matrimony. She will not of necessity sour into a pink-nosed old maid,
or throw herself at any rickety old shell of humanity, whose clothes
are as much out of repair as his morals. No, the future man will have
to "step lively;" this wife is not to be had for the whistling. He
will have a long canter round the pasture for her, and then she will
leap the fence and leave him limping on the ground. Thick-soled boots
and skating are coming in, and "nerves," novels and sentiment (by
consequence) are going out. The coming woman, as I see her, is not to
throw aside her needle; neither is she to sit embroidering worsted
dogs and cats, or singing doubtful love ditties, and rolling up her
eyes to "the chaste moon."
Heaven forbid she should stamp round with a cigar in her mouth,
elbowing her neighbors, and puffing smoke in their faces; or stand on
the free-love platform, _public or private_--_call it by what specious
name you will_--wooing men who, low as they may have sunk in their own
self-respect, would die before they would introduce her to the
unsullied sister who shared their cradle.
Heaven forbid the coming woman should not have warm blood in her
veins, quick to rush to her cheek, or tingle at her fingers' ends when
her heart is astir. No, the coming woman shall be no cold, angular,
flat-chested, narrow-shouldered, sharp-visaged Betsey, but she shall
be a bright-eyed, full-chested, broad-shouldered, large-souled,
intellectual being; able to walk, able to eat, able to fulfill her
maternal destiny, and able--if it so please God--to go to her grave
happy, self-poised and serene, though unwedded.
* * * * *
We often think of the solitariness and isolation of the young man--a
stranger in a crowded city; suddenly cut adrift, perhaps from loving
home influences--finding an inexorable necessity in his nature for
sympathy and companionship--returning at night, when his day's toil is
done, to his dreary, cell-like room, or, if he go out, solicited by
myriad treacherous voices to unlearn the holy lessons taught at his
mother's knee--solicited to show his "manliness" by drinking with
every acquaintance that chance or the devil may send. That youth must
needs be strongly intrenched in the _true_ idea of "manliness" not to
waver and turn aside from his own independent course of well-doing.
Alas! that to so many the fear of ridicule, or dread of "oddity,"
should have power to draw a veil over the swift and sure downfall of
the drunkard or profligate. Alas! that the little word _No_ should be
so impossible of articulation--in a circle, too, whose sneering
condemnation of it were not worth a thought, no matter how brilliantly
the jest or the song may issue from lips foul with the sophistry of
"free-love;" than which _freedom_ nothing is more shackled with
disgust and pain; for try as we will, God's image, though marred,
shall never be wholly effaced: enough shall be left in every man's and
woman's soul to protest against such desecration, though it voice
itself, as it often does, in bitter denunciation of what the soul
knows to be its only true happiness. The holy stars make no record of
the gasping sigh, brief but intense, that their purity has evoked.
The little bird trills out its matins, and vespers, all unconscious
that their sweetness forces the unwelcome tear from some world-sated
eye. Bless God, these moments will and do come to the most
reckless--these swift heralds of our immortality--to be silenced never
in this world; if disregarded, to be mourned over forever in the next;
for the fiercest theologian's idea of "hell" can never, it seems to
me, go beyond the consciousness of god-like powers wasted and
debased--noble opportunities of benefiting our race defiling past the
memory in mournful procession, and the sorrowing soul nerveless,
powerless to bid them stay.
To every young man entering the lists against the vices of a crowded
city, at such fearful odds, we would say: cultivate an acquaintance,
as soon as possible, with some family, or families, whose healthful
influence may be your talisman against evil associations, whose good
opinion may give an impetus to your self-respect, and whose cheerful
fireside may outshine the ignis-fatuus lights which dazzle but to
mislead. To those who see difficulties or impossibilities in this, we
would suggest the cultivation of a taste for reading, which surely may
be compassed in a city, even by a young person of slender means. Good
books are safe, pleasant and economical company. The time spent with
them is an investment which will not fail to yield a satisfying
interest for all future time. Let those who will--and their name, we
fear, is legion--wreck health and reputation, for the lack of courage
or desire to be true to their better feelings; let those who will,
cover their inclination to do evil with the transparent excuse "that
it is well to see life in all its phases." As well might a perfectly
healthy person _from mere curiosity_ breathe the tainted air of every
pest-house in the country. No thanks are due to his fool-hardy
temerity if he escape; "served him right!" would be the unanimous
verdict of common sense if he should not.
