least. I mention what may be to you but a very ordinary experience,
because I am really quite humiliated: first, that such an unusual
thing should have occurred to me; and secondly, that it should have
been the undeserved penalty of great amiability on my part. It
happened lately that, on a certain public occasion, a seat was
politely assigned me near the orator of the hour, and, unfortunately,
also near an open window, through which came directly upon my throat a
blast of chill air. I felt it clutch me, but I said to myself, I wont
make a disturbance leaving. Hence the necessity of a doctor, and a
total cessation of speech, and a big bunch, the size of an egg, on a
throat which were better without it. The next time I am polite, you
may tell me of it! I am out now, to be sure, under the trees again,
but I can't walk with any spring or unction. I can't eat with any
appetite. I can't ride without being sensible of every inequality in
the road. I hate a bed so that I can scarce bring my mind to get into
one at night, and yet I am, as the expression goes, "_dead tired_" all
the time. I tell you all this, particularly now, however, because I
have received a stack of letters, during this period, which I must
take a little time to answer, and which correspondents might otherwise
suppose were never received, or had been slighted. But, oh! how
beautiful look the green fields to me, now, and how welcome the fresh
air! Still, don't come to Stockbridge _to be sick_. It is heaven for
well people, and kind friends who dwell here are heavenly in kind
deeds, at such and all other times.
This is what ails Stockbridge. It is occupied, mainly, by rich people,
who come here only for their summer sojourn. Most of the houses here
are quite closed in winter; therefore, you see that they are all
consumers: _producers_ are the exceptions. If you have fruit or
squashes in your own garden, thank the sun and the Lord for the same.
If you don't own a garden, and don't want to tire out the generosity
of your friends; in short, if you are a sick pilgrim at a hotel, then
more's the pity. _Then_ you'll lie on your pillow and dream of big
peaches, and luscious pears, and plums, in your native hunting-ground,
the New York markets. You'll think of the stores in Broadway, where
huge bunches of grapes, in purple bloom, lie clustering. Maybe at the
butcher's, near your very door in New York, is the "sweet-bread,"
which, if cooked at the right moment, and in the right way, might
tempt your flagging appetite. Heaven's blessings on the good
Samaritans who brought _me_ nice tit-bits; but one don't want to be a
pauper too long, lest the patience of benevolence might give out.
While I lay sick, I must say a peach-tree seemed more desirable than
the grandest elm; and a pear-tree preferable to ever so magnificent a
maple or chestnut. Grape-vines, also, I thought finer than woodbine,
ivy, or clematis; in short--were my state of invalidism to continue, I
am confident I should become a confirmed utilitarian.
If this bit of experience of mine is any comfort to the forced
sojourner in the hot city, let him hug it to heart. I have had sunsets
here like the glory of "the New Jerusalem." I've wandered under these
trees and been driven over these lovely roads, till my eyes were moist
with happiness I could not voice. I have heard such kindly tones, and
seen such loving faces, and been so hospitably entreated here, that it
would take more physic than was involved in those bed-ridden days of
pain and unrest to give me a grudge against lovely, mountain-girdled
Stockbridge.
_MEN AND THEIR CLOTHES._
The female fashions of to-day are absurd enough; but if anything more
absurd than a man's "stove-pipe hat" was ever invented, I would like
to see it. Mark its victims, when they remove it from their
heads--which they seldom do, the gods know why, unless they are
getting into bed; see the red rim across their foreheads, produced by
its unwieldy weight, and unnecessary inches up in the air; see them
occasionally in the street, giving it a cock backwards, when nobody
but apple-women are looking, to observe how quickly a gentleman, by
that action, may be made into a rowdy; then see them apply their
handkerchiefs to their foreheads, to cool off the heat and the pain,
and then with a stoicism worthy of one of Fox's martyrs, replace it,
and bear the long agony till they get home. Then what garment that
ever woman wore, is more ridiculous than a man's shirt, whether
buttoning before or buttoning behind, or disfigured with puerile
"studs;" whether the stiff collar stands up like a picket on guard, or
lays over, with a necktie to tie it suffocatingly over the jugular
vein.
Then mark that abomination--a swallow-tailed coat. Heavens! how ugly
the handsomest man may look in it! and woe for the plain men, when
they intensify their plainness with it!
