HOWmany pleasant breakfast-tables it looks down upon! No need to hurry away to office, or store, or counting-room. Fathers come leisurely down in dressing-gown and slippers, and sip their coffee without danger of choking. They have time to look round and see how tall the children are growing, and that nothing in this world is so beautiful as a rosy baby fresh from slumber. Mother, too, has the old girlish smile, that comes not often on a week-day, or if it does, father has not time to notice it, and that, perhaps, after all, is the reason it comes so seldom. It is pleasant, after eggs and coffee, to sit comfortably down, the centre of a ring of happy faces, and hear the church-bells chime. Time enough yet to go, for this is the first bell.
HOWmany pleasant breakfast-tables it looks down upon! No need to hurry away to office, or store, or counting-room. Fathers come leisurely down in dressing-gown and slippers, and sip their coffee without danger of choking. They have time to look round and see how tall the children are growing, and that nothing in this world is so beautiful as a rosy baby fresh from slumber. Mother, too, has the old girlish smile, that comes not often on a week-day, or if it does, father has not time to notice it, and that, perhaps, after all, is the reason it comes so seldom. It is pleasant, after eggs and coffee, to sit comfortably down, the centre of a ring of happy faces, and hear the church-bells chime. Time enough yet to go, for this is the first bell.
Church-bells are not, to my ear, an "impertinence." One is a free agent. I am free to go, which I like to do; you are free to stay, if you prefer; though I may think you make a mistake. I don't say that I should go every Sunday to hear a man who was always binding doctrines together like bundles of dry sticks, and thrusting them at his yawning hearers. I want to hear a sermon thatany poor soul who straggles into church, from any by-lane or alley, can understand, and carry home with him to his cellar or garret; not a sermon that comes on chariot wheels, but afoot, and with a warm, life-like grasp for every honest, aye, anddishonest, hand in the assembly, defaulter or Magdalen; for who bade you slam heaven's gate in their faces?
I want ahumansermon. I don't care what Melchisedek, or Zerubbabel, or Kerenhappuk did, ages ago; I want to know whatIam to do, and I want somebody besides a theological bookworm to tell me; somebody who is sometimes tempted and tried, and is not too dignified to own it; somebody like me, who is always sinning and repenting; somebody who is glad and sorry, and cries and laughs, and eats and drinks, andwantsto fight when they are trodden on, anddon't! That's the minister for me. I don't want a spiritual abstraction, with stony eyes and petrified fingers, and no blood to battle with. What credit is it tohimto be proper? How can he understandme? Were there only such ministers in the pulpit, I wouldn't go to church either, because my impatient feet would only beat a tattoo on the pew floor till service was over: but, thank God! there are! and while they preach I shall go to hear them, and come home better and happier for having done it.
So I pray you don't abolishmySunday, whatever you may do with yours. Don't take away my blessed Sunday breakfast, when we all have timeto love one another. Don't take away the Sabbath bells, which I so love to hear. Don't take away my human minister, whose God is no tyrant, and is better pleased to see us go smiling home from church, than bowing our heads like a bulrush, and groaning back to our dinners, till all you anti-Sabbatarians are mad to abolish Sunday,—and no wonder.
Our Catholic brethren have set us, at least one good example; their churches are not silent as the tomb on week-days. Their worshippers do not do up all their religion on Sunday. It may be only for a few moments they step in through that open church-door, on a week-day, to kneel and lay down burdens too heavy else to be borne. I like the custom. I should rather say, I like the reminder, and the opportunity thus afforded them; and I heartily wish that all our Protestant churches could be thus opened. If rich Christians object to the promiscuous use of their velvet cushions and gilded prayer-books, at least let the aisles and altar be free for those who need God on the week-days; for the poor, the tried, the tempted; for those who shrink, in their shabby habiliments, from the Sunday exhibition of fine toilettes and superfine Christianity. Were I a minister, and obliged to preach to paniers and diamonds and satins, on Sunday, I think I shouldhaveto ease my heart in some such way as this, to make my pastoral life endurable, else my office would seem to me the most hollow of all mockeries. "The rich and the poor meet together,and the Lord is the Maker of them all," should be inscribed outside my church door, had I one. I could not preach to those paniers and their owners. My tongue would be paralyzed at those kneeling distortions of womanhood, bearing such a resemblance to organ-grinders' monkeys. I am not sure that I should not grow hysterical over it, and laugh and cry in the same breath, instead of preaching. I can never tell what vent my disgust would take; but I am sure it must have some escape-valve. You may say that such worshippers (Heaven save the mark!)needpreaching to. I tell you that women, so given over to "the devil and all his works," are past praying for; "having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not." They are ossified, impervious; they are Dead-Sea apples, full of ashes. There! now I feel better.
Having alluded to our Roman Catholic friends, allow me to ask leave of them to have the cross surmount all ourProtestantchurches, unless they have taken out a patent for the same. It is lovely to me, this symbol, as I pass along our streets. It rests my heart to look at it, amid the turmoil, and din, and hurry, and anxious faces, and sorrowful faces, and, worse than all, empty faces, that I meet. I say to myself, there is truththere; there is hope and comfort there, and this tangle of life isnotthe end. When I am a Protestant minister, the dear cross shall be on my church, and nobody shall stay away from it because they are ragged or poor, or because the cushions are too nice. Oh, I like Catholicismforthat. They are nearer heaven than Protestants on this point.
I am very glad for the Protestant noonday prayer-meetings, wheresoever held. One may have a great spiritual need on other days than Sunday. One may happen in here—if such things everhappen, which I doubt—andtherelearn that need, and the way to satisfy it. The devil is cunningly and wisely busyevery dayand every night in the week. Why should good Christians think to circumvent this skilful diplomatist in one?—onSundayonly? The devil makeseasyall the paths leading to perdition. Christians make hard and difficult the road to heaven, with their fine churches, and fine worshippers, and empty preaching once a week. And all around us pitiful hands are outstretched, and hungry hearts are waiting for the loving Christian word of help, temporal and spiritual; and men and women go down into the maelstrom of despair, folly, and sin; and we open our churches and letwell-dressedChristians in to pray for them on Sunday. Sunday! the word has no meaning. Call it Monday or Tuesday, or Fourth of July, or anything you will, but not "Sunday."Thatonce meant something.
