimes wondered how so delicate and dainty a flower should

have blossomed from out so rude a soil; for her father’s money could

neither obliterate nor gild over the traces of his innate vulgarity; in

fact, his love for his daughter was his only redeeming trait--the only

common ground upon which the father and lover could meet. The petty

accumulation of fortune by the penny, had narrowed and hardened a heart

originally good and unselfish; the love of gold for its own sake had

swallowed up every other thought and feeling. Like many persons of

humble origin, whose intellects have not expanded with their coffers,

Jacob Ford overrated the accident of birth and position, and hence was

well pleased with Mary’s projected alliance with Percy.

“Well, to be sure, Lucy, beauty _is_ a great thing for a girl,” he one

day said to his wife. “I did not dream of this when Mary used to climb

up on the counter of my little dark shop in Peck-lane, and sit playing

with the goose and shears.”

“Nor I,” replied Lucy, as she looked around their handsome apartment,

with a satisfied smile; “nor I, Jacob, when, after paying me one

Saturday night for my week’s work, you said, ‘Lucy, you can be mistress

of this shop if you like.’ I was _so_ proud and happy: for, indeed, it

was lonesome enough, Jacob, stitching in that gloomy old garret I often

used to think how dreadful it would be to be sick and die there alone,

as poor Hetty Carr did. It was a pity, Jacob, you did not pay her more,

and she so weakly, too. Often she would sit up all night, sewing, with

that dreadful cough racking her.”

“Tut--tut--wife,” said Jacob; “she was not much of a seamstress; you

always had a soft heart, Lucy, and were easily imposed upon by a whining

story.”

“It was too true, Jacob; and she had been dead a whole day before any

one found it out; then, as she had no friends, she was buried at the

expense of the city, and the coffin they brought was too short for her,

and they crowded her poor thin limbs into it, and carried her away in

the poor’s hearse. Sometimes, Jacob, I get very gloomy when I think of

this, and look upon our own beautiful darling; and, sometimes,

Jacob--you won’t be angry with me?” asked the good woman, coaxingly, as

she laid her hand upon his arm--“sometimes I’ve thought our money would

never do us any good.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Jacob, impatiently shaking off his wife’s hand;

“pshaw, Lucy, you are like all other women, weak and superstitious. A

man must look out for number one. Small profits a body would make to

conduct business on your principles. Grab all you can, keep all you get,

is every body’s motto; why should I set up to be wiser than my

neighbors?”

Lucy Ford sighed. A wife is very apt to be convinced by her husband’s

reasoning, if she loves him; and perhaps Lucy might have been, had she

not herself known what it was to sit stitching day after day in her

garret, till her young brain reeled, and her heart grew faint and sick,

or lain in her little bed, too weary even to sleep, listening to the

dull rain as it pattered on the skylight, and wishing she were dead.

A pressure of soft lips upon her forehead, and a merry laugh, musical

as the ringing of silver bells, roused Lucy from her reverie.

“Good-by--mother dear,” said Mary; “I could not go to ride with Percy

without a kiss from you. Come to the window--look! Are not those pretty

horses of Percy’s? They skim the ground like birds! And see what a

pretty carriage! Now acknowledge that my lover’s taste is perfect.”

“Yes--when he chose you,” said Jacob, gazing admiringly on Mary’s

bright face and graceful form. “You would grace a court, Mary, if you

are old Jacob Ford’s daughter.”

Mary threw her arms around the old man’s neck, and kissed his bronze

cheek. To her the name of father was another name for love; nurtured in

this kindly atmosphere, she could as little comprehend how a child could

cease to worship a parent, as she could comprehend how a parent, when

his child asked for bread, should mock his misery with a stone.

Unspoiled by the world’s flatteries, she had not learned to undervalue

her doting father’s love, that it was expressed in ungrammatical phrase;

she had not yet learned to blush at any old-fashioned breach of

etiquette (on his part), in the presence of her fastidious young

friends; and by her marked deference to her parents in their presence,

she in a measure exacted the same from them. It was one of the loveliest

traits in Mary’s character, and one for which Percy, who appreciated her

refinement, loved and respected her the more.

* * * * *

“Have your fortune told, lady?” asked a withered old woman, of Mary,

as she tripped down the steps to join Percy.

“Of course,” said the laughing girl: “suppose you tell me whom I am to

marry,” with a gay glance at Percy; and she ungloved her small white

hand, while the dame’s withered fingers traced its delicate lines.

