ability to kill or cure; some will treat diseases in their incipiency
with quack medicines, bought cheap, hoping thereby to fend off the
doctor’s bill. Some women seem to be pursued by an evil demon of
economy, which, like an _ignis fatuus_ in a bog, delights constantly to
tumble them over into the mire of expense. They are dismayed at the
quantity of sugar in the recipe for preserves, leave out a quarter, and
the whole ferments and is spoiled. They cannot by any means be induced
at any one time to buy enough silk to make a dress, and the dress
finally, after many convulsions and alterations, must be thrown by
altogether, as too scanty. They get poor needles, poor thread, poor
sugar, poor raisins, poor tea, poor coal. One wonders, in looking at
their blackened, smouldering grates, in a freezing day, what the fire is
there at all for,—it certainly warms nobody. The only thing they seem
likely to be lavish in is funeral expenses, which come in the wake of
leaky shoes and imperfect clothing. These funeral expenses at last
swallow all, since nobody can dispute an undertaker’s bill. One pities
these joyless beings. Economy, instead of a rational act of the
judgment, is a morbid monomania, eating the pleasure out of life, and
haunting them to the grave.
“Some people’s ideas of economy seem to run simply in the line of
eating. Their flour is of an extra brand, their meat the first cut; the
delicacies of every season, in their dearest stages, come home to their
table with an apologetic smile,—‘It was scandalously dear, my love, but
I thought we must just treat ourselves.’ And yet these people cannot
afford to buy books, and pictures they regard as an unthought-of
extravagance. Trudging home with fifty dollars’ worth of delicacies on
his arm, Smith meets Jones who is exulting with a bag of crackers under
one arm and a choice little bit of an oil painting under the other,
which he thinks a bargain at fifty dollars. ‘_I_ can’t afford to buy
pictures,’ Smith says to his spouse, ‘and I don’t know how Jones and his
wife manage.’ Jones and his wife will live on bread and milk for a
month, and she will turn her best gown the third time, but they will
have their picture, and they are happy. Jones’s picture remains, and
Smith’s fifty dollars’ worth of oysters and canned fruit to-morrow will
be gone forever. Of all modes of spending money, the swallowing of
expensive dainties brings the least return. There is one step lower than
this,—the consuming of luxuries that are injurious to the health. If all
the money spent on tobacco and liquors could be spent in books and
pictures, I predict that nobody’s health would be a whit less sound, and
houses would be vastly more attractive. There is enough money spent in
smoking, drinking, and over-eating to give every family in the community
a good library, to hang every-body’s parlor-walls with lovely pictures,
to set up in every house a conservatory which should bloom all winter
with choice flowers, to furnish every dwelling with ample bathing and
warming accommodations, even down to the dwellings of the poor; and in
the millennium I believe this is the way things are to be.
“In these times of peril and suffering, if the inquiry arises, How shall
there be retrenchment? I answer, First and foremost retrench things
needless, doubtful, and positively hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the
meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the same. Second,
retrench all eating not necessary to health and comfort. A French family
would live in luxury on the leavings that are constantly coming from the
tables of those who call themselves in middling circumstances. There are
superstitions of the table that ought to be broken through. Why must you
always have cake in your closet? why need you feel undone to entertain a
guest with no cake on your tea-table? Do without it a year, and ask
yourselves if you or your children, or any one else, have suffered
materially in consequence.
“Why is it imperative that you should have two or three courses at every
meal? Try the experiment of having but one, and that a very good one,
and see if any great amount of suffering ensues. Why must social
intercourse so largely consist in eating? In Paris there is a very
pretty custom. Each family has one evening in the week when it stays at
home and receives friends. Tea, with a little bread and butter and cake,
served in the most informal way, is the only refreshment. The rooms are
full, busy, bright,—everything as easy and joyous as if a monstrous
supper, with piles of jelly and mountains of cake were waiting to give
the company a nightmare at the close.
“Said a lady, pointing to a gentleman and his wife in a social circle of
this kind, ‘I ought to know them well,—I have seen them every week for
twenty years.’ It is certainly pleasant and confirmative of social
enjoyment for friends to eat together; but a little enjoyed in this way
answers the purpose as well as a great deal, and better too.”
“Well, papa,” said Marianne, “in the matter of dress now,—how much ought
one to spend just to look as others do?”