Let me give you a postscript to a sermon I once heard. "Middle age is inevitable routine, but keep yoursoulsabove it," I heard a clergyman remark the other night. He "knew that it was difficult," he said, "not to merge one's self at that crisis in the shop, in the store, in the office; difficultnotto becomea mere drudge and a machine; but still, avoiding it was the only hope for this life." Oh, how my heart echoed these words—not for men, but for my own sex, of whose routine life the clergyman said nothing. I wanted to get up and say to him, "My dear sir, your address is eloquent, and true, scholarly, and sound, so far as it goes. Itisthe only hope for this life that these men of business should not become mere tools." But I wanted to ask him if men, with their freedom of action—men who, out in the world, inevitably come into collision withstirring, notstagnantlife—find this difficult, what of their wives? With twenty nerves where men have one to be jarred and agonized, with the pin and needle fret, of every minute, which they may never hope to escape or get away from; tied hand and foot, day and night, week after week, with the ten thousand cords, invisible often to the dull eye of husband and father, who accepts at evening the neat and pleasant result, without a thought of how it was accomplished—without a thought of the weariness of that inexorable grind of detail necessary to it—without a thought that a change of scene is either necessary or desirable for the wife and mother who is surely under its benumbing influence, mergingher"soul" till she is a mere machine.
I wanted to hear this clergyman say something about that. I wanted to know of him whether these women were doing God and their husbands service, by so sinking the spiritual part of them that one couldhardly tell that it had existence. I wanted to ask him whether, if their husbands, through indifference or selfishness, or both, gave no thought to this matter, if he—set in a high place to teach the people—had no word of advice to such men, that they look as well to the spiritual deterioration of themothersof their children as to their own—the fathers. Nay, I insist that for the mother it is ofmoreconsequence, as having infinitely more to do with the forming years of these children. And what time, pray, have many of these "routine" mothers for "thought," properly so called? What time for reading even the daily papers, to keep up intelligently with the great issues of the day, of which it is a shame and disgrace for any American wife and mother to be ignorant? How can they in this way be fit companions for their children's future? How can they answer their questions, on this subject and on that, while their vision is for ever bounded by the horizon of the physical wants of the household? You may preach "woman's duty" to me till you are hoarse; and I will preach to you the lust and the selfishness, which is ever repeating the dilemma of "the old woman in the shoe," till she has not an interval to think whether she or her broodhavesouls. "Routine life" ofmen! Men can and do get out of it—"business takes them away from home on journeys." "Business" takes him out pleasant evenings; on rainy ones, he never has "business;" then he goes early to bed, to preparefor a long evening of "business" when the sky clears.
His wife—well, "she don't seem to need it; or if she does, she don't say so;" and I might add, in the language of Dickens's nurse, Sary Gamp, "it is little she needs, and that little she don't get," at least from him.
Routine men! Oh, bah! "Routine men" have a result to show for their "routine." They have clerks—not from Intelligence-offices either—who have to do as they bid them. They also lock up shop at dark. They also walk or ride home in the fresh air, and talk with their male friends while doing it. They also are not dependent on the whim or caprice of any man to take them out for a breath of fresh air at night, after an exhaustive day of indoor stifling detail. And so, though the sermon to which I listened was excellentfrom a man to men, I made up my mind to add this little Appendix to women, from a woman, on the routine-woman's side of the question. You may talk of the selfishness of women till your head is white; there never lived that selfish woman so execrably selfish as a selfish man can be. I don't sayyouare so, sir: though at this distance, I venture to inquire whether, were you in your wife's place, you wouldn't occasionally like to climb up on the edge of the peck-measure in which she daily revolves, and look about outside, even if it should tip over on the whole brood of young ones in the process?
CANanybody tell why clergymen should not receive fees for attending funerals? They receive fees, and generous ones often, for performing the marriage-ceremony, which is very unnecessary in comparison; a wedding being a joyful, happy, inspiriting occasion, with its bright faces, sweet flowers, and happy congratulations of friends; the exceptions to which are so few as not to need enumerating; and it must needs rest a man instead of wearying him, cobwebbed all over with theological tangles as he is, to witness all this; for no matter what vicissitudes fate and the future have in store for the two he has made one, at least forthathour they are supremely blessed, and he has made them so. But afuneral! with all its present unnecessary and dreadful accumulation of horrors; with its closed blinds, its piling up of sable garments, its pale dead face, which needs no such auxiliaries of gloom. Imagine a clergyman, already worn out, mentally and physically, entering such a room, filled with mourning friends, to whom even the Saviour's own sweet words would seem cold, who must each for himself tread the wine-pressalone,till such time as they can findHim. Imagine this minister trying, by prayer and exhortation, to lift that heavy load of sorrow which all who have grieved know, that time and faith alone can lighten. Then he goes and looks into the face of the dead—oh! how many dead faces has he looked at, through the eyes of others, in the same way!—then he offers a friendly hand to the widow, or the orphan, as the case may be, and then with this immense draft on his sympathies, with those heart-rending sobs still sounding in his ears, perhaps within that very hour, he is called to a repetition of the sad scene. I am very sure that any clergymen of experience and sensibility will say, that I have not overstated this wear and tear of feeling in the delicate endeavor to say just the right thing, to the differing faiths of the craving, sorrowing hearts present.
CANanybody tell why clergymen should not receive fees for attending funerals? They receive fees, and generous ones often, for performing the marriage-ceremony, which is very unnecessary in comparison; a wedding being a joyful, happy, inspiriting occasion, with its bright faces, sweet flowers, and happy congratulations of friends; the exceptions to which are so few as not to need enumerating; and it must needs rest a man instead of wearying him, cobwebbed all over with theological tangles as he is, to witness all this; for no matter what vicissitudes fate and the future have in store for the two he has made one, at least forthathour they are supremely blessed, and he has made them so. But afuneral! with all its present unnecessary and dreadful accumulation of horrors; with its closed blinds, its piling up of sable garments, its pale dead face, which needs no such auxiliaries of gloom. Imagine a clergyman, already worn out, mentally and physically, entering such a room, filled with mourning friends, to whom even the Saviour's own sweet words would seem cold, who must each for himself tread the wine-pressalone,till such time as they can findHim. Imagine this minister trying, by prayer and exhortation, to lift that heavy load of sorrow which all who have grieved know, that time and faith alone can lighten. Then he goes and looks into the face of the dead—oh! how many dead faces has he looked at, through the eyes of others, in the same way!—then he offers a friendly hand to the widow, or the orphan, as the case may be, and then with this immense draft on his sympathies, with those heart-rending sobs still sounding in his ears, perhaps within that very hour, he is called to a repetition of the sad scene. I am very sure that any clergymen of experience and sensibility will say, that I have not overstated this wear and tear of feeling in the delicate endeavor to say just the right thing, to the differing faiths of the craving, sorrowing hearts present.
