to college; contracting long livery-stable, hotel, and tailors' bills,
with a perfect reliance upon his diplomatic abilities to "set it all
right with the old gentleman;" thanking him deceitfully for his
unparalleled generosity to a son so unworthy; alluding delicately to
his pride in him as a father, and trusting some day to make a proper
return for all his goodness, etc., etc. See the "stupid boy" who is
summarily set down to be wanting in cleverness, accepting in silence
this verdict, and the consequent disposal of his time in some
uncongenial, distasteful employment, till at last, wearied out by the
silent drop that descends mercilessly and unremittingly, hour by hour,
on his tortured soul, he rushes from the home which has been a home
only in name, and wanders forth, with the gnawing pain in his heart
for silent company. Merciful God! what is to keep him? His blood is
young and warm, his heart throbbing wildly in his breast for what
every human thing yearns for--sympathy--love!
Years pass on. The college boy returns with more knowledge of horses,
wine and women, than of Greek, Latin and mathematics--returns to
receive the congratulations of partial friends that he has passed off
for pure gold the glittering brass of his showy superficiality. The
truant's name is never mentioned, or if so, with the hope, not that he
may be kept from evil, but "that he may not disgrace us." Meanwhile
the wanderer lies languishing on a bed of sickness in a foreign
country. Woman's heart is the same in all lands, when pity knocks at
it, else had he closed his eyes in exile. Pity he had not--pity he
returned to be asked, with cold tones and averted eyes, why he did not
stay there. Pity that he could not smother that unconquerable longing
which approaching death brings, to look our last upon our native land.
Pity that the errors born of neglected childhood, and forsaken youth,
should have been held up to him by the pharisaical hands which goaded
him into them, even at the tomb's portal. Pity that sinful man may not
be merciful as a holy, pitying God.
I ask you, and you, and you, who have woven the "coat of many colors"
for some one of your household--you who, by your partiality and
short-sightedness, are fostering the rank weeds, and trampling under
foot the humble flowers--you who are bringing up children whose hearts
shall one day be colder to each other than the dead in their
graves--you upon whom shall be visited--alas! too late--every scalding
tear of agony and disappointment from out young eyes, which should
have beamed only with hope and gladness;--I ask every parent who is
doing this, if he or she is willing that his or her child shall grow
up by these means to lose his faith in man, and sadder still, in God?
* * * * *
I wonder is it foreordained that there shall be one child in every
family whom "nobody can do anything with?" Who tears around the
paternal pasture with its heels in the air, looking at rules, as a
colt does at fences, as good things to jump over. We all know that the
poor thing must be "broken in," and all its graceful curvetings
sobered down to a monotonous jog-trot; that it must be taught to bear
heavy burdens, and to toil up many a steep ascent at the touch of the
spur; but who that has climbed the weary height does not pass the
halter round the neck of the pretty creature with a half-sigh, that
its happy day of careless freedom should be soon ended?
How it bounds away from you, making you almost glad that your attempt
was a failure; how lovingly your eye follows it, as it makes the swift
breathless circle, and stops at a safe distance to nod you defiance.
Something of all this every loving parent has felt, while trying to
reduce to order the child whom "nobody can do anything with."
Geography, grammar and history seem to be put into one ear, only to
go out at the other. The multiplication table might as well be written
in Arabic, for any idea it conveys, or lodges, if conveyed, in the
poor thing's head. Temperate, torrid, and frigid zones may all be of a
temperature, for all she can remember, and her mother might have been
present at the creation of the world, or at the birth of the Author of
it, for aught she can chronologically be brought to see.
But look! she is tired of play, and has taken up her pencil to draw;
she has had no instruction; but peep over her shoulder and follow her
pencil; there is the true artist touch in that little sketch, though
she does not know it--a freedom, a boldness which teaching may
regulate, never impart. Now she is tired of drawing, and takes up a
volume of poems, far beyond the comprehension, one would think, of a
child of her years, and though she often miscalls a word, and knows
little and cares less about commas and semi-colons, yet not the finest
touch of humor or pathos escapes her, and the poet would be lucky,
were he always sure of so appreciative a reader. She might tell you
that France was bounded south by the Gulf of Mexico, but you yourself
could not criticise Dickens or Thackeray with more discrimination.