Then see the knock-kneed and the crooked-legged advertising their
deformity in tight pantaloons; and short, fat, barrel men wearing
little boys' cloth caps on their heads! Ah, for every female goose
that Fashion makes, I will find you a male mate, even to the wearing
of tight corsets!
But, my friends, on one point there's a difference. "When a
fashionable lady engages a female servant, she stipulates that she
shall wear a cap on her head, and calico on her back, to mark the
difference between herself and that servant--without which, I suppose,
it would not often be recognizable." When her _husband_ gives a dinner,
the male waiters are dressed exactly like himself--in festal white
neckties, white gloves, and hideous swallow-tailed coats.
How is this? It must be that the male creature is very secure of his
position, socially, mentally, morally, and physically, to permit such
presumption--nay, to demand it. Can any philosopher explain to me this
mystery? I was "struck 'midships" with the idea at a festal gathering
not long since; and turning to my male guide, philosopher, and friend,
asked what it meant. His irritating answer to this most proper and
natural question was, "Fanny, don't be silly."
I reiterate my remark that men's dress is to the full as absurd in its
way as women's, and I am only reconciled to the idea that a man was
intended for a human being when I see an athlete of a gymnast, of
glorious chest and calves, and splendid muscular arms, skimming the
air as gracefully as a bird, and as poetically; then I know how
civilization has ruined him! I know, that man if he jumped, and ran,
and wrestled, and walked, instead of sitting stupidly in a chair in
the house, or creeping into an omnibus when out of it, and smoking and
going to sleep in the intervals, would not be obliged to creep into
these ugly tailor's padded fashions to hide his deficiencies, but
could wear what he chose, knowing that the beautiful outlines of his
form would glorify any decent vestment.
I walked several blocks out of my way behind a man, the other day, who
positively "stepped off." What a chest he had! what a splendid poise
of the head! what a free, jubilant swing of the arm! I hope he will
come to New York again some day, for I'm sure he was a stranger to it,
for he neither stopped anywhere to take a drink, buy a cigar, nor did
he hail an omnibus!
Magnificent giant! I wonder what was his name, and had he a mother. If
not--well, it was a pity he shouldn't have.
I wonder what _are_ "good manners"? The question occurred to me the
other evening in a place of public amusement. I was one of a dozen or
so of ladies, wedged in a row of the usual narrow seats. At every
pause in the performance, three _gentlemen_ stepped over the laps of
the ladies in that seat, carrying off in their exit, or knocking upon
the floor, opera-glasses, fans, scarfs, handkerchiefs, and, almost,
the ladies themselves; returning each time wiping their lips, and
introducing with them a strong odious smell of tobacco. I respectfully
submit to any _real_ gentleman who reads this article, if that is
"good manners."
Of course, I know it would be better if all seats at such places could
be so arranged that _gentlemen_ need not clean their boots on ladies'
laps in order to pass out. But also it would be well if gentlemen took
all the sustenance in the way of wine which they needed before
starting from home; and if they _could_ also bring their godlike
minds, to defer smoking till they could annoy only the one lady, whom
they have a legal right to annoy, it would add to the general comfort,
as well as their _public_ reputation for gallantry and politeness. Men
generally object to going out evenings, "because they are so tired."
Why, then, they never embrace the opportunity to sit still when they
get there, is an inconsistency which we must place unsolved, on the
shelf already so well labelled with them. I might suggest also, that
if they will persist in cleaning their boots on our laps, in order to
get out these narrow sets of seats, and if they will carry off in
their exit our gloves and fans and opera-glasses, and if they will
keep on repeating this little pastime all the evening, to say nothing
of occasionally crushing our feet out of all shape, I would venture to
suggest that they should mitigate the suffering by saying,
occasionally, "I beg pardon," or, "Pray excuse me," or by some such
little deference acknowledge the infinite bore of their presence.
Failing in this, I propose that each _gentleman_, on his return,
should bring in his hand a peace-offering to the ladies in the seat,
of a glass of lemonade and a bit of cake. Why shouldn't _we_ be
thirsty too? Mr. Beecher says a woman has a right to--no, I believe he
_didn't_ say that, but he ought to have done so; and if he didn't,
"fair play is a jewel."
