season, for we never can take it up again where we leave off. For some
there will be weddings, for some there will be funerals--good-by, said
so gaily, will surely be final to some of us who utter it. We shall
take up the paper some day, and a well-known name will catch the eye
in that dark list of bereavement. We shall recall its owner on _that_
morning of the party to the "mountain," or the "lake," and the bright
eye, and the flowing hair, and the voice of music--and then the world
will close round us, and all will go on as before, till our turn
comes, too, to be forgotten.
* * * * *
We never quite realize how dear any particular face is to us until we
meet it in a crowd of strangers' faces. It is only then that we begin
to know that we do not love it simply for its beauty; that there is
something more in it to us than pure outline and sweet color, or
whatever its particular charm may be. We have been hurrying on perhaps
up Broadway--a stream of unknown people on the left, and another on
the right. We have thought "how beautiful" of some, "how ugly" of
others. Suddenly we think, "It is ----." We do not compare, we do not
criticize. We may vaguely recognize the fact that it is the plainest
or the prettiest face we have met; but that has nothing to do with it.
There comes our friend, blotting out the strangers as though they were
not. Even if we pass and do not speak, our hearts meet and soften; and
we are happier throughout the whole long day, for having met a
friend's face in a crowd.
_OUT ON THE END OF CAPE ANN._
Good-by, City! I'm off! Now that wretched ragman may jingle the six
great cow-bells attached to his miserable hand-cart, to his heart's
content. They have driven me to the verge of distraction with their
monotonous clang--clang--clang, ever since the weather was warm enough
to sit with open windows. How many times I have resolved to call the
attention of the policeman on our "beat" to this illegal disturbance
of the peace; particularly as he chooses _our_ street to meander up
and down in, merely because I am a scribbler, and it drives me
mad--why else does he do it? For Heaven knows, I never did, or would
bestow a "rag" upon him, though I never was to see _paper_ again.
Good-by to the unfeeling wretch; I bequeath him to the unfortunates I
leave behind; who like myself are too lazy to chase up a policeman for
his summary ejection.
Good-by, I say again. I am going out to grass. I shall shortly find a
clover-field where I intend to bury my disgusted nose until October.
So anybody who chooses may leave their odorous dirt-barrels on the
sidewalk till sundown to regale neighborly olfactories. The postman
may pull my bell-wire till it breaks; he will get no response from
me. I don't care who didn't do what; or when it wasn't done. I'm for
_Katy-dids_!
I've done with shopping, thank Heaven! If my clothes or shoes give
out, let 'em. I've done with grocer-boys, and ice-men, and bakers, and
brewers. I'm going back to milk and nature; and I'm going to be
weighed before I go, to see what will come of it.
Perhaps I shall meet you there; and you--and you. If I should, for
Heaven's sake don't talk "shop" to me. Speak of "caows" and
"medder-land," and welcome--but don't mention books, not even my last
new one, "Folly as it Flies," which any of you who can, are welcome to
read--_I_ can't. And don't pump me as you always do, to know "what
sort of a man is Mr. Bonner?" I tell you, once for all, that he is the
_right_ sort, and you couldn't improve on that.
And if you see me coming in to dinner, and think it worth while to
announce the fact, in a place where there is a dearth of news, just do
it quietly, so that I shan't feel like throwing a biscuit at your
head, and don't think, because I am a literary woman, that I live on
violets and dew--I don't. I wear awful thick shoes, and go out in the
mud, and like to get stuck there; and I am horrid old--fifty-six--and
ugly besides; and I shall speak when I feel like it, and when I don't,
I shan't, because it is too much to be on my good behavior all the
year round, and this is my vacation.
Now we have settled all that, I hope, and there's nothing left but to
toss my traps into my trunk, and lock it. I don't care much whether
there is anything inside of it or not, for I'm desperate. These few
last hot days have finished me. I'm almost afraid to trust myself to
"write a character" for my departing chamber-maid, I feel so savage.
You can take her, though; the only crime she will have to "carry to
confession" is, that when she puts my room "to rights," she invariably
turns the table which has a drawer in it, the _drawer-side next the
wall_. To a person of my feeble intellect, this is distracting,
especially in the dark; and I have so many distractions, and am so
much in the dark, that really, Father Malooney, or some other nice
priest, ought to jog her elbow on this point. They who will may abuse
Roman Catholic priests--every _sensible housekeeper_ knows their
value. Long life to the like of 'em, _I_ say.
