Chapter V: Part 5

But stay a bit: can you tell me _why_, when one's room is what they call "put to rights," the table which has a drawer in it should always be so left by Bridget that the drawer side faces the wall? Or why, when a basin of water is in use, to cleanse spots from paint, it should always be placed near the door, that the first comer may enjoy an impromptu foot-bath? Why, in moving a vase, or any other fragile article, it is always so located, that breakage is inevitable? Why should dust-pans be left in dark entries, or stairways, to the sudden precipitation of some unsuspecting victim? Why, when a broom is off duty, should it be "stood up" where the handle is sure to make thumping acquaintance with one's nose? Why should soiled towels be abstracted, before replacing them with fresh ones, and you left to make the harrowing discovery with dripping finger-ends? Oh! tell me why need your bonnet be put in the coal-scuttle, and your muddy gaiter-boots in the bandbox? Why should your "honey-soap" be used to wash the hearth? Why, when you beseech that blankets, and sheets, and coverlets, should be tucked harmoniously in at the bottom of the bed, should your toes make unwilling acquaintance, every night, with the cold foot-board? Why, when you request that a door should be kept shut, is it always left wide open? and why, when you are in a gasping condition, should it be carefully closed, spite of repeated remonstrance?

Gentle Shepherd, tell me, are pigs and Bridgets _the only_ creatures whom heaven and earth can't stop from going east, if you desire them to go west? And the Shepherd answers--_Man_.

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MOTHERS OF MANY CHILDREN.--"Ponder every subject with careful attention, if you wish to acquire knowledge." What is then to be the mental status of that mother who has a _perpetual_ baby in her arms, and only time to "ponder" that baby, so weary is her body with its "ponder"-osity? Where is the Solomon to answer this question? Baby knowledge she may indeed have; but the baby will grow up by and by, and how is she to acquire "knowledge" under such circumstances, and be a fit intellectual companion for it then? That's what some people want to know, when little brothers and sisters tread so fast on each other's heels, that the mother has scarcely breathing time between.

"_EVERY FAMILY SHOULD HAVE IT._"

One actually gasps for breath in crowded, closetless New York to read this frequent newspaper announcement, "Every family should have it." Modern times having abolished the "garret of our forefathers with its all-embracing omnium-gatherum eaves," the prospect of dire confusion is terrible if "every family" does not turn a deaf ear to these disinterested caterers for their benefit. Alas! for that old blessed garret, the standing curiosity shop for the youngsters of a rainy or a holiday afternoon; that mausoleum of "notions" cast aside by our venerated ancestors, who undoubtedly had their little follies like their descendants. Old boxes, old tins, old baskets, old hats, old bonnets, old school-books, old bottles, did not then, as now, marshal themselves on the sidewalks, in company with coal cinders, to the disgust of every pedestrian, waiting the snail-like operations of the dirt-man, who is off duty six days out of the seven, and spills half he carries away at that, besides knocking the bottom out of every barrel when, having essayed to disembowel it, he jerks it off one wheel of his cart to the sidewalk. One needs to go to Boston or to Philadelphia occasionally to air one's nostrils and temper after it. After this, to talk of more things, each day, that "every family must have," is enough to drive one to a druggist's for speedy oblivion. What a blessing to these public and disinterested philanthropists, of "every family," are gullible housekeepers and matrons who, though cheated and bamboozled seventy times seven, are still on hand for the latest sham--"improvement." Credulous souls! How do their husbands count over to them on warning marital fingers the dismal amount thus uselessly expended! Not that _they themselves_ do not, and have not, erred in the same way; but who is going to have the superhuman courage to tell these sinless beings so? But after all, far be it from me to say that there are not many things that "every family must have;" and one of these is a baby. Not that _they_ too are not occasionally dumped unceremoniously and heartlessly on the sidewalk; but that don't alter the fact, that a house without a baby is no house at all. Another thing that "every family must have," is a Doctor; also a Minister. Who ever heard of a woman without these two confidential friends--what would become of her if she couldn't make a good cup of tea for the latter, and tell the other her real and imaginary aches? And if she knows anything, can't she always choose her own sanitary prescriptions, all the same as if there were no diploma in her Doctor's pocket?

