this bird-singing morning, you wouldn't poke me up to write. A soft mist
half veils the ocean, so turbulent last night, and butterflies in pairs
are wooing, now in the vines about my window, then darting out into the
bright meadows for a longer flight. I am fascinated with the graceful
circles they make. I am fascinated with that old cow, too indolent even
to whisk the flies off her back, standing as she has stood for an hour
under that big tree. I love to see the pretty maidens, with their fresh
young faces and saucy little hats, driving their cunning ponies past my
window. Now and then comes borne to my ear by this soft west wind a
child's silvery laugh, as musical as the ripple of a brook. I am away,
thank Heaven, from "riots" and murder, save in the chicken line; and I
hope nobody will debate "female suffrage" with me to-day, or ask my
opinion on anything, save the heavenliness of this beautiful Newport,
where the daily delightful surprises of Nature, by land and ocean, keep
me in a constant state of beatitude. Now and then I get wroth with the
over-dressed dames, who evidently have no eyes for it, or appreciation
of it, save to strike attitudes on the soft green lawn, or lounge
elegantly in the fashionable drive, with poodle and baby and husband and
carriage robe, arranged like a tableau to be gazed at; never driving
where it is dusty, for fear of the sacred dry-goods, though Nature woo
ever so sweetly. Talk of the "laboring classes"! The amount of "labor"
these women will take upon themselves in the languid summer days is past
my computation. I encountered one in a shop here the other day, trailing
after her, at eleven in the morning, a wonderful length of silk robe,
and wringing her tightly kidded fingers because a particular kind of
ribbon was not to be had, and with a gesture of despair exclaiming, "I
must telegraph instantly to New York for it." Poor thing! I say _poor_
advisedly. I had rather be the barefooted, blithe little girl who drives
the cows home, if I had to make my choice. What is woman without a shop?
Storekeepers here act on this principle, and spread their lures
accordingly. Not that ladies go to buy always, but it is a sort of
Exchange, where their toilets can be displayed, as well as a neat ankle,
while alighting from a gay carriage at the door.
I think there are more _Stars_ in Newport than in any other place. There
was a wonderful profusion out last evening. Not literary stars--though
Newport is full of them too, if the crazy kind of abstracted, _author_
look is any indication. Flowing hair upon the coat collar, and a scarlet
bit of necktie, and general sauciness of dress and demeanor, are
generally indicative of an artist. _I_ find no fault. Give us
individuality, or give us death. This world would be a sorry place
without it. There are worse people than "queer people" about. The
queerest I ever met, was a woman who prided herself on her surpassing
ugliness, and dressed up to the character, selecting always those colors
which intensified it. I am happy to state that her husband was a match
for her in this respect. But so witty was she, that no young beauty at
the hotel had so many followers and admirers. I really think she enjoyed
her own hideousness. After hearing her witticisms, you would go your way
and remember it no more, or if so, only to admire the wisdom of her
conquest over it.
Yes, I am idle here. But that reminds me--is anything more diverting
than the advice so lavishly tendered to women as to the "best mode of
passing their time in the country, during the summer months"?
One writer recommends that "they should take up the study of a new
language." That sounds well; but suppose a lady to have been a teacher
all the rest of the year? This would scarcely be an exhilarating,
restful occupation. Another wonders that "some one lady does not read
aloud to a group of lady friends." That sounds well too; but some
ladies like history, others biography; many, indiscriminate novels. Then
how few, even among so-called "educated" ladies, read well, or, reading
well, have power to read aloud for any length of time; or, these points
being favorable, can bring the other women to a focus as to the hour
agreed upon, or keep them at it, when they get them there, without
frequent yawning, unless, indeed, a gentleman be included in the party!
Some, again, propose "botany" to them; and there are ladies who,
preferring health to dry-goods, carry out this advice successfully. As
to the study of botany, for one, I would rather call fox-glove
fox-glove, than to call it _fox a borondibus ora gloribundus_! but then
that is a matter of taste and breath. I should be much more likely also
to look at its shape and coloring, than to search the encyclopaedia for
its horticultural baptism. But then, as an eminent biographer is apt to
remark to me fifty times a day, "That's a peculiarity of _yours_,
Fanny." Who said it wasn't? Haven't I a right to my peculiarities, as
has a tree to its shape and foliage, and blossoms and fruit? And while
we are in the leafy line, why isn't a Fern as good as any other kind of
grass? I've seen pretty tall ferns in my day, especially up the Shaker
road, a little out of Stockbridge, Mass., where, I have no doubt, they
are waving in plumy luxuriance at this very minute.