“I will tell you what I saw the other night, girls, in the parlor of one
of our hotels. Two middle-aged Quaker ladies came gliding in, with calm,
cheerful faces, and lustrous dove-colored silks. By their conversation I
found that they belonged to that class of women among the Friends who
devote themselves to travelling on missions of benevolence. They had
just completed a tour of all the hospitals for wounded soldiers in the
country, where they had been carrying comforts, arranging, advising, and
soothing by their cheerful, gentle presence. They were now engaged on
another mission, to the lost and erring of their own sex; night after
night, guarded by a policeman, they had ventured after midnight into the
dance-houses where girls are being led to ruin, and with gentle words of
tender, motherly counsel sought to win them from their fatal
ways,—telling them where they might go the next day to find friends who
would open to them an asylum and aid them to seek a better life.
“As I looked upon these women, dressed with such modest purity, I began
secretly to think that the Apostle was not wrong, when he spoke of women
adorning themselves with the _ornament_ of a meek and quiet spirit; for
the habitual gentleness of their expression, the calmness and purity of
the lines in their faces, the delicacy and simplicity of their apparel,
seemed of themselves a rare and peculiar beauty. I could not help
thinking that fashionable bonnets, flowing lace sleeves, and dresses
elaborately trimmed could not have improved even their outward
appearance. Doubtless, their simple wardrobe needed but a small trunk in
travelling from place to place, and hindered but little their prayers
and ministrations.
“Now, it is true, all women are not called to such a life as this; but
might not all women take a leaf at least from their book? I submit the
inquiry humbly. It seems to me that there are many who go monthly to the
sacrament, and receive it with sincere devotion, and who give thanks
each time sincerely that they are thus made ‘members incorporate in the
mystical body of Christ,’ who have never thought of this membership as
meaning that they should share Christ’s sacrifices for lost souls, or
abridge themselves of one ornament or encounter one inconvenience for
the sake of those wandering sheep for whom he died. Certainly there is a
higher economy which we need to learn,—that which makes all things
subservient to the spiritual and immortal, and that not merely to the
good of our own souls and those of our family, but of all who are knit
with us in the great bonds of human brotherhood.
“There have been from time to time, among well-meaning Christian people,
retrenchment societies on high moral grounds, which have failed for want
of knowledge how to manage the complicated question of necessaries and
luxuries. These words have a signification in the case of different
people as varied as the varieties of human habit and constitution. It is
a department impossible to be bound by external rules; but none the less
should every high-minded Christian soul in this matter have a law unto
itself. It may safely be laid down as a general rule, that no income,
however large or however small, should be unblessed by the divine touch
of self-sacrifice. Something for the poor, the sorrowing, the hungry,
the tempted, and the weak should be taken from _what is our own_ at the
expense of some personal sacrifice, or we suffer more morally than the
brother from whom we withdraw it. Even the Lord of all, when dwelling
among men, out of that slender private purse which he accepted for his
little family of chosen ones, had ever something reserved to give to the
poor. It is easy to say, ‘It is but a drop in the bucket. I cannot
remove the great mass of misery in the world. What little I could save
or give does nothing.’ It does this, if no more,—it prevents one soul,
and that soul your own, from drying and hardening into utter selfishness
and insensibility; it enables you to say I have done something; taken
one atom from the great heap of sins and miseries and placed it on the
side of good.
“The Sisters of Charity and the Friends, each with their different
costume of plainness and self-denial, and other noble-hearted women of
no particular outward order, but kindred in spirit, have shown to
womanhood, on the battle-field and in the hospital, a more excellent
way,—a beauty and nobility before which all the common graces and
ornaments of the sex fade, appeal like dim candles by the pure, eternal
stars.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IX.
SERVANTS.
IN the course of my papers various domestic revolutions have occurred.
Our Marianne has gone from us with a new name to a new life, and a
modest little establishment not many squares off claims about as much of
my wife’s and Jenny’s busy thoughts as those of the proper mistress.
Marianne, as I always foresaw, is a careful and somewhat anxious
housekeeper. Her tastes are fastidious; she is made for exactitude: the
smallest departures from the straight line appear to her shocking
deviations. She had always lived in a house where everything had been
formed to quiet and order under the ever-present care and touch of her
mother; nor had she ever participated in these cares more than to do a
little dusting of the parlor ornaments, or wash the best china, or make
sponge-cake or chocolate-caramels. Certain conditions of life had always
appeared so to be matters of course that she had never conceived of a
house without them. It never occurred to her that such bread and biscuit
as she saw at the home-table would not always and of course appear at
every table,—that the silver would not always be as bright, the glass as
clear, the salt as fine and smooth, the plates and dishes as nicely
arranged as she had always seen them, apparently without the thought or
care of any one,—for my wife is one of those housekeepers whose touch is
so fine that no one feels it. She is never heard scolding or
reproving,—never entertains her company with her recipes for cookery or
the faults of her servants. She is so unconcerned about receiving her
own personal share of credit for the good appearance of her
establishment, that even the children of the house have not supposed
that there is any particular will of hers in the matter,—it all seems
the natural consequence of having very good servants.
