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