Good-by! If I am smashed on the railroad, weep over my _pieces_. I
think you told me you had already done that--on less provocation.
Geography never could find a lodgement in my head; but this I will
assert, without fear of being sent to "the foot of the class," that
granite, fish, and sand, are the principal products of Cape Ann. When
you go down Broadway and see those square stone blocks in process of
being pounded down for our mutual benefit, know that I am up here, a
self-constituted superintendent of the work. Said a Cape-Ann-der the
other day, "When you see six hundred ton of granite taken out of a
quarry every week for the whole summer, you'd _not_-erally think that
'twould leave a hole there, but it don't." I mention this remark to
you as a proof of the fertility of the soil.
Needle and thread are not to be despised any more than the deft
fingers which ply them; but you should sit on a big stone at one of
the quarries, and watch four or five of these stalwart fellows, each
muscular hand grasping the hammer, coming down rhythmically, surely,
powerfully, at the same instant, hour after hour, on the same huge
granite block, till it is shaped for its purpose. It was a grand and
suggestive sight to me. The men who did it were heroes; shaping--who
can tell what?--monuments for history--public buildings--that will
stand long after you and I are forgotten. And the other side of these
exhaustless stone caverns rolled the broad ocean, waiting to float off
on its mighty bosom these huge masses of granite to any desired port.
And close by were woods, so filled with song, and perfume, and deep,
cool shadows, and soft hum of insect life, and ancient trees,
moss-coated, where the swell of the ocean and the sound of all this
labor came with muffled breath, as if fearful to bring jarring discord
to all that harmony. This granite, thought I, may stand for our
pilgrim fathers; these woods, with their song and perfume, for their
wives and daughters, who brought to this "rock-bound coast" the
softening influence of their sweet, holy presence.
Away from all this, over the hill, down in the village, are the
stores, and, more important to me, the post-office. I don't know what
our pilgrim fathers did, but I know that to-day their descendants
close them when they go to tea or dinner, while expectant customers
patiently _roost_ on the neighboring fences till their places reopen.
But I am happy to state that the Cape-Ann-ders make up for this
placidity when they get hold not only of granite, but of horse-flesh.
It is their stereotyped rule to race up-hill, at break-neck speed. It
is therefore needless to state how they go _down-hill_ and how
perfectly immaterial to them it is whether the horse fetches up in a
stone-quarry or in the ocean. I ought to know, for I have danced often
enough into the wet grass and dust, and over stone walls, in order to
save my neck, to know. You see the Cape-Ann-ders, being born with oars
in their hands, have not studied horse-flesh like Mr. Bonner. The
ocean is their hunting-ground. One can't excel in all the virtues; but
such fish as they coax out of it, and such chowder as they make of it,
would go far to make one forget their equestrianism. I've seen about
every kind of fish on the table except whales, of which I had my first
astonished view yesterday. That _bulk can be frisky_ was the first
lesson they taught me. As to their spouting, a political meeting is
nothing to it! When they came up out of water to breathe, you might
have heard them in New York--that is, if the rag-man, with his six
infernal jangling cow-bells, hadn't been going through your street.
There is nothing I have sighed for in those streets since I left them,
except some digestible bread. I suppose you know _that_ commodity is
seldom furnished _out_ of the city. If you don't, you may read it in
the faces of nearly every woman, and child too, after a certain age,
in the country. The _men_, by virtue of working in the open air, worry
through with it better. _Saleratus_, _soda_, _shortening_, _grease_,
and sugar! these are as infallibly married to pills, and castor-oil,
and rhubarb, and bitters, as are the sexes to each other. All over New
England, in these lovely leafy homes, with the blessing of sweet,
pure, untainted air, with literally _no_ excuse for sickness, vile
bread vitiates and neutralizes God's best gifts.