This is a digression; but you would digress too, had you ever ridden
that road of a bright summer day.
To return to my subject. Wholesale giving of advice, on this or any
other point, is like administering medicine; none but quacks give it
without considering constitutional tendencies, as well as the age and
daily habits of the patient. Unfortunately, with advice-givers these
points are generally ignored: one and the same pill being supposed
remedial for all times, seasons, and complaints, especially where women
are concerned, who really need more classifying than any big lump of men
who were ever thrown together--such infinite variety and delicate
shading is there in their mental, moral, and physical make-up. But of
this, man is either wilfully or indifferently ignorant, since he never
mentions the subject without committing egregious blunders.
I never hear a man remark, "_you women!_" that I don't mentally send him
"_to the foot of the class_."
"_You_ women!" Why, a man may live with even _one_ woman all his life,
and yet really know no more about her, than I do why men were born at
all. I heard a husband once deplore that, being ignorant of the French
language, he could not know the meaning of a sentence in the book he was
reading.
"Give it to me," replied his wife, immediately translating it. "Why,"
exclaimed he, in astonishment, "I never knew you understood French!" And
yet he had lived with her fifteen years. It is just so with other and
still more important knowledge of a wife. Now I ask you, Mr. BONNER,
when you choose a horse, if you do not first find out what that horse
can do, especially how fast he can trot without damage?--which, by the
way, is the last question a married man thinks of asking about his wife.
Well, isn't a wife quite as important an animal as a horse? I would like
to see _Dexter_ put to dragging stones on the highway, or _Pocahontas_
to rotary sawing of wood at a railway station!
And yet thousands of men all over the country make stupider blunders
than these about their wives, every day in the year, partly, as I say,
through ignorance, which of course is culpable, and partly through
indifference.
Many women, if they were half as judiciously managed, as to their
physical needs and possible capabilities, as are horses, would be worth
much more to their owners; and I am sure I have seen men to whom this
argument would be the only one they would think worth listening to.
Also, in all fairness, I should add, that I have seen others who
remembered it first and always.
_SOME CITY SIGHTS._
More than in any other locality does a funeral passing through Broadway
seem impressive to me. There, while life is at the flood, and thousands
pass and repass you whose faces you do not recognize, save by the
universal stamp of eagerness and bustle and hurry, as if the goal in the
distance which they aim at was for eternity and not for fleeting time;
there, where bright eyes shine brightest, and silken locks and silken
dresses shimmer fairest in the dancing sunbeams; there, where all
nations, all interests are represented, and the panorama never halts,
day or night, but only substitutes one set of moving figures for
another; there, indeed, does Death _seem_ Death when it glides
stealthily in among the busy, surging crowd.
Once, walking there on a bright sunny day, I met four pall-bearers,
slowly bearing a coffin covered with black, with the clergyman in his
gown and bands, and the mourners following. Instinctively the gay crowd
parted upon the sidewalk, the men standing with uncovered heads; the
laugh died upon the lips of the young girl; the little children looked
on, wondering and awe-struck. Even she over whose own grave no loving
tear might ever fall, bowed her defiant head, and for one brief moment
faced that terrible thought. And so the slow procession passed, though
no one knew who slept so quietly amid all that din and noise; but
knowing only that some heart, some home was desolate. Then the eager
crowd closed in again, and new faces passed smilingly, new forms stepped
gayly, smart equipages dashed by, and the jest and the laugh fell again
upon my ear as before, while I seemed to move as one in a dream.
Once again, but in the country, fragrant with blossoms, and sweet with
the song of birds and the murmured whisper of leaves, just such a sombre
procession crossed the green fields, under the blue sky, with its quiet
burden. It is long years since I witnessed both; but they stand out in
my memory, each as distinctly as if it were but yesterday. I don't know
which was the more impressive. I only know that when I looked upon the
latter, I said to myself, when life's fret is over, just so would _I_ be
carried to my last rest.
