I have trotted across this room twenty times to pick up little bits of
thread and shining pins, that offended my eye, upon this floor. I
positively couldn't write till I had done it. Then that vase was placed
a little awry when the room was dusted, and I had to get up and settle
its latitude and longitude. The hearth, too, had some ashes upon it, and
there was a shawl on the sofa that should have been in the closet. Then
there was an ink-spot on my thumb that had to be removed, and my desk
had a speck or two of dust on the corner. All these things bothered me;
and then I fell thinking whether it were not, after all, better not to
have quite so sharp an eye for these things; that perhaps editors were
right who had their office windows so thickly crusted with dirt that
they could not tell whether it were a rainy or a sunshiny day from
indoor observation. That perhaps they were right in heaping breast-high
upon their office desks papers, books, MSS., letters, pencils, pens,
gloves, hats, and cigar-stumps, varied with engravings and dirty
pocket-handkerchiefs. Perhaps they were right in never sweeping their
floors, and leaving it to their visitors to dust their chairs with their
clothes. Really it is quite a question with me this morning, whether
the bump of order is not a nuisance, even to a woman. Now at any chance
table where I may lunch, I have regularly to re-locate the cups,
saucers, and dishes, before I begin, placing them where their
geographical relation will be most harmonious. If the folds in the
table-cloth run the wrong way, I assure you I am quite miserable; and a
missing stopper to the vinegar cruet drives me to despair. Then I
endeavor so to regulate my bureau drawers and closets that a visit to
them in the darkest night, without a light, for any article, would be
eminently successful. Till, "_Now, who has been here_," has come to be a
miserable joke against me, by the happy creatures who cannot comprehend,
that to misplace my gloves, or handkerchiefs, or ribbons, or veil, is to
cause my too susceptible heart an exquisite anguish, beside wasting my
precious time in fruitless hunts for the same.
Then I may be very tired when I return at twelve o'clock at night from
some visit or place of amusement; but no amount of reasoning could avail
to get me to bed till my bonnet, cloak, and dress were put away in their
appropriate places. I am sorry to confess that unless I did this,
visions of Betty and a broom in possible connection with them, the next
morning, would quite interfere with my slumbers. You may laugh at all
this; but 'tis I who would laugh at _you_ in the morning, when you are
spending the best hours of the day in flying distractedly round for some
missing article which you cannot do without, and which, of course,
_nobody has seen_. If "Order is Heaven's first law," as my school
copy-book used to assert, my initiatory carefulness here below may not
be, after all, without its value. Still, I do not forget that there was
once a Martha who was rebuked for "being careful and troubled about many
things."
But stay a bit: can you tell me _why_, when one's room is what they call
"put to rights," the table which has a drawer in it should always be so
left by Bridget that the drawer side faces the wall? Or why, when a
basin of water is in use, to cleanse spots from paint, it should always
be placed near the door, that the first comer may enjoy an impromptu
foot-bath? Why, in moving a vase, or any other fragile article, it is
always so located, that breakage is inevitable? Why should dust-pans be
left in dark entries, or stairways, to the sudden precipitation of some
unsuspecting victim? Why, when a broom is off duty, should it be "stood
up" where the handle is sure to make thumping acquaintance with one's
nose? Why should soiled towels be abstracted, before replacing them with
fresh ones, and you left to make the harrowing discovery with dripping
finger-ends? Oh! tell me why need your bonnet be put in the
coal-scuttle, and your muddy gaiter-boots in the bandbox? Why should
your "honey-soap" be used to wash the hearth? Why, when you beseech that
blankets, and sheets, and coverlets, should be tucked harmoniously in at
the bottom of the bed, should your toes make unwilling acquaintance,
every night, with the cold foot-board? Why, when you request that a
door should be kept shut, is it always left wide open? and why, when you
are in a gasping condition, should it be carefully closed, spite of
repeated remonstrance?
Gentle Shepherd, tell me, are pigs and Bridgets _the only_ creatures
whom heaven and earth can't stop from going east, if you desire them to
go west? And the Shepherd answers--_Man_.
