CHAPTER XXII

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“Mine forever,” whispered Percy, as he drew Fanny’s hand within his arm, on their wedding morning, and led her to the carriage.

Not a word was spoken on the way; even the rattling Kate vailed her merry eyes under their soft lashes, and her woman’s heart, true to itself, sent up a prayer for the orphan’s happy future. And Percy; he was to be all to Fanny--father, brother, husband; there were none to divide with him the treasure he so jealously coveted.

Happy Percy! The lightning bolt, indeed, had fallen; riving the stately tree, dissevering its branches, but again it is covered with verdure and blossoms, for lo--the cloud has rolled away, the rainbow arches the blue sky, and hopes, like flowers, sweeter and fresher for nature’s tears, are springing thick in his pathway.

All this and more, passed through Percy’s mind as he watched the shadows come and go on Fanny’s changeful cheek.

“Get out of the way,” thundered the coachman, to a man who, with slouched hat, and Lucifer-ish frown, stood before the carriage. “Get out of the way, I say;” and he cracked his whip over his shoulders. “Staring into the carriage window that way, at a young ’oman as is going to be married. Get out of the way!”

“Go to ----,” muttered the man. “Get out of the way! ha--that’s good--it will be a long time before _I_ get out of the way, I can promise you. But, drive on--drive on--I’ll overtake you--and ride over you all, too, rough-shod, hang me, if I don’t. ‘The horns of the altar,’ as the ministers call it, will prove the horn of a dilemma to you, Mr. Percy Lee, or there was no strength in the horn I swallowed this morning.”

* * * * *

The words were said which never may be unsaid; the twain were one--joy to share together--sorrow to bear together--smooth or rough the path, life’s journey to travel together. A few words from holy lips--a short transit of the dial’s fingers--a blush--perchance a tear--a low response--and heaven or hell, even in this world, was to be their portion.

The bridal party turn from the altar. Through the stained windows--under the grand arches--past the fluted pillars, the dim light slants lovingly upon the soft ripples of the young bride’s hair--upon the fleecy folds of her gossamer vail--upon the sheen of her bridal robe; the little satin shoe peeps in and out from under the lustrous folds, whose every rustle is music to Percy’s ear.

Hark! Fanny’s lip loses its rose--as she clings, tremblingly, to Percy’s arm. A scuffle--curses--shouting--the report of a pistol--then a heavy fall--then a low groan!

“Is he _quite_ dead? Does his pulse beat?”

“Not a flutter,” said the policeman, laying the man’s head back upon the church steps.

“How did it happen?”

“Well, you see, he was intoxicated like, and ’sisted upon coming in here, to see the wedding, though I told him it was a private ’un. Then he muttered something about jail-birds and the like ’o that--intending to insinivate something ag’in me, I s’pose. Well, I took him by the shoulder to carry him to the station-house, and in the scuffle, a loaded pistol he had about him went off; and that’s the end of him. His name is in his hat, there. ‘John Scraggs.’ A ruffianly-looking dog he is, too; the world is none the worse, I fancy, for _his_ being out of it.”

* * * * *

As at the birth, so at the bridal, Life and Death passed each other on the threshold; new-born love to its full fruition; the still corpse to its long home.

There are homes in which Love folds his wings contented _forever_ to stay. Such a home had Fanny and Percy.

“The love born of sorrow, like sorrow is true.”

MORAL MOLASSES;

OR, TOO SWEET BY HALF.

The most thorough emetic I know of, is in the shape of “Guide to Young Wives,” and kindred books; as if one rule could, by any possibility, apply to all persons; as if every man living did not require different management (bless me, I did not intend to use that torpedo word, but it is out now); as if, when things go wrong, a wife had only to fly up stairs, read a chapter in the “Young Wife’s Guide,” supposed to be suited to her complaint, and then go down stairs and apply the worthless plaster to the matrimonial sore. Pshaw! as well might a doctor send a peck of pills into a hospital, to be distributed by the hands of the nurse, to any and every male patient brought there, without regard to complaints or constitutional tendencies. I have no patience with such matrimonial nostrums.

“Always meet your husband with a smile.” That is one of them. Suppose we put the boot on the other foot, and require the men to come grinning home? no matter how many of their notes may have been protested; no matter how, like Beelzebub, their business partner may have tormented them; no matter how badly elections go--when they do it, may I be there to see! Nor should they. Passing over the everlasting monotony of that everlasting “Guide Book” smile, let us consider, brethren (sisters not admitted), what matrimony was intended for. As I look at it, as much to share each other’s sorrows, as to share each other’s joys; neither of the twain to shoulder wholly the one or the other. Those of you, brethren, who agree with me in this lucid view of the subject, please to signify it by rising.

’Tis a vote.

Well then, do people in moments of perplexity generally grin? Is it not asking too much of female, and a confounded sight too much of male nature, to do it when a man’s store burns down, and there is no insurance? or when a misguided and infatuated baby stuffs beans up its nose, while its mamma is putting new cuffs on her husband’s coat, hearing Katy say her lesson, and telling the cook about dinner? And when this sorely afflicted couple meet, would it not be best to make a clean breast of their troubles, sympathize together over them, have a nice matrimonial cry on each other’s shoulders, and wind up with a first-class kiss?

’Tis a vote.

Well then--to the mischief with your grinning over a volcano;--erupt, and have done with it! so shall you love each other more for your very sorrows; so shall you avoid hypocrisy and kindred bedevilments, and pull evenly in the matrimonial harness. I speak as unto _wise_ men.

Lastly, brethren, what I particularly admire, is the indirect compliment to your sex, which this absurd rule I have quoted implies; the devotion, magnanimity, fortitude, and courage, it gives _you_ fair-weather sailors credit for! But what is the use of talking about it? These guide books are mainly written by sentimental old maids; who, had they ever been within kissing distance of a beard, would not so abominably have wasted pen, ink, and paper; or, by some old bachelor, tip-toeing on the outskirts of the promised land, without a single clear idea of its resources and requirements, or courage enough to settle there if he had.

A WORD TO SHOP-KEEPERS.

In one respect--nay, in more, if so please you--I am unfeminine. I detest shopping. I feel any thing but affection for Eve every time I am forced to do it. But we must be clean and whole, even in this dirt-begrimed, lawless city; where ash-barrels and ash-boxes, with spikes of protruding nails for the unwary, stand on every sidewalk, waiting the bidding of balmy zephyrs to sift their dusky contents on our luckless clothes. All the better for shop-keepers; indeed, I am not at all sure, that they and the street-cleaning gentry do not, as doctors and druggists are said to do, play into each other’s hands!

Apart from my natural and never-to-be-uprooted dislike to the little feminine recreation of shopping, is the pain I experience whenever I am forced to take part in it, at the snubbing system practiced by too many shop-keepers toward those whose necessities demand a frugal outlay. Any frivolous female fool, be she showily dressed, may turn a whole storefull of goods topsy-turvy at her capricious will, although she may end in taking nothing away but her own idiotic presence; while a poor, industrious woman, with the hardly-earned dollar in her calico pocket, may not presume to deliberate, or to differ from the clerk as to its most frugal investment. My blood often boils as I stand side by side with such a one. I, by virtue of better apparel, receiving respectful treatment; she--crimsoning with shame, like some guilty thing, at the rude reply.

Now, gentlemen, imagine yourselves in this woman’s place. _I_ have no need to do so, because I have stood there. Imagine her, with her fatherless, hungry children by her side, plying the needle late into the night, for the pitiful sum of seventy-five cents a week, as I once did. Imagine her, with this discouraging price of her eye-sight and strength, creeping forth with her little child by the hand, peeping cautiously through the glass windows of stores, to decide unobtrusively upon fabrics and labeled prices, or vainly trying to read human feeling enough in their owners’ faces to insure her from contemptuous insult at the smallness and cheapness of her contemplated purchase. At length, with many misgivings, she glides in amid rustling silks and laces, that drape hearts which God made womanly and tender like her own, but which Fashion and Mammon have crushed to ashes in their vice-like clasp; hearts which never knew a sorrow greater than a misfitting dress, or a badly-matched ribbon, and whose owners’ lips curl as the new-comer holds thoughtfully between her thin fingers the despised fabric, carelessly tossed at her by the impatient clerk.

Oh, how can you speak harshly to such a one? how can you drive the blood from her lip, and bring the tear to her eye? how can you look sneeringly at the little sum she places in your hand, so hardly, _virtuously_, _bravely_ earned? She has seen you!--see her, as she turns away, clasping so tightly that little hand in hers, that the pained child would tearfully ask the reason, were it not prematurely sorrow-trained.

Oh, _you_ have never (reversing the order of nature) leaned with a breaking heart, upon a little child, for the comfort and sympathy that you found nowhere else in the wide world beside. _You_ never wound your arms about her in the silent night, drenching brow, cheek and lip with your tears, as you prayed God, in your wild despair, dearly as you loved her, to take her to himself; for, living, she, too, must drink of the cup that might not pass away from your sorrow-steeped lips.

It is because I have felt all this that I venture to bespeak your more courteous treatment for these unfortunates who can only weep for themselves.

A MUCH-NEEDED KIND OF MINISTER’S WIFE;

OR, A HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE FOR SOME PARISH.

I once had a narrow escape from being a minster’s wife. No wonder you laugh. Imagine a vestry-meeting called to decide upon the width of _my_ bonnet-strings, or the proper altitude of the bow on that bonnet’s side. Imagine my being called to an account for asking Mrs. A. to tea, without including the rest of the alphabet. Imagine my parishioners expecting me to attend a meeting of the Dorcas Society in the morning, the Tract Society in the afternoon, and the Foreign Mission Society in the evening, five days in the week--and make parish calls on the sixth--besides keeping the buttons on my husband’s shirts, and taking care of my “nine children, and one at the breast.” Imagine a self-constituted committee of female Paul Prys running their arms up to the elbows in my pickle-jar--rummaging my cupboards--cross-questioning my maid-of-all-work, and catechizing my grocer as to the price I paid for tea. Imagine my ministerial progeny prohibited chess and checkers by the united voice of the parish. Christopher!

Still, the world lost a great deal by my non-acceptance of that “call.” What would I have done? I would not, on Saturday afternoon (that holiday which should never, on any pretext, be wrested from our over-schooled, over-taught, children), have put the finishing touch to the crook in their poor little spines, by drumming them all into a Juvenile Sewing Society, to stitch pinafores for the Kankaroo heathen. What would I have done? I would have ate, drunk, slept, and laughed, like any other decent man’s wife. I would have educated my children as do other men’s wives, to suit myself, which would have been to turn them out to grass till they were seven years old, before which time no child, in my opinion, should ever see the inside of a school-room; and after that, given them study in homœopathic, and exercise in allopathic quantities. I would have taken the liberty, as do other men’s wives, when family duties demanded it, to send word to morning callers that I “was engaged.” I should have taken a walk on Sunday, if my health required it, without asking leave of the deacons of my parish. I would have gone into my husband’s study, every Saturday night, and crossed out every line in his forthcoming sermon, _after “sixthly.”_ I would have encouraged a glorious beard on my husband’s sacerdotal chin, not under the cowardly plea of a preventive to a possible bronchitis, but because a minister’s wife has as much right to a good-looking husband as a lay-woman. I would have invited all the children in my parish to drink tea with me once a week, to play hunt the slipper, and make molasses candy; and I would have made them each a rag-baby to look at, while their well-meaning, but infatuated Sunday-school teachers, were bothering their brains with the doctrine of election. That’s what _I_ would have done.

PARENT AND CHILD;

OR, WHICH SHALL RULE.

“Give me two cents, I say, or I’ll kick you!”

I turned to look at the threatener. It was a little fellow about as tall as my sun-shade, stamping defiance at a fine, matronly-looking woman, who must have been his mother, so like were her large black eyes to the gleaming orbs of the boy. “Give me two cents, I say, or I’ll kick you,” he repeated, tugging fiercely at her silk dress to find the pocket, while every feature in his handsome face was distorted with passion. Surely she will not do it, said I to myself, anxiously awaiting the issue, as I apparently examined some ribbons in a shop-window; surely she will not be so mad, so foolish, so untrue to herself, so untrue to her child, so belie the beautiful picture of healthy maternity, so God-impressed in that finely-developed form and animated face. Oh, if I might speak to her, and beg her not to do it, thought I, as she put her hand in her pocket, and the fierce look died away on the boy’s face, and was succeeded by one of triumph; if I might tell her that she is fostering the noisome weeds that will surely choke the flowers--sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind.

“But the boy is so passionate; it is less trouble to grant his request than to deny him.” Granting this were so; who gave you a right to weigh your own ease in the balance with your child’s soul? Who gave you a right to educate him for a convict’s cell, or the gallows? But, thoughtless, weakly indulgent, cruel-kind mother, it is not easier, as you selfishly, short-sightedly reason, to grant his request than to deny it; not easier for him--not easier for you. The appetite for rule grows by what it feeds on. Is he less domineering now than he was yesterday? Will he be less so to-morrow than he is to-day? Certainly not.

“But I have not time to contest every inch of ground with him.” Take time then--make time; neglect every thing else, but neglect not that. With every child comes this turning point: _Which shall be the victor--my mother or I?_ and it must be met. She is no true mother who dodges or evades it. True--there will be a fierce struggle at first; but be firm as a rock; recede not one inch; there may be two, three, or even more, but the battle once won, as won it shall be if you are a faithful mother, it is won for this world--ay, perhaps for another.

“But I am not at liberty to control him thus; when parents do not pull together in the harness, the reins of government will slacken; when I would restrain and correct him, his father interferes; children are quick-witted, and my boy sees his advantage. What can I do, unsustained and single-handed?” True--true--God help the child then. Better for him had he never been born; better for you both, for so surely as the beard grows upon that little chin, so surely shall he bring your gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; and so surely shall he curse you for your very indulgence, before he is placed in the dishonored one your parental hands are digging for him.

These things need not be--ought not to be. Oh! if parents had but a firm hand to govern, and yet a ready ear for childish sympathy; if they would agree--whatever they might say in private--never to differ in presence of their children, as to their government; if the dissension-breeding “Joseph’s coat” were banished from every hearthstone; if there were less weak indulgence and less asceticism; if the bow were neither entirely relaxed, nor strained so tightly that it broke; if there were less out-door dissipation, and more home-pleasures; if parents would not forget that they were once children, nor, on the other hand, forget that their children will be one day parents; if there were less form of godliness, and more godliness (for children are Argus-eyed; it is not what you preach, but what you practice), we should then have no beardless skeptics, no dissolute sons, no runaway marriages, no icy barriers between those rocked in the same cradle--nursed at the same breast.

THE LAST BACHELOR HOURS OF TOM PAX.

To-morrow, at eleven, then, I am to be married! I feel like a mouse conscious of coming cheese. Is it usual for bachelors to feel this way, or am I a peculiar institution? I trust the parson, being himself a married man, will be discreet enough to make a _short_ prayer after the ceremony. Good gracious, my watch has stopped! no it hasn’t, either; I should like to put the hands forward a little. What to do with myself till the time comes, that’s the question. It is useless to go over to Mary’s--she is knee-deep in dressmaker’s traps. I never could see, when one dress is sufficient to be married in, the need women have to multiply them to such an indefinite extent. Think of postponing a man’s happiness in such circumstances, that one more flounce may be added to a dress! Phew! how stifled this room is! I’ll throw up the window; there now--there goes a pane of glass; who cares? I think I will shave; no I won’t--I should be sure to cut my chin--how my hand trembles. I wonder what Mary is thinking about? bless her little soul. Well, for the life of me I don’t know what to do with myself. Suppose I write down

TOM PAX’S LAST BACHELOR WILL AND TESTAMENT.

In the name of Cupid, Amen.--I, Tom Pax, being of sound mind, and in immediate prospect of matrimony (praised be Providence for the same), and being desirous of settling my worldly affairs while I have the strength and capacity to do so, I do, with my own hand, write, make, and publish this, my last Will and Testament:

And in the first place, and principally, I commit my heart to the keeping of my adorable Mary, and my body to the parson, to be delivered over at the discretion of my groomsmen, to the aforesaid Mary; and as to such worldly goods as a kind Providence hath seen fit to intrust me with, I dispose of the same in the following manner (I also empower my executors to sell and dispose of my real estate, consisting of empty demijohns, old hats, and cigar boxes, and invest the proceeds in stocks or otherwise, to manage as they may think best; all of which is left to their discretion):

I give and bequeath to Tom Harris, my accomplice in single blessedness, my porcelain punch-bowl, white cotton night-cap, and large leathern chair, in whose arms I first renounced bachelordom and all its evil works.

I give and bequeath to the flames the yellow-covered novels and plays formerly used to alleviate my bachelor pangs, and whose attractions fade away before the scorching sun of my prospective happiness, like a snow wreath between a pair of brass andirons.

I give and bequeath to Bridget Donahue, the chambermaid of this lodging-house (to be applied to stuffing a pin-cushion), the locks of female hair, black, chestnut, brown, and tow-color, to be found in my great coat breast pocket.

I give and bequeath to my washwoman, Sally Mudge, my buttonless shirts, stringless dickeys, gossamer-ventilator stockings, and unmended gloves.

I give and bequeath to Denis M‘Fudge, my bootblack, my half box of unsmoked Havanas, which are a nuisance in my hymeneal nostrils.

I give and bequeath to my benighted and unconverted bachelor friend, Sam Scott, my miserable and sinful piejudices against the blessed institution of matrimony, and may Cupid, of his infinite loving-kindness, take pity on his petrified heart.

In witness whereof, I, Tom Pax, the Testator, hereunto set my hand and seal, as my last Will and Testament, done this twelfth day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six.

TOM PAX. [L.S.] Witness, FANNY FERN.

TOM PAX’S CONJUGAL SOLILOQUY.

Mrs. Pax is an authoress. I knew it when I married her. I liked the idea. I had not tried it then. I had not a clear idea what it was to have one’s wife belong to the public. I thought marriage was marriage, brains not excepted. I was mistaken. Mrs. Pax is very kind: I don’t wish to say that she is not. Very obliging: I would not have you think the contrary; but when I put my arm round Mrs. Pax’s waist, and say, “Mary, I love you,” she smiles in an absent, moonlight-kind of a way, and says, “Yes, to-day is Wednesday, is it not? I must write an article for ‘The Weekly Monopolizer’ to-day.” That dampens my ardor; but presently I say again, being naturally affectionate, “Mary, I love you;” she replies (still abstractedly), “Thank you, how do you think it will do to call my next article for ‘The Weekly Monopolizer,’ ‘The Stray Waif?’”