Mr. Smith exclaims, on reading this, "Horrible woman!" because, though
a handsome man, he sees himself looking selfish and ugly in the glass
I hold up to him. Now, Mr. Smith wouldn't say that, if he should sit
down beside me and let me talk to him five minutes. Not he! You see I
have him at a great disadvantage, away off at the other end of the
city or over to Brooklyn. I could say the very same things to him I
have just said on paper, sitting here on my sofa beside me, and that
man would go on lying, as men will, to other men's wives' faces, and
be _so_ polite and smiling, that his own wife never would know him, if
she happened in; and he'd tell me that "what I said was all true, and
that men _were_ selfish animals," meaning Tom Jones and Sam Jenkins,
and every other man but just himself. Don't I know them?
_NOTES FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK._
How I ever lived so many years in Boston without coming to see
Plymouth, is one of the sins of omission for which I am at this
present finding doing my best to atone. I trust all of you who are
equally guilty, will come as soon as may be to breathe the fine
Newport air of the place, and take time to visit its interesting
coast, its numerous ponds, its lovely drives through odorous woods,
and all the hallowed spots which ought to be dear to the heart of
every true American. Don't go to Paris or London till you have been to
Plymouth. It were well to "see Niagara" first; but it were better to
have gone with me to the "Record Office" this morning, and seen the
yellow manuscripts, covered thickly with the small German text-looking
handwriting of our Pilgrim Fathers; setting forth, for instance, "the
shares they severally held in a cow," in the simple, honest,
straightforward manner of the time--one signed by "Myles Standish,"
who, it seems, having the primitive ambition to own an _entire_ cow,
kept buying up the shares of the rest as speedily as his means
allowed. I thought of Mr. Bonner's stables, and the thousands of
dollars his horses represented, and wondered how he dared to say his
catechism! Then I saw their veritable "Charter," kept in a dark
cupboard, with a silken curtain drawn across the precious signatures,
lest the unscrupulous sunlight, invading this "Holy of Holies," should
snatch them from posterity. And then and there was exploded for me the
theory that handwriting is indicative of character. Certainly those
effeminate, small, beautiful letters gave no sign or token of the
moral strength, the rugged persistence of purpose, of the Pilgrim
Fathers. Not one modern young lady in a hundred could write so minute
and beautiful a hand. They must have had good eyesight in those days,
when gas and furnaces were not. Sharp men they were; disguising the
very graves of the first little Mayflower band, lest the Indians
should take advantage of the reduction of their numbers. The very
house I am in bears the name of the first Indian who visited
them,--"Samoset." Whether the fair and tender-hearted Rose Standish
quailed before the savage owner of this most musical name, I have not
learned. I do not hesitate to say, that _I_ should have made for the
bushes on his first appearance. It is curious, in walking the streets
of Plymouth, to hear the little children calling to each other, in
their play, and using the old familiar Mayflower names of hundreds of
years ago.
But Pilgrim ancestry does not insure saintliness in all its
descendants, as I found upon visiting the county prison. Within its
walls was pointed out to me a woman who had poisoned her husband,
when sick and helpless on her hands. For thirteen long weary years
she had never been outside those walls; and latterly had declined even
walking in the little paved yard allowed the prisoners. She was a
large, powerfully built woman, with a skin like the parchments I had
been looking at in the Record Office drawn tightly over her high
cheek-bones. She sat sewing at her grated window as we entered; and
when asked "if she were not warm," as the day was very hot, answered
petulantly, "No--I am most always cold; there can't be circulation
where there's no exercise." Outside was bloom and sunlight, and song
of birds, and merry voices, and blue skies, and pleasant hum of labor,
and the faint dirge of the sea. She merited her fate, but I turned
away from her sick at heart, and thought, were it my case, how
questionable were the mercy that abolished hanging for such
slow-dropping torture as this.
