AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN OLD PAIR OF SCISSORS.
I was born in Sheffield, England, at the close of the last century, and
was, like all those who study Brown's Shorter Catechism, made out of dust.
My father was killed at Herculaneum at the time of the accident there, and
buried with other scissors and knives and hooks and swords. On my mother's
side I am descended from a pair of shears that came to England during the
Roman invasion. My cousin hung to the belt of a duchess. My uncle belonged
to Hampton Court, and used to trim the king's hair. I came to the United
States while the grandfathers of the present generation of children were
boys.
When I was young I was a gay fellow--indeed, what might have been called "a
perfect blade." I look old and rusty hanging here on the nail, but take me
down, and though my voice is a little squeaky with old age, I can tell you
a pretty tale. I am sharper than I look. Old scissors know more than you
think. They say I am a little garrulous, and perhaps I may tell things I
ought not.
I helped your grandmother prepare for her wedding. I cut out and fitted all
the apparel of that happy day. I hear her scold the young folks now for
being so dressy, but I can tell you she was once that way herself. Did not
I, sixty years ago, lie on the shelf and laugh as I saw her stand by the
half hour before the glass, giving an extra twist to her curl and an
additional dash of white powder on her hair--now fretted because the
powder was too thick, now fretted because it was too thin? She was as proud
in cambric and calico and nankeen as Harriet is to-day in white tulle and
organdy. I remember how careful she was when she ran me along the edges of
the new dress. With me she clipped and notched and gored and trimmed, and
day and night I went click! click! click! and it seemed as if she would
never let me rest from cutting.
I split the rags for the first carpet on the old homestead, and what a
merry time we had when the neighbors came to "the quilting!" I lay on the
coverlet that was stretched across the quilting-frame and heard all the
gossip of 1799. Reputations were ripped and torn just as they are now.
Fashions were chattered about, the coalscuttle bonnet of some offensive
neighbor (who was not invited to the quilting) was criticised, and the
suspicion started that she laced too tight; and an old man who happened to
have the best farm in the county was overhauled for the size of his
knee-buckles, and the exorbitant ruffles on his shirt, and the costly silk
lace to his hat. I lay so still that no one supposed I was listening. I
trembled on the coverlet with rage and wished that I could clip the end of
their tattling tongues, but found no chance for revenge, till, in the hand
of a careless neighbor, I notched and nearly spoiled the patch-work.
Yes, I am a pair of old scissors. I cut out many a profile of old-time
faces, and the white dimity bed curtains. I lay on the stand when your
grandparents were courting--for that had to be done then as well as
now--and it was the same story of chairs wide apart, and chairs coming
nearer, and arm over the back of the chair, and late hours, and four or
five gettings up to go with the determination to stay, protracted
interviews on the front steps, blushes and kisses. Your great-grandmother,
out of patience at the lateness of the hour, shouted over the banister to
your immediate grandmother, "Mary! come to bed!" Because the old people sit
in the corner looking so very grave, do not suppose their eyes were never
roguish, nor their lips ruby, nor their hair flaxen, nor their feet spry,
nor that they always retired at half-past eight o'clock at night. After a
while, I, the scissors, was laid on the shelf, and finally thrown into a
box among nails and screws and files. Years of darkness and disgrace for a
scissors so highly born as I. But one day I was hauled out. A bell tinkled
in the street. An Italian scissors-grinder wanted a job. I was put upon the
stone, and the grinder put his foot upon the treadle, and the bands pulled,
and the wheel sped, and the fire flew, and it seemed as if, in the heat and
pressure and agony, I should die. I was ground, and rubbed, and oiled, and
polished, till I glittered in the sun; and one day, when young Harriet was
preparing for the season, I plunged into the fray. I almost lost my senses
among the ribbons, and flew up and down among the flounces, and went mad
amongst the basques. I move round as gay as when I was young; and modern
scissors, with their stumpy ends, and loose pivots, and weak blades, and
glaring bows, and course shanks, are stupid beside an old family piece like
me. You would be surprised how spry I am flying around the sewing-room,
cutting corsage into heart-shape, and slitting a place for button holes,
and making double-breasted jackets, and hollowing scallops, and putting the
last touches on velvet arabesques and Worth overskirts. I feel almost as
well at eighty years of age as at ten, and I lie down to sleep at night
amid all the fineries of the wardrobe, on olive-green cashmere, and beside
pannier puffs, and pillowed on feathers of ostrich.
Oh! what a gay life the scissors live! I may lie on gayest lady's lap, and
little children like me better than almost anything else to play with. The
trembling octogenarian takes me by the hand, and the rollicking
four-year-old puts on me his dimpled fingers. Mine are the children's curls
and the bride's veil. I am welcomed to the Christmas tree, and the
sewing-machine, and the editor's table. I have cut my way through the ages.
Beside pen, and sword, and needle, I dare to stand anywhere, indispensable
to the race, the world-renowned scissors!
But I had a sad mission once. The bell tolled in the New England village
because a soul had passed. I sat up all the night cutting the pattern for a
shroud. Oh, it was gloomy work. There was wailing in the house, but I could
not stop to mourn. I had often made the swaddling-clothes for a child, but
that was the only time I fashioned a robe for the grave. To fit it around
the little neck, and make the sleeves just long enough for the quiet
arms--it hurt me more than the tilt hammers that smote me in Sheffield,
than the files of the scissors-grinder at the door. I heard heart-strings
snap as I went through the linen, and in the white pleats to be folded over
the still heart I saw the snow banked on a grave. Give me, the old
scissors, fifty bridal dresses to make rather than one shroud to prepare.
I never recovered from the chill of those dismal days, but at the end of
life I can look back and feel that I have done my work well. Other scissors
have frayed and unraveled the garments they touched, but I have always made
a clean path through the linen or the damask I was called to divide. Others
screeched complainingly at their toil; I smoothly worked my jaws. Many of
the fingers that wrought with me have ceased to open and shut, and my own
time will soon come to die, and I shall be buried in a grave of rust amid
cast-off tenpenny nails and horse-shoes. But I have stayed long enough to
testify, first, that these days are no worse than the old ones, the
granddaughter now no more proud than the grandmother was; secondly, that we
all need to be hammered and ground in order to take off the rust; and
thirdly, that an old scissors, as well as an old man, may be scoured up and
made practically useful.