_To the Editor._—I am in a great dilemma, and I come to you for
counsel. I love and wish to marry a young carpenter who has been
waiting on me for two years. My father wants me to marry a literary
man fifteen years older than myself,—a very smart man I will admit,
but I fancy he is _too_ smart for me. I much prefer the young
carpenter, yet father says a marriage with the literary man would give
me the social position he fancies I would enjoy. Now, what am I to do?
What would _you_ do, if you were I?
Yours in trouble,
PRISCILLA.
Listen, gentle maiden, and ye others of her sex, to the story of
Xanthippe, the Athenian woman.
Very, very many years ago there dwelt in Athens a fruit-dealer of the
name of Kimon, who was possessed of two daughters,—the one named Helen
and the other Xanthippe. At the age of twenty, Helen was wed to
Aristagoras the tinker, and went with him to abide in his humble
dwelling in the suburbs of Athens, about one parasang’s distance from
the Acropolis. Xanthippe, the younger sister, gave promise of singular
beauty; and at an early age she developed a wit that was the marvel and
the joy of her father’s household, and of the society that was to be met
with there. Prosperous in a worldly way, Kimon was enabled to give this
favorite daughter the best educational advantages; and he was justly
proud when at the age of nineteen, Xanthippe was graduated from the
Minerva Female College with all the highest honors of her class. There
was but one thing that cast a shadow upon the old gentleman’s happiness,
and that was his pain at observing that among all Xanthippe’s
associates, there was one upon whom she bestowed her sweetest smiles;
namely, Gatippus, the son of Heliopharnes the plasterer.
“My daughter,” said Kimon, “you are now of an age when it becomes a
maiden to contemplate marriage as a serious and solemn probability:
therefore I beseech you to practise the severest discrimination in the
choice of your male associates, and I enjoin upon you to have naught to
say or to do with any youth that might not be considered an eligible
husband; for, by the dog! it is my wish to see you wed to one of good
station.”
Kimon thereupon proceeded to tell his daughter that his dearest ambition
had been a desire to unite her in marriage with a literary man. He saw
that the tendency of the times was in the direction of literature:
schools of philosophy were springing up on every side, logic and poetry
were prated in every household. Why should not the beautiful and
accomplished daughter of Kimon the fruiterer become one of that group of
geniuses who were contributing at that particular time to the glory of
Athens as the literary centre of the world? The truth was, that, having
prospered in his trade, Kimon pined for social recognition: it grieved
him that one of his daughters had wed a tinker, and he had registered a
vow with Pallas that his other daughter should be given into the arms of
a worthier man.
Xanthippe was a dutiful daughter; she had been taught to obey her
parents; and although her heart inclined to Gatippus, the son of
Heliopharnes the plasterer, she smothered all rebellious emotions, and
said she would try to do her father’s will. Accordingly, therefore,
Kimon introduced into his home one evening a certain young Athenian
philosopher,—a typical literary Bohemian of that time, one Socrates, a
creature of wondrous wisdom and ready wit. The appearance of this
suitor, presumptive if not apparent, did not particularly please
Xanthippe. Socrates was an ill-favored young man. He was tall,
raw-boned, and gangling. When he walked, he slouched; and when he sat
down, he sprawled like a crab upon its back. His coarse hair rebelled
upon his head and chin; and he had a broad, flat nose, that had been
broken in two places by the kick of an Assyrian mule. Withal, Socrates
talked delightfully; and it is not hard to imagine that Xanthippe’s
pretty face, plump figure, and vivacious manners, served as an
inspiration to the young philosopher’s wit. So it was not long ere
Xanthippe found herself entertaining a profound respect for Socrates.
At all events, Xanthippe, the Athenian beauty, was wed to Socrates the
philosopher. Putting all thought of Gatippus, the son of Heliopharnes
the plasterer, out of her mind, Xanthippe went to the temple of
Aphrodite, and was wed to Socrates. Historians differ as to the details
of the affair; but it seems generally agreed that Socrates was late at
the ceremony, having been delayed on his way to the temple by one
Diogenes, who asked to converse with him on the immortality of the soul.
