China for the four principal blessings we enjoy. Tea came from China,
the compass came from China, printing came from China, and gunpowder
came from China—thank God! China, sir, is an old country, a very old
country. There is one word, sir, we got from China that is oftener in
the mouths of American people than any other word in the language. It is
_cash_, sir, cash! That we derive from the Chinese. It is the name, sir,
of the small brass coin they use, the coin with a square hole in the
middle. And then look at our Franklin; he drew the lightning from the
skies with his kite; but who invented the kite, sir? The long-tailed
Chinaman, sir. Franklin had no invention; he never would have invented a
kite or a printing-press. But he could use them, sir, to the best
possible advantage, sir; he had no genius, sir, but he had remarkable
talent and industry.
“Then, sir, we got our umbrella from China. The first man that carried
an umbrella, in London, in Queen Anne’s reign, was followed by a mob.
That is only one hundred and fifty years ago. We get the art of making
porcelain from China. Our ladies must thank the Celestials for their
tea-pots.
“Queen Elizabeth never saw a tea-pot in her life. In 1664 the East India
Company brought two pounds two ounces of tea as a present for his
Majesty King Charles the Second. In 1667 they imported one hundred
pounds of tea.
“Then, sir, rose the reign of scandal. Queen scandal, sir! Then, sir,
rose the intolerable race of waspish spinsters who sting reputations and
defame humanity over their dyspeptic cups. Then, sir, the astringent
principle of the herb was communicated to the heart, and domestic
troubles were brewed and fomented over the tea-table. Then, sir, the age
of chivalry was over, and women grew acrid and bitter; then, sir, the
first temperance society was founded, and high duties were laid upon
wines, and in consequence they distilled whisky instead, which made
matters a great deal better, of course; and all the abominations, all
the difficulties of domestic life, all the curses of living in a country
village; the intolerant canvassing of character, reputation, piety; the
nasty, mean, prying spirit; the uncharitable, defamatory, gossiping,
tale-bearing, whispering, unwomanly, unchristianlike behaviour of those
who set themselves up for patterns over their vile decoctions, sir,
arose with the introduction of tea. Yes, sir; when the wine-cup gave
place to the tea-cup, then the devil, sir, reached his culminating
point.
“The curiosity of Eve was bad enough; but, sir, when Eve’s curiosity
becomes sharpened by turgid tonics, and scandal is added to
inquisitiveness, and innuendo supplies the place of truth, and an
imperfect digestion is the pilot instead of charity; then, sir, we must
expect to see human nature vilified, and levity condemned, and good
fellowship condemned, and all good men, from Washington down, damned by
Miss Tittle, and Miss Tattle, and the widow Blackleg, and the whole host
of tea-drinking conspirators against social enjoyment.”
Here Dr. Bushwhacker grew purple with eloquence and indignation. We
ventured to remark that he had spoken of tea “as a blessing” at first.
“Yes, sir,” responded Dr. Bushwhacker, shaking his bushy head, “that
reminds one of Doctor Pangloss. Yes, sir, it is a blessing, but like all
other blessings it must be used _temperately_, or else it is a curse!
China, sir,” continued the doctor, dropping the oratorical and taking up
the historical; “China, sir, knows nothing of perspective, but she is
great in pigments. Indian ink, sir, is Chinese, so are vermilion and
indigo; the malleable properties of gold, sir, were first discovered by
this extraordinary people; we must thank them for our gold leaf. Gold is
not a pigment, but roast pig is, and Charles Lamb says the origin of
roast pig is Chinese; the beautiful fabric we call silk, sir, came from
the Flowery Nation, so did embroidery, so did the game of chess, so did
fans. In fact, sir, it is difficult to say what we have not derived from
the Chinese. Cotton, sir, is our great staple, but they wove and spun,
long staple and short staple, yellow cotton and white cotton, before
Columbus sailed out of the port of Palos in the _Santa Maria_.”
_Frederick S. Cozzens._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: _OLD AUNT MARY’S._]
WASN’T it pleasant, O brother mine,
In those old days of the lost sunshine
Of youth—when the Saturday’s chores were through,
And the “Sunday’s wood” in the kitchen, too,
And we went visiting, “me and you,”
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s?
It all comes back so clear to-day!
