the parks; but what with French nurses and silk velvet coats, I have
learned to turn my feet elsewhere. It gives me the heart-ache to see a
child slapped for picking up a bright autumn leaf, though it _may_
chance to be "dirty;" or denied a smooth, round pebble, on account of a
dainty little glove that must be kept immaculate. I get out of temper,
and want to call on all their mothers and fight Quixotic battles for the
poor little things, as if it would do any good; as if mothers who dress
their children that way to play, cared for anything _but_ their looks.
Then I have some unknown acquaintances in the yard of a large house in
the upper part of Broadway. I never asked who lived in the house; but I
thank him for the rare birds of brilliant plumage who walk to and fro in
it, or perch upon the window-sills or steps, as proudly conscious of
their gay feathers as the belles who rustle past. I love to imagine the
beautiful countries they came from, and the flowers that blossomed
there, and the soft skies that arched over them. I love to see them pick
up their food so daintily, and, with head on one side, eye their many
admirers looking through the fence, as if to say--beat _that_ if you can
in America! Ah! my birdies, stop your crowing; just wait a bit and see
how the "_American Eagle_" is going to come out, and how each time they
who have tried to clip his wings have only found that it made them grow
broader and stronger. Soft skies and sweet flowers are very nice things,
birdies; but rough winds and freedom are better for the soul.
I have said nothing of unknown acquaintances among my favorite authors.
How many times--did I not so hate the sight of a pen when "school is let
out"--have I longed to express to them my love and gratitude. Nor,
judging by myself, could I ever say, "they do not need it;" since there
are, or should be, moments in the experience of all writers when they
regard with a dissatisfied eye what they have already given to the
world, when sympathetic, appreciative words, warm from the heart, are
hope and inspiration to the receiver.
* * * * *
A LINK BETWEEN HUSBANDS AND WIVES.--Blessed be the little children who
make up so unconsciously our life-disappointments. How many couples,
mutually unable to bear each other's faults, or to forbear the causes of
irritation, find solace for their pain in these golden links which still
continue to unite them. On that they are one. _There_ they can really
repose. Those fragile props keep them from quite sinking disheartened by
life's roadside. How often has a little hand drawn amicably together two
else-unwilling ones, and made them see how bright and blessed earth may
become in pronouncing that little word--"forgive."
_LIFE AND ITS MYSTERIES._
Was there ever a romance in that man or that woman's life? I _used_ to
ask myself, as I looked upon a hard face which stoicism seemed to have
frozen over, through the long years. Was there ever a moment when, for
that man, or woman, love transfigured everything, or the want of it
threw over the wide earth the pall of unrest? Have they ever wept, or
laughed, or sighed, or clasped hands in passionate joy or sorrow? _Had_
they any life? Or have they simply vegetated like animals? Did they see
any beauty in rock, mountain, sky, or river, or was this green earth a
browsing place, nothing more?
I never ask those questions now; for I know how much fire may be hidden
under a lava-crusted exterior. I know that though the treasure-chest
_may_ sometimes be locked when it is empty, oftener beneath the
fastening lies the wealth, which the right touch can at any moment set
free. There are divers masks worn in this harlequin world of ours. Years
ago I met, in travelling, a lady who seemed to me the very embodiment of
fun and frolic. Like a humming-bird, she never was still; alighting now
here, now there, wheresoever were sunshine, sweetness and perfume. One
day, as we were rambling in the woods, we sat down to rest under a tree,
after our frolicking. Some little word of mine, as I drew her head into
my lap, and smoothed the hair on her temples, transformed her. With a
sharp, quick cry of agony, she threw her arms about my neck, weeping as
I never saw a woman weep. When she was quiet came the sad story. The
trouble battled with, and bravely borne. The short, joyous years--then
the long days, and nights, and weeks, and months, so full of desolation
and bitterness, and life yet at its meridian. How should she meet the
long, slow-moving years? That was the question she asked me. "Tell me
how! you who know--tell me how!"
And this was the woman I thought frivolous and pleasure-seeking. Wearing
beneath that robe the penitential cross, reminding her at every moment
with its sharp twinge of pain, that try as she might, she could never
fly from herself.
How often, when I have been inclined to judge harshly, have I thought of
that Gethsemane cry. It is sorrowful how we misjudge each other in this
busy world. How very near we may be to a warm heart, and yet be frozen!
How carelessly we pass by the pool of Bethesda, with its waiting crowd,
without thinking that we might be the angel to trouble the waters? This
thought is often oppressive to me in the crowd of a city hurrying home
at nightfall. What burden does this man or that woman carry, known only
to their Maker? How many among them may be just at the dividing line
between hope and despair! And how some faces remind you of a dumb
animal, who bears its pain meekly and mournfully, yet cringing lest some
careless foot should, at any moment, render it unendurable; haunting you
as you go to your home as if you were verily guilty in ignoring it.