Socrates stopped to talk, and would perhaps have been stopping there
still had not Kimon hunted him up, and fetched him to the wedding.
A great wedding it was. A complete report of it was written by one of
Socrates’ friends, another literary man, named Xenophon. The literary
guild, including philosophers by the score, were there in full feather,
and Xenophon put himself to the trouble of giving a complete list of
these distinguished persons; and to the report, as it was penned for
“The Athens Weekly Papyrus,” he appended a fine puff of Socrates, which
has led posterity to surmise that Socrates conferred a great compliment
on Xanthippe in marrying her. Yet, what else could we expect of this man
Xenophon? The only other thing he ever did was to conduct a retreat from
a Persian battle-field.
And now began the trials of Xanthippe, the wife of the literary man. Ay,
it was not long ere the young wife discovered, that, of all husbands in
the worlds, the literary husband was the hardest to get along with.
Always late to his meals, always absorbed in his work, always
indifferent to the comforts of home—what a trial this man Socrates must
have been! Why, half the time, poor Xanthippe didn’t know where the next
month’s rent was coming from; and as for the grocer’s and butcher’s
bills—well, between this creditor and that creditor the tormented little
wife’s life fast became a burden to her. Had it not been for her
father’s convenient fruit-stall, Xanthippe must have starved; and, at
best, fruit as a regular diet is hardly preferable to starvation. And
while she scrimped and saved, and made her own gowns, and patched up the
children’s kilts as best she might, Socrates stood around the streets
talking about the immortality of the soul and the vanity of human life!
Many times Xanthippe pined for the amusements and seductive gayeties of
social life, but she got none. The only society she knew was the prosy
men-folk whom Socrates used to fetch home with him occasionally.
Xanthippe grew to hate them, and we don’t blame her. Just imagine that
dirty old Diogenes lolling around on the furniture, and expressing his
preference for a tub; picking his teeth with his jack-knife, and smoking
his wretched cob-pipe in the parlor!
“Socrates, dear,” Xanthippe would say at times, “please take me to the
theatre to-night: I do so want to see that new tragedy by Euclydides.”
But Socrates would swear by Hercules, or by the dog, or by some other
classic object, that he had an engagement with the rhetoricians, or with
the sophists, or with Alcibiades, or with Crito, or with some of the
rest of the boys—he called them philosophers, but we know what he meant
by that.
So it was toil and disappointment, disappointment and toil, from one
month’s end to another’s; and so the years went by.
Sometimes Xanthippe rebelled; but, with all her wit, how could she
reason with Socrates, the most gifted and the wisest of all
philosophers? He had a provoking way of practising upon her the
exasperating methods of Socratic debate,—a system he had invented, and
for which he still is revered. Never excited or angry himself, he would
ply her with questions until she found herself entangled in a network of
contradictions; and then she would be driven, willy-nilly, to that last
argument of woman—“because.” Then Socrates—the brute!—would laugh at
her, and would go out and sit on the front door-steps, and look
henpecked. This is positively the meanest thing a man _can_ do!
“Look at that poor man,” said the wife of Edippus the cobbler. “I _do_
believe his wife is cruel to him: see how sad and lonesome he is.”
“Don’t play with those Socrates children,” said another matron. “Their
mother must be a dreadful shiftless creature to let her young ones run
the streets in such patched-up clothes.”
So up and down the street the neighbors gossiped—oh! it was very
humiliating to Xanthippe.
