Kitabı oku: «Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.», sayfa 14
SPRING IN THE CITY
There are those who like to begin the day vociferously; with demonstrative step and voice; with hurry and rush. I confess to a love of the serene, soft-stepping way in which Nature heralds in the day. Soft skies, softer music; the gradual rolling up of night's mantle, and the genial warmth which steals imperceptibly about us. Oh, that sweet, quiet, devotional coming in of the new-born day! How I long for it, as the blades of grass begin to grow green, between the pavement-stones of the crazy city! How I tire of its quips and pranks and circus-clown-tumblings. How stale grow its jests! How I pant for freedom outside its artificial, heated walls! How disgusting is the road woman must travel to secure all this happiness! Woollens and furs to be put safely out of reach of moths. House-cleaning and carpet-shaking to be done. Dresses to be bought, and horror! worse than all, to be fitted. Trunks to be packed – writing to be done, weeks ahead. My brain spins to think what a purgatory one must travel through, to reach that serene heaven, the bird-peeping-morning-hour of the country; when nobody comes to me with horrible questions about meat and butter. When as soon as my shoes and stockings are on, and before the dew is off, or the lovely mist done creeping off the mountains, Nature's cool hand is laid on my temples, and I give her the best of me. With my head on her bosom, I forget all that is askew in life and rest there contented with the present; like the babe who dreams not that its mother will presently loose its hand from her neck, and disappear while yet the trance continues.
If I am sentimental, forgive me; but sometimes I sigh to think how much of life goes to consideration of food and clothes. Now, while I sojourned in a tent on the James river, during the war, I used to lie in my cot, and consider these things among others. There were just the cot, a rough pine table, and my trunk, for furniture. I had only to wash my face and hands in the tin basin of water that Sambo slipped under the tent every morning, and all those bothering, small considerations were disposed of for the day.
There was no carpet there to be swept – there were no pictures or china to look after. Sambo made my bed, while I went into another tent to breakfast; and the fighting was going on outside, which was to leave it optional with Sambo about handing tin-basins of water to white folks. All that suited me. Life under these circumstances seemed to have something in it. I felt dignified to be alive, and thanked my father and mother for it.
We have finished the war since then. I am not sorry for that, but life in that tent has spoiled me for parlor fripperies. That's the worst of it. I keep all the time asking everybody if they don't think we should be a great deal happier without all these artificial wants, that so wear our spirits and souls out. Bless you, they all say, yes; but they keep going on all the same, and I suppose I shall.
A Woman's Motion. – I rise to make a proposition. It is this: that the name and denomination, and the name of the pastor, of our respective churches, should be neatly placed beside the principal entrance door, that strangers may be able to find those churches they desire. Why not? as well as the name of the sexton and his residence, which we find upon nearly all our churches. I won't charge anything for the hint, provided it is carried out. The thought came to me as I was touched upon the arm by a stranger the other Sunday, in the porch of a New York church, and asked, "Of what denomination is the pastor here?" I had to rub my head to remember, for creeds and denominations find little lodgment there. Provided I find Christianity, that's enough for me, and to my thinking, no one church has the monopoly of that.
WAIFS
Did you ever try to rid yourself of a thing you did not want? An old glove or a faded knot of ribbon, or a bit of lace? After Bettina has picked it up, and with honest delight returned it as a missing valuable, and every adult and minor in the house has taken his or her turn in depositing it carefully on your table, were you ever driven "clean" demented by the dust-man ringing the area bell, with the article in question, thinking, deluded philanthropist, that he had performed a virtuous action? Go where you may, can you rid yourself of it? Don't it turn up between the covers of books, and stare at you from bureau drawers, and appear simultaneously with your pocket-handkerchief on some august occasion from your robe pocket? Will water quench it, or fire burn it? Don't it always fly up chimney unharmed by the sparks, and watch an opportunity to re-enter at the area door? When you go out, don't it frisk along the gutter, timing itself to your steps, slow or quick; or eddy round your head in a gust of wind, and finally get blown back upon your door-step, where it persists in lodging, spite of brooms and Bettys, till you get as nervous about it as if it were some relentless enemy, dogging your every step? Perhaps all this while you are hunting every nook and corner vainly to find some article you really want, and which persistently keeps out of your way, or at least until you have given it up, and replaced it with a duplicate, when it takes that occasion suddenly to appear, and innocently to confront you, from a fold in an arm-chair, or sofa, or from the corner of a carpet.
