no more; which could never be again, because the heart that made them
glad was now still in death.
The formality of the morning meal was disposed of,--it was nothing
more than a form to the weeping household,--and Mabel returned to the
side of her departed sister. She kissed the cold lips again, and gave
herself up to the flood of irresistible grief which faithful memory
forced upon her.
“Excuse me, Miss Grant,” said one of the neighbors, who had come in to
assist the family, “but Miss Barnes, the dressmaker, is waiting to fit
your dress.”
Her dress! There was something heartless, cruelly repulsive in the
word. Her dress at such a time as that! Must she leave the bier of her
dead sister to converse upon the details of a garment? Must her mind
abandon the thought of the dead to dwell upon the fashion of a dress?
Without a word she went to the sitting room. It was a busy scene for
the house of mourning, and she learned that the mantuamaker had been
there all night, for the weather was warm, and the funeral must take
place on the following day.
The conversation of the apartment sounded loathsome to her. It was not
of her dead sister, it was of the latest fashions, of the propriety of
this and that; the fitness of one article and the unfitness of another.
They asked her how she would have her dress cut; but her thoughts were
with Mary, and she answered not. As soon as she could be spared, she
left the dressmakers, and returned to the chamber of the dead.
Again she wandered back with Mary to the scenes of their happy
childhood. Again the tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and the
spirit of the loved one seemed to speak to her from the heaven to which
she had ascended.
“The milliner has come, and wants to try on your bonnet,” said the
servant girl.
Mabel attended the summons and returned. Her grief was too deep to
permit her to participate in the occupations of the sitting room,
though her mother was compelled to be there, and had been there all
night.
“Please ma’am, the shopkeeper has come over with some gloves, and they
want you to pick out a pair,” said the girl again.
She had scarcely disposed of this matter before another demanded her
attention; and thus it was all day long. The house was full of bustle
and confusion. The tailor, the hatter, the hosier, and a score of
female artisans were constantly coming and going.
The solitude which her weeping heart craved was denied her. On the
morrow that loved form was to be borne away and placed in the ground.
They could never behold it again; but from the hour that Mary had
breathed her last, to the arrival of the funeral guests, she heard more
of business, of the repulsive details of dress and fashion, than of
those more appropriate words which solace the mourner in the hour of
trial.
The mourning garments were completed; but when Mabel was arrayed in
them, they carried no comfort to the heart. She could not even feel
that the wearing of them was a token of respect to her dead sister; for
they had robbed her of the blessed privilege of weeping over her bier.
More than once she recalled the uncharitable judgment she had
passed upon the Lawsons; but they had been privileged to mourn
without interruption over their dead. The course they had chosen was
reasonable; and she could not but feel that if the heart alone were
consulted, it would not weep in nodding plumes and sable weeds.
Around the grave of Mary the devoted sister planted the flowers she had
loved so well, and every evening, as the sun sank away, she placed a
fresh bouquet upon the green sod above her.
And close by, the hand of affection strewed flowers upon the grave of
Ellen Lawson; and all summer long, and when the chill winds of autumn
swept the cemetery, these floral offerings told the passer by that the
dead were remembered every day.
Bring flowers! Scatter them upon the graves of the dead; for they are a
far more grateful tribute to the memory of the departed, than all the
trappings of fashionable woe!
THE DOMESTIC ELEMENT.
_CHAPTER I._
“Julia has been to the public schools long enough,” said Mrs. Mason to
her husband. “She is fifteen years old, and I am sure she can learn
nothing more till she is sent to a boarding school.”
[Illustration]
“Nonsense!”
“Besides, Mrs. Benson’s daughter has left, and Julia don’t want to go
any longer.”
“Let her stay at home then.”
“Stay at home! Don’t you mean she shall have any polish?”
“Can’t you polish her, my dear?” asked the easy husband, with a
good-natured smile.
“How absurdly you talk!”
“Why, my dear, you have got quite polish enough for the wife of a small
merchant. I would not give a copper to have you any more of a lady than
you are.”
“But Julia may be the wife of a rich man; what would she be then
without music, French, and painting?”
“And she may be the wife of a poor mechanic, and these accomplishments
be useless and burdensome.”
