Kitabı oku: «Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.», sayfa 17

CEMETERY MUSINGS

When I am in a new place I always stroll into its principal cemetery. I fancy that the average age of the dead tells its own story of the healthfulness of the neighborhood, or the contrary. The style of monumental inscription is also a good test of its educational and moral progress. One delicious morning in July, I passed through the gateway of the beautiful cemetery in the town of – . Little birds were pluming themselves on the moss-grown tombstones, or alighting, with eye askance, on the pathway before me, or swaying on some light branch and singing as if there were no such thing as sorrow or death in this bright world; while the sunbeams slanted down through the trees, touching the half-effaced inscriptions, as if lovingly, for the "stranger within the gate." Now and then one heard the click of the chisel, as some new name was being added to those already inscribed there; while in the distance the mowers were busy, scythe in hand, laying low the tall grass, as they carefully touched the many graves, and recited little homely histories of those whom the Great Reaper had garnered. Little children were playing innocently about, with eyes like gems, and flowing locks, and graceful, gliding steps, now and then stooping to inhale the flowers, or spell out with pretty blunders a passing inscription. Go not there, my little ones —that inscription is not for you – your God is love. Into His hand yours is now placed confidingly, lead wheresoever He may, to fall asleep on His bosom in His own good time. Why should you read, "Prepare each day the funeral shroud." Why should you fetter your simple, sweet faith in "Our Father" by chains of fear, through which, all your lifetime, you "should be subject to bondage"? Why for you should skulls be disinterred and dry bones held up to startle and affright? Step away, little children. Think not of "shrouds" and "coffins;" this is the lesson He taught you: "Little children, love one another." When He giveth His beloved sleep, neither you nor I shall know, nor does it matter.

And as I moved through this lovely place, breathing of beauty, and balm, and the song of birds, and the scent of flowers, I said to myself, Oh why, when the warm, throbbing heart of life is so slow to comprehend the unseen, and so tenaciously clings to the things seen, should it have hindrance, instead of help, in its efforts to spell out immortality! Why fetter it from childhood with those gloomy clogs and burdens? How many good men and good women have struggled vainly through a lifetime with these physical, funereal terrors. And so I turned away to the graves of the "Little Annies" and "Little Freddys," where love had placed its freshly gathered flowers, and said: "This is wiser; this is better."

THE SCRUBBING-BRUSH MANIA

Did you ever see a woman who was possessed by the house-cleaning fiend? Not periodically, but at all times. Who would go about drawing her finger over every lounge, and table, and chair, speering into cracks and crannies for crooked pins and lint; holding tumblers up to the light for finger marks; in short, so utterly absorbed in the pursuit of dirt that every other pursuit was as nothing in comparison.

Now, being New England born, I know what neatness is, and value it as only a New Englander can; but when it takes such shape as this, and robs life of all its charms, I turn my back upon it with righteous disgust. Who thanks these zealous furies for their self-imposed labors? Certainly not their husbands, who flee into remote corners from dust-pans and dust-brushes, and weary of the recitals of their prowess day by day. Certainly not their children, who have no place to stow away their little sacred property in the shape of bright bits of silk or paper, or broken cups, which are dear and precious to them, and should always be held in respect within proper, innocent limits.

Oh, ye careful and troubled Marthas of the household, stop and take breath. Place a flower on the mantel, that you and your household may perhaps have some in their lives. While you stop to rest, read. So shall the cobwebs be brushed from your neglected brain, and you shall learn that something else besides cleanliness is necessary to make home really home for those dependent on your care.

Throw your broom out of doors; take your children by the hand, and let the fresh wind touch your wrinkled forehead. If your house is wound up to such an immaculate pitch of cleanliness, it can run on a few hours without your care. Laugh and talk with them, or better still, listen to their foolish-wise talk. Bring home a bit of gingerbread for each of them, and play some simple game with them. Put on the freshest dress you have, and ask your husband, when he comes in, if he recognizes his wife.

"I wish my mother looked as pretty as you," said a little girl, one day, to a neighbor.

"But your mamma is much prettier than I," replied the neighbor. The truth was that the child's mother always was in a wrapper, unless company was expected. The rest of the time she was under the dominion of the house-cleaning fiend, and the children fled from such a joyless utilitarian home, where no flower of beauty could ever get time to take root and blossom.