When I experience these trials, I no longer marvel at the clutching fingers thrust through the grated windows of lunatic asylums, or the unearthly howls of rage or peals of wild laughter with which these unfortunates give vent to their feelings. I no longer smile at the annoyed man who, waking one fine spring morning, and looking at the fresh grass, exclaimed, "What! Green again! and —blue– his brains (?) out."
Partial Judgment. – How few people are gifted with the faculty of seeing round a corner; in other words, looking at both sides of a question before deciding! Those who have not this gift are always sinning, and always repenting; always asserting, and always retracting. They may have many estimable qualities, and yet, their house being built on such a sandy foundation, one hesitates before entering it; or, if he makes up his mind to do so, it is with the deliberate expectation that he may possibly be buried under its ruins.
TACT
I'm not particularly good at definitions, but I know what tact is not. It is not tact to sit down by the side of a person grieving for the dead, and tell them how much more comfortable life would now be to them, did they not love so strongly; and how much wiser, could they only be more diffusive in their attachments, and concentrate less; so that when the crape flutters from the door, one could coolly say: "Yes, it is true – he or she is dead and gone; and there's no help for it; let us turn to something else and be jolly."
It is not tact to tell a mother, who has an idiotic or deformed child, how smart, and sweet, and bright are your own; with what a zest they enter into rollicksome sports; how apt they are to learn, and how brilliant may be their own and your future.
It is not tact, if you have an acquaintance, who only by the most rigid and painstaking economy can maintain a presentable appearance, to make a call on such, in an elaborate toilet, with manners to match.
It is not tact to embarrass persons of limited education, and little reading, by conversing upon topics of which they can by no possibility know anything, save that you have the advantage of them in that regard. It is not tact, in the presence of an invalid, to dilate upon savory dishes, and the pleasures of the table. It is not tact to converse with an editor upon a quiet, peaceful life; or with a compelled authoress upon the safe and uninvaded sanctities of the fireside for women.
The most astounding instance of tact, is to listen, inwardly crucified, with a pleased air, to an old —old joke, and a poor one at that: to improvise a laugh at the proper moment, and successfully to resist the malicious instinct to flatter the narrator, at the close, by saying: "Yes, I have heard that before."
Answer your Children's Questions. – Education is erroneously supposed only to be had at schools. The most ignorant children often have been constant in their attendance there, and there have been very intelligent ones who never saw the inside of a school-room. The child who always asks an explanation of terms or phrases it cannot understand, who is never willing to repeat, parrot-like, that which is incomprehensible, will far outstrip in "education" the ordinary routine scholar. "Education" goes on with children at the fireside – on the street – at church – at play – everywhere. Do not refuse to answer their proper questions then. Do not check this natural intelligence, for which books can never compensate, though you bestowed whole libraries.
THE INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS
"Poor Burns!" all exclaim after reading his life and his poems. Poor Burns! I too say; and the next minute I ask, impatiently, why he, so conscious of his God-given powers, should have miserably shortened his life one-half by ill-governed appetites and excesses. Why, if coining his brain into dollars, for the widow and fatherless, proved impossible, he should become so disgusted with manual labor, that even his filial, fraternal, and conjugal love could not dignify its repulsive features, since it needs must be. Why, with a loving, prudent, industrious, faithful wife to help him, he could not emulate her everyday but sublime heroism, not by paroxysms of effort, only to show us how well he might have done, but that steady, determined persistence which seldom fails of success. Why he, at once so great and so little, took pleasure and pride in wallowing in the mire, merely because strait-laced hypocrisy stepped daintily over it with white-sandalled feet. There was no greatness in this. It was but the angry kick of the impatient urchin upon the chair over which he had stumbled. Did his ambition to be written down a publican and a sinner lessen the ranks of the Pharisee? Could he look into the trusting faces of his innocent children, and feel no secret pang that for so petty and unworthy a motive he was content to hazard or forego their future respect? Had he none but himself to consult in such unworthy disposition of his time and talents? Was it manly in the midst of that loving group coolly to look forward to the possibility of an old age of beggary, and toleration by chance firesides, in the undignified character of jester or clown? Because a man is a "genius," must one indorse these things and write them down as "eccentricities" inseparable from it and to be lightly passed over? Must intellect necessarily be at variance with principle?
