Part 19

Did you ever stop short in the midst of the grind, and toil, and whirl of life, at the thought. After all, what will this never ceasing fret of body and soul amount to? Did you ever then begin to reckon upon your fingers the unfulfilled promises of life within your knowledge, as if you had but just heard of them? First, there is your acquaintance, Mr. ----, who, since he came to years of maturity, has had but this one object: to secure a pecuniary independence for himself and his children. At fifty he has achieved it; and now he has nothing to do but to enjoy himself. But _how_? That is the question which racks his brain day and night. He has his library, to be sure; that was part of the furnishing of his house; but, alas! he has no taste for reading. He has fine pictures upon his walls; but he has no eye for their beauty. He has daughters; but they are devoured with the love of finery and fashion. He has sons; but they are emulating each other in spending money, criminally and foolishly; and now he stands aghast at the goal, to reach which he has sacrificed the better part of himself and them; his sun is setting, and he has only the ashes of the Dead Sea Apple of Victory between his fingers.

Then there is Mrs. ----, who has staked all on her beautiful young daughter. She was educated at home, for fear of the contamination of associates; she was never from under the watchful eye of her parents, lest her manners should receive a flaw. She was drilled to speak, step, look, smile, eat, and drink, according to prescribed rules. She must perfect herself in music, in the languages, in drawing. Her eyes, hands, teeth, nails, must undergo a careful supervision each day, lest any attraction should be prematurely shorn of its glory. At last she dawns into beautiful womanhood. The evening is fixed for her triumphant entrance into society. Dress-makers, hair-dressers, jewellers, and florists are called into requisition. The important toilette is finished; when suddenly the house is thrown into consternation by her violent indisposition; and before morning the young girl sleeps in her shroud.

The anguished woman groans out, "Ye have taken away my idol, and what have I left?" and she feels that life for her has nothing left but a dreary waiting for its close.

Then there are the great army of parents, whose heart-strings are wrung with pity at the little eyes which may never see, the little ears which may never hear, the little feet which may never skip or run, and the mute tongues which may never syllable the sweet words, "Father!" "Mother!" Then there are sons whose god is the wine-cup; and living daughters whose own mothers had rather look upon their dead faces. These heart-wrenchings and disappointments, are they not legion? And yet, like children, whose toys, one after another, are broken, or taken from them, we still reach out our hands for the gilded bubble of hope, all the same as if it had never burst between our fingers. When our dearly-loved children are taken from us, our torn heart-strings hasten to twine about _their_ children; forgetting the _little_ feet that have also trod "the dark valley." Surely, by this love-yearning, which may never die in us, shall we find in another world than this, its uninterrupted and perfect fruition.

_JACK SIMPKINS._

It is a miserable thing to be born a philanthropist. Jack Simpkins can tell you that. He thinks that one ought not to be merry, while the world is so much out of joint. When his sister Betty tells him that cheerfulness conduces to longevity, and that it is useless to make one's self miserable about inevitables, Jack lifts his eyebrows and accuses her of triviality and want of feeling. Not long since this pair went into a place which shall be nameless, for some refreshment, after an evening's public entertainment. While they were waiting to be served, Jack's eye fell on the clerk at the desk, who, pen behind his ear, was taking money and making change. "Betty," said Jack, "look at that poor devil; week in and week out, there he stands, seeing other people eat and counting money. Now, I'll be sworn he has never a holiday, and not even Sunday. Do you suppose he has, Betty?"--"I am sure I don't know," Betty replied, looking over a tempting bill of fare, with the accompaniment of an extended forefinger; "he is a _man_, isn't he? and that implies every kind of liberty. Were he a woman, and restricted to the choice of one or two occupations, and not half paid at that, I might possibly make myself unhappy about it; as it is, let us have some oysters, and be jolly."--"But," persisted Jack, "just think of his confined position, and--"--"But I don't _want_ to think about it," said Betty; "this is a free country; and if he don't like his place, can't he leave it? Come, Jack, eat your oysters." To do Jack justice, he _did_ eat with a will; for such a wide-spread benevolence as his is never supported on an empty stomach.