Have you never felt this? and, although you may have been cheated and
imposed upon seventy times seven, can you wholly stifle it? and _ought_
you to try, even though you know how well the devil can wear the livery
of heaven?
I think it is this that, to the reflecting and observing, makes soul and
body wear out so quickly in the city. These constantly recurring,
unsolvable problems, which cloud faith and make life terrible, instead
of peaceful and sweet; which lead us sometimes to look upon the little
child, so dear to us, with such cowardly fear, that it would be a relief
to lay it, then and there, in the arms of the Good Shepherd, lest _it_,
too, stray away from the fold.
* * * * *
SWEARERS AND SWEARING.--Profanity is such a _cheap_ accomplishment!
"Damme!" "Damn it!" The idea that "_gentlemen_," so called, should use
these expletives, in which the commonest laborer, who can scarcely "make
his mark" to a document, can excel him! As a matter of taste, setting
aside any question of morality, the practice of it by "cultivated
persons" is our daily wonder.
_MRS. WASHINGTON'S ETERNAL KNITTING._
There are many-sided men and women, and there are men and women that are
one-sided, both in brains and body. There are men of business who have
no surplus left after attending to their business. There are women who
have no surplus left after attending to their kettles and pans and their
mending basket. On the other hand, there are men whom business does not
wholly absorb; who are interested intelligently, and actively, too, in
every great question of the day and hour. There are women who order
their houses discreetly, tastefully, and economically, and can yet
converse elegantly and with knowledge with the most cultured persons of
both sexes.
This is a preface to some little remarks of mine on an article lately
written by a gentleman in one of our Magazines, on the wife of General
(Cherry-Tree) Washington.
This writer says that Mrs. Washington's "knitting was never out of her
hands; that when callers came, the click of her needles was always an
accompaniment to her conversation. That she deemed it a privilege to
attend to the details of housekeeping, and regarded the days when her
official position required her presence in the drawing-room as _lost_."
Now she is a specimen of what I should call a one-sided woman. I am glad
she was an accomplished housekeeper, and better still, was not above
attending to her duty there. It was splendid, in her high position, that
she should set so good an example in this regard. But it was _not_ good
to keep her needles clicking when callers came, as if to say, You are an
intruder, and I can ill endure your presence. This, I maintain, was
neither necessary nor polite. It was _not_ good that she could consider
her "drawing-room days" as lost, and not perceive that they might be
turned to account in elevating, as an intelligent woman can, the tone of
the society she moved in. That she took the contrary view of it shows,
to my thinking, that she was _not_ truly an intelligent woman. I believe
her duty, as the wife of an American President, lay there quite as much
as in looking over her household economies. But that was _Then_, and
this is _Now_! In those days one-sided men and women were plenty, and
many-sided men and women rare. We can point to-day to many glorious
examples of the latter, thank Heaven.
It was once considered a disgrace to a woman to know enough to spell
correctly; and if, in addition to committing this indiscretion, she
happened to disgrace herself by a knowledge of French or Latin, let her
never speak of it, lest it should "destroy her chances of marriage." The
idea is losing ground that a woman's mentality perils puddings and
shirt-buttons. There have been too many shining, tasteful houses and
well-ordered tables presided over by cultivated women, for any man
nowadays to drag up that old fogyism, without raising a laugh for
himself.
When I read this article about Mrs. Washington, who, I admit, was
excellent as far as she went, I called the writer to an account. He
replied, "Oh, I knew you'd pitch into me, Fanny;" and not liking to
disappoint him, I have.
* * * * *
RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE.--It would do no harm if Christians who are disposed
to judge harshly of each other, were to read occasionally the accounts
handed down to us of enormities committed some centuries ago, and even
in later years, in the name of religion, upon those of differing creeds;
the perpetrators sincerely believing at the time that they were doing
God service. When we are tempted to shut the gate of heaven in any
fellow-mortal's face, let us recall these things, at which humanity and
Christianity should alike shudder. Said a good old man, in dying, of a
son who had embraced another faith than that taught him, "Well, it
matters not by which road John gets to heaven, if he only reaches it at
last." It seems to us that this, taken rightly, is the true spirit.