Down goes the book, and she is on the tips of her toes pirouetting.
She has never seen a dancing-school, nor need she; perfectly modeled
machinery cannot but move harmoniously; she does not know, as she
floats about, that she is an animated poem. Now she is tired of
dancing, and she throws herself into an old arm-chair, in an attitude
an artist might copy, and commences to sing; she is ignorant of
quavers, crotchets and semi-breves, of tenors, baritones and sopranos,
and yet you, who have heard them with rapturous encores, stop to
listen to her simple melody.
Now she is down in the kitchen playing cook; she turns a beef-steak as
if she had been brought up in a restaurant, and washes dishes for fun,
as if it had been always sober earnest; singing, dancing and drawing
the cook's portrait at intervals, and all equally well done.
Now send that child to any school in the land, where "Moral Science"
is hammered remorselessly and uselessly into curly heads, and she
would be pronounced an incorrigible dunce. Idiotically stupid
parrot-girls would ride over her shrinking, sensitive shame-facedness,
rough-shod. She would be kept after school, kept in during recess, and
have a discouraging list of bad recitation marks as long as Long
Island; get a crooked spine, grow ashamed of throwing snow-balls, have
a chronic headache, and an incurable disgust of teachers and schools,
as well she might.
She is like a wild rose, creeping here, climbing there, blossoming
where you least expect it, on some rough stone wall or gnarled trunk,
at its own free, graceful will. You may dig it up and transplant it
into your formal garden if you like, but you would never know it more
for the luxuriant wild-rose, this "child whom nobody can do anything
with."
Some who read this may ask, and properly, is such a child never to
know the restraint of rule? I would be the last to answer in the
negative, nor (and here it seems to me the great agony of outraged
childhood comes in) would I have parents or teachers stretch or dwarf
children of all sorts, sizes and capacities, on the same narrow
Procrustean bed of scholastic or parental rule. No farmer plants his
celery and potatoes in the same spot, and expects it to bear good
fruit. Some vegetables he shields from the rude touch, the rough wind,
the blazing sun; he knows that each requires different and appropriate
nurture, according to its capacities. Should they who have the care of
the immortal be less wise?
"You have too much imagination, you should try to crush it out," was
said many years ago to the writer, in her school-days, by one who
should have known that "He who seeth the end from the beginning,"
bestows _no_ faculty to be "crushed out;" that this very faculty it is
which has placed the writer, at this moment, beyond the necessity of
singing, like so many of her sex, the weary "Song of the Shirt."
* * * * *
One request I would make of every mother. Make your "nursery"
pleasant. Never mind about your "parlor," _but is your nursery a
cheerful place_? Is there anything there upon the wall for little eyes
to look at, and little minds to think about when they wake so early
in the morning; or as they lounge about when a stormy day keeps them
close prisoners? If not, see to it without delay. Don't say I "can't
afford it;" one shilling--two shillings will do it; if you can spare a
few shillings more, so much the better. You know the effect a bright,
cheerful apartment has upon yourself, even with all your mature
resources for thought and pleasure. Think then of the little children,
reaching out their young thoughts, like vine tendrils, for something
to twine about, something to lean on, something to grow to,--in fine,
something to think and talk about. A blank, white wall is not
suggestive or inspiriting. Give the little nursery prisoner something
bright to look at. Can that be called "a trifle" which makes home
attractive? We think not. Therefore we like flowering plants in
windows. There are some houses which make us feel as though we were on
friendly terms with the inmates, through these cheerful, mute tokens.
Mute! did I say? Have our past lives been so barren of incident that
the perfume of a flower never brought before us some bright face, or
loved form, which has made life for us blessed? You must have felt
it--and _you_ and _you_; I am sure of it. Just such a rose as that you
have "seen in her hair;" and you sit dreamily looking at it, as it
sways gracefully on the stem; and you wonder what the dear child, so
many hundred miles away, is thinking of now; and whether her
full-blossomed life has fulfilled its budding promise. And that
reminds you how the whirlpool of life's cares and duties has almost
engulfed these sweet memories; and resolutely turning your back upon
them all, you sit down and write a warm _heart-letter_, which comes to
her in her distant home, like a white-winged dove at the window of a
dreary winter day. And all this came of the little rose in your
window; the old love wakened in _your_ heart, and the gladness to
_hers_!