Meanwhile Helen lived in peace with Aristagoras the tinker. Their little
home was cosey and comfortable. Xanthippe used to go to see them
sometimes, but the sight of their unpretentious happiness made her even
more miserable. Meanwhile, too, Xanthippe’s old beau, Gatippus, had
married; and from Thessaly came reports of the beautiful vineyard and
the many wine-presses he had acquired. So Xanthippe’s life became
somewhat more than a struggle: it became a martyrdom. And the wrinkles
came into Xanthippe’s face, and Xanthippe’s hair grew gray, and
Xanthippe’s heart was filled with the bitterness of disappointment. And
the years, full of grind and of poverty and of neglect, crept wearily
on.
Time is the grim old collector who goes dunning for the abused wife, and
Time finally forced a settlement with Socrates.
Having loafed around Athens for many years to the neglect of his family,
and having obtruded his views touching the immortality of the soul upon
certain folk who believed that the first duty of a man was to keep his
family from starving to death, Socrates was apprehended on a
bench-warrant, thrown into jail, tried by a jury, and sentenced to die.
It was in this emergency that the great, the divine nobility of the wife
asserted itself. She had been neglected by this man, she had gone in
rags for him, she had sacrificed her beauty and her hopes and her pride,
she had endured the pity of her neighbors, she had heard her children
cry with hunger—ay, all for _him_; yet, when a righteous fate o’ertook
him, she forgot all the misery of his doing, and she went to him to be
his comforter.
Well, she could not have done otherwise, for she was a woman.
Where was his philosophy now? where his wisdom, his logic, his wit? What
had become of his disputatious and learned associates that not one of
them stood up to plead for the life of Socrates now? Why, the first
breath of adversity had blown them away as though they were but mist;
and, with these false friends scattered like the coward chaff they were,
grim old Socrates turned to Xanthippe for consolation. She burdened his
ears with no reproaches, she spoke not of herself. Her thoughts were of
him only, and it was to his chilled spirit that she alone ministered.
Not even the horrors of the hemlock draught could drive her from his
side, nor unloose her arms from about his neck; and when at last the
philosopher lay stiff in death, it was Xanthippe that bore away his
corpse, and, with spices moistened by her tears, made it ready for the
grave.
_Philadelphia._
“The Philadelphia News,” which is justly entitled to the great success
it enjoys in the field of evening journalism, has published a double
paper containing divers opinions of Philadelphia as expressed by certain
distinguished men of the country. We are pleased to see what these
eminent critics have had to say. But we are surprised that none of them
has called attention to the fact that Philadelphia is one of three
American cities into which and out of which all railway trains back? The
other two cities are Toledo, O., and Atchison, Kan. St. Louis is the
only city we know of that can be approached from the civilized world by
means only of a tunnel. Philadelphia discounts this underground or
woodchuck method by running her railroad-line over the tops of houses;
and, as this line is constructed in the shape of a =Y=, all incoming
trains back in, and all outgoing trains back out.
Another curiosity in Philadelphia is its railway station. It is the only
structure in America that is composed simply of a roof and a basement.
All trains come in upon and depart from the roof: cabmen and
hack-drivers lie in wait in the basement for travellers descending from
the roof.
There are but two topics of conversation indulged by the patriotic
Philadelphian. The first is a Clover-Club dinner that _has_ been, and
the second is the new City Hall that is going to be. The Clover Club is
an erotic social organization, founded with a view to stuffing strangers
with terrapin, and then flattening them out with a triphammer. The new
City Hall is a hollow square of marble, covered with aerial derricks,
and medallions of B. Franklin and W. Penn. It has already cost as many
million dollars as the Philadelphian narrator believes you capable of
swallowing.
“The Record” office is said to be the finest newspaper building on the
continent. The counting-room has a tessellated floor: over the cashier’s
desk hangs an oil-painting of the Holstein cow that chased the dog that
worried the cat that ate the rat printer. Mr. Singerly, editor of “The
Record,” owns this cow. He is very proud of her, and she of him. She can
set up more ems of solid brevier milk at one sitting than any other
lacteal compositor now on earth.