Though I am as bald as you are grey—
Out by the barn-lot, and down the lane,
We patter along in the dust again,
As light as the tips of the drops of the rain,
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
We cross the pasture, and through the wood
Where the old grey snag of the poplar stood,
Where the hammering “red-heads” hopped awry,
And the buzzard “raised” in the “clearing” sky,
And lolled and circled, as we went by
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
And then in the dust of the road again;
And the teams we met, and the countrymen;
And the long highway, with sunshine spread
As thick as butter on country bread,
Our cares behind, and our hearts ahead,
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
Why, I see her now in the open door,
Where the little gourds grew up the sides and o’er
The clapboard roof!—and her face—ah, me!
Wasn’t it good for a boy to see—
And wasn’t it good for a boy to be
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
And oh, my brother, so far away,
This is to tell you she waits to-day
To welcome us:—Aunt Mary fell
Asleep this morning, whispering, “Tell
The boys to come!” And all is well
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
_James Whitcomb Riley._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_A PETITION OF THE LEFT HAND._
TO THOSE WHO HAVE THE SUPERINTENDENCY OF EDUCATION.
I ADDRESS myself to all the friends of youth, and conjure them to direct
their compassionate regards to my unhappy fate, in order to remove the
prejudices of which I am the victim. There are twin sisters of us; and
the two eyes of man do not more resemble, nor are capable of being upon
better terms with each other, than my sister and myself, were it not for
the partiality of our parents, who make the most injurious distinctions
between us. From my infancy I have been led to consider my sister as a
being of a more elevated rank. I was suffered to grow up without the
least instruction, while nothing was spared in her education.
She had masters to teach her writing, drawing, music, and other
accomplishments; but if by chance I touched a pencil, a pen, or a
needle, I was bitterly rebuked; and more than once I have been beaten
for being awkward, and wanting a graceful manner. It is true, my sister
associated me with her upon some occasions; but she always made a point
of taking the lead, calling upon me only from necessity, or to figure by
her side.
But conceive not, sirs, that my complaints are instigated merely by
vanity. No; my uneasiness is occasioned by an object much more serious.
It is the practice in our family, that the whole business of providing
for its subsistence falls upon my sister and myself. If any
indisposition should attack my sister,—and I mention it in confidence
upon this occasion, that she is subject to the gout, the rheumatism, and
cramp, without making mention of other accidents,—what would be the fate
of our poor family?
Must not the regret of our parents be excessive, at having placed so
great a difference between sisters who are so perfectly equal? Alas! we
must perish from distress; for it would not be in my power even to
scrawl a suppliant petition for relief, having been obliged to employ
the hand of another in transcribing the request which I have now the
honour to prefer to you.
Condescend, sirs, to make my parents sensible of the injustice of an
exclusive tenderness, and of the necessity of distributing their care
and affection among all their children equally. I am, with a profound
respect, sirs, your obedient servant,
THE LEFT HAND.
_Benjamin Franklin._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_WOMEN’S FASHIONS._
SHOULD I not keepe promise in speaking a little to Women’s fashions,
they would take it unkindly. I was loath to pester better matter with
such stuffe; I rather thought it meet to let them stand by themselves,
like the _Quæ Genus_ in the Grammar, being Deficients, or Redundants,
not to be brought under any Rule: I shall therefore make bold for this
once, to borrow a little of their loose-tongued Liberty, and misspend a
word or two upon their long-wasted, but short-skirted patience; a little
use of my stirrup will doe no harme.
_Ridentem dicere verum, quid prohibet?
Gray Gravity itselfe can well beteam,
That Language be adapted to the Theme.
He that to Parrots speaks, must parrotize;
He that instructs a foole, may act th’ unwise._
It is known more then enough, that I am neither Nigard, nor Cinick, to
the due bravery of the true Gentry: if any man mislikes a bully ’mong
drossock more than I, let him take her for his labour! I honour the
woman that can honour her selfe with her attire: a good Text alwayes
deserves a fair Margent: I am not much offended if I see a trimme, far
trimmer than she that wears it: in a word, whatever Christianity or
Civility will allow, I can afford with _London_ measure: but when I
heare a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dresse the Queen is in this
week: what the nudiustertian fashion of the court; I meane the very
newest: with egge to be in it in all haste, what ever it be; I look at
her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a
cypher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if shee were of a
kickable substance, than either honour’d or humour’d.