And yet – and yet – because I can say this, I do not fall a whit behind the most ardent admirer of his genius. But I do hold that he is to be held as accountable for his errors as the most ordinary farmer's boy who is unable to spell the name of the plough which he guides. Nor does this interfere with the heart-aching pity with which I look upon the soiled wings, so capable of soaring into a pure atmosphere, yet trailing their beauty in the dust. Nor does this keep my eyes from overflowing when some lofty or beautiful sentiment of his shines out diamond-like from the rubbish.
How could he? Why did he?
Softly – reverently let us answer. We so full of faults – always sinning – sometimes repenting. Softly let us answer. We who have not sinned only because we were not tempted. Softly – we whom pride, not principle, has saved. Softly – we whose lives the world writes fair, and perhaps God's eye leprously foul.
Country Matins. – He who sleeps at early dawn in the country, stops his ears to the prayers of Nature. That early tuneful waking! What can compare with it? Evening is soothing and sweet, with its stars and its calm; but the gradual brightness of the new day, softly stealing upon us, as the tints deepen and the songs strengthen, till the full orchestra is complete, oh! this is soul strengthening and sublime! We were weak of purpose, we were dispirited, the night before. Yesterday had overlapped its cares, and our tired shoulders shrank from the coming burden. But this bright resurrection heralded so thrillingly by soulless creatures! Shall we immortals only be thankless and dumb? We join the chorus! Care sits lightly at this blessed hour. All things for that day are possible to us – hard duty sweet. Blessed be God, then, for the sweet dawning of each new day!
A TRIP TO THE CAATSKILLS
Well – I've "done" the Caatskills! I've tugged up that steep mountain, one of the hottest days in which a quadruped or a biped ever perspired, packed to suffocation, with other gasping sufferers, in that crucifying institution called a stage-coach, until I became resignedly indifferent, whether it reached its destination, or rolled head over heels – or rather head over wheels – over the precipice. Landing at last at the hotel, I was conscious of only one want – a bedroom; which, when obtained, was close enough, and which I shared with three other jaded mortals. The next morning, thanks to a good Providence and the landlord, I emigrated into unexceptionable quarters.
Ah – now I breathe! now I remember no more that purgatorial reeling stage-coach, and its protracted jigglings – wriggling – joltings and bumpings. Now I am repaid – now I gaze – oh, how can I gaze with only one pair of eyes, on all this beauty and magnificence? This vast plain spread out so far below our feet like an immense garden, with its luxuriant foliage – its little cottages, smaller than a child's toy: its noble river, specked with white sails, lessened by distance to a silver thread, winding through the meadows; and beyond – still other plains, other streams, other mountains – on – on – stretching far beyond the dizzy ken, till the eye fills, and the heart swells, and leaning in an ecstasy of happiness on the bosom of "Our Father," we cry, "Oh! what is man that Thou art mindful of him?"
Now – as if the scene were too gorgeous for mortal sight, nature gently, compassionately drops a silvery veil of mist before it, veiling, yet not hiding – withdrawing, yet not removing – giving us now sunshine, now shadow; bringing out now the vivid green of a meadow, now the silver sheen of the river; now the bold outline of a pine-girdled mountain. And now – the scene changes, and fleets of clouds sail slowly – glide ghostly, round the mountain's base; winding-sheets wrapped round the shapely trees, from which they burst with a glorious resurrection; while over and above all arches the blue heavens, smiling that it canopies a scene so fair. See – village after village, like specks in the distance – where human hearts throb to human joys and sorrows; where restless ambition flutters against the barred cage of necessity, pining for the mountain-top of freedom; when, gained, oh, weary traveller, to lose its distant golden splendor, and wrap thee in the chill vapors of discontent. What matter – if thou but accept this proof of thy immortality? Yes – village after village; farmers plodding on, as farmers too often will, turning up the soil for dollars and cents, seeing only in the clouds the filter for their crops; in the lakes the refrigerator for their fish; in the glorious trees their fuel; in the waving grass and sloping meadows, feed for their cattle; in the sweet sunrise an alarm bell to labor, in the little bird's vespers but a call to feed and sleep.