To him who, eschewing such unwisdom, chooses to breathe a healthful,
moral atmosphere, it may be a reflection worth having, that he will
bring to his future home a constitution and principles as sound as
those he so properly requires in the wife of his choice and the mother
of his children; and I confess myself unable to see why this should be
more necessary in the case of one parent than in that of the other.
_Such men, and such only, have a call to be husbands._
_A CHAPTER ON MEN._
What constitutes a handsome man? Well--there must be enough of him;
or, failing in that, but, come to think of it, he _mustn't_ fail in
that, because there can be no beauty without health, or at least,
according to my way of thinking. In the second place, he must have a
beard; whiskers--as the gods please, but a beard I insist upon, else
one might as well look at a girl. Let his voice have a dash of
Niagara, with the music of a baby's laugh in it. Let his smile be like
the breaking forth of the sunshine on a spring morning. As to his
figure, it should be strong enough to contend with a man, and slight
enough to tremble in the presence of the woman he loves. Of course, if
he is a well made man, it follows that he must be graceful, on the
principle that perfect machinery always moves harmoniously; therefore
you and himself and the milk pitcher, are safe elbow neighbors at the
tea-table. _This_ style of handsome man would no more think of
carrying a cane, than he would use a parasol to keep the sun out of
his eyes. He can wear gloves, or warm his hands in his breast pockets,
as he pleases. He can even commit the suicidal-beauty-act of turning
his outside coat-collar up over his ears of a stormy day, with
perfect impunity;--_the tailor didn't make him_, and as to his hatter,
if he depended on this handsome man's patronage of the "latest spring
style," I fear he would die of hope deferred; and yet--by Apollo! what
a bow he makes, and what an expressive adieu he can wave with his
head! For all this he is not conceited--for he hath _brains_.
But your conventional "handsome man," of the
barber's-window-wax-figure-head-pattern; with a pet lock in the middle
of his forehead, an apple-sized head, and a raspberry moustache with
six hairs in it; a pink spot in its cheek, and a little dot of a
"goatee" on its cunning little chin; with pretty blinking little studs
in its shirt bosom, and a neck-tie that looks as if he would faint
were it tumbled, I'd as lief look at a poodle. I always feel a desire
to nip it up with a pair of sugar-tongs, drop it gently into a bowl of
cream, and strew pink rose-leaves over its little remains.
After all, when _soul_ magnetizes _soul_, the question of beauty is a
dead letter. _Whom one loves is always handsome_, the world's
arbitrary rules notwithstanding; therefore when you say "what _can_
the handsome Mr. Smith see to admire in that stick of a Miss Jones?"
or, "what _can_ the pretty Miss T. see to like in that homely Mr.
Johns?" you simply talk nonsense--as you generally do, on such
subjects. Still the parson gets his fees, and the census goes on all
the same.
I wonder why people decry a masculine blush: I don't know. I
immediately love the man who blushes. I am sure that he is
unhackneyed; that he has not a set of meaningless, cut and dried
compliments on hand, for every woman he meets; that he has not learned
to sniff at sacred things, or prate transcendentally about
"affinities" or any other corruption under a new-fangled name. I know
that his love will be worth a pure woman's having; that he will not be
ashamed of liking home, or his baby, or laughed out of staying in it
in preference to any other place. I know that when he stops at a
hotel, his _first_ business will not be to hold a private conference
with the cook, to tell him how he likes an omelette made. I know that
in his conversation he will not pride himself upon the small fopperies
of talk, in the way of pronunciation and newly coined words, to show
how well he is posted up in dictionary matters. I know that he will
not be closeted two thirds of his time with his tailor; or think it
fine to be continually quoting some dead-and-gone book, known only to
some resurrectionist of scarce authors. I know he will not sit in
grimstarched statuesqueness in a car, when a woman old enough to be
his mother, is standing wearily in front of him, swaying to and fro
with the motion of the vehicle. In short, I know that he is not a
petrifaction; that there's human nature in him, _and plenty of it_;
that he is not like an animal under an exhausted receiver, having
form only--in whom there is no spring, nor elasticity, nor breath of
life.
