find, where everybody is too much occupied to interfere with your
personal business; where waiters are plenty, and it is not high treason
to ask for salt with your meat. If your finances forbid this, then, in
mercy to yourself, rent a shanty where no third person is a fixture in
your family, where you can sneeze when your nose has a call that way,
and where your hopes and fears, joys and sorrows will not be leisurely
dissected by the cool fingers of malignity, and where that nightmare,
Paul Pry-ism, is not always astride of your heart and brain.
That's my opinion of boarding-houses, and may the gods have mercy on the
_bored_. Let us have a new edition of Fox at once.
* * * * *
AN ERROR TO AVOID.--All writers do best who depict that which they have
seen with their own eyes, instead of their "mind's eye." It is very easy
to detect the difference. There is a glow, a naturalness, a fidelity to
life in the first, that is never to be found in the last. And yet how
many, stepping past their own legitimate points of observation, and
looking only through the fog of imagination, give us dim, distorted,
crude caricatures of life and human beings, the counterpart of which
never has and never will exist. This is especially the fault of
beginners, whose misdirected aim it is to startle and astonish.
_WRITING "COMPOSITIONS."_
I have lately received a letter which it would be well every teacher and
parent in the land should read. As I shall not betray the name or
residence of the distressed young writer, of whom I have no knowledge
except what is communicated by her letter, and as it may call attention
to the last-drop-in-the-bucket misery, inflicted upon children already
sufficiently overtasked, who are required to furnish ideas upon a given
subject, which it is utterly impossible their young minds should grasp,
I shall make no apology for transcribing it verbatim; calling particular
attention to the italicized passages:
* * * * *
"DEAR AUNT FANNY:--You have said you are Auntie to all poor girls in
distress. I am in distress, if ever anybody was; and I know that you
will be kind to me. Let me tell you about it. I have expected to
graduate in about two weeks; and I have no essay to read, and if I don't
have one I can't graduate. I would not care so much for that myself, but
my father would be _so_ disappointed; and he has made so many sacrifices
to keep me at school, that I _can't_ disappoint him. Oh! I have worked
so hard to keep up with my class, for I am obliged to be absent so
much, and now if I can't go through, _I shall die, I know_. I am not
afraid of passing examination, for I know I can do that successfully,
but I never could write any kind of a decent composition; and now it
seems as though it was worse than ever, for _I have tried for four
months to write one, but I am farther off from it than ever_. I know
that you will think me very, _very_ dull, and I suppose I am; but, oh!
Aunt Fanny, _do, do_ pity me. Please, _please_ write me one to
read--_you_ can do it in a very short time. I know that it is a very
great favor to ask of you, and I should not dare to do it, but oh! I am
almost crazy, and I know by your writings that you will pity and help
me. I pray every night that God will help me, and I think He put it into
my heart to write to you about it. I have tried everything. Oh, dear! I
can't write on anything at all. _I have sat up all night, but I am as
dull as ever, and I dream about it when I go to sleep._ Oh! Aunt Fanny,
do, _do_ pity me, and write for me. I will do anything in this wide
world for you. Oh, please, do; I will never forget you. You can do
anything almost; I will bless you forever. _Oh, I shall die if I don't
have one!_ Do write me a line, anyway, and direct to ----, ----. Excuse
me for writing so, but I am nearly desperate. _Oh, for the love of God,
do write me one in two weeks, or at most three!_ I dare not even read
over what I have written to you. Oh! Aunt Fanny, don't refuse me."
* * * * *
A better comment than this touching letter, upon the present forcing,
hot-house system of education, even I should not desire. Think of this
young girl, goaded to the very verge of insanity by those who _should
know_ that they are defeating the very object they are trying to attain
by forcing the young mind to string together to order, and by the page,
_words without ideas_. In my opinion this "composition" business is the
greatest possible nonsense. I believe it to be the baneful root of the
inflated style of writing so prevalent. I believe that there are
exercises in English, which would serve the purpose millions of times
better without driving pupils mad, and without offering them a premium
for deceit, in passing off as their own the thoughts of others. Not long
since, I received a letter from the principals of a school, enclosing "a
composition" to which "a prize" had just been awarded, and which some
person present at the reading had detected as stolen from one of my
books; with a request that I would look it over and pronounce upon the
same. I found it word for word as I had written it in my book! Perhaps
the _moral_ effect of this system may be worth inquiring into, even by
those who seem to be utterly insensible to the wretched spectacle of a
young head tossing feverishly, night after night, on the pillow, under
the brooding nightmare of an unwritten "_composition_." Let careless
parents, who are quite as much to blame as teachers, give this subject a
thought.