Now why, I ask, should clergymen, in addition to their other exhaustive duties, be expected to go through this most exhaustive service of all, without remuneration? More especially, when one considers the often danger of contagious atmospheric influences, at such times and places, upon his tired frame.
I have often pondered, without yet being able to find a shadow of a reason for this unjust demand upon clerical strength. If you say it is the custom, I only say it is time that, with other bad customs, it were reformed; and more—since clergymen themselves have their lips delicately closed on this especial subject, while on others they might be consideredat liberty to speak. That's whyIhave spoken for them.
I like ministers. I was brought up with them. My father's house was a minister's tavern, lacking the sign swinging before the door. I was a wild slip in those days; that's why they always "wanted a little conversation with Sarah." It was philanthropic, but thrown away. I had been told so often that I was "a child of wrath," that I had it at my fingers' ends—I might have said, at my toes' ends, for it was they who helped me out the nearest door after meals, lest I should hear the stale announcement again. I persisted I "loved God," when I was asked. Why shouldn't I? for no bugaboo of anybody's raising could have made me believe I was born by him to be tormented. The flowers, the clouds, the ocean, the sun, moon, and stars—what priceless gifts were they! No "doctrine" or "creed" could rob me of them; and didn'themake them, and give me a soul to enjoy them? It was of no use telling me I was a "child of wrath" under circumstances like these! One soft sweet breath from my flower-garden knocked that idea "all to smithereens."
Now I didn't hate those ministers for trying to darken what should have been, and whatwas, in spite of them, youth's festival hour. I knew theythoughtthey were right, and I believe them to be truly good, though mistaken, men. They didn't know that, child as I was, ifIever went to Heaven, it would be taking hold of my Heavenly Father'shand, not cowering before him through fear of "hell." So they fired over my curls, when they got me in a corner, and talked to me that way. They didn't make me hate "meetin'" either; though I was driven there to hear so many "seventeenth-lies" at the point of the bayonet; and when skewered up on the seat between rows of big folks, I felt as if little ants were creeping out from under my finger-nails, so fidgety did I get for the blessed outdoors.
But I have not outgrown "meetin'" yet, and I count no Sunday a Sunday when I don't go there some part of the day. Oh, had they only knownhowto talk to me, instead of driving me within myself, and making me put my worst religious foot foremost. But clergymen have found a better way since, thank God! Still I often smile at the bits of the old leaven in the ministerial make up. How they will wonder at it all, when eternity's light shines down on their life-path, and shows them these mistakes. For I make no apology here for boldly asserting that a minister can, and does, and always will, make an occasional mistake; although I was once pounced down upon by an evangelical critic, who talked to me about "wounding the Lord in the house of his friends," when I said so. It is just such stuff as that, that drives everybodyfromthe "Lord." Better face the music, and own up, that even ministers arehuman. For my part, were I a minister, and fenced in, and badgered about, and cross-questioned and interfered with, andexpected to be a sound, rounded, well-disposed human being, morally, mentally, and physically, all the same as if a coroner's inquest wasn't squatting on my free-agency every hour in the day, I'll warrant you I should make a great many more mistakes than they do. Old Adam in me, would soon see that they didn't want material for a verdict to suit their narrowness.
And now I hope I have shown you that I am a friend to ministers. So that without getting a boxed ear, I must tell you here, what a laugh I got out of a lot of them yesterday. You see, I was in an omnibus alone, save one lady, when a meeting of some sort in one of our churches "bust up,"—excuse the expression—"bust up." Five ministers emerging from the church porch, hailed the omnibus and got in, and decorously seated themselves. Now, some ministers look jolly, and as if they were alive. These were thin, cavernous, and had the ten commandments written all over them. They had heard of New York Delilahs evidently, for they wouldn't see thefareof the lady or myself between our gloved fingers waiting for the driver—not a bit of it! Catch them at it! They looked straight past us both, safely out the window at an innocent brick wall. Oh, heavens! how I laughed! It carried me back to the days I was a curly-headed little sinner, rebelling at being called "a child of wrath." I wanted to say, "Brethren, I too am a Christian"—and I will persist that I am; so don't be afraid of my innocent female pennies, nor "cross" yourselvesbecause your foot accidentally touched the hem of my robe when you got in; for though I believe in ministers, Idon'tlike to have the devil laugh in his sleeve at their queer, poky, solemn ways, and say to himself, "Aha! so would I have it."
May clergymen sneeze? Well—not exactly that; but a question quite as foolish, I saw gravely propounded and treated, the other day, in a religious paper. The debate was upon this highly important point: "Whether it was right for ministers to play croquet." Now I reallyhadhoped that the day had gone by when the only amusement allowed to ministers was counting the scores of little heads that surrounded their table. I did hope that they might wash their faces on a towel, though it had not a funereal urn embroidered in the corners. And that they need not of necessity plant a cypress, or weeping willow, at their front door, to designate their raven-like calling; or banish every plant from their garden save the funereal rue and rosemary. It seems I was mistaken; more's the pity. Now if there is anything the devil likes, it is fine-spun, wire-drawn distinctions, on unimportant questions like these. If there is anything he likes, it is this ascetic rendering of religious things, to disgust the young, and throw a pall over that whichshouldattract them by a wise recognition of their human needs. When we place a young plant down cellar and shut out light and sunshine, though it may put out shoots, we all know that they are white, sickly,and destined early to perish; just so with this misnamed "godliness" which the well-meaning but over-zealous religionist would thrust upon us and persuade us was doing God-service. I tell you it isnot. I tell you that a minister, above all others, needs innocent and proper recreation, like croquet. Every summer, in my travels to and fro, I meet "ministers" enjoying their brief respite of a summer-vacation; most of them bearing unmistakable evidence in their pale faces and narrow chests, of their great necessity for it. I have watched them, sympathetically, as they sat on the piazzas of the hotels and boarding-houses where we were thrown together. I have seen them commit this unpardonable sin of "playing croquet" on a nice green lawn, while the fresh mountain air tinged their pale cheeks, and their eyes grew brighter, and their tones grew cheerful, and I blessed God for the sight. I said to myself,that'sthe way to foil the devil, when the young people found, day after day, that even a "minister" could be cheerful himself and promote cheerfulness; and that religion, after all, was not death to innocent happiness. I have been with ministers to the ten-pin alley, in company with their wives, children, and friends; I have climbed mountains with them, when I had a better frolic than I ever had with any of the laymen; and after a three-hours climb, and we all sat upon the top and enjoyed the view of the surrounding country, and, seated upon the grass, ate our luncheon, I never perceived that religion suffered by it. Ihaveoften, on thecontrary, heard young people of the party say, "Well, this is the first time I everreallyliked a minister. I thought they were all stiff and solemn, and—to use a juvenile but expressive epithet—'poky'"! Nor when the following Sunday, sweet as Sunday always dawns on the hills and valleys, dawned on us, in some such lovely spot, and these same clergymen were requested to preach, sometimes in the parlor of the hotel, sometimes, which was better, in a grove near the house, didIfor one perceive anything incongruous in his doing so, though the audience was the very same merry party of the day before. And when they have joined in the sweet hymn under the trees, where he stood with uncovered head, as in God's best temple, I confess to much more devotion than I am apt to feel, when surrounded and hedged in, and, allow me to say, sometimesstifledwith all the clerical city paraphernalia, whose husk often seems to me so to shut in and compress the kernel, that one almost doubts if it has existence.