Mrs. Pax sews on all my shirt-buttons with the greatest good humor: I would not have you think she does not; but with her thoughts still on “The Weekly Monopolizer,” she sews them on the flaps, instead of the wristbands. This is inconvenient; still Mrs. Pax is kindness itself; I make no complaint.

I am very fond of walking. After dinner I say to Mrs. Pax, “Mary, let us take a walk.” She says, “Yes, certainly, I must go down town to read the proof of my article for ‘The Monopolizer.’” So, I go down town with Mrs. Pax. After tea I say, “Mary, let us go to the theater to-night;” she says, “I would be very happy to go, but the atmosphere is so bad there, the gas always escapes, and my head must be clear to-morrow, you know, for I have to write the last chapter of my forthcoming work, ‘Prairie Life.’” So I stay at home with Mrs. Pax, and as I sit down by her on the sofa, and as nobody comes in, I think that this, after all, is better, (though I must say my wife looks well at the Opera, and I like to take her there). I put my arm around Mrs. Pax. It is a habit I have. In comes the servant; and brings a handful of letters for her by mail, directed to “Julia Jesamine!” (that’s my wife’s _nom-de-plume_). I remove my arm from her waist, because she says “they are probably business letters which require immediate notice.” She sits down at the table, and breaks the seals. Four of them are from fellows who want “her autograph.” _Mrs. Pax’s_ autograph! The fifth is from a gentleman who, delighted with her last book, which he says “mirrored his own soul” (how do you suppose Mrs. Pax found out how to “mirror _his_ soul?”) requests “permission to correspond with the charming authoress.” “Charming!” my wife! “his soul!” Mrs. Pax! The sixth is from a gentleman who desires “the loan of five hundred dollars, as he has been unfortunate in business, and has heard that her works have been very remunerative.” Five hundred dollars for John Smith, from my wife! The seventh letter is from a man at the West, offering her her own price to deliver a lecture before the Pigtown Young Men’s Institute. _I like that!_

Mrs. Pax opens her writing desk; it is one I gave her; takes some delicate buff note-paper; I gave her that, too; dips her gold pen (my gift) into the inkstand, and writes--writes till eleven o’clock. Eleven! and I, her husband, Tom Pax, sit there and wait for her.

The next morning when I awake, I say, “Mary dear?” She says, “Hush! don’t speak, I’ve just got a capital subject to write about for ‘The Weekly Monopolizer.’” Not that I am _complaining_ of Mrs. Pax, not at all; not that I don’t like my wife to be an authoress: I do. To be sure I can’t say that I knew _exactly_ what it involved. I did not know, for instance, that the Press in speaking of her by her _nom-de-plume_ would call her “OUR Julia,” but I would not have you think I object to her being literary. On the contrary, I am not sure that I do not rather like it; but I ask the Editor of “The Weekly Monopolizer,” as a man--as a Christian--as a husband--if he thinks it right--if it is doing as he would be done by--to monopolize my wife’s thoughts as early as five o’clock in the morning? I merely ask for information. I trust I have no resentful feelings toward the animal.

TEA AND DARNING NEEDLES “FOR TWO!”

Not long since, John Bull, in the columns of an English newspaper, growled out his intense disgust at the “trash in the shape of American lady books,” which constantly afflicted him from the other side of the Atlantic.

Here is a book called “Letters from the United States, Canada, and Cuba,” by the Hon. Amelia M. Murray, a lady of supposable refinement, education, and of the highest social position in England; a lady whose daily bread was _not_ dependent upon the immediate publication of her book; who had leisure and opportunity carefully to write, and to correct and revise what she had written.

We propose giving a few extracts to show what advance has been made upon American literature, by our aristocratic British sister. But before beginning, we wish to throw our glove in John Bull’s face, and defy him to produce a greater, or even an _equal_ amount of stupid twaddle, unrhetorical sentences, hap-hazard conclusions, petty, egotistical, uninteresting details, narrow-minded views, and utter want of talent, from between the covers of any _American_ lady book yet published.

The political question discussed by “the Hon.” authoress, we shall not meddle with further than to say, first, that her book contains not one new idea upon the subject; secondly, that her advocacy of a system which condemns a portion of her own sex to helpless, hopeless, brutal prostitution, reflects as little credit on her standard of what is lovely and of good report in woman, as does her book upon female English literature.

We quote the following specimens of Miss Murray’s style:

“At the house of his sister I saw another work by the same artist: two children, the one as an angel leading the awakened soul of the other, with an inscription below; very pretty!”

Again.

Speaking of the cholera in Boston, and the practice of using hot vinegar there, as a disinfective, she says:

“I was told a carriage of this _fumigated_ liquid had been driven through the streets; there are deaths here every day and some at Newport, but _it_ is not believed to be contagious at present, only carrying off the profligate and the debilitated.”

Again.

“Till my introduction to the Governor of New York I did not know that each State has a Governor. Governor Seymour lives at Albany. Some of those Governors are only elected for two years, _and_ this gentleman does credit to popular choice.”

So much for the _Queen’s_ English! Now for one or two specimens of her penetration. The first quotation we make will undoubtedly cause as much surprise to the very many benevolent associations in Boston (which are constantly deploring their inability to meet the voices of distress which cry, help us!), as it did to ourself:

“I never met a beggar in Boston, not even among the Irish, and ladies have told me that _they could not find a family on which to exercise their benevolent feelings_!”

Governor Seymour, Miss Murray’s friend, will doubtless feel flattered by the following patronizing mention of him. And here we will say, that it would have been more politic in the Hon. Miss Amelia, when we consider England’s late relations to Sebastopol, had she omitted to touch upon so ticklish a subject as British military discipline.

Speaking of Governor Seymour’s review of the New York troops, on Evacuation Day, she says:

“Governor Seymour reviewed these troops in front of the City Hall with as much tranquillity of manner and simple dignity _as might have been evinced by one of the most experienced of OUR public men_!”

One more instance of Miss Murray’s superior powers of observation:

“I have found out the reason why ladies, traveling alone in the United States, must be extravagantly dressed; without that precaution they meet with no attention, and little civility, decidedly much less than in any other country, so here it is not as _women_, but as ladies, they are cared for, and this in Democratic America!”

In the first place, every body but Miss Murray knows that an American LADY never “travels expensively dressed.” That there are females who do this, just as they walk our streets in a similar attire, and for a similar purpose, is undeniable; and that they receive from the opposite sex the “attentions” which they seek, is also true; but this, it seems to us, should hardly _disturb the serenity of a “Maid of Honor_!”

As an American woman, and proud of our birth-right, we resent from our British sister her imputation upon the proverbial chivalry of American gentlemen. We have traveled alone, and in threadbare garments, and we have never found these garments non-conductors of the respectful courtesy of American gentlemen; they have never prevented the coveted glass of water being proffered to our thirsty lips at the dépôt; the offer of the more eligible seat on the shady side of the cars; the offer of the beguiling newspaper, or book, or magazine; the kindly excluding of annoying dust or sun by means of obstinate blinds or windows, unmanageable by feminine fingers; the offer of camphor or cologne for headache or faintness, or one, or all, of the thousand attentions to which the chivalry of American gentlemen prompts them without regard to externals, and too often (shame on the recipients!) without the reward of the bright smile, or kindly “thank you,” to which they are so surely entitled.

I could cite many instances in contradiction of Miss Murray’s assertion that it is “not as _women_ but as ladies,” that American gentlemen care for the gentler sex in America. I will mention only two, out of many, which have come under my own personal observation.

Every body in New York must have noticed the decrepit old woman, with her basket of peanuts and apples, who sits on the steps near the corner of Canal-street (for how long a period the oldest inhabitant only knows). One day toward nightfall, when the execrable state of the crossings almost defied petticoat-dom, I saw her slowly gather up her decrepit limbs, and undiminished wares, and, leaning upon her stick, slowly totter homeward. She reached the point where she wished to cross; it was slippery, wet, and crowded with a Babel of carts and carriages.

She looked despondingly up and down with her faded eyes, and I was about to proffer her my assistance when a gentlemanly, handsome young man stepped to her side, and drawing her withered hand within his arm, safely guided her tottering footsteps across to the opposite sidewalk; then, with a bow, graceful and reverential enough to have satisfied even the cravings of the honorable and virginal Miss Murray, he left her. It was a holy and a beautiful sight, and by no means an uncommon one, “_even in America_.”

Again. I was riding in an omnibus, when a woman, very unattractive in person and dress, got out, leaving a very common green vail upon the seat. A gentleman present sprang after her with it in his hand, ran two blocks, placed it in her possession, and returned to his place, not having received even a bow of thanks from the woman in whose service his nicely polished boots had been so plentifully mud-bespattered.

If “the honorable Miss Murray” came to this country with the expectation that a coach-and-six would be on hand to convey her from every dépôt to the hotel she was to honor with her aristocratic presence, or that gentlemen would remain with their heads uncovered, and their hands on the left side of their vests as she passed, in honor of the reflected effulgence of England’s Queen (supposed to emanate from Miss Murray’s very ordinary person), it is no marvel she was disappointed. We should like to be as sure, when we travel in England, of being (as a woman), as well and as courteously treated by John Bull as was the honorable Miss Amelia by Brother Jonathan in America.

That there may be men, “even in America,” who measure out their nods, and bows, and wreathed smiles, by the wealth and position of the recipient, we do not doubt; for we have seen such, but would gently suggest to “the honorable Miss Amelia” that in the pockets of such men she will generally find--_naturalization papers_!

A HOUSE WITHOUT A BABY.

There was not a child in the house, not one; I was sure of it, when I first went in. Such a spick-and-span look as it had! Chairs--grown-up chairs, plastered straight up against the wall; books arranged by rule and compass; no dear little careless finger-marks on furniture, doors, or window-glass; no hoop, or ball, or doll, or mitten, or basket, or picture-book on the premises; not a pin, or a shred on the angles and squares of the immaculate carpet; the tassels of the window shades, at which baby-fingers always make such a dead set, as fresh as if just from the upholsterer’s. I sat down at the well-polished window, and looked across the street. At the upper window of a wooden house opposite, I saw a little bald baby, tied into a high chair, speculating upon the panorama in the street, while its little fat hands frantically essayed to grab distant pedestrians on the sidewalk. Its mother sat sewing diligently by its side. Happy woman! she has a baby! She thought so, too; for by-and-by she threw down her work, untied the fettering handkerchief, took the child from its prison-house, and covered it with kisses. Ah! she had heard a step upon the stairs--_the_ step! And now there are _two_ to kiss the baby; for John has come to his dinner, and giving both mother and child a kiss that made my lips work, he tosses the babe up in his strong arms, while its mother puts dinner on the table.

But, pshaw!--here come the old maids I was sent to see. I hear the rustle of their well-preserved silks in the entry. I feel proper all over. Vinegar and icicles! how shall I ever get through with it? Now the door opens. What a bloodless look they have?--how dictionary-ish they speak!--how carefully they lower themselves into their chairs, as if the cushions were stuffed with live kittens!--how smooth their ruffs and ribbons!

Bibs and pinafores! Give _me_ the upper room in the wooden house, with kissing John and the bald baby!

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA.

NUMBER ONE.

And this is Philadelphia! All hail, Philadelphia! Where a lady’s aching fingers may be reprieved from the New York thraldom of skirt-holding off dirty pavements; where the women have the good taste, in dress, to eschew the gaudy tulip and array themselves like the lily; where hoops are unknown, or at least so modified as to become debateable ground; where lady shop-keepers know how to be civil to their own sex, and do not keep you standing on one leg an hour after you hand them a bill, while with hawk eye and extended forefinger they peruse that nuisance called the “Counterfeit Detector.” Where the goods, not better than in New York, save in their more quiet hue, are never crammed down a customer’s unwilling throat; where omnibus-drivers do not expectorate into the coach-windows, or bang clouds of dust into your doomed eyes from the roof, thumping for your fare, or start their vehicles before female feet have taken leave of what has nearly proved to so many of us the _final_ step! where the markets--but hold! they deserve a paragraph by themselves.

Ye gods! what butter! Shall I ever again swallow the abominable concoction called butter in New York? That I--Fanny Fern--should have lived to this time, and never known the bliss of tasting Philadelphia butter!--never seen those golden pounds, each separately folded in its fresh green leaf, reposing so temptingly, and crying, Eat me, so eloquently, from the snow-white tubs! What have the Philadelphians done that they should be fed on such crisp vegetables, such fresh fruits, and such _creamy_ ice-creams? That their fish should come dripping to their mouths from their native element. That their meat should wait to be carried home, instead of crawling by itself? Why should the most circumscribed and frugal of housekeepers, who goes with her snowy basket to buy her husband’s dinner, be able to _daintyfy_ his table with a fragrant sixpenny bouquet? Why should the strawberries be so big, and dewy, and luscious? Why should the peas, and cauliflowers, and asparagus, and lettuce--Great Cæsar! what _have_ the Philadelphians done that they should wallow in such high-stepping clover?

_I have it!_

It is the reward of virtue--_It is the smile of Heaven on men who are too chivalric to puff tobacco-smoke in ladies’ faces which beautify and brighten their streets_. They deserve it--they deserve their lily-appareled wives and roly-poly, kissable, sensibly-dressed children. They deserve to walk up those undefiled marble-steps, into their blessed home sanctuaries, overshadowed by those grand, patriarchal trees. They deserve that their bright-eyed sons should be educated in a noble institution like “The Central High School,” where pure ventilation and cheerfulness are considered of as much importance as mathematics, or Greek and Latin. Where the placid brow and winning smile of the Principal are more potent auxiliaries than ferules or frowns. Give me the teacher on whose desk blooms the bouquet, culled by a loving pupil’s fingers; whose eye, magnetic with kindness--whose voice, electric with love for his calling, wakes up into untiring action all that is best and noblest in the sympathetic, fresh young hearts before him. A _human_ teacher, who recognizes in every boy before him (be he poorly or richly clad--be he glorious in form and face as a young Apollo, or cramped and dwarfed into unshapeliness in the narrow cradle of poverty) an immortal soul, clamorous with its craving needs, seeking the light, throwing out its luxuriant tendrils for something strong and kindly to cling to, longing for the upper air of expansion and strength. God bless the _human_ teacher who recognizes, and _acts_ as if he recognized this! Heaven multiply such schools as “The Philadelphia High School,” with its efficient Principal, its able Professors and teachers, and its graduates who number by scores the noble and honored of the land, and of the sea.

I love to linger in cemeteries. And so, in company with an editorial friend, Colonel Fitzgerald, of the Philadelphia _City Item_, to whose hospitality, with that of his lovely wife, I am much indebted, I visited “Laurel Hill.” The group “Old Mortality” at its entrance needs no praise of mine. The eye might linger long ere it wearied in gazing at it. I like cemeteries, but I like not elaborate monuments, or massive iron railings; a simple hedge--a simple head-stone (where the tiny bird alights, ere, like the parting spirit, it plumes its wings for a heavenward flight) for its inscription--the words to which the universal heart has responded, and will respond till time shall be no longer--till the graves give up their dead; “Mother”--“Husband”--“Wife”--“Child”--what epitaph can improve this? what language more eloquently measure the height and breadth, and length and depth of sorrow?

And so, as I read these simple words at “Laurel Hill,” my heart sympathized with those unallied to me, save by the common bond of bereavement; and thus I passed on--until I came to an author’s grave--no critic’s pen again to sting that heart;--pulseless it must have been, not to have stirred with all the wealth of bud and blossom, waving tree and shining river, that lay bathed in the golden, summer sunlight above him. So, God willing, would I sleep at last; but not yet--not yet, my pen, till thou hast shouted again and again--_Courage! Courage!_--to earth’s down-trodden and weary-hearted.

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA.

NUMBER TWO.

If you want to see unmasked human nature, keep your eyes open in railroad cars and on steamboats. See that man now, poring over a newspaper, while he is passing through scenery where the shifting lights and shadows make pictures every instant, more beautiful than an artist ever dreamed. See that woman, who has journeyed with her four children hundreds of miles alone--as I am proud to say women may safely journey in America (if they behave themselves)--travel-stained, care-worn and weary, listening to, and answering patiently and pleasantly the thousand and one questions of childhood; distributing to them, now a cracker, now a sip of water from the cask in the corner, brushing back the hair from their flushed brows, while her own is throbbing with the pain, of which she never speaks. In yonder corner are two Irish women, each with a little red-fretted baby, in the universal Erin uniform of yellow; their little heads bobbing helplessly about in the bumping cars, screaming lustily for the comfort they well know is close at hand, and which the public are notified they have at last found, by a ludicrously instantaneous suspension of their vociferous cries. Beautiful as bountiful provision of Nature! which, if there was no other proof of a God, would suffice for me.

There is a surly old fellow, who won’t have the windows open, though the pale woman beside him mutely entreats it, with her smelling-salts to her nose. Yonder is an old bachelor, listening to a sweet little blue-eyed girl, who, with untasked faith in human nature, has crept from her mother’s side, and selected him for an audience, to say--“that once there was a kid, with two little totty kids, and don’t you believe that one night when the old mother kid was asleep,” etc., etc. No wonder he stoops to kiss the little orator; no wonder he laughs at her naïve remarks; no wonder she has magnetised the watch from his pocket “to hear what it says;” no wonder he smooths back the curly locks from the frank, white brow; no wonder he presses again and again his bachelor lips to that rosy little mouth; no wonder, when the distant city nears us, and the lisping “good-by” is chirruped, and the little feet are out of sight and sound, that he sighs,--God and his own soul know why! Blessed childhood--thy shortest life, though but a span, hath yet its mission. The tiniest babe never laid its velvet cheek on the sod till it had delivered its Maker’s message--heeded not then, perhaps--but coming to the wakeful ear in the silent night-watch, long after the little preacher was dust. Blessed childhood!

It is funny, as well as edifying, to watch hotel arrivals; to see the dusty, hungry, lack-luster-eyed travelers drag into the eating-room--take their allotted seats--enviously regard those consumers of dainties who have already had the good fortune, by rank of precedence, to get their hungry mouths filled; to see them at last “fall to,” as Americans only know how. Heaven help the landlord! Beef-steak, chicken, omelette, mutton-chops, biscuit and coffee--at one fell swoop. Waiters, who it is to be hoped, have not been kept breakfastless since early daylight, looking on calm, but disgusted. Now, their appetites appeased, that respectable family yonder begin to notice that Mr. and Mrs. Fitzsnooks and Miss Fitzsnooks opposite, who are aristocratically delicate in their appetites, are shocked beyond the power of expression. They begin, as they wipe their satisfied lips with their table-napkins, and contemplate Miss Fitzsnooks’s showy breakfast-robe, to bethink them of their dusty traveling-dresses; as if--foolish creatures--they were not in infinitely better taste, soiled as they are, than her gaudy finery at so early an hour--as if a man was not a man “for a’ that”--ay, and a woman, too--as if there _could_ be vulgarity without pretension--as if the greatest vulgarity was not ostentatious pretension.