In the same room with her were three hard-featured women, placed there
for violation of the liquor laws. Each in that room had a babe in her
arms, or at her knee--poor little innocent victims of maternal
misdoing. One baby was moaning with the teething process, so hard to
endure and survive, even with all the appliances of out-door air and
wholesome surroundings. Its little waxen face showed signs of severe
suffering, and for _three months_ more, if the little life were spun
out that long, it must remain there--its only amusement rocking the
rude box which was allowed for a cradle. The mother answered me
roughly enough when I inquired the age of her baby, but God knows I
forgive her any bitterness she might feel at the difference that
bright day in our respective lots; but could she have read my heart,
and seen how I longed to carry her little one out on the grass, and
among the flowers, and see it smile, she would have known me for its
friend.
I never saw a prison more clean, and neat, and well-ordered; and yet I
could not help thinking there should be a nursery there, that the
little children of these erring mothers need not be punished with
them; but, in the graphic language of the Superintendent, "Its
original intention was _not_ a fancy boarding-house."
I wish here to place on record that Plymouth can make good bread. I
had begun to fear, so long had I been fed on Cape Ann saleratus, that
I might lose the taste of wholesome yeast and flour, just as the
"marasmus" denizens of the Five Points learn to dislike pure air. A
brief heaven of good city bread in blessed old Boston quite set me up;
and its unexpected appearance in Plymouth was more than I dared to
hope.
I presume to this I may attribute the number of hale-looking, cheerful
old people in Plymouth. I have no doubt it has had its effect also on
the religious liberality so prevalent here, as I find that nobody
_makes mouths_ at you for being a Unitarian, or an Episcopalian, or of
any other denomination that happens to suit your complaint. Rev. Mr.
Robinson, the minister of the church in Holland from which "the
Mayflower" Christians came, inculcated upon his flock this bit of pure
gospel, in his parting sermon to them, that, "there was a great deal
of truth coming out ahead that they had not even dreamed of as yet;"
and particularly warned them against that spiritual conceit which
should close their eyes to the perception of it. Now that's what I
call liberal Christianity. Ministers, deacons, and the religious world
generally will please take notice.
Since I came here, Plymouth has distinguished itself by a storm of
rain and wind, the like of which I never saw before. I began to think
over my transgressions; but really there were so many of them, and the
house rocked so, and the trees swirled round at such a furious rate,
that I had no clear idea then, nor have I since, of their number or
enormity. And the very next morning the sun shone out so brightly on
uprooted trees and unroofed barns and tumble-down chimneys, and the
flowers that from their lowliness had escaped the avenger, that I took
heart of grace, and classed myself among the latter!
_NO BEAUX ANYWHERE._
No beaux! Absolutely _no_ beaux! Well, young ladies, stop and
consider, if, after all, you yourselves have not pronounced the
sentence of banishment.
We?--we "banish" them? Good gracious! Is it not for them we have
devised all this elaboration of adornment? We, indeed! Were we not,
for weeks, before we came to these odious mountains, where men are as
scarce as French hair-dressers, closeted with our dress-makers and
milliners to produce these bewitching "suits," long and short, for
morning and evening, out-door and indoor wear? Have we not cool
dresses and warm dresses; dresses for rain, dresses for sunshine,
dresses for neutral weather, with ribbons, gloves, sashes, parasols,
hats and fans to "match," to the minutest shade? For whom should we
take all that trouble but for the beaux? And how are we responsible
for their disgusting absence?
Listen, my dears, for in that which you have just said lies your
offence. Can damsels thus arrayed walk in the woods, climb the
mountains (except in poetry)? Can they take even an ordinary, mild
walk, without mortal terror of perilling their millinery? Must they
not, therefore, "ride," morning, afternoon, and evening, everywhere,
to the delectation of stable-keepers, and the consequent pecuniary
depletion of the "beaux"? These beaux, whose fathers may be rich, but
whose sons have yet to fill their individual coffers; these beaux, who
have just so much to expend when they get away for a summer holiday,
and who do not desire to pour it _all_ into the pockets of the
stable-keepers; these beaux, who can get vastly more fun out of their
purses, and make them last longer, with a party of "the
fellows,"--this is the reason that, with rare exceptions, you have to
throw away these ravishing toilettes on your own sex, when you play
croquet, or sit on the piazza, dreaming of the "coming man."
My dears, he _wont_ come! He knows too much. He has seen his sister's
milliner and mantua-maker bills, and heard the family discussions
thereon; and though he acknowledges your fascinations even through all
the absurd toggery you are doomed by fashion's slavery to have and to
wear, he has yet to make the fortune to enable him to foot his angel's
bills. So he runs away from you, discreetly; runs off fishing, or
gunning, with "the fellows," and, wiser than you, comes home brown,
hale, and hearty for the winter months, instead of perspiring at your
side in tight boots and yellow kids.