One of the prettiest sights to be seen in the early morning is that of
the little girls going to school. I like them best of a rainy day,
because then their sweet little faces beam from out little close hoods,
drawn about their red cheeks; and their little fat calves have such a
tussle with the wind as they try to get round gusty corners; so that
what with battling with their sandwich-boxes, and what with their
geographies, their gleaming white teeth make a very lovely show between
their rosy lips. What policeman, with the heart of a father, but would
rather help a flock of these pretty birds across the street than a bevy
of paniered ladies who shrink from their touch, all the while they are
ready to scream with fright if they are _not_ taken by the arm.
Commend me to the little girls of six, eight, and twelve, who, not yet
having come to their wickedness, squeal out with delicious frankness,
"Mr. Policeman! Mr. Policeman! please come carry me over the street."
And so they swarm round him like a cloud of bees till they are all
safely landed on the other side.
Bless their little innocent faces! It is as good as a chapter of the
Bible to any policeman, to see such sweet white lilies blossoming amid
the physical and moral filth which they meet in their rounds in the New
York streets.
As it is rather an exception to find a little school-_boy_ who is not
either a little saintly prig or a little well-dressed ruffian and bully,
I have not contemplated their goings and comings with the same
satisfaction as I do that of their little sisters; though _why_ a little
_boy_ shouldn't be as well-mannered as a little girl I have always been
at a loss to know.
One is occasionally an eye-witness to scenes in New York which
momentarily paralyze one's faith in humanity, I had almost said in God.
One lovely afternoon of last week I determined to try the drive by the
"new Hudson River road to Fort Lee," which, by the way, I rapturously
commend, _en passant_, to every New Yorker, and stranger within our
gates who is fond of beautiful scenery. On the way we alighted, and
entered one of the numerous rural gardens, to enjoy from thence a fine
view of the river. Immediately our attention was arrested by loud
voices; among which we distinguished that of a woman, now in loud, angry
tones, then soft and pleading, as if deprecating personal violence. "Pay
up, then," vociferated a coarse, masculine voice, as a stout man
appeared, grasping a young girl of eighteen or twenty by the wrist,
dressed in a soiled tawdry bonnet and silk gown, and forcibly ejected
her from the piazza of a refreshment room into the garden. She was a
woman and young, and without understanding her offence, his brutality
roused me; but my blood froze in my veins, when gathering up her form to
its full height, raising her small hand in the air, and flashing her
dark eyes, she cursed him as only a woman _can_ curse who is lost for
this world and the next. And men stood by and heard it, who had mothers
and sisters, and laughed, and jeered, and maddened her already excited
blood, _for sport_, to fiercer words of unwomanly strife! A young man of
her own age, who appeared to have accompanied her there, and seemed
terrified at the turn of affairs, stepped to her side; but she sprang
upon him like a panther, then bounded past him, then seized a garden
stool, and hurling it at his head with blistering curses, ran through
the garden to the river. For the first time I found voice to say--Great
God--she will drown herself! and before the words were out of my
mouth--a leap--a splash--and she had disappeared. A boat was near, into
which two men jumped, and succeeded with her companion in catching hold
of her dress, after she had twice sunk. Pale, gasping, in her tawdry,
dripping finery, she was dragged on shore. One of the men turning to her
companion said, "another twenty-five cents due for fishing her out."
Then two or three men--I suppose they _called_ themselves men--took her
under the arm-pits with her face downward, and two went behind and
seized her by the heels, her drapery falling back from her knees, while
other men of the same stamp walked behind gazing at her exposed limbs.
Then they laid her upon a garden bench with her white face upturned to
the fair sky, and stood over the gasping, sobbing creature, with less
feeling than they would gaze upon a maimed horse or dog; her dress, torn
from her neck, revealing to their beastly gaze youth and beauty which
God never made for this desecration.
Oh! could I by a word have summoned the advocates of _Free Love_ to that
spot--then and there would I have given them my dumb, eloquent answer to
their nauseous, hell-begotten doctrines. I would have summoned thither
those women who have lately stood up in public as champions of their
sex's "rights" (Heaven defend us from their polluted, polluting
tongues), and bade them look upon what they _must_ know to be the
inevitable end of promiscuous "affinity." I would have summoned there
those men of position in the community, who sit in their carpeted,
well-stocked library, and in full view of their household gods--within
sound of the innocent prattle of their own children--by their own _yet_
undesecrated hearthstones--write fine-spun theories upon Free-Love,
claiming for its brazen female advocates the title of "modest" women! I
would have summoned thither the editors of those respectable daily
journals, who publish in their columns the sophistical effusions of such
men, and bade them, one and all, look upon that young, gasping girl, and
the coarse men who stood by and jeered at her.