To speak moderately, I truly confesse, it is beyond the ken of my
understanding to conceive, how those women should have any true grace,
or valuable vertue, that have so little wit, as to disfigure
themselves with such exotick garbes, as not only dismantles their
native lovely lustre, but trans-clouts them into gant bar-geese,
ill-shapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian hyeroglyphicks, or at the best
into French flurts of the pastery, which a proper English-woman should
scorne with her heels; it is no marvell they weare drailes on the
hinder part of their heads, having nothing as it seems in the fore
part, but a few Squirril’s brains to help them frisk from one
ill-favor’d fashion to another.
_These whimm-Crown’d shees, these fashion-fansying wits,
Are empty thin-brained shells, and fiddling Kits._
The very troublers and impoverishers of mankind, I can hardly forbear to
commend to the world a saying of a Lady living sometime with the Queen
of _Bohemia_. I know not where shee found it, but it is a pitty it
should be lost.
_The World is full of care, much like unto a bubble;
Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble._
The Verses are even enough for such odde pegma’s. I can make myselfe
sicke at any time, with comparing the dazling splender wherewith our
Gentlewomen were embellished in some former habits, with the goosdom
wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. Wee have about five or
six of them in our Colony; if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot
cleanse my phansie of them for a moneth after. I have been a solitary
widdower almost twelve yeares, purposed lately to make a step over to my
Native Country for a yoke fellow; but when I consider how women there
have tripe-wifed themselves with their cladments, I have no heart to the
voyage, least their nauseous shapes and the Sea, should work too sorely
upon my stomach. I speak sadly; me thinkes it should breake the hearts
of Englishmen to see so many goodly Englishwomen imprisoned in French
Cages, peering out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help
them with a little wit, and no body relieves them.
It is a more common than convenient saying, that nine Taylors make a
man; it were well if nineteene could make a woman to her minde; if
Taylors were men indeed, well furnished, but with meer morall
principles, they would disdain to be led about like Apes, by such mymick
Marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing, for men that have bones in them,
to spend their lives in making fidle-cases for futilous women’s
phansies; which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, the gyblets of
perquisquilian toyes. I am so charitable to think, that most of that
mystery would worke the cheerfuller while they live, if they might bee
well discharged of the tyring slavery of mis-trying women; it is no
little labour to be continually putting up English-women into
Out-landish caskes; who if they be not shifted anew, once in a few
moneths, grow too sowre for their Husbands. What this Trade will answer
for themselves when God shall take measure of Taylors’ consciences is
beyond my skill to imagine. There was a time when
_The joyning of the Red-Rose with the White,
Did set our State into a Damask plight._
But now our Roses are turned to _Flore de lices_, our Carnations to
Tulips, our Gilliflowers to Dayzes, our City Dames, to indenominable
Quæmalry of overturcas’d things. Hee that makes Coates for the Moone had
need take measure every noone; and he that makes for women, as often, to
keepe them from Lunacy.
I have often heard divers Ladies vent loud feminine complaints of the
wearisome varieties and chargeable changes of fashions! I marvell
themselves preferre not a Bill of redresse. I would _Essex_ Ladies would
lead the Chore, for the honour of their County and persons; or rather
the thrice honourable Ladies of the Court, whom it best beseemes; who
may wel presume of a _Le Roy le Veult_ from our sober King, a _Les
Seigneurs ont Assentus_ from our prudent Peers, and the like _Assentus_
from our considerate, I dare not say wife-worne Commons! who I believe
had much rather passe one such Bill, than pay so many Taylors’ Bills as
they are forced to doe.
Most deare and unparallel’d Ladies, be pleased to attempt it; as you
have the precellency of the women of the world for beauty and feature;
so assume the honour to give, and not take Law from any, in matter of
attire; if ye can transact so faire a motion among yourselves
unanimously I dare say, they that most renite, will least repent. What
greater honour can your Honours desire, than to build a Promontory
president to all foraigne Ladies, to deserve so eminently at the hands
of all the English Gentry present and to come; and to confute the
opinion of all the wise men in the world; who never thought it possible
for women to doe so good a work?
If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously, he is much
mistaken. I have written what I write with all the indignation I can,
and no more than I ought. I confesse I veer’d my tongue to this kinde of
Language _de industria_ though unwillingly, supposing those I speak to
are uncapable of grave and rationall arguments.
I desire all Ladies and Gentlewomen to understand that all this while I
intend not such as through necessary modesty to avoyd morose
singularity, follow fashions slowly, a flight shot or two off, showing
by their moderation that they rather draw countermont with their hearts,
than put on by their examples.