“Retribution is written here,” said the old woman, solemnly; “your sun

will set early, fair girl.”

“Come away, Mary,” said Percy, with a frown, shaking his whip at the

woman, “the old thing is becrazed.”

“Time will show,” muttered the beldame, pocketing the coin with which

Mary had crossed her hand; “time will show; brighter eyes than yours,

fair lady, have wept themselves dim.”

“What can she mean?” said Mary, drawing involuntarily close to the

side of her lover. “I almost wish we had not seen her.”

The spirits of youth are elastic. The April cloud soon passed from

Mary’s brow, and before the fleet horses had skimmed a mile, her laugh

rang out as merrily as ever.

The lovers had both a trained eye for natural beauty, and the lovely

road through which they passed, with its brown houses half hidden in

foliage--the lazy grazing cattle--the scent of new-mown hay and breath

of flowers--the rude song of the plowman and the delicate twitter of the

bird--the far-off hills, with their tall trees distinctly defined

against the clear blue sky--the silver stream and velvet meadows--the

wind’s wild anthem, now swelling as if in full chorus, then soft and

sweet as the murmur of a sleeping babe, all filled their hearts with a

quiet joy.

“Life is very sweet,” said Mary, turning her lustrous eyes upon her

lover. “People say that happiness and prosperity harden the heart; when

I am most blest I feel most devotional. In vain might the infidel tell

me ‘there is no God,’ with such a scene as this before me, or fetter my

grateful heart-pulses as they adored the Giver.”

“You dear little saint,” said Percy, with a light laugh, “how well you

preach. Well--my mother was neck-deep in religion; the prayers and hymns

she taught me, stay by me now, whether I will or no. I often catch

myself saying ‘Now I lay me,’ when I go to bed, from the mere force of

habit; but your rosy lips were never made to mumble pater nosters, Mary:

leave that to crafty priests, and disappointed nuns. Religion, my pet,

is another name for humbug, all the world over; your would-be-saint

always cheats in proportion to the length of his face and his prayers.

Bah! don’t let us talk of it.”

“Don’t--dear Percy,” said Mary. “I like you less well when you talk

so; religion is the only sure basis of character. Every superstructure

not built on this foundation--”

“Must topple over, I suppose,” said Percy. “Don’t you believe it, my

angel. I am a living example to the contrary; but Cupid knows I would

subscribe to any article of faith emanating from your rosy lips;” and

Percy drew rein at the door of his father-in-law’s mansion, and leaping

out, assisted Mary to alight.

* * * * *

“Such a lovely drive as we have had, dear mother,” said Mary, throwing

her hat upon the table. “Percy has just gone off with a client on

business; he will be back presently. Dear Percy! he’s just the best

fellow in the world--a little lax on religious points, but he loves me

well enough to be influenced there. Now I will sit down at this window

while I sew, and then I shall see Percy when he comes up the street.”

Nimbly her fingers moved; her merry song keeping time the while. Now a

blush flitting over her cheek, then a smile dimpling it. She was

thinking of their beautiful home that _was_ to be, and how like a fairy

dream her life would pass, with that deep, rich voice lingering ever in

her ear; cares, if they came, lightened by each other’s presence, or

turned to joys by mutual sympathy. And then, she was so _proud_ of him;

A woman’s love is so deepened by that thought.

God pity her, who, with a great soul, indissolubly bound, must walk

ever backward with a mantle (alas! all too transparent), to cover her

husband’s mental nakedness!

CHAPTER II.

“A gentleman, sir, to see you,” said a servant to Jacob Ford, as he

ushered in his old friend, Mr. Trask.

“Ah, Trask, how are you? Glad to see you,” said Jacob, with one of his

vice-like shakes of the hand. “Come for a rubber at whist? That’s right.

I was thinking to-day, how long it was since you and I had a quiet hour

together. How’s trade, Trask? You _ought_ to be making money. Why,

what’s the matter, man?” clapping him on the shoulder; “never saw you

this way before; hang me if you don’t look as solemn as old Parson

Glebe. Why don’t you speak? Why do you stare at me so?”

“Jacob,” replied Mr. Trask, and there he stopped.

“Well--that’s my name; Jacob Ford: as good a name as you’ll find on

’change. I never have done any thing to make me ashamed of it.”

“I wish every body could say as much,” said Trask, gravely.

“What are you driving at?” asked Jacob Ford; “don’t talk riddles to

me--they get me out of temper. If you have any thing to tell, out with

it. I’ve seen fifty years’ wear and tear; I’m not frightened by

trifles.”