As I turned soul-sick away, I saw a woman standing at a little distance
with an infant in her arms, her face white with fear. As she gave a last
glance at the girl she pressed her babe convulsively to her breast and
covered its innocent face with kisses. The action was suggestive. Alas,
just so must that lost young girl's mother _once_ have kissed _her!_
* * * * *
HOW EASY TO SAY "BE CHEERFUL"!--"Be cheerful," says the man who is easy
in his circumstances, missing no loved face at the table, nor by the
hearth. But does he ever consider how hard it may be to be "cheerful"
when the heart aches, and the cupboard is empty, and there are little
fresh graves in the churchyard, and friends are few or indifferent, and
even God, for the time being, seems to have forgotten us, so desolate is
our lot? How difficult for one man to understand another, in such
different circumstances! How easy to _say_, "Be cheerful!" How hard he
would find it to practise it, were _he_ stripped of all life's
brightness!
_DOG-DAYS IN THE MOUNTAINS._
To whomsoever human nature is a pleasant study, I would recommend as an
inviting field a summer boarding-place. Wood, rocks, and lakes are
nothing beside human nature. We can form some sort of an idea on
geological, aquarian, and other principles, why _they_ exist. We quite
indorse the Scriptural statement at creation that they are all "very
good." But I am puzzled to know why a woman who can do nothing but
simper and fold her hands should be married and have children without
number, and another beneath whose large motherly heart no little one
ever has or ever will nestle, should go mourning all her days on account
of it. Why a man whose every impulse and feeling and purpose are
unswervingly in the right direction should have an empty pocket; and a
mean, narrow-minded, ignorant, miserable apology for a man, have his
tight fist on a full one. Why consumptives and scrofulous people should
insist on industriously increasing the census, and men and women made
physically on the right principles pertinaciously cling to celibacy. Why
the serving-maid should have more womanliness, intelligence, and
goodness, than the mistress whose irate voice makes her tremble. Why
the clergyman should pay such undeviating attention to the _soul_ of his
child that he cannot spare time to see that his body at twelve years of
age is "standing from under." Why a man marries a woman merely for her
beauty, and is disgusted in two weeks that she has not turned out an
intellectual companion. Why a good man, but _not_ an _intellectual_ one,
marries a "strong-minded woman," and instantly sets about teaching her
that obedience and silence are the first duties of wives. Why young men
should decline marriage on the score that "they cannot afford it," when
they spend more than would support a family, on their vices. Why a man
with the proportions of Hercules should have a voice like a squeaking
door-hinge, and a lovely girl deafen you every time she opens her
rosebud mouth. In short, why, when men and women are such natural
curiosities--singly or in groups, married or celibate--should showmen,
at such cost of outlay, stock their premises with anacondas and
giraffes, when their fellow-critters "would be so rich" an exhibition?
But think as long and as industriously as I may on these vexed
questions, no solution comes. I turn them over to some philosopher who
will unravel the skein while I take an evening sail upon the lake. In
fact, when I get _there_, I don't care what becomes of my kind so that
my sunset sail is not denied me. Nor is this as selfish as it seems,
since I should not be safe company for them in the dog-days without this
soothing process. Keep close to the shore now, oh, boatman: and above
all, keep silence. Pickerel are good in their way, but bony; and I would
fain listen dreamily to the plashing oar, and the twit-twit of the
little birds as they seek their nests in the trees, while my eye rests
on the changing clouds and their reflections in the smooth mirror below.
Vex me not with talk of "dead swells" and "whitecaps." I would sail here
till midnight in silence, and thence straight into the other world,
before a ripple of earthly fret came over my spirit.
