Kitabı oku: «Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.», sayfa 16

UP THE HUDSON

I suppose nobody is to blame, but I feel indignant every time I take a steamboat sail up the Hudson, that I was not born a New Yorker. I am not particularly fond of sleeping on a shelf, or eating bread and butter in that submarine Tophet, called the "Dining Cabin;" were it not for these little drawbacks, I think I should engage board for a month on one of our Hudson river steamboats (one that doesn't patronize "Calliopes").

As to a "residence on the banks of the Hudson," do you think I would so sacrilegiously and audaciously familiarize myself with its glorious beauty? I decline on the principle that the lover, who had pleasurably wooed for years, refused to marry, "because he should have nowhere to spend his evenings;" where, oh, where, I ask, should I spend my summers? Yes, a month's board on a Hudson river steamboat! a floating boarding-house! why not? I claim the idea as original. First stipulation – meals and mattresses on deck, in fair weather.

What a curious study are travellers! How the human nature comes out! There are your men and women, bound to get their money's worth, to the last dime, and who imagine that bullying and bluster is the way, not only to do this, but to deceive people into the belief that they are accustomed to being waited upon at home. Of such are the men who wander ceaselessly upstairs and downstairs and in my ladies' cabin, smoking and yawning, poking their walking-sticks into every bundle and basket from sheer ennui, – and ever and anon returning on deck, suspiciously wiping their mouths. Of such are they who light a pipe or cigar in the immediate proximity of ladies, who have just secured a comfortable seat on deck, that they may revel in the much-longed-for fresh sea-breeze; dogged, obstinate, "deil take the hindmost," selfish, ruffianly cubs, who would stand up on their hind legs in a twinkling at the insinuation that they were not "gentlemen."

Yes, there are all sorts on board a steamboat; there is your country-woman in her best toggery; fancy bonnet, brass ear-rings, and the inevitable "locket;" who, when the gong sounds, takes out a huge basket to dine off molasses-cake, drop-cake, doughnuts, and cheese; who coolly nudges some man in the ribs "to lend her the loan" of his jack-knife, wherewith she dexterously cuts up and harpoons into a mouth more useful than ornamental, little square blocks of "soggy" gingerbread, with a trusting confidence in the previous habits of that strange jack-knife, that is delicious to witness! Then there are quicksilver little children, frightening mothers into fits, by peering into dangerous places, and leaning over the deck into the water; shaking their little flossy lap-dog-curls, and singing as they go, asking you with innocent straightforwardness, as they decline your offered cracker, "why you didn't buy candy instead." Then there are great, puffy, red-faced Britons, with strong white teeth, most astonishing girth of limb, and power of sleep in uncomfortable places; broad in the shoulders and sluggish in the brain; "not thinking much of America," but somehow or other keeping on coming here! Then there is your stereotyped steerage-passenger, rubbing one eye with the corner of her apron, who has "niver a penny to get to her daughter," and she might add niver a daughter, and come nearer the truth.

Then there is the romantic young-lady traveller, got up coquettishly, and yet faultlessly, for the occasion in that ravishing little hat and feather, becoming only to young beauty, or at least to fresh youth, whose wealth of hair threatens instant escape from the silken net at the back of her head, and of whose fringed eyes all bachelors should beware. Let her have her little triumphs, ye that have had your day, and let no censorious old maid, or strait-laced matron, look daggers at her innocent pleasure in being beautiful. Then there is a gentleman and lady, cultivated and refined, if faces may be trusted, with a sweet boy, whom you would never know to be blind, his face is so sunny, were it not that they guide his steps so carefully; and why shouldn't his face be sunny, when his infirmity calls forth such riches of love and tenderness? How gently his mother smooths his hair, and places his little cap upon it, and how one loves his father for holding him so long there upon his knee, and whispering to him all about the beautiful places we are passing, instead of leaving him to his mother, and going selfishly off to smoke uncounted cigars. Nor is our steamboat without its wag, who has his own way of passing the time. Having possessed himself of a large plate of ice-cream as bait for a group of youngsters, who are standing expectant in a row before him, with imperturbable gravity he maliciously feeds them with such huge spoonfuls that little feet dance up and down, and little hands are clapped to chubby cheeks, to ease the ache, which they are not quite sure is pain or pleasure, but which, anyhow, they have no idea of foregoing.