One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected on,—that, under all
the changes of the domestic cabinet which are so apt to occur in
American households, the same coffee, the same bread and biscuit, the
same nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table always gladdened their
eyes; and from this they inferred only that good servants were more
abundant than most people had supposed. They were somewhat surprised
when these marvels were wrought by professedly green hands, but were
given to suppose that these green hands must have had some remarkable
quickness or aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored
ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits could be made by a raw
Irish girl, fresh from her native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the
genius of the race; and my wife, who never felt it important to attain
to the reputation of a cook, quietly let it pass.
For some time, therefore, after the inauguration of the new household,
there was trouble in the camp. Sour bread had appeared on the
table,—bitter, acrid coffee had shocked and astonished the palate,—lint
had been observed on tumblers, and the spoons had sometimes dingy
streaks on the brightness of their first bridal polish,—beds were
detected made shockingly awry,—and Marianne came burning with
indignation to her mother.
“Such a little family as we have, and two strong girls,” said
she,—“everything ought to be perfect; there is really nothing to do.
Think of a whole batch of bread absolutely sour! and when I gave that
away, then this morning another exactly like it! and when I talked to
cook about it, she said she had lived in this and that family, and her
bread had always been praised as equal to the baker’s!”
“I don’t doubt she is right,” said I. “Many families never have anything
but sour bread from one end of the year to the other, eating it
unperceiving, and with good cheer; and they buy also sour bread of the
baker, with like approbation,—lightness being in their estimation the
only virtue necessary in the article.”
“Could you not correct her fault?” suggested my wife.
“I have done all I can. I told her we could not have such bread, that it
was dreadful; Bob says it would give him the dyspepsia in a week; and
then she went and made exactly the same;—it seems to me mere
wilfulness.”
“But,” said I, “suppose, instead of such general directions, you should
analyze her proceedings and find out just where she makes her
mistake,—is the root of the trouble in the yeast, or in the time she
begins it, letting it rise too long?—the time, you know, should vary so
much with the temperature of the weather.”
“As to that,” said Marianne, “I know nothing. I never noticed; it never
was my business to make bread; it always seemed quite a simple process,
mixing yeast and flour and kneading it; and our bread at home was always
good.”
“It seems, then, my dear, that you have come to your profession without
even having studied it.”
My wife smiled, and said,—
“You know, Marianne, I proposed to you to be our family bread-maker for
one month of the year before you married.”
“Yes, mamma, I remember; but I was like other girls; I thought there was
no need of it. I never liked to do such things; perhaps I had better
have done it.”
“You certainly had,” said I; “for the first business of a housekeeper in
America is that of a teacher. She can have a good table only by having
practical knowledge, and tact in imparting it. If she understands her
business practically and experimentally, her eye detects at once the
weak spot; it requires only a little tact, some patience, some clearness
in giving directions, and all comes right. I venture to say that your
mother would have exactly such bread as always appears on our table, and
have it by the hands of your cook, because she could detect and explain
to her exactly her error.”
“Do you know,” said my wife, “what yeast she uses?”
“I believe,” said Marianne, “it’s a kind she makes herself. I think I
heard her say so. I know she makes a great fuss about it, and rather
values herself upon it. She is evidently accustomed to being praised for
her bread, and feels mortified and angry, and I don’t know how to manage
her.”
“Well,” said I, “if you carry your watch to a watchmaker, and undertake
to show him how to regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his own
way; but if a brother-machinist makes suggestions, he listens
respectfully. So, when a woman who knows nothing of woman’s work
undertakes to instruct one who knows more than she does, she makes no
impression; but a woman who has been trained experimentally, and shows
she understands the matter thoroughly, is listened to with respect.”
“I think,” said my wife, “that your Bridget is worth teaching. She is
honest, well-principled, and tidy. She has good recommendations from
excellent families, whose ideas of good bread it appears differ from
ours; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience, she will come
into your ways.”
“But the coffee, mamma,—you would not imagine it to be from the same bag
with your own, so dark and so bitter; what do you suppose she has done
to it?”
“Simply this,” said my wife. “She has let the berries stay a few moments
too long over the fire,—they are burnt, instead of being roasted; and
there are people who think it essential to good coffee that it should
look black, and have a strong, bitter flavor. A very little change in
the preparing will alter this.”