I will not stop to inquire whether this advertisement-heading is a disinterested one, or whether they who deal in such things are conversant with the respective sizes of our houses, or families, or both; or whether new complications of pots and pans, and tea-kettles, and gridirons, and egg-beaters, and clothes-wringers, and the like, will only wring to utter extinction the already muddled heads of our unscientific "help" and the depleted purses of housekeepers, consequent upon their unthrift. We only wish to remind these disinterested shopkeepers, who would fain take in verdant housekeepers, that houses nowadays are mainly constructed without garrets, without cellars, without closets, without any lumber place whatsoever, where the wrecks of these articles "that no family can do without," can be ultimately stranded. Their wares are, to be honest, often tempting enough to look at; beautiful in their shining freshness, and deliciously suggestive of good roasts and stews and broils--_awfully_ suggestive of the latter!--but "terrible as an army with banners," when contemplating "Intelligence offices"; though why "_intelligence_" when anything _but_ that is to be had there, I have heretofore failed to see.

Another question I would ask these disinterested persons who have so many "articles no family can do without:" Did they ever hear of the _First of May_? Have they a realizing sense of what it is to "move"? Will they tell us, when moving carts are already bursting with "the things no family can do without," and the sidewalk refuses to receive the remainder, and the new tenant won't have them at any price, and you are wild with despair that it is impossible for you to be divorced from them--will they tell us, at that halcyon moment, if they really contemplated, in the affluence of their desires to furnish our houses, that they might be the means of sending us to a lunatic asylum?

Beggars are useful at such times, if they only wouldn't sort out the horrid heap of broken and disabled things that "the family can" _now_ do very well "without," directly in the path of the moving carts, and before your afflicted eyes, that are quite ready to close on all things here below, so intense is your disgust of them.

The words "do without" convey to me a very different meaning now than of yore. A new dumping-ground must be invented in New York before _I_ patronize any more inventions. I'm for condensing instead of expanding things, till our city masters find time to attend to that. Nobody need ring my door-bell with "patent" anything, while it is so patent that there is no vacant space in Manhattan for anything new under the sun. My nature is not conservative; but one can't be pushed into the East river, when it is so full of the "things that no family can do without," that there is not room enough left there even to sink.

_GETTING TO RIGHTS._

There! I breathe again! The household is at last wound up--carpets down, house-cleaning accomplished; all the "pretties" located in the most effective places; my flowers and ivies luxuriant; my desk newly fitted up; everything thriving save myself; but that's no consequence, I suppose. My play-day is over, and now I must buckle down to realities. Still one's home _is_ lovely after the jar of the creaking machinery used in getting it in order has ceased. Your own chair, just fitted to your weary back; your own convenient dressing-room and glass, with all your little duds close to your hand; gas, instead of kerosene; bell-wires ready to your hand, instead of having to descend stairs and do your own errands; food cooked your own way, and just when you want it; and over and above all, to be able to say what shall, and what shall not, be _inside_ your front door. May the gods make us thankful so far! But if I _could_ get a breath of dear Newport now, before I buckle down to work; if I could have just _one_ drive more in my horse and phaeton round the "ocean road," and smell the good salt breeze, and see the crisp white foam of the dashing waves, I think it would quite set me up for the winter campaign. As to my horse, I know he wants me as much as I do him. I don't think he has made much, in exchanging my free and go-easy "chirrup" for the lash of the whip. I wish I were a man, and then I could drive here in the city; but I ain't, you see, and so I shall have to get the snarl out of my tired nerves some other way.

Let us change the subject. Is it not funny how a man will go on inspecting your efforts to get a house to rights? Is it not funny how he never can tell how "a thing is going to look," till every accessory is perfected? Now he says, "What made you choose that dull carpet, nobody can tell." You reply, "Because it is capable of such brilliant contrasts in color." He shakes his head, having no imagination to help him out, and thinks it "a blunder." You smile serenely, knowing your ground, and bide your time, while he croaks. By and by, some day, when he has gone out, the little bits of color are added by you, here and there: a bright vase, or a cushion, or a stand of flowers, or the color of a mat judiciously chosen; and my gentleman walks in, and says, "Why, who would have thought it? it is really lovely!" That, of course, is only setting himself down for a goose; but when is ever a man anything else, when he attempts to criticise a woman's housekeeping in any of its departments? You despise his encomiums now, and with nose in air, walk round among your flowers and pretties, as if to say, "In future, sir, confine yourself to Grad-grind matters that you understand, and leave the decorative part of your existence to one who--Hem!"