Eloquent? If flowers are not eloquent, who or what is? Then, why are
so many withered leaves put away with bright tresses and pressed
passionately to lonely lips, whose quivering no eye sees save His "who
wounds but to heal?" Eloquent? Could mines of gold buy them? _This_
was twined in her bridal veil; _that_ was laid upon her coffin-lid. No
fingers but yours may touch the shrivelled treasures. For _her_ sake
you have placed their blossoming counterparts in your window. You shut
your eyes when you go near them, that their perfume may seem her very
breath.
Eloquent? Why does the old man stoop, and with trembling fingers pick
the daisy or violet, and place them in his button-hole? Don't question
him about it when strangers are by. It is the key to his whole
life--that little flower.
"My mother liked primroses," the matron says to her little child; and
so they blossom in _her_ home as they did, many years ago, in the
sunny nursery-window of her childhood. Ah, these "mothers!" whose
"rights," guaranteed by the Great Law-giver, nor statute makers, nor
statute breakers can weaken or set aside. Long years after they are
dust, shall some little blossom they loved be placed in a bosom which
yearns unceasingly, over and above every other human love, for her who
gave it these warm pulsations. Blessed be these memorials of "the long
ago!"
* * * * *
There is a class of mothers, _easy_ mothers, who lose much time by not
_finding time_ for imperative duties. We wish it were possible to
persuade some of them, who are otherwise most excellent mothers--how
much trouble they would save themselves, by exercising a little
firmness toward their young children. Of course it takes more time to
contest a point with a child, than to yield it; and a busy mother not
reflecting that this is not for once, but for thousands of future
times, and to rid herself of importunity, says wearily--"yes--yes--you
may do it;" when all the while she knows it to be wrong and most
injurious to the child. Then there comes a time when she _must_ say
No! and the difficulty of enforcing it, at so late a period of
indulgence, none can tell but "easy" mothers of self-willed children.
For _your own sakes_, then, mothers, if you have not the future good
of your children at heart; for your own sakes--and to save yourselves
great trouble in the future, _learn to say No--and take time to
enforce it_. Let everything else go, if necessary, because this
contest must be fought out, successfully, with every separate child;
and remember once fought it is done with forever. When we see mothers,
day by day, worried--harassed, worn out by ceaseless teasings and
importunities, all for want of a little firmness at the outset, we
know not whether to be more sorry or angry.
Again: some mothers are so busy about the temporal wants of their
children that they are wholly unacquainted with them spiritually. You
are very careful of your daughter's dress; you attend personally to
its purchase and fit. You go with her to see that her foot is nicely
gaitered; and you give your milliner special instructions as to the
make and becomingness of her bonnets; but do you ever ask yourself,
_what she is thinking about_? In other words, do you know anything at
all of her inner life? Many who are esteemed most excellent mothers,
are as ignorant on this all-important point as if they had never
looked upon their daughters' faces. They exact respectful obedience,
and if the young creature yields it, and has no need of a physician's
immediate services, they consider their duty done. Alas, what a fatal
mistake! These are the mothers, who, never having invited the
confidence of those young hearts, live to see it bestowed anywhere and
everywhere but in accordance with their wishes. _Is_ it, _can_ it be
enough to a mother worthy the name, to be satisfied that her
daughter's physical wants are cared for? What of that yearning, hungry
soul, that is casting about, here and there, for something to satisfy
its questionings? Oh, give a thought _sometimes_ to this. When she
sits there by the fire, or by the window, musing, sit down by her, and
_love_ her thoughts out of her. Cast that fatal "dignity" or
indifference to the winds, which has come between so many young
creatures and the heart to which they should lie nearest in these
important forming years. "Respect" is good in its place; but when it
freezes up your daughter's soul-utterances; when it sends her for
sympathy and companionship to chance guides, _what then_? A word, a
loving, kind word, at the right moment! No mind can over-estimate its
importance. Remember this, when you see the sad wrecks of womanhood
about you; and amid the sweeping waves of life's cares and life's
pleasures, what else soever you neglect, do not fail to know _what
that young daughter of yours is thinking about_.