The cupboards and closets of these naturally healthy homes are stuffed
full of "physic;" and the country doctor, who _ought_, in these lovely
villages, to be a pauper, thrives on the disastrous consumption of
FRIED _everything_, and clammy bread. Meantime my excellent country
friends put up pounds and quarts of "_jell_" every fall. Now, let them
know that half, or a quarter of the time spent in making these
indigestible sugary concoctions, if spent in learning to make good
bread, would obliterate all traces of dyspepsia both under their belts
and in their faces. If I seem to speak unkindly, I do not feel so;
only it seems to me such a useless waste of material, and what is
infinitely worse, such a criminal waste of health, that I cannot help
entering my earnest protest against it.
I boldly assert that dyspepsia _in the country_ is a disgrace. The
birds' song is not heard by a dyspeptic. The flowers by the road-side
throw out no incense for him. There may be fish in _his_ ocean, but
there is no beauty there. How can there be with _that_ fiend plucking
at his suspenders?
And oh, the country washerwoman! Can anybody tell why she, having
tried her fists only on red flannel, calico, and sheets, should
announce herself as a professional laundress, and up to the mysteries
of bluing, rinsing, clear-starching, and ironing? Trustingly you place
your linen in her hands, and she departs to some spot where sun, fresh
air, clover-blossoms, and plenty of water are all in her favor. In
process of time she returns your clothes. The next morning your
husband reproachfully requests you to examine _that_ shirt-bosom, with
its streaks of bluing, its little globules of starch, and its scorched
spots, presenting a zebra front rivalled only in a menagerie. Now,
perhaps shirt-bosoms are the only part of your husband's apparel in
which he takes any interest; your educatory efforts in behalf of his
gloves, boots, &c., having failed utterly; for that reason you weep,
that this single germ of neatness, thus untimely nipped in the bud,
should cause him to backslide into that normal slovenliness from which
woman alone delivers him.
Well--he struggles into that shirt-bosom, and, with a man's inability
to face disagreeable things, goes off without consulting his
looking-glass; and you sit on the side of the bed, with your hair in
your eyes, contemplating a pair of "clean" stockings just taken from
your drawer.
_That_ streak of dirt, carefully preserved, was got last week down on
the rocks, from contact with seaweed; and that in the meadows, where
you went for ferns and wild flowers; and that, when you slipped one
leg down a deep and treacherous dirt-hole, trying to get a big
blackberry. You can identify every one. You go to your closet for a
gingham dress. When you put it in the wash it was gray, now it is a
sickly green. You get a "clean" collar and cuffs--they are both
saffron color. You are rather particular about the mixing of tints,
and so have to give up the idea of a bow at your neck that will "go"
with this rainbow apparel, and fall back, instead, on a safe jet pin,
as emblematic also of your feelings.
I don't mention in this connection a little habit the country
washerwoman has of returning Mrs. Smith's husband's flannel drawers,
instead of the conjugal pair which generally delight my eyes, well
mended and with buttons on the waistband, (hem!) while _Smith's_ are
in a state of non-repair, disgusting even to "a literary woman." I
don't speak of my cambric under-waist, irretrievably torn down the
back, or Smith's night-gown, about half the length of mine, which last
is probably at that moment quietly reposing beside _Mrs._ Smith; but I
pause to ask you to survey--yes, _survey_, for that is the proper
word--this great table-cloth of a pocket-handkerchief of Smith's
instead of my own dear little hem-stitched one, with a tiny fern-leaf
in the corner. As to Smith's socks, they make it their home in my
room, without any permit from the priest. I'm getting sick of Smith.
Again, my sisters, can you tell me why the country washerwoman
invariably appears with her bundle of "clean" clothes just as you are
starting for a ride, or going down to breakfast? Can one enjoy lovely
scenery, or relish one's coffee and eggs, while this intermarriage of
strange stockings and nightgowns is going on in one's room, and the
fruitless hunt for ten cents to make "even change" is looming up in
the horizon? I am constrained to say that in what light soever I view
the country washerwoman, she is ----. Yes, ma'am!
P.S.--A Cape Ann editor gave me a box on the ear the other day for
some remark I made on country washing. Now be it known that I am so
accustomed to a boxed ear in a good cause, that I have learned to
stiffen up to it, and I can endure it now without even winking.
