the pleasantest day of all the week. When I open my eyes to its dawn, I
always rejoice, if instead of a gray, cloudy sky, it be a lovely blue,
and the sun be shining brightly; I think upon the thousands to whom this
day is the only leisure day of all the seven; the thousands who, without
this blessed rest, would scarcely have time to look upon the faces of
wife or children; scarcely time to receive the regenerating caresses of
little twining arms, or hear the recital of little griefs and joys which
it is so blessed to share with one who never wearies in the hearing, and
to whose fatherly ear nothing a little child can say is "trifling." It
is blessed to me to think of the thousand humble homes where the
Sabbath sun shines upon just such a scene as this; preaching _through
the family_ this simple gospel: that the humblest have those for whom
they must strive to leave the legacy of a good and honest name. Now when
a working-man, with his heart full of love and happiness, walks forth on
a Sunday morning, do you think it wise when he approaches a church to
shake a coffin in his face? Had I my way, I would tear these
undertaker-placards all down to-morrow, and instead, I would write this,
"Strangers furnished with free seats here every Sunday." Were I a
clergyman, an undertaker should no more use my church walls to advertise
his business, than the upholsterer who furnished the pew-cushions, or
the bookseller who provided the hymn-books, or the man who found the
gas-fixtures. Ah! but you say it is very convenient to know where the
sexton lives. Very well, so it is; but let him advertise in the papers,
as other people do, who have no convenient church walls to save their
advertising fees. The truth is, that the whole undertaker business, as
at present managed, is monstrously mis-managed. The other day, in one of
our streets, I saw an oyster shop with heaps of bivalves curiously
arranged in the window, over which was written: "_Live and let live._"
Next door, being an undertaker, he had piled ostentatiously _his_ wares,
consisting of heaps of "fancy coffins," in his show-window. If he had
only copied his bivalve-neighbor, so far as to write over the window,
_Die and let die_, the farce would have been complete.
They who please may sniff at Sunday. To us it is a blessed reprieve from
care and business, and worry of every sort. The very putting on of the
fresh, clean, "best" raiment, is suggestive of best thoughts and best
feelings for all whom we meet, and more than all, for the dear ones at
home, whose happiness it is ours to make or to mar. Then the sweet,
soothing hymn and the pleading prayer; and the sermon, in which it were
hard, as a rule, to find nothing that we could not take home with us for
our improvement and self-help. Then the pleasant family group at table,
where the children _should_ be. Ah! _we_ are glad for this blessed
Sunday, let him who will, decry or pervert it.
* * * * *
A PITIABLE SIGHT.--There is no more pitiable sight than that of a
husband and father reeling home at the end of the week, having left the
greater part of his week's wages at some drinking saloon. We think of
the patient, toiling wife and hungry children, and the miserable Sunday,
and the coming week in store for them, and the utter hopelessness of
their future lot, and can find no words of denunciation strong enough
for the man who grows rich by tempting a brother's weakness, knowing,
when he does so, that for his victim there is in this world no
redemption.
_A VOICE FROM THE SKATING POND._
Coats and trousers have the best of it _everywhere_, I exclaimed, for
the thousandth time, as I looked at the delightful spectacle of the male
and female skaters at the Central Park. Away went coat and trousers,
like a feather before the wind; free, and untrammelled by dry-goods, and
independent of any chance somerset; while the poor, skirt-hampered women
glided circumspectly after their much-needed health and robustness, with
that awful omnipresent sense of _the proprieties_, (and--horror of
horrors--a tumble!) which sends more of the dress-fettered sex to their
graves every year than any disease _I_ wot of. That a few women whom I
saw there had had the perseverance to become tolerable skaters, with all
that mass of dry-goods strung round their waists, is infinitely to their
credit. How much _longer_ and better they could have skated,
disembarrassed, as men are, of these swaddling robes, common sense will
tell anybody. I should like to see how long a _man's_ patience would
hold out, floundering round in them, while _he_ learned to skate! And
yet were a lady to adopt any other costume, how decent soever, or how
eminently soever befitting the occasion, what a rolling of eyes and
pursing of mouths should we see from the strainers at gnats and
swallowers of camels. All these thoughts passed through my mind as I
mixed in with the merry crowd on that bracing winter day, whose keen
breath was like rare old wine, so did it stir and warm the blood; and I
wondered, as I gazed at those dress-fettered women, whether those
heathen nations who strangled their female babies at birth were as
naughty as we had been told they were!