* * * * *
MOTHERS OF MANY CHILDREN.--"Ponder every subject with careful attention,
if you wish to acquire knowledge." What is then to be the mental status
of that mother who has a _perpetual_ baby in her arms, and only time to
"ponder" that baby, so weary is her body with its "ponder"-osity? Where
is the Solomon to answer this question? Baby knowledge she may indeed
have; but the baby will grow up by and by, and how is she to acquire
"knowledge" under such circumstances, and be a fit intellectual
companion for it then? That's what some people want to know, when little
brothers and sisters tread so fast on each other's heels, that the
mother has scarcely breathing time between.
"_EVERY FAMILY SHOULD HAVE IT._"
One actually gasps for breath in crowded, closetless New York to read
this frequent newspaper announcement, "Every family should have it."
Modern times having abolished the "garret of our forefathers with its
all-embracing omnium-gatherum eaves," the prospect of dire confusion is
terrible if "every family" does not turn a deaf ear to these
disinterested caterers for their benefit. Alas! for that old blessed
garret, the standing curiosity shop for the youngsters of a rainy or a
holiday afternoon; that mausoleum of "notions" cast aside by our
venerated ancestors, who undoubtedly had their little follies like their
descendants. Old boxes, old tins, old baskets, old hats, old bonnets,
old school-books, old bottles, did not then, as now, marshal themselves
on the sidewalks, in company with coal cinders, to the disgust of every
pedestrian, waiting the snail-like operations of the dirt-man, who is
off duty six days out of the seven, and spills half he carries away at
that, besides knocking the bottom out of every barrel when, having
essayed to disembowel it, he jerks it off one wheel of his cart to the
sidewalk. One needs to go to Boston or to Philadelphia occasionally to
air one's nostrils and temper after it. After this, to talk of more
things, each day, that "every family must have," is enough to drive one
to a druggist's for speedy oblivion. What a blessing to these public and
disinterested philanthropists, of "every family," are gullible
housekeepers and matrons who, though cheated and bamboozled seventy
times seven, are still on hand for the latest sham--"improvement."
Credulous souls! How do their husbands count over to them on warning
marital fingers the dismal amount thus uselessly expended! Not that
_they themselves_ do not, and have not, erred in the same way; but who
is going to have the superhuman courage to tell these sinless beings so?
But after all, far be it from me to say that there are not many things
that "every family must have;" and one of these is a baby. Not that
_they_ too are not occasionally dumped unceremoniously and heartlessly
on the sidewalk; but that don't alter the fact, that a house without a
baby is no house at all. Another thing that "every family must have," is
a Doctor; also a Minister. Who ever heard of a woman without these two
confidential friends--what would become of her if she couldn't make a
good cup of tea for the latter, and tell the other her real and
imaginary aches? And if she knows anything, can't she always choose her
own sanitary prescriptions, all the same as if there were no diploma in
her Doctor's pocket?
I will not stop to inquire whether this advertisement-heading is a
disinterested one, or whether they who deal in such things are
conversant with the respective sizes of our houses, or families, or
both; or whether new complications of pots and pans, and tea-kettles,
and gridirons, and egg-beaters, and clothes-wringers, and the like, will
only wring to utter extinction the already muddled heads of our
unscientific "help" and the depleted purses of housekeepers, consequent
upon their unthrift. We only wish to remind these disinterested
shopkeepers, who would fain take in verdant housekeepers, that houses
nowadays are mainly constructed without garrets, without cellars,
without closets, without any lumber place whatsoever, where the wrecks
of these articles "that no family can do without," can be ultimately
stranded. Their wares are, to be honest, often tempting enough to look
at; beautiful in their shining freshness, and deliciously suggestive of
good roasts and stews and broils--_awfully_ suggestive of the
latter!--but "terrible as an army with banners," when contemplating
"Intelligence offices"; though why "_intelligence_" when anything _but_
that is to be had there, I have heretofore failed to see.
Another question I would ask these disinterested persons who have so
many "articles no family can do without:" Did they ever hear of the
_First of May_? Have they a realizing sense of what it is to "move"?
Will they tell us, when moving carts are already bursting with "the
things no family can do without," and the sidewalk refuses to receive
the remainder, and the new tenant won't have them at any price, and you
are wild with despair that it is impossible for you to be divorced from
them--will they tell us, at that halcyon moment, if they really
contemplated, in the affluence of their desires to furnish our houses,
that they might be the means of sending us to a lunatic asylum?