But to business. This Cape Ann editor inquires, "why, if I do not like
the Cape Ann washing, I do not get out the wash-tub, and wash my
clothes myself." I smile serenely, while I answer, that while Mr.
Bonner pays me enough for my articles to buy out this editor's
printing-office, I prefer to do precisely what _he_ would do, were he
in my place--turn my back on the wash-tub and face the inkstand. Is he
answered? I am sorry also to inform him that all womanhood seems to be
"marching on" to the same or similar results, and that by and by men
will have to choose their words in addressing "women folks;" not, I
hope, for fear of being "knocked down," but because woman, be she
married or single, being able to earn her own living independent of
marriage,--that often hardest and most non-paying and most thankless
road to it,--she will no longer have to face the alternative of
serfdom or starvation, but will marry, when she does marry, for love
and companionship, and for co-operation in all high and noble aims and
purposes, _not_ for bread and meat and clothes; and the men who sneer
at this picture are always sure to be men with souls narrow as a
railroad track, who never look or desire to look beyond the curve and
out into the wide world of progress.
_Then_, if a woman's husband dies, she will not stay to hear his or
her relatives disputing over his dead body which shall contribute
_least_ to her support. No: she will rub the tears out of her eyes,
and taking her children by the hand, pocket the well-earned wages of a
book-keeper; or she will be an architect; or she will write books, or
open a store; or she may even rise to the dignity of editor of a "Cape
Ann" paper--who knows?--or through any one of the open doors through
which the light of woman's millennium is shining, she will pass
serenely to collect her dividends. No more hysterics, sirs! no more
fainting! no more trudging miles to match a ribbon! no more eating her
heart out, trying to bear rough usage! She wont _have_ rough usage!
She will be in a position to receive good treatment, from _motives of
policy_, from those natures which are incapable of better and higher.
She will, in short, stand on her own blessed independent feet, so far
as "getting a living" is concerned, as I do to-day, and able to make
mouths even at Cape Ann, which--blessed be its rocks and
"cunner"!--has not yet found the philosopher's stone, or made, even
out of its vile bread, a "dyspeptic" of me, as its editor asserts.
Me "a dyspeptic"?--me! who could eat a block of its granite for
dinner, and ask for another for dessert?--me! who, at fifty-eight, can
tramp ten miles, every day, over its horrid rocky roads, and come back
red as a peony and fresh as a lark!--me a dyspeptic? I am sorry to
inform "Cape Ann" that I am as "live" as one of its whales, and none
of its harpoons will ever finish me. And that my mission, wheresoever
I sojourn in summer, is to preach down bad country washing, and bad
bread, and country dyspepsia; and Cape Ann might as well, first as
last, burn down its churches, for sal-eratus and sal-vation will never
wed; for the victims of the former will walk this bright earth, so
full of sparkle and sunshine and fragrance and bloom, with bowed
heads, contracted chests, and pallid faces, nursing the dyspeptic's
cherished vision of an "_angry God_"! That's where bad bread lands
them!
As to "washing," bless you! there was a time when I did all my own
washing, and did it well too. That's the way I came to know how to
speak with authority on the starch and flat-iron question; and
besides, as I said before, if Mr. Bonner will insist on paying my
washing bills, whose business is it, save his and mine? He is quite
welcome.
* * * * *
There are people who get up in the morning for the express purpose of
making somebody uncomfortable before the day is out. They generally
pitch upon some sunny-faced, happy, singing human lark carolling high
above the ditches and marshes of life, soaring in the blue ether of
his happiness, nearer God and the angels than he himself knows
anything about, and, taking practised aim at some vulnerable point,
bring him plump down, with maimed wing, to flutter in the dust. Now
what is good enough for such a miscreant? The more you flutter the
better he likes it; every writhe of your agonized spirit is delicious
music to this vulture; there is one other person in the world as
uncomfortable as himself. What right had _you_ to be happy when _his_
liver was out of order? It was clearly a piece of impertinent
presumption, and so there you lie moaning and turning, the sunshine
all gone, the chill mist of despondence gathering thick about you, and
your persecutor standing by, turning you over now and then with his
foot, to see if there is life enough left for a fresh attack.