Do you begin to understand? Now, my dears, if you have been ushered
into the world in a coach and six, till your feet and hands have
become paralyzed for want of use, that's your _misfortune_, not your
fault, because that necessitates a rich husband. And as there are very
few rich _young_ husbands, you will have to bid good-by to your
girlish ideal, and marry the bald-headed, gouty Mr. Smith, who was
born at the same time as your own father. This, my dears, you will
have to do, or face your nightmare, _single blessedness_.
I have looked at you playing croquet, without a coat-tail among you; I
have seen you driving yourselves out in your pretty little phaetons;
and though you put a brave face on it, I know very well what is going
on under that gay little sash of yours; and I think it is a pity that
you should have been brought up to so many artificial wants, that your
_heart_ must go hungry in life's spring-time because of them.
My dears, _I_ never lacked beaux at your age. But a walk in the woods,
or in the city either, involved no expense to _my_ beaux. I could
climb a fence, where there was no gate, or where there _was_ either; I
was not afraid of dew, or rain, because my dress was simple. My gifts
were not diamonds, but flowers, or books. _My_ mother would not have
allowed me to ride with gentlemen, had they asked me. When they came
to spend an evening, our tray of refreshments did not involve a
"French cook." So you see, my dears, though I had no silk dresses, I
had plenty of beaux, and a gay heart; and I enjoyed a sail with an old
sun-bonnet over my curls, or a moonlight ramble, with a merry party,
much better than you do "the German;" and half an hour was sufficient
warning for me "to dress" for any kind of a party--indoors or
out--because, unlike you, I was not bothered to choose from twenty
dresses which to wear; and I will give you leave to ask any of my
beaux, who are now grandfathers, if I was not able at that time to
settle _their_ accounts! And it is because I had such a good time that
I feel vexed that your youth and prettiness should so often go
a-begging--through no fault of yours; and you may show this to your
mothers and tell them I say so.
In the country, too, matrons, we have full trunks and absent husbands.
It was a quiet little village; just such a place as you, madam, with
your six children, sensibly clad in calico, would like to have enjoyed
the sweet summer days in. There was no "dress;" there were no "hops,"
in hot halls, by gas-light; there were no masquerade balls. Everybody
was in bed by ten o'clock, save a few smokers, who profaned the sweet,
odorous quiet with their vile tobacco fumes. There was plenty of
driving through the bewitching roads, plenty of walking, _some_
gossip,--_which I have ascertained has no sex_--some croquet-ing and
crochetting, but no _coquetting_, because there was a great vacuum
where beaux should be. Altogether, the city residents of Frog-ville
were a sensible set.
But, alas! one unlucky day the shrieking cars landed at the door of
the principal boarding-house a woman. That was not an event of itself,
but this woman was accompanied by many trunks. Nobody knew whence she
came, but conjecture was rife as to the contents of the trunks.
Breakfast, next morning, solved the mystery. Mrs. Fire-Fly--for she
was a Mrs.--none the less dangerous for that--on the contrary!--swept
into the dining-hall in a train about six yards long. The train was
white and spotless; the floor was not. The lady carried her coffee to
her lips, with diamond girdled fingers, _steadily_, with an eye to her
delicate ribbons. Scipio, who handed her beefsteak over her shoulder,
had no time to consider such trifles. Little puddles of milk lay in
wait on the floor for that spotless train, dexteriously coiled, by its
owner, like an anaconda under the table. Pools of milk, tea-drippings,
and bits of omelette, dislodged from their moorings, by hot haste in
serving, were dotted, here and there, in the path she would soon be
called upon to mop on her exit. At _length_ she rose! Her train
followed at a respectful distance. The eyes of the dozen or two
sensible women, clad in sensible raiment, followed that train. Its
dainty owner, with a disdain of economy, born of many trunks, and
their ample contents, did not so much as lift it with one of her
jeweled fingers. On she swept, through the coffee-pools--through the
gravy-drippings--through the milk-puddles, out into the hall.