Beggars are useful at such times, if they only wouldn't sort out the
horrid heap of broken and disabled things that "the family can" _now_ do
very well "without," directly in the path of the moving carts, and
before your afflicted eyes, that are quite ready to close on all things
here below, so intense is your disgust of them.
The words "do without" convey to me a very different meaning now than of
yore. A new dumping-ground must be invented in New York before _I_
patronize any more inventions. I'm for condensing instead of expanding
things, till our city masters find time to attend to that. Nobody need
ring my door-bell with "patent" anything, while it is so patent that
there is no vacant space in Manhattan for anything new under the sun. My
nature is not conservative; but one can't be pushed into the East river,
when it is so full of the "things that no family can do without," that
there is not room enough left there even to sink.
_GETTING TO RIGHTS._
There! I breathe again! The household is at last wound up--carpets down,
house-cleaning accomplished; all the "pretties" located in the most
effective places; my flowers and ivies luxuriant; my desk newly fitted
up; everything thriving save myself; but that's no consequence, I
suppose. My play-day is over, and now I must buckle down to realities.
Still one's home _is_ lovely after the jar of the creaking machinery
used in getting it in order has ceased. Your own chair, just fitted to
your weary back; your own convenient dressing-room and glass, with all
your little duds close to your hand; gas, instead of kerosene;
bell-wires ready to your hand, instead of having to descend stairs and
do your own errands; food cooked your own way, and just when you want
it; and over and above all, to be able to say what shall, and what shall
not, be _inside_ your front door. May the gods make us thankful so far!
But if I _could_ get a breath of dear Newport now, before I buckle down
to work; if I could have just _one_ drive more in my horse and phaeton
round the "ocean road," and smell the good salt breeze, and see the
crisp white foam of the dashing waves, I think it would quite set me up
for the winter campaign. As to my horse, I know he wants me as much as
I do him. I don't think he has made much, in exchanging my free and
go-easy "chirrup" for the lash of the whip. I wish I were a man, and
then I could drive here in the city; but I ain't, you see, and so I
shall have to get the snarl out of my tired nerves some other way.
Let us change the subject. Is it not funny how a man will go on
inspecting your efforts to get a house to rights? Is it not funny how he
never can tell how "a thing is going to look," till every accessory is
perfected? Now he says, "What made you choose that dull carpet, nobody
can tell." You reply, "Because it is capable of such brilliant contrasts
in color." He shakes his head, having no imagination to help him out,
and thinks it "a blunder." You smile serenely, knowing your ground, and
bide your time, while he croaks. By and by, some day, when he has gone
out, the little bits of color are added by you, here and there: a bright
vase, or a cushion, or a stand of flowers, or the color of a mat
judiciously chosen; and my gentleman walks in, and says, "Why, who would
have thought it? it is really lovely!" That, of course, is only setting
himself down for a goose; but when is ever a man anything else, when he
attempts to criticise a woman's housekeeping in any of its departments?
You despise his encomiums now, and with nose in air, walk round among
your flowers and pretties, as if to say, "In future, sir, confine
yourself to Grad-grind matters that you understand, and leave the
decorative part of your existence to one who--Hem!"
I ache from head to foot with my herculean efforts to bring things in
this house to a bright New England focus. But I am not sorry, because I
can now put to rout some articles lately written, by a very bright woman
too, on "the inexactness of hired women's work, as compared to the
fidelity and exactness of hired men's work." I am happy to state, that
after my new parlor carpets were nailed down, by _men_ too, I discovered
several little blocks of wood and other nuisances underneath, which
should have been first removed; thus perilling the future wear of my
pretty new carpet. I am happy to state too, that the papering done by
men was not to my mind, or _according to my order_, and had to be done
over again. I rejoice to say that my window-shades are not yet
forthcoming, according to a _man's_ promise; and that it was only by
personal supervision that my cellar was thoroughly cleansed by a _man_,
as he agreed it should be. In short, I don't want to hear any more on
the "_exactness_ of man's work," since he can fib, and slight things,
with an adroitness worthy of a woman, and I am sure I couldn't put the
case any stronger.
_Now_ I am going to fold my hands and be comfortable. I can't have my
horse this winter, and so I sha'n't sigh any more for _him_; but if I
live till the spring, that horse, or some other, has got to help me get
rid of this world's cares and perplexities every blessed sunny
afternoon. Let us trust that he is fattening up on oats paid and
provided for in the stable of some philanthropist unknown to me. I have
had so much of the _details_ lately, that I shall be quite satisfied
with _results_ without inquiring further.
