milliners, hair-dressers and chambermaids had been laboring on
Aurelia. They modelled her, shaped her, powdered her, painted her,
twisted her, pulled her, laced her, unlaced her, fixed her, took
her to pieces and put her together again, behind carefully locked
doors, while that poor devil Peplum, in a seven-by-nine room, with a
two-by-three looking glass, two brushes and a comb, went at himself
with fear and trembling, and although he was more lavish than ever of
Macassar and Day & Martin, and split three pairs of kids and looked
very red in the face, still he looked like himself, which is more
than I can say of Aurelia.
In the meantime the guests were assembled, one hundred of whom
were young ladies and all dear friends, looking very much like
pinks in a parterre; fifty young gentlemen who looked as if they
had something on their minds and were suspicious of the integrity
of their cravats--(I know of nothing more terrible than to be in
the company of very dear friends when you have a suspicion of
the integrity of your outer man); a handful of old people who
resembled feathery dandelion-tufts in a field of red and white
clover; and Rev. Fitz-Herbert Evelyn, the sweet young associate of
old Dr. Homilectics, who does up the weddings, youthful funerals,
evening meetings, and morning calls, is sound on lunch, convenient
in doctrine, and orthodox in raiment. For a set sermon on the
rationalistic errors in Transubstantiation, the old doctor can beat
him out of sight, but he has given up weddings as he is no longer
sweet, and has been known to have talked common sense on such
occasions, which is as much out of place as honesty in a Legislature.
Consequently, the young ladies prefer the sweet, young Fitz-Herbert,
who would sleep uneasily should he find a rose leaf under him edge
upward, who rushes through the ceremony daintily, with the tips of
his fingers, and after having tied the young lambs together with a
thread, cooly dares anybody to put them asunder.
When the bridal couple entered the room, they immediately became
the foci of three hundred or more eyes. They had scarcely got into
position, when one hundred noses were elevated just a trifle, from
which I judged that Aurelia, although fearfully and wonderfully made,
was not altogether a success to her dear young friends. One hundred
upper lips curled up, and fifty elbows of dear friends nudged in
concert the corsets of fifty other dear friends, at what I afterwards
found to be a spot upon her veil, left by one of the bridesmaids who
was addicted to chewing spruce gum.
Aurelia commenced to look interesting, and, to my horror, so did
young Peplum, and they succeeded admirably in looking like a young
man and a young woman detected in the act of stealing green apples
from a corner grocery. Sweet Mr. Evelyn stepped up, and after running
his hand through his raven hair and passing it over his marble brow
once or twice, thereby setting off to more advantage that amethyst
ring which Blanche Jessamine gave him at the last meeting of the
Young Ladies' Aid Society, he commenced looking very saintly and
talking very sweetly.
After the customary promises, Fitz-Herbert began a beautiful
exordium, feelingly alluding to the journey of life; touching
upon the launching of the craft; alluding to calm seas; solemnly
describing the mutual partnership of joys and sorrows; mentioning
cups of bliss, sprinkling roses and boldly deprecating thorns. And
when he said, in a solemn but sweet tone of voice: "My dear young
friends, you are about to enter upon a pathway," etc., all the dear
friends were visibly affected. One hundred lace handkerchiefs went up
to two hundred eyes. The old maid who goes to all the weddings and
funerals for lachrymal purposes went off like a waterspout. As she
afterwards told me it did her a power of good, and that she hadn't
enjoyed the blessing of tears so much since Podgers died.
(Podgers was a distant relative of her's on her mother's side, and
was so confused at the time of his decease, that he forgot to mention
her in his will.)
Mrs. Carbuncle, the woman in red hair and blue Thibet, who went to
see Booth in Othello, because she doted on the Irish drama, had her
child with her, who had served his purpose thus far in supplying some
of the rash young fellows present with significant jokes. The child,
seeing all the rest of the company in a lachrymose state, also lifted
up his voice and wept out of sympathy. Mrs. Carbuncle's efforts
to quiet him only made matters worse, and the youthful Carbuncle,
kicking and weeping, was carried off in disgrace to an upper chamber,
where, for half an hour afterwards, he manifested his poignant grief,
by refusing to be comforted, and bumping the back of his head against
a cottage bedstead.