And now night comes on, and travellers one by one – or two by two, which is far better – disappear in those purgatorial state-rooms, and peep like prisoners through the grated windows, and try to sleep to the monotonous plash-plash of the waves, while male nocturnal pedestrians walk very slowly past the hurricane-deck state-room windows (innocent of curtain or blind), while denunciatory epithets are being muttered at them by their fair occupants.

Morning comes at last, and – Albany. I would respectfully inquire of its "oldest inhabitant," if it always rains torrents at Albany, at four o'clock in the morning, on the arrival of the boats? Also, if all their roads are as "hard to travel" as that through which steamboat passengers are furiously bumped and thumped, by drivers who seem to be on contract to Macadamize the bones of their passengers as well as the roads. It takes one of mine host of the – 's very good breakfasts to christianize one after it.

Victimized Babies. – Nothing is more distressing to contemplate than a young baby in the hands of an ignorant mother. The way she will roast it in warm weather with layers of clothes, and strip it in cold weather, if fashion bids, and wash it when it is sleepy and tired, and put out its eyes with sun or gas, and feed it wrongly, or neglect to feed it at the proper time, and in every way thwart Nature and outrage common-sense, is so harrowing a sight to the stranger who dare not intermeddle, that a speedy retreat is the only course left, till he is perhaps summoned to the poor little thing's funeral, not mine.

"WHY DON'T I LECTURE?"

The true reason is, that I've nothing to say, and no ambition to say it. But as nobody ever gives the true reason for anything, why should I? Well, then, it is owing to several other becauses. In the first place, never being able to learn the multiplication table, how can I study Time tables? How could I find out, without getting the headache, how long it would take me to travel from Pumpkinville to Turnipville? How could I tell whether it would rain or shine that day? and not knowing this, how could I tell what to wear? As to what a woman lectures about, that is a minor consideration; but as to what she wears, ask the reporters if that does not constitute the staple of their newspaper accounts of her public appearance. Then I am afraid of "committees." Committees are composed of men. If I arrived late, and the expectant audience were just on the point of exploding, I couldn't ask the committee how my "back hair" looked. You see at once the difficulty of the thing, also its importance, because they would be the fellows that would have to look at my back hair from a plat-form view, you see. Well, then, again, I couldn't lecture because I can't breathe without fresh air; and that is a luxury that is always denied to lecturers. They'll applaud him, and they'll ask him "what he'll drink," and they'll take him to execution in a carriage, and take his corpse back in a carriage, but they won't let him breathe, at least till they've done with him, and I shouldn't long survive such politeness. Then the stereotyped pitcher of water would close my lips instead of helping to open them. I hate a pitcher of water. I got a boxed ear for saying that once; but I've got two ears, that's a comfort, so I'll say it again. Then, I couldn't lecture because I should feel cold shivers down my back, when that awful chairman rose and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the speaker for this evening, Fanny Fern." I hate that. I should want to hop up and speak when I got ready – say – while the lovers in the audience were whispering to each other, and the old ladies settling where to put their "umberils," and the old gentlemen hunting their pockets for their "spettacles" which they had left at home, and the old maids trying to find a seat where "a horrid man" wasn't too near. I'd like to pounce on them, like a cat, just then, and give my first scratch and draw blood; and then they'd let me go on my own way; because, you see, I am one of those persons who can't do anything "to order." I often see in the papers advertisements of "shirts made – to order," but I never yet saw an advertisement of a corresponding female garment made that way. Did you? Well, that's a hint that females shouldn't be hampered by stupid rules and precedents. But this is a digression.

Again, I couldn't lecture because I can't bear saleratus, and I suppose all my engagements wouldn't be in cities. Then, nextly, I couldn't lecture, because, after the lecture was over, I should be "dead beat;" and that is just the time everybody would hurry into the committee-room to tell me that I was; and to use a dozen dictionaries, to advise "me not to talk," but to go right straight home and go to bed as soon – as they had got through talking with me!

Lastly, the reason I can't lecture is because I am the wife of a lecturer. He likes it; but two of that trade in one family is more than human nature can stagger under. It is enough for me to see him come home white about the gills, with a muddy valise, and a mousey horror of a travelling blanket, that I always air the first thing, and with an insane desire to indulge in a Rip Van Winkle nap, and dodge his kind. Now I hope, in conclusion, it is sufficiently clear to you that I have no call on the platform. My "sphere is home." I trust Dr. Holland will make a note of this. "My sphere is home," especially when I'm asked to do anything outside of it that I don't want to do!