“But this is no trifle, Ford. I can’t do it,” said the soft-hearted Mr.

Trask. “Jacob, my old friend--I--can’t do it,” and he sat down and

covered his face with his hands.

“Come--come,” said Jacob; “take heart, man. If you have got into a

scrape, Jacob Ford is not the man to desert an old friend; if a few

hundreds or more will set it all right, you shall have it.”

“For God’s sake, stop,” said Trask; “the shadow has fallen on _your_

threshold, not on _mine_.”

“Mine?” replied Jacob, with a bewildered look. “Mine? defalcations?

banks broke? hey? Jacob Ford a beggar, after fifty years’ toil?”

“Worse--worse,” said Trask, making a violent effort to speak. “Percy

Lee is arrested for embezzlement, and I have proofs of his guilt.

There--now I’ve said it.”

“Man! do you _know_ this?” said Jacob, in a hoarse whisper, putting

his white lips close to his friend’s ear, as if he feared the very walls

would tell the secret.

“Before God, ’tis true,” said Trask, solemnly.

“Then God’s curse light on the villain,” said Jacob Ford. “My Mary--my

bright, beautiful Mary! Oh! who will tell _her_? Listen, Trask, that’s

her voice--singing. Oh, God--oh God, this is too dreadful”--and the old

man bowed his head upon his breast, and wept like a child.

“What does all this mean?” asked Lucy Ford, opening the door.

“Jacob--husband--Trask--what is it?” and she looked from one to the

other, in bewildered wonder.

“Tell her, Trask,” whispered Jacob.

“Don’t weep so, dear Jacob,” said Lucy; “if money has gone, we can

both go to work again; we both know how. Mary will soon have a home of

her own.”

Jacob sprang to his feet, and seizing Lucy by the arm, hissed in her

ear, “Woman, don’t you name him. May God’s curse blight him. May he die

alone. May his bones bleach in the winds of heaven, and his soul be

forever damned. Lucy--Percy Lee is a--a--swindler! There--now go break

_her_ heart, if you can. Lucy?--Trask?”--and Jacob, overcome with the

violence of his feelings, wept again like a child; while poor Lucy,

good Lucy, hid her face on her husband’s breast, repressing her own

anguish that she might not add to his.

“Who’s going to tell _her_, I say?” said Jacob. “May my tongue wither

before I do it. My darling--my loving, beautiful darling--who will tell

her?”

“I,” said the mother, with ashen lips, as she raised herself slowly

from her husband’s breast, and moved toward the door.

Clutching at the balustrade for support, Lucy dragged herself slowly

up stairs. Ah! well might she reel to and fro as she heard Mary’s voice:

“Bring flowers, bring flowers for the bride to wear,

They were born to blush in her shining hair;

She is leaving the home of her childhood’s mirth,

She hath bid farewell to her father’s hearth,

Her place is now by another’s side;

Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride.”

A trembling hand was laid upon Mary’s shoulder. She shook back her

long bright hair, and looked smilingly up into her mother’s face.

“Mary,” said Lucy, solemnly, “you will never marry Percy Lee.”

“Dead? Percy dead? Oh--no--no,” gasped the poor girl. “_My_

Percy!--no--no!”

“Worse--worse,” said Lucy, throwing her protecting arms around her

child. “Mary, Percy Lee is a swindler; he is unworthy of you; you must

forget him.”

“Never,” said Mary--“never! Who _dare_ say that? Where is he?--take me

to him;” and she sunk fainting to the floor.

“I have killed her,” said the weeping mother, as she chafed her cold

temples, and kissed her colorless lips. “I have killed her,” she

murmured, bending over her, as Mary passed from one convulsive fit to

another.

“Will she die, Jacob?” asked Lucy, looking mournfully up into her

husband’s pallid face. “Will she die, Jacob?”

“Better so,” groaned the old man. “God’s curse on him who has done

this. She was my all. What’s my gold good for, if it can not bring back

the light to _her_ eye, the peace to _her_ heart? My gold that I have

toiled for, and piled up in shining heaps: what is it good for?”

“The curse was on it, Jacob,” groaned Lucy. “Oh, Jacob, I told you so.

God forgive us; it was cankered gold.”

“Why did the villain blast _my_ home?” asked Jacob, apparently

unconscious of what Lucy had said; “kill my one ewe lamb; all Jacob had

to love--all that made him human? Lucy, I never prayed, but perhaps _He_

would hear me for her;” and he knelt by his child. “Oh God, make my soul

miserable forever, if thou wilt, but spare _her_--take the misery out of

_her_ heart.”