Philadelphia is the only city in the country where street-car fare is
six cents, where New-York papers are sold for seven cents apiece, and
where the barbers charge twenty cents for shaving a stranger. It is the
only city, too, where Twelfth (as the name of a street) is spelled
T-w-e-l-f-v-t-h on the lamp-posts. It is the only city, too, where
people scrub their front-steps every morning in the dead of winter, and
then sprinkle ashes on the steps to keep folks from slipping down. It is
the only city, too, where editors of morning papers go home from work at
4.30 P.M. every day.
Philadelphia is also the only city that has beaten Chicago four straight
games at base-ball.
Still, Chicago is hardly in a position to criticise Philadelphia
unprejudicedly. Chicago has been so unfortunate as to become the adopted
home of three of Philadelphia’s most enterprising sons.
One of these gentlemen is Mr. Joseph C. Mackin, who, owing to
circumstances over which he has no control, is temporarily absent from
this city.
Another is Mr. Gallagher, who ought to be absent, but isn’t.
The third is Mr. Charles T. Yerkes.
_Humanity._
The big-eyed baby, just across the way,
Longs for the moon, and reaches out to clasp it:
He lunges at the crescent, cold and gray,
And waxes wroth to find he cannot grasp it.
Be hushed, O babe! and give thy grief a rest.
Better, a thousand times, for thee to ponder
Upon the lacteal wealth of mother’s breast,
Than reach for that vain milky way up yonder.
Yet am I like this man of recent birth
That lets a foolish disappointment fret it—
Scorning the sky, I’m reaching for the earth,
And grunt and groan because I do not get it.
_Baked Beans and Culture._
The members of the Boston Commercial Club are charming gentlemen. They
are now the guests of the Chicago Commercial Club, and are being shown
every attention that our market affords. They are a fine-looking lot,
well-dressed and well-mannered, with just enough whiskers to be
impressive without being imposing.
“This is a darned likely village,” said Seth Adams last evening.
“Everybody is rushin’ ’round an’ doin’ business as if his life depended
on it. Should think they’d git all tuckered out ’fore night, but I’ll be
darned if there ain’t just as many folks on the street after nightfall
as afore. We’re stoppin’ at the Palmer tavern; an’ my chamber is up so
all-fired high, that I can count all your meetin’-house steeples from
the winder.”
Last night five or six of these Boston merchants sat around the office
of the hotel, and discussed matters and things. Pretty soon they got to
talking about beans: this was the subject which they dwelt on with
evident pleasure.
“Waal, sir,” said Ephraim Taft, a wholesale dealer in maple-sugar and
flavored lozenges, “you kin talk ’bout your new-fashioned dishes an’
highfalutin vittles; but, when you come right down to it, there ain’t no
better eatin’ than a dish o’ baked pork ’n’ beans.”
“That’s so, b’ gosh!” chorussed the others.
“The truth o’ the matter is,” continued Mr. Taft, “that beans is good
for everybody,—’t don’t make no difference whether he’s well or sick.
Why, I’ve known a thousand folks—waal, mebbe not quite a thousand;
but,—waal, now, jest to show, take the case of Bill Holbrook: you
remember Bill, don’t ye?”
“Bill Holbrook?” said Mr. Ezra Eastman; “why, of course I do! Used to
live down to Brimfield, next to the Moses Howard farm.”
“That’s the man,” resumed Mr. Taft. “Waal, Bill fell sick,—kinder moped
round, tired like, for a week or two, an’ then tuck to his bed. His
folks sent for Dock Smith,—ol’ Dock Smith that used to carry round a
pair o’ leather saddlebags,—gosh, they don’t have no sech doctors
nowadays! Waal, the dock, he come; an’ he looked at Bill’s tongue, an’
felt uv his pulse, an’ said that Bill had typhus fever. Ol’ Dock Smith
was a very careful, conserv’tive man, an’ he never said nothin’ unless
he knowed he was right.