There is little need to misinterpret my meaning. Many a ruined life has come of a joyless home. Your children take to the sunlight as naturally as do the flowers. Shut it out of your houses and they will go abroad in search of it, you may be sure of that. Isn't this worth thinking about, O ye mothers? careful and troubled about many things, and yet so blind to your first and greatest duty.

Co-operative Housekeeping. – When the millennium comes, or when women stand by one another as men do – though I'm free to say, the reason why men do it is, that when one man does anything bad, all the rest defend him, because they don't know but they may want to do it too– but, as I was saying, when women will stand by each other, then we will talk about "Co-operative Housekeeping." Or, when men will help their wives out of scrapes with other women, instead of running away, or "pooh-poohing" it, then we will talk about a dozen families living in one house. At present Mrs. Smith's boy John will slap your little Sarah in the face, just to show her that he is going to be a man some day. Now, there's but one common staircase, and little Sarah can't go up and down after that without a body-guard; and Johnny's pa and your daughter Sarah's pa are business friends, and "What are you going to do about it?" coolly asks Sarah's pa, of Sarah's irritated ma.

That's the idea; and Co-operative Housekeeping, allow me to tell you, is planned by bachelors and single ladies, and to them we'll leave it.

SAUCE FOR THE GANDER

Every written or spoken sentence, not calculated to benefit mankind, carries with it, I verily believe, its own antidote in the shape of narrowness and bigotry.

This comforting thought occurred to me on leaving a lecture hall the other evening, where the speaker, in saying some very good things, had mentioned all female employments, save housekeeping, especially those of writing and lecturing, with utter contempt, averring that the education and training of children were the only things worthy their notice. He did not stop to explain what was to become of all the old maids and single women generally; or whether they might be excused for earning an honest support by pen and ink, or even stepping upon the platform, when they had no "home," and consequently no "home duties" to attend to; and whether, if the lecture they should deliver were as narrow and illogical as his own, the patient public might not, as in his case, be willing to pay and listen. Also, while insisting upon every woman being a mother, and desiring nothing beyond her nursery walls, not even her own intellectual progression, to qualify her to meet the questioning youth, as well as the dependent infancy of her children, I heard not one syllable from him upon the home duty devolving on the father and the husband, as to his share in their government and home education, which, in my opinion, is more important than that of school; nor of the cultivation of his companionable qualities, to assist in making home pleasant. Not a word did he say on this head, no more than as if these things were not binding equally on him as on the wife. As if that could be "home," in any true sense, where both did not know and practise these duties. He told us it was "of course more pleasant for women to be like the noisy cascade, and to mount the platform, than to imitate the gentle, silent rivulet, and stay quietly at home out of the public eye." As the lecturer had a home himself, and was a husband and father, and not particularly in need of any emolument from lecturing, it occurred to me that the propriety of his own absence from the "gentle rivulet" of home duties might admit of a doubt. It could not be possible that he who could map out a wife's home duty by such strict latitude and longitude, should himself have wearied of their tameness, and "mounted the platform to keep in the public eye."

What nonsense even a male lecturer may utter! said I, as I left his presence. As if there were no women, good and earnest as well as gifted, who neglected no duties while mounting the platform, but who honored it with their womanly, dignified presence, and made every large-souled, large-brained man who listened to them rejoice that they were there.

This "vine and oak" style of talk is getting monotonous. There is more "oak" to the women of to-day than there was to those of the past. Else how could the great army of drunken, incompetent, unpractical, idle husbands be supported as they are by wives, who can't stop to be "gentle, silent rivulets," but have to "keep in the public eye" as business women? Our lecturer didn't mention this little fact – not he!

Leaving Home for the Summer. – There is always a certain sadness in leaving home for the pleasant summer jaunt in the country, however glad we may be to get rid of our cares. As we close the door and turn the key, the thought will come: Shall we ever see this home again? Have we really left it, not only for a time, but forever? Of course, new scenes and new objects soon dissipate these thoughts; and it is well it is so, or we should not gain the relief we seek; but we doubt if the thought does not obtrude itself for the moment, even in the case of the most habitually thoughtless.