Sweet Fitz-Herbert, who has a gift at weddings, but a keen
appreciation of fees, was very brief in his ceremony, much to young
Boosey's delight, who was dying to get at the supper table, around
which Biddy was hovering in transports of delight like a bee round a
hollyhock, being engaged at the same time in an internecine war with
some men and brethren who had invaded her domains, in which war she
was assisted by all the Biddies of the neighborhood, whom she had
smuggled in by the back entrance to see the tables.
The ceremony having been concluded, congratulations were in order,
when Mrs. Flamingo burst in, in a state of perspiration and general
_deshabille_. For being just two minutes late, and for sleeping over
on important occasions, that woman is a prodigy. In the natural
history of society, she is the Great American Snail. If she ever
dies, she will have to change her present habits, and in any event
will sleep over when Gabriel blows his trumpet. If she had lived in
the days of Noah, she would have been drowned within hailing distance
of the ark. She is the woman who always comes late at the concerts
and has to be waked by the door-keeper when he puts out the lights,
and is always vigorous in pursuit of the last car of a railroad
train.
It is hardly necessary for me to describe the wedding supper: the
cakes, crowned with sugar cherubs straddling white roses and chasing
golden butterflies among silver leaves; sugar Cupids, hovering on
the brink of an ocean of Charlotte Russe; the huge pyramid of small
syllabubs, which a man and brother, losing his presence of mind in
waiting upon young Boosey, upset in all directions; the saucer of
ice cream which another man, etc., upset upon Mrs. Carbuncle's head;
the Heidseck which ruined Celeste's silk; the customary sentiment of
sweet Fitz-Herbert, which I give entire: "Our dear young friends,
who this night enter the pathway of life: May their cup of bliss
always be full and their journey strewn with roses without a thorn.
And if we never meet here, may we meet hereafter where they neither
marry nor are given in marriage." Greatest of all, need I describe
how Boosey and the crying old maid commenced at one end of the table
and ate and drank through to the other without a single skip, or how
Boosey retired from the fray, confused in his mind and uncertain in
his legs, after proposing as a sentiment: "Here's to Peplum and Mrs.
Peplum--j-j-jolly good fe-fe-fe-fellows. Dr-dr-dr-drink hearty."
The most astonishing event of the evening was the utter indifference
of the hackman, who took the bride and Mr. Peplum to the depot. He
was not aware of the importance of the event, and even dared to growl
up to the fifth trunk, and swear in a low tone of voice at the sixth
and last--the four-story Saratoga, and in a satirical tone of voice
asked if he should drive to the freight depot.
That wretched man knew not that he carried the first woman ever
married.
The guests finally departed--Mr. and Mrs. Peplum to the uncertainties
of the sleeping car; sweet Fitz-Herbert leaving a Night-Blooming
Cereus odor of sanctity behind him; the dear young friends; the old
dandelion tops; the old maid still weeping; the disgraced child;
Boosey on his winding way; and Mrs. Flamingo, who was found asleep
near the ruins of the supper table, when Biddy was putting out the
lights.
And I went to my den and lit my pipe and looked out of the window.
The moon was still shining. The stars winked at me. A romantic young
man was practising "Oft in the Stilly Night" on a cracked trumpet.
Terrence and Bridget were sitting up at the next gate. The wind blew.
The leaves rustled. My pipe glowed. The world revolved. I existed.
And yet Aurelia had been married that very night.
If I have said little about Mr. Peplum, it is because Mr. Peplum
seemed to have very little to do with it.
July 6, 1867.
_MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY._
Are you a base-ballist? If not, take my word and retire from the
world.
You are a nullity, a nothing, a 0.
The cholera of 1866 is among us, but it has assumed the base-ball
type. It is malignant, zymotic and infectious. Its results are not
so fatal as last year, and manifest themselves in the shape of
disjointed fingers, lame legs, discolored noses, and walking sticks.
The disease is prevalent among all classes. Editors, actors,
aldermen, clerks, lumbermen, commission men, butchers, book-sellers,
doctors and undertakers have it, and many of them have it bad.
Even the tailors tried to make up a club, but as they found it took
eighty-one men to make up a nine they gave it up.
The only class not yet represented is the clerical.
More's the pity.
