My wife and I were sitting at the open bow-window of my study, watching
the tuft of bright red leaves on our favorite maple, which warned us
that summer was over. I was solacing myself, like all the world in our
days, with reading the "Schoenberg Cotta Family," when my wife made her
voice heard through the enchanted distance, and dispersed the pretty
vision of German cottage-life.
"Chris!"
"Well, my dear."
"Do you know the day of the month?"
Now my wife knows this is a thing that I never do know, that I can't
know, and, in fact, that there is no need I should trouble myself about,
since she always knows, and what is more, always tells me. In fact, the
question, when asked by her, meant more than met the ear. It was a
delicate way of admonishing me that another paper for the "Atlantic"
ought to be in train; and so I answered, not to the external form, but
to the internal intention.
"Well, you see, my dear, I haven't made up my mind what my next paper
shall be about."
"Suppose, then, you let me give you a subject."
"Sovereign lady, speak on! Your slave hears!"
"Well, then, take _Cookery_. It may seem a vulgar subject, but I think
more of health and happiness depends on that than on any other one
thing. You may make houses enchantingly beautiful, hang them with
pictures, have them clean and airy and convenient; but if the stomach is
fed with sour bread and burnt coffee, it will raise such rebellions that
the eyes will see no beauty anywhere. Now in the little tour that you
and I have been taking this summer, I have been thinking of the great
abundance of splendid material we have in America, compared with the
poor cooking. How often, in our stoppings, we have sat down to tables
loaded with material, originally of the very best kind, which had been
so spoiled in the treatment that there was really nothing to eat! Green
biscuit with acrid spots of alkali,--sour yeast-bread,--meat slowly
simmered in fat till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing
in cold grease,--and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong
butter! How often I have longed to show people what might have been done
with the raw material out of which all these monstrosities were
concocted!"
"My dear," said I, "you are driving me upon delicate ground. Would you
have your husband appear in public with that most opprobrious badge of
the domestic furies, a dish-cloth pinned to his coat-tail? It is coming
to exactly the point I have always predicted, Mrs. Crowfield: you must
write, yourself. I always told you that you could write far better than
I, if you would only try. Only sit down and write as you sometimes talk
to me, and I might hang up my pen by the side of 'Uncle Ned's' fiddle
and bow."
"Oh, nonsense!" said my wife. "I never could write. I know what ought to
be said, and I could _say_ it to any one; but my ideas freeze in the
pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy bread. I was
born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things on all
subjects in this world of ours are said not by the practical workers,
but by the careful observers."
"Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had made it myself,"
said I.
"It is true that I have been all my life a speculator and observer in
all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under my eye in our
own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman's matter, it must be
understood that I am only your pen and mouth-piece,--only giving
tangible form to wisdom which I have derived from you."
So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign lady quietly stitched by
my side. And here I tell my reader that I write on such a subject under
protest,--declaring again my conviction, that, if my wife only believed
in herself as firmly as I do, she would write so that nobody would ever
want to listen to me again.