“She never shall be the wife of a mechanic if I can help it,” retorted
Mrs. Mason, smartly.
“Fie, Mary; you are unreasonable. Why should she look higher than a
mechanic, especially as some of our best and most reputable men are
mechanics?”
“She shall not be the wife of a mechanic if I can help it,” repeated
the lady.
“Why not?”
“She shall do better, and that is the reason why I want her better
educated.”
“She may do worse. What are we, my dear, that we need look among the
nabobs for a husband for our daughter?”
“Are you not a merchant?”
“Only a small shopkeeper.”
“Well, that’s a merchant; and I mean Julia shall marry a merchant.”
Mr. Mason yielded the point, and agreed that Julia should marry
whomsoever she and her mother might choose.
“But she must be educated for her future station.”
“True, she must.”
“She must go to a boarding school, and learn French, music, painting
and German.”
“And Chinese,” interposed Mr. Mason.
“She must learn all the fashionable things.”
“I believe English grammar, writing, and arithmetic are not in fashion.”
“Pooh! she knows all about these things.”
“I asked her to tell me how many bushels of potatoes a wagon seven feet
long by four wide and three high would contain, and she could not make
the first figure towards it.”
“I suppose there was no such question in her book.”
“Perhaps not; and she could not tell me where Sevastopol was--whether
it was in China or the Sandwich Islands.”
“How foolish you are! I think likely she never happened to see the
place on the map.”
“And that letter she wrote to her uncle was such horrible grammar that
I was ashamed to send it.”
“No matter for that; she understands grammar very well.”
“May be she does; but she has an awkward way of showing it. I suppose
washing, cooking, and baking are not fashionable either.”
“There it is again.”
“I think you would do better by her if you took her into the kitchen,
and taught her these things. If she happens to marry a poor man, they
will be of some service to her.”
“Time enough for these things.”
“Well, well, do as you please; but I am opposed to boarding schools; I
think they do more harm than good.”
“That’s just like you! Opposed to boarding schools! Who ever heard of
such a thing?”
“They spoil more young ladies than they ever benefit.”
“How in the world can it spoil them?”
“Home is the place for girls. The first thing they should be taught to
love is the fireside; they ought never to be weaned from it by sending
them away to undergo monastic discipline in a boarding school.”
“How foolish!”
“It gives them bad habits--makes them romantic--fills their silly heads
with moonshine; and if you send Julia, ten to one she will run away
with some bearded puppy.”
But it was no kind of use for Mr. Mason to argue with his wife on such
a topic as this; she was bent on sending Julia to the boarding school.
He was a man of peace, and, rather than make a tempest, he withdrew
from the combat.
_CHAPTER II._
Julia Mason did not possess a very brilliant intellect. Nature had
never intended her for a “blue stocking,” and, live as long as she
might, there was no probability that she would ever become even a
“strong minded woman.” She had for many years attended one of the
public schools, but had never risen above the second class, and the
master did not believe she ever would.
Yet, for all this, Julia was a good-hearted, generous, whole souled
girl. What Nature had neglected to place in her head, she had
beneficently put in her heart. She had a nice, womanly, domestic
temperament, was quiet and unobtrusive in her manners, and, without
doubt, if no pains had been taken to spoil her, would have made
somebody a very loving, if not a very brilliant wife.
She was a little disposed to be romantic and sentimental--would have
fed well and thriven on moonshine--a temperament which requires a great
deal of prudent management on the part of the parent or guardian.
Julia went to the boarding school; but she had not been there three
weeks before she wrote to her mother, begging her to take her away, or
she declared she should certainly die.
The poor girl was homesick. Monastic discipline was an outrage upon her
affectionate, domestic nature. She had been accustomed to spend her
evenings by the fireside at home, with her parents and younger brother
and sisters; and it was a sad deprivation to her to be driven, at the
stroke of a bell, into her chamber at seven o’clock, there to sit in
painful silence with her roommate, and study her lesson. She was not a
genius, and she hated study; it was uncongenial in the highest degree.
At nine o’clock, at the stroke of the bell, she must retire, and in
fifteen minutes her light must be put out, or a black mark was made
against her name on the following day; and so it was all day long, week
in and week out. Her existence was odiously mechanical. Her life was
regulated by that everlasting stroke of the bell. She was obliged to
do every thing by rule--eat, drink, sleep, study, play, walk, by rule.