A fool, hey? No, sir--not necessarily a fool neither. _The fool is he
who, not yet at life's meridian, has exhausted it and himself_; who
thinks every man "green" who has not taken his diploma in wickedness.
For whom existence is as weary as a thrice-told tale. Who has crowded
four-score years into twenty, or less; and has nothing left for it but
to sneer at the healthy, simple, pure, fresh joys which may never come
again to his vitiated palate.
Very likely you have met him: this _blasé_ man, who, though yet at
life's meridian, has squeezed life as dry as an orange. Who has seen
everything, heard everything, ate everything, drank everything,
traveled everywhere, but into his own heart, to see its utter
selfishness. Who is willing, upon the whole, to tolerate his
fellow-creatures, provided they don't speak to him when he wants to be
silent, or annoy him by peculiarities of dress, manner and
conversation. Who remains immovably grave when everybody else laughs,
and smiles when everybody else looks grave; who lifts his eyebrows and
shrugs his shoulders dissentingly, when people who have not like him
"been abroad," applaud. Who talks knowingly and mystically of "art,"
and thinks it fine to showerbath everybody's enthusiasm with
"to-l-e-r-a-b-l-e." Who goes to church occasionally, but owing to the
prevalence of badly-fitting coats and vests in the assembly, is unable
to attend to the service; who don't care much what a man's creed is,
provided he only takes it mild. He likes to see a woman plump and
well-made, but abhors the idea of her eating; likes to see her rosy,
but can't abide an india-rubber on her foot, even in the most
consumptive-breeding weather; thinks it would be well were she
domestic when he considers his tea and coffee, but don't believe in
aprons and calico. Thinks she should be religious, because it would be
a check-rein upon her tongue when his liver is out of order; and keep
her true to him when he leaves her with all her yearning affections,
to take care of herself.
And so our _blasé_ man yawns away existence, everything outward and
inward tending only to the great central I, when life might be _so_
glorious, _so_ bright, would he only recognize the existence of
others. For how much is that education valuable, the result of which
is only this? For how much that refinement which lifts a man so high
in the clouds, that no cry of humanity, be it ever so sharp and
piercing, can reach him? I turn away from his face, on which ennui and
selfishness have ploughed such furrows of discontent, to the laborer
in his red flannel shirt-sleeves, who, returning at sunset,
dinner-pail in hand, has well earned the right to clasp in his arms
the little child who runs to meet him. He may be illiterate, he may be
uneducated, but he is a _man_; and by that beautiful retributive law
of our being, by which the most useful and unselfish shall be the
healthiest, and happiest, he has his reward.
_LITERARY PEOPLE._
The verdant have an idea, that literary people are always under the
influence of "the divine afflatus;" but, like the curious female who
gazed through the bars of the doomed man's cell to gloat over his
situation, and was told by her victim, that, although the gallows was
impending, "he couldn't cry all the time," they are doomed to
disappointment.
When a literary person's exhaustive work is over, the last thing he
wishes to do is to _talk book_. The last person he wishes to meet is
another unfortunate, who also has been cudgelling his brains for
ideas. The person whom he wishes to see most, if, indeed, he desire to
see anybody, is one who will stir up his mentality least. The
laurel-wreath, which the verdant suppose he settles carefully and
becomingly on his head, before the looking-glass, ere he goes forth,
he would be glad to toss into the first ash-barrel; and, so far from
desiring to regulate his personal appearance, according to the
programme marked out by the sentimental, he feels only an insane
desire to be let severely alone, and "let _Natur_ caper," if, indeed,
she has not forgotten how.
He wants--this wise man--to hear some merry little child sing:
"Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
And down he ran:
Hickory, dickory, dock."
Or he wants to lean over a fence and see the turnips grow. It rests
him to think that the fat, lazy pigs never think, but lie winking
their pink eyes forever at the sun. In short, as I told you, he wants
just the antipodes of himself.