“If it be Thy will,” responded Lucy.

“Don’t say that, Lucy,” said Jacob. “I must have it so;--what has she

done, poor lamb?”

CHAPTER III.

Percy Lee a defaulter--a swindler! The news flew like wildfire.

“No great catch, after all,” said a rival beauty, tossing her ringlets.

“I expected something of that sort,” said a modern Solomon.

“Hope he’ll be imprisoned for life,” said a charitable tailor, whom

Jacob Ford had eclipsed, “this will bring Jacob’s pride down a trifle,

I’m thinking.”

“How lucky you did not succeed in catching him,” said a mother,

confidentially, to her daughter.

“I?” exclaimed the young lady. “I? Is it possible you can be so

stupid, mamma, as to suppose I would waste a thought on Percy Lee! I

assure you he offered himself to Mary Ford in a fit of pique at my

rejection. Don’t imagine you are in all my secrets,” said the dutiful

young lady, tossing her head. “Well--her disappearance from society is

certain--thank goodness--not that she interferes with _me_; but her

pretended simplicity is so disgusting! What the men in our set could see

to admire in her, passes me; but _chacun à son gout_.”

* * * * *

“Of course, Lee will get clear,” said a rough dray-man to his comrade.

“These big fish always flounder out of the net; it is only the minnows

who get caught. Satan! it makes me swear to think of it. I will be sure

to stand at the court-house door when he is brought for trial, and

insult him if I can. I hope the aristocratic hound will swing for it.”

“Come, now, Jo,” said his friend, taking out his penknife, and sitting

down on a stump to whittle. “You are always a railing at the

aristocracy, as you call ’em. I never knew a man who talks as you do,

who was not an aristocrat at heart, worshiping the very wealth and

station he sneered at. Don’t be a fool, John. We are far happier, or

might be, with our teams, plenty of jobs, and good health, than these

aristocrats, as you call them, who half the time are tossing on their

pillows, because this ship hasn’t arrived in port, or that land

speculation has burst up, or stocks depreciated, or some such cursed

canker at the root of all their gourds. Now there’s poor Jacob Ford; of

what use are all his riches, now his daughter’s heart is broke? And

Percy Lee, too--will his fine education and book learning get him out of

the clutches of the law? Have a little charity, Jo. It hurts a man worse

to fall from such a height into a prison, than it would you or me, from

a dray-cart. Gad--I pity him; his worst enemy couldn’t pile up the agony

any higher.”

“Pity him!” said Jo, mockingly--“a swindling rascal like that--to

break a pretty girl’s heart!”

“Jo,” said his friend, shutting up his penknife, and looking him

steadily in the eye, “have you always said no to the tempting devil in

_your_ heart? Did you never charge a stranger more than the law allows

for a job? Did no poor girl ever curse the hour she saw the light, for

your sake?”

“Well, Mr. Parson, what if all that were true?” asked Jo, with an

abortive attempt at a laugh. “I can’t see what it has to do with what we

are talking about; hang it.”

“Just this,” answered his friend. “He who is without sin, only, is to

cast the first stone.”

“O, get out,” said Jo, cracking his whip over his horse’s head, and

taking refuge, like many other cornered disputants, in flight.

* * * * *

And Percy Lee! From the hour in which he passed from the heaven of

Mary’s smile, up to the present moment, in which he paced like a caged

lion up and down his narrow bounds, what untold agonies were his! Why

had he wrecked happiness, love, honor, all in one fatal moment? Why had

he prostituted his God-given talents so madly to sin? Let those answer

who have in like manner sinned, and who have expiated that sin, by a

life-long brand upon the brow and a life-long misery in the heart. “Let

him who thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”

CHAPTER IV.

“I can’t remember,” said Mary, two months after Percy’s arrest, “I can’t

remember,” raising herself, and laying her emaciated hand upon her brow.

“Have I been sick, mamma?”

“Yes, Mary,” replied her mother, repressing her tears of joy at the

sound of her child’s voice.

“Where’s Percy, mamma?”

But before Lucy could answer, she again relapsed into stupor. Another

hour passed--there was reason in her glance. “Mamma? Percy--take me to

him”--said Mary, with a burst of tears, as she strove vainly to rise

from her couch.