Ministers play croquet? I wish every minister had a violin and a brisk saddle-horse. Away with this bogus sanctity. Take a lesson from our Roman Catholic friends in the virtue of cheerfulness. Drive notfromyou, but draw soothingly, caressingly to you the lambs of the flock. Terror never yet made a true Christian. Frigidity never yet glorified God. The world is not a charnel-house. Else the blue sky would have been as black as some of these ascetics fain would make it. No! It is full ofperfume and song and color, and you can never shut the eyes of young people to it with your distorted views of life. Oh, be wiser, lest the sad rebound of the atheist come, and they find only at the end of a life misspent, that in their zeal to prove your detested "religion" a sham, they had overlooked the fact that the counterfeit presupposes thetrue coin.
How seldom, in judging of those who excite our anger or contempt, do we judge them, as the Almighty does, by the extenuating circumstances of birth and education, and the lack of spiritual light! "Nobody ever told me;" "I did not know it was wrong;" "Nobody cared whether I was good or bad." What pitiful words are these! The Saviour recognized these facts when he said, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."
SHEdon't shuffle round in "skimpt" raiment, and awkward shoes, and cotton gloves, with horn side-combs fastening six hairs to her temples; nor has she a sharp nose, and angular jaw, and hollow cheeks, and only two front teeth. She don't read "Law's Serious Call," or keep a cat, or a snuff-box, or go to bed at dark, save on vestry-meeting nights, nor scowl at little children, or gather catnip, or apply a broomstick to astonished dogs.Not a bit of it. The modern "old maid" is round and jolly, and has her full complement of hair and teeth, and two dimples in her cheek, and has a laugh as musical as a bobolink's song. She wears pretty, nicely fitting dresses too, and cunning little ornaments around her plump throat, and becoming bits of color in her hair, and at her breast, in the shape of little knots and bows; and her waist is shapely, and her hands have sparkling rings, and no knuckles; and her foot is cunning, and is prisoned in a bewildering boot; and she goes to concerts and parties and suppers and lectures and matinees, and she don't go alone either; and she lives in a nice house, earned by herself, and gives jolly little teas in it. She don't care whether she is married or not, nor needshe. She can afford to wait, as men often do, till they have "seen life," and when their bones are full of aches, and their blood tamed down to water, and they have done going out, and want somebody to swear at and to nurse them—then marry!
SHEdon't shuffle round in "skimpt" raiment, and awkward shoes, and cotton gloves, with horn side-combs fastening six hairs to her temples; nor has she a sharp nose, and angular jaw, and hollow cheeks, and only two front teeth. She don't read "Law's Serious Call," or keep a cat, or a snuff-box, or go to bed at dark, save on vestry-meeting nights, nor scowl at little children, or gather catnip, or apply a broomstick to astonished dogs.
Not a bit of it. The modern "old maid" is round and jolly, and has her full complement of hair and teeth, and two dimples in her cheek, and has a laugh as musical as a bobolink's song. She wears pretty, nicely fitting dresses too, and cunning little ornaments around her plump throat, and becoming bits of color in her hair, and at her breast, in the shape of little knots and bows; and her waist is shapely, and her hands have sparkling rings, and no knuckles; and her foot is cunning, and is prisoned in a bewildering boot; and she goes to concerts and parties and suppers and lectures and matinees, and she don't go alone either; and she lives in a nice house, earned by herself, and gives jolly little teas in it. She don't care whether she is married or not, nor needshe. She can afford to wait, as men often do, till they have "seen life," and when their bones are full of aches, and their blood tamed down to water, and they have done going out, and want somebody to swear at and to nurse them—then marry!
Ah! the modern old maid has her eye-teeth cut. She takes care of herself, instead of her sister's nine children, through mumps, and measles, and croup, and chicken-pox, and lung fever and leprosy, and what not.
Shedon't work that way for no wages and bare toleration, day and night. No, sir! If she has no money, she teaches, or she lectures, or she writes books or poems, or she is a book-keeper, or she sets types, or she does anything but hang on to the skirts of somebody's else husband, and she feels well and independent in consequence, and holds up her head with the best, and asks no favors, and "Woman's Rights" has done it!
That awful bugbear, "Woman's Rights"! which small-souled men, and, I am sorry to say, narrowwomentoo, burlesque and ridicule, and wont believe in, till the Juggernaut of Progress knocks them down and rides over them, because they will neither climb up on it, nor get out of the way.
The fact is, theModernOld Maid is as good as the Modern Young Maid, and a great deal better, to those who have outgrown bread and butter. She has sense as well as freshness, and conversation and repartee as well as dimples and curves.
She carries a dainty parasol, and a natty littleumbrella, and wears killing bonnets, and has live poets and sages and philosophers in her train, and knows how to use her eyes, and don't care if she never sees a cat, and couldn't tell a snuff-box from a patent reaper, and has a bank-book and dividends: yes, sir! and her name is Phœbe or Alice; and Woman's Rights has done it.
A newspaper lately announced that the fashion of blue coats and brass buttons for gentlemen had received its death-blow. Now, listen, ye men who are constantly preaching to us women, about our "slavery to fashion." It was done by Prince Arthur, whodidn'twear it at a recent great public ball. Deadly stab! We hope the gentlemen who did appear in that costume will not commit suicide. But if we might give them a little bit of advice, it would be, that they should keep on wearing blue coats and brass buttons, justbecause"the Prince" didn't. Show yourself superior to fashion, gentlemen, as you so often advise ladies to do. Try the boot onthatfoot. Don't throw aside a good coat for the puerile reason that it is out of fashion! Oh, no!