“_Fairmount_,” of which the Philadelphians are so justly proud, is no misnomer. He must be cynical, indeed, hopelessly weak in the _understanding_, who would grumble at the steep ascent by means of which so lovely a panorama is enjoyed. At every step some new beauty develops itself to the worshiper of nature. In the gray old rocks, festooned with the vivid green of the woodbine and ivy, considerately draping statues for eyes--I confess it, more prudish than mine. The placid Schuylkill flowing calmly below, with its emerald-fringed banks, nesting the homes of wealth and luxury; enjoyed less, perhaps, by their owners, than by the industrious artisan, who, reprieved from his day’s toil, stands gazing at them with his wife and children, and inhaling the breeze, of which, God be thanked, the rich man has no monopoly.

Of course I visited Philadelphia “State-House;” of course I talked with the nice old gentleman who guards the country’s relics; of course I stared--with my ’76 blood at fever heat--upon the big bell which clanged forth so joyfully our American independence; of course I stared at the piece of stone-step, from which the news of our Independence was first announced; and of course I wondered how it was possible for it, under such circumstances, to _remain_ stone. Of course I sat down in the venerable, high-backed leather chair, in which so many great men of that time, and so many little men of this have reposed. Of course I reverently touched the piece of a pew which formerly was part of “Christ Church,” and in which Franklin and Washington had worshiped. Of course I inscribed my name, at the nice old gentleman’s request, in the mammoth book for visitors. And of course I mounted to the Cupola of the State House to see “the view;” which, with due submission, I did not think worth (from that point) the strain on my ankles, or the confused state of my cranium, consequent upon repeated losses of my latitude and longitude, while pursuing my stifled and _winding_ way.

“The Mint?” Oh--certainly, I saw the Mint! and wondered, as I looked at the shining heaps, that any of Uncle Sam’s children should ever want a cent; also, I wondered if the workmen who fingered them, did not grow, by familiarity, indifferent to their value--and to their possession. I was told that not the minutest particle of the metal, whether fused or otherwise, could be abstracted without detection. I was glad, as I always am, in a fitting establishment, to see _women_ employed in various offices--such as stamping the coin, etc., and more glad still, to learn that they had respectable wages. Heaven speed the time when a thousand other doors of virtuous labor shall be opened to them, and silence for ever the heart-rending “Song of the Shirt.”

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA.

NUMBER THREE.

Always an _if_! _If_ the Philadelphians would not barricade their pretty houses with those ugly wooden outside shutters, with those ugly iron hinges. I am sure my gypsy breath would draw hard behind one. And _if_ the Philadelphians would not build such garrison-like walls about their beautiful gardens. Why not allow the passer-by to view what would give so much pleasure? certainly, we would hope, without abstracting any from the proprietors. Clinton avenue, as well as other streets in Brooklyn, is a beautiful example of this. Light, low iron railings about the well-kept lawns and gardens--sunset groups of families upon piazzas, and O--prettier yet--little children darting about like butterflies among the flowers. I missed this in Philadelphia. The balmy air of evening seemed only the signal for barring up each family securely within those jail-like shutters; behind which, I am sure, beat hearts as warm and friendly as any stranger could wish to meet, I must say I feel grateful to any householder who philanthropically refreshes the _public_ eye with the vines and flowers he has wreathed about his home. I feel grateful to any woman I meet, who rests my rainbow-sated eye by a modest, tasteful costume. I thank every well-made man who passes me with well-knit limbs and expanded chest, encased in nice linen, and a coat he can breathe in; yes--why not? Do you purse up your mouth at this? do you say it was not _proper_ for me to have said this? I hate the word proper. If you tell me a thing is not proper, I immediately feel the most rabid desire to go “neck and heels” into it. Proper! it is a fence behind which indelicacy is found hidden much oftener than in the open highway. Out upon proper! So I say again, I like to see a well-made man--made--not by the tailor--but by the Almighty. I glory in his luxuriant beard; in his firm step; in his deep, rich voice; in his bright, falcon eye. I thank him for being handsome, and letting me see him. We all yearn for the beautiful; the little child, who drew its first breath in a miserable cellar, and has known no better home, has yet its cracked mug or pitcher, with the treasured dandelion or clover blossoms. Be generous, ye householders, who have the means to gratify a taste to which God himself ministers, and hoard not your gardens and flowers for the palled eye of satiety. Let the little child, who, God knows, has few flowers enough in its earthly pathway, peep through the railing, and, if only for a brief moment, dream of paradise.

The Philadelphia Opera House, which I am told is a very fine one, I did not see, as I intended, as also many institutions which I hope yet to visit, when I can make a longer stay. Of one of the principal theaters I will say, that she must be a courageous woman who would dare to lean back against its poisonously dirty cushions. Ten minutes sufficed me to breathe an atmosphere that would have disgraced the “Five Points;” and to listen to tragic howlings only equaled in the drunken brawls of that locality. Upon my exit, I looked with new surprise upon the first pair of immaculate marble steps I encountered, and putting this and that together, gave up the vexed problem. New York streets may be dirty, but our places of amusement are clean.

At one public institution I visited, we were shown about by the most dignified and respectable of gray-haired old men; so much so, that I felt serious compunctions lest I should give trouble by asking questions which agitated my very inquiring mind. Bowing an adieu to him, with the reverence with which his appearance had inspired me, we were about to pass down the principal stairs to the main entrance, when he touched the gentleman who accompanied me on the shoulder, and said in an undertone, not intended for my ears, “Please don’t offer me money, sir, _in the presence of any one_!” A minute after he had pocketed, with a bow, the neatly-extracted coin (which _I_ should as soon have thought of offering to General Washington), and with a parting touch of his warning forefinger to his lip, intended for my companion, we found ourselves outside the building, doing justice to his generalship by explosive bursts of laughter. So finished was the performance, that we admiringly agreed to withhold the name of the venerable perpetrator.

We found the very best accommodations at the hotel where we were located, both as to the fare and attendance. I sent a dress to the laundry-room for a little re-touching, rendered necessary by my ride the day before. On ringing for its return, the summons was answered by a grenadier-looking fellow, with a world of whisker, who, as I opened the door, stood holding the gauzy nondescript at arm’s length, between his thumb and finger, as he inquired of me, “Is this the item, mem?” _Item!_ Had he searched the dictionary through, he could not have better hit it--or me. I have felt a contempt for the dress ever since.

Having had the misfortune to set the pitcher in my room down upon vacancy, instead of upon the wash-stand, and the natural consequence thereof being a crash and a flood, I reported the same, lest the chambermaid should suffer for my careless act. Of course, I found it charged in my bill, as I had intended, but with it the whole cost of the set to which it belonged! It never struck me, till I got home, that by right of proprietorship, I might have indulged in the little luxury of smashing the remainder--which I think of taking a special journey to Philadelphia to do!

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA.

NUMBER FOUR.

I wonder--I suppose a body may wonder--if the outward sweeping and garnishing one sees in Philadelphia is symbolical of its inward purity? If the calm placidity of its inhabitants covers up smoldering volcanoes? It is none of my business, as you say; for all that, the old proverb--“Still waters run deepest”--would occur to me, as I walked those lovely streets. An eye-witness to the constant verification of this truth, in the white-washed, saintly atmosphere of the city of Boston, may certainly be forgiven a doubt. Do the Philadelphia churches, like theirs, contain a sprinkling of those meek-faced Pharisees, who weary Heaven with their long prayers, and in the next breath blast their neighbor’s character; who contribute large sums to be heard of men, and frown away from their doors their poverty-stricken relatives? Do those nun-like Philadelphia women ever gossip, “Caudle lecture” and pout? Do those correct-looking men know the taste of champagne, and have they latch-keys? Are their Quaker habits pulled off, when they come “on business” to this seething Sodom? Or--is it true of them, as Mackay says of Lady Jane--

“Her pulse is calm--milk-white her skin, She hath not blood enough to sin.”

It is none of my business, as you say; but still I know that white raiment is worn alike by the rosy bride and the livid corpse.

Mischief take these microscopic spectacles of mine! mounted on my nose by the hypocrites I have known, who glide ever between my outstretched arms of love and those whom I would enfold. Avaunt! I like Philadelphia, and I like the Philadelphians, and I _will_ believe in appearances once more before I die.

Like a cabinet picture in my memory, is lovely “Wissahickon;” with its tree-crowned summits--its velvety, star-blossomed mosses; its feathery ferns, and its sweet-breath’d wild flowers. If any one thinks an editor is not agreeable out of harness, let him enjoy it, as I did, with Mr. Fry of “The New York Tribune,” whose early love it was in boyhood. In such an Eden, listening to the low whisper of the shivering trees, the dreamy ripple of the wave, and the subdued hum of insect life--well might the delicate artistic ear of song be attuned.

But “Wissahickon” boasts other lions than Fry--in the shape (if I may use a Hibernicism) of a couple of live bears--black, soft, round, treacherous, and catty; to be gazed upon at a distance, spite of their chains; to shiver at, spite of their owner’s assurance, as they came as far as their limits through the trees to look at us, “that they wouldn’t do nothing to nobody.” It would be a speculation for some Broadway druggist to buy that one who stood upon his hind legs, and taking a bottle of Sarsaparilla Soda in his trained fore-paws, drained it standing with the gusto of a connoisseur.

Not one beggar did I see in Philadelphia. After witnessing the squalor which contrasts so painfully with New York luxury and extravagance, this was an untold relief.

Philadelphia, too, has what we so much need here--comfortable, cleanly, convenient, _small_ houses for mechanics; comprising the not-to-be-computed luxury of a bath-room, and gas, at the attainable rent of seventy-five or a hundred dollars a year. No house ever yet was built, broad enough, wide enough, and high enough, to contain two families. Wars will arise over the disputed territory of front and back stairs, which lawless childhood--bless its trustful nature--will persist in believing common ground. But apart from the cozy pleasure of having a little snuggery of one’s own--where one may cry, or laugh, or sneeze, without asking leave--this subject in its _moral_ aspect is well worth the attention of humane New York capitalists--and I trust we have such.

IN THE DUMPS.

What does ail me? I’m as blue as indigo. Last night I was as gay as a bob-o’-link--perhaps that is the reason. Good gracious, hear that wind howl! Now low--now high--till it fairly shrieks; it excites me like the pained cry of a human. There’s my pretty California flower--blue as a baby’s eyes; all shut up--no wonder--I wish my eyes were shut up, too. What _does_ ail me? I think it is that dose of a Boston paper I have just been reading (for want of something better to do), whose book critic calls “Jane Eyre” an “_immoral_ book.” Donkey! It is vain to hope that _his_ life has been as pure and self-sacrificing as that of “Charlotte Bronte.” There’s the breakfast-bell--and there’s Tom with that autumn-leaf colored vest on, that I so hate. Why don’t men wear pretty vests? why can’t they leave off those detestable stiff collars, stocks, and things, that make them all look like choked chickens, and which hide so many handsomely-turned throats, that a body never sees, unless a body is married, or unless a body happens to see a body’s brothers while they are shaving. Talk of women’s throats--you ought to see a whiskered throat I saw once----Gracious, how blue I am! Do you suppose it is the weather? I wish the sun would shine out and try me. See the inch-worms on that tree. That’s because it is a pet of mine. Every thing I like goes just that way. If I have a nice easy dress that I can sneeze in, it is sure to wear out and leave me to the crucifying alternative of squeezing myself into one that is not broke into my figure. I hate new gowns--I hate new shoes--I hate new bonnets--I hate any thing new except new--spapers, and I was born reading them.

There’s a lame boy--now why couldn’t that boy have been straight? There’s a rooster driving round a harem of hens; what do the foolish things run for? If they didn’t run, he couldn’t chase them--of course not. Now it’s beginning to rain; every drop perforates my heart. I could cry tears enough to float a ship. Why _need_ it rain?--patter--patter--skies as dull as lead--trees nestling up to each other in shivering sympathy; and that old cow--I hate cows--they always make a dive at me--I suppose it is because they are females; that old cow stands stock still, looking at that pump-handle just where, and as she did, when I went to bed last night. Do you suppose that a cow’s tail ever gets tired lashing flies from her side; do you suppose her jaws ever ache with that eternal munching? If there is any place I like, it is a barn; I mean to go a journey this summer, not “to see Niagara”--but to see a barn. Oh, the visions I’ve had on haymows! oh, the tears I’ve shed there--oh, the golden sunlight that has streamed down on me through the chinks in the raftered roof--oh, the cheerful swallow-twitterings on the old cross-beams--oh, the cunning brown mice scampering over the floor--oh, the noble bay-horse with his flowing mane, and arching neck, and satin sides, and great _human_ eyes. Strong as Achilles--gentle as a woman. Pshaw! women were never half so gentle to me. _He_ never repulsed me when I laid my head against his neck for sympathy. _Brute_ forsooth! I wish there were more such brutes. Poor Hunter--he’s dead, of course, because I loved him;--the _trunk-maker_ only knows what has become of his hide and my books. What of that? a hundred years hence and who’ll care? I don’t think I love any thing--or care for any thing to-day. I don’t think I shall ever have any feeling again for any body or any thing. Why don’t somebody turn that old rusty weather-cock, or play me a triumphant march, or bring me a dew-gemmed daisy?

There’s funeral--a _child’s_ funeral! Oh--what a wretch I am! Come here--you whom I love--you who love me; closer--closer--let me twine my arms about you, and God forgive me for shutting my eyes to his sunshine.

PEEPS FROM UNDER A PARASOL.

People describe me, without saying “by your leave;” a little thought has just occurred to me that two can play at that game! I don’t go about with my eyes shut--no tailor can “take a measure” quicker than I, as I pass along.

There are Drs. Chapin and Bethune, whose well-to-do appearance in this world quite neutralizes their Sunday exhortations to “set one’s affections on a better.” There’s Greeley--but why describe the town pump? he has been handle-d enough to keep _him_ from Rust-ing. There’s that Epicurean Rip-lie, critic of the “New York Tribune;” if I have spelt his name wrong, it was because I was thinking of the unmitigated fibs he has told in his book reviews! There’s Colonel Fuller, editor of the “New York Evening Mirror,” handsome, witty, and saucy. There’s Mr. Young, editor of “The Albion,” who looks too much like a gentlemen to have abused, in so wholesale a manner, the lady writers of America. There’s Blank-Blank, Esq., editor of the “New York Blank,” who always reminds me of what the Scotch parson said to his wife, whom he noticed asleep in church: “Jennie! Jennie! you have no beauty, as all the congregation may see, and if you have no grace, I have made but a poor bargain of it!” There’s Richard Storrs Willis, or, Storrs Richard Willis, or, Willis Richard Storrs (it is a way that family have to keep changing their names), editor of the “Musical World,” not a bad paper either. Richard has a fine profile, a trim, tight figure, always unexceptionably arrayed, and has a gravity of mien most edifying to one who has eat bread and molasses out of the same plate with him.

Behind that beard coming down street in that night-gown overcoat, is Mr. Charles A. Dana, of the “New York Tribune,” who is ready to say, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” when he shall have made the “New York Tribune” like unto the “London Times;” Charles should remember that the motto of the “London Times” is “Fair Play”--not the _appearance_ of fair play. And here is Philander Doesticks, of the “New York Picayune,” and “New York Tribune,” a delightful specimen of healthy manhood, in a day whose boys at sixteen look as though they had exhausted life; may his wit continue as keen as his eyes, his heart as fresh as his complexion, and his fancy as luxuriant as his beard. There’s Bayard Taylor, “the Oriental Bayard.” Now I don’t suppose Bayard is to blame for being a _pretty_ man, or for looking so nice and bandbox-y. But if some public benefactor _would_ tumble his hair and shirt collar, and tie his cravat in a loose sailor knot, and if Bayard himself _would_ open that little three-cent piece mouth of his a l-i-t-t-l-e wider when he lectures, it would take a load off my mind! I write this, in full view of his interest in the Almighty “Tribune,” and also set up before him certain “Leaves” for a target, by way of reprisal.

And there is George P. Morris--General George Morris--and Briga-_dear_ General at that, with an eye like a star; and more vitality in him than there is in half the young men who might call him father. May Time, who has dealt so gently with “The Woodman,” long delay to cut him down.

* * * * *

One day, after my arrival in New York, I met a man striding down street, in the face of a pin-and-needle wind, that was blowing his long hair away from his bloodshot eyes, and forcing him to compress his lips, to keep what breath he had--inside--to warm him; tall and lank, he clutched his rough blanket shawl about him like a brigand. Fearing he might be an escaped lunatic, I gave him a wide berth on the sidewalk. Each day, in my walks, I met him, till at last I learned to watch for the wearied, haggard-looking face; I think the demonism of it magnetized me. After looking at the kidded dandies, who flourished their perfumed handkerchiefs past, the sight of him was as refreshing as a grand, black thunder cloud, looming up in the horizon, after the oppressive hum-drum-ness of a sultry day. One night I was at the opera; and amid its blaze, and glitter, and glare, was that haggard face, looking tenfold more satanic than ever. Grisi charmed him not, nor Mario either.

Ah--that strain! who could resist it? A luminous smile in an instant transforms Lucifer--was that the same haggard face, upon which, but one moment ago, every passing hour had seemed to set its seal of care, and sorrow, and disappointment?

What was that smile like?

It was like the glorious outbursting of the sun on bud and tree, and blossom, when the thunder cloud has rolled away. It was like the sudden flashing of light through a crystal vase, revealing the delicate tracery of _His_ fingers who made man _originally_ “but little lower than the angels.”

And so when I hear Mr. Fry, the musical thunderer of the “Tribune,” called “gaunt” and “ugly”--I shake my head incredulously; and when I read in the “Tribune” a biting article from his caustic pen, dissecting poor Napoleon (who certainly expiated all his sins, even that wretched divorce, when he fretted his eagle soul away at St. Helena, beating his strong, but powerless wings, heavily against his English prison bars); when I read Mr. Fry’s vulture-like dissection of Napoleon, I recall that luminous music-born smile, and rejoice that in every man’s heart is an oasis which the Simoon-breath of worldly care, and worldly toil and ambition has no power to blight!

