CHAPTER XXI.“A gin-sling, waiter! Strong, hot, and quick; none of your temperance mixtures for me;andwaiter, here, a beef-steak smothered in onions;andwaiter, some crackers and cheese, and be deuced quick about it, too. I’m not a man to betrifledwith, as somebody besides you will find out, I fancy,” said Mr. Scraggs, hitching his heels to the mantel, as the waiter closed the door.Mr. Scraggs was a plethoric, pursy, barrel-looking individual, with a peony complexion, pink, piggyeyes, and a nose sky-wardly inclined. His neck-cloth was flashy and greasy; his scarlet vest festooned with a mock chain; his shirt bosom fastened with green studs, and his nether limbs encased in a pair of snake-skin pantaloons. As the waiter closed the door to execute his order, he delivered himself of the following soliloquy, between the whiffs of his cigar:“Ha-ha! pardoned out, was he? turned peddler, did he? fathered the little gal, and sold tape to pay her board, hey? put her to boarding-school, and went to New Orleans to seek his fortin’? got shipwrecked and robbed, and the Lord knows what, and then started for Californy for better luck, did he? Stuck to gold-digging like a mole—made his fortin’, and then came back to marry the little gal, hey? That’ll be asIsay. She’s a pretty gal—may I be shot, if she ain’t; a deuced pretty gal—but she don’t come between me and my revenge. Not ’xactly! That blow you struck in the prison, my fine fellow, is not forgottenquiteyet. John Scraggs has a way of putting them little things on file. Hang me if it don’t burn on my cheek yet. Your fine broadcloth suit don’t look much like your red and blue prison uniform, Mr. Percy Lee. Your crop of curly black hair israthermore becoming than your shaven crown; wonder what your pretty love would say if she knew all that? if she knew she was going to marry the man who killed her own mother? and, pretty as she is, by the eternal, sheshall know it. But, patience—John Scraggs; a little more billing and cooing first; a little more sugar before the drop of gall brims over the cup. Furnish the fine house you have taken, Mr. Percy Lee, pile up the satin and damask, and picters, and statters, and them things—chuckle over the happiness you arenota going to have—for by the eternal, the gal may go the way the mother did, but my hand shall crushyou; and yet, I ain’t got nothing agin the gal, neither: she’s as pretty a piece of flesh and blood as I’ve seen this many a day. A delicate mate for a jail-bird, ha—ha.”“Waiter! waiter another gin-sling; hotter and stronger than the last; ’gad—fire itself wouldn’t be too strong for me to swallow to-day. Percy Lee’s wedding-day, is it? We shall see!“He will curl his fine hair, don his broad-cloth suit, satin vest and white gloves; look at his watch, and be in a devil of a hurry, won’t he? ha—ha. He will get into a carriage with his dainty bride, and love her all the better for her blushing and quivering; he will look into her pretty face till he would sell his very soul for her; he will lead her by the tips of her little white gloved fingers into church; then they’ll kneel before the parson, and he will promise all sorts of infernal lies. Then the minister will say, ‘if any one present knows any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in the holy state of matrimony, let him speak, or forever after hold his peace.’“Then is your time, John Scraggs—leap to his side like ten thousand devils; hiss in the gal’s ear that her lover is a jail-bird—that he’s her mother’s murderer—laugh when she shrinks from his side in horror, and falls like one stone dead; for by the eternal, John Scraggs is the man to do all that—and yet I ain’t got nothing agin the gal either.“But, stay a bit; that will be dispatching the rascal too quick. I’ll make slower work of it. I’ll prolong his misery. I’ll watch him writhe and twist like a lion in a net. I’ll let the marriage go on—I’ll not interrupt it; and then I’ll make it the hottest hell! The draught shall be ever within reach of his parched lips, and yet, he shall never taste it; for his little wife shall curse him. She shall be ever before him, in her tempting, dainty beauty, and yet a great gulf shall separate them. That’s it—slowtorture; patience—I won’t dispatch him all at once. I’ll lop off first a hand, then a foot, pluck out an eye, touch up a quivering nerve, maim him—mangle him—let him die a thousand deaths in one. Good! I’ll teach the aristocrat to fell me to the earth like a hound. A jail-bird—ha, ha; salt pork and mush, instead of trout cooked in claret; water in a rusty tin cup, instead of old Madeira, and Hock, and Sherry, and Champagne. Mush and salt pork—ha, ha. Too cursed good, though, for the dainty dog. I wish I’d been warden of the Bluff Hill prison. I’d have lapped up his aristocratic blood, drop by drop.”CHAPTER XXII.“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 beforeIget 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 hequitedead? 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, forhisbeing 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 contentedforeverto 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, letus 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 untowisemen.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 givesyoufair-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.Ihave 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 silksand 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,bravelyearned? 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,youhave 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.Younever 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 ofmybonnet-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 wrestedfrom 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, butinfatuated Sunday-school teachers, were bothering their brains with the doctrine of election. That’s whatIwould 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 willsurely 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;childrenare 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 ashortprayer 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 downTOM 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 porcelainpunch-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 tostuffing 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 Ihave 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’snom-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’sautograph! 