ALLhonor to Mr. Bergh for his remedial measures to prevent cruelty to animals. Cats, they say, have nine lives; so, with this in their favor, will the gentleman above mentioned let them wriggle a while, and devote that portion of his time to an animal which has only one life. I refer to the New York child—therichNew York child. If he will take a walk through any of our city parks with his eyes open, he cannot fail to see suffering enough among this class to enlist his warmest sympathies. I often stroll through the parks to hear the birds sing, and to see the children. One day last week I saw a bright little boy of four years amusing himself by picking up little twigs that had fallen from the trees, while his nurse was engaged in interminable gossip with one of her class. Turning her head suddenly, she perceived him engaged in this harmless and natural amusement. Snatching them from his hand, she took each little twig separately and struck him with each across his happy little face; then, throwing them away out of his reach, left him standing there, sobbing, with nothing to do, while she continued her chapter of gossip. Walking on alittle farther, I saw a little girl who had strayed across the path to look at a "dolly" which another child was drawing in a little wagon. It was a wonderful "dolly;" with flaxen curls, and pink boots, and a muslin dress; and its eyes were closed in slumber, after the fashion of the doll of the period, while in a recumbent position. Oh! the sweet little face, as it peered into the tiny wagon, and the precociousmotherlook of adoration at the "dolly"! Instantly came darting after her the Gorgon nurse, and with a smart slap upon her head and a shake of her little shoulders, till her bright hair flew quite over the frightened little face, she tore her violently away, and seating herself upon a bench, where she had been talking with a coarse-looking man, set the sobbing child so hard upon her knee that I could distinctly hear it catch its breath. I mention here only these two instances of brutal treatment, which I could multiply by dozens. Why do not mothers take pains to follow their nurses occasionally, to see if all is right with their children when out of doors? And why could not Mr. Bergh order somebacksplaced to the torturing benches in our parks where the little children sit? The Central Park benches are a good model in this regard, as many a weary pedestrian can testify. And while he is up there looking at them with a view to this, if he will just pass under the damp bridges, and rout out those self-same nurses, who sit there talking with their beaux, instead of taking their little charges out into the sunshine, and among the flowers, as theywere told to do,thisalso would be a humanitarian act.
ALLhonor to Mr. Bergh for his remedial measures to prevent cruelty to animals. Cats, they say, have nine lives; so, with this in their favor, will the gentleman above mentioned let them wriggle a while, and devote that portion of his time to an animal which has only one life. I refer to the New York child—therichNew York child. If he will take a walk through any of our city parks with his eyes open, he cannot fail to see suffering enough among this class to enlist his warmest sympathies. I often stroll through the parks to hear the birds sing, and to see the children. One day last week I saw a bright little boy of four years amusing himself by picking up little twigs that had fallen from the trees, while his nurse was engaged in interminable gossip with one of her class. Turning her head suddenly, she perceived him engaged in this harmless and natural amusement. Snatching them from his hand, she took each little twig separately and struck him with each across his happy little face; then, throwing them away out of his reach, left him standing there, sobbing, with nothing to do, while she continued her chapter of gossip. Walking on alittle farther, I saw a little girl who had strayed across the path to look at a "dolly" which another child was drawing in a little wagon. It was a wonderful "dolly;" with flaxen curls, and pink boots, and a muslin dress; and its eyes were closed in slumber, after the fashion of the doll of the period, while in a recumbent position. Oh! the sweet little face, as it peered into the tiny wagon, and the precociousmotherlook of adoration at the "dolly"! Instantly came darting after her the Gorgon nurse, and with a smart slap upon her head and a shake of her little shoulders, till her bright hair flew quite over the frightened little face, she tore her violently away, and seating herself upon a bench, where she had been talking with a coarse-looking man, set the sobbing child so hard upon her knee that I could distinctly hear it catch its breath. I mention here only these two instances of brutal treatment, which I could multiply by dozens. Why do not mothers take pains to follow their nurses occasionally, to see if all is right with their children when out of doors? And why could not Mr. Bergh order somebacksplaced to the torturing benches in our parks where the little children sit? The Central Park benches are a good model in this regard, as many a weary pedestrian can testify. And while he is up there looking at them with a view to this, if he will just pass under the damp bridges, and rout out those self-same nurses, who sit there talking with their beaux, instead of taking their little charges out into the sunshine, and among the flowers, as theywere told to do,thisalso would be a humanitarian act.
In fact,the rich child of the periodis at present an object forhisespecial consideration. Deserted apparently by its natural protector, the mother, except so far as its dress is concerned, it is peculiarly helpless and friendless, at least when out of doors. I speak advisedly; for not a day passes that my blood does not boil at the cruelty it endures; at the innocent little instincts, for the gratification of which it is immediately slapped, as if they were crimes; just as if we should stone a bird for warbling, or a bee for humming, or a leaf for fluttering in the sweet south wind.
Oh! the harsh Juggernaut wheel which crushes out all this sweetness into the dust!
And what of thetemperpermanently spoiled and soured by such roughness and injustice? What of the aching little head, which is slapped and shaken? What of the tired little feet, while the nurse and her comrades occupy the seat, and the little ones, forbidden to play, lean wearily against the nurse's knee, and cry for "mamma"? Surely, where is mamma? Good Mr. Bergh, doyoube the rich children's "mamma," and let the cat with her "nine lives" look out for herself!
OH! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able tobelieve. Does life give us anything, in after years, as compensation for the lack of all this; I asked, as I watched the busy little feet about me, never weary of chasing some butterfly of the minute. But then when this thought overshadowed me it was a blue day. Things had somehow got "contrary." My shoe might have pinched, or my belt have been too tight; or I had been up too long without my coffee; or I had forgotten the touch of my first baby's velvet cheek, or my mother's praise of my first pie, or my exultation when I cut and fitted down a carpet all myself, sewing on the thick seams till my fingers were swollen and sore, because help was not to be had. I remember, when it was finished, how intensely I admired myself and that carpet. Then I have strutted round very proudly in dresses of my own fitting, that "were fits." And once I roasted a piece of beef, and seasoned itwith saleratus, instead of salt; think of the triumph of that moment! But that was owing to a too-fascinating novel under my cooking-apron, in a day when novels were forbidden fruit. And once, at the romantic age of twelve years, I gave a little blue-eyed boy one of my long, yellow curls, and he threw it in the gutter, and said "he hated girl's hair," but then another boy was standing by at the time, and the world's jeer was too much for him; but I may mention in this connection, that the next handful of "three-cornered nuts" he offered me, when we were alone, followed that curl into the gutter!