They would derive many advantages from the game. You see they would
learn the value of the short stop. That is an important point on
warm Sundays. They would also learn to hit hard. There are lots of
old sinners who need to be hit that way. This continual pelting away
with little theological pop-guns at old sinners whose epidermis
is as thick as an elephant's, is of no consequence whatever. The
shot rattle off like hailstones from a roof. They must learn to hit
hard--hit so it will hurt--hit right between the eyes--fetch their
man down, and rather than take such another theological bombshell, he
will reconstruct.
There isn't a minister in this city who wouldn't preach better next
Sunday for a square game of base-ball. This Christianity of the soft,
flaccid, womanish, alabaster, die-away muscle kind, is pretty, but it
isn't worth a cent in a stand-up fight with the Devil.
The Devil is not only a hard hitter with the bat, but he is a quick
fielder, and he will pick a soul right off the bat of one of these
soft muscle men while S. M. is wasting his strength on the air. He
has another advantage over our clergymen. Most of them are confined
to one base. The Devil plays on all the bases at once, and he can
take the hottest kind of a ball without winking. Our ministers ought
to get so they can do the same thing.
Melancthon was one of the soft muscle kind. He was gentle, sweet,
amiable, gracious, and all that, but if he had been compelled to
carry the Reformation on his shoulders, he never would have left his
home base. While old Luther, a man of iron muscle, a hard hitter
and a hard talker, who keeled the Devil over with his inkstand, and
kicked Popes and Popes' theses, bulls and fulmina to the winds, made
home runs every time, and left a clean score for the Reformation.
A great many of our ministers have bones--some, rather dry
bones--nerves, sinews and muscles, just as an infant has, but they
want development. They need blood which goes bounding through the
veins and arteries, and tingles to the finger tips. Their sinews
must stiffen up, their nerves toughen and their muscles harden.
This process can be obtained by base-ball. It will settle their
stomachs and livers, and when these are settled, their brains will be
clear. They won't have to travel to cure the bronchitis, and won't
be so peevish over good sister Thompson, who needs a great deal of
consolation, owing to her nervous system.
Now, I would like to see two ministerial nines in the field. Robert
Collyer at the bat would be a splendid hitter, and would send the
Liberal ball hot to Brother Hatfield, on the short stop, and I would
stake all my money that he couldn't make it so hot that Brother H.
wouldn't stop it. These two clergymen wouldn't need to practice much,
because they represent my idea of muscular Christians. Whenever they
hit, they hit hard, and I pity the soft-muscled parson that gets into
a controversy with either of them. But then they would get all the
rest of the nines into good trim and harden up the muscles of Dr.
Ryder and Robert Laird Collier, Father Butler, Dr. Patton, and Revs.
Everts and Patterson, and the rest. To be sure, the clerical fingers
would sting, and the clerical legs would be stiff, and the clerical
backs would ache for a few days, but it would take all the headaches
and dizziness, and dyspepsia and liver complaints, and heartburns out
of the system. Their inner men would be refreshed, and their outer
men regenerated, and they would go into their pulpits with firmer
step, and their sermons would be full of blood and muscle, and they
would kick the old musty tomes on one side and preach right out of
their consciousness and hearts, man to man, and all would get their
salaries increased and a month's vacation to go to the seaside.
I tell you, my brethren, in this city of Chicago, the Devil is
getting the upper hand, and you must go in on your muscle. Get your
backs up. Stiffen your muscles and then hit like a sledge-hammer. If
old Croesus, in your congregation, is a whiskey-seller, don't be
afraid of him. Hit him on the head so it will hurt. If Free-on-Board
is a professional grain gambler, hit him on the head. If old
Skinflint acts dirtily with his tenants, tell him he is a miserable
old devil. Don't be afraid of him. He will like you all the better
for it. If he won't get down on his knees by fair talking, take hold
of his coat-collar and put him upon his knees.
August 17, 1869.
_THE BOSTON GIRL._
The Boston girl, necessarily, was born in Boston. Necessarily, also,
her ancestors, and she can trace back her lineage to that Thankful
Osgood, who came over in 1640, and owned the cow that laid out the
streets of Boston. The wolf that suckled Romulus was held in no more
respect by the Latins than is the bronzed image of that cow, cast by
Mr. Ball, the sculptor, upon a commission from her father, a solid
man, who lives on Beacon street, in a brown stone front with two
"bow" windows and a brass knocker.