IN THE CARS

"Palace cars" are a great invention for mothers with uneasy babies, for invalids, and for lovers. But as I am in neither of the above positions, allow me to express a preference for a seat in the common car. If I am to eat in public out of my luncheon basket, I prefer a large audience, with their backs to me, to a small one employed in looking down my throat. Then if I wish to go to sleep, again the audience have their backs to me. Or if I wish to read, they are not holding a coroner's inquest on my politics, or my literary taste in books. Then, again, although I want to pass unnoticed, yet with the lovely consistency of human nature generally, I like to observe life around me, and have enough of it to observe, too.

One result of my observations in this line has been the necessity of supporting a travelling missionary, to take from the necks of little children, in a hot car, the woollen mufflers that are turning their faces brick red, and the woollen mittens that are driving them wild, while their fond parents are absorbed in looking at illustrated papers, to get a snatched free reading before the carrier returns for the same. It is very funny how they will let these children wriggle and twist and turn, like little worms, and never think that anything can be the matter, save a lack of peanuts or painted lozenges, which they procure with a fiendish haste, and bestow with a profusion astounding to gods and some women. Presently the little victims call for "a drink of water," as well they may, with their feverish throats and mouths; but that only makes matters worse; so, by way of assuagement, a wedge of mince-pie is added, or a huge doughnut, supplemented by parched corn.

"Ye gods!" I mentally exclaim; and yet we keep on sending "missionaries to the heathen." I am not there at the journey's end to see how those children's ears are boxed for growing devilish on such fare, but I know it is done all the same by these ignorant parents. It is refreshing occasionally to hear a father or mother say to a child, "If you are hungry, you can eat this nice piece of bread and butter, or this bit of chicken, but you must not eat nuts, candy, pastry, and cake, when you are travelling." It is refreshing to hear one say, "Eat slowly, dear." It is refreshing to see one take off a child's hat or cap, and lay the little owner comfortably down for the little nap, instead of letting the child bob its tired, heated head vainly in every direction for rest. Now papa understands well enough in his own case what to do, in the way of alleviation; but children are bundled up like so many packages, on starting – labelled, ticketed – and, like these packages, not to be untied through any diversities of temperature till the bumping journey's end. It is monstrous! I am glad they kick all night after it – if so be their parents sleep with them!

But isn't it great, when, in addition to all these inflictions, a book-vender comes round and tries to make you buy one of your own books? That is the last ounce on the camel's back! How all its shortcomings and crudenesses come up before you! How all its "Errata!" How short you cut that wretched boy in his parrot panegyric! How you perspire with disgust till he takes it out of your sight and hearing, and how you pray "just Heaven" to forgive you for your sins of commission, all for bread and butter.

Now – as the story writers say when they drag in a moral by the head and shoulders, at the end of their narratives – "my object is accomplished, if the perusal of this, etc., shall have induced but one reader to reform, and lead a different life!"

So I say, if only one wretched little young one gets his dangling legs put up on the seat; or his hot woollen tippet unwound from his strangled neck, or is refused candy and lozenges, or is fed wholesomely at proper intervals, instead of keeping up a continuous chewing all through the day; or don't get spanked afterward for the inevitable results; or if I have dissuaded but one individual from buying a book with "Fern" on its covers, my object will have been accomplished!

PETTING

In the course of my reading, I came upon this sentence the other day:

"I have thought a great deal lately upon a kind of petting women demand, that does not seem to me wholesome or well. Even the strongest women require perpetual indorsement, or they lose heart. Can they not be strong in a purpose, though it bring neither kiss nor commendation?"

It seems to me that this writer cannot have passed out of sight of her or his own chimney, not to have seen the great army of women, wives of drunken and dissipated husbands, who, not only lacking "kiss and commendation," but receiving in place of them kicks and blows, and profane abuse, keep steadily on, performing their hard, inexorable duties with no human recognition of their heroism. Also, there are wives, clad in purple and fine linen, quite as much to be pitied, whose husbands are a disgrace to manhood, though they themselves may fail in no wifely or motherly duty. Blind indeed must that person be who fails to see all this every hour in the twenty-four.

So much for the truth of the remark. Now as to "petting." That woman is no woman – lacks woman's, I had almost said, chiefest charm – who does not love to be "petted." The very women who stifle their hearts' cries, because it is vain to listen for an answer where they had a sacred right to look for it, and go on performing their duty all the same – if it be their duty – are the women who most long for "petting," and who best deserve it too; and I, for one, have yet to learn that it is anything to be ashamed of. If so, men have a great sin on their souls; for they cannot get along at all – the majority of them – without this very sort of bolstering up.