I ache from head to foot with my herculean efforts to bring things in this house to a bright New England focus. But I am not sorry, because I can now put to rout some articles lately written, by a very bright woman too, on "the inexactness of hired women's work, as compared to the fidelity and exactness of hired men's work." I am happy to state, that after my new parlor carpets were nailed down, by _men_ too, I discovered several little blocks of wood and other nuisances underneath, which should have been first removed; thus perilling the future wear of my pretty new carpet. I am happy to state too, that the papering done by men was not to my mind, or _according to my order_, and had to be done over again. I rejoice to say that my window-shades are not yet forthcoming, according to a _man's_ promise; and that it was only by personal supervision that my cellar was thoroughly cleansed by a _man_, as he agreed it should be. In short, I don't want to hear any more on the "_exactness_ of man's work," since he can fib, and slight things, with an adroitness worthy of a woman, and I am sure I couldn't put the case any stronger.

_Now_ I am going to fold my hands and be comfortable. I can't have my horse this winter, and so I sha'n't sigh any more for _him_; but if I live till the spring, that horse, or some other, has got to help me get rid of this world's cares and perplexities every blessed sunny afternoon. Let us trust that he is fattening up on oats paid and provided for in the stable of some philanthropist unknown to me. I have had so much of the _details_ lately, that I shall be quite satisfied with _results_ without inquiring further.

* * * * *

I wish I were a voter: I would vote for the officials who would take a little interest in the household ash-barrel. It may be too much to ask that the McGormicks, and McCormicks, and O'Flahertys, who are paid for emptying these utensils--when it don't rain, and when they don't forget it--should not empty the contents on the pavement, and then half shovel them up, to save themselves the exertion of lifting the barrels, which they always throw down upon their sides, to roll wheresoever the gods or idle boys will. It may be too much to ask that they should amend their ways in these particulars; but were every lady housekeeper a voter, as, thank Providence, they are sure to be some day or other, these gentlemen would either have to toe the mark, or be run over by the new wheel of progress.

Meantime, it is of little use for Bridget to sweep the sidewalk, or keep the gutter free, as she often pathetically remarks to me, when she goes forth to perform this matutinal duty. Now, as the tools used in my profession keep sharper and freer from rust, in the air of Manhattan, than elsewhere, I cannot be expected to vacate for the dry-dirt-man. The only alternative that I know of is, that _he_ shall vacate for me, and make room for more executive officials. That's logic, if it is feminine. In short, I want those men to take a little journey somewhere--I'm not particular where, so that they don't come back.

It grows clearer to me, every day, as I observe these one-horse arrangements, why women are not allowed to vote: there would be little margin then for all this cheating, this pocketing of salaries without an equivalent. The sidewalks, gutters, streets would be as clean as a parlor floor. No old boxes, or kegs, or boots and shoes, past their prime, would challenge our eyes, or our noses. The drinking-places would be disgorged of husbands, fathers, lovers, and brothers; also the billiard and gambling saloons. In short, the broom of reform would raise such a dust in the eyes of the _how-not-to-do-its_, that, when their vision was restored, they would ask, like the old woman whose skirts were curtailed while taking her nap, if "this be I?"

Meantime I wait--not patiently--for this millennium. It galls me--this dirt and thriftlessness--more in the Autumn than at any other time. In the Spring it is sufficiently odious; but then one is on the wing for the country, and that hope buoys a housekeeper under it. In the Winter the friendly, pure white snow comes, with its heavenly mantle of charity, to cover it sometimes. But who or what shall comfort the housekeeper in the lingering, golden days of the Indian Summer, when fresh from the pure air of the country, and the brilliant foliage of the valleys, and the lovely shadows on the hillsides, she is doomed to see, to smell, to breathe whatever of pollution and unthrift our city fathers choose, without the power to cast the vote that shall give us a clean city?

Meantime, as I say, I wait--_not_ patiently--for that desired millennium; and shall continue, with a touching faith in it, to keep flowering plants in my windows, and in other ways to signify, to the passer-by, that dirt and unsightliness, and bad odors, are not and never have been, the normal condition of _woman_.

* * * * *

OUR MORNING MEAL.--Breakfast should be the most enlivening meal of the whole day, for then we are to be nerved for another day's duties and cares, and perhaps for great sorrows also. Let there be no exciting argument, from which personalities may crop out, around the breakfast table. Let there be, if possible, only pleasant topics, and affectionate salutations, that all may go forth their separate ways with sweet, peaceful memories of each other; for some foot may never again cross the family threshold, some eye never witness another day's dawning. This thought, if the busy world were not so clamorous as to stifle it, would often arrest the impatient, fretful words that pain so many tender hearts.