Now, girls, I fully sympathize with you in your distractions in this
dilemma, but this is not the way to help you out of it. I advise you to
ask your teacher to allow you to describe some scene or place you have
visited, which you could easily do; then write it out naturally, as if
you were telling it to some friend, without any attempt at fine
language. Also ask your teacher to allow you _to stop when you get
through_, instead of exacting so many lines or pages when your ideas
give out. That is the only way that good "compositions" can be written,
and I wish fervently all school-teachers knew it, and ceased bothering
poor young heads "to make bricks without straw," or resort in their
distress to the deception you propose to me.
"Composition day," it is true, in my school-days, was only a delight to
me. But you should have seen the idiot I was in arithmetic or algebra,
or historical dates! How I pinched the girl next me to help me out; and
how gratefully I remembered it, in after years, and embroidered my
gratitude on her first baby's little flannel petticoats!
Now, my dear young ladies, don't be discouraged because you are slow at
"composition." As I say, it is not your fault, for half the time the
most impossible subjects are given you to write about. Your minister
might just as well be asked to write a dissertation on French millinery.
Then, though your gift may not be "composition," it may lie in something
quite as important; so with this little consolation I leave you to
wriggle out of your dilemma the best way you can, without pilfering.
And, moreover, I think a meeting of school-teachers ought speedily to be
called to consider this composition subject and make it, as easily might
be done, a delight, instead of a bore and a cheat.
* * * * *
THE LITTLE ONES.--Fortunate are those parents who have learned to
respect the _individuality_ of their children. Who are not madly bent
upon planting them in the family garden in set rows, and so closely that
their branches have no room to stretch out into the fair sunlight. Who
are not forever on hand with the pruning-knife or hoe, to lop off that
which, if left, would develop into sweet buds or flowers; or to dig the
earth prematurely from roots which were better left safely hidden till
their natural period of vigorous appearing. A gardener who should be
guilty of such folly would be a laughing-stock. What if all his flowers
were of one color? What if every twig and leaf were of the same size?
How weary should we be of this monotony. How we should long for the
delicate pink of the rose, and the royal purple of the violet, and the
pure snow of the lily, and the distinctive aroma of each! Why not in
this respect take a lesson from Nature, which is at once so bountiful
and so wise?
_NICE LITTLE TEA-PARTIES._
Hospitality seems to be an extinct virtue. Grand parties we have in
plenty of all kinds, where those who have vitality sufficient to attend
them, and purses long enough to compete with the vulgar show attending
them, may return such hollow civilities, and "have it over," as they
express it.
"_Have it over!_" There's just the fly in the ointment. The
old-fashioned, genuine hospitality never was "over." Nobody wanted it
"over." A simple, elegant little tea, a well-cooked, well-served, plain
family dinner, one's friend was always welcome to join, without a
printed card of invitation weeks beforehand, accompanied with a
whispered, "I hope to gracious they won't accept!" But that, alas! is
all in the past. Fashion has decreed an elaborate show of food, dishes,
and dress. Families pinch themselves a whole year for one grand display
of this kind, in the endeavor to compete with those whose means perhaps
may justify this barren style of entertaining, and where stupefaction
and a consequent lack of intelligent conversation are the only result,
save a long bill of expense. The consequence is, that people whose time
is valuable, and whose vitality is too precious to expend in this way,
refuse all such invitations. But the unfortunate part of it is, that
many of them do not revive the old simple hospitality; and when
expostulated with upon setting a better example, only reply, that the
prevailing taste for show has so vitiated everything, that there are few
who care to go where it is not the order of the entertainment.