The sentimental will perceive, from this, the small chance they stand
for edification, or amusement, from "literary people" when off duty.
Blithe ladies will see, how very jolly it must be to marry a poet or
an author. But what shall we say of "the situation" when a literary
man and a literary woman are yoked? When the world abroad demands the
best of each, and nothing is left for home consumption? When, instead
of writing sonnets to each other, and looking at the chaste moon in
their leisure moments, as the sentimental have arranged it, they are
too used up to do anything but gape? When a change of programme would
not only be a blessing, but absolutely necessary, to stave off a
Coroner's Inquest? When the sight of a book to either, is like water
to a mad dog: particularly the sight of their own books, which
represent such an amount of headache, and bother, and sleepless
nights, to enable a critic to notice _only_ a printer's mistake in a
date, which is generally set down to the author's "want of knowledge
of his subject?" When they wonder, in the rasped state of their
nerves, what life is worth, if it is to be forever pitched up to that
key? When they can't open their mouths on any subject, without
perversely saying everything they _don't_ mean, and nothing that they
_do_?
Ah! then is the time for them to catch sight of that athlete--the
day-laborer, in red flannel shirt-sleeves, whistling along home with
his tools. Do you hear? _Tools!_ Happy man! He won't have to
manufacture _his_ tools before he begins to-morrow's work. He can
pound away all day, and sing the while, and no organ-grinder has power
to drive him mad.
* * * * *
It is a difficult thing for literary people, as well as others, to
tell the truth sometimes. Now here is a letter containing an article
by which the writer hopes to make money; and of which my "candid
opinion is asked, as soon as convenient."
Now in the first place, the article is most illegibly written; an
objection sufficient to condemn it at once, with a hurried editor--and
all editors are hurried--beside having always a bushel basket full of
MSS. already in hand to look over. In the second place, the spelling
is wofully at fault. In the third place, the punctuation is altogether
missing. In the fourth place, if all these things were amended, the
article itself is tame, common-place, and badly expressed. Now that
is my "candid opinion" of it.
Still, I am not verdant enough to believe that the writer wished my
"candid opinion" were it so condemnatory as this; and should I give
it, there is great danger it would be misconstrued. The author, in his
wounded self-love, might say, that, being a writer myself, I was not
disposed to be impartial. Or he might go farther and say that I had
probably forgotten the time when _I_ commenced writing, and longed for
an appreciative or encouraging word myself. Now this would pain me
very much; it would also be very unjust; because when I began to write
I called that person my best and truest friend who dared tell me when
I was at fault in such matters. I have now in my remembrance a
stranger, who often wrote me, regarding my articles, as they appeared
from time to time; who criticised them unsparingly; finding fault in
the plainest Saxon when he could not approve or praise. I thanked him
then, I do so now; and was gratified at the singular interest he
manifested in one unknown to him. I have never seen him all these
years of my literary effort; but I know him to have been more truly my
friend than they who would flatter me into believing better of what
talent I may possess than it really merits.
This is the way I felt about friendly though unfavorable criticism.
The question is, have _I_ sufficient courage to risk being
misunderstood, should _I_, in this instance, speak honestly and
plainly. Or shall I write a very polite, non-committal answer,
meaning anything, or nothing. Or shall I praise it unqualifiedly, and
recommend the writer to persevere in a vocation in which I am sure he
is certain to be doomed to disappointment; and all for the sake of
being thought a generous, genial, kindly, sympathetic sort of person.
_Which shall I do?_
The writer would not like to descend from his pedestal, and hear that
he must begin at the foot of the ladder, and first of all, learn to
spell correctly, before he can write. And that after words, must come
thoughts; and that after thoughts, must come the felicitous expression
of thoughts. And that, after all that, he must then look about for a
market for the same.
This, you see, is a tedious process to one who wants not only
immediate but _large_ pecuniary results, and evidently considers
himself entitled to them, notwithstanding his deference to your
"candid opinion."
But what a pleasure, when the person appealed to, can conscientiously
say to a writer, that he has not _over_ but _under_-rated his gifts!