_MODERN MARTYRS._

Fox's cheerful "Book of Martyrs" strikes us as incomplete. He tells, to be sure, of people who have been roasted alive, cut up, torn limb from limb, disembowelled, and suffered various other trifling annoyances of that kind; but though I have perused it carefully, I see no mention of the unhappy wretch who, coming home at twelve o'clock at night, with frozen fingers, gropes round his room, bumping his nose, and extinguishing his eyes, in the vain search for his match-box, the latitude and longitude of which some dastardly miscreant has changed. Nor do I see any mention of him who, having washed his hands nicely, looketh in vain for a towel, where a towel _should_ be, while little rivulets of water run up his shirt-sleeves or drip from his extended finger-tips. No allusion either is made to her who, sitting down to her time-honored portfolio, misseth one sheet of MS. which somebody has fluttered out, and straightway gone his heedless way. Nor yet of the unhappy owner of a pen, whose pace answers only to one hand, and whose nib has been tampered with by some idle scribbler, in multiplying the name of "Laura," or "Matilda," to an indefinite extent, over a sheet of paper as blank as his mind. I see no mention of her who, sitting down to write, is made frantic by the everlasting grind of a hand-organ beneath the window; that performer's welcome retreat being followed by a shaky old man with a wheezy flute, or the more horrible bagpipe performance, compared with which the shrieks of twenty cur-tailed cats were heaven's own music. I have not noticed any mention of her who, giving her husband a letter to drop into the post, finds the same a month afterwards in the pocket of a vest, which he tosses her to mend. I see no mention of the lady-victims of owners of shops, three miles long, who have always "_just the article you want_" at the very farthest extremity of the store; and whom they lure to traverse that distance only to find something in the _shopman's_ view "infinitely superior," but about as near the article wanted as is the North to the South pole. No mention either is made of the gentleman with a bran new coat, who takes the last seat in the car, next a child fond of wriggling, with a piece of soft gingerbread or a moist stick of candy in its uncertain gripe. Nor is any allusion made to the friend of the family, who furnishes all the children with holiday toys, every one of which has either a crucifying squeak or a stunning explosive power, which soon fits their amiable mother for a lunatic asylum. Nothing is said, as I can find, of that mistress of a family to whom the morning hours are as precious as gold dust, and who is called down to see a gentleman, who (having read _Jones_ on the door-plate) straightway, with sublime assurance, asks "for _Mrs._ Jones, on particular business;" when that lady, descending, finds a well-dressed, well-groomed individual, who, with a smirk and a bow, straightway draws from his pocket "a bottle of furniture polish," which he exhausts all the dictionary and her patience in extolling; or presents to her notice a "cement for broken china," or "samples of needles." Scarcely has she rid herself of this nuisance, when "a boy wishes also to see _Mrs. Jones_ on particular business," which turns out to be the hoped-for sale of "six envelopes, two steel-pens, a pencil, a brass breast-pin, a tin trumpet, a corkscrew, and four sheets of letter-paper--all for sixpence--_and just sold three next door, mum_."

Is not the boarding-house public an army of martyrs? As to boarding-house life, I detest it every way: its public feeding, its scandal, its heterogeneousness, its tyrannical edicts against babies and young children, its stifling atmosphere of roast, and boil, and stew, and tobacco-smoke, its punctual delivery of your letters and parcels, _on the entry table_; its way of sweeping your room at most inconvenient hours, and dusting it with one summary whisk from a long-handled, feather-tailed switch; its convenient deafness to the jerk of your bell-wire; its homoeopathic coffee and pie; its towels, threadbare in quality, and niggardly in quantity; its parlor, showy and shabby, with its inevitable centre-table, with its perennial annuals, its hump-backed rocking-chair, and distorted pictures--and apoplectic bills.

The necessity it entails of always wearing a mask; of fearing to speak, lest you should tread on the toes of your neighbor's pet hobby, and thereby deprive yourself of the convenient bridge over which the salt and pepper must necessarily travel to your plate, waiters being stupid and scarce; the bore of talking when you feel taciturn, or having your neighbor provokingly insist upon it that you must be ill; the bore of laughing when you feel sad, and hearing threadbare topics rediscussed, and stale jokes resurrectionized; the misery of never being able to have the first unfolding of your own morning-paper, or of having it incontinently disappear, in company with some unprincipled boarder bound on a daybreak journey, and that day sure to be aggravatingly dull and rainy; the necessity of always turning your keys upon boxes and trunks, and the certainty of losing or misplacing them when you are in a double-twisted, insane hurry; your contracted, closetless space; your inevitable city window prospect of back sheds, with ghostly garments hanging on groaning clothes-lines; of distracted bachelors at upper chamber-windows, vainly essaying to sew on missing buttons, and muttering inaudible oaths at their clumsy, needle-pricked fingers.