I point my pen only against the light-heel’d beagles that lead the chase
so fast, that they run all civility out of breath, against these
Ape-headed pullets, which invent Antique foole-fangles, meerly for
fashion and novelty sake.
_Nathaniel Ward._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE NEWSBOY._
[Illustration: “I WISH YOU, SIR, TO CONTROL YOUR NEWSBOYS.”]
“IS this the office of the _National Pop-gun and Universal Valve
Trumpet_?” inquired Sapid in sepulchral tones.
“Hey—what? Oh!—yes,” gruffly replied the clerk, as he scrutinised the
applicant.
“It is, is it?” was the response.
“H—umpse;” heaving a porcine affirmative, much in use in the city of
brotherly love.
“I am here to see the editor, on business of importance,” slowly and
solemnly articulated Sapid. There must have been something
professionally alarming in this announcement, if an opinion may be
formed from the effect it produced.
“Editor’s not come down yet, is he, Spry?” inquired the clerk, with a
cautionary wink at the paste-boy.
“Guess he ain’t more nor up yet,” said Spry; “the mails was late last
night.”
“I’ll take a seat till he does come,” observed Sapid, gloomily.
Spry and the clerk laid their heads together in the most distant corner
of the little office.
“Has he got a stick?” whispered one.
“No, and he isn’t remarkable big, nuther.”
“Any bit of paper in his hand—does he look like State House and a libel
suit? It’s a’most time—not had a new suit for a week.”
“Not much; and, as we didn’t have any scrouger in the _Gun_ yesterday,
perhaps he wants to have somebody tickled up himself. Send him in.”
St. Sebastian Sockdolager, Esq., the editor of _The National Pop-gun and
Universal Valve Trumpet_, sat at a green table, elucidating an idea by
the aid of a steel pen and whity-brown paper, and therefore St.
Sebastian Sockdolager did not look up when Mr. Sapid entered the
sanctum. The abstraction may, perhaps, have been a sample of literary
stage effect; but it is certain that the pen pursued the idea with the
speed and directness of a steeple-chase, straight across the paper, and
direful was the scratching thereof. The luckless idea being at last
fairly run down and its brush cut off, Mr. Sockdolager threw himself
back into his chair with a smile of triumph.
“Tickletoby,” said he, rumpling his hair into heroic expansiveness.
“What?” exclaimed Sapid, rather nervously.
“My dear sir, I didn’t see you—a thousand pardons! Pray what can be done
for you in our line?”
“Sir, there is a nuisance——”
“Glad of it, sir; _The Gun_ is death on a nuisance. We circulate ten
thousand deaths to any sort of a nuisance every day, besides the weekly
and the country edition. We are a regular smash-pipes in that
line—surgical, surgical to this community—we are at once the knife and
the sarsaparilla to human ills, whether financial, political, or
social.”
“Sir, the nuisance I complain of lies in the circulation—in its mode and
manner.”
“Bless me,” said Sockdolager, with a look of suspicion, “you are too
literal in your interpretations. If your circulation is deranged, you
had better try Brandreth, or the Fluid Extract of Quizembob.”
“It is not my circulation, but yours, that makes all the trouble. I
never circulate—I can’t without being insulted.”
“Really, mister, I can’t say that this is clearly comprehensible to
perception. Not circulate! Are you below par in the money article; or in
what particular do you find yourself in the condition of ‘no go’? Excuse
my facetiæ and be brief, for thought comes tumbling, bumping, booming——”
and Sockdolager dipped his pen in the ink.
Mr. Sappington Sapid unravelled the web of his miseries. “I wish you,
sir, to control your newsboys—to dismiss the saucy, and to write an
article which shall make ’em ashamed of themselves. I shall call on
every editor in the city, sir, and ask the same—a combined expression
for the suppression of iniquity. We must be emancipated from this new
and growing evil, or our liberties become a farce, and we are squashed
and crushed in a way worse than fifty tea-taxes.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Whatcheecallem; it can’t be done—it would be suicidal,
with the sharpest kind of a knife. Whatcheecallem, you don’t understand
the grand movement of the nineteenth century—you are not up to snuff as
to the vital principle of human progression—the propulsive force has not
yet been demonstrated to your benighted optics. The sun is up, sir; the
hill-tops of intellect glow with its brightness, and even the level
plain of the world’s collective mediocrity is gilded by its beams; but
you, sir, are yet in the foggy valley of exploded prejudice, poking
along with a tuppenny-ha’penny candle—a mere dip. Suppress sauciness!