What a pleasure, if one's opinion can be of any value to him, to be
able to speak encouragingly of the present, and hopefully for the
future. And surely, he who has himself waded through this initiatory
"Slough of Despond," and, by one chance in a thousand, landed safely
on the other side, should be the last to beckon, or lure into it,
those whose careless steps, struggle they ever so blindly, may never
find sure or permanent foot-hold.
"What did I do, after all, about _that letter_?" Well, if you insist
upon cornering me, it lies unanswered on my desk, this minute: a
staring monument of the moral cowardice of FANNY FERN.
_SOME VARIETIES OF WOMEN._
Chief of all sublunary abominations is the slatternly woman. I blame
no man for longing to rush from a house, the mistress of which,
habitually, and from choice, pays him the poor compliment of pouring
out his coffee in curl-papers, or tumbled hair, or dingy, collarless
morning gown, and slip-shod feet. If there is a time when a pretty
woman looks prettier than at any hour in the twenty-four, it is in a
neat breakfast toilette, with her shining bands of hair, and nice
breakfast robe, (calico, if you like, provided it fit well, and the
color be well chosen); and if there is a time when a plain woman comes
the nearest to being handsome, it is in this same lovable, domestic
dress.
I will maintain that the coffee and eggs taste better, and that the
husband goes more smilingly and hopefully to his day's task, after
helping such a wife to bread and butter. I could never comprehend the
female slattern--thank heaven there are few of them--or understand how
a woman, though she had no eye to please but her own, should not be
scrupulously neat in all the different strata of her apparel.
I repeat it, I blame no man from rushing in disgust from a house whose
mistress is a slattern; who never pays her husband the compliment to
look decent in her person or in her house, unless company is expected;
who reserves her yawns and old dresses for her husband, and strikes an
attitude for his male friends; whose pretty carpets are defaced with
spots; whose chairs are half dusted; whose domestic dinners are
uneatable; whose table-cloth, castors, and salt-cellars are seldom
regenerated; and whose muslins look as if they had been dipped in
saffron.
Not to speak of the _wastefulness_ of this crying fault: bonnets,
shawls and cloaks will not long retain their beauty if left on chairs
or tables over night, instead of being carefully put away; bracelets
and brooches are not improved by being trodden upon, or ribbons and
laces by being hastily wisped into a corner. To such an extreme do I
carry my horror of an untidy woman, that I would almost refuse to
believe in the virtue of such an one. Not that I admire the woman who
is always at her husband's heels with a brush and a dust-pan; who puts
him under the harrow if he does not place his boots under the scraper
before entering the parlor; who has fits if his coat is not hung up on
the left side of the door instead of the right; who when he has but
ten minutes to spare after breakfast to enjoy the morning paper,
drives him out of his comfortable corner by the fire, to brush up a
spoonful of ashes on the hearth; who is always "righting," as she
calls it, his own particular den, which I am convinced all husbands
must be allowed to enjoy, neck deep in confusion unmolested, if their
wives wish the roof to stay on.
I once had the misfortune to live in the house with such a female,
whose husband roosted half his in-door time on the top of the table,
to keep clear of the mop. How her cap-strings flew through the doors;
what galvanized broomsticks she wielded; how remorselessly she
ferreted out closets, and disembowelled cupboards; how horribly she
scraped glass and paint; and how anxious she looked to begin again
when it was all done. How I slunk behind doors, and dodged behind
screens, and jumped out of windows, to get out of the vixen's way; and
how I sat swinging in the elm tree in the orchard at a safe distance
till the whirlwind was past.
Heavens; how that india-rubber woman would go to baking after she had
done cleaning, and to ironing after she had done baking, and to sewing
after she had done both; how vindictively she twitched her needle
through, as if she wished it were some live thing, that she might make
it feel weariness and pain. How like whipped spaniels her children
looked; and what a reverence they had for washing and ironing days;
how remorselessly she scrubbed their noses up and down of a Sunday
morning, and shoved them into their "meetin clothes," turning the
pockets carefully inside out, to see that no stray bit of string, or
carnal marble, or fish-hook remained, to alleviate the torture of the
long-drawn seventeenthlies of the parson's impracticable discourse.