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 “mirrorhissoul?”) 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 gaveher 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 amcomplainingof 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 knewexactlywhat it involved. I did not know, for instance, that the Press in speaking of her by hernom-de-plumewould call her “OurJulia,” 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 theHon.Amelia M. Murray, a lady of supposable refinement, education, and of the highest social position in England; a lady whose daily bread wasnotdependent 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 anequalamount 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 anyAmericanlady book yet published.The political question discussed by “theHon.” authoress, we shall not meddle with further than to say, first, that her book contains not one new ideaupon 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 thisfumigatedliquid had been driven through the streets; there are deaths here every day and some at Newport, butitis 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,andthis gentleman does credit to popular choice.”So much for theQueen’sEnglish! Now for one or two specimens of her penetration. The first quotation we make will undoubtedly cause as muchsurprise 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 thatthey 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 theHon.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 dignityas might have been evinced by one of the most experienced ofourpublic 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 aswomen, but as ladies, they are cared for, and this in Democratic America!”In the first place, every body but Miss Murray knows that an Americanladynever “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 hardlydisturb 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 ofMiss Murray’s assertion that it is “not aswomenbut 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, gotout, 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—thestep! And now there aretwoto 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! Givemethe 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 thefinalstep! 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 suchcreamyice-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 todaintyfyhis 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—GreatCæsar! whathavethe 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. Ahumanteacher, 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 thehumanteacher who recognizes, andactsas 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 PhiladelphiaCity 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 neverspeaks. 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 therecouldbe 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 theunderstanding, 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, toremainstone. Of course I sat down in the venerable, high-backed leather chair, in which so manygreat 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 andwindingway.“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 seewomenemployed 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 anif!Ifthe 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. Andifthe 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 thepubliceye 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 notproperfor 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 (whichIshould 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 theperformance, 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!
“A gin-sling, waiter! Strong, hot, and quick; none of your temperance mixtures for me;andwaiter, here, a beef-steak smothered in onions;andwaiter, some crackers and cheese, and be deuced quick about it, too. I’m not a man to betrifledwith, as somebody besides you will find out, I fancy,” said Mr. Scraggs, hitching his heels to the mantel, as the waiter closed the door.
Mr. Scraggs was a plethoric, pursy, barrel-looking individual, with a peony complexion, pink, piggyeyes, and a nose sky-wardly inclined. His neck-cloth was flashy and greasy; his scarlet vest festooned with a mock chain; his shirt bosom fastened with green studs, and his nether limbs encased in a pair of snake-skin pantaloons. As the waiter closed the door to execute his order, he delivered himself of the following soliloquy, between the whiffs of his cigar:
“Ha-ha! pardoned out, was he? turned peddler, did he? fathered the little gal, and sold tape to pay her board, hey? put her to boarding-school, and went to New Orleans to seek his fortin’? got shipwrecked and robbed, and the Lord knows what, and then started for Californy for better luck, did he? Stuck to gold-digging like a mole—made his fortin’, and then came back to marry the little gal, hey? That’ll be asIsay. She’s a pretty gal—may I be shot, if she ain’t; a deuced pretty gal—but she don’t come between me and my revenge. Not ’xactly! That blow you struck in the prison, my fine fellow, is not forgottenquiteyet. John Scraggs has a way of putting them little things on file. Hang me if it don’t burn on my cheek yet. Your fine broadcloth suit don’t look much like your red and blue prison uniform, Mr. Percy Lee. Your crop of curly black hair israthermore becoming than your shaven crown; wonder what your pretty love would say if she knew all that? if she knew she was going to marry the man who killed her own mother? and, pretty as she is, by the eternal, sheshall know it. But, patience—John Scraggs; a little more billing and cooing first; a little more sugar before the drop of gall brims over the cup. Furnish the fine house you have taken, Mr. Percy Lee, pile up the satin and damask, and picters, and statters, and them things—chuckle over the happiness you arenota going to have—for by the eternal, the gal may go the way the mother did, but my hand shall crushyou; and yet, I ain’t got nothing agin the gal, neither: she’s as pretty a piece of flesh and blood as I’ve seen this many a day. A delicate mate for a jail-bird, ha—ha.”
“Waiter! waiter another gin-sling; hotter and stronger than the last; ’gad—fire itself wouldn’t be too strong for me to swallow to-day. Percy Lee’s wedding-day, is it? We shall see!