And here comes Barnum--poor Barnum! late so _riant_ and rosy. Kick not the prostrate lion, ye crowing changelings; you may yet feel his paws in your faces; Mammon grant it! not for the love I bear to “woolly horses,” but for the hate I bear to pharisaical summer friends.

Ah! here comes Count Gurowski; Mars of the “Tribune.” Oh! the knowledge buttoned up in that shaggy black overcoat! Oh! the prophet eyes hid by those ugly green goggles! Not a move on the European checker-board escapes their notice; but no film of patriotism can cloud to their Russian owner the fall of Sebastopol; and while we gladly welcome rare foreign talent like his to our shores, our cry still must be, “Down with tyranny and tyrants.”

And there is Briggs; whilome editor of “Putnam’s Monthly,” now factotum of the “New York Times,” a most able writer and indefatigable worker. People judge him to be unamiable because his pen has a sharp nib. Fudge! one knows what to expect from a torpedo, but who can count on an eel? I trust no malicious person will twist this question to the disparagement of Briggs’s editorial coadjutor.

And here, by the rood, comes FANNY FERN! FANNY is a woman. For that she is not to blame; though since she first found it out, she has never ceased to deplore it. She might be prettier; she might be younger. She might be older; she might be uglier. She might be better; she might be worse. She has been both over-praised and over-abused, and those who have abused her worst, have imitated and copied her most.

One thing may be said in favor of FANNY: she was NOT, thank Providence, born in the beautiful, backbiting, sanctimonious, slandering, clean, contumelious, pharisaical, phiddle-de-dee, peck-measure city--of Boston!

Look!

Which? How? Where?

Why _there_; don’t you see? there’s Potiphar Curtis.

Potiphar Curtis! Ye gods, what a name! Pity my ignorance, reader, I had not then heard of the great “Howadji”--the only Potiphar I knew of being that much-abused ancient who--but never mind him; suffice it to say, I had not heard of “Howadji;” and while I stood transfixed with his ridiculous cognomen, his coat tails, like his namesake’s rival’s, were disappearing in the distance. So I can not describe him for you; but I give you my word, should I ever see him, to do him justice to the tips of his boots, which, I understand, are of immaculate polish. I have read his “Papers” though, and to speak in the style of the patronizing critics who review lady-books, they are very well--_for a man_.

* * * * *

I was sauntering along one sunny day last week, when I saw before me a young girl, hooped, flounced, fringed, laced, bugled, and ribboned, regardless of cost. Her mantilla, whether of the “Eugenie” or “Victoria” pattern I am too ignorant to inform you, was of black, and had more trimming than I could have believed the most ingenious of dressmakers could pile on _one_ mantilla, though backed by every dry goods merchant in New York. Venus! what a figure it was hung on! Short, flat-chested, narrow-shouldered, angular, and stick-like! her bonnet was a marvel of Lilliputianism, lightness, and lilacs. Raphael! what a face was under it! Watery, yellow, black eyes, a sallow, unwholesome skin, and--Bardolph! what a nose! Imagine a spotted “Seckle pear”--imagine a gnarled bulb-root--imagine a vanquished prize-fighter’s proboscis, and you have it! That such a female, with such repulsive features, living in a Christian country, where there were looking-glasses, should strain back from the roots what little hair she had, as if her face were beautiful in its outline--it was incredible.

Who, or what, was she? One of those poor, bedizened unfortunates who hang out signal “Barkis” flags? The poor thing had no capital, even for that miserable market; nobody would have bid for her, but a pawnbroker.

While I speculated and wondered, she slowly lifted her kidded forefinger. I was all eyes and ears! A footman in livery sprang forward, and obsequiously let down the steps of a superb carriage, in waiting, on whose panels was emblazoned a coat-of-arms. The bundle of millinery--the stick-like figure inside the hoops--the gay little bonnet, and the Bardolphian nose, took possession of it. The liveried footman mounted behind, the liveried coachman cracked his whip on the box, the sleek, shiny horses arched their necks, the silver-mounted harness glistened in the sunlight, and the vision was gone. F-a-n-n-y F-e-r-n! is there no limit to your ignorance? You had been commiserating--actually _commiserating_--one of the _élite_ of New York!

All-compensating nature! tossing money-bags to twisted features, and divorcing beauty from brains; unfortunate they, whom in thy hurry thou hast overlooked, bestowing neither beauty, brains, nor money!

That was not all I saw from under my parasol, on that sunny morning. I saw a young girl--bonnetless, shawlless--beautiful as God often makes the poor--struggling in the grasp of two sturdy policemen. Tears streamed from her eyes, while with clasped hands, as she shrank away from their rough gripe, she plead for release. What was her sin I know not. It might have been the first downward step in a life of unfriended and terrible temptation; for the agony in that young face could not have been feigned; or--she might have been seized only on suspicion; but in vain she begged, and prayed, and wept. Boys shouted; men, whose souls were leprous with sin, jeered; and heartless, scornful women “passed by on the other side.”

The poor young creature (none the less to be pitied, _had_ she sinned) goaded to madness by the gathering crowd, seized her long trailing tresses, and tossing them up like a veil over her shame-flushed and beautiful face, resigned herself to her fate.

Many will think any expression of sympathy for this poor unfortunate, uncalled for. There are enough to defend that side of the question, and to them I willingly leave it; there are others, who, with myself, could wish that young girls thus (it may be _innocently_) accused, should not, before trial, be dragged roughly through the public streets, like shameless, hardened offenders. There are those who, like myself, as they look upon the faces of their own fair young daughters, and think of the long life of happiness or misery before them, will wish that the sword of the law might be tempered with more mercy.

The two scenes above recorded, are not _all_ that I saw from under my parasol, on that sunny morning. I passed the great bow-windows of the St. Nicholas--those favorite lounging-places for male guests, and other gentlemen, well pleased to criticise lady pedestrians, who, thanks to the inventor of parasols, can dodge their battery of glances at will.

Not so, the gentlemen; who weary with travel and sight-seeing, unthinkingly fall asleep in those luxurious arm-chairs, in full view of the public, with their heels on the window-sill, their heads hanging on one side, and their wide-open mouths so suggestive of the----_snore_--that I fancy I hear. Heaven forgive these comical-looking sleepers the cachinatory sideaches they have often given me!

Was there _ever_ any thing uglier than a man asleep? Single women who have traveled in railroad cars, need not be too modest to answer!

One of the first things I noticed in New York, was the sharp, shrill, squeaking, unrefined, vixenish, _uneducated_ voices of its women. How inevitably such disenchanting discord, breaks the spell of beauty!

Fair New Yorkers, keep your mouths _shut_, if you would conquer.

By what magnetism has our mention of voices conjured up the form of Dr. LOWELL MASON? And yet, there he is, as majestic as Old Hundred--as popular--and apparently as indestructible by _Time_. I would like to see a pupil of his who does not love him. I defy any one to look at this noble, patriarchal chorister (as he leads the _congregational singing_ on the Sabbath, in Dr. Alexander’s church) with an unmoistened eye. How fitting his position--and oh! how befitting God’s temple, the praise of “_all_ the people.” Should some conquering hero, whose blood had been shed, free as water, for us and ours, revisit our shores, oh, who, as his triumphal chariot wheels rolled by, would _pass over to his neighbor for expression_ the tumultuous gratitude with which his own heart was swelling?

That the mantle of the father should have fallen on the son, is not surprising; and they who have listened delightedly at Mr. William Mason’s “Musical Matinée’s” must bear witness how this inherited gift has been enriched by assiduous culture. Nature in giving him the ear and genius for a pianist, has also finished off his hands with such nicety, that, as they dart over the keys, they look to the observer like little snow-white scampering mice.

Ah--here is Dr. Skinner! no misnomer that: but what a logician--what an orator! Not an unmeaning sentence--not a superfluous word--not an unpolished period escapes him. In these day of superficial, botched, evangelical apprentice-work, it is a treat to welcome a master workman. Thank Providence, _all_ the talent is not on the side of Beelzebub!

Vinegar cruets and vestry meetings! here come a group of Bostonians! Mark their puckered, spick-and-span self-complaisance! Mark that scornful gathering up of their skirts as they sidle away from that gorgeous Magdalen who, God pity and help her, _may_ repent in her robes of unwomanly shame, but they in their “mint and anise,” whitewashed garments--_never_!

I close with a little quotation, not that it has any thing to do with my subject, but that it is merely a poetical finish to my article. Some people have a weakness for poetry; I have; it is from the pen of the cant-hating HOOD.

“A pride there is of rank--a pride of birth, A pride of learning, and a pride of purse, A London pride--in short, there be on earth A host of prides, some better, and some worse; But of all prides, since Lucifer’s attaint, The proudest swells a _self-elected saint_.

To picture that cold pride, so harsh and hard, Fancy a peacock, in a poultry-yard; Behold him in conceited circles sail, Strutting and dancing, and planted stiff In all his pomp and pageantry, as if _He felt “the eyes of Europe” on his tail_!”

THE CONFESSION BOX.

I confess to being nervous. I don’t admire the individual who places a foot upon the rounds of the chair on which I am sitting; or beats a prolonged tattoo with his fingers on the table; or stands with his hands on a creaking door, moving it backward and forward, while he performs an interminable leave-taking; or spins napkin-rings, while he waits for the dessert; or tips his chair back on its hind legs, in the warmth of debate; or tells jokes as old as Noah’s ark; or levels volleys of puns at me when I am not in the laughing mood.

Yes, I’m nervous. I would rather not hear a dog bark more than half the night. The scissors-grinder’s eternal bell-tinkle, and the soap-fat man’s long-drawn whoop, send me out of my chair like a pop-gun. I break down under the best minister, after “forty-ninthly;” and am prepared to scream at any minute after every seat in a street car is filled, and every body is holding somebody in their laps; and somebody is treading on every body’s toes in the aisle; and every door and window is shut; and onions and musk, and tobacco and jockey-club, and whisky, and patchouli are mingling their sweets; and the unconscionable conductor continues to beckon to misguided females upon the sidewalk, with whole families of babies (every one of whom is sucking oranges or sugar-candy), to crowd in, and add the last drop of agony to my brimming cup.

Yes, I think I may say I am nervous. I prefer, when the windows of an omnibus are open, and the wind “sets that way,” that the driver should not ex-spit-orate any oftener than is necessary. If the skirt of my dress _must_ be torn from my belt by hasty feet upon the sidewalk, I prefer it to be done by a man’s boot rather than a woman’s un-apologizing slipper; if the fringe of my mantle is foreordained “to catch,” the gods grant it may be in a surtout button rather than on a feminine watch-chain. If women shopkeepers were less lavish of cross looks, and crossed sixpences, I might have more faith in the predicted “millennium.” I don’t wish the Irish woman any harm who tortures me by grinding on her accordeon in the cars, but, if I thought she had settled her little reckoning with the priest, I should be happy to peruse her obituary. I had rather not exchange a pleasant parlor circle for the company of a huge bundle of “proof, to be called for by seven o’clock the next morning;” and I had rather not have the pianos, in five different houses near, each playing different tunes while I am revising it. I don’t wish to interfere with infant boys who are fond of bonfires, but if they could make them of something beside dried leaves, it would be a saving to my bronchial apparatus. If people who address me would spell “Fanny” with two ns, I should be more likely to answer their letters. If the little cherub, in jacket and trowsers, who blows the organ of a Sunday, would stand behind a screen, it would materially assist my devotions. If all the men in New York had as handsome a beard as the editor of the ----, I would not object to see them h--air ’em. I should rather the New Yorker would not say that such and such a paragraph would “go all over,” instead of “everywhere.” I should rather the Connecticuter, when he does not comprehend me, would not startle me out of my chair with a sharp _Which?_ I should rather the Yankee would not say “he was going to wash _him_,” or speak of the “back _side_ of the church.” And, lastly, if all the people who are born with seven fingers on one hand, or feet minus toes, or two noses, would not select me in the street to inspect their monstrosities, my epitaph might possibly be deferred a while longer.

A WORD TO PARENTS AND TEACHERS.

I have before me a simple but imploring letter from a little child, begging me “to write her a composition.” I could number scores of such which I have received. I allude to it for the sake of calling the attention of parents and teachers to this cruel bugbear of childhood, with which I can fully sympathize, although it never had terrors for me. The multiplication table was the rock on which I was scholastically wrecked; my total inability to ascertain “if John had ten apples, and Thomas took away three, how many John would have left,” having often caused me to wish that all the Johns in creation were--well, never mind that, now. I have learned to like Johns since!

But to return to the subject. Just so long as themes like “The Nature of Evil,” or “Hydrostatics,” or “Moral Science,” and kindred subjects, are given out to poor bewildered children, to bite their nails and grit their teeth over, while the ink dries on the nip of their upheld pens, just so long will “composition day” dawn on them full of terrors. Such themes are bad enough, but when you add the order to write three pages at a mark, you simply invite them to diffuse unmeaning repetitions, as subversive of good habits of composition as the command is tyrannical, stupid, and ridiculous. You also tempt to duplicity, for a child, cornered in this way, has strong temptations to pass off for its own what is the product of the brains of another; and this of itself, as a matter of principle, should receive serious consideration at the hands of these child-tormentors. A child should never be allowed, much less _compelled_ to write words without ideas. Never be guilty of such a piece of stupidity as to return a child’s composition to him with the remark, “It is very good, but it is _too short_.” If he has said all he has to say, what more would you have? what more can you get but repetition? Tell him to _stop when he gets through if it is at the end of the first line_--a lesson which many an adult has yet to learn.

In the first place, give a child no theme above his comprehension and capacity; or, better still, allow him to make his own selection, and always consider one line, intelligibly and concisely expressed, better than pages of wordy bombast. In this way only can he be taught to write well, sincerely, and fluently. Nature teaches you this: The little bird at first takes but short flights to the nearest twig or tree. By-and-by, as his strength and confidence grow, they are voluntarily and pleasurably lengthened, till at last you can scarce follow him, as he pierces the clouds. This forcing nature--pushing the little fledgeling rudely out of the nest, can result only in total incapacity, or, at best, but crippled flights. In the name of the children, I enter my earnest protest against it, and beg teachers and parents to think of and remedy this evil.

BREAKFAST.

Let the world fly off its axle any hour in the twenty-four, save the breakfast hour. Ruffle me not then, and I promise to out-Socrates Socrates, though it should rain tribulations all the rest of the day. If I am to have but one glimpse of sunshine until nightfall, let it be then. A plague on him or her who sits down to coffee (all hail coffee!) with a doleful phiz. The witches fly away with that female who presents herself in curl-papers, or introduces herself with a yawn. Unassoiled be that grocer, who offends my proboscis with a doubtful egg; garroted be that dairyman who waters my milk; kneaded be that fat podge of a baker who is tardy with his hot rolls.

Tell me no disagreeables--be not argumentative over our Mocha; discourse not of horrid murders, nor yet dabble in the black sea of politics. Tell me not the price of any article I am eating, neither inquire of me prematurely what I will have for my dinner. Let thy “Good-morning” have _heart_ in it, and touch thy lips to my eyelids as thou passest to thy seat. If thou hast a clover-blossom, or a babe, set it before me; and dream not, because my heart’s incense rises silently as its perfumed breath, that I praise not God for the sweet morning.

GREENWOOD AND MOUNT AUBURN.

I have seen Greenwood. With Mount Auburn for my ideal of what a cemetery _should_ be, I was prepared for disappointment. But the two are not comparable. Greenwood is the larger, and more indebted to the hand of art; the gigantic trees of Mount Auburn are the growth of half a century; but then Greenwood has its ocean view, which, paradoxical as it may seem, is not to be overlooked. The entrance to Mount Auburn I think the finer. Its tall army of stately pines stand guard over its silent sleepers, and strew their fragrant leaves on the pathway, as if to deaden the sound of the carriage wheels, which, at each revolution, crush out their aromatic incense, sweet as the box of spikenard which kneeling Mary broke at Jesus’ feet.

Greenwood has the greater monumental variety, attributable, perhaps (more than to design), to the motley population of New York; the proprietors of each tomb, or grave, carrying out their national ideas of sepulture. This is an advantage. Mount Auburn sometimes wearies the eye with its monumental monotony. Mount Auburn, too, _had_ (for he long since laid down in its lovely shade), a gray-haired old gate-keeper, courteous and dignified: “a man of sorrows,” whose bald, uncovered head, many will remember, who have stood waiting at the portal to bear in their dead. Many a bouquet, simple but sweet, of my favorite flowers have I taken from his palsied hand; and many a sympathizing look, treasured up in my heart from him whom Death had also bereft of all. Greenwood has, at least if my afternoon visit was a fair exponent, its jocund grave-diggers, who, with careless poise, and indecent foot, of haste stumble on with the unvarnished coffin of the poor, and exchange over the fresh and narrow mound, the comrade’s time-worn jest. Money has its value, for it purchases gentler handling and better manners.

Let those who will, linger before the marble statue, or chiseled urn of the rich; dearer to me is the grave of the poor man’s child, where the tiny, half-worn shoe, is sad and fitting monument. Dearer to me, the moldy toys, the whip, the cap, the doll, the faded locks of hair, on which countless suns have risen and set, and countless showers have shed their kindly tears. And yet for the infant army who slumber there, I can not weep; for I bethink me of the weary toil and strife; the wrecks that strew the life-coast; the plaint of the weary-hearted, unheard in life’s fierce clamor; the remorseless, iron heel of strength, on the quivering heart of weakness; the swift-winged, poisoned arrow of cruel slander; the hearts that are near of kin as void of love; and I thank God that the little shoes were laid aside, and the dreary path untrod.

And yet, not all drear, for, as I pass along, I read, in graven lines, of those who periled life to save life; who parted raging billows and forked flames, at woman’s wild, despairing shriek, and childhood’s helpless wail. Honor to such dauntless spirits, while there are eyes to moisten and hearts to feel!

Beautiful Greenwood! with thy feathery swaying willows, thy silver-voiced fountains and glassy lakes: with thy grassy knolls and shady dells; with thy “Battle Hill,” whose sod of yore was nourished by brave men’s blood. The sailor here rests him well, in sound of old Ocean’s roar; the fireman heeds nor booming bell, nor earthly trump, nor hurried tramp of anxious feet; the pilot’s bark is moored and voyage o’er; the school-boy’s lesson conned; beauty’s lid uncloses not, though rarest flowers bloom above her; no husband’s hand is outstretched to her who stoops with jealous care to pluck the obtrusive weed which hides the name she, lonely, bears; no piping, bird-like voice, answers the anguished cry, “My child, my child!” but, still the mourners come, and sods fall dull and heavy on loved and loving hearts, and the busy spade heeds never the dropping tears; and for her who writes, and for them who read--ere long--tears in their turn shall fall. God help us all.