* * * * *
How strong sometimes is weakness! When a very young child loses its
mother, before it has yet learned to syllable her name, we are
generally struck with pity at what we call its "helpless condition;"
and yet, after all, its apparent helplessness is at once its strength
and shield; for is not every kind heart about it immediately drawn
toward it in love and sympathy? Do not the touch of its soft hand, its
pretty flitting smile, the "cuddlesome" leaning of the little head,
the trustful innocence of its eyes, do more for it, than could all the
eloquence of Demosthenes? I was struck with the truth of this not long
since, upon going into a shop to make a purchase, where I found the
young girl who usually waited there, with a little babe in charge,
whose mother had just died. Looking about the shop, and remarking the
many calls upon her time and attention, as she moved quickly around
with this pretty little burden upon her arm, I said, this child must
be a great care for you. Yes, said she; but oh, _such a comfort, too_.
And so playing with the baby and talking the while, I learned that
before its mother died, it was taken in every night for her to kiss
it, before it was put to sleep. After the mother's funeral, as the
young girl was passing through that room with it, the little creature
_stretched out its hands toward the empty bed for the accustomed
kiss_? Tears stood in her eyes, as she again kissed the baby. I knew
_now_ how it was that the "_comfort_" outweighed the "_care_." No
voice from the spirit-land could so effectually and solemnly have
bound up her future with that orphan baby as that mute reaching out of
its loving arms to that empty bed. _Now_ had that young girl a _soul_
for labor; a motive for living. _Now_ there was something to repay
toil. Something for her to love--something to love her. Every customer
who came in, was so much toward a subsistence for little Annie. Ah,
the difference between plodding on for cold duty's sake, and working
with one's heart in it! The little shop looked bright as heaven, that
cold November afternoon, and I went out of it, wondering what people
could mean when they spoke of "_infant helplessness_;" since all New
York might have failed to do for that little one, what it had
accomplished for itself by that one unconscious, touching little
action.
_THOUGHTS ON SOME EVERY DAY TOPICS._
Women boarders are often called troublesome; but it must be remembered
that all a man wants of his room is to sleep and dress in, but it is a
woman's _home_; and alas! often all she has. She would not _be_ a
woman did she not desire to make it tidy and habitable. This--her
landlady contracts to do. The fruitless ringings for fresh-water,
towels, coal, lights and a clean carpet--and she is not allowed to go
down stairs after them herself--are not unknown to any woman who has
worn life out in boarding-houses. It is not, as I remarked, in the
nature of a woman to be comfortable in Babel; nor does its owner fancy
a cloud of dust, raised in the middle of the day, upon her nicely
smoothed hair, or clean collar, because the chambermaid has an
appointment with John, the waiter, in the entry, or because she enjoys
lolling out the front window on her elbows an hour in every room she
is "righting," instead of attending promptly to her business, and
getting through with it.
Now, man is by nature an unclean animal. I doubt if he would ever wash
his face, were there no women about who would refuse to kiss him if he
didn't. Well--_he_ clears a hole in the middle of his room, and gets
ready for breakfast; which he swallows, and then bolts through the
front-door, (dining down town,) not to return again till evening. What
possible difference, then, does it make to him, whether his bed be
made, and his room swept at ten o'clock in the morning, or four in the
afternoon? _His_ home is in the restaurant, in the store, in the
street, anywhere and everywhere, that temptation and inclination may
lead him; four walls don't bound _his_ vision. He can afford to be
philosophical about brooms and dust-pans.
But let Biddy take them into his _counting-room_. Let him stand round
on one leg while she--having moved his desk and displaced his ledgers
and papers, preparatory to a sweep--runs out into the street half an
hour, under pretence of getting a broom, to gossip with an
acquaintance. Let him, getting impatient, sit down in the midst of the
hub-bub, and drawing up his inkstand, commence writing. Let Biddie
re-enter, just as he gets under way, with a frisk of that wretched,
long-handled duster, which tosses on more dust than she ever takes
off. Let him rise again and make way for her, and then--let her bob
off again--after a little water, and stay another half hour,--and all
the while the merciless clock ticking on, and the perspiration
standing on his forehead at this unnecessary waste of his time and
temper, and the work he _hasn't_ done, and let Biddy repeat this in
that counting-room, to that man, every morning in the year, (365
mornings). How long do you suppose he would stand that?