The ambition of every Boston girl is to live in a brown stone front
with two "bow" windows and a brass knocker, before she dies. Having
accomplished that, and attended a course of medical lectures, she is
ready to depart in peace, for after that, all is vanity.
There are three episodes in the life of every Boston girl, viz., the
Frog Pond, the Natural History Rooms, and the Fraternity Lectures.
In her infancy, if so majestic a creature ever had an infancy,
she sailed small boats on the Frog Pond, and was several times
rescued from drowning in its depths, by the same policeman, who
to-day wanders along its stone coping, watching the reflection of
his star in the water, as he did a quarter of a century ago. She
visits the pond daily on her way to the Natural History Rooms, where
she inspects with diurnal increase of solicitude the bones of the
megatherium and the nondescript foeti of human and animal births,
preserved in Boston bottles, filled with Boston spirits.
But the series of Fraternity Lectures is the great fact of the Boston
girl's life. She dotes on Phillips, idolizes Weiss' social problems,
goes into a fine frenzy over Emerson's transcendentalism, and
worships Gail Hamilton and her airy nothings.
The Boston girl is of medium height, with a pale, intellectual
face, light hair, blue eyes, wears eye-glasses, squints a little,
rather _deshabille_ in dress, slight traces of ink on her second
finger, blue as to her hose and large as to her feet. Of physical
beauty she is no boaster, but of intellectual she is the paragon
of animals. Gather a dandelion by the roadside, she will only
recognize it as _Leontodon taraxacum_, and discourse to you learnedly
of fructification by winged seeds. She will describe to you the
relative voicings of the organs of Boston and the size of the stops
in the Big one. She will analyze the difference in Beethoven's and
Mendelssohn's treatment of an _allegro con moto_. She will learnedly
point out to you the theological differences in the conservative and
radical schools of Unitarianism, and she has her views on the rights
of woman, including her sphere and mission. But I doubt whether
the beauty of the flower, the essence of music, the sublimity of
Beethoven and Mendelssohn, or the inspiration of theology, ever find
their way into her science-laden skull, or whether her spectacled
eyes ever see the way to the core of nature and art.
The Boston girl is a shell. She never ripens into a matured flesh
and blood woman. She is cold, hard, dry and juiceless. Gail Hamilton
is a type of the Boston girl at maturity. Abby Kelly Foster was a
type of the Boston girl gone to seed. If Gail Hamilton lives as long
as did Abby, she will carry a blue cotton umbrella, wear a Lowell
calico, and make speeches on the wrongs of woman and the abuses of
the Tyrant Man. If the Boston girl ever marries, she gives birth
to a dictionary, or to a melancholy young intellect, who is fed
exclusively on vegetables, at the age of six has mastered logarithms
and zoology, is well up in the carboniferous and fossiliferous
periods, falls into the Frog Pond a few times, dies when he is eight
years of age, and sleeps beneath a learned epitaph and the _Leontodon
taraxacum_.
September 7, 1867.
_THE DEAD._
Has a live man any rights which a dead man is bound to respect?
I ask this question with due consideration for the feelings of a
dead man. I know it is an unpleasant thing to be a dead man. There
are no corner-lots, no operas, no new novels, no latest styles, no
duck-shooting, no sensations on the other bank of the Styx.
I never appreciated that poet who would not live always. I would.
Neither that other poet who wanted to die in the summer time. I am so
little particular about the time, as to prefer not to die at any time.
Neither those gushing young women who pine for a willow tree, with
a nightingale "into it," at the headboard, and trim daisies at the
foot-board.
My sepulchro-botanical yearnings are overpowered by a very strong
friendship for this superb old world.
Which reminds me to again ask the question: Has a live man any rights
which a dead man is bound to respect?
And this suggests, first, Tombstones.
I am prepared to make a wager with any responsible party that in
a match for the championship of lying, a tombstone would beat
Ananias with Sapphira thrown in, and will give odds. _Hic jacet_
is literally true, and about the only true thing the majority of
tombstones say. If the ghosts of the late deceased--who are always
eminent--are permitted to stroll about cemeteries at their leisure,
their astonishment at reading their epitaphs must be of the most
supernatural character.
A miser, whose small soul in his earthly life could not have been
found with a microscope, is astonished to discover, that he was a
liberal-hearted man and a benefactor, with distant allusions to the
possibility of his having been an angel in disguise.