Now – twilight steals upon the mountains, calm as heaven. The bright valleys sleep in their deepening shadows, while on the mountain-tops lingers the glory, as if loath to fade into the perfumed night. With a graceful sweep the little bird mounts to the clouds, takes his last circling flight, and sings his evening hymn, sweet and soft as the rapt soul's whispered farewell to earth. And yet – O God! – this is but the porch to the temple, before whose dazzling splendors even Thy seraphs veil their sinless eyes.
In an article in a late weekly, I was shocked at a flippant and unfeeling allusion to "the yellow invalids one meets at watering-places." Surely, the sight of such, wandering forth with feeble step and faded eyes, taking their last look at this beautiful earth, side by side with the rosy cheek and bounding pulse of health, should excite in us only feelings of tenderest love and compassion. Some such I met; but I would not, if I could, that their pale faces should have been banished from our merry circle. It was no damper on my enjoyment to gaze at their drooping eyelids, and listlessly crossed hands. I would but have yielded them the cosiest corner on the sofa, or the most comfortable arm-chair, or the sunniest nook on the piazza, or tempted their failing appetite with the daintiest bit at the table. I would like to have taken their transparent hands in my healthy palm, and given them a kindly grasp, by which they would recognize me in that better land, which every day dawns clearer on my sight. It is well that we should have such in our midst; and surely none whose hearts are drawn by yearning, but invisible cords, to the dear ones who once made sunlight in our homes, can fail to recognize and respond to the tacit claims of the stranger-invalid upon our tenderest sympathies.
And while upon this subject, I would speak a word, which, it seems to me, needs to be spoken – upon a courteous recognition of the lonely, unobtrusive traveller, who, for the time, makes one of the same family under a hotel roof. It is easy for all to pay court to the distinguished, the handsome, or the agreeable; to seek an introduction to such, or manufacture a pretext for speaking. It is for the unattractive I would plead, and the aged – for those who have nothing to recommend them to notice, save that they are unnoticed. It seems to me that one need study no book of etiquette to find out, that a passing salutation to such, a kind inquiry after their health, an offer of a flower – when one has been rambling where their weary feet may not go – is the true politeness. One feels like spurning the civility received at the hands of those who see not in these disregarded ones the lineaments of the same Father. It gives me pleasure to say that I have witnessed some noble examples of courtesy to such, extended with a graceful ease, which would seem less to confer a favor than to receive one by their acceptance.
It was very pleasant to see little children at the Caatskills; but they were all too few. Children are generally supposed to be bad travellers: this is a mistake. They have often more self-denial, fortitude, and endurance than half your grown people. I can answer at least for one little girl under my charge from whom no amount of burning sun, hunger, or fatigue, extorted a syllable of complaint; in fact, I once saw her endure a car collision with the same commendable philosophy, while men old enough to be her father were frantic with affright. "Render unto children their due," is on the fly-leaf of my Bible.
Yes, it is good for them to go out of cities. A city child is a cruel, wicked, shapeless, one-sided abortion. 'Tis a pale shoot of a plant, struggling bravely for its little day of life in some rayless corner, all unblest by the warm sunshine which God intended to give to it color, strength, and fragrance. What wonder that the blight falls on it? Do you say, Pshaw? Do you suppose a child, for instance, could appreciate the scenery at the Caatskills? I ask you, do all the adults who flock there to gaze, appreciate it? Do you not hear the words "divine," – "enchanting," – "beautiful," – "magnificent," – applied by them, as often to costume as to clouds? Give me a child's appreciation of such a scene, before that of two-thirds of the adult gazers. Its thought may be half-fledged, and given with lisping utterance, but it is a thought. The eyes, while speaking, may suddenly change their look of wondering awe, for one of elfish fun; what matter! The feeling was sincere, though fleeting – genuine, though fragmentary. By and by that little child, leaving its sports, will come back again to my side as I sit upon the rocks; and any gray-haired philosopher who can, may answer the question with which she seals my lips; any poet who can, may coin a phrase which, more fitly than her's, symbols nature's beauty. Now she's off to play again – leaving the deep question unanswered, but not for that reason to be forgotten – no more than the rock, or mountain, or river, which called it forth, and which is hung up like a cabinet picture in that childish memory, to be clouded over, it may be, by the dust and discolorations of after years, but never destroyed – waiting quietly that master touch, which obliterating all else, as if trivial or unworthy, restores only to the fading eye of age, in freshened beauty, the glowing pictures of childhood.