"Why don't _you_ get up a skating costume, Fanny, and set them an
example?" whispers a voice at my elbow. _Me_? why don't _I_? Because,
sir, custom has made me a poor, miserable coward in these matters, like
the rest of my sex, and because, moreover, sir, you would have no more
courage to walk by my side in such a costume, than I should have to wear
it. No, no: a crowd of curious men in my wake would be no more agreeable
in reality than it is in perspective. It is brave _talking_, I know, but
the time has not yet come when men, by refraining from rude remarks on a
female pioneer in such a cause, would remove one of the chief obstacles
to its advancement. They "like healthy women"--oh, of course they do!
but then, unfortunately, they like dainty prettiness of attire much
better. Else, why don't they encourage women when they try to do a
sensible thing? Why do they grin, and stroke their beards, and shrug
their shoulders, and raise their eyebrows, and go home to Jane Maria,
and say, "Let me catch _you_ out in such a costume"? Till all that is
done away with, we must be content to see puny, waxy-looking children,
and read in "Notes on America" the usual number of stereotyped pages on
"the fragility of our women." Now, let me say in closing that I don't
wish to be misunderstood on this matter. I approve of no costume which a
delicate-minded, self-respecting, dignified woman might not wear in
public. But I will insist that nothing _can_ be done in the way of
reform, while husbands and fathers and brothers _sniff_ the whole
subject "under the table" as soon as it is mentioned. May every one of
them have a yearly doctor's bill to pay as long as the moral law!
* * * * *
BEARING TROUBLE.--There are persons who emerge from every affliction and
trouble and vexation, purified like fine gold from out the furnace.
There are others, and they are the more numerous, who are imbittered and
soured, and made despondent and apathetic. We think the latter belong to
the class who _try to stand alone_ during these storms of life, instead
of looking above for aid. When one can truly say, "He doeth all things
well," the sting is taken out of affliction, the tears are dried, and
the courage given to bear what the future has in store. This, we think,
makes the great difference between these two classes.
_THE SIN OF BEING SICK._
I wish women could be made to understand the importance of flannel
under-clothing, and warm outer-clothing, and common-sense generally in
food and exercise, when they talk about longing to have a "profession"
or a "career." Not that good health should not always be a sort of
religion with them; but they should remember that what failings soever
men may have, as a general thing they are not such fools as to shiver in
insufficient clothing when other may be had, or to go with wet or cold
feet, because thick stockings "fill up the boot," or reject thick-soled
boots because they make the feet look a size or two larger. They do not,
either, think it attractive to bare their throats and necks to a biting
wind in the street, thus inviting a blue nose and the pitying contempt
of every beholder. Woman's great foe, "headache," is surely invited and
perpetuated by these follies, even if no worse punishment follows. "I am
so shivery all over!" you will hear these silly creatures exclaim, and
the red and white located in the wrong spots in their faces attest the
truth of it. One would think that, as a matter upon which their
much-valued good looks depend, they would "consider their ways, and be
wise;" but no. After this they come in and call for some "hot, strong
tea." Tea! _that woman's dram!_ morning, noon, and night. It makes her
"feel like another being," she says. I'm sure it makes her _act_ like
one. This lasts an hour, perhaps; then she has such a "gnawing at her
stomach." Then follows depression after the exhilaration. Then she eats
nothing, because she has "no appetite." Then--another cup of tea, to
"set her up," as she calls it.
I should like to see such a woman having any "career," except fitting
herself speedily for a lunatic asylum. Such a course is reprehensible
and suicidal enough, when good food is at hand and enough of it, and the
women who practise it have money enough to pay a doctor to come and see
them, and tell them lies, and give them nice messes to make believe cure
them. But unfortunately our working girls and women, who have only a
hospital bed to look forward to when sick, go on after the same crazy
fashion. There is some shadow of excuse with them for their intemperate
use of _tea_; the horrible fare of their boarding-places being so
unpalatable and disgusting, and their long hours of labor so exhaustive
and discouraging that this stimulant has become _seemingly_ necessary to
their existence--the one bit of comfort and luxury that they look
forward to with eagerness in the interval of work. "I can't do without
it," said a young shop-girl to me, when I remonstrated with her on its
use, morning, noon, and night. "I couldn't do my work without it." And
how did she spend the wages received for "her work"? In a flimsy, showy
dress; in a gay hat; in a fashionable pair of boots with high heels.