The oysters eaten, Betty congratulated herself that Jack felt more cheerful. Not a bit of it. While she stood, like a hen on one leg, waiting for him to "settle" at the clerk's desk, he remarked to the latter, in a melancholy, commiserating tone, "Your situation here must be a very tiresome and confining one; don't you find it so?"--"Not at all," replied the clerk, blandly; "quite the contrary."--"Do you ever have a holiday; do you have Sundays?" asked Jack.--"Always when I wish," replied the clerk; "but I don't care to be away much. I see the best people in the city here, and I have a great deal of good conversation." Betty smiled inwardly. It was not in human nature--certainly not in female human nature--to refrain from crowing a little over what she considered Jack's Quixotic philanthropy; and when she laughed at his waste of pity, in this case, that infatuated man replied, "Is it possible you can make merry over it, Betty? Why, to _my_ mind, his not '_caring_ for holidays' was the most melancholy feature of the whole thing; as showing how perfectly benumbed he must be, by such heartless exaction on the part of his employer."--"But you don't know anything about his employer," said Betty; "and it is evident that he _could_ go out, any day he wished." Jack shrugged his shoulders, and replied, "Ah, yes--I know what that '_could_' means, when a man's nature is yielding; ah--yes," and he gave another deep sigh. "Well," said Betty, getting a little irritated, "_I_ don't know what _you_ may think, but if my fellow-creatures are perfectly satisfied with their lot in life, I for one am not going to try to make them miserable about it." Whereupon Jack preached her a long lecture on the sin of selfishness, which quite stopped the process of oyster digestion, and sent her to bed to enjoy the horrors of a well-earned nightmare.

Once, when Betty and Jack were travelling, they stopped at a fine hotel. Everything was as perfect as skill and system could make it. Jack paid the bill, and Betty launched out in praise of the establishment. "Yes," said Jack, his face lengthening; "but I am afraid that landlord feeds his guests much better than he can afford. I don't think he charged as much as he ought in that bill of ours. I really feel as if he had cheated himself." Now, Betty's experience in this regard was entirely antagonistic to Jack's, so she replied, with an ironical and not very amiable expression, "that if the gift of a ten-dollar bill to the landlord would lighten her brother's conscience, she would be willing to engage that the former would by no means take offence at it."

Betty says that selfishness is not _her_ besetting sin any more than it is Jack's; and, if you doubt it, you can ask him to transfer his glass of ale to you when he cannot get another, or you can read his daily paper before he does in the morning, and see what will come of it. She thinks it is not so much philanthropy in Jack, as that the off-side of a question has such an unconquerable attraction for him; in other words, that argument is his very breath; and, therefore, without vexing her spirit any more because he never will agree with her, she has instead made up her mind, that what side soever of a question a person takes when conversing with Jack, it is morally certain that no power in this world or the other will ever prevent _him_ from going to the opposite.

"_BIDING THE LORD'S TIME._"

If there is one piece of advice more bandied about by irresolution, imbecility, and moral cowardice than this, I should be glad to know it. As _I_ take it, the Lord's time is the first chance you get. At any rate, those who act on this principle have, as a general thing, done the Lord more service than they who have folded their hands and sat down upon the stool of conservatism to "bide His time," as they call it. All the great reformers who have blessed mankind have had pioneers, who looked upon "the Lord" as a helper, not a hindrance. The stumbling-blocks which for centuries had impeded progress they vigorously set about clearing away, without stopping to cross themselves for doing that which indolent or timid bystanders excused themselves from, as an irreverence.

This stealing of heaven's livery to serve the devil in, is of all thefts the most disgusting. This "fearing to offend a weaker brother" is a plea which self-interest should know by this time is getting to be transparent. If the weaker brother can't stand on his own vacillating legs, the rest of the world can't afford to spend their whole existence in propping him. Let him lie down till he can; or till the Juggernaut wheels of progress roll sufficiently near to _force_ him to spring to his feet. I don't believe in weak brothers. They had better get out of the ranks and join the sisters. It may be the choice between the frying-pan and the fire; for, after all, the silliest woman who ever cried for a ribbon knows enough to dislike the male creature who is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. But the most trying time, when the platitude we are considering is thrust into the face by moral parrots, is when they would not lift a finger to ease the burden of a fellow-creature who is staggering and fainting before their very eyes; or when some heart-wrench is being agonized through, and your stoical consoler, who is himself impervious to every suffering save that which is purely physical, iterates in your sensitive ear, a string of such time-worn phrases, because he lacks heart to say, Poor soul--no wonder you writhe; how I wish I could comfort you! "_The Lord_"--and I say it not irreverently--is the first compassionate human arm which is thrown round the quivering sufferer when he needs it most. "_The Lord_" is the first outstretched human hand which grasps the moral suicide as the last strand of hope is

## parting. "_The Lord_" is the pitying human heart which draws to itself

the poor outcast, and without unrolling his transgressions to the face of the broad day, stands firmly by his side, till he has won the self-respect to stand alone.