GETTING UP THE WRONG WAY.

It was an unlucky day; every body has known such. I got up just one hour too late, and spent the whole day vainly trying to make it up. It was useless. Things were predestined to go wrong. I felt it. Hooks and eyes, strings and buttons were in the maddening conspiracy. Shoes and stockings were mis-mated; there was a pin in the towel on which I wiped my face; my hair-brush and comb had absconded, and my tooth-brush and nail-brush had gone to keep them company. I ate a hurried breakfast, salting my coffee and sugaring my beefsteak: for I recollected that I had pressing business down town which required a cool head and punctual feet. As I looked at my watch, I saw that it was already time that I was on my way. I wound it up with a jerk, snapping the crystal, and dislocating a spring. Now my boot laces knotted and twisted, and defied every attempt to coerce them into duty; and what was worse, upon looking for the MS. (the product of hours and days of labor), I found that I had burned it, in my absent state of mind, along with some waste paper! and I recollected with agony how indifferently I had watched the last sparkling fragment, as the hated wind merrily whistled it up the chimney.

I held my head for one distracted minute! Was it possible to recall it as it was originally written? Even suppose I could? think of all that lost labor (on heavenly days, too, when the pleasant sunlight wooed me out-of-doors), and think of all that jog-trot punctuating to be gone over again. For me, who _hate_ stops--who believe only in an exclamation point and a dash! I, who turn my back disdainfully upon an interrogation point, who despise coal-on (save in January), who religiously believe that a writer should no more be expected to fritter away his brains on stupid stops, than that an artist should be required to manufacture with his own hands the wooden frames used for his pictures.

Well, the MS. was gone--stops and all--past praying for. I had not even time to whine about it; I must go directly down town. I had the misfortune to be boarding, so every drawer, closet, and cupboard must be locked before starting; for locking one’s room door is a mere farce while there are duplicate keys in the house. Yes, I locked them, and unlocked them, too, twenty times or more, as I recollected some handkerchief, collar or purse, which I had forgotten to take out.

All right now, said I, dolorously, as I put the rattling keys in my pocket, descended the interminable hotel stairs, and gained the street. I had passed two blocks when I discovered that the pair of gloves I had brought were both for one hand; the thermometer was at nipping point and I had left my muff behind! I thrust one bare hand into my shawl, shut my teeth together, and exclaimed, as I looked Fate full in the face--now, do your worst.

And so it did!

Down came the snow; had I taken my umbrella, not a flake would have fallen; every body knows that. I looked at the omnibusses; they were all full--full of great, lazy, black-coated men. I hate a black coat; I don’t know why a man, unless he has received “the right hand of fellowship,” should button himself up in one. Yes, there they sat, as solemn as so many parsons, with their hats slouched over their faces, thinking to save time (while they ruined their eye-sight) by reading the morning papers as they joggled along to their offices. Meanwhile down came the pitiless snow, as I plodded along. _Plodded_, for every wheel-barrow, box, bale, cask, cart, and wagon, got purposely across my track; and not for the life of me could I remember a sentence of that ascension MS.

I tried not to meet any body, but I met every body, and every body WOULD speak to me: beggars stopped me, country folks singled me out to inquire the way--_me!_ why _me?_ with a street full of people? Did I direct them wrong? Let them learn to ask somebody next time who does not mourn a lost MS.; somebody whose life is not spent in locking up things and losing the keys; somebody who is not required to write an article with a stupid chambermaid flying in and out every ten minutes, leaving your door ajar, whirling your papers across the room, and scattering your ideas to the remorseless winds; somebody whose meals are not _always_ not to be had, when type and printers wait for no woman.

This is a digression. I reached the goal at last; simply and only because one who keeps moving must inevitably fetch up somewhere. I performed my errand, or thought I had, till I had got half-way home, when I recollected an important fact omitted--_n’importe_. I was desperate now. Guns and pistols could not have turned my steps back again. How it blew! how it snowed! I did not hurry one step; I took a savage pleasure in thinking of my spoiled bonnet-ribbon, wet feet, and ice-ermined skirts. I even stopped, as I observed some umbrella-shielded pedestrian looking wonderingly at me, and gazed with affected delight at the miserable feminine kick-shaws in the shop windows, just to show my sublime indifference to the warring elements.

I reached my room, by dint of climbing the obnoxious stairs. I turned the key, as I fondly hoped, on all my species.

Rat, tat, rat, tat!

Shall I hear it?

Not I!

Rat, tat, tat, rat, tat!

It is of no use; I shall go mad with that thumping. I had rather face Cloven Foot himself than hear it. I open the door; it is my washerwoman. She has a huge pile of clothes to be counted, and sorted, and paid for, too! She dumps them down on the floor, just as if every minute was not to me so much gold-dust until that MS. was resurrectionized. I look around for my list of the clothes. It is not in the big dictionary, no, nor in the Bible, no, nor in the pocket of my blue, red, gray, green, or plaid dress.

Bother! I exclaim, I can’t find it. I dare say you have them all right; so I commence taking them out, and counting the pieces with an eye to her pay. What’s that? A dickey, two shirts, and a vest! I hold them up to the light with the tips of my fingers.

Woman alive! what need has a female of such garments?

She had made a mistake. She had brought me Mr. ----’s clothes--I will not expose him by telling his name, for they were wretchedly ragged; but as I turned the key again on them and her, I squeezed this drop of comfort out of my misery--Thank heaven, I have not to mend those clothes!

Rat, tat, tat! Merciful man! what now?

A bundle of proofs, big as my head, to read and return by the bearer immediately, and quick at that.

I sat down. So did the devil. I began to read, pen in hand. I could not remember, with my bewildered brain, whether “_stet_” stood for “let it be,” or “take it out;” or what “_d_” signified in a typesetter’s alphabet. I read on. Could it be possible that _I_ ever wrote such a disconnected sentence as this? No, they have left out an entire line; and forgot to send the MS. copy, too!

Devil take it! I exclaim; and so he does (the literal infernal!) and is out of sight before I can explain that the unorthodox exclamation was wrung out of me by the last drop in my brimming cup on that unlucky day.

A HOT DAY.

Sissing fry-pans, and collapsed flapjacks--what a hot day! Not a breath of air stirring, and mine almost gone. Fans enough, but no nerve to wield ’em. Food enough, but no strength to chew it. Chairs hot; sofa hotter; beds hottest. Sun on the back stoop; sun on the front stoop; and hot neighbors on both sides. Kittens mewing; red-nosed babies crying; poor little Hot-ten-tots! dogs dragging about with protruding tongues and inquiring tails; cockerels feebly essaying to crow. Every thing sticky, and flabby, and limpsy. Can’t read; can’t sew; can’t write; can’t talk; can’t walk; can’t even sleep; hate every body who passes through the room to make it hotter.

Now, just see that fly. If I have knocked her off my nose once, I have done it forty times; nothing will serve her but the bridge of my nose. I say _her_, because I am sure it is a female, on account of its extraordinary and spiteful persistence.

“Will I have any thing to drink?” No. Wine heats me; lemonade sours me; water perspires me. “Will I have the blinds closed?” No. “Will I have ’em open?” No. “What _will_ I have?” Well--if there’s an old maid to be had, for heaven’s sake, walk her through this room to cool it. “What will I have for dinner?” Now, isn’t that the last drop in my brimming cup? Dinner, indeed! Soup hot; fish hot; beef hot; mutton hot; chicken hot;--ugh! Hot potatoes; hot squash; hot peas; hot pudding; hot children;--ugh! Tell that butcher to make his will, or get out of my kitchen. “Lady down stairs wishes to see me?” In the name of Adam and Eve, take all my dresses off the pegs and show her--but never believe I’d be so mad as to get into them for any body living.

FUNERAL NOTES.

Was there ever any thing like these insensate New Yorkers? Peep with me into that undertaker’s shop, sandwiched between a millinery establishment and an oyster saloon. See the coffins, Behemoth and Lilliputian, pyramided in corners, spread out in rows, challenging in platoons, on the sidewalk, the passers-by; while in the windows are corpse-caps, stiffly starched and plaited, with white ribbon strings, ready to be tied under your chin, or mine.

See the jolly owner, seated on a chair in the middle of his shop, with his legs crossed, his hat on the back of his head, nonchalantly smoking, with his children about his knee; as if the destroying angel had charge to pass unvisited _his_ blood-besprinkled door-post; as if eyes now bright with hope were never to weep themselves dim over those narrow houses.

Now a customer comes in; a young man, whose swollen lids tell their own sorrowful tale. The jolly undertaker, wide awake, throws away his cigar stump, hands a chair to the new comer, exchanges a few words with him, draws pencil and paper from his pocket, and _taking an infant’s coffin into his lap for a writing desk_, commences scribbling down directions. Meanwhile, a hearse rattles up to the door; none of your poor-house hearses, in rusty black, with “seedy” driver, and hang-dog looking horses; but a smart, sonsie, gay-looking New York turn-out--fit for a turtle-consuming, turtle-consumed mayor; with nine huge ostrich feathers, black and white, nodding patronizingly to the a-gape urchins, who stand around the door, who are almost willing to get into a coffin to have a ride with them--with two spanking white horses, equal to Dan Rice’s “Excelsior,” with ostrich feathers in either ear, flowing as their well-combed tails, which whisk gracefully over the black velvet pall and trappings, as if Life were a holiday and Death its Momus.

Now the young man staggers out, shuddering as he passes the hearse, and screening his swollen lids from curious gazers and the obtrusive sunshine, to whom broken hearts are an every-day story. The jolly undertaker rubs his hands, for death is busy and business is brisk. The young man has made no bargain with him beforehand as to prices; how could he? his heart was full of the widowed sister he left behind, and her newly-made orphans; he only remarked, as he left the street and number, “to do what is customary;” and custom requires that carriages shall be provided for all the “friends and acquaintances” who may wish to go. So “friends and acquaintances” gather (when the funeral hour arrives). Why not? The day is fine and a ride to the out-of-town cemetery pleasant, and (to them) inexpensive; they whose eyes scarce rested with interest on the living form, gaze ceremoniously and curiously on the dead; the widow’s tears are counted, the mourning dresses of herself and children scrutinized; the prayer that always falls so immeasurably short of what critical ears demand, is said; a great silence--then a rustling--bustling--whispering--then the coffin is borne past the widow, who sees it through a mist of tears; and then the long procession winds its way through harlequin Broadway, with its brass bands, and military companies, its thundering omnibusses, its bedizened courtezans, its laughing pedestrians, and astonished, simple-hearted country-folk. Wheels lock, milk carts and market wagons join the procession; Barnum’s band pipes from out the Museum balcony merry “Yankee Doodle,” and amid curses and shouts, laughter and tears, the mournful cavalcade moves on.

And now the incongruous showy farce is over, and the “friends and acquaintances” alighting at their respective houses, re-cross their unblighted thresholds, and the widow and children return to their desolate hearth-stone (_how_ desolate, God and themselves only know); while poverty, strange and unbidden guest, creeps stealthily after them, and takes the empty chair.

O clamorous tyrant, Custom! O thoughtless, unfriendly friends, who can mourn for the dead only in carriages, that swallow up the little legacy left for the living, by the dead for whom you profess to grieve!

Beautiful the calm faith of Swedenborg, turning its hopeful eye away from such childish sackcloth mummery; anchoring where no wave of earthly trouble rolls; gliding through the accustomed life-paths, not lonely, not hopeless; feeling still the warm life-clasp, hearing still the loved voices, breaking the bread, or blessing the meat.

THE “FAVORITE” CHILD.

Why will parents use that expression? What right have you to have a _favorite_ child? The All-Father maketh his sun to shine alike upon the daisy and the rose. Where would you be, were His care measured by your merits or deserts? Is your child none the less your child, that nature has denied him a fluent tongue, or forgotten her cunning, when, in careless mood, she fashioned his limbs? Because beauty beams not from the eye, is there no intelligence there? Because the rosy flush mantles not the pale cheek, does the blood never tingle at your coldness or neglect? Because the passive arms are not wound about your neck, has the soul no passionate yearnings for parental love? O, how often does God, more merciful than you, passing by the _Josephs_ of your household, stoop in his pity and touch those quivering lips with a live coal from off the altar? How often does this neglected one, burst from out the chrysalis in which your criminal coldness has enveloped him, and soaring far above your wildest parental imaginings, compel from your ambition, what he could not gain from your love?

How often does he replenish with liberal hand the coffers which the “favorite child,” in the selfishness which you fostered, has drained of their last fraction. “He that is first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” Let parents write this on their heart tablets. Let them remember it when they repulse the little clinging arms, or turn a deaf ear to the childish tale of sorrow. O, gather up those clinging tendrils of affection with gentlest touch; trample them not with the foot of haste or insensibility rudely in the dust.

“And they, in the darkest of days, shall be Greenness, and beauty, and strength to thee.”

A QUESTION, AND ITS ANSWER.

To Mary M., who desires a frank expression of opinion from the undersigned, with regard to her marrying an old bachelor.

Answer. Don’t do it. A man who for so long a period has had nobody but himself to think of, who knows where the finest oysters and venison steaks are to be found, and who has for years indulged in these and every other little selfish inclination unchecked, will, you may be sure (without punning), make a most miserable _help-meat_. When you have tea, he will wish it were coffee; when you have coffee, he will wish it were tea; when you have both, he will desire chocolate; and when you have all, he will tell you that they are made much better at his favorite restaurant. His shirts never will be ironed to suit him, his cravats will be laid in the drawer the wrong way, and his pocket-handkerchiefs marked in the wrong corner. He will always be happy to wait upon you, provided _your_ way is his way; but an extra walk round a block will put him out of humor for a week. He will be as unbending as a church-steeple--as exacting as a Grand Turk, and as impossible to please as a teething baby. Take my advice, Mary; give the old fossil the mitten, and choose a male specimen who is in the transition state, and capable of receiving impressions.

WINTER.

Hoary-headed old Winter, I have had enough of you! Not that I shrink from facing your rough breath, in a ten-mile walk, on the coldest day on which you ever made icicles; for I am no fair-weather sailor, not I; I have no thousand-dollar dress to spoil, and I am not afraid to increase the dimensions of my ankle by a never-to-be-sufficiently-adored India-rubber boot. I am dependent neither upon cars nor omnibusses, though I am, like other mortals, sometimes brought up short for want of a ferry-boat; but I am tired of frozen ground. I am tired of denuded trees, and leafless vines and branches, scraping against walls and fences, in the vain attempt to frictionize a little warmth into their stiffened limbs. I am tired of gray skies, and the mournful wailing of the winter wind; the stars have a steel-like glitter, and the moonbeams on the snow petrify me like the ghost of a smile on the face of a wire-drawn old maid. I long, like a prisoned bird, for a flight into green fields--I can not sing without the blossoming flowers. I would go to sleep with them, nor wake till the soft spring sheds warm, joyful tears, to call forth her hidden treasures.

And yet, old Winter, I have liked thee less well than now; when the hungry fire devoured the last remaining faggot, and Nature’s frozen face was but typical of the faces that my adverse fortune had petrified; but who cares for thee or them? So surely as prosperity brought back their sycophantic smiles, so surely shall thy stiff neck be bowed before the bounty-laden Spring. “Hope on--hope ever;” and yet how meaningless fall these words upon the ear of the poor widow, who but a stone’s throw from my window, sits watching beside her dead husband, heeding neither the wailing cry of the babe at her breast, nor the wilder wail of the winter wind, as it drifts the snow against the door.

“Hope on--hope ever.” She looks at you with a vacant stare, and then at the lifeless form before her, as if that were her mute answer. You tell her to trust in God, when it is her bitterest sorrow that the voice of her rebellious heart is, “Ye have taken away my idol, and what have I left?”

“Left?” poor mourner. O, so much, that you can not see until those falling tears have cleared your vision and eased your pain. “Left?” the sweet memory of unclouded earthly love, of which not even death can rob you; tones and looks which you will count over, when no human eye sees you, as the miser tells his hoarded gold.

“Left?” his child and yours, who, with the blessed baptism of holy tears, you will call God’s. “Left?” O, many a household, whose inmates pressing their anguished brows under _living_ sorrows, would bless God for the sweet memories of earthly love that you cling to in your pain. “Left?” tearful mourner; a crown to win, sweeter for the wearing, when thorns have pressed the brow.

“Left?” a cross to bear, but O, so light to carry, when heaven is the goal!

“One by one thy griefs shall meet thee, Do not fear an armed band; One will fade as others greet thee, Shadows passing through the land.

“Do not look at life’s long sorrow, See how small each moment’s pain; God will help thee for to-morrow, Every day begin again.”

A GAUNTLET FOR THE MEN.

I maintain it: all the heroism of the present day is to be found among women. I say it to your beards. I am sick of such remarks as these: “Poor fellow! he was unfortunate in business, and so he took to drinking;” or--“poor fellow! he had a bad wife, and lost all heart.” What does a _woman_ do who is unfortunate in business, I would like to know? Why--she tries again, of course, and keeps on trying to the end of the chapter, notwithstanding the pitiful remuneration man bestows upon her labor, notwithstanding his oft-repeated attempts to cheat her out of it when she has earned it! What does a woman do, who has a bad, improvident husband? Works all the harder, to be sure, to make up his deficiencies to her household; works day and night; smiles when her heart and back are both breaking; speaks hopeful words when her very soul is dying within her; denies herself the needed morsel to increase her children’s portion, and crushed neither by the iron gripe of poverty, nor allured by the Judas-smile of temptation, hopefully puts her trust in Him who feedeth the sparrows.

She “the weaker sex?” Out on your pusillanimous manhood! “Took to drinking because he was unhappy!” Bless--his--big--Spartan--soul! How I admire him! Couldn’t live a minute without he had every thing to his mind; never had the slightest idea of walking round an obstacle, or jumping over it; never practiced that sort of philosophical gymnastics--couldn’t grit his teeth at fate, and defy it to do its worst, because they chattered so;--poor fellow! Wanted buttered toast, and had to eat dry bread; liked “2.40,” and had to go a-foot; fond of wine, and had to drink Croton; couldn’t smoke, though his stove-pipe did; rushed out of the world, and left his wife and children to battle with the fate that his coward soul was afraid to meet. Brave, magnanimous fellow!