Now, if you needs must board, go to the biggest and best hotel you can find, where everybody is too much occupied to interfere with your personal business; where waiters are plenty, and it is not high treason to ask for salt with your meat. If your finances forbid this, then, in mercy to yourself, rent a shanty where no third person is a fixture in your family, where you can sneeze when your nose has a call that way, and where your hopes and fears, joys and sorrows will not be leisurely dissected by the cool fingers of malignity, and where that nightmare, Paul Pry-ism, is not always astride of your heart and brain.

That's my opinion of boarding-houses, and may the gods have mercy on the _bored_. Let us have a new edition of Fox at once.

* * * * *

AN ERROR TO AVOID.--All writers do best who depict that which they have seen with their own eyes, instead of their "mind's eye." It is very easy to detect the difference. There is a glow, a naturalness, a fidelity to life in the first, that is never to be found in the last. And yet how many, stepping past their own legitimate points of observation, and looking only through the fog of imagination, give us dim, distorted, crude caricatures of life and human beings, the counterpart of which never has and never will exist. This is especially the fault of beginners, whose misdirected aim it is to startle and astonish.

_WRITING "COMPOSITIONS."_

I have lately received a letter which it would be well every teacher and parent in the land should read. As I shall not betray the name or residence of the distressed young writer, of whom I have no knowledge except what is communicated by her letter, and as it may call attention to the last-drop-in-the-bucket misery, inflicted upon children already sufficiently overtasked, who are required to furnish ideas upon a given subject, which it is utterly impossible their young minds should grasp, I shall make no apology for transcribing it verbatim; calling particular attention to the italicized passages:

* * * * *

"DEAR AUNT FANNY:--You have said you are Auntie to all poor girls in distress. I am in distress, if ever anybody was; and I know that you will be kind to me. Let me tell you about it. I have expected to graduate in about two weeks; and I have no essay to read, and if I don't have one I can't graduate. I would not care so much for that myself, but my father would be _so_ disappointed; and he has made so many sacrifices to keep me at school, that I _can't_ disappoint him. Oh! I have worked so hard to keep up with my class, for I am obliged to be absent so much, and now if I can't go through, _I shall die, I know_. I am not afraid of passing examination, for I know I can do that successfully, but I never could write any kind of a decent composition; and now it seems as though it was worse than ever, for _I have tried for four months to write one, but I am farther off from it than ever_. I know that you will think me very, _very_ dull, and I suppose I am; but, oh! Aunt Fanny, _do, do_ pity me. Please, _please_ write me one to read--_you_ can do it in a very short time. I know that it is a very great favor to ask of you, and I should not dare to do it, but oh! I am almost crazy, and I know by your writings that you will pity and help me. I pray every night that God will help me, and I think He put it into my heart to write to you about it. I have tried everything. Oh, dear! I can't write on anything at all. _I have sat up all night, but I am as dull as ever, and I dream about it when I go to sleep._ Oh! Aunt Fanny, do, _do_ pity me, and write for me. I will do anything in this wide world for you. Oh, please, do; I will never forget you. You can do anything almost; I will bless you forever. _Oh, I shall die if I don't have one!_ Do write me a line, anyway, and direct to ----, ----. Excuse me for writing so, but I am nearly desperate. _Oh, for the love of God, do write me one in two weeks, or at most three!_ I dare not even read over what I have written to you. Oh! Aunt Fanny, don't refuse me."

* * * * *

A better comment than this touching letter, upon the present forcing, hot-house system of education, even I should not desire. Think of this young girl, goaded to the very verge of insanity by those who _should know_ that they are defeating the very object they are trying to attain by forcing the young mind to string together to order, and by the page, _words without ideas_. In my opinion this "composition" business is the greatest possible nonsense. I believe it to be the baneful root of the inflated style of writing so prevalent. I believe that there are exercises in English, which would serve the purpose millions of times better without driving pupils mad, and without offering them a premium for deceit, in passing off as their own the thoughts of others. Not long since, I received a letter from the principals of a school, enclosing "a composition" to which "a prize" had just been awarded, and which some person present at the reading had detected as stolen from one of my books; with a request that I would look it over and pronounce upon the same. I found it word for word as I had written it in my book! Perhaps the _moral_ effect of this system may be worth inquiring into, even by those who seem to be utterly insensible to the wretched spectacle of a young head tossing feverishly, night after night, on the pillow, under the brooding nightmare of an unwritten "_composition_." Let careless parents, who are quite as much to blame as teachers, give this subject a thought.