Meantime she had no flannel; she had no _thick_ boots; she had no warm
outer garments; she had nothing to insure either health or comfort, and
she was in the same alternatives of exhilaration and depression as her
richer sisters of whom I have spoken. I don't know why, either, that I
should call them "richer," except that _they_ could have a rosewood
coffin with silver nails, and be buried in a fashionable cemetery, while
the working-girl would have a pine one, and sleep her long sleep in the
Potter's Field. Oh, dear! I see all these abuses, and I exclaim, Oh, the
rare and priceless blessings of good health and common-sense! How I wish
that every clergyman in our land--only that I know that in many cases
they are as great sinners themselves in the matter of health--would
preach on the _sin of being sick_.
Now _there's_ a topic for those of them who have the face to speak of
it, and a clear conscience to bear them out in it. For those of them who
don't sit in their libraries smoking till you can't see across it, when
they should be knocking about in the open air, cultivating a breezy,
sunny, healthful state of mind and body--just the same as if they were
laymen, instead of "ministers," whom the devil desires, of all things,
to see solemn and dyspeptic.
I lately read an article in one of our papers headed, "_Have we a
Healthy Woman among us?_" I fully indorse what the writer says as to
the marvellous amount of invalidism among our girls and women, and I
deplore it as sincerely as he does. But let us have fair play on this
subject. If there are few of them who ever ought to be wives and
mothers, I ask, how much better qualified--physiologically speaking--are
the young _men_ of the present day to be husbands and fathers? Go to any
physician of large practice and experience, and if he answers you
frankly and truthfully, you will learn that it is six of one and half a
dozen of the other. When boys of eight and twelve go to school with a
satchel in one hand and a cigar in the other, I wouldn't give much for
their future vitality, even without leaving a margin for other
violations of the laws of health. It would be well, while publicly
deploring "tight lacing" and "tight shoes" for girls, privately to
inquire about the practice of smoking for boys in short-jackets. To be
sure, I cannot see with what face a father, who is himself a bond-slave
to this habit, can ask his boy to refrain from doing that which he, as a
man, has not had self-control enough to accomplish. But don't let him
then write or speak dolefully about the miserable ill-health of our
girls and women, not, at least, till he moves out of his own
"glass-house." If the _truthful_ inscriptions were placed upon the
myriad little graves in our cemeteries, it would be _fathers_, not
_mothers_, in many cases, who could not read them without pangs of
remorse.
The day will, I hope, come, when the marriage question will cease to be
decided by Cupid or cupidity; when parents, and lovers, themselves, will
consider a sound, healthy body to be of primary importance. Oh! the
weary years of watching and dosing and misery for two, consequent upon
the neglect of this precaution! Oh! the army of puny and idiotic
children, doomed, if they live to adult years, to be a blight in
themselves and to all around them! And how distressing is it to see a
wife, made gloriously as a woman should be, with a broad chest, a free,
firm, graceful step and a beaming face, married to a man whose only
claim to be a living being is, that he has not yet ceased to breathe!
And still as mournful is it, to look at a kingly man, whose very
presence is so full of life that it is like stepping from a close room
into the glad, free, balmy sunshine even to come where he is, married to
a little pink-eyed, feeble dwarf of a creature, with little paws like a
bird's, and not life enough left even to chirp to him.
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" as the pre-Raphaelite friend
asked of a disconsolate widow who kept on crying for her dead husband.
That's just the point where I want to bring _you_, my reader. I want you
individually to look first for good health in the chosen wife who is to
be the mother of your children. And you, young girl, look first for that
rarity, a _clean bill of health_, with your future husband. A
brown-stone house and a carriage and livery are nothing to it. Take my
advice. Don't take copper for gold on the health question, and _don't
give it_.
_ARE MINISTERS SERFS?_
We hear a great outcry occasionally about "ministers who work outside of
their profession," as it is called--that is, in the lecture field, or in
writing newspaper or magazine articles for pay, or in editing
newspapers; and this although the ministers thus censured are faithful
to their pastoral duties, and bring forth every Sunday, and during the
week, fresh, vigorous thoughts for the profit and pleasure of these
complainers.
Now in our view this is a great impertinence.
Suppose a clergyman has a decrepit mother or sister, whose only
pecuniary reliance is himself? Suppose he is not willing, from delicacy
toward them, to turn his family affairs inside out, and explain _why_ he
does this "outside work," which may enable him to meet this or some
similar outside demand? _Is it_ properly anybody's business? If he do
not defraud his parish, have they any right to hold a coroner's inquest
over his "outside" earnings and their possible appropriation? How would
his deacons or church-members stand such a scrutiny over their own
private affairs? We think that the "old Adam" in them would soon rear
and plunge at it. Well, ministers are men too, though you sometimes
seem to forget it; and _they_ don't like it either. The parish has not
purchased their _souls_, as I understand it, no more than have husbands
those of their wives. Let us hope, in this enlightened age, that neither
are serfs. Let us hope that all ministers, and all wives too, all over
the land, may honestly and innocently earn money, and keep it in a
private purse too, without accounting to either the parish or their
husbands for the expenditure of the same; or without, in either case,
causing unfounded suspicion or breach of the peace, or officious
meddling, no more, in my opinion, to be justified, than as if the "boot
was on the other foot," where Mrs. Grundy would consider it a great
wrong to place it, or to insist upon its being worn, regardless of the
limping or contortions of the wearers.