It was unnatural, and her soul cried out within her against such
monstrous formality. She could not learn, her heart grieved so under
the repulsive mechanism of her existence. Even the music lesson,
which she had anticipated with the liveliest pleasure, was gloomy and
distasteful. She was conscientious, and, though her companions laughed
at her for it, she at first paid the most implicit obedience to the
rules of the institution. Her roommate devised various happy expedients
for relieving the tedium of their lives; but she refused to avail
herself of them.
Her mother begged her to persevere for a time, assuring her that she
was only homesick--a disease which a few weeks would effectually cure.
She did persevere; but her “chum” finally succeeded in overcoming her
conscientious scruples, and the evenings, instead of being passed in
study, were devoted to a “good time generally.” It is true, Julia
got innumerable black marks for failures in her recitations; but the
horrible bugbears soon became so familiar that they ceased to have
any terrors. Before the first term had expired, she had so completely
weaned herself from her domestic memories that home had lost all its
charms.
She had learned a great many “new tricks.” Indeed, the preceptor, in
his report to her parents at the close of her first term, felt it his
duty to say that her conduct had not been altogether satisfactory. She
had gone to the boarding school the quietest person in the world; she
returned a romp, her head full of strange notions about lovers, and her
heart as washy as the moonshine in her head.
On the first evening after her return home she insisted on going to the
opera; the second to a concert; the third to the theatre; the fourth to
a lecture; the fifth to a party; the sixth to a conference meeting; and
so on every evening.
“What in the world has got into you, Julia? You did not use to be fond
of ‘kiting’ round in this manner,” said the astonished Mrs. Mason.
“O mother, it is so insufferably dull at home! Besides, it is not
fashionable to stay at home in the evening,” drawled Julia.
“What _has_ got into you?”
“Boarding schools,” said Mr. Mason.
“I should die of _ennui_ to stay at home an evening,” continued the
daughter, with a languishing sigh.
“You had better give her a lesson on the pots and kettles now,”
interrupted Mr. Mason.
“O papa, how cruel you are! Pray go to the opera with me.”
Mr. Mason was an indulgent papa, and he was obliged to go; but he
could not help wondering what Julia would finally come to, if she was
permitted to go on in this manner.
_CHAPTER III._
Julia returned to the boarding school, and in spite of the weak efforts
of her father to avert the fashionable fate that awaited her, she
continued there for nearly two years. In music and painting she made
rapid progress; but in literature and science she failed to make even a
decent proficiency.
She was an altered creature. She was vain, affected, romantic, and
transcendental, cherishing all sorts of visionary notions about life,
and especially about lovers and husbands, who filled a long space in
her daily meditations. She had lost her domestic nature, and that was
the saddest loss of all. Her heart was not actually corrupted; but it
was so buried up in the weeds of vanity and folly, that its gentle
influence was almost entirely lost upon her life and character. If not
unsexed, she had lost that hold upon woman’s sphere which confers her
chief charm in society. She was a creature for the ball room and the
opera, and not for the quiet shades of home.
Perhaps a boarding school does not always make such sad havoc in the
mind and heart of the young female; but such is the tendency of its
artificial manner of existence. Monastic discipline spoils woman; it
removes her from, and unfits her for, her social, domestic position.
When the two years had nearly expired, Mr. Mason one day received a
letter from the principal of the seminary, containing the astounding
intelligence that Julia had eloped with a young gentleman who had come
from the city on a visit in the neighborhood.
“The grand _finale_ of the drama,” said Mr. Mason, throwing the letter
to his wife.
“Good Heaven! who is this Mr. Winchel?” exclaimed Mrs. Mason, when she
had read the letter.
“A son of Winchel, the merchant in ---- Street.”
“Rich?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God it is no worse!” replied Mrs. Mason, so far relieved that a
pleasant smile played upon her lips.
A few days after, Julia and her husband presented themselves at the
home of her father. They were received with open arms. Mrs. Mason was
too much pleased with the match to make a fuss about it, and Mr. Mason
followed his wife’s “lead.”