“By-and-by, darling,” said her mother, coaxingly, laying her gently back

upon the pillow, as she would an infant, “by-and-by, Mary, when you are

stronger.”

“No--_now_” she replied, a spasm of pain contracting her features. “Is

he--is he--_there_? How long have I lain here?”

“Two months, Mary.”

“Two months,” exclaimed poor Mary, in terror, “two months. O, mamma,

if you ever loved me, if you want me to live--take me to him. Two

months! He will think!--O, dear, mamma, take me to Percy!”

“Yes--yes, you _shall_ go,” said Jacob, “only don’t cry. I would shed

my heart’s blood to save you one tear. You shall go, Mary, even to that

curs--”

“Well--well, I won’t say it,” said the old man, kissing her forehead;

“but mind, it is only for _your_ sake--here--Lucy, quick, she is

fainting.”

Another week passed by, poor Mary making superhuman efforts to sit up,

to gain strength to accomplish her heart’s wish. Jacob would look at

her wasted figure, till the curse rose to his lip, and then rush

suddenly from her presence.

“I did not think I could do this, even for her,” muttered Jacob, on the

morning of their visit to the prison. “I don’t know what has come over

me, Lucy--sometimes I wonder if I _am_ Jacob. I don’t care for any

thing, so she don’t grieve.”

The carriage came--in silence the sad trio moved toward the prison.

“Can’t do it,” whispered Jacob to Lucy, as they stopped before the door;

“I thought I could go in with her; but I can’t do it, not even for Mary.

The old feeling has come back. I can’t look on that man’s face without

crushing him as I would a viper;” and the old man left them in the

turnkey’s office, returned to the carriage, twitched down the blinds,

and threw himself back upon the seat.

Ah! how much the poor heart may bear! Mary sat in the prison

office--still--motionless!--but a bright spot burned upon her cheek, and

her tone was fearful in its calmness, and Lucy asked her again “if she

were strong enough to go through with it.” How distinctly the turnkey’s

clock ticked! What a quantity of false keys and other implements which

had been taken from refractory prisoners, were on exhibition in the

glass case! How the clerk stared at them as they registered their names

in the book! What a mockery for that little bird to sing in his cage,

over Mary’s head! How crushed and broken-hearted the poor woman looked

in the black bonnet, on the bench, waiting to see her prodigal son! How

sad his young wife beside her, with the unconscious baby sleeping on her

breast! The room grew smaller--the air grew stifled.

“You can go now, ma’am,” said the turnkey, rattling his keys and

addressing Lucy.

“In a moment, please,” said Lucy, with a quivering lip, as Mary fell

from her chair:--“Some water quick, please, sir”--and she untied the

strings of Mary’s hat.

“Now,” said Mary, after a pause. And again the bright spot burned upon

her cheek--and as with faltering step, she followed the turnkey, the

young wife’s tears fell on her baby’s face, while she murmured, “God

help her, and it’s my own heart that has the misery, too.”

CHAPTER IV.

The huge key grated in the lock. In the further corner of the cell,

crouched Percy--his chin in his palms, his eyes bloodshot, and his face

livid as death.

As Mary tottered through the door, Percy raised his head, and, with a

stifled groan, fell at her feet. Pressing his lips to the hem of her

robe, he waved her off with one hand, as if his touch were

contamination. Mary’s arms were thrown about his neck, and the words, “I

love you,” fell upon his doomed ear, like the far-off music of heaven.

When Percy would have spoken, Mary laid her hand upon his mouth--not

even to _her_, should he humiliate himself by confession. And so, in

tears and silence, the allotted hour passed--He only, who made the

heart, with its power to enjoy or suffer, knew with what agonizing

intensity.

“Well, I’ve seen a great many pitiful sights in my day,” said the old

jailor, as the carriage rolled away with Mary; “but never any thing that

made my eyes water like the sight of that poor young cretur. Sometimes I

think there ain’t no justice up above there, when I see the innocent

punished that way with the guilty. I hope these things will all be made

square in the other world; I can’t say they are clear to my mind here. I

get good pay here, but I’d rather scull a raft than stay here to have my

feelin’s hurt all the time this way. If I didn’t go in so strong for

justice, I should be tempted, when I think of that young woman, to

forget to lock that fellow’s cell some night. ‘Five years’ hard labor!’

_’Tis_ tough, for a gentleman born--well, supposing he got out? if he is

a limb of the devil, as some folks say, he will break her heart over

again some day or other. It would be a shorter agony to let her weep

herself dead at once. God help her.”