“Bill began to git wuss, an’ he kep’ a-gittin’ wuss every day. One
mornin’ ol’ Dock Smith sez, ‘Look a-here, Bill, I guess you’re a goner:
as I figger it, you can’t hol’ out till nightfall.’
“Bill’s mother insisted on a con-sul-tation bein’ held; so ol’ Dock
Smith sent over for young Dock Brainerd. I calc’late, that, next _to_
ol’ Dock Smith, young Dock Brainerd was the smartest doctor that ever
lived.
“Waal, pretty soon along come Dock Brainerd; an’ he an’ Dock Smith went
all over Bill, an’ looked at his tongue, an’ felt uv his pulse, an’ told
him it was a gone case, an’ that he had got to die. Then they went off
into the spare chamber to hold their con-sul-tation.
“Waal, Bill he lay there in the front room a-pantin’ an’ a-gaspin’, an’
a wond’rin’ whether it wuz true. As he wuz thinkin’, up comes the girl
to git a clean tablecloth out of the clothes-press, an’ she left the
door ajar as she come in. Bill he gave a sniff, an’ his eyes grew more
natural, like: he gathered together all the strength he had, an’ he
raised himself up on one elbow, an’ sniffed again.
“‘Sary,’ says he, ‘wot’s that a-cookin’?’
“‘Beans,’ says she, ‘beans for dinner.’
“‘Sary,’ says the dyin’ man, ‘I must hev a plate uv them beans!’
“‘Sakes alive, Mr. Holbrook!’ says she: ‘if you wuz to eat any o’ them
beans, it’d kill ye!’
“‘If I’ve got to die,’ says he, ‘I’m goin’ to die happy: fetch me a
plate uv them beans.’
“Waal, Sary she pikes off to the doctors.
“‘Look a-here,’ says she, ‘Mr. Holbrook smelt the beans cookin’, an’ he
says he’s got to have a plate uv ’em. Now, what shall I do about it?’
“‘Waal, doctor,’ says Dock Smith, ‘what do you think ’bout it?’
“‘He’s got to die anyhow,’ says Dock Brainerd; ‘an’ I don’t suppose the
beans’ll make any diff’rence.’
“‘That’s the way I figger it,’ says Dock Smith: ‘in all my practice I
never knew of beans hurtin’ anybody.’
“So Sary went down to the kitchen, an’ brought up a plateful of hot
baked beans. Dock Smith raised Bill up in bed, an’ Dock Brainerd put a
piller under the small of Bill’s back. Then Sary sat down by the bed,
an’ fed them beans into Bill until Bill couldn’t hold any more.
“‘How air you feelin’ now?’ asked Dock Smith.
“Bill didn’t say nuthin’: he jest smiled sort uv peaceful, like, an’
closed his eyes.
“‘The end hez come,’ said Dock Brainerd sof’ly: ‘Bill is dyin’.’
“Then Bill murmured kind o’ far-away, like (as if he was dreamin’), ‘I
ain’t dyin’: I’m dead an’ in heaven.’
“Next mornin’ Bill got out uv bed, an’ done a big day’s work on the
farm, an’ he hain’t hed a sick spell since. Them beans cured him! I tell
you, sir, that beans is,” etc.
_Mr. Isaac Watts, Tutor._
Our valued fellow-townsman, Mr. F. L. Blake, tells us that he was
considerably interested by our remarks recently on the subject of Dr.
Isaac Watts’s poetry. Such an interest, in fact, did our words awaken,
that, upon reading them, Mr. Blake threw aside the paper, went to his
book-case, and took down an old volume of Watts’s hymns and poems. He
had not read the volume in many years, and sweet were the memories that
came to him as he thumbed over the musty pages. “Still,” says he, “I
cannot agree with you when you speak of Dr. Watts’s verse as ‘quaint,
simple poetry.’ One of the first hymns I struck was a recital of the
joys of the redeemed, and I shuddered when I read this stanza:—
“‘In heaven above among the blest,
What mortal tongue can tell
The joys of saints when looking down
On damnèd souls in hell!’