"Talk _out_!" exclaimed a little puzzled child to a foolish adult who was speaking to it in a way which it could not possibly comprehend. Talk _out_! say I, and call things by their right names. Now "_the Lord_," to my way of thinking, don't murder little babies. If a careless mother locks one up, with a cotton pinafore and a blazing fire, and goes away, I should not say over its coffin that it died by a visitation of Divine Providence. Nor when a drunken husband sends a wooden chair, and a tea-kettle, and a small table through his wife's skull, should I say that "the Lord" had seen fit in his inscrutable will to remove Mrs. Smith from this sublunary sphere. Still--I may be hypercritical--and after all, of course, I defer to your better theological judgment--but I will say _this_ much, that _my_ "Lord" don't do one half the things He is charged with, every day in the year.

_ONE SORT OF FOOL._

Now I like a fool--a genuine fool, who is obliviously unconscious of the fact! Life is too dull at best; a fool has his mission, and where's the harm of laughing, invulnerable as he is in his panoply of self-conceit? The fool I am thinking of this moment, however, is of the feminine gender--one who loomed upon my astounded vision in the cabin of a ferry-boat, gorgeous as a shivered rainbow, or a bed of variegated tulips, or a garden of staring sunflowers, which challenge notice, flauntingly forbidding quiet passers-by to go abstractedly on the winding way of their various duties and avocations. Thus challenged, I of course surveyed my challenger. Heavens! what an array of millinery and mantua-making was spread over that human lay-figure. What a vapid, inane face that gay bonnet framed; what big feet those cream-colored gaiters betrayed! What a sweep of flounce, and ruffle, and ribbon and lace. What an all-over consciousness of "go-to-meetin'" fixins, in every lineament and limb! What a _haven't I done it now?_ in every defying glance? It was astounding. I was mentally knocked over and stultified. And as if this were not enough, the woman actually had the sacrilegious presumption to perpetuate herself in a child which she led by the hand, a little four-year-older, bedizened in orange and black, and green and blue, and pink and purple, effectually stifling all the graces of childhood, if such a mother had bequeathed any. A little tottling bunch of brilliant dry-goods, happily putting an end to its existence, however, with double handfuls of sugar-candy, which the mamma was supplying without stint or limit. Disgusted steady-going business-men gazed and sighed like a pair of bellows, as they inwardly said to themselves, in the language of that eminent philosopher, Pop Weasel, "That's the way the money goes." Young men tittered, and old matrons wondered how her kitchen closets and cupboards, her pickle and preserve jars, looked at home. Meanwhile the child, unobserved, strayed from the maternal side to take a survey of the cabin, looking curiously round, much as you have seen an organ grinder's monkey. "George Washington!" We all started patriotically at the sound of this honored name, shouted from lungs that would not have disgraced an omnibus-driver; only to collapse again, smothering with laughter, as George Washington's mamma seized him by the belt, splitting her pea-green glove in the operation, and deposited him right end up with care upon the seat by her side, well pleased with her maternal prowess, and putting only a favorable construction upon the grinning faces around her.

There's a great deal of human nature in ferryboats; but be advised by me, and don't, if you can help it, get into one early, when the inveterate expectorators are abroad, and before the ladies, "God bless 'em!" (as the men say when they shut them out after dinner), have done us the favor to clean the cabin floors with their sweeping silks and brocades. Don't get into one early in the morning, when fingers are performing the office of combs, and quill toothpicks are rife. One is apt to be dainty at the belt at sunrise.

* * * * *

I suppose you have met some smooth-faced, plausible wretches, bowing and smirking you into the hottest purgatory. Now an honest enemy I know how to meet; but your malicious, mealy-mouthed, Watts'-Psalms-and-Hymns wretch, who takes your hand with his velvety palm only to tell you that your pulse is wrong, and that your father died at your age--I wonder if there _is_ salvation for such?

_THE FIRST BABY._

Heaven help that poor little victim of experiments, the first baby in a family. Upon whom every new and old nostrum is tried; who is overloaded with fine clothes, and feeding; who is constantly kept in a state of excitement by _cluck_ings, and _chuck_ings, and tossings, and ticklings, till he frets from sheer nervousness; and then--is blanketed, and physicked, and steamed, till he is as limp as a thread paper. Who is kept in a gaspingly close apartment six weeks, at the instigation of one grandmother, and driven out-doors, without regard to wind or weather, the next six, at the recommendation of the other. Who is so overburdened with toys, that he would prefer at any time a chance stick or twig of his own picking from the carpet or sidewalk, and who takes to fisticuffs from sheer weariness of being fondled.