Now we don't believe this. We have too often heard sensible, cultivated,
refined men and women deplore it, to credit this idea. But they are in
the maeelstrom; Mrs. So and So is a particular friend, and "she thinks
she must go through with this vulgar parade," or, "her husband likes
it;" and "they think every time that they accept, they never will do it
again, even for her," etc. Now it isn't that there are "few who don't
like it:" but it _is_ true that there are few who have the independence
to inaugurate a different state of things--to be _truly_ hospitable
without excessive upholstery, or gastronomy, or fine millinery.
To my mind, there is something better than sitting hours to see servants
dexterously place and take away dishes. One sees that at home in lesser
degree, and with less waste of time. One can converse with one's hostess
there, and she will not answer at random, because her mind is occupied
with processions of birds and sugar and wines. Little children's faces,
like flowers, are there, in place of a stiff bouquet of flowers and
silver pyramids obscuring one's _vis-a-vis_. _There_ is a home flavor
which puts the most modest guest at ease, and permits him or her to
bring forth something in the way of conversation that is not the
inflamed product of half a dozen kinds of wine--something to remember
and think of afterward with pleasure, instead of blushing next day to
associate with the speaker.
I say there are people, and the best kind of people too, who _much_
prefer this style of entertainment; but they should not rest there. They
should inaugurate something better in their place, instead only of
retiring in disgust under the shelter of their own roofs, and living
only for their own family circles. They owe a duty also to society, and
it should be paid by setting a sensible example of old-fashioned
simplicity in hospitality, which in time may reform this matter. People
who value their brains want them in decent condition for the next
morning, and the next morning after that, and cannot afford to waste
them in this manner. It is a matter of dollars and cents with them, I'd
have you to know, as well as a matter of taste; if, indeed, I may be
pardoned for putting forward an idea so practical. They wish to retire
early, for one thing; they prefer out-door air for another, when they
are off duty with the pen, instead that of a close, stifled room, and
the spectacle of feeding and drinking till sense and wit give out. This
is plain talking, but it won't hurt you, my friends, to have a little
occasionally.
_A SLEEPLESS NIGHT._
You know what it is to lie awake at night, I suppose, while every
lumpish human creature in the house is sleeping, regardless of the
perspiration standing in drops on your bewitched forehead; regardless of
your twitching fingers, and kicking toes, and glaring, distended eyes;
regardless of your increasing disgust at each miserable moment at the
monotonous tap, tap, tap, of solitary heels on the forsaken sidewalk;
regardless of your meditated vengeance on the morrow, should you
perchance survive to see it, upon the owner of that flapping-blind
across the way, which has been slamming fore-and-aft all night, and yet
never dropped, as you hoped it might, on somebody's or anybody's
head--you didn't care whose, so that you might have been delivered from
the nuisance.
In vain have you tried the humbugging recipe of saying the
Multiplication Table; in vain have you repeated poetry by the yard, or
counted one hundred; in vain have you conjugated verbs, or done any of
the foolish things recommended in such cases. _Two_ o'clock has just
struck, and no somniferous result has followed. Well--if you can't
sleep, you _won't_ sleep, that's all. You'll just get up, and strike a
light and read. You do it; but the fire is low, and cold shivers run up
and down your back-bone. You're hungry! yes--that must be it. You'll go
to the closet, and get a bit of cold chicken you wot of. Good heavens!
if those lumpish, snoring wretches haven't devoured it before going to
bed. You go look at the creature vindictively; _you_ know just who would
be capable of such a meanness. She has slept there these three hours, on
the strength of that bit of purloined chicken--_your_ chicken--while you
haven't closed an eyelash. She _will_ sleep comfortably till daylight;
and get up with a clear head, and refreshed limbs, to breakfast. Then
she will eat, like a great healthy animal, while food looks perfectly
nauseous to you, who will then be too exhausted to be hungry. You look
at the creature again, and think of Judith and Holofernes; and don't
wonder as you used at Judith. Indeed, she seems to you at that moment
rather an estimable person than otherwise; and as to pitying Holofernes,
why should _you_ pity anybody who could _sleep_?