Before either parishes or husbands complain of outside _honest_
earnings, let them inquire if the salaries they give are just and ample.
Let them both inquire whether the objection they have to outside earning
in both cases, does not mainly arise from the fear that the curious
public will imagine that they are not.
Of course, in saying all this, I am referring to those clergymen and
those married women who are sensible and judicious, as well as blessed
with ability, and it is my opinion that Mrs. Grundy has meddled long
enough with the proper independence and self-respect of both.
One thing I've forgotten, namely, parishes are not to suppose that an
increase of a clergyman's salary is to padlock his lips afterward, if
he is requested, or if he feels inclined, to deliver his sentiments,
even "for pay," on the platform, as well as in the pulpit they have
called him to fill. Nor after that, are they to handcuff him either,
lest he should write a line "for pay" in a paper or magazine? In short,
do try to be willing that your "minister" should stand up straight like
any other man, and not go cringing round the world a bought serf, with
his "white choker" for a badge of the same. I'm sick of seeing it. If I
were a minister, it would take all the religion I could muster to keep
me from saying wicked words about it.
"Our minister was away six weeks this summer," said a person
complainingly, the other day. Well, are not ministers human? Must they
not eat, drink, rest, sleep, sorrow and grieve, like other mortals? Have
they not, in addition to all this, a constant and exhaustive demand upon
their sympathies for the griefs of other people? And must they not
constantly be racking their brains, in and out of the pulpit, to have
all their words set fitly, like "apples of gold in pictures of silver"?
And is it not better that a minister should rest "six weeks" than be
laid useless upon the shelf for six months, or that his voice should be
silenced forever because of the exactions of the unthinking portion of
his hearers? And would it not be well if the persons thus complaining
spent the time instead in looking to it that they had profited by what
they had _already_ heard?
Whatever else you grudge, never grudge a good, faithful minister a
breathing spell.
_BLAMING PROVIDENCE FOR OUR OWN FAULTS._
Napoleon is said to have lost a battle on account of an underdone leg of
mutton. Now, there are many who, shaking their heads, would say, it was
"an overruling Providence." I have to smile sometimes at poor
"Providence"--that convenient scapegoat for all the human stupidity
extant;--who kills little babies, and puts a tombstone over young girls
who should have lived to be the healthy mothers of healthy sons and
daughters. This "All-wise Providence," who, as some would have us
believe, is malignantly and perpetually employed in tripping up the
heels of human beings for the benefit of the undertaker--what a
convenient theology for bad cooks, for unwise school-teachers, for
selfish, careless, ignorant parents!
Now "Providence" does no such things. Providence approves of live, fat,
rollicking babies; of deep-chested women; of round, healthy girls; of
muscular men; and sound physical specimens of every kind. Bless
you--_he_ don't bend spines, nor make drunkards, nor thieves, nor write
a shameful history on the pure brow of any woman who ever has or ever
shall live; _he_ don't ordain perpendicular ghosts of ministers, to
defile sepulchrally through creation, and scare people into heaven. _He_
don't smile on those suicidal mothers, who run breathlessly round and
round the nursery treadmill, thinking they are doing God service, till
they drop dead in the harness, and leave eight or nine children
motherless, at an age when they most need maternal guidance. _He_ don't
manufacture scrofulous constitutions out of unwholesome food, and bad
ventilation, and dissipated habits. It is _not_ one of the ten
commandments that babies should be taught Greek and Latin before they
have cut their teeth, that they may become idiots before maturity; or
that school-boys should smoke pipes and cigars; or that school-girls
should drink strong coffee for breakfast, and eat rich pastry and
pickles for luncheon. It is high time that people shouldered their own
sins, and called things by their right names, and told the truth at
funerals, and on tombstones, if they _must_ say anything there. In my
opinion, an "All-wise and inscrutable Providence" has borne quite
blasphemy enough in this way.