why, my dear bungletonian, sauciness is the discovery of the age—the
secret of advancement! We are saucy now, sir, not by the accident of
constitution—temperament has nothing to do with it. We are saucy by
calculation, by intention, by design. It is cultivated, like our
whiskers, as a superadded energy to our other gifts. Without sauciness,
what is a newsboy? what is an editor? what are revolutions? what are
people? Sauce is power. Sauce is spirit, independence, victory,
everything. It is, in fact,—this sauce, or ‘sass,’ as the vulgar have
it,—steam to the great locomotive of affairs. Suppress, indeed! No, sir;
you should regard it as part of your duty as a philanthropist and as a
patriot to encourage this essence of superiority in all your countrymen;
and I’ve a great mind to write you an article on that subject instead of
the other, for this conversation has warmed up my ideas so completely
that justice will not be done to the community till they, like you, are
enlightened on this important point.”
St. Sebastian Sockdolager, now having a leading article for _The
National Pop-gun and Universal Valve Trumpet_ clearly in his mind, was
not a creature to be trifled with. An editor in this paroxysm, however
gentle in his less inspired moments, cannot safely be crossed, or even
spoken to. It is not wise to call him to dinner, except through the
keyhole; and to ask for “more copy,” in general a privileged demand, is
a risk too fearful to be encountered. St. Sebastian’s eye became fixed,
his brow corrugated, his mouth intellectually ajar.
“But, sir, the nuisance,” said Sappington.
“Don’t bother!” was the impatient reply, and the brow of St. Sebastian
Sockdolager grew black as his own ink.
“The boys, sir, the boys!—am I to be worried out of my life and soul?”
The right hand of St. Sebastian Sockdolager fell heavily upon the huge
pewter inkstand—the concatenation of his ideas had been broken—he half
raised himself from his chair and glanced significantly from his visitor
to the door. “Mizzle!” said he, in a hoarse, suppressed whisper.
The language itself was unintelligible—the word might have been
Chaldaic, for all that Sapid knew to the contrary; but there are
situations in which an interpreter is not needed, and this appeared to
be one of them. Sapid never before made a movement so swiftly
extemporaneous.
He intends shortly to try whether the Grand Jury is a convert to the new
doctrine of sauciness.
_Joseph C. Neal._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE BOYS AROUND THE HOUSE._
SURELY you must have seen a boy of eight or ten years of age get ready
for bed? His shoe-strings are in a hard knot, and after a few vain
efforts to unlace them he rushes after a case-knife and saws each string
in two. One shoe is thrown under the table, the other behind the stove,
his jacket behind the door, and his stockings are distributed over as
many chairs as they will reach.
The boy doesn’t slip his pants off; he struggles out of them, holding a
leg down with his foot and drawing his limbs out after many stupendous
efforts. While doing this his hands are clutched into the bedclothes,
and by the time he is ready to get into bed the quilts and sheets are
awry and the bed is full of humps and lumps. His brother has gone
through the same motions, and both finally crawl into bed. They are good
boys, and they love each other, but they are hardly settled on their
backs when one cries out—
“Hitch along!”
“I won’t!” bluntly replies the other.
“Ma, Bill’s got more’n half the bed!” cries the first.
“Hain’t either, ma!” replies Bill.
There is a moment of silence, and then the first exclaims—
“Get yer feet off’n me!”
“They hain’t touching you!” is the answer.
“Yes they be, and you’re on my pillar, too!”
“Oh! my stars, what a whopper! You’ll never go to heaven!”
The mother looks into the bedroom and kindly says—
“Come, children, be good, and don’t make your mother any trouble.”
“Well,” replies the youngest, “if Bill ’ll tell me a bear story ’ll go
to sleep.”
The mother withdraws, and Bill starts out—
“Well, you know, there was an old bear who lived in a cave. He was a big
black bear. He had eyes like coals of fire, you know, and when he looked
at a feller he——”
“Ma, Bill’s scaring me!” yells Henry, sitting on end.
“Oh, ma! that’s the awfullest story you ever heard!” replies Bill.
“Hitch along, I say!” exclaims Henry.
“I am along!” replies Bill.