Again--we are constantly hearing that the extravagance of women debars young men from the bliss of matrimony. Poor things! they can’t select a wife _from out_ the frivolous circle of fashion; there are no refined, well-educated, lady-like, practical girls and women, whom any man, with a man’s soul, might be proud to call wife, nobly struggling for an honest maintenance as writers, governesses, teachers, semptresses, and milliners. They never read such an advertisement as this in the papers:

“Wanted, by a young girl, a situation as governess. She can teach the English branches, French and Italian; and is willing to accept a small remuneration, to secure a respectable home.”

Fudge! None so blind as they who _won’t_ see. The truth is, most of the young men of the present day are selfish to the backbone. “Poor,” too--very poor!--never go to Shelby’s or Delmonico’s for a nice little game supper, washed down with champagne at $2 a bottle; never smoke dozens of cigars a day, at six cents a piece; never invite--_themselves_ to go to concerts, the opera, or the theater! Wish they could afford to get married, but can’t, at least not till, as they elegantly express it, “they meet a pretty girl who has the tin.”

SOLILOQUY OF A LITERARY HOUSEKEEPER.

“Spring cleaning!” Oh misery! Ceilings to be whitewashed, walls to be cleaned, paint to be scoured, carpets to be taken up, shaken, and put down again; scrubbing women, painters, and whitewashers, all engaged for months a-head, or beginning on your house to secure the job, and then running off a day to somebody else’s to secure another. Yes, spring cleaning to be done; closets, bags, and baskets to be disemboweled; furs and woolens to be packed away; children’s last summer clothes to be inspected (not a garment that will fit--all grown up like Jack’s bean-stalk); spring cleaning, sure enough. I might spring my feet off and not get all that done. When is that book of mine to get written, I’d like to know? It’s Ma’am, will you have this? and Ma’am, will you have that? and Ma’am, will you have the other thing? May I be kissed if I hadn’t more time to write when I lived in an attic on salt and potatoes, and scrubbed the floor myself. Must I turn my house topsy-turvy, and inside out, once a year, because my grandmother did, and send my MSS. flying to the four winds, for this traditionary “spring cleaning.” Spring fiddlestick! Must I buy up all Broadway to be made into dresses, because all New York women go fashion-mad? What’s the use of having a house, if you can’t do as you like in it? What’s the use of being an authoress, if you can’t indulge in the luxury of a shabby bonnet, or a comfortable old dress? What’s the use of dressing when your cook can outshine you? What is the use of dragging brocade and velvet through ferry-boats and omnibusses, to serve as mats for market-baskets and dirty boots? “There goes Lily Larkspur, the authoress, in that everlasting old black silk.” Well--what’s the use of being well off, if you can’t wear old clothes. If I was poor, as I was once, I couldn’t afford it. Do you suppose I’m going to wrinkle up my face, scowling at unhappy little boys for treading on a five-hundred-dollar silk? or fret myself into a fever because some _gentleman_ throws a cigar-stump on its lustrous trailing folds? no, no; life is too short for that, and much too earnest. Give me good health--the morning for writing, and no interruptions, plenty of fresh air afterwards, and an old gown to enjoy it in, and you may mince along in your peacock dry-goods till your soul is as shriveled as your body.

A BREAKFAST-TABLE REVERIE.

I looked up--they were laughing at me--I am accustomed to be laughed at--so it neither moved nor astonished me. They had been laughing because I had been reading so long, and so intently, the advertising page of my daily paper. And why not? when it is often to me the most interesting part of it. To be sure, I look at it with a pair of eyes that have not always been undimmed with tears; I think sometimes of the unwritten tragedy there may be in a four-line advertisement which scarce arrests the careless, laughing eye. I think of the days and nights of misery it took, the suffering and privation, to goad the sensitive heart up to its first appeal to the public ear--the trembling fingers which may have penned it--the tears which well-nigh obliterated it--the leaden feet which bore it, almost helplessly, to its destination.

No, I was not vexed that they laughed at me, for how should they, whose life-path had been always flower-bestrown, think of these sad things?

I had been reading what follows. Listen

“A young lady, suddenly thrown upon her own resources for support, desires a situation as Governess. She can teach all the English branches, understands French, German, and Italian, and would be willing to accept even the smallest compensation.”

I saw her! homeless--friendless--heart-broken; willing to accept the most humiliating, grinding conditions for a safe and _immediate_ shelter for her innocence. I saw the cold, calculating eye of some lady fashionist fasten upon the touching appeal. I saw her place the young girl’s pressing necessities in one scale, and her avarice in the other. I saw her include, in her acceptance of the post of governess, that of lace-laundress and nursery-maid; and I saw the poor young creature meekly, even thankfully, accept the conditions, while her wealthy patroness questioned her qualifications, depreciated her services, and secretly rejoiced at securing such a prize, at such an economical rate of compensation.

I saw another young girl similarly situated, but even less fortunate than the one of whom I have spoken. I saw the libidinous eye of a wretch who reads the advertising sheet with an eye to “young governesses,” fasten upon her advertisement. I saw him engage her, as he has others, for some fictitious family, in some fictitious place, constituting himself the head of it, and her escort on the way--only to turn, alas! her sweet innocent trust into the bitter channel of a life-long and unavailing remorse.

I took up the paper and read again:

“Who wants a boy?--A widower, with six children, will dispose of an infant to some family inclined to receive it.”

That a widower might possibly be so situated as to render such a measure necessary, I could conceive, but that a _father_ could pen such a brusque, hilarious, jocular--“_halloa-there_”--announcement of the fact, rather stunned me.

“Who wants a boy?”

As if it were a colt, or a calf, or a six-weeks young pup--or any thing under heaven but his own flesh and blood! as if the little innocent had never lain beneath the loving heart of _her_ whose last throb was for its sweet helplessness--last prayer for its vailed future.

Shade of the mother hover over that child!

I read again:

“Information wanted of a little girl, who, at the age of five years, was placed, ten years ago, in ---- alms-house.”

I thought of _her_ cheerless childhood (as I looked around my own bright hearthstone at my own happy children). I saw _her_ yearning vainly for the sweet ties of kindred. I followed her from thence out into the world, where all _but_ herself, even the humblest, seem to have some human tie to make life sweet; I saw her wandering hither and thither, like Noah’s weary dove, without finding the heart’s resting-place; wondering, when she had time to wonder (for the heavy burden of daily toil which her slender shoulders bent beneath), if one heart yet beats on God’s green earth, through which her own life-tide flows.

I think of this--I wonder _who_ it is who “wants information” concerning her. I wonder is it some remorseful relative, some brother, some sister, some father whose heart is at length touched with pity for the unrecognized little exile--ay--such things have been!

“Clerks out of employment.”

Need it be? With acres of fertile earth lying fair in the broad sunshine, waiting only the touch of their sinewy muscles, to throw out uncounted embryo treasures, while ruddy Health stands smiling at the plow!

Then I read of starving seamstresses, with no stock in trade but their needle; nothing but that too often, God help them! between their souls and perdition; and, then, in the very face of my womanly instincts, I say, _let_ them lecture--_let_ them preach--let them even be doctors, if they will (provided they keep their hands off me!)

Then I read, alas! advertisements, which promise youth and purity to lead them through the scorching fires of sin unharmed, unscathed, which say that the penalty annexed by a just God to his violated laws (even in this world), _they_ will turn aside; that a man _can_ take fire into his bosom and _not_ be burned. And then I think that the editor who for paltry gain, throws such firebrands into pure and happy homes _should look well that the blight fall not on his own_.

But there is comedy as well as tragedy in an advertising sheet. I am fond of poetry; my eye catches a favorite extract from Longfellow, or Bryant, or Percival, or Morris; I read it over with renewed pleasure, blessing the author in my heart the while. I am decoyed into the building to which it serves as a fairy vestibule. Where do I find myself?

By Parnassus! in a carpet-warehouse--in a sausage-shop--in a druggist’s--shoemaker’s--tailor’s--or hatter’s establishment.

Who shall circumscribe American ingenuity where dollars and cents are concerned?

Answer me, great Barnum!

A GLANCE AT A CHAMELEON SUBJECT.

“Tell you what are the fashions?” I, who am sick of the very word fashion? who could shake hands with every rustic I meet, for very delight at his napless hat, and ark-like coat?

You should be surfeited, as I am, with harlequin costumes; disgusted, as I am, with troops of women, strutting, like peacocks, to show their plumage; but who, less sensible than peacocks, never _shed their feathers_. You should see brocades, and silk velvets, fit only for carriage or dinner dresses, daily mopping up the tobacco pools on these unmitigatedly nasty sidewalks. You should see the gay little bonnets, and oh! you should see the vapid, expression-less, soul-less faces beneath them. You should see the carriages, with their liveried servants, in our republican streets, and the faces, seamed with _ennui_ and discontent, which peer through the windows, from beneath folds of lace and satin.

You should see how this dress furore infects every class and circle. You should see the young apprentice girl who can afford but one bonnet, buying a flimsy dress-hat, to be worn in all weathers; securing for Sunday, a showy silk dress and gilt bracelet, when she has hardly a decent chemise, or petticoat, and owns, perhaps, but one handkerchief, and a couple of pairs of stockings. You should see the wife of the young mechanic, with her embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and flaunting pink parasol, while she can number but one pair of sheets, and one table-cloth. You should see her children, with their plumed hats, while

## parti-colored, dilapidated petticoats peep from beneath their dresses,

and they are shivering for the want of warm flannels. You should see the servant-girl, with her greasy flounces, and soiled artificial flowers. You should see young men, with staring diamond pins stuck on their coarse shirt-bosoms, with shabby velvet vests, and mock chains looped over them.

You should go into the “furnishing stores for ladies’ and children’s garments;” and see how _impossible_ it is to find _plain_, _substantial_ articles of clothing _for either_--two thirds, at least, of the cost of every article being for elaborate trimming, and ruffling, and useless embroidery. You should go into the “ladies’ cloak stores,” and see these garments loaded indeed with gay trimmings, but miserably thin, and ill-adapted for winter wear; hence the _stories_ of garments you frequently notice on New York ladies (as winter intensifies), as if one good, sensible, thickly-wadded, old-fashioned, outside garment, could, by any possibility, be more awkward and ugly than such an “arrangement,” and as if it were not a million degrees more comfortable, and less troublesome; but, then--Fashion says, No!

“Tell you the fashions?”

Excuse my rambling. Well; here they are, as near as I can find out:

Puff your hair and your skirts. Lace your lungs and your handkerchief. Put on the most stunning dress you can find; wear it of a _stumbling_ length, because Queen Victoria’s royal ankles are thick.

Take a handful of artificial roses, each of a different color, half a dozen yards of ribbon ditto, lace ditto. Secure them, for a bonnet, to your bump of amativeness, with two long pins. Then sprinkle the contents of a jeweler’s shop promiscuously over your person; and by no means, before you go out, omit drawing on a pair of bright _yellow_ gloves; that _sine quâ non_ of a New York woman’s toilette.

“Tell you the fashions?” Take a walk down Broadway, and see for yourself. If you have a particle of sense, it will cure you of your absorbing interest in that question during your natural life, though your name be written “Methuselah.”

FACTS FOR UNJUST CRITICS.

A few scraps from the “Life of Charlotte Bronte,” that I would like to see pasted up in editorial offices throughout the length and breadth of the land:

“She, Miss Bronte, especially disliked the lowering of the standard by which to judge a work of fiction if it proceeded from a feminine pen; and praise, mingled with pseudo-gallant allusions to her sex, mortified her far more than actual blame.

“Come what will,” she says, “I can not, when I write, think always of myself, and of what is elegant and charming in femininity; it is not on these terms, or with such ideas, that I ever took pen in hand, and if it is only on these terms my writing will be tolerated, I shall pass away from the public and trouble it no more.

“I wish all reviewers believed me to be a man; they would be more just to me. They will, I know, keep measuring me by some standard of what they deem becoming to my sex; where I am not what they consider graceful, they will condemn me.

“No matter--whether known or unknown--misjudged or the contrary--I am resolved not to write otherwise. _I shall bend as my powers tend._ The two human beings who understood me are gone; I have some who love me yet, and whom I love, without expecting or having a right to expect they shall perfectly understand me. I am satisfied, _but I must have my own way in the matter of writing_.”

Speaking of some attacks on Miss Bronte, her biographer says:

“Flippancy takes a graver name, when directed against an author by an anonymous writer; we then call it _cowardly insolence_.”

She also says:

“It is well that the thoughtless critics, who spoke of the sad and gloomy views of life presented by the Brontes in their tales, should know how such words were wrung out of them by the living recollection of the long agony they suffered. It is well, too, that they who have objected to the representation of _coarseness, and shrank from it with repugnance, as if such conception arose out of the writers, should learn, that not from the imagination, not from internal conception--but from the hard cruel facts, pressed down, by an external life upon their very senses, for long months and years together, did they write out what they saw, obeying the stern dictates of their consciences_. They might be mistaken. They might err in writing at all, when their afflictions were so great that they could not write otherwise than as they did of life. It is possible that it would have been better to have described good and pleasant people, doing only good and pleasant things (_in which case they could hardly have written at any time_): all I say is, that never, I believe, did women possessed of such wonderful gifts exercise them with a fuller feeling of responsibility for their use.”

A friend of Miss Bronte says:

“The world heartily, greedily enjoyed the fruits of Miss Bronte’s labors, _and then found out she was much to blame for possessing such faculties_.”

Mrs. Gaskell says:

“So utterly unconscious was Miss Bronte of what was by some esteemed ‘_coarse_’ in her writings, that on one occasion, when the conversation turned upon women’s writing fiction--she said, in her grave, earnest way, ‘I hope God will take away from me whatever power of invention, or expression I may have, before he lets me become blind to the sense of what is fitting, or unfitting to be said.’”

Fanny Fern says:

I would that all who critically finger women’s books, would read and ponder these extracts. I would that reviewers had a more fitting sense of their responsibility, in giving their verdicts to the public; permitting themselves to be swayed neither by personal friendship, nor private pique; speaking _honestly_, by all means, but remembering their own sisters, when they would point a flippant, smart article _by disrespectful mention of a lady writer; or by an unmanly, brutal persistence in tearing from her face the mask of incognito-ship, which she has, if she pleases, an undoubted right to wear_. I would that they would speak respectfully of those whose pure, self-denying life, has been through trials and temptations under which _their_ strong natures would have succumbed; and who tremblingly await the public issue of days and nights of single-handed, single-hearted weariness and toil. Not that a woman’s book should be praised because it is a woman’s, nor, on the contrary, condemned for that reason. But as you would shrink from seeing a ruffian’s hand laid upon your sister’s gentle shoulder, deal honestly, but, I pray you, _courteously_, with those whose necessities have forced them out from the blessed shelter of the home circle, into jostling contact with rougher natures.

TRY AGAIN.

“No woman ever produced a great painting or statue.”--_Ex._

On the contrary, she has produced a great many “statues,” who may be seen any sunshiny day, walking Broadway, in kid gloves and perfumed broadcloth, while “Lawrence” lies in ashes.

“No woman ever wrote a great drama.”--_Ex._

Ay--but they have lived one; and when worn out with suffering at hands which should have shielded them, have died without a murmur on their martyr lips.

“No woman ever composed a great piece of music.”--_Ex._

What do you call a baby?

“No woman was ever a great cook!”--_Ex._

True--it takes a man to get up a _broil_.

“Women have invented nothing outside of millinery since the world began.”--_Ex._

How can they? when they are so _hooped_ in?

“Women have written clever letters, tolerable novels, and intolerable epics.”--_Ex._

Indeed! It strikes me, though, that we have furnished you the material for yours; just tell me what _your_ “letters,” _your_ “novels,” _your_ “epics,” would have amounted to, without the inspiring theme--_woman_. When the world furnishes us _heroes_, perhaps _we_ shall write splendid novels, and splendid epics. Pharaoh once required bricks to be made “without straw.”

“Letters?” No man, since the world began, could pen a letter equal to a woman. Look at the abortions dignified by that name in men-novels; stiltified--unnatural--stiff--pedantic, or else coarse. You can no more do it than an elephant can waltz. The veriest school girl can surpass you at it. I have often heard men confess it (when off their guard). One thing at least we know enough to do, viz.: when we wish to make one of your sex our eternal and unchangeable friend we always allow him to beat us in an argument.

FAIR PLAY;

OR, BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY.

“It is too bad,” said a lady to me, not long since, “it is too bad; I am almost tired to death.” She had been to York on a shopping expedition; and, having finished her purchases, and returned, laden with them to the ferry, found two thirds of the seats in the _ladies’ cabin_ of the ferry-boat occupied by _men_, while she and several other ladies were compelled to stand till the boat reached the pier. “It is too bad,” she repeated; “they have no right to occupy the _ladies’_ cabin, when ladies are standing. Give them a dig, Fanny, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” said I; “the case, to my mind, is clearly against the coat-tails; more especially, as, when the boat touches the pier, they rush past the ladies, and by right of their pantaloons leap over the chain (which femininity must wait to see unhooked), in order to monopolize all the seats in the street cars, to the exclusion of the aforesaid dismayed and weary ladies. Most certainly I will give them a dig, my dear; it is an exhibition of ‘grab’ which is quite disgusting.”

But stay--have the _ladies_ no sins to answer for? May it not be just possible that the men are at last getting weary of rendering civilities to women who receive them as a matter of right, without even an acknowledging smile, or “Thank you?” May they not have tired of creeping, with an abject air, into cars and omnibusses, and gradually and circumspectly lowering themselves amid such billows of hoops and flounces? May they not at last have become disgusted at the absurd selfishness which ladies manifest on these occasions? the “sit closer, ladies,” of the conductors and drivers being met with a pouting frown, or, at best, the emigration of the sixteenth part of an inch to the right or left. And is it not a shame, that a deprecating blush should crimson a gentleman’s forehead because he ventures to seat himself, in a public conveyance, in the proximity of these abominable, limb-disguising, uncomfortable, monopolizing hoops? Women who are blessed with hips, should most certainly discard these nuisances, and women who are not, should know that narrow shoulders, and a bolster conformation, look more ramrod-y still, in contrast with this artificial voluminousness of the lower story.

And then the little girls! The idea of hunting under these humbugs of hoops, for little fairy girls, whose antelope motions are thus circumscribed, their graceful limbs hidden, and their gleeful sports checked--the monstrosity of making hideous _their_ perfect proportions, and rendering them a laughing-stock to every jeering boy whom they meet; and--worse than all--the _irreparable moral wrong_ of teaching them that comfort and decency must be sacrificed to Fashion! Bah!--I have no patience to think of it. I turn my pained eyes for relief to the little ragged romps who run round the streets, with one thin garment, swaying artistically to the motion of their unfettered limbs. I rush into the sculptor’s studio, and feast my eyes on limbs which have no drapery at all.