_A CHAPTER ON NURSES._
Can anybody tell why nurses are fat? Is there anything in the atmosphere
of a sick room, or in the sight of phials, pills, leeches, potions,
blisters, and plasters to give one an appetite? I solemnly affirm that I
never saw a bony nurse--never. There's a horrid mystery about it which I
have in vain tried to solve. With what a lazy waddle they roll round the
apartment, and how your flesh creeps as they fix their unsympathizing
eyes upon you; you are so sure that they had just as lief bring you your
shroud as a clean nightcap; that it is quite immaterial to them whether
the next thing that comes through the door is a bowl of gruel or your
coffin; in fact, that they would be immensely gratified if you'd hurry
up your dying, and let them off to the pleasurable excitement of a new
subject.
And then that professional sniffle when a visitor asks, "How is your
patient, nurse?" It is a poor satisfaction, to make faces at her under
the sheet, as she answers; but I have done it; I shouldn't be surprised
now, if you thought that was unamiable. Ah! you never had her twitch
down the curtain over a lovely sunset, that was soothing you like a
cool hand on your forehead, and light a little, nasty "nurse-lamp,"
merely because she knew you hadn't strength enough to say, "Please
don't." A nurse-lamp! that you have contemplated night after night in
the silent, dreary watches, till it seemed like an evil eye, glimmering
and glowing, fascinating you in spite of yourself, till the perspiration
stood in cold drops on your forehead, while the watch went "tick,"
"tick," and the fat, old nurse snored away, and each nerve in your body
seemed a separate and more perfect engine of torture. No wonder you hate
to see her unnecessarily shorten the daylight and repeat the horror. But
she'll do it; of course she'll do it. If you had not wanted her to, you
should have told her that of all sublunary things, you fancied a
night-lamp. Now I leave it to you, if, after that and kindred
crucifixions of momentary occurrence, you could stand that pious sniffle
with which she answers the question, "How is your patient, nurse?"
And then, if she wouldn't be so excruciatingly officious at such a time,
one might swallow one's disgust. If, when a visitor comes in, she
wouldn't twitch your pillow from under your head, just as you are
knowing your first comfortable moment, and giving it a shake and a pat,
thrust it under your head again, forcing your chin down into your
breastbone, and half dislocating your neck, just to show them how
attentive she is; if she wouldn't strip down the blanket, or pile on a
dozen quilts, when you are just the right temperature, for the same
reason, I think it would be more jolly. Then if, after all that, she
wouldn't stand, and _keep_ standing, so near the corner of your mouth,
that you couldn't call her some "rantankerous" name by way of relief;
though, at another time, when you were dying for a glass of water, she'd
leave you all alone and take half an hour to get it; if she wouldn't do
all these things; but she will. _She grows fat on thwarting her
patients: I know it._ Of course, if your strength equalled your disgust,
you wouldn't _be_ thwarted; you'd obstinately persist in admiring
everything she did, though she should comb your hair with a red-hot
poker, but being sick and babyish, one can only whimper; and there is
where they have us.
"Ill-natured article." Well, suppose it is an ill-natured article? Am I
to be the only saint in the world? Am I to pussy-cat round a subject,
and never show my claws, or stick up my back, when I catch sight of the
enemy! I cry you mercy; in that case I should have been devoured long
ago. Beside, wasn't the handle broken off a lovely little porcelain
"gift cup" this morning? and isn't it raining cats and dogs, though I
_must_ go out? and are not these as good reasons for making somebody
uncomfortable as _you_ had, Sir, or _you_, Madam, for that little thing
you did or said this morning to some poor soul in your power, who
couldn't resent it? Please get out of your own glass-house before you
throw stones at mine.
"But there are good, kind nurses." Well, I am glad to hear it. Upon my
soul, I believe it. Since you say so, and I have had my growl out, I
think I remember two or three. They'll go to heaven, of course. What
more do you want?
* * * * *
A REASONABLE BEING.--If there's anything I hate, it is "a reasonable
being." Says the lazy mother to her restless child whom she has
imprisoned within doors and whose active mind seeks solutions of passing
remarks, "Don't bother, Tommy; do be _reasonable_, and not tease with
your questions." Says the husband to his sick or overtasked wife, when
she cries from mere mental or physical exhaustion, "How I hate tears; do
be a reasonable being." Says the conservative father to his son, whom he
would force into some profession or employment for which nature has
utterly disqualified him, "Are you wiser than your father? do be a
reasonable being." Says the mother to sweet sixteen, whom she would
marry to a sixty-five-year old money-bag, "Think what a thing it is to
have a fine establishment; do be a reasonable being."