MY FIRST CONVERT

I have just received a letter from a soldier, who was with us in our late four-years struggle for the "Stars and Stripes," announcing himself a convert to the renunciation of tobacco, through my ministrations on this subject. He says that "he has to thank me for the kind encouragement I have held out to him to persevere in this resolve, and for the freedom he enjoys, now that he is no longer a slave to that filthy habit; and that he shall, while he lives, hold me in grateful remembrance for the same."

Now that's encouraging, even though I shouldn't add another member to my congregation. If any other "brother" feels like "speaking out in meetin'" and relating a similar experience, so much the better; but in any event I shall not cease doing my best to make proselytes. "You ought to let up on a poor fellow a little," said a smoker to me not long since; "you ought to have a little charity for a fellow." Now I don't think that. My charity is for those who silently suffer from this selfish indulgence. For the poor girls, who stand on their weary feet hours behind the counters of shops, where the master sits with his feet up, smoking till their poor heads ache, and their cheeks crimson with the polluted air, roaring for them to shut the door or window if they so much as open a crevice for relief. My charity is for myself, when, seated in a car or omnibus, some "gentleman" who has just thrown away his cigar stump, places himself next to me, and compels me to inhale his horrible breath and touch his noxious coat-sleeve. My charity is for myself, when Mike O'Brien, who is in my cellar, getting in coal, sits down on the top of it, lights his pipe, and sends up the nasty fumes into the parlor and all over the house. My charity is for myself, when the proofs of my forthcoming book are sent me to read, to be obliged to hang them out of the window, like signals of distress, before I can correct them without absolute nausea. Nor am I to be mollified by the sample-package of "Fanny Fern Tobacco" once sent me. Now I felt complimented, when a little waif of a black baby, picked up in the streets of a neighboring city, was named for me; also when a handcart was christened ditto; also a mud-scow; but tobacco – excuse me!

I read in a paper, the other day, of an ancient institution called "smoking-tongs," constructed to hold a live coal so securely, as to admit of its being passed round the room; women, at that time, as an act of hospitality, used to approach their male guests with the same, and light their pipes for them. I should have liked to have had that office; but I don't think I should have applied the live coal to the pipes!

COUNTRY HOUSEWIVES

I think that between country housewives and their city boarders there is a sort of antagonism, in the very nature of things, intensified, of course, when there is unreasonableness on both sides.

The country housewife rises betimes, and betaking herself to a hot kitchen, either prepares or oversees the preparing of the expected breakfast; and this not only for the boarders, but the "help," men and women, belonging to the establishment. Perhaps her husband, regarding her only in the light of a "farm hand," never speaks to her except on topics relating to the business of the household, and objects to the baby crying, which her diverted attention necessitates, as a "nuisance," while he swallows his breakfast.

Heated and worried, she sees her city boarders come down to breakfast in cool dresses and fresh ribbons, to enjoy the result of her toil, perhaps to find fault with it. She sees them after breakfast driving out to enjoy the delicious morning air, while she must iron clothes, or wash dishes, or prepare their dinner. Now don't you see in the differing positions of the two parties material for an explosion? It is no use to reply, if they had each attained a proper and high degree of civilization there would be no need of this. Remember you have to take human nature as you find it, and not as you wish to find it. Incessant toil coarsens and roughens, especially woman nature. It chokes the graces in the bud, and leaves only thorns and prickers. From my heart I pity such women, with not a flower in their desert lives. Still, you know city boarders had not the ordering of it; and should not, as they often are, be disliked merely for being able to lead a life of comparative ease. Ease does not always involve happiness; remember this, discouraged country housewife. Somebody has had to work hard for that ease, and it may be the very woman you envy and dislike for it. She has her Gethsemane with it, of which you know nothing, though she wear a smiling face. The landscape upon which she gazes may bring tears to her eyes instead of joy to her heart, as she drives away from your door, where you stand thinking of her only as a heartless idler for whom you are to toil.

Could you sit down together, woman and woman, and talk this all over, how different often would be your judgment of each other! She thinks, perhaps, of graves far away, or worse, living sorrows, which she cannot forget, and that will not bear thinking of, and may only be poured into the ear of "Our Father." She has learned to shut them in, and therefore you see no sign; but they are there all the same. I want you to try and remember this, because else I think many, situated as you are, make themselves unnecessary misery.