Yes, it is trying to feminine ankles and patience, to have gentlemen occupy ladies’ places in the “ladies’ cabin,” and gentlemen who do this will please consider themselves rebuked for it; but it is also disgusting, that women have not fortitude sufficient to discard the universal and absurd custom of wearing hoops. Nay, more, I affirm that any woman who has not faith enough in her Maker’s taste and wisdom, to prefer her own bones to a whale’s, deserves the fate of Jonah--minus the ejectment.

TO GENTLEMEN.

A CALL TO BE A HUSBAND.

Yes, I did say that “it is not every man who has a call to be a husband;” and I am not going to back out of it.

Has that man a call to be a husband, who, having wasted his youth in excesses, looks around him at the eleventh hour for a “virtuous young girl” (such men have the effrontery to be _very_ particular on this point), to nurse up his damaged constitution, and perpetuate it in their offspring?

Has that man a call to be a husband, who, believing that the more the immortal within us is developed in this world, the higher we shall rank with heavenly intelligences in the next, yet deprecates for a wife a woman of thought and intellect, lest a marriage with such should peril the seasoning of his favorite pudding, or lest she might presume in any of her opinions to be aught else than his echo?

Has that man a call to be a husband, who, when the rosy maiden he married is transformed by too early an introduction to the cares and trials of maternity, into a feeble, confirmed invalid, turns impatiently from the restless wife’s sick-room, to sun himself in the perfidious smile of one whom he would blush to name in that wife’s pure ears?

Has _he_ any call to be a husband, who adds to his wife’s manifold cares that of selecting and providing the household stores, and inquires of her, at that, how she spent the surplus shilling of yesterday’s appropriation?

Has _he_ any call to be a husband, who permits his own relatives, in his hearing, to speak disrespectfully or censoriously of his wife?

Has _he_ any call to be a husband, who reads the newspaper from beginning to end, giving notice of his presence to the weary wife, who is patiently mending his old coat, only by an occasional “Jupiter!” which may mean, to the harrowed listener, that we have a President worth standing in a driving rain, at the tail of a three-mile procession, to vote for, or--the contrary? and who, after having extracted every

## particle of news the paper contains, coolly puts it in one of his many

mysterious pockets, and goes to sleep in his chair?

Has _he_ a call to be a husband, who carries a letter, intended for his wife, in his pocket for six weeks, and expects any thing short of “gunpowder tea” for his supper that night?

Has he a call to be a husband, who leaves his wife to blow out the lamp, and stub her precious little toes while she is navigating for the bed-post?

Has he a call to be a husband, who tells his wife “to walk on a couple of blocks and he will overtake her,” and then joins in a hot political discussion with an opponent, after which, in a fit of absence of mind, he walks off home, leaving his wife transformed by his perfidy into “a pillar of salt?”

Has he any call to be a husband, who sits down on his wife’s best bonnet, or puts her shawl over her shoulders upside down, or wrong side out at the Opera?

Has he any call to be a husband, who goes “unbeknown” to his wife, to some wretch of a barber, and parts, for twenty-five cents, with a beard which she has coaxed from its first infantile sprout, to luxuriant, full-grown, magnificent, unsurpassable hirsuteness, and then comes home to her horrified vision a pocket edition of Moses?

Has he any call to be a husband, who kisses his wife only on Saturday night, when he winds up the clock and pays the grocer, and who never notices, day by day, the neat dress, and shining bands of hair arranged to please his stupid milk-and-water-ship?

TO THE LADIES.

A CALL TO BE A WIFE.

Has that woman a call to be a wife, who thinks more of her silk dress than of her children, and visits her nursery no oftener than once a day?

Has that woman a call to be a wife, who cries for a cashmere shawl when her husband’s notes are being protested?

Has that woman a call to be a wife, who sits reading the last new novel, while her husband stands before the glass, vainly trying to pin together a buttonless shirt-bosom?

Has that woman a call to be a wife, who expects her husband to swallow diluted coffee, soggy bread, smoky tea, and watery potatoes, six days out of seven?

Has she a call to be a wife, who keeps her husband standing on one leg a full hour in the street, while she is saying that interminable “last word” to some female acquaintance?

Has she a call to be a wife, who flirts with every man she meets, and reserves her frowns for the home fireside?

Has she a call to be a wife, who comes down to breakfast in abominable curl-papers, a soiled dressing-gown, and shoes down at the heel?

Has she a call to be a wife, who bores her husband, when he comes into the house, with the history of a broken tea-cup, or the possible whereabouts of a missing broom-handle?

Has she a call to be a wife, whose husband’s love weighs naught in the balance with her next door neighbor’s damask curtains, or velvet carpet?

Has she a call to be a wife, who would take advantage of a moment of conjugal weakness, to extort money or exact a promise?

Has she a call to be a wife, who “has the headache” whenever her husband wants her to walk with him, but willingly wears out her gaiter boots promenading with his gentlemen friends?

Has she a call to be a wife, who takes a journey for pleasure, leaving her husband to toil in a close office, and “have an eye, when at home, to the servants and children?”

Has she a call to be a wife, who values an unrumpled collar or crinoline more than a conjugal kiss?

Has she a call to be a wife, to whom a _good_ husband’s society is not the greatest of earthly blessings, and a house full of rosy children its best furnishing, and prettiest adornment?

MATRIMONIAL ADVERTISEMENTS.

That prurient young men, and broken-down old ones, should seek amusement in matrimonial advertisements, is not so much a matter of surprise; but that respectable papers should lend such a voice in their columns, is, I confess, astonishing. I do not say that a virtuous woman has never answered such an advertisement; but I do say, that the virtue of a woman who would do so is not invincible. There is no necessity for an attractive, or, to use a hateful phrase, a “marketable” woman, to take such a degrading step to obtain what, alas! under legitimate circumstances, often proves, when secured, but a Dead Sea apple. It is undesirable, damaged, and unsaleable goods that are oftenest offered at auction. A woman must first have ignored the sweetest attributes of womanhood, have overstepped the last barrier of self-respect, who would parley with a stranger on such a topic. You tell me that marriage has sometimes been the result. Granted: but has a woman who has effected it in this way, bettered her condition, how uncongenial soever it might have been? Few husbands (and the longer I observe, the more I am convinced of the truth of what I am about say, and I make no exception in favor of education or station) have the magnanimity to use justly, generously, the power which the law puts in their hands. But what if a wife’s helplessness be aggravated by the reflection that she has _abjectly solicited_ her wretched fate? How many men, think you, are there, who, when out of humor, would hesitate tauntingly to use this drawn sword which you have foolishly placed in their hands?

Our sex has need of all the barriers, all the defenses, which nature has given us. No--never let woman be the wooer, save as the flowers woo, with their sweetness--save as the stars woo, with their brightness--save as the summer wind woos--silently unfolding the rose’s heart.

A SABLE SUBJECT.

Every day, in my walks, I pass a large bow window on the corner of two streets, in which is displayed the agreeable spectacle of big and little coffins of all sorts and shapes, piled up and standing on end. This is in bad taste enough; but yesterday, through the ostentatious glass-windows of the shop, I saw a little rosy baby crawling over and around them, while the elder children were using them for play-houses for their dolls! Now such a sight may strike other people agreeably, or they may pass it every day with entire indifference; unfortunately for my peace of mind, I can do neither one nor the other, for by a sort of horrid fascination my eyes are attracted to that detestable window, and familiarity but increases my disgust.

Now I know I shall need a coffin some day or other; but to-day the blue sky arches over my head, the fresh wind fans my temples, and every blade of grass, and new-blown violet, makes me childishly happy; now what right has that ghoul of an undertaker to nudge me in my healthy ribs as I pass, check my springing step, send the blood from my cheek back to my heart, change my singing to sighing, and turn this bright glorious earth into one vast charnel-house? In the name of cheerfulness, I indict him, and his co-fellows, for unmitigated nuisances.

And while I am upon this subject I would like to ask why the New York sextons, for I believe it is peculiar to them, should have the exclusive privilege of advertising their business on the outer church-walls, any more than the silversmith who furnishes the communion-plate; or the upholsterer who makes the pulpit and pew-cushions; or the bookseller who furnishes the hymn-books; or the dry-goods merchant who sells the black silk to make the clergyman’s robe? It strikes me that it is a monopoly, and a very repulsive one. In my opinion, this whole funeral business needs reforming. Much of the shrinking horror with which death is invested even to good Christians, is traceable to these repulsive, early associations, of which they can not, by any exercise of faith, rid themselves in after years. These unnecessary, ostentatious, long-drawn-out paraphernalia of woe; these gloomy sable garments, which all should unite in abolishing; these horrible pompous funerals, with their pompous undertakers, where people who scarce ever glanced at the living face congregate to sniffle hypocritical tears over the dead one; these stereotyped round-about prayers that mean so little, and which the mourner never hears; this public counting of scalding tears by careless gazers at the grave-yard or the tomb; it is all horrible--it need not be--for the sake of childhood, often, through fear of death, all its life-time subject to bondage, it _ought not_ to be. Even the “heathen,” so called, have the advantage of us in the cheerfulness with which they wisely invest a transition, from which flesh and blood, with its imperfect spiritualization, instinctively shrinks.

NEW YORK.

“There is no night there,” though spoken of a place the opposite of New York, is nevertheless true of Gotham; for by the time the ennuied pleasure seekers have yawned out the evening at the theater or opera, and supped at Taylor’s, or danced themselves lame at some private ball, a more humble but much more useful portion of the community are rubbing open their eyelids, and creeping by the waning light of the street lamps, and the gray dawn, to another brave day of ill-requited toil; while in many an attic, by the glimmer of a handful of lighted shavings, tear-stained faces resume the coarse garment left unfinished the night before. At this early hour, too, stunted, prematurely-old little boys may be seen, staggering under the weight of heavy shop window shutters, and young girls, with faded eyes and shawls, crawl to their prisoning workshops; while lean, over-tasked omnibus horses, commence anew their never-ceasing, treadmill rounds. God help them all! my heart is with the oppressed, be it man or beast.

The poet says there are “sermons in stones.” I endorse it. The most eloquent sermons I ever heard were from “_A. Stone_;” (but that is a theme I am not going to dwell upon now.) I maintain that there are sermons in _horses_.

Crash--crash--crash!

I turned my head. Directly behind me, in Broadway, was a full-freighted omnibus. One of the horses attached had kicked out both his hind legs, snapped the whiffle-tree to the winds, and planting his hoofs into the end window, under the driver’s seat, had shivered the glass in countless fragments, into the faces of the astonished passengers, plunging and rearing with the most ’76-y spirit. Ladies screamed, and scrambled with what haste they might, out on to the pavement; gentlemen dropped their morning papers, and uttering angry imprecations as they brushed the glass splinters from their broadcloth, followed them; while the driver cursed and lashed in vain at the infuriated hoofs, which abated not a jot of their fury at all his cursing and lashing.

“Vicious beast!” exclaimed one bystander. “Ought to be shot _instanter_!” said a second. “I’d like to lash his hide raw!” exclaimed a third Nero.

Ah! my good friends, thought I, as I went laughing on my way, not so fast with your anathemas. The cause of that apparently malicious and unprovoked attack, _dates a long way back_. Count, if you please, the undeserved lashings, the goadings, and spurings, that noble creature has borne, while doing a horse’s best to please! Think of the scanty feed, the miserable stable, the badly-fiting, irritating harness; the slippery pavements, where he has so often been whipped for stumbling; the melting dog-days with their stinging bottle-flies and burning sun-rays, when he has plodded wearily up and down those interminable avenues, sweating and panting under the yoke of cruel task-masters.

’Tis the last ounce which breaks the camel’s back; ’tis the last atom which balances the undulating scales. Why should that noble horse bear all this? He of the flashing eye, arching neck, and dilating nostril? He of the horny hoof and sinewy limb? _He!_--good for a _score_ of his oppressors, if he would only think so!--_Up go his hoofs!_ As a Bunker Hill descendant, I can not call that horse--a jackass.

AIRY COSTUMES.

Are the New York children to be frozen this winter, I want to know? Are their legs to be bared from the knee to the tip of their little white socks, just above the ankle, to please some foolish mother, who would rather her child were a martyr to neuralgia and rheumatism, its natural life, than to be out of fashion? Are sneezing babes to face the winter wind in embroidered muslin caps, lined with silk, the costly lace borders of which are supposed to atone for the premature loss of their eye-sight? Are little girls to shiver in cambric pantalettes, and skirts lifted high in the air by infantile hoops? Are their mothers to tiptoe through the all-abounding “slosh” of New York streets, in paper-soled gaiters, and rose-colored silk stockings? And yet one scarcely cares about the latter, because the sooner such “mothers of families” tiptoe themselves into their graves, the better for coming generations; but for the children, one can but sigh, and shiver too; and inquire, as did an old-fashioned physician of a little undressed victim, “If cloth was so dear that her mother could not afford to cover her knees?” It is a comfort to look at the men, who, whatever follies they may be guilty of (and no human arithmetic can compute them), have yet sense enough to wear thick-soled boots, and wadded wrappers in the proper season. One looks at their comfortable garments and heaves a sigh for breeze and mud-defying pantaloondom; for with the most sensible arrangements for skirts, they are an unabated and intolerable nuisance in walking; and yet those horrid Bloomers! those neutral, yet “strong-minded” Miss Nancys! with their baggy stuff-trowsers, flaping fly-aways, and cork-screw stringlets. I _could_ get up a costume! but alas! the brass necessary to wear it! I see now, with my mind’s eye, the jaunty little cap, the well-fitting, graceful pants, the half-jacket, half-blouse--the snow-white collar, and pretty fancy neck-tie--the ravishing boot--the nicely fitting wrist-band, with its gold sleeve-buttons; but why awake the jealousy of the other “sect?” Why drive the tailors to commit suicide in the midst of their well-stocked warehouses? Why send little boys grinning round corners? Why make the parson forget his prayers, and the lawyer his clients? Why drive distracted the feminine owners of big feet and thick ankles? Why force women to mend the holes in the heels of their stockings? Why leave to scavengers the pleasant task of mopping up dirty streets and sidewalks? Why drive “M. Ds.” to take down their signs, and take up “de shovel and de hoe?” I’ll be magnanimous. I won’t do it.

A PEEP AT THE OPERA.

I was at the opera last night. It was all gas-glare, gilding and girls. Oh, the unspeakably tiresome fix-up-ativeness of New York women! The elaborate hair-twistings and braidings; the studied display of bracelets and rings; the rolling-up of eyes, and casting-down of eye-lashes; the simperings and smirkings; the gettings-up and sittings-down, ere the fortunate attitude is fixed upon; the line at which a shawl must be dropped to show a bust; the ermine sheets, worn without reference to lily or leopard complexions; the fat damsels who affect Madonna-ism; the lean women, whaleboned to “Peter Schemel”-ism; the tinsel-y head-dresses; the gaudy opera-cloaks; the pray-do-look-at-me air; the utter absence of simplicity, and of that beautiful self-forgetfulness which is the greatest charm of woman. It is a relief to see some honest country people stray in, simply cloaked and bonneted (and old-fashioned and homely at that,) who, ignorant of the mighty difference between “point” and cotton-lace, ermine and cat-skin, drop into a seat, ignore their artificial neighbors, and lose themselves in the illusions of the stage.

Mark GRISI! What perfection of grace in attitude, what simplicity and appropriateness in costume, what a regal head, what massive white shoulders, what a queenly tread. How could such an imperial creature ever love that effeminate little pocket-edition--MARIO? A _pretty_ man! with his silky locks parted in the middle, and a little dot of an imperial under his little red lip! Antidote me his effeminacy, oh memory, with the recollection of Daniel Webster’s unfathomable eyes and Lucifer-ish frown;--something grand--something noble--something _homely_ if you like, but for Heaven’s sake, something _manly_.

HARD TIMES.

“Is _me_ velvet j-a-c-k-e-t ready to try on?” drawled a lady, dropping her elegant cashmere from one shoulder, as she sauntered into Mme. ----’s dress-making saloon.

“It is not,” replied the young girl in waiting.

“_Ve’y_ extraordinary--_ve’y_ surprising; madame promised it, without fail, this morning.”

“Madame has been unexpectedly called out,” replied the girl, coolly rehearsing the stereotyped fib.

“_Ve’y_ perplexing,” muttered the lady; “_ve’y_ ridiculous--pray, when _will_ she see me?” she asked (unwilling to trust the draping of her aristocratic limbs to less practiced hands).

“This afternoon at five,” answered the girl, fibbing a second time, knowing very well that it was part of madame’s tactics to keep her saloon daily filled with just such anxious expectants, up to the last endurable point of procrastination. And there they sat, poor imbeciles! grouped about the room, pulling over the last fashion prints, overhauling gayly-colored paper dress patterns, discussing modes, robes, basques, and trimmings, with the most ludicrously-grave earnestness, ordering ruinous quantities of point lace and velvet, with the most reckless abandon, and vying which should make themselves look most hideously-Babylonish and rainbow-like; while their husbands and fathers, in another part of the city, were hurrying from banks to counting-houses, sweating and fretting over “protested notes,” care, meanwhile, anticipating old Time in seaming their brows, and plowing their cheeks with wrinkles.

* * * * *

In an unfashionable, obscure part of the city, in the basement of a small two-story house, sat a woman of twenty-seven years, the mother of _ten_ children, who were swarming about her like a hive of bees--fat, clean, rosy, noisy, merry, and happy. They had little space for their gymnastics, it is true, the little room dignified as “the parlor” being only twelve feet square; back of this was a dark bedroom, leading to a small kitchen, filled with the usual variety of culinary utensils. The pot of potatoes for their simple dinner, was boiling over the kitchen fire; the happy mother of this little family was putting the last touches to a silk dress for a lady in the neighborhood; and the baby was sleeping as sweetly, as though its brothers and sisters were not using their lungs and limbs, as God _intended_ children’s lungs and limbs should be used. On a small table in the corner lay a pile of medical books--for the father of these ten children was absent at a medical lecture, preparatory to a physician’s practice.