“I don’t believe you really think that this is ‘quaint, simple poetry.’”
Few men have been more read and less understood than Dr. Isaac Watts. He
was in many particulars a remarkable man. Old Sam Johnson described him
as a little man not more than five feet tall, with an austere
expression, and a deep, resonant voice. Watts was always more or less of
a valetudinarian. He was unwise enough at the age of twenty-five to hire
himself to Sir John Hartopp of Stoke-Newington as tutor to Sir John’s
children—a lad named Ralph, aged sixteen, and a girl named Delia, aged
eighteen. The care which this engagement involved so seriously impaired
Watts’s health that he was never thereafter a robust man. Ralph Hartopp
was a wild boy; and Delia, the girl, appears to have been a rather
flippant miss. There dwelt in Stoke-Newington, at this time, one Richard
Steele, a reckless but bright fellow, who fell in love with Delia
Hartopp, and by his attentions gave Tutor Watts grave uneasiness; for
Watts recognized in Steele a “godless young man, given over to the
vanities and frivolities of the world.” Steele had a friend named
Addison,—Joseph Addison,—a taciturn young man, who exhibited a fondness
for sitting around in ale-houses and at street-corners, merely for the
purpose of watching people, and of hearing them talk. This Addison had
one ambition, and that was to print a satirical daily paper in London;
and he calculated that when his friend Steele married Sir John Hartopp’s
daughter, Sir John himself would advance the capital necessary to set
Steele and Addison up in the newspaper business. So, in his quiet,
unobtrusive way, Addison helped Steele with his wooing of Sir John’s
pretty daughter.
We can imagine how grievously Steele and Addison tormented Tutor Watts:
both were shrewd and witty, had seen much of the world, and were keen
satirists of human character. When it got to them that Watts was in the
habit of writing “religious and moral poems for the better guidance and
wiser admonition” of his pupils, they set themselves to writing poems
too; and these poems they cast in Watts’s way, and right often was the
good man grievously scandalized thereby. One of these poems, which
appears to have been the work of Steele and Addison conjointly, has come
down to posterity under the ostentatious title of “The Redemption of
Mistress Prudence told in Rhyme for the Better Understanding of Our
Sovereign Beauty, the Fair Delia.” These lines, thus addressed to Delia
Hartopp, were as follow:—
“Behold our Prudence in her prime
As meek and fair a dame as any;
Yet was she tempted in her time,
As tempted are, alas! too many.
Satin and silken gowns had she,
Feathers and ribbons, plumes and laces,—
Vain gewgaws fetched across the sea
From divers godless foreign places.
Thereat her foolish, wicked pride
Did vaunt itself to such condition,
That she did constantly deride
Her gentle tutor’s admonition.
In vain he reasoned with the maid;
In fashion’s way she strode undaunted;
And all the more her tutor prayed,
Why, all the more her plumes she flaunted.
At last, however, waxing sick
Of worldly praise and admiration,
She felt her quickened conscience prick,
And straightway sought her soul’s salvation.
And when she saw, through tearful eyes,
How nearly Satan’s darts had missed her,
She doffed her dazzling flummeries,
And gave them to her younger sister.”
It is narrated that these verses shocked Tutor Watts beyond all telling,
and we can believe it. Sir John Hartopp was a jolly old fellow,
immensely proud of his children, and confident that, after the wildness
natural to youth toned down, they would be a credit to their family. So
Sir John simply laughed at these verses and others that poor Watts
brought to him as the work of “those evil-minded young men.” It appears
that the conscientious tutor got very little sympathy from his employer.
The following lines, said to have been instigated by Richard Steele,
were found in Ralph Hartopp’s copy-book one morning:—