The great charm of the Caatskills is its constant variety; look where you may, you shall never see twice the same effect of light and shade. Again, and again I said to myself, How, amid such prodigal, changeful beauty, shall the artist choose? Life were all too short for the decision. Ever the busy finger of Omnipotence, silently showing us wonder upon wonder. "Silently," did I say? Ah, no; ever writing, on cloud and valley, rock, mountain, and river – "all these as a scroll shall be rolled away, but My Word shall never pass away."
I have not spoken of the lovely rides in the vicinity of the Caatskills, of which we were not slow to avail ourselves. Turn which way we would, all was beauty. And yet, not all – I must not forget among these magnificent mountains the hateful, bare, desolate, treeless, vineless, old-fashioned school-house, resembling a covered pound for stray calves. What a sight it was, to be sure, to see the weary children swarm out into the warm sunshine, shouting for very joy that they might shout, and trying their poor cramped limbs to see if they had not actually lost the use of them in those inquisitorially devised seats. Alas! what an alphabet might a teacher who was a child-lover have deciphered, outside those purgatorial walls, on trees, and flowers, and mountains; the teaching of which would have needed no quickening ferule, cramped no restless limbs, overtasked and diseased no forming brain! What streams of knowledge, waiting only the divining rod of the lover of God, and His representatives —little children– to freshen and to beautify wheresoever they should flow!
Yes – it was good to see those children kicking their reprieved heels in the air – I only wish they could have kicked over that desolate old school-house. They didn't know why I nodded to them such a merry good day; they never will know, poor victims, how royally well I sympathized with their somersets on the grass – they thought, perhaps, that I knew the "school-marm;" – Heaven forbid – I would rather know the incendiary who should set fire to her school-house!
In one neighborhood – which is so small that an undertaker must be sorely puzzled to find subjects – I noticed a hideous picture of a coffin stuck on the front of a small dwelling-house, with a repulsive ostentation that outdid even New York. This, to an invalid visiting the Caatskills for health (and there are many such), must be an inspiriting sight!
This summer travel, after all, is a most excellent thing. It is well for people from different parts of the country to rub off their local angles by collision. It is well for those of opposite temperaments and habits of thought, to look each other mentally in the face. It is well for the indefatigable mother and housekeeper to remain ignorant, for one blessed month, of the inevitable, "What shall we have for dinner?" It is well for the man of business, whose thoughts are narrowed down to stocks and stores, to look out on the broad hills, and let the little bird's song stir memories of days when heaven was nearer to him than it has ever been since. It is well for the ossified old bachelor to air his selfishness in the genial atmosphere of woman's smile. It is well for the overtasked clergyman, and his equally overtasked (though not equally salaried) wife, to have a brief breathing spell from vestries and verjuice. It is well for their daughter, who has been tied up to the parish pillory of – "you must not do this," and "you must not do that," and "you must not do the other," till she begins to think that God did not know what He was about when He made her, to bestow so many powers, and tastes, and faculties, which must be forever folded up in a napkin, for fear of offending "Mrs. Grundy." It is well for the Editor, that he may look in the faces of the women whose books he has reviewed, and condemned, too, without reading a blessed word of them. It is well for everybody – even the exclusives who hesitate, through fear of plebeian contamination, to sit down in the common parlor; because, were all the world wise – which Heaven forbid – there would be nothing to laugh at!