“Poor George!” said the prolific young mother, with a laugh--“all these big books yet to be crammed into his curly head; never mind--I had rather do all my own work, take in dress-making, and support the family two years longer, than that he should be disappointed in his favorite wish of becoming a doctor. There he comes!” said she, dropping her needle, as a dark-eyed, intelligent-looking, mercurial little fellow bounced into the room--snatched the baby from the cradle--jumped pell-mell into the laughing group of little boys and girls, and kissed his wife’s forehead, as he helped her to draw out the dinner-table.

Ah, thought I, as I contrasted this with the scene at Madame B----’s saloon, better is a dinner of potatoes where _love_ is, than a stalled ox and a protested note therewith!

COUNTER IRRITATION.

“That is all clerks are fit for,” said a heartless woman, who had been diverting herself with turning a store full of goods topsy-turvy.

Is it?

Is the situation of a clerk always a congenial one? Have those who occupy it never a soul above ribbons and laces? Are they as frivolous, and mindless as many of the ladies upon whom they are often obliged to wait? Is their future bounded by the counter to which necessity has chained them?

Not at all.

Look into our library reading-rooms of an evening. See them joining the French, Spanish, German, and Italian classes. See them, unconscious of the flight of time, devouring with avidity works of history, biography, and books of travel. See the eye sparkle, and the brow flush, as they read how a Greeley shut his teeth on discouragement, and hewed out with his unaided arm a path to honor and usefulness. Ah! has the clerk no noble, hopes or aspirations for the future, which the grinding, treadmill round of his daily toil can neither smother nor crush out? Is there no far-off home from which he is an unwilling exile? No mother, no sister, whom he must make proud of son and brother? No bright-eyed, winsome young girl, whose image enshrined in his heart is at once a talisman against evil, and a spur to unremitting exertion? the hope of whose love sweetens and dignifies his unpretending labor, nerves him to bear uncomplainingly, unresentfully, the overbearing and undeserved rebuke of arrogant assumption?

You shake your head, and cite sad instances to the contrary. You tell me of dishonest, dissolute, improvident clerks, lost to every just, generous, and noble feeling; who look not beyond the present hour either for soul or body.

True.

But what if, when they entered upon their clerkship they stood alone in the world, uncared for, irresponsible, held in check by no saving home influences, adrift upon the great human life tide? What if their employers looked upon them merely as tools and machines, not as human beings? What if they ground them down to the lowest possible rate of compensation. What if never by look, act, word, or tone, they manifested a kindly parental interest in their future, cared not what company they kept, or what influences surrounded them in their leisure hours? What if these young men returned at night, after their day’s meagerly rewarded toil, to a small, dreary, desolate, comfortless, lodging room, where there was nothing to cheer the eye or rest the heart? What if the syren voice of sin softly whispered those youthful, restless, craving hearts away?

What then?

Oh! if employers sometimes thought of this! Sometimes stopped the Juggernaut wheels of Mammon to look at the victims which lay crushed beneath, for want of a little human love, and care, and sympathy! Sometimes thought, while looking with fond pride upon their own young sons, that fortune’s wheel, in some of its thousand revolutions, might whirl them through the same fiery ordeal, and that their now unclouded sun might go down while it was yet day.

You, who are employers, think of it!

Youth hungers for appreciation--sympathy--must have it--ought to have it--_will_ have it. Oh, give it an occasional thought whether the source from whence it is obtained be good or evil, pure or impure! Speak kindly to them.

Oh, the saving power there is in feeling that there is one human being who cares whether we stand or fall!

SUNDAY IN GOTHAM.

’Tis Sabbath morning in Now York. You are wakened by children’s voices, pitched in every variety of key, vying which shall shout the loudest: “Her’ld--_Dis_patch--Sun’y Times--Sunny Atlas”--parenthetized by an occasional street-fight between the sturdy little merchants, when one encroaches on the other’s “beat.” You have scarce recovered from their ear-splitting chorus, before the air is rent by a sound like ten thousand Indian war-whoops, and an engine thunders by, joined by every little ragamuffin whose legs are old enough to follow. Close upon the heels of this comes the milk-man, who sits philosophically on his cart, and glancing up at the windows, utters a succession of sounds, the like of which never was heard in heaven above, or earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.

Now, saloons and cigar stores open half a shutter each, and apple-stalls multiply at street corners. Then the bells ring for church, and, with head and heart distracted, you obey the summons. On your way you pass troops of people bound to Hoboken, Jersey, Williamsburg--anywhere, but to the house of God. Groups of idle young men, with their best beavers cocked over one eye, stand smoking and swearing at the street corners; and now Yankee Doodle strikes on your ear, for the dead is left to his dreamless sleep, and the world jogs on to a merrier measure.

You enter the church porch. The portly sexton, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, meets you at the door. He glances at you: your hat and coat are new, so he graciously escorts you to an eligible seat in the broad aisle. Close behind you follows a poor, meek, plainly-clad seamstress, reprieved from her treadmill round, to think one day in seven of the Immortal. The sexton is struck with a sudden blindness. She stands one embarrassed moment, then, as the truth dawns upon her, retraces her steps, and, with a crimson blush, recrosses the threshold, which she had profaned with her plebeian foot.

Now the worshipers one after another glide in; silks rustle; plumes wave; satins glisten; diamonds glitter; and scores of forty-dollar handkerchiefs shake out their perfumed odors.

What an absurdity to preach the gospel of the lowly Nazarite to such a set! The clergyman knows better than to do so. He values his fat salary and his handsome parsonage too highly. So with a velvet-y tread he walks round the ten commandments, places the downiest of pillows under the dying profligate’s head, and ushers him with seraphic hymning into an upper-ten heaven.

From this disgusting farce let me take you to the lecture-room of the Rev. Dr. Tyng. It is the first Sunday afternoon of the month (when he regularly meets the children of his parish, who are mostly members of his Sabbath-school). It would seem an easy thing to address a company of children. Let him who thinks so, try it! Let him be familiar without being flat; let him be instructive, and at the same time entertaining; let him fix roving eyes; let him nail skittish ears; let him stop just at the moment when a child’s mental appetite has lost its digestive power. All this requires a--Dr. Tyng.

See--group after group of bright faces gather around him, and take their seats; not one is afraid of “the minister.” He has a smile of love and a word of kindness for all. He has closed his church _purposely_ to meet them, and given the grown-folks to understand, that the soul of a child is as priceless as an adult’s, and that he has a message from God for each little one, as well as for father and mother and uncle John. He asks some question aloud. Instantly a score of little voices hasten to reply, as fearlessly as if they were by their own fire-side. He wishes to fix some important idea in their mind: he illustrates it by an anecdote, which straightway discloses rows of little pearly teeth about him. He holds up no reproving finger when some lawless, gleeful little two-year-older rings out a laugh musical as a robin’s carol. He calls on “John,” and “Susy,” and “Fanny,” and “Mary,” with the most parental familiarity and freedom. He asks _their opinion_ on some point (children like that!), he repeats little things they have said to him (_their_ minister has time to remember what even a little child says!) He takes his hymn-book and reads a few sweet, simple verses; he pitches the tune _himself_, and, at a wave of his hand, the bright-eyed cherubs join him.

Look around. There is a little Fifth Avenue pet, glossy haired, velvet skinned--her dainty limbs clad in silk and velvet. Close by her side, sits a sturdy, freckled, red-fisted little Erin-ite, scantily clad enough for November, but as happy, and as unconscious of the deficiency as his tiny elbow neighbor; on the same seat is a little African, whose shiny eye-balls and glittering teeth, say as plainly as if he gave utterance to it, _we are all equal, all welcome here_.

Oh, _this_ is Christianity--this is the Sabbath--this is millennial. Look around that room, listen to those voices, if you can, without a tear in your eye, a prayer in your heart, and Christ’s sweet words upon your lips: “_Feed my Lambs_.”

ANNIVERSARY TIME.

MR. GOUGH AT THE OPERA HOUSE.

Funny, isn’t it? Country ministers, with their wives and daughters, in the unhallowed precincts of an Opera House! I trust they crossed themselves on the threshold, by way of exorcising Beelzebub. Observe their furtive glances at the naked little dimplednesses perched upon yonder wooden pillars. How legibly is--Saints and angels! where are those children’s trowsers? written upon the elongated corners of their evangelical mouths. R-a-t-h-e-r different, I confess, from the Snagtown “meetin’-house,” with its slam-down seats, its swallow-nested roof, and its shirt-sleeved chorister; but, my strait-laced friends, if you strain at a harmless marble Cupid, how could you swallow an electric flesh-and-blood ballet-dancer? Such as we are wont to see in this house? I have tried to educate myself up to it, but may I be pinched this minute if I do not catch myself diligently perusing the play-bill, whenever they execute one of their astounding rotary _pas_. I can’t stand it; and yet my friends, at the risk of being excommunicated, allow me to say, that I would rather stand a ballet-dancer’s chance of getting to heaven, than that of many a vinegar-visaged saint of high repute in your churches.

But this is a digression. Just see those women seating themselves _on the stage_. Saucy as I am, I could not do that; nor, if I did, would I put my feet upon the rounds of a chair in front of me--and the audience. How patriarchal Solon Robinson looks, with his clear, calm face, and his long, snow-white beard! He is quite a picture. What a pity he ever burned his fingers with “Hot Corn.” But let him throw the first stone who has never by one well-meant, but mistaken act of his life, called forth the regretful “what a pity!” The river which never overflows its banks may never devastate, nor--does it ever freshen the distant and arid Sahara. Many a poor man has blessed, and will bless, the name of Solon Robinson; and many a hard-toiling woman, too, whom he has instructed how to procure the most nutriment for her starving children from an old bone or a couple of onions. Let those who make wry mouths at “Hot Corn,” taste his “poor man’s soup,” and do justice to the active brain and philanthropic heart of its originator.

I used to think the “New York Tribune,” of which Solon is agricultural editor, a great institution, until I discovered two things: first, the number of able, talented, practical men employed in its getting up; secondly, that a _bull’s head_ is kept constantly seething in the machine boiler to impart a wholesome ferocity to its paragraphs!

Hush! here comes the speaker of the evening--John B. Gough, supported by Dr. Tyng (who believes in preaching to dear little children, as well as to their fathers and mothers). John says, “Ladies and gentlemen” (not--_Gentlemen_ and ladies, as do some ungallant orators). “Ladies and gentlemen, when the admission tickets are twenty-five cents I feel doubtful of giving you your money’s worth; judge then how a fifty cent ticket embarrasses me.” A very politic preface, John; but ere you had spoken five consecutive sentences, I knew it was mock-modesty. You know very well that no man understands better how to sway a crowd; you know that many an audience, who yawn through addresses that are squared, rounded, and plumb-ed by nicest rules of rhetoric, will sit spell-bound unconscious hours, and laugh and cry at _your_ magnetic will. John, you are a good and a great institution, and right glad am I that the noble cause in which your eloquence is enlisted, has so pleasing and indomitable a defender.

But John--it is not all in _you_. Double-edged is the sword wielded in a _just_ cause; and not a man, woman, or child has listened to your burning words to-night who did not know and feel that you spoke God’s truth.

Success to the Temperance cause, and all its apostles, both great and small; and above all, _never_ let _woman’s_ lip baptize the bowl, which, for aught she can tell, may sepulcher her dearest hopes this side heaven.

WAYSIDE WORDS.

I wonder is there a country on the face of the earth, where the Almighty is oftener called upon to send to perdition the souls of those who offend its inhabitants? Everywhere that horrid imprecation, so familiar that it is unnecessary to shock you by writing it, meets the pained ear. I say pained, because I, for one, can not abhor it less on account of its frequency, or consider it less disgusting, because it filters through aristocratic lips. Everywhere it pursues me; in crowded streets, on ferry boats, in omnibusses, and, I am sorry to say, in ladies’ parlors, which should afford a refuge from this disgusting habit.

From old men--whose toothless lips mumble it almost inarticulately; from those who would resent to the death any question of their claim to the title of gentlemen; from young men, glorious else, in the strength and vigor of youth; and sadder still--from little children, who have caught the trick, and bandy curses at their sports. _An oath from a child’s lips!_ One would as soon expect a thunderbolt from out the heart of a rose. And yet, there are those who deliberately _teach_ little children to swear, and think it sport, when the rosy lips, with childish grace, lisp the demoniac lesson.

An oath from a _woman’s_ lips! With shuddering horror we shrink away, and ask, what bitter cup of wrong, suffering, and despair, man has doomed her to drink to the dregs, ere she could so belie her beautiful womanhood.

One lovely moonlight night, I was returning late from the opera, with a gentleman friend, the delicious tones I had heard still floating through my charmed brain. Suddenly from out a dark angle in a building we passed, issued a woman; old, not in years, but in misery, for her long, brown hair curtained a face whose beauty had been its owner’s direst curse. To my dying day I shall never forget the horrid oaths of that wretched woman as she faced the moonlight and me. Perhaps I had evoked some vision of happier days, when she, too, had a protecting arm to lean upon; sure I am, could she have read my heart, she would not have cursed me. But oh, the wide gulf between what she must have been and what she was! Oh, the dreadful reckoning to be required at the hands of him who defaced this temple of the living God, and left it a shapeless, blackened ruin!

CHARLOTTE BRONTE.

Who has not read “Jane Eyre?” and who has not longed to know the personal history of its gifted author? At last we have it. Poor Charlotte Bronte! So have I seen a little bird trying bravely with outspread wings to soar, and as often beaten back by the gathering storm-cloud--not discouraged--biding its time for another trial--singing feebly its quivering notes as if to keep up its courage--growing bolder in each essay till the eye ached in watching its triumphant progress--up--up--into the clear blue of heaven.

Noble Charlotte Bronte! worthy to receive the baptism of fire which is sent to purify earth’s gifted. I see her on the gloomy moors of Haworth, in the damp parsonage-house--skirted by the grave-yard, sickening with its unwholesome exhalations, crushing down, at the stern bidding of duty, her gloomy thoughts and aspirations; tending patiently the irritable sick, performing cheerfully the most menial household offices; the days “passing in a slow and dead march;” cheered by no mother’s loving smile, or rewarding kiss; waiting patiently upon the hard, selfish, unsympathizing father, who saw, one by one, his gifted daughters sink into untimely graves, for want of the love, and sympathy, and companionship for which their yearning hearts were aching.

I see these sisters at night, released from toil, when their father had retired to rest, denied the cheerful candle-light, pacing up and down, in utter darkness, the dreary little sitting-room, talking of the vacant past and present, and trying vainly to pierce the impenetrable future for one glimmering ray of hope; and as years passed on, and vision after vision faded away--alas! with those who wove them--I see Charlotte, the last survivor of that little group, pacing _alone_ that desolate sitting-room; while the winds that swept over the bleak moor, and through the church-yard, and howled about the windows, seemed to the excited imagination of the lonely, feeble watcher, like the voices of her sisters shrieking to be again enfolded in her warm, sisterly embrace. Alone--_all_ alone!--no shoulder to weep upon--no loving sister’s hand to creep about her waist--the voices of her soul crying eternally, unceasingly, vainly, Give, give--and he who gave her life, sleeping, eating, drinking, as stoically as if ten thousand deaths were not compressed, to that feeble girl, into each agonized moment.

One smiles now, when the praise of “Jane Eyre” is on every tongue, at the weary way the author’s thumbed manuscript traveled from publisher to publisher, seeking a resting-place, and finding none; and when at length it did appear in book form--the caution of the sapient book-dissecting “London Athenæum” containing only “very qualified admissions of the power of the author”--also of “The Literary Gazette,” which “considered it unsafe to pronounce upon an unknown author;” also at “The Daily News,” which “did not review novels”--but found time soon afterward to notice others. Mistaken gentlemen! you were yet, like some others of your class, to take off your publishing and editorial hats to the little woman who was destined to a world-wide fame, but--and if ye have manly hearts they must have ached ere now to think of it--not until the bitter cup of privation and sorrow had been so nearly drained to the dregs by those quivering lips, that the laurel wreath, so bravely, hardly won, was twined with the cypress vine.

Literary fame! alas--what is it to a _loving_ woman’s heart, save that it lifts her out of the miry pit of poverty and toil? To have one’s glowing thoughts handled, twisted, and distorted by coarse fingers; to shed scalding tears over the gravest charge which can be untruthfully brought against a woman’s pen; to bear it, writhing in silence, and have that silence misconstrued, or speak in your own defense, and be called unwomanly; to be a target for slander, envy, and misrepresentation, by those of both sexes who can not look upon a shining garment without a wish to defile it--all this, a man’s shoulders may be broad enough to bear, but she must be a strong _woman_ who does not stagger under it.

I see Charlotte Bronte in the little parsonage parlor, at Haworth, draperied, hung with pictures, furnished, at last, with books from the proceeds of her own pen; and upon the vacant chairs upon which should have sat the toiling, gifted sisters, over whom the grave had closed, I see inscribed, Too late--Too late! and I look at its delicate and only inmate, and trace the blue veins on her transparent temples, and say, Too late!--even for _thee_--Too late! Happiness is not happiness if it be not shared--it turns to misery. But, thank God, at last came the delirious draught of love, even for so brief a space, to those thirsting lips--but which, incredible as it may seem, the father, in his selfishness, would have dashed aside; relenting at last, he gave up this tender, shrinking flower to more appreciative keeping; but the blast had been too keen that had gone before--the storms too rough--the sky too inclement. We read of a wedding, the happiness of which the selfish father must cloud at the last moment, by refusing, for some inexplicable reason, or no reason at all, to give away the bride in person according to episcopal usage--we read of a short bridal tour--of a return to a love-beautified, love-sanctified home--we read of a pleasant walk of the happy pair--of a slight cold taken on that occasion--of a speedy delirium--of a conscious moment, in which the new-made bride opened wide her astonished eyes upon her kneeling husband, pleading with God to spare her precious life; and we read the heart-rending exclamation of the latter as the truth flashed upon her clouded intellect--“O! I am not to die _now_?--when we have been so happy?” and with streaming eyes we turn away from the corpse of Charlotte Bronte.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Note:

This book contains inconsistent hyphenations which have been left as printed. Corrections to punctuation have been made without comment. Other changes that have been made are:

Page 70 From posssible To possible

Page 103 From what do you thing of this? To what do you think of this?

Page 138 From betwen the leaves To between the leaves

Page 181 From and and her heart To and her heart

Page 194 From friendles sonly To friendless only

Page 218-219 From childred To children

Page 258 From coat-of arms To coat-of-arms

Page 278 From Soup hop; fish hot; To Soup hot; fish hot;

Page 297 From mingled wth To mingled with

The original chapter numbering has been retained, despite there being two chapters numbered “IV” in the “Fanny Ford” Story.