* * * * *
I wish I were a voter: I would vote for the officials who would take a
little interest in the household ash-barrel. It may be too much to ask
that the McGormicks, and McCormicks, and O'Flahertys, who are paid for
emptying these utensils--when it don't rain, and when they don't forget
it--should not empty the contents on the pavement, and then half shovel
them up, to save themselves the exertion of lifting the barrels, which
they always throw down upon their sides, to roll wheresoever the gods or
idle boys will. It may be too much to ask that they should amend their
ways in these particulars; but were every lady housekeeper a voter, as,
thank Providence, they are sure to be some day or other, these gentlemen
would either have to toe the mark, or be run over by the new wheel of
progress.
Meantime, it is of little use for Bridget to sweep the sidewalk, or keep
the gutter free, as she often pathetically remarks to me, when she goes
forth to perform this matutinal duty. Now, as the tools used in my
profession keep sharper and freer from rust, in the air of Manhattan,
than elsewhere, I cannot be expected to vacate for the dry-dirt-man. The
only alternative that I know of is, that _he_ shall vacate for me, and
make room for more executive officials. That's logic, if it is
feminine. In short, I want those men to take a little journey
somewhere--I'm not particular where, so that they don't come back.
It grows clearer to me, every day, as I observe these one-horse
arrangements, why women are not allowed to vote: there would be little
margin then for all this cheating, this pocketing of salaries without an
equivalent. The sidewalks, gutters, streets would be as clean as a
parlor floor. No old boxes, or kegs, or boots and shoes, past their
prime, would challenge our eyes, or our noses. The drinking-places would
be disgorged of husbands, fathers, lovers, and brothers; also the
billiard and gambling saloons. In short, the broom of reform would raise
such a dust in the eyes of the _how-not-to-do-its_, that, when their
vision was restored, they would ask, like the old woman whose skirts
were curtailed while taking her nap, if "this be I?"
Meantime I wait--not patiently--for this millennium. It galls me--this
dirt and thriftlessness--more in the Autumn than at any other time. In
the Spring it is sufficiently odious; but then one is on the wing for
the country, and that hope buoys a housekeeper under it. In the Winter
the friendly, pure white snow comes, with its heavenly mantle of
charity, to cover it sometimes. But who or what shall comfort the
housekeeper in the lingering, golden days of the Indian Summer, when
fresh from the pure air of the country, and the brilliant foliage of the
valleys, and the lovely shadows on the hillsides, she is doomed to see,
to smell, to breathe whatever of pollution and unthrift our city fathers
choose, without the power to cast the vote that shall give us a clean
city?
Meantime, as I say, I wait--_not_ patiently--for that desired
millennium; and shall continue, with a touching faith in it, to keep
flowering plants in my windows, and in other ways to signify, to the
passer-by, that dirt and unsightliness, and bad odors, are not and never
have been, the normal condition of _woman_.
* * * * *
OUR MORNING MEAL.--Breakfast should be the most enlivening meal of the
whole day, for then we are to be nerved for another day's duties and
cares, and perhaps for great sorrows also. Let there be no exciting
argument, from which personalities may crop out, around the breakfast
table. Let there be, if possible, only pleasant topics, and affectionate
salutations, that all may go forth their separate ways with sweet,
peaceful memories of each other; for some foot may never again cross the
family threshold, some eye never witness another day's dawning. This
thought, if the busy world were not so clamorous as to stifle it, would
often arrest the impatient, fretful words that pain so many tender
hearts.
_MODERN MARTYRS._
Fox's cheerful "Book of Martyrs" strikes us as incomplete. He tells, to
be sure, of people who have been roasted alive, cut up, torn limb from
limb, disembowelled, and suffered various other trifling annoyances of
that kind; but though I have perused it carefully, I see no mention of
the unhappy wretch who, coming home at twelve o'clock at night, with
frozen fingers, gropes round his room, bumping his nose, and
extinguishing his eyes, in the vain search for his match-box, the
latitude and longitude of which some dastardly miscreant has changed.