_THE WOMAN QUESTION._
I have been sitting here, enjoying a quiet laugh all by myself, over a
pile of newspapers and magazines, in which the "Woman Question" was
aired according to the differing views of editors and writers. One
gentleman thinks that the reason the men take a nap on the sofa,
evenings at home, or else leave it to go to naughty places, is because
there are no Madame De Staels in our midst to make home attractive. He
was probably a bachelor, or he would understand that when a man who has
been perplexed and fretted all day, finally reaches home, the last
object he wishes to encounter is a wide awake woman of the Madame De
Stael pattern, propounding her theories on politics, theology, and
literature. The veriest idiot who should entertain him by the hour with
tragic accounts of broken tea-cups and saucepans, would be a blessing
compared to her; not that he would like that either; not that he would
know himself exactly what he _would_ like in such a case, except that it
should be something diametrically opposite to that which years ago he
got on his knees to solicit.
Another writer asserts that women's brains are too highly cultivated at
the present day; and that they have lost their interest in the increase
of the census; and that their husbands, not sharing their apathy, hence
the disastrous result. I might suggest in answer that this apathy may
have its foundation in the idea so fast gaining ground--thanks to
club-life, and that which answers to it in a less fashionable strata of
society--that it is an indignity to expect fathers of families to be at
home, save occasionally to sleep, or eat, or to change their apparel;
and that, under such circumstances, women naturally prefer to be the
mother of four children, or none, than to engineer seventeen or twenty
through the perils of childhood and youth without assistance,
co-operation, or sympathy.
Another writer thinks that women don't "smile" enough when their
husbands come into the house; and that many a man misses having his
shirt or drawers taken from the bureau and laid on a chair all ready to
jump into at some particular day or hour, as he was accustomed when he
lived with some pattern sister or immaculate aunt at home. This preys on
his manly intellect, and makes life the curse it is to him.
Another asserts that many women have some female friend who is very
objectionable to the husband, in exerting a pugilistic effect on her
mind, and that he flees his house in consequence of this unholy
influence; not that this very husband wouldn't bristle all over at the
idea of his wife's court-martialing a bachelor or benedict friend, for
the same reason; but then it makes a difference, you know, a man not
being a woman.
Another writer asserts that nobody yet knows what woman is capable of
doing. I have only to reply that the same assertion cannot be made with
regard to men, as the dwellers in great cities, at least, know that the
majority of them are capable of doing anything that the devil and
opportunity favor.
It has been a practice for years to father every stupid joke that
travels the newspaper-round on "_Paddy_"--poor "Paddy." In the same way
it seems to me that for every married man now, who proves untrue to his
better nature, _his wife_ is to be held responsible. It is the old
cowardly excuse that the first man alive set going, and which has been
travelling round this weary world ever since. "The woman thou gavest to
be with me"--_she_ did thus and so; and therefore all the Adams from
that time down have whimpered, torn their hair, and rushed forth to the
long-coveted perdition, over the bridge of this cowardly excuse.
One of the sapient advisers of women ridicules the idea of a woman's
voting till she has learned to be "moderate" in following the fashions;
moderate in her household expenses; moderate in her way of dressing her
hair; moderate in the length of her party-robes and in the shortness of
her walking costume. Till woman has attained this desirable moderation
he declares her totally unfit for the ballot.
Granted--for the sake of the argument, granted; but as it is a poor rule
that won't work both ways, suppose we determine a man's fitness for the
ballot by the same rule. Let not his short-tailed coats refuse to be
sat upon by the fat owner thereof. Let not his pantaloons be so tight
that he cannot stoop without danger. Let not his overcoat flap against
his heels, because a new-fangled custom demands an extra inch or two.
Let not the crown of his hat pierce the skies, or be so ridiculously
shallow as to convey the idea that it belongs to his little son. Let him
smoke "moderately." Let him drink "moderately." Let him drive
"moderately." Let him stock-gamble "moderately." Let him stay out at
night "moderately." Let him, in short, prepare himself by a severe
training in the virtue of "moderation" for the privilege of casting a
vote.
Why, there is not a man in the land who wouldn't sniff at the idea! and
yet I suppose it never occurred to the writer of this advice to women
that he was uttering impertinent nonsense, or that the rules he laid
down were quite as well suited to his own sex as to ours.
Every day I see gentlemen who are as much walking advertisements of
their tailor's last exaggerated fashion as any foolish woman could be of
her dress-maker's newly fledged insanity. If Bismarck be the rage, or
Metternich green, their neckties and gloves slavishly follow Fashion's
behest. Hats, coats, trousers are long-tail or short, tight or loose, as
she bids; and that whether legs are straight or crooked, whether the
outline is round or angular, whether the owner looks like an
interrogation-point, or a tub on two legs. At least he is in the
fashion--that manly thought consoles him.
If "moderation" in smoking were the test of fitness for the ballot-box,
how many men do you think would be able to vote?