What a moral millennium to such is the advent of a second, third, and fourth baby. When young master may sneeze, and the whole neighborhood not be called to witness the phenomenon. When, if he fall, he may sprawl there at least two whole minutes without a spoiling condolence, and make the wholesome discovery that he can pick himself up whenever he gets ready. When the playthings, over which he has been sole monarch, are ruthlessly snatched by the new baby's fingers, and he is taught, what he would never else have learned,--that this world was not made for _one_. When, fifty times a day, he must wait his turn to be served, instead of bringing all the household operations to a standstill, till his real or imaginary wants are satisfied. When an over busy mother at last clips the boy's long curls, which, pretty as they were, should have been laid on the altar of common-sense long ago. No longer do his little playmates call the tears to his eyes, by shouting after him "_girl-boy_." _Now_ he is one of "the fellows." There is no danger now of his being called into the parlor to be shown off to mamma's visitors, and flattered into precocious impertinence, for there is no knowing what rents are in elbows and knees, or how many coats of dirt are on his face. But meanwhile, thank heaven, he is not being spoiled, and the important process of self-education, i.e., poking his nose into everything, that he may find out the whys and wherefores, is going on. This blessed let-alone system, which, with proper limitations, is so necessary to a child at an age when its whole business should be to sleep, eat, and grow well, and which every successive birth in the family helps him to enjoy unmolested.

How surprising is the discovery to papa and mamma, and the whole troop of adulators, that the second, third and fourth baby, says, "pa-pa," "mamma," as well, and as early as that wonderful of a _first_!

How levelling and disgusting the knowledge that everybody's baby in the United States, without distinction of brown-stone-front houses, has done just that! And what fond idiots they must have appeared to lookers on, who had grown old rearing families. With what wonderment mamma now handles the first baby's robes, where she very nearly stitched in her life, in the anxiety to have all the absurd frills and embroidery that a tyrannical precedent has enumerated in such cases. _And now look at those of Johnny_--the last! Judging by his robes, he might have been _anybody's_ baby! Well, well, his eyes are as bright, and his limbs as dimpled, and his cheeks as rosy, as if his clothes were _not_ sensible and plain. In short, what a thing is experience. "Let us be careful, dear," says mamma, sagely, "to teach _our_ girls to do better than _we_ have." As if every young couple must not go through all these mistakes for themselves, and ten to one kill one baby, before they learn how to take care of the rest.

There never was a greater mistake made than when childhood is called the happiest portion of life. I have seen a little child's breast swell with an anguish as great as would ever agitate it though it should live to four-score. Call it "a trifle" if you will, that a playmate jeered before a laughing crowd of boy judges; no verdict of after-life would be harder to bear; and when, sure of sympathy, he tells the story to some one whom he fancies will sympathize, and that man or woman or child listens with indifference, or pooh-poohs it away--do you suppose that child will ever drink a bitterer drop? I tell you _nay_, and if the rough grinding heel of the busy, insatiate world, were not on us all the time, we should know and feel it. Nor is the suffering _momentary_, as many suppose. How can it be, when some such juvenile experience often colors a whole life? I say _children suffer immensely more than is believed_. Take a child's first day at school; thrust into a crowd of uproarious mischievous little savages, shrinking, cowering, trembling away from their rude contact, with heaving chest, and tear-laden eyes, choking down the misery made so intolerable by suppression, do you tell me that is "a trifle"? Take the child who sits intensely listening to some story related between grown-up people, when suddenly his presence is recollected and the peremptory summons "to bed," is promulgated without a thought of the _wise clemency_ of a reprieved ten minutes. I well remember in my days of pinafore and pantalettedom, an old maid who used to say "_that_ child," in a tone that made all my curls stand on end. For years I agitated my mind with the question whether old maids went to heaven; because, strong as were my predilections for that blissful state, I was in no wise content to share them with _her_. Nor, shall I soon forget the _transition age_, when too tall for short dresses and too short for tall ones; called "nothing but a child," when I was anxious to do the stately young lady; and begged to recollect that "I was no longer a child," when a fit of obstreperous romping overtook me with a vigor I could not resist; called a goose for blushing if a man spoke to me, and "did I think he could notice such a child as me?" and begged to remember "my manners" when I bounced off next time without noticing the young man. Driven to the verge of desperation by my inability to define my place in the world, and disgusted enough with this terrestrial ball to kick it as I would any other. A few more inches to my stature, however, settled all that. _Then was my time!_

While I am on this subject, I would like to ask, why should not a child's fancy in the way of food--I refer to their intense dislike of certain things--be regarded, as much as the repugnance of an adult. I consider it a great piece of cruelty to force a child to eat things that are repulsive to it, because somebody once wrote a wise saw to the effect, "that children should eat whatever is set before them." I have often seen the poor little victims shudder and choke at sight of a bit of fat meat, or a little scum of cream on boiled milk; toothsome enough to those who like them, but in _their_ case a purgatorial infliction. Whenever there is this decided antipathy, nature should be respected, _even in the person of the smallest child_; and he who would act otherwise is himself _smaller_ than the child over whom he would so unjustifiably tyrannize.