OH! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able tobelieve. Does life give us anything, in after years, as compensation for the lack of all this; I asked, as I watched the busy little feet about me, never weary of chasing some butterfly of the minute. But then when this thought overshadowed me it was a blue day. Things had somehow got "contrary." My shoe might have pinched, or my belt have been too tight; or I had been up too long without my coffee; or I had forgotten the touch of my first baby's velvet cheek, or my mother's praise of my first pie, or my exultation when I cut and fitted down a carpet all myself, sewing on the thick seams till my fingers were swollen and sore, because help was not to be had. I remember, when it was finished, how intensely I admired myself and that carpet. Then I have strutted round very proudly in dresses of my own fitting, that "were fits." And once I roasted a piece of beef, and seasoned itwith saleratus, instead of salt; think of the triumph of that moment! But that was owing to a too-fascinating novel under my cooking-apron, in a day when novels were forbidden fruit. And once, at the romantic age of twelve years, I gave a little blue-eyed boy one of my long, yellow curls, and he threw it in the gutter, and said "he hated girl's hair," but then another boy was standing by at the time, and the world's jeer was too much for him; but I may mention in this connection, that the next handful of "three-cornered nuts" he offered me, when we were alone, followed that curl into the gutter!
I have also dim recollections of "seating" a pair of trousers, to see if I had any undeveloped talent in that line; but I have a lurking suspicion that I must have interfered with their original shape, for though my efforts received due commendation, I am confident those breeches were never worn afterward. But I think my failure came of my always running away, in my girlhood, whenever the family tailoress came to reside with us for a period, to make innumerable vests, jackets, etc., for my little brothers. In revenge she prophesied that, when I was married, I should have always boys, and be very glad of her presence. When she learned years after, that I had threegirls, she remarked, in a limp and crestfallen state, that "it beat all I should have my own wayin such a matter as that!"
Oh, yes, I suppose there is something to be got out of the world besides dolls and sugar-candy; butwhether it is worth while to go through all we do to secure it, remains yet the unsolved problem.
Grown people, doubtless, have their crucifixions. Women, I know, "die daily." But I am certain, from observation and reflection, that some children, and very small ones too, suffer quite as much as it is possible for adults to do. I shall never forget a punishment measured out to me, when a fat little chub at school. I had committed the heinous offence of "whispering to one of the boys." I don't recollect what it was about. I only remember that Georgie smiled kindly at me on that first terrible day when I took my seat on a narrow bench, without any back, to "keep very still;" which was then, and is now, the most fiendish torment that can be devised for me.
Directly my name was called to "stand up in the middle of the floor."Hisname, "Georgie," was also called. With very red faces, out of which all the smile had gone, we confronted each other. Miss Birch then turned us back to back, and with a string of twine tied our elbows together, saying to me as she did so, "Since you like boys, you shall have enough of 'em." Now Georgie, true to the instincts of his sex, no sooner felt himself "bound" to the little creature, whom he the moment before adored, than he began to pull at the cruel string, till it cut into my fat bare arm, with torturing sharpness; his jacket sleeve protecting him from the pain he inflicted on me. There we stood, "the boys"laughingat Georgie. What little man could stand being"hen-pecked," even at that tender age? For me, I would not have shed a tear, had he cut my arm in two. I let him pull and tweak, and bore it with Spartan endurance till our penance was over, and school was "let out."
"Did you care?" asked the girls of me, going home. "No," answered I, huskily, with my chin in the air, twitching nervously at my white pinafore. I said nothing about it when I got home, but went up garret to cry it out. That Georgie should have hurt meon purpose, when I was in disgrace! That he should not have walked home with me from school, as before; or that he—aboy—should be "afraid," though a thousand of "the boys" looked on, to speak to a girl—to speak tome!Hisreign was over from that moment, spite of his curly black hair and glittering white teeth. I staid up garret till I had it all out among the rafters, and then washed my face and went down to my dinner.
The next morning I took my satchel and went to school. When I got as far as the corner of the street, Georgie was there waiting for me. I didn't see him. I looked straight at the lamp-post. He said softly, "Sarah!" I didn't hear. I planted my little boots firmly on the sidewalk and trotted on. He hadnotbeen my friend in my trouble. Failing inthat, he had failed in everything. This was my first life-battle. I have had others since, with greater capacity for suffering; but I thought then, nothing could be worse than little Georgie's defection.
One day I was walking, with my two little girls beside me, and met "Georgie," to whom I had never spoken since our childish falling out. He was a physician then, in good practice, and as handsome as a man, as he had been as a child.
We each laughed, and passed on. For one, I was glad that I was not "tied" to him, save only for those few moments.
I may add, however, by way of postscript, that if Miss Birch imagined that she then and there cured me of "whispering to the boys," it was a fallacy.
Have you a habit of "putting off till a better time"—through an indolence inexplicable even to yourself—little matters that may seem trifling, but which you should really consider as tests of character? To such we say,fightthis inclination with a persistent strength which will take no denial, if you ever wish to be or to accomplish anything in this world; for rest assured, it is the little fox at the foot of the vine, which will nibble away till every bud and blossom of the future shall be covered with mildew and blight.