Then, again, do not call everything city boarders consider important "only a notion." If you have done making bread because your folks like pies better, try and understand that tastes and opinions may differ on so vital a point of "vittles" and digestion. If your house and its belongings are so constructed that the decencies of life are impossible, remember that because you "don't mind your husband or the men on the farm," your lady boarders may, even at the risk of being called "fussy."

To sum all up, there must be consideration on both sides. Still, the cases are rare in which farm-houses can be the best boarding-places for city people. The ideas of the two parties on the most vital questions relating to the topics I have touched upon are so widely apart, that assimilation is next to impossible. The country housewife knows much more on many subjects than her city boarder. In return, the former might often be enlightened by the latter, even on purely physical matters. But while one side starts with the "I'm as good as you" motto, and the other feels it necessary to fence this feeling at all points, the millennium of peace and good-will must of course be indefinitely postponed.

FIRST MORNING IN THE COUNTRY

Peace, new-mown hay, and a sniff of the sea; I'm content. "Don't the country make you sleepy?" asked a lady of me. Sleepy! why, every part of me is so wide-awake to bliss, that I doubt whether it were not a sin to sleep, lest I might lose some fine note of Nature the while. The music of the shivering leaves, swelling, then dying away so softly; the exquisite trill of some little bird near my window; the march of the waves to the shore; the soft lights and shadows on the far hills; the happy laugh of the little brown children in the hay! I'm afraid I shall quite forget "female suffrage" here! The whirl out of which I have emerged into this temporary heaven seems like a horrid nightmare, from which I have been roused to find myself encircled in loving arms, and looked down upon by a smiling face. I dare say omnibusses are still thundering down Broadway, and piles of stone, and chaos generally, reign therein; but I can scarce conceive it in this sweet hush and prayer of Nature.

I have no doubt doctors may still be found there, giving nauseous pills by the pound, and awful "mixtures" by the quart, when all their deluded patients want is hay – and fresh milk. And I suppose ministers are there, preaching about "hell," and I don't wonder at it; but if they came here, I think heaven would come more naturally to their lips. But where is "here"? you ask. As if I should tell you! I shall want all the fresh air for myself. I need a great deal of breath, and the world is wide. The Great Artist too decorates it all over; so that in every spot lovely flowers shall be tinted all the same, though you may never chance to light upon them; and the clouds shall be heavenly blue; and the giant trees shall spread their sheltering, graceful arms, though you may never happen to lie on the grass beneath; and the birds in their branches will have as much melody in their throats as if you had promised to come and listen. So, you see, I may be stingy of my little paradise, and not defraud you either!

It is often very oppressive to me, the sight of so much beauty, the sound of so much harmony, that none but God perhaps may ever hear or see. Nothing expresses Omnipotence so well to me as this: the perfect finish of every leaf and blade; nothing left unworkmanlike; even the old rocks coated with soft moss – even the decayed tree-trunk wreathed with a graceful vine. I know there are good, lovely Quakers, but God is no Quaker. The red wild roses from yonder hedge, advertising their presence with wafts of incense on every passing breeze, make that fact patent. The richness of the red clover and yellow buttercups, and the myriad rainbow hues on every field and hedge-row, are anti-Quaker. So that, good as they are, I'm glad they didn't make this world. I'm sure that glorious red and yellow oriole looks better on yonder branch than would a drab bird. I like his saucy little ways, too. But there's one thing for which I will always shake hands with all Quakerdom: they allow their women to speak in "meetin'!" Nothing hurts a woman like shutting down the escape-valves of talk; but men never learn that until they find them getting dangerous, and then, when a terrible explosion comes off, they wonder "what's got into 'em!"

A Hint to Gentlemen Critics. – It is a pity men don't praise women when they are sensible in dress. Now, notwithstanding the pressure which fashion has brought to bear upon them to return to the long trailing skirts for street wear, they have courageously resisted it, and sensibly insisted upon the comfortable, cleanly, short walking skirt for the street; and yet men keep on growling all the same about minor matters of no consequence; so that women may well exclaim, "There's no suiting them; so we will just please ourselves." A word to the wise is sufficient.