Nor do I see any mention of him who, having washed his hands nicely,
looketh in vain for a towel, where a towel _should_ be, while little
rivulets of water run up his shirt-sleeves or drip from his extended
finger-tips. No allusion either is made to her who, sitting down to her
time-honored portfolio, misseth one sheet of MS. which somebody has
fluttered out, and straightway gone his heedless way. Nor yet of the
unhappy owner of a pen, whose pace answers only to one hand, and whose
nib has been tampered with by some idle scribbler, in multiplying the
name of "Laura," or "Matilda," to an indefinite extent, over a sheet of
paper as blank as his mind. I see no mention of her who, sitting down to
write, is made frantic by the everlasting grind of a hand-organ beneath
the window; that performer's welcome retreat being followed by a shaky
old man with a wheezy flute, or the more horrible bagpipe performance,
compared with which the shrieks of twenty cur-tailed cats were heaven's
own music. I have not noticed any mention of her who, giving her husband
a letter to drop into the post, finds the same a month afterwards in the
pocket of a vest, which he tosses her to mend. I see no mention of the
lady-victims of owners of shops, three miles long, who have always
"_just the article you want_" at the very farthest extremity of the
store; and whom they lure to traverse that distance only to find
something in the _shopman's_ view "infinitely superior," but about as
near the article wanted as is the North to the South pole. No mention
either is made of the gentleman with a bran new coat, who takes the last
seat in the car, next a child fond of wriggling, with a piece of soft
gingerbread or a moist stick of candy in its uncertain gripe. Nor is any
allusion made to the friend of the family, who furnishes all the
children with holiday toys, every one of which has either a crucifying
squeak or a stunning explosive power, which soon fits their amiable
mother for a lunatic asylum. Nothing is said, as I can find, of that
mistress of a family to whom the morning hours are as precious as gold
dust, and who is called down to see a gentleman, who (having read
_Jones_ on the door-plate) straightway, with sublime assurance, asks
"for _Mrs._ Jones, on particular business;" when that lady, descending,
finds a well-dressed, well-groomed individual, who, with a smirk and a
bow, straightway draws from his pocket "a bottle of furniture polish,"
which he exhausts all the dictionary and her patience in extolling; or
presents to her notice a "cement for broken china," or "samples of
needles." Scarcely has she rid herself of this nuisance, when "a boy
wishes also to see _Mrs. Jones_ on particular business," which turns out
to be the hoped-for sale of "six envelopes, two steel-pens, a pencil, a
brass breast-pin, a tin trumpet, a corkscrew, and four sheets of
letter-paper--all for sixpence--_and just sold three next door, mum_."
Is not the boarding-house public an army of martyrs? As to
boarding-house life, I detest it every way: its public feeding, its
scandal, its heterogeneousness, its tyrannical edicts against babies and
young children, its stifling atmosphere of roast, and boil, and stew,
and tobacco-smoke, its punctual delivery of your letters and parcels,
_on the entry table_; its way of sweeping your room at most inconvenient
hours, and dusting it with one summary whisk from a long-handled,
feather-tailed switch; its convenient deafness to the jerk of your
bell-wire; its homoeopathic coffee and pie; its towels, threadbare in
quality, and niggardly in quantity; its parlor, showy and shabby, with
its inevitable centre-table, with its perennial annuals, its hump-backed
rocking-chair, and distorted pictures--and apoplectic bills.
The necessity it entails of always wearing a mask; of fearing to speak,
lest you should tread on the toes of your neighbor's pet hobby, and
thereby deprive yourself of the convenient bridge over which the salt
and pepper must necessarily travel to your plate, waiters being stupid
and scarce; the bore of talking when you feel taciturn, or having your
neighbor provokingly insist upon it that you must be ill; the bore of
laughing when you feel sad, and hearing threadbare topics rediscussed,
and stale jokes resurrectionized; the misery of never being able to have
the first unfolding of your own morning-paper, or of having it
incontinently disappear, in company with some unprincipled boarder bound
on a daybreak journey, and that day sure to be aggravatingly dull and
rainy; the necessity of always turning your keys upon boxes and trunks,
and the certainty of losing or misplacing them when you are in a
double-twisted, insane hurry; your contracted, closetless space; your
inevitable city window prospect of back sheds, with ghostly garments
hanging on groaning clothes-lines; of distracted bachelors at upper
chamber-windows, vainly essaying to sew on missing buttons, and
muttering inaudible oaths at their clumsy, needle-pricked fingers.