Now, girls, I fully sympathize with you in your distractions in this dilemma, but this is not the way to help you out of it. I advise you to ask your teacher to allow you to describe some scene or place you have visited, which you could easily do; then write it out naturally, as if you were telling it to some friend, without any attempt at fine language. Also ask your teacher to allow you _to stop when you get through_, instead of exacting so many lines or pages when your ideas give out. That is the only way that good "compositions" can be written, and I wish fervently all school-teachers knew it, and ceased bothering poor young heads "to make bricks without straw," or resort in their distress to the deception you propose to me.

"Composition day," it is true, in my school-days, was only a delight to me. But you should have seen the idiot I was in arithmetic or algebra, or historical dates! How I pinched the girl next me to help me out; and how gratefully I remembered it, in after years, and embroidered my gratitude on her first baby's little flannel petticoats!

Now, my dear young ladies, don't be discouraged because you are slow at "composition." As I say, it is not your fault, for half the time the most impossible subjects are given you to write about. Your minister might just as well be asked to write a dissertation on French millinery. Then, though your gift may not be "composition," it may lie in something quite as important; so with this little consolation I leave you to wriggle out of your dilemma the best way you can, without pilfering.

And, moreover, I think a meeting of school-teachers ought speedily to be called to consider this composition subject and make it, as easily might be done, a delight, instead of a bore and a cheat.

* * * * *

THE LITTLE ONES.--Fortunate are those parents who have learned to respect the _individuality_ of their children. Who are not madly bent upon planting them in the family garden in set rows, and so closely that their branches have no room to stretch out into the fair sunlight. Who are not forever on hand with the pruning-knife or hoe, to lop off that which, if left, would develop into sweet buds or flowers; or to dig the earth prematurely from roots which were better left safely hidden till their natural period of vigorous appearing. A gardener who should be guilty of such folly would be a laughing-stock. What if all his flowers were of one color? What if every twig and leaf were of the same size? How weary should we be of this monotony. How we should long for the delicate pink of the rose, and the royal purple of the violet, and the pure snow of the lily, and the distinctive aroma of each! Why not in this respect take a lesson from Nature, which is at once so bountiful and so wise?

_NICE LITTLE TEA-PARTIES._

Hospitality seems to be an extinct virtue. Grand parties we have in plenty of all kinds, where those who have vitality sufficient to attend them, and purses long enough to compete with the vulgar show attending them, may return such hollow civilities, and "have it over," as they express it.

"_Have it over!_" There's just the fly in the ointment. The old-fashioned, genuine hospitality never was "over." Nobody wanted it "over." A simple, elegant little tea, a well-cooked, well-served, plain family dinner, one's friend was always welcome to join, without a printed card of invitation weeks beforehand, accompanied with a whispered, "I hope to gracious they won't accept!" But that, alas! is all in the past. Fashion has decreed an elaborate show of food, dishes, and dress. Families pinch themselves a whole year for one grand display of this kind, in the endeavor to compete with those whose means perhaps may justify this barren style of entertaining, and where stupefaction and a consequent lack of intelligent conversation are the only result, save a long bill of expense. The consequence is, that people whose time is valuable, and whose vitality is too precious to expend in this way, refuse all such invitations. But the unfortunate part of it is, that many of them do not revive the old simple hospitality; and when expostulated with upon setting a better example, only reply, that the prevailing taste for show has so vitiated everything, that there are few who care to go where it is not the order of the entertainment.

Now we don't believe this. We have too often heard sensible, cultivated, refined men and women deplore it, to credit this idea. But they are in the mäelstrom; Mrs. So and So is a particular friend, and "she thinks she must go through with this vulgar parade," or, "her husband likes it;" and "they think every time that they accept, they never will do it again, even for her," etc. Now it isn't that there are "few who don't like it:" but it _is_ true that there are few who have the independence to inaugurate a different state of things--to be _truly_ hospitable without excessive upholstery, or gastronomy, or fine millinery.

To my mind, there is something better than sitting hours to see servants dexterously place and take away dishes. One sees that at home in lesser degree, and with less waste of time. One can converse with one's hostess there, and she will not answer at random, because her mind is occupied with processions of birds and sugar and wines. Little children's faces, like flowers, are there, in place of a stiff bouquet of flowers and silver pyramids obscuring one's _vis-à-vis_. _There_ is a home flavor which puts the most modest guest at ease, and permits him or her to bring forth something in the way of conversation that is not the inflamed product of half a dozen kinds of wine--something to remember and think of afterward with pleasure, instead of blushing next day to associate with the speaker.