You walk to the window. It is some comfort that the stars have to wink
all night as well as you. And there's a policeman, dragging up and down
in the cold, and clapping his hands across his breast to keep warm.
Good! you're glad of it. Four o'clock! Gracious! how you _will_ feel
to-morrow. If you only had a bottle of ale to make you stupid and
drowsy. And sure enough, now you think of it, there is just one left.
You seize it! Why--somebody has unwired the cork. Merciful man! it is
only _Ink_. Now, that's a little too much for a tired soul. Suppose you
should begin and run from the top of the stairs to the bottom, as fast
and as loud as you could, and wake up the whole family. And as the
vision of terrified night-gowns rises before your mental vision, you
commence grinning noiselessly like a maniac; then laughing hysterically;
then crying outright; and the next thing you know it is eight o'clock in
the morning, and coffee and rolls and beefsteak are awaiting your
advent.
And as to musquitoes. Ah! you too have suffered. You have lain, hour
after hour, listening to that never-ceasing war-song, till you were as
nervous as a hump-backed cat face to face with Jowler in a corner. You
have "turned over;" you have lain on your side, lain on your back, lain
on your face, spite of your prominent nose. You have doubled your fists
up under your arm-pits, and twisted your feet into hard knots under your
night-clothes, to no avail. You have then fallen back on your dignity
and the pigmy-ness of your tormentors, and folding your arms resolutely
over your chest, and looking fiercely up to the ceiling, exclaimed:
"Come one--come all--this bed shall fly
From its stout legs as soon as I!"
And yet, at that very moment, an "owdacious" bite has sent you, with a
smothered exclamation, into the middle of the floor, bewailing the day
you were born.
Next day you get a "musquito net." What a fool not to think of it
before. You festoon it round your bed. It looks pink-y and safe. You
explore it carefully that night before getting in, that no treacherous
crevice be left for the enemy. You put out the light, and oh! happiness
unutterable, listen to their howl of rage _outside_, which sounds like
the "music of the spheres," and fall asleep. Next morning you wake with
a splitting headache. Can it be the confined air of the net? _Horrible!_
You spend that day nursing your head and your wrath. Why were musquitoes
made? You find no satisfactory solution. What do they live on when not
devouring human beings? Why, in the same bed, is one bitten and the
other left? Why infest New York, and leave Brooklyn, whose inhabitants
deserve punishment for monopolizing Beecher? Why, if they _must_ bite,
not pitch in at once, instead of stopping to harrow you by giving a
concert.
That night you refuse to gasp under a net, for all the musquitoes that
ever swarmed. You even light your gas defiantly, open the windows, and
sneer at the black demons as they buzz in for their nocturnal raid. You
sit and read--occasionally boxing your own ears--till the small hours,
and then--to bed; only to dash frantically against the wall, throw your
pillows at the enemy, laugh hysterically, and rise at daylight a
blear-eyed, spotted, dismal wretch!
_WOMEN'S NEED OF RECREATION._
I read an article the other day on working-men's clubs, which set me
thinking. In it was set forth the necessity, after a man's hard day's
work, of an evening of rest, away from home, where he should find light
and warmth, and boon companionship, other than is to be found in the
corner grocery.
Now this is well, were there not a better way, as I believe. I am not
about to propose clubs for working-women, because our police reports
show every day that they have existed for a long time--thanks to "corner
groceries"--and that they are made of any implement that comes handy,
and result in bruised flesh and a broken head. This being the case, I
cannot see why the working-woman, as well as the working-man, does not
need, after a hard day's work, "light, warmth, and boon companionship of
an evening, away from home." Nay, all the more, since work, hard as her
husband may, it is often in the fresh, open air; or, if not, he has it
going and returning, and the boon companionship of his fellow-workmen
with it; while she, with "Ginx's last baby" to look after, in some
noisome tenement house, stands over the perpetual wash-tub or
cooking-stove, with two or three half-grown children hanging to her
draggled skirts, never exchanging her unwomanly rags, not even perhaps
to mass for a hurried prayer in the church which, God be thanked, is
free alike to poor and rich, and which suggests, in its own way, a
distant heaven for her.