A few weeks after, they were comfortably settled in a pleasant house;
for Mr. Winchel, who had some very clearly defined aspirations for
the quiet joys of a fireside of his own, insisted upon going to
housekeeping instead of boarding.
This kind of life was novel to Julia, and for the first six months,
while her husband consented to take her every evening to the opera, a
ball, party, or concert, she was tolerably contented.
But Mr. Winchel got sick of such an incessant round of amusement, and
sighed for that paradise of home which his imagination had years ago
painted. He reasoned with his giddy wife; but she hated home, and
reproached him for attempting to imprison her in the house, and thus
make her life miserable.
Mr. Winchel was firm, and positively refused to go to any more operas,
balls, parties, or concerts.
Julia was forced to accede to his reasonable desires; but home, even in
the presence of her husband, had become an intolerable place. Indeed,
the romance of a husband had worn itself away. He had fallen in love
with her in the most natural way in the world, and had proposed to wait
upon her father, and arrange the preliminaries for their marriage; but
Julia was not content to be united to him in such a tame manner as
that, and insisted upon an elopement. Her lover gratified her--to his
sorrow, he now discovered.
Julia was unhappy. Her husband, disgusted at her folly, returned to the
club he had abandoned when he married her, leaving her to comfort or
amuse herself as best she might. And she found comfort and amusement
in the society of a gay and dashing Lothario, who consoled her for her
husband’s absence by making love to her. It was not long before the
world was again astonished by the publication of an elopement--not a
harmless, sentimental affair, but a criminal elopement.
Julia was too romantic to consider the moral turpitude of the act. The
pious preaching and praying of the boarding school, had been lost upon
her in the variety of more congenial topics that were there presented
to her. The elopement was romance; she thought not of the crime.
Mr. Mason and his wife were in the deepest distress. Mr. Winchel called
at her father’s store, and stated the particulars of their domestic
experience. It was plain to both that the distaste for home was
traceable to the loss of the domestic element of the misguided wife.
Julia and her seducer--we wrong him--both were guilty--were heard from
in New Orleans; but the villain soon became tired of her whims, and
left her, and she died a few years later, a ruined, abandoned, off-cast
creature, the victim of a false education.
Mr. Mason’s remaining daughters were not sent to the boarding school.
They received the best education to be had in the city, and there are
noted institutions of learning there. They were thus kept constantly
under the watchful care of their parents, and the domestic element in
their natures was not unsettled by absence from home, while the plastic
mind was being moulded into its shape for life.
“BANG UP!”
OR,
THE RESULTS OF ADVERTISING.
_CHAPTER I._
“Any thing over, Ben?”
“Not a dollar; I just paid the Journal’s bill for advertising, which
has pretty much cleaned me out.”
“How much?”
“Forty-two dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“Ben, I don’t like to tell you that you are the biggest fool on the
street; but you are.”
“Wait, Joe, and see,” returned the other, with a confident smile.
“Forty-two dollars for advertising!”
“Just so, and for three months’ advertising.”
The applicant for “any thing over” gave a peculiar whistle to define
the length, breadth, and depth of his astonishment.
This conversation occurred in the store of Benjamin Weston, a young
and enterprising merchant, who had just commenced business on his own
account. The other person, who to use his own classic expression, was
“bang up,” and wanted to borrow fifty dollars to make up the amount of
a note due that day, was Joseph Weston, a cousin of the other. They had
been playmates in youth and stanch friends in maturity. Though there
was a great diversity of opinion on many topics, a strong sympathy
existed between them.
They had commenced business at about the same time, and under nearly
the same circumstances, both being obliged for the want of sufficient
capital to mortgage the stock in their respective stores.
Thus far they had done well, and the prospect was that both would
become wealthy and distinguished merchants.
They had married sisters, and occupied tenements in the same block.
Their houses were furnished in substantially the same style, and with
no material difference of expenditure. Both had been brought up to
business habits, and educated into the principles of a rigid economy.
“Forty-two dollars for advertising,” repeated Joe.
“And if I had the money to spare, I would spend double that sum,”
replied Benjamin.
“What benefit do you expect to realize from it?”
“You are behind the times, Joe. Benefit! What a question! I expect to
make my fortune by it.”
“Humbug!”
“Look at Brandeth and Swaim.”