Oh, pshaw! Advice to women will go in at one ear and out at the other,
while male advisers are such egregious fools. The silliest woman who
ever cleaned the streets with her silken robe, or exhibited thick ankles
in a short one, or froze her ears in January in a saucer of a bonnet,
knows that she can find a parallel for all her nonsense in the male side
of the question. Men inhabit too many glass-houses for them at present
to hurl missiles of that sort at their fair neighbors. Reform
_yourselves_, gentlemen. _You_ who are so much mightier and stronger and
more competent, _by your own showing_, show us, poor, weak, "grown-up
children" how to behave pretty!
* * * * *
A WORD FOR THE LITTLE ONES.--Have one rough suit for your little ones,
this summer, to tumble about the dirt in. The amount of happiness they
will get out of that rough suit, and their liberty in it, is not to be
computed by any parent's arithmetic. Only a child brought up to city
pavements and fine clothes can add up that sum. Will you do it, mothers?
Just for this one summer, if no more. Leave off for a time the sashes
and laces, and let the little ones get happily, and, what is better,
_healthily_ dirty.
_TWO KINDS OF WIVES._
Some writer remarks, "We blunder fearfully with our domesticity in
America. Our wives are only of two kinds: the family slave on one hand;
the frivolous woman of fashion on the other!"
"_Our_ wives!" As a _woman_ can't have a "wife," I may logically infer
that a man wrote the above paragraph, though without these two helping
words I should have come to the same conclusion. Now so far as my
limited knowledge goes, we generally find "in the market" that which is
oftenest called for. Put that down in your memorandum book, sir. Men are
but just beginning to find out that the two specimens of womankind
referred to are much more difficult to get along with, in the main, than
a woman of intelligence and mentality. I say they are just _beginning_
to understand it. Men are very fond of the results that the "family
slave" brings about, in the shape of good food and well-mended clothes,
but they dodge with a fox's cunning the creaking and jarring of the
machinery by which these results are obtained. They never want to be on
hand when any process of disentanglement is necessary that defies
temporarily the "family slave." Just then "business" is
imperative--very likely in the shape of a journey--till the household
machine runs smoothly again; nor does he care to hear how it is done, so
that he is not bothered about it. If the "family slave" gets thinner and
thinner, why, it is because "she takes everything _so hard_." She ought
not to take things hard! That's her fault! It is an unfortunate
nervousness which she ought to try to get rid of, because--it worries
_him_! She is "no companion" for him--not a bit! When he wants to be
amused, she is too tired to do it. In fact she don't see anything to be
amused at. That is another unfortunate peculiarity of hers, this looking
on the dark side of things. _He_ don't do so. Not he! He deplores it; he
sits down and writes just such a paragraph as I have just quoted above,
like the consistent man he is.
I once heard a man who was in excellent circumstances, and whose young
wife, just recovered from a severe illness, had taken her twelve-pound
baby in her weak arms, and gone into the country for a few days, remark,
as she left, "She _would_ take all my old trousers with her to mend--God
bless her!" adding, hallelujah-wise, "_There's a wife for you!_"
Now who made _that_ "family slave"? Because she was magnanimous and
self-forgetful, must he need be a brute? Women must take care of
themselves in these matters. They must husband their strength for future
demands, since their husbands won't husband it. That man was abundantly
able to pay a tailor or a seamstress to repair his clothes. Instead of
contenting himself with God-blessing this little meek wife, he should,
like a true man, have positively _forbidden_ her to work at all, in this
short reprieve from household care. When there is nothing left of her
but one front tooth, and a back, bent like the letter C, he will
contemplate some round, rosy woman, who has not yet met her doom, and
wonder how his wife came "to lose all her good looks so soon."
As to "fashionable women," were there no fashionable men, I don't
imagine that they would exist on this planet. "She is so dowdy!" "She is
so stylish!" Do you suppose the women who hear these masculine comments
forget them? And do you suppose when, to use an equine expression, you
have once given a wife "her head," by your admiration of "style" and
fashion, that you can rein her up short, whenever you take a notion?
Don't she hear you sneering at intelligent women, and don't she see you
flattering fashionable fools?
Of course she does. Now let every man ask himself, before he sits down
to write against the faults and follies of women, what he, individually,
has done to form and perpetuate them? And if ever, in his whole life,
when he saw a woman wronging her better self in _any_ way, he extended a
manly, brotherly hand to her, in the endeavor to lead her right? or, if
he did not, on the contrary, join her, and walk with her, _well
pleased_, in her own ill-selected path.
_UNDERTAKERS' SIGNS ON CHURCHES._
It may strike _you_ pleasantly, but when I am about to enter a church,
the conspicuous intelligence upon its outside walls, that the
"undertaker may be found at such a street," is anything but a pleasant
announcement. Now not being myself a theologian of that school which
compels a smiling countenance to be left at the _porch_ of the
"meetin'-house," I can, therefore, by no means indorse any gloomy
surroundings, outside or inside.