“He will curl his fine hair, don his broad-cloth suit, satin vest and white gloves; look at his watch, and be in a devil of a hurry, won’t he? ha—ha. He will get into a carriage with his dainty bride, and love her all the better for her blushing and quivering; he will look into her pretty face till he would sell his very soul for her; he will lead her by the tips of her little white gloved fingers into church; then they’ll kneel before the parson, and he will promise all sorts of infernal lies. Then the minister will say, ‘if any one present knows any reason why these two shouldn’t be joined in the holy state of matrimony, let him speak, or forever after hold his peace.’
“Then is your time, John Scraggs—leap to his side like ten thousand devils; hiss in the gal’s ear that her lover is a jail-bird—that he’s her mother’s murderer—laugh when she shrinks from his side in horror, and falls like one stone dead; for by the eternal, John Scraggs is the man to do all that—and yet I ain’t got nothing agin the gal either.
“But, stay a bit; that will be dispatching the rascal too quick. I’ll make slower work of it. I’ll prolong his misery. I’ll watch him writhe and twist like a lion in a net. I’ll let the marriage go on—I’ll not interrupt it; and then I’ll make it the hottest hell! The draught shall be ever within reach of his parched lips, and yet, he shall never taste it; for his little wife shall curse him. She shall be ever before him, in her tempting, dainty beauty, and yet a great gulf shall separate them. That’s it—slowtorture; patience—I won’t dispatch him all at once. I’ll lop off first a hand, then a foot, pluck out an eye, touch up a quivering nerve, maim him—mangle him—let him die a thousand deaths in one. Good! I’ll teach the aristocrat to fell me to the earth like a hound. A jail-bird—ha, ha; salt pork and mush, instead of trout cooked in claret; water in a rusty tin cup, instead of old Madeira, and Hock, and Sherry, and Champagne. Mush and salt pork—ha, ha. Too cursed good, though, for the dainty dog. I wish I’d been warden of the Bluff Hill prison. I’d have lapped up his aristocratic blood, drop by drop.”
“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 beforeIget 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 hequitedead? 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, forhisbeing 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 contentedforeverto stay. Such a home had Fanny and Percy.
“The love born of sorrow, like sorrow is true.”
“The love born of sorrow, like sorrow is true.”
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, letus 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 untowisemen.
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 givesyoufair-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.
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.Ihave 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 silksand 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,bravelyearned? 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,youhave 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.Younever 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.
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 ofmybonnet-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 wrestedfrom 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, butinfatuated Sunday-school teachers, were bothering their brains with the doctrine of election. That’s whatIwould have done.
“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 willsurely 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;childrenare 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.
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 ashortprayer 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 porcelainpunch-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 tostuffing 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.
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 porcelainpunch-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 tostuffing 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.
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 Ihave 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’snom-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’sautograph! 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 “mirrorhissoul?”) 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 gaveher 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 amcomplainingof 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 knewexactlywhat it involved. I did not know, for instance, that the Press in speaking of her by hernom-de-plumewould call her “OurJulia,” 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.
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 theHon.Amelia M. Murray, a lady of supposable refinement, education, and of the highest social position in England; a lady whose daily bread wasnotdependent 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 anequalamount 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 anyAmericanlady book yet published.
The political question discussed by “theHon.” authoress, we shall not meddle with further than to say, first, that her book contains not one new ideaupon 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 thisfumigatedliquid had been driven through the streets; there are deaths here every day and some at Newport, butitis 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,andthis gentleman does credit to popular choice.”
So much for theQueen’sEnglish! Now for one or two specimens of her penetration. The first quotation we make will undoubtedly cause as muchsurprise 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 thatthey 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 theHon.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 dignityas might have been evinced by one of the most experienced ofourpublic 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 aswomen, but as ladies, they are cared for, and this in Democratic America!”
In the first place, every body but Miss Murray knows that an Americanladynever “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 hardlydisturb 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 ofMiss Murray’s assertion that it is “not aswomenbut 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, gotout, 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!
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—thestep! And now there aretwoto 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! Givemethe upper room in the wooden house, with kissing John and the bald baby!
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 thefinalstep! 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 suchcreamyice-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 todaintyfyhis 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—GreatCæsar! whathavethe 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. Ahumanteacher, 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 thehumanteacher who recognizes, andactsas 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 PhiladelphiaCity 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.
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 neverspeaks. 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 therecouldbe 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 theunderstanding, 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, toremainstone. Of course I sat down in the venerable, high-backed leather chair, in which so manygreat 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 andwindingway.
“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 seewomenemployed 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.”
Always anif!Ifthe 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. Andifthe 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 thepubliceye 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 notproperfor 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 (whichIshould 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 theperformance, 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!