“Now,” said I, “Marianne, if you want my advice, I’ll give it to you
gratis:—Make your own bread for one month. Simple as the process seems,
I think it will take as long as that to give you a thorough knowledge of
all the possibilities in the case; but after that you will never need to
make any more,—you will be able to command good bread by the aid of all
sorts of servants; you will, in other words, be a thoroughly prepared
teacher.”
“I did not think,” said Marianne, “that so simple a thing required so
much attention.”
“It is simple,” said my wife, “and yet requires a delicate care and
watchfulness. There are fifty ways to spoil good bread; there are a
hundred little things to be considered and allowed for that require
accurate observation and experience. The same process that will raise
good bread in cold weather will make sour bread in the heat of summer;
different qualities of flour require variations in treatment, as also
different sorts and conditions of yeast; and when all is done, the
baking presents another series of possibilities which require exact
attention.”
“So it appears,” said Marianne, gayly, “that I must begin to study my
profession at the eleventh hour.”
“Better late than never,” said I. “But there is this advantage on your
side: a well-trained mind, accustomed to reflect, analyze, and
generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double
experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her business
than you do. After a very brief period of attention and experiment, you
will not only know more than she does, but you will convince her that
you do, which is quite as much to the purpose.”
“In the same manner,” said my wife, “you will have to give lessons to
your other girl on the washing of silver and the making of beds. Good
servants do not often come to us; they must be _made_ by patience and
training; and if a girl has a good disposition and a reasonable degree
of handiness, and the housekeeper understands her profession, she may
make a good servant out of an indifferent one. Some of my best girls
have been those who came to me directly from the ship, with no
preparation but docility and some natural quickness. The hardest cases
to be managed are not of those who have been taught nothing, but of
those who have been taught wrongly,—who come to you self-opinionated,
with ways which are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of
your housekeeping. Such require that their mistress shall understand at
least so much of the actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the
servant that there are better ways than those in which she has hitherto
been trained.”
“Don’t you think, mamma,” said Marianne, “that there has been a sort of
reaction against woman’s work in our day? So much has been said of the
higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done to find some better
work for her, that insensibly, I think, almost everybody begins to feel
that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society to be much tied
down to family affairs.”
“Especially,” said my wife, “since in these Woman’s-Rights Conventions
there is so much indignation expressed at those who would confine her
ideas to the kitchen and nursery.”
“There is reason in all things,” said I. “Woman’s-Rights Conventions are
a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas,—the mere
physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings
and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of
harsher ages had cast upon the sex. Many of the women connected with
these movements are as superior in everything properly womanly as they
are in exceptional talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that
the sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that republican
governments in particular are to be saved from corruption and failure
only by allowing to woman this enlarged sphere. Every woman has rights
as a human being first, which belong to no sex, and ought to be as
freely conceded to her as if she were a man,—and first and foremost, the
great right of doing anything which God and Nature evidently have fitted
her to excel in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickenson,
or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not
the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of
her powers. Nor can there be any reason shown why a woman’s vote in the
state should not be received with as much respect as in the family. A
state is but an association of families, and laws relate to the rights
and immunities which touch woman’s most private and immediate wants and
dearest hopes; and there is no reason why sister, wife, and mother
should be more powerless in the state than in the home. Nor does it make
a woman unwomanly to express an opinion by dropping a slip of paper into
a box, more than to express that same opinion by conversation. In fact,
there is no doubt, that, in all matters relating to the interests of
education, temperance, and religion, the state would be a material
gainer by receiving the votes of women.
“But, having said all this, I must admit, _per contra_, not only a great
deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions, but a too great
tendency of the age to make the education of women anti-domestic. It
seems as if the world never could advance, except like ships under a
head-wind, tacking and going too far, now in this direction, and now in
the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects sewing from the
education of girls, which very properly used to occupy many hours daily
in school a generation ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are
put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics,
to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to
woman. A girl cannot keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to
domestic matters; and accordingly she is excused from them all during
the whole term of her education. The boy of a family, at an early age,
is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father becomes impatient
of his support, and requires of him to care for himself. Hence an
interrupted education,—learning coming by snatches in the winter months
or in the intervals of work. As the result, the females in our country
towns are commonly, in mental culture, vastly in advance of the males of
the same household; but with this comes a physical delicacy, the result
of an exclusive use of the brain and a neglect of the muscular system,
with great inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race of
strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places,
and made the bright, neat, New England kitchens of old times,—the girls
that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness a horse and drive him, no
less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable
books,—this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and
in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a
modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The
great danger of all this, and of the evils that come from it, is that
society by and by will turn as blindly against female intellectual
culture as it now advocates it, and, having worked disproportionately
one way, will work disproportionately in the opposite direction.”