SHOWme an "easy person," and I will show you a selfish one. Good-natured he may be; why not? since the disastrous consequences of his "easiness" are generally shouldered by other people. He always "guesses it is all right," though he knows it is all wrong. None so blind as they who don't wish to see. To right an abuse, is to tread on somebody's corns, and then that Somebody might turn and tread on his. For instance, some boys in the street are pelting a poor, drunken woman. "Well—boyswilldo such things." He takes a journey with his family and stops at a hotel in the dog-days, and the hotel clerk assigns him a room which is right over a fiery kitchen. He "guesses" there was no other to give; if so, why didn't the clerk say so? That might possibly do if the clerk didn'talwaysgive him the room over the hotel kitchen. He gets up from his seat in the car to step out upon the platform; a veryodorousindividual takes his seat, much to the disgust of his family. When asked to eject him, he replies, that he is not sure that the law in such cases is in his own favor; so he takes another seat, and leaves to them the new and uncongenial neighbor. The grocer sends himbad butter, instead of the good for which he bargained; but he thinks it was the grocer's boy who did it, and thathedidn't do itpurposely, and that he wont do it again. The milkman overcharges in his bill: well, very likely grass was scarce, or there was some good reason for it; beside, he can give his family a dollar or two less, the next time money is wanted,—and it is always wanted,—and that will make it all square; thus proving the adage, "that nobody can be generous without doing an injustice to somebody." Mr. Easy orders a coat; and when it comes home the sleeves are too short; but he don't like to send it back. He guesses the cutter understood the order to be just so; besides it is paid for and settled. Mr. Easy always pays for things before they come home;—he thinks it looks like distrust of your fellow-creatures if you don't;—and so he has perpetual short sleeves in his coats, and perpetually his trousers come home too long in the leg; and his wife has to keep on fibbing, and tell him they are just right, and it is the latest fashion; for fear he will ask her, as she goes by the tailor's store, just to step in and mention it, becausesheis so good at such things, you know, and don't mind speaking up; which accomplishment, desirable as it is, he prefers her to exerciseoutsidethe house;in-doors it must be kept in pickle.
SHOWme an "easy person," and I will show you a selfish one. Good-natured he may be; why not? since the disastrous consequences of his "easiness" are generally shouldered by other people. He always "guesses it is all right," though he knows it is all wrong. None so blind as they who don't wish to see. To right an abuse, is to tread on somebody's corns, and then that Somebody might turn and tread on his. For instance, some boys in the street are pelting a poor, drunken woman. "Well—boyswilldo such things." He takes a journey with his family and stops at a hotel in the dog-days, and the hotel clerk assigns him a room which is right over a fiery kitchen. He "guesses" there was no other to give; if so, why didn't the clerk say so? That might possibly do if the clerk didn'talwaysgive him the room over the hotel kitchen. He gets up from his seat in the car to step out upon the platform; a veryodorousindividual takes his seat, much to the disgust of his family. When asked to eject him, he replies, that he is not sure that the law in such cases is in his own favor; so he takes another seat, and leaves to them the new and uncongenial neighbor. The grocer sends himbad butter, instead of the good for which he bargained; but he thinks it was the grocer's boy who did it, and thathedidn't do itpurposely, and that he wont do it again. The milkman overcharges in his bill: well, very likely grass was scarce, or there was some good reason for it; beside, he can give his family a dollar or two less, the next time money is wanted,—and it is always wanted,—and that will make it all square; thus proving the adage, "that nobody can be generous without doing an injustice to somebody." Mr. Easy orders a coat; and when it comes home the sleeves are too short; but he don't like to send it back. He guesses the cutter understood the order to be just so; besides it is paid for and settled. Mr. Easy always pays for things before they come home;—he thinks it looks like distrust of your fellow-creatures if you don't;—and so he has perpetual short sleeves in his coats, and perpetually his trousers come home too long in the leg; and his wife has to keep on fibbing, and tell him they are just right, and it is the latest fashion; for fear he will ask her, as she goes by the tailor's store, just to step in and mention it, becausesheis so good at such things, you know, and don't mind speaking up; which accomplishment, desirable as it is, he prefers her to exerciseoutsidethe house;in-doors it must be kept in pickle.
The cook sends up the meat underdone. Mr. Easy remarks, apologetically, that it was a larger piece than usual; as if just there, the cook's judgment, if she had any, was not expected to come in,by putting it on to roast a little earlier, else what is the use of a cook?
Now,Mr.Easy's wife believes in eternal justice—obedience or the guillotine.Shethinks that the person who, through indolence, offers a premium for carelessness or incompetency, commits a crime against society. She believes that he has no right to shirk a disagreeable duty because it is disagreeable; or because he is lazy, or because it is pleasant to be popular, and to appear amiable to the outside world. She believes that executive people are the hinges upon which alone the world turns—creaking awfully sometimes, it is true, but, thank God!turning!notrusting. She believes in using the dictionary, and plenty of it, when people need waking up to their duty; and, this accomplished, she believes in laying it on the shelf till again called for. A wrongun-righted painsMrs.Easy; rouses her fiery indignation.Mr.Easy is never quite sure itiswrong; and, till he is, it is not necessary, in his opinion, to clear the deck for action.
Now, I have no doubt that both styles of persons have their mission in the world, else they wouldn't be here: I have known wasps and snails each to have their admirers. Some day I'll write a book of fables for you, to which Æsop's shall be no circumstance.
I wonder is a man justified, to his own conscience or his Maker, in allowing himself to be so absorbed by "business," beyond what is necessary to the comfortable support of his family, that he is as much astranger to his own wife and children as if he were only a boarder in the family,—bodily present indeed at two or three meals a day, but totally ignorant of the ponderosity of the domestic machinery, or at what cost of health, or mental and moral deterioration, to his wife, this unrelieved strain is being carried out from day to day.
Perhaps you will answer, Who is to decide whatis"a necessary and comfortable support for a family"? I can only ask, if there is not a great wrong unredressed, when a man knows nothing of the different mental or moral characteristics of the children he has launched into a world of temptation and trial, and is also quite content to remain ignorant. I think all intelligent, thinking persons will agree on this point. Also when a man, professional or other, seldom or never addresses a word to his wife about anything but the family expenses, or his favorite mode of cooking any pet article of food. Sure I am that any wife who is not a hopeless idiot, will chafe under such treatment, until, at last, her fate being too much for her, mental and moral deterioration fairly set in, and she hopelessly revolves in her narrow bounds without even a desire that the children, once so dear to her, should ever peep over and beyond them. The friends whom shemightand ought to have retained for herself and them, she has gradually, one by one, lost sight of; her husband being never at home to care whether they came or stayed away—his interests, and his friends, being quite separate and apart. Meantime his houseshines, his meals are well prepared, and his "buttons" are in place.
This picture is not overdrawn. I can produce you its counterparts any hour in the twenty-four. By and by, the oldest boy outgrows pinafores and jackets, and steps round in long-tails. No father has been at hand, to point out the quicksands he should have avoided, or to encourage him by his sympathy or love to do right. But the devil in all his Protean shapeshasbeen at his elbow, delighted at that father's indifference. Presently some wild oat sown, brings to that home, as yetpubliclyundisgraced, its full-grown harvest of shame.Nowcome storms of reproach, under which the loving mother weeps and cowers, as ifshe, God help her! were guilty. Alas! and alas! were such young wayward feeteverturned right by such injudiciousness and injustice? Does not that boyknowthat it is the disgrace alone that father feels, and not the shipwreck of his child's soul? Does that father say, even to himself, "Oh, Absalom! my son! my son!" Not at all: he feels only a blind rage, a vexatious thwarting and hindering of his own affairs, whichhis sonhas brought about.