Well, that's just what women in boarding-houses have to put up with.
That's why they are troublesome. That's why they can't help it. That's
why landladies like men who live everywhere but in their rooms, and
who, provided their mattress is not put in their washbowl, and the
ends of their cigars are not broken by the landlady's little boy, give
her carte blanche as to dirt and other luxuries.
On the other hand I acknowledge that a man-boarder eats four times as
much as a woman, and often keeps his landlady waiting weeks to have
her bill paid, if indeed he ever pays it. Then he tumbles up stairs at
midnight in an oblivious condition, thumping against all the doors as
he goes, frightening the single women into fits, and waking up hapless
babies, to drain the last drop of the milk of motherly kindness? Then
he brings his comrades home to dinner or to tea, and expects his poor
struggling landlady to omit all mention of the same when she makes out
her bill? Then, notwithstanding this, he sniffs at the eggs, cracks
stale jokes on the chickens; rails at the beef, looks daggers into the
coffee-cup, and holds his supercilious nose when the butter is too
near; and by many other gentlemanly tokens shows the poor widow, whose
husband once would not let the wind blow roughly on her, that he will
grind her and her children down to the last fraction, that he may
spend it on cigars and drinks, while the gray hairs gather thickly on
her temples, and she goes to sleep every night with a "God help me,"
on her lips.
* * * * *
It is a self-evident fact, that all women are not ladies, in the best
sense of the word; _i. e._ by virtue of behavior, _not_ dress; no
doubt landladies as well as others have often discovered this. It is
very easy to tell "a lady" by the standard of behavior. Ten women
shall get into an omnibus, and though we never saw one of them before,
we shall select you the true lady. She does not titter when a
gentleman, handing up her fare, knocks off his hat, or pitches it awry
over his nose; nor does she receive her "change," after this
inconvenient act of gallantry, in grim silence. She wears no flowered
brocade there to be trodden under foot, nor ball-room jewelry, nor
rose-tinted gloves; but the lace frill round her face is scrupulously
fresh, and the strings under her chin have evidently been handled only
by dainty fingers. She makes no parade of a watch, if she wears one;
nor does she draw off her dark, neatly-fitting glove to display
ostentatious rings. Still we notice, nestling in the straw beneath us,
such a trig little boot, not paper-soled, but of an anti-consumption
thickness; the bonnet upon her head is plain, simply trimmed, for your
true lady never wears full-dress in an omnibus. She is quite as civil
to the _poorest_ as to the _richest_ person who sits beside her, and
equally regardful of their rights. If she attracts attention, it is by
the unconscious grace of her person and manner, not by the
ostentation of her dress. We are quite sorry when she pulls the strap
and disappears. We saw a lady do a very pretty thing the other
morning. Our omnibus was nearly full of ladies, going down town, when
quite an elderly man slowly mounted the steps, and clambered in,
taking a seat by the door. The lady next him, observing him take out
his fare, smilingly extended her hand to the venerable man, passed the
money up to the driver, and returned the change. It was a _little_
thing, but, oh, how _lovely_! more particularly, as the old man's hat
was shabby, his coat seedy, and he had every mark of poverty about
him. That woman will make a good wife, said we, and we had half a mind
to ask her address, for the benefit of some young man; only that we
reflected that unless her virtues were backed by "a fortune," they
might possibly go a-begging.
* * * * *
The "term" lady has been so misused, that I like better the
old-fashioned term, _woman_. I sometimes think the influence of a good
woman greater than that of a good man. There are so many avenues to the
human heart left open to her gentle approach, which would be instantly
barred up at the sound of rougher footsteps. One may tell anything to a
good woman. In her presence pride sleeps or is disarmed. The old
child-feeling comes back upon the world-weary man, and he knows not why
he has reposed the unsought confidence which has so lightened his
heart. Why he goes forth again ashamed that one so feeble is so much
mightier. Why _he_ could doubt and despair where _she_ can trust and
wait. Why he could fly from the foe for whose approach she so
courageously tarries. Why he thinks of the dagger, or pistol, or
poisoned cup, while she, accepting the fierce blast of misfortune,
meekly bows her head till the whirlwind be overpast,--believing,
hoping, _knowing_ that God's bright smile of sunshine will break
through at last.