_COUNTRY DIET._
Foreign missions and missionaries. These have their place and their
work. What _I_ want to see is a Home Mission and Home Missionaries,
having for an object the extermination of the unhealthy and _immoral_
bread of New England. When matters have got to that pass that a
perfectly sound, healthy person cannot decline eating this poison
without being supposed to have an imperfect digestion, the climax of
stupidity and ignorance is reached by its makers and defenders. "_The
heathen?_" Great Cesar! who _are_ heathen, if the makers of this bread
are not? I know of a factory where pie, whose principal ingredient is
"lard," is the staple article of food placed before the operatives.
And so imperfectly is it baked, that the lard is not really melted in
the process. This for _breakfast_! with muddy coffee and sour bread!
This for supper, with sour bread. This "pie" taken to the factory for
lunch or dinner also. Imagine a hundred or so of young women feeding
on such poison as that. Future wives, possibly, of hard-working
mechanics, expected to do the family washing, and bear and rear
children, on the results of such an atrocious diet. It were enough to
expect them even to bear themselves, robbed of the vitality and
spring of their youth by these fiendish providers. The man who sets
fire to a house at night, and smothers all the inmates, is a saviour
in comparison. _They_ die at once. _These_ linger weary years,
fighting disease, fighting gloomy thoughts, as truly needing
compassion and sympathy as any victim of delirium-tremens. Now take a
girl, fresh from the old country, her cheeks red with the rich, pure
blood manufactured from sweet-milk, potatoes, and oatmeal, and place
her in one of these factories on this fare. It needs no seer to tell
how long, even with such a stock of health as she brings, that she can
stand this exterminating process; how long before those sound white
teeth will begin to ache and blacken, and the bright clear eyes dim,
and the cheek wear yellow instead of red roses, and the flesh become
flabby, and the whole creature become demoralized. Now, I ask, Is
nobody guilty for all this waste and wreck? Is it any more trouble to
make sweet, wholesome bread, than to manufacture and multiply bad
pies? As a matter of policy, wouldn't these operatives work better on
a piece of beefsteak and a slice of sweet bread, than on pie and
pickles? As a matter of _morality_, ought not such caterers to be held
to strict account? Can _virtue_ even flourish where the whole head is
sick, and the whole heart faint; when morbidness takes the place of
hope, and faith is merged in despair? What wonder that of dyspepsia
should come the suicide's rope?
And as to the usual country boarding-house or hotel fare, for which
the keepers of these places coolly pocket their fees, I propose some
deduction be made by them for the doctor's bills consequent the
ensuing winter; some reduction for the sour milk that the children
have drunk, because the cans in which it was kept were not properly
washed and aired, or the ice-house kept in good order; some reduction
for the state of the stomach caused by taking refuge from bad bread in
poor crackers; some reduction for generating such a disgust of meat,
from the sight of it in its various stages of raw, burnt, and
grease-soaked, that weeks or months even of wholesome food can
scarcely tempt one trial of the article; some reduction for aching
limbs produced by bunchy beds an entire "season;" some reduction for
boarders performing the part of "waiters," through the season, in the
total absence of bell-wires in the establishment; some reduction for
inhaling the noxious gases of refuse kitchen matter, carelessly thrown
around the house, or the nuisance of beating about the country in
search of a washerwoman. Before the bill is finally settled, and the
trunks packed, I would like to see these questions considered by the
country landlord.
But you say, "It is all ignorance; _they don't know any better_." As
if that was not just where the agony came in! As if an "_ignorant_"
person had any right to take such a position, or any right to expect
anything like the same pay as a competent, intelligent one receives.
Now I have made up my mind to "speak in meetin'". I don't care how
many country editors jump on the fence and say, "Silence!" I wont _be_
silent. I intend to fight a crusade against this crying sin of New
England, so long as I can make a pen wag; and anybody whose rustic
feathers get ruffled in the process may take his own time to oil them
down. I persist that I have never yet "boarded" anywhere in the
country that I found wholesome bread there, or meat cooked other than
_fried_, unless it has been through line upon line and precept upon
precept of my own; and that in these awful experiences of mine, Cape
Ann bears off the palm. There! I am going to-morrow to the city to get
some decent bread--the only place where it is to be found--and get
some fish; for if you want fish, never go where they swim. Put that in
your note-book too.