But it is not to be. One of our party "wants to pick pond-lilies," slimy
and smell-less; _not_ like the dear old pond-lilies in Massachusetts,
though mockingly like in form and color. Another is yelling at an echo,
which answers back as persistently as if it were of the feminine gender;
but, unlike the feminine gender, always _agrees_ colloquially. Another
pokes me up from my reverie to know "why I am so stupid?" And now when
the shadows are loveliest and the moon beginning to silver the lake, the
universal voice is "to land." Let them go. Good riddance! Two of us stay
with the boatman. Now flash up the Northern lights! Now appears the
evening star, crowning yonder hill, and twinkling defiantly in the very
face of the new moon. Plucky star! That's right! to take for your motto
that of America--_Room and freedom for all_.
"What will we _ever_ do when we get back to New York?" dolefully asked
little Bright Eyes of me, the other day, as she came in with her apron
full of mosses and flowers. That's just it. That's what _I_ want to
know. No cool lake awaits me there at eventide, on whose broad expanse
one can float into serenity. But instead, gas-lighted, unventilated
public assemblies, where vexed questions are agitated: and in place of
bird-singing, inodorous streets, full of children whose "childhood" is a
myth. And for the lovely fresh morning, with its aromatic odors, the
whoop of milkmen, the rush of street cars, and the old maeelstrom whirl
of business, folly, and sin. My very soul sickens to think of it. I
_won't_ think of it. I'll lay off and dream.
Every summer vacation I ask myself, why people who have no relish for
country life doom themselves to yawn through six or eight weeks of it?
People who never move from a certain chair on the piazza save to migrate
to their beds, or to the dining-table; who have neither eyes to see
earth's glory, nor heart to be grateful for it, or ears open to its
myriad musical voices--living discords amid all its harmony. If
invalids, I can understand and pity their misfortune; but your fat,
well-to-do, buxom men and women, who have no earthly impediment to their
locomotion, and yet who live weeks in the vicinity of grand natural
objects, and are just as dead to them as the ox in the meadow--why do
they travel thousands of dusty miles to get to them? People who look
pityingly at you, as you return exhilarated from your delicious rambles,
as if to say, "_Poor lunatics!_" One turns from them to the children, to
whom every daisy and blade of grass is a bright heaven, and counts sadly
over their lost years. Also, I would like to ask, is there anything in
the climate of Vermont which turns out such huge trees, mountains, and
_men_, that dwarfs nearly all its womankind? Again: Do preserves and
pills, flapjacks and ipecac, plum-cake and castor-oil, jelly and jalap
have a natural affinity, that they are so often found in each other's
company? In other words: Why do the country-women of New England waste
their time in concocting the indigestible richness which everybody is
better without, and which renders these drugs necessary? Half the time
thus spent, if devoted to the manufactory of that rare commodity--sweet,
wholesome bread--or to the best way of cooking meat so as to preserve
its juices, would shut up the drug-shops, prolong their own lives and
good looks, and make them a credit to the glorious country in which they
are born. _Give us good bread_, my dear country-women. What else soever
you pass over, _don't slight the bread_. It is the crying sin of the
country, that if there are cakes and pies in plenty, the bread may be
sour, or filled with saleratus, or so stale that a dog would not swallow
it, or so "slack-baked" that one might as well eat dough. Now the
digestion of an ostrich would fail on such fare as this. A healthy
stomach revolts at it, and refuses to be put off with sweets and
preserves. It is a crime to set such bread before _little children_,
even if adult digestion were equal to it, which it is not. A great
reform is needed here, and if I can help it on, I care not who boxes my
ears for the attempt. To see human beings making and swallowing such
messes, and then sending physic after it, like a detective, to clear it
from the system, is a proceeding which should give them all a free pass
to the Lunatic Asylum. There--now I feel better! While I am catechising,
do you suppose there was ever an invalid who didn't button-hole
everybody, to recapitulate his or her symptoms, exhibit their tongues,
and discuss patent medicines? It gets monotonous after a while,
particularly when you know that they are bound personally to experiment
on every pill, powder, and plaster that any heartless quack may invent
to make a living. If half of them were to stop taking physic entirely,
live on wholesome food, take plenty of fresh air and sleep, they would
never know pain or ache. Don't the doctors know this, and laugh in their
sleeves at it? And _does a doctor ever give drugs to his own family_? I
think I have asked questions enough for the present, so we will consider
the meeting adjourned.
_SPRING IN THE CITY._