"Hisson?"
It is about the first time he ever regarded him in that relationship.
There is another kind of father and husband, quite the antipodes of this.Hedevotes himself entirely to the domestic side of the question. He has no "business" to occupy him, nor does he desire tohave. He loves his wife devotedly, and the more children he has the better he is pleased. Their mother and themselves are enveloped in a warm atmosphere of love. Never was a harsh, pettish, or fretful word heard from his amiable lips. He plays with the children all day; he fixes kites and balls without stint for them; he tends the baby; and when a crisis comes, and the maid-of-all-work disappears, discouraged at the eleventh baby, he washes the dishes, if need be, as serenely as if he were born to it. Meantime these really bright children, loving and loved, grow apace. The mother is growing old. Love is a good thing, but there is a far-off questioning look in her gentle eyes, vainly searching those children's future.Herhands are now helplessly tied, and she sees nooutwardtendency toward business in his. She "loves him"—how can she help it?—thus far; but the years move on so quickly, and her children grow so tall! She remembers sadly the advantages of educationshehad, as she looks into the fair faces of her girls. Ah! how long will she continue to "love" their father? And how will those children, in after years, gauge that "love" which placed such obstacles between them and their best advancement? At what point in their young lives will they, chafing, let go the irresolute hand, that could only lead them up and down that narrow garden-path, when the broad highway of development lay in sight, and untrodden?
I am fully persuaded that ifeven Ihad created human beings, I couldn't have improved upon theoriginal programme. I used to think that I should like to sweep the whole pussy-cat tribe of my fellow-creatures out of existence, with one wave of my wand. I am convinced now, that as a means of grace, they had better remain. Their sublime indifference as to the period in which the most momentous questions are to be settled, is instructive to hurricane natures. The fatalistic way in which they subside into their own comfortable chimney-corner, while all the moral elements are in a wild tornado outside, is calming to the spirit. The placidity with which they can eat, and sleep, and drink, and be merry, side by side with the corpses of dead hopes and abortive projects, over which humanity stands weeping and wringing her hands, is as good as a dose of opium. We look at them, and, wiping the cold perspiration from our brow, we ask, Is it possible, then, that we have been lashing ourselves into all this fury, when there isreallyto be no shipwreck?Arewe really on the high road to lunacy without knowing it, and in the near proximity to such sublime self-poise and calmness? We slink into our corner to reflect; and get that much breathing-time and wind to go at the demon again. So you see they are of use, as I told you.
Then there are your critical people, like John Randolph, who actually stopped his dying, to correct the pronunciation of a friend who was waiting to close his eyes. So they will stop you in the midst of a ravishing bit of poetry, or the narration of a story, to dissect the sentiment of it by some glaringDrummond light, that they keep remorselessly on hand for such purposes, while you, poor wretch, dropped suddenly from your sublime height, lose both your place and your temper.
Now you can't say this isn't educational.
Then there is your human chameleon, who takes its color from the last leaf it feeds on. You quote one of its yesterday-expressed opinions, with full assurance of faith, as exactly coinciding with your own. Up comes a third party, and demands how you can so misrepresent the chameleon's views, because that very day it expressed a totally different opinion to this third party. You ask the chameleon for an explanation; when it coolly informs you that consistency is the vice of little minds; and that to unsay to-day what you said yesterday, is a proof of progress. You retire with a muttered wish that the chameleon would furnish you with a pair of seven-league boots, with which to overtake his "progress."
Then there is that social wasp, "I told you so;" who, vulture-like, hovers over the fallen, ready to insert his cruel beak at any sore place one has made, tripping. The guillotine is nothing to the bits of quivering fleshhetears out.
Then there is your routine person, who sneezes precisely at six, and sits down precisely at seven, and rises precisely at eight, and looks out of the window precisely at nine, and keeps this up month after month, and year after year, without the shadow of turning, and in the teeth of imperative exigencies, and with a stony stoicism, and pettiness of purpose,which is exasperating enough to bring on a fit of apoplexy in the beholder.
Nobody can say that this is not equal to any authorized penance in the church, to the sufferer, whose blood has not turned to milk and water. In fact, I have often wondered why our Roman Catholic friends, who have so many excellencies, need trouble themselves to suggest or appoint anything of the kind, when life is so full of crosses and discipline in the raw. When it is so teeming with cross-purposes, that every person you meet seems obstinately bent either upon forming a partnership which, like oil and water, will forever be opposed to mingling, or throwing pebble after pebble into some ocean, expecting that the little circle it makes, will reach to the farthest shore of worldly fame or ambition. In fact, when I have visited lunatic asylums, it has really seemed to me that mad as their inmates undoubtedly are, there is little need to dissever them from their comrades on the outside.
You will perceive from this that I consider life a discipline.I do.No response was ever heartier. When one bubble after another bursts, this, you see, is a comforting reflection to settle down upon. There was once a man who read the lists of deaths every day, hoping to see that of some woman, the whole sisterhood of whom he hated. When he came to one, he always exclaimed, "Thank God, there's another of 'em gone!" My moral is obvious.
Commend me to the person who can say No with a will, when it is needed; who is not deterred fromit for fear of being called "disagreeable," or "being thought to be always in hot water." Any water but lukewarm water for me! One of my favorite passages in the Good Book is this: "I would that thou wert either cold or hot; but because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." The joke comes in here: that your timid conservative is always the first to raise the signal of distress on any emergency for the speedy arrival of "that disagreeable person who is always in hot water." He likes him marvellously as such crises of his existence? Now, beyond dispute, everybody likes to travel on a smooth-beaten road without jolting, if possible; but in order for this, somebody must make a great turn-over generally, in clearing away the stones that obstruct it. Now, I consider it a cowardly piece of business for either man or woman, to travel miles around that road, rather than take hold and do their fair share of the disagreeable work, either from indolence, or from fear that they might offend one who might possibly prefer that the road should remain in its normal condition. Oh, how glad they are when somebody else has taken this troublesome pioneership off their shoulders! How they rub their lazy hands, and smirk, and say, "You seeyoudo these thingssowell! I never was constituted for it"! Which translated, means, that they prefer sacrificing a principle to sacrificing their ease or popularity; as if anybody liked to keep all the time fighting—as if other people didn't love ease too!