A lack of competition is said to affect progress. That the traveller to the Caatskills has no choice but "The Mountain House," should not, it seems to me, act as an extinguisher to enterprise upon its well-patronized landlord. I might make many suggestions as to improvements, by which I am sure he would, in the end, be no loser. It needs no great stretch of the imagination to fancy the carriage which conveys victims to "The Falls," a relic of the Inquisition. I did not know till I had tried it, how many evolutions a comfortably-fleshed woman could perform in a minute, between the roof and floor of such a ve-higgle! (Result – a villanous headache – and the black and blues.) I noticed a small bookshelf in the very pleasant ladies' parlor. "Praise God Barebones," I think, must have made the selection of the volumes. But it is pleasanter to commend than to find fault. I could forgive many shortcomings for the privilege of feasting on the wholesome light bread, which to a saleratus-consuming – saleratus-consumed New Yorker, was glory enough to nibble at. Blessings, too, on the skilful fingers which stirred up those appetizing omelettes and sublime orange-puddings. What an amusement it is, to be sure, to watch a man when he gets hold of the dish he fancies! What fun to bother him with innumerable questions while he is trying to eat it in undisturbed rapture – meanwhile wishing you at the North Pole! How cynical the creatures are, the last interminable half hour before meals, and how sweetly amiable and lazy after! Then is your time to try men's soles; to insist upon their taking a walk with you, when they can scarce waddle; when visions of curling Havana smoke invite them to two-legged piazza-chairs, digestion, and meditation. Then is your time to be suddenly seized with an unpostponable longing for a brisk game of ten-pins, to test the sincerity of all their disinterested speeches. My dears, the man who continues amiable while you thus stroke his inclinations the wrong way, may safely be trusted in any matrimonial crisis. I indorse him.
With regard to the Falls it may be a delusion, but I think it is rather a damper to sentiment to fee a man to turn on the water for them! and I know it is a damper to the slippers to go down into the ravine beneath – which, joking aside, is very beautiful, and a great place for a bear to hug you in. Instead of which, I met a young parson whom I knew by token of his very black coat, and very white necktie; and who actually pulled from his sacerdotal pocket a profane handkerchief which I had carelessly dropped, presenting it with as much gravity as if he had been giving me "the right hand of fellowship." Heaven help him – so young – so well-made – and so solemn! – I felt immensely like a frolic. And speaking of frolics – oh, the mountains I had to leave unclimbed, the "campings out" foregone – and all because I was foreordained to petticoats – hampering, bush-catching petticoats! – all because I hadn't courage to put on trousers (in which, by the way, I have made several unsatisfactory private rehearsal attempts to unsex myself, but nature was too much for me), and wade knee-deep in moss to see what man alone, by privilege of his untrammelled apparel, may feast his eyes upon. It is a crying shame. Ten-pins, too; who can get a "ten-strike" in petticoats? See what I would do at it in a jacket and unmentionables, though I really think nature had no eye to this game when she modelled a woman's hand and wrist. Now I dare say there are straight-laced people who will be shocked at the idea of a woman playing ten-pins. Well, let them be shocked. I vote for it for two reasons; first, for the exercise, when dripping grass and lowering skies deny it to us elsewhere; secondly, because it is always a pleasant sight to see husbands sharing this, or any other innocent recreation, with their wives and daughters, instead of herding selfishly in male flocks. I like this feature of domesticity in pleasure-seeking in our friends, the Germans. I like the Germans. Their joy is infectious. A sprinkling of such spirits would do much towards infusing a little life into the solemn business way in which Americans too often pursue, but seldom overtake, pleasure. Yes, it is a lovely sight to see them with their families! and oh, how much more honorable and just, to a painstaking, economical wife and mother, than the expensive meal, shared at a restaurant with some male companion, while she sits solitary, to whom a proposal even for a simple walk would be happiness, as an evidence of that watchful care which is so endearing to a wife's heart.
Not the least among our enjoyments were our evenings at the Caatskills. When warm enough, promenading on the ample piazza with pleasant friends; when the out-door temperature forbade this, seated in the parlors, listening to merry voices, looking on young and happy faces, or, what is never less beautiful, upon those who, having reached life's summit, did not, for that reason, churlishly refuse to cast back approving, sympathizing glances upon the young loiterers who were still gleefully gathering flowers by the way.