Read any of the thousand and one precious books on "Advice to Women," and you will see how we are all to be up to time on the front door-step, ready to "smile" at our husbands the minute the poor dears come home, lest they lose heart and doubt our love for them; better for the twins to cry, than the husband and father. Just so with advice to young girls. They must always be on hand to mend rips in their brothers' gloves and tempers, and coddle them generally; but I have yet to see the book which enjoins upon brothers to be chivalric and courteous and gentlemanly to their sisters, as they take pleasure and pride in being to other young men's sisters.

"There is a time for everything," the good Book says, and so there is a time and place to be "petted." None of us want it in public. In fact, the men and women guilty of it render themselves liable to the suspicion of only being affectionate in public. But deliver me from the granite woman who prefers to live without it, who prides herself on not wanting it. I wouldn't trust her with my baby were there a knife handy. Thank God there are few such. The noblest and greatest and best women I have ever known, have been big-hearted and loving, and have known how to pet and be "petted," without losing either strength or dignity of character.

Facing a Thin Congregation. – It is comparatively easy for a clergyman to preach to a full audience; but the test which shows whether one's heart is in his work, is to get up and face a thin congregation, and yet deliver his message with an earnestness which shows that he has a realizing sense of the value of even one soul. Only that clergyman who keeps this at all times in view, can so utterly leave himself out of consideration, that he will be just as eloquent and just as earnest when speaking to a thin audience, as if he were addressing a large multitude, from whose eager, upturned faces he might well draw inspiration.

MY GRIEVANCE

Some jilted bachelor has remarked that "no woman is happy unless she has a grievance." Taking this view of the case, it seems to me that men generally deserve great praise for their assiduity in furnishing this alleged requisite of feminine felicity. But that is not what I was going to talk about. I have "a grievance." My fly has come! I say my fly, because, as far as I can find out, he never goes to anybody else; he is indifferent to the most attractive visitor; what he wants is me– alas! me—only me! The tortures I have endured from that creature, no pen, tongue, or dictionary can ever express. His sleepless, untiring, relentless persecution of a harmless female is quite fiendish. His deliberate choice, and persistent retention of agonizing titillating perches, shows a depth of "strategy" unequalled in one so young. Raps, slaps, exclamations not in the hymn-book, handkerchief waving, sudden startings to the feet – what do they all avail me? He dogs me like a bailiff, from one corner of the room to another. All the long, hot day he attends my steps; all night he hovers over my couch, ready for me at the first glimmer of daybreak. The marvellous life-preserving way he has of dodging instant and vengeful annihilation, would excite my admiration, were not all my faculties required to soothe my nose after his repeated visits. In vain I pull my hair over my ears to shield them. In vain I try to decoy him into saucers of sweet things while I write. Down goes my pen, while my hands fly like the wings of a windmill in the vain attempt to dislodge him permanently. In vain I open the door, in the hope he may be tempted out. In vain I seat myself by the open window, trusting he will join the festive throng of happy Christian flies, whizzing in the open air in squads, and harming nobody. If he would only go, you know, I would clap down my window, and die of stifling, rather than of his harrowing tickling. See there! he goes just near enough to raise my hopes, and then lights on the back of my neck. I slap him – he retires an instant – I throw my slipper after him – it breaks my Cologne bottle, and he comes back and alights on my nostril. Look! here! I'm getting mad; now I'll just sit calmly down in that arm-chair, and fix my eyes on that Madonna, and let him bite. Some time he will surely get enough, and now I'll just stand it as long as he can. Heavens! no, I can't; he is inside my ear! Now, as I'm a sinner, I'll tell you what I'll do. Good! I'll go a journey, and lose him! I'll go to Lake George. Saints and angels, don't he follow me there too? To Niagara – do the rapids rid me of him? To the White Mountains? Don't he ascend with me? To the sea-shore? Is he afraid of the seventh wave? Look here! a thought strikes me. Do you suppose that fly would cross Jordan with me? for I can't stand this thing much longer.

Standing Alone. – Thank Heaven, I can stand alone! Can you? Are you yet at the end of your life journey? Have you yet stood over the dead body of wife or child, snatched from you when life was at the flood-tide of happiness? Did you ever close your weary eyes to the bright dawn of a new day, and pray that you might never live to look at another? If a woman, did you ever face poverty where luxury had been, and vainly look hither and thither for the summer friends that you would never see again till larder and coffer were replenished? Are you sure, when you boast that you can "stand alone," that you have learned also how to fall alone?