I say there are people, and the best kind of people too, who _much_ prefer this style of entertainment; but they should not rest there. They should inaugurate something better in their place, instead only of retiring in disgust under the shelter of their own roofs, and living only for their own family circles. They owe a duty also to society, and it should be paid by setting a sensible example of old-fashioned simplicity in hospitality, which in time may reform this matter. People who value their brains want them in decent condition for the next morning, and the next morning after that, and cannot afford to waste them in this manner. It is a matter of dollars and cents with them, I'd have you to know, as well as a matter of taste; if, indeed, I may be pardoned for putting forward an idea so practical. They wish to retire early, for one thing; they prefer out-door air for another, when they are off duty with the pen, instead that of a close, stifled room, and the spectacle of feeding and drinking till sense and wit give out. This is plain talking, but it won't hurt you, my friends, to have a little occasionally.

_A SLEEPLESS NIGHT._

You know what it is to lie awake at night, I suppose, while every lumpish human creature in the house is sleeping, regardless of the perspiration standing in drops on your bewitched forehead; regardless of your twitching fingers, and kicking toes, and glaring, distended eyes; regardless of your increasing disgust at each miserable moment at the monotonous tap, tap, tap, of solitary heels on the forsaken sidewalk; regardless of your meditated vengeance on the morrow, should you perchance survive to see it, upon the owner of that flapping-blind across the way, which has been slamming fore-and-aft all night, and yet never dropped, as you hoped it might, on somebody's or anybody's head--you didn't care whose, so that you might have been delivered from the nuisance.

In vain have you tried the humbugging recipe of saying the Multiplication Table; in vain have you repeated poetry by the yard, or counted one hundred; in vain have you conjugated verbs, or done any of the foolish things recommended in such cases. _Two_ o'clock has just struck, and no somniferous result has followed. Well--if you can't sleep, you _won't_ sleep, that's all. You'll just get up, and strike a light and read. You do it; but the fire is low, and cold shivers run up and down your back-bone. You're hungry! yes--that must be it. You'll go to the closet, and get a bit of cold chicken you wot of. Good heavens! if those lumpish, snoring wretches haven't devoured it before going to bed. You go look at the creature vindictively; _you_ know just who would be capable of such a meanness. She has slept there these three hours, on the strength of that bit of purloined chicken--_your_ chicken--while you haven't closed an eyelash. She _will_ sleep comfortably till daylight; and get up with a clear head, and refreshed limbs, to breakfast. Then she will eat, like a great healthy animal, while food looks perfectly nauseous to you, who will then be too exhausted to be hungry. You look at the creature again, and think of Judith and Holofernes; and don't wonder as you used at Judith. Indeed, she seems to you at that moment rather an estimable person than otherwise; and as to pitying Holofernes, why should _you_ pity anybody who could _sleep_?

You walk to the window. It is some comfort that the stars have to wink all night as well as you. And there's a policeman, dragging up and down in the cold, and clapping his hands across his breast to keep warm. Good! you're glad of it. Four o'clock! Gracious! how you _will_ feel to-morrow. If you only had a bottle of ale to make you stupid and drowsy. And sure enough, now you think of it, there is just one left. You seize it! Why--somebody has unwired the cork. Merciful man! it is only _Ink_. Now, that's a little too much for a tired soul. Suppose you should begin and run from the top of the stairs to the bottom, as fast and as loud as you could, and wake up the whole family. And as the vision of terrified night-gowns rises before your mental vision, you commence grinning noiselessly like a maniac; then laughing hysterically; then crying outright; and the next thing you know it is eight o'clock in the morning, and coffee and rolls and beefsteak are awaiting your advent.

And as to musquitoes. Ah! you too have suffered. You have lain, hour after hour, listening to that never-ceasing war-song, till you were as nervous as a hump-backed cat face to face with Jowler in a corner. You have "turned over;" you have lain on your side, lain on your back, lain on your face, spite of your prominent nose. You have doubled your fists up under your arm-pits, and twisted your feet into hard knots under your night-clothes, to no avail. You have then fallen back on your dignity and the pigmy-ness of your tormentors, and folding your arms resolutely over your chest, and looking fiercely up to the ceiling, exclaimed:

"Come one--come all--this bed shall fly
From its stout legs as soon as I!"

And yet, at that very moment, an "owdacious" bite has sent you, with a smothered exclamation, into the middle of the floor, bewailing the day you were born.