A man who went through the world without the responsibility of a
single moral principle under his vest, suddenly finds that he was
possessed of all the cardinal virtues, and is written down on cool
marble as an exemplar for the rising generation.
A woman who, in the earthly tabernacle, was the lingual scourge of
her neighborhood, discovers that she was the loveliest of her sex,
and is now an angel with the handsomest wings to be found in the
whole ornithological tribe of the upper air.
A man whose highest ambition was to go through life quietly, doing
as much good as he could for his fellows, and to go out of life like
a gentleman, finds himself kicking up posthumous dust under a huge
monument of the most elaborate description, gaudy with gilding,
wreaths, chaplets, urns, torches and flowers.
Considering the number of nuisances among the living, the quantity of
angels and cherubs in every graveyard is appalling, and it becomes
a question worthy of consideration by the Academy of Sciences--the
ultimate destination of the sinners and poor devils. All known grave
yards are devoted exclusively to saints. In what _ignota terra_ rest
the bones of the sinners?
Now, I submit that a live man has some rights which a tombstone
is bound to respect, and that when old Sniffles, who swindled me
unmercifully, the other day, without any compunction, shuffles off
his miserable coil, his tombstone shall not tell me he was a pink of
honesty.
And again, are we not overdoing the thing in regard to funerals? I
have already shown in these letters that one can hardly afford to die
now-a-days, owing to the expense. This expense grows out of the fact
that we are letting fashion act as mistress of ceremonies on these
occasions. It is not enough that fashion has made asses of us, and
tricked us out with her fantastic nonsense all our lives, but, even
after the curtain has fallen, the lights are turned off, the audience
have gone home, and the house is shut up, fashion still persists in
hanging its gewgaws upon the outside walls.
Accordingly, every respectable deceased must be buried in a casket--a
pretty casket of the most approved shape, and the costlier the
material, the better. The nails must be silver-headed to be _au
fait_, and the handles classic in design and silver beyond suspicion.
The inside must correspond with the outside, and, after the late
deceased is laid out, it is then eminently proper to smother him or
her with flowers, crosses, wreaths, anchors and other emblematic
designs. The climax will be capped if the deceased is clad in the
latest style of the _beau monde_, and carries with him or her into
the long sleep, the exact cut or style of garment in which death
overtook him or her.
I am not inveighing against respect to the dead. I believe that
nothing is so appropriate for a dead child as flowers, nothing
so typical of beauty and purity, nothing which so becomes the
young life, frail as the flowers themselves. I only object to the
frivolous, foolish, indecorous displays which fashion compels the
survivors to make. If a man has lived through life like a gentleman,
let him be buried like a gentleman, without fashion's tricking-out. I
submit that when a man or woman has got through with life, he or she
has got through with fashion, and that it is the height of folly for
friends of the family to allow officious tradesmen the opportunity of
displaying their fashionable wares, on an occasion when simplicity
and solemnity are most befitting.
Which brings me to another point in considering whether a live
man has any rights a dead man is bound to respect. And that point
is--Mourning.
On general principles, I claim that we have no right to advertise
our griefs to the world by mourning apparel. Of all griefs, those of
death should be the most delicate, the most personal. If we must do
it at all, I think the Chinese custom of wearing white is the most
sensible. Why must we go in sables and obtrude our crape into the
blessed light of the sun, and our black sorrow into the eyes of the
world, when all is light where our friend has gone?
But this custom could be endured if fashion had not seized it.
Fashion regulates our sorrow, measures our grief, and bounds our
mourning within prescribed limits. Heartfelt grief goes in deep
black. Good average grief in half black. Mitigated grief contents
itself in a black-bordered handkerchief, and advertises itself to
correspondents in a black-bordered envelope. Hopeful grief will get
along with a jet pin, and for just the smallest amount of grief in
the world, a dark figure in the dress, and a week's abstinence from
the opera will do; while for the tribe of relatives whom you never
saw and never wanted to see, any milliner or tailor can regulate your
grief with a yardstick or hat-body.
If I were a blessed, viewless spirit, and found a friend of mine
indulging in mitigated grief for me with handkerchief edging, I would
indulge in spiritual manifestations which would put the Fox sisters
to their trumps.