Thinking over all this, I said why not Germanize this thing? Why not
have clubs for working-men and their families, with innocent amusement
minus the drink? Isn't it possible? Or if not, I wish it were, for the
poor harassed women's sake. I only see the millennial germ of it; but
this I know, that the wives need it more, far more, than their husbands,
the wide world over, and in every strata of society; by the pains of
motherhood, even in favorable conditions; by her intenser nervous
organization; by her indoor confinement and narrowing, petty
detail-worries; by the work that ends not at sundown as does his. By the
wakeful, unrestful nights, which every mother knows; _this_ is the
hardest, most wearing kind of work, no matter what may be said of the
husband, who has his sleep at least; who demands _that_ in every family
exigency as his right, and as the foundation of his ability to labor for
his family. Ah! what if the wife and mother, with less strength, feebler
organization, should make a stand for this? even when, in addition to
her other cares, she helps in some outside honest way to support the
family?
Does she not, too, need warmth, light, and boon companionship of an
evening? While it is true that
"All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy,"
remember it is just as true of Jack's wife as it is of Jack, and the
founders of "Working-men's Clubs" would do well to put this into their
foundation.
I wish that some of the pains taken to make human beings "_good_" were
expended in trying to make them _happy_. Particularly is this necessary
in regard to young people, though it is a fact that should be recognized
much more than it is, in the conditions of every human being. Let a
little sunshine into the outward circumstances surrounding them before
you begin to talk about a future state. There are children, and grown
people too, so cob-webbed over with care and misery, that all talk, how
"_good_" soever, is useless. _They want some brightness infused into
their lives._ It may be a wife--weary, body and soul; tired of plodding;
she needs some kind voice to say (alas! how little husbands think of
it!): "Come, leave all your cares just _now, this minute_, and if you
can't leave without I take your place, I'll take it, and it will be a
gain to both of us; for you have come just to that spot where you must
stop to rest, or fail entirely." It may be a little child under your
care, perhaps your own, perhaps another's; who is not really "_bad_,"
but only troublesome. It wants change; a ramble in the Park, or a ramble
somewhere; something to see and talk about, and _happify_ it; some new
objects to occupy its mind and thoughts; and the more intelligent the
child is, the more necessary this becomes. Many a child is punished
because its active mind, having no food, becomes a torment to itself and
others. _Give it food!_ Take it up to the Park and show it the animals
there. Tell it of their habits, and the way they live in the countries
from which they were taken. This is a _cheap_ pleasure, it is true, and
may, though it ought not to be, a very commonplace one to you; but you
have no idea how it freshens the mind and body of the little one.
_Sometimes I almost think that happiness is goodness._ Certainly, till
the hard and difficult lesson of life is thoroughly learned, it is wise
to lend a helping hand to those who are stumbling after, lest they fall
by the way to rise no more.
Perhaps you have some good servants in your house whose underground,
plodding life needs relief, who have grown sharp and querulous on
account of it; whose lot needs brightening a bit. Send them or take them
to some place of amusement; give them a holiday, or half a holiday if
you can do no better. You have no idea how this break in their wearisome
round will lighten toil for many a day; and more because _you thought of
it_, perhaps, than from the pleasure the amusement afforded.
Life presses heavily on most of us in one shape or another. They are not
always the greatest sufferers, whose barrel of meal and cruse of oil
fail. Therefore, when I open a church door, and the first sentence I
hear is about "An _Awful_ God," I sometimes want to invite the speaker
to rest himself a bit, and let me try my hand at it. I believe that most
people want soothing, and comforting, and encouraging, more than
denouncing or frightening, even though the latter be done with good
intentions. I know most _women_ have been "punished" enough during the
week, without being threatened with it in another world on Sundays. Take
that poor soul with a drunken husband, who tries to support him and
herself, and no end of children, by washing, and whose husband comes
home only to demand her money, and smash up her wash-tub and table and
chairs for his amusement. Would you talk to that woman about an "_awful
God_," when she stole away to church for a crumb of comfort on Sunday?
You had much better buy her a new wash-tub, and put her brute of a
husband where--but it won't do to say all one thinks, even out of
"meetin'."
_THE GOOD OLD HYMNS._