“Both humbugs.”
“No matter for that; if these fellows have been able to make princely
fortunes by advertising humbugs, how much more so will he who deals in
substantial realities!”
“All gammon!”
“We differ; time will tell who is in the right.”
“Seriously, Ben, you will ruin yourself if you go on in this manner.
Forty-two dollars a quarter for advertising!”
“I shall spend a hundred the next quarter.”
“Don’t do it, Ben.”
“How does it happen, Joe, that you are in the street borrowing money? I
never did such a thing since I commenced business.”
“How does it happen, Ben, that you haven’t got any money to lend?”
asked Joe, with a smile.
“Because I spent it in advertising.”
“Better have spent it for opera and 2:40’s.”
“Wait, Joe, wait.”
“I spent nothing for advertising; but I will bet you the oysters my
sales for the last quarter are as large as yours.”
“I will take you up on the next quarter.”
“Why not the last.”
“Advertising is somewhat like planting potatoes; you must wait for the
crops.”
“Don’t believe in it, Ben. When I have a fifty spot that I don’t know
what to do with, I shall put it into my family. Buy a library, a new
sofa, or something of that sort. I should rather go to the White
Mountains with it, than throw it away upon newspapers.”
“You don’t know your own interest, Joe.”
“Don’t I? Some kinds of business might thrive on advertising; but
ours, never. Do you believe the women look in the newspapers before
they go shopping?”
“Well, there was a lady in here just now, who said she saw such and
such goods advertised by me.”
“Pshaw! and on the strength of that you intend to spend fifty dollars
more in advertising! Ben, you are crazy;” and Joseph Weston turned his
heel and left the store, assured in his own mind that his friend was
going to ruin.
In his estimation such loose principles would eventually bring him to
bankruptcy. But Ben was his friend, and he deeply commiserated him
because he clung to such weak and pernicious doctrines.
_CHAPTER II._
Business prospered with the young men. By prudent and careful
management, each had not only made a living, but had been able to pay
a small portion of the mortgage on the stock, at the end of the first
year.
Joseph had the advantage of his friend in possessing a better location,
and though his rent was somewhat higher, the difference was more than
compensated by the increased facilities it afforded him. The prospect
was decidedly bright to him. If his business increased as it had done,
he would be enabled to clear himself of debt in another year.
Under this encouraging aspect he ventured to expend a hundred
dollars in additions to his furniture, which his wife insisted was
absolutely necessary for their comfort and happiness. The house had
been furnished altogether too plain for this progressive age in her
estimation. She was behind some of her friends who, she was sure, were
doing no better than her husband.
Joseph was a little obstinate at first; but then there was something
so decidedly comfortable in a set of stuffed chairs and a lounge, that
he did not hold out in his opposition. He was doing well, and the
expenditure would not seriously embarrass him.
With a nice new Brussels carpet and the new furniture, Mrs. Weston’s
little parlor looked exceedingly pleasant and comfortable. Besides, it
looked as though her husband was prospering in his business.
It was so very nice that the young wife could not bear the idea of
having the parlor shut up, so that no one should see it till the
furniture had grown rusty; consequently she made up her mind that they
must have a party.
Their friends had parties; why shouldn’t they? It looked stingy not to
have one. Mrs. Weston was an eloquent debater, and she gained the day
in this matter. It is true the party was not a very extravagant affair;
but it cost Joe some fifty dollars. In the meantime Benjamin had paid
quite as much for advertising as his friend had for new furniture and
the party. Joseph laughed at him, and finally came to believe that he
was insane, and would certainly come to ruin in another year.
Mrs. Ben Weston, too, felt decidedly unpleasant about the improvements
which had been going on in her sister’s house.
“Why can’t we have a rosewood table and a set of stuffed chairs,
Benjamin?” asked she, pouting her pretty lips into a very unamiable
position.
“Simply, my dear, because I cannot afford it,” replied the
philosophical merchant.
“How can Joe afford it?”
“I presume he knows his business best.”
“He has put over a hundred dollars into his house.”
Ben whistled “T’other side of Jordan,” and made no reply.
“Do, Ben, buy some new chairs.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“_You_ can afford it as well as Joe.”
“Perhaps I can.”
“Do buy some.”