Next day you get a "musquito net." What a fool not to think of it before. You festoon it round your bed. It looks pink-y and safe. You explore it carefully that night before getting in, that no treacherous crevice be left for the enemy. You put out the light, and oh! happiness unutterable, listen to their howl of rage _outside_, which sounds like the "music of the spheres," and fall asleep. Next morning you wake with a splitting headache. Can it be the confined air of the net? _Horrible!_ You spend that day nursing your head and your wrath. Why were musquitoes made? You find no satisfactory solution. What do they live on when not devouring human beings? Why, in the same bed, is one bitten and the other left? Why infest New York, and leave Brooklyn, whose inhabitants deserve punishment for monopolizing Beecher? Why, if they _must_ bite, not pitch in at once, instead of stopping to harrow you by giving a concert.

That night you refuse to gasp under a net, for all the musquitoes that ever swarmed. You even light your gas defiantly, open the windows, and sneer at the black demons as they buzz in for their nocturnal raid. You sit and read--occasionally boxing your own ears--till the small hours, and then--to bed; only to dash frantically against the wall, throw your pillows at the enemy, laugh hysterically, and rise at daylight a blear-eyed, spotted, dismal wretch!

_WOMEN'S NEED OF RECREATION._

I read an article the other day on working-men's clubs, which set me thinking. In it was set forth the necessity, after a man's hard day's work, of an evening of rest, away from home, where he should find light and warmth, and boon companionship, other than is to be found in the corner grocery.

Now this is well, were there not a better way, as I believe. I am not about to propose clubs for working-women, because our police reports show every day that they have existed for a long time--thanks to "corner groceries"--and that they are made of any implement that comes handy, and result in bruised flesh and a broken head. This being the case, I cannot see why the working-woman, as well as the working-man, does not need, after a hard day's work, "light, warmth, and boon companionship of an evening, away from home." Nay, all the more, since work, hard as her husband may, it is often in the fresh, open air; or, if not, he has it going and returning, and the boon companionship of his fellow-workmen with it; while she, with "Ginx's last baby" to look after, in some noisome tenement house, stands over the perpetual wash-tub or cooking-stove, with two or three half-grown children hanging to her draggled skirts, never exchanging her unwomanly rags, not even perhaps to mass for a hurried prayer in the church which, God be thanked, is free alike to poor and rich, and which suggests, in its own way, a distant heaven for her.

Thinking over all this, I said why not Germanize this thing? Why not have clubs for working-men and their families, with innocent amusement minus the drink? Isn't it possible? Or if not, I wish it were, for the poor harassed women's sake. I only see the millennial germ of it; but this I know, that the wives need it more, far more, than their husbands, the wide world over, and in every strata of society; by the pains of motherhood, even in favorable conditions; by her intenser nervous organization; by her indoor confinement and narrowing, petty detail-worries; by the work that ends not at sundown as does his. By the wakeful, unrestful nights, which every mother knows; _this_ is the hardest, most wearing kind of work, no matter what may be said of the husband, who has his sleep at least; who demands _that_ in every family exigency as his right, and as the foundation of his ability to labor for his family. Ah! what if the wife and mother, with less strength, feebler organization, should make a stand for this? even when, in addition to her other cares, she helps in some outside honest way to support the family?

Does she not, too, need warmth, light, and boon companionship of an evening? While it is true that

"All work and no play
Makes Jack a dull boy,"

remember it is just as true of Jack's wife as it is of Jack, and the founders of "Working-men's Clubs" would do well to put this into their foundation.

I wish that some of the pains taken to make human beings "_good_" were expended in trying to make them _happy_. Particularly is this necessary in regard to young people, though it is a fact that should be recognized much more than it is, in the conditions of every human being. Let a little sunshine into the outward circumstances surrounding them before you begin to talk about a future state. There are children, and grown people too, so cob-webbed over with care and misery, that all talk, how "_good_" soever, is useless. _They want some brightness infused into their lives._ It may be a wife--weary, body and soul; tired of plodding; she needs some kind voice to say (alas! how little husbands think of it!): "Come, leave all your cares just _now, this minute_, and if you can't leave without I take your place, I'll take it, and it will be a gain to both of us; for you have come just to that spot where you must stop to rest, or fail entirely." It may be a little child under your care, perhaps your own, perhaps another's; who is not really "_bad_," but only troublesome. It wants change; a ramble in the Park, or a ramble somewhere; something to see and talk about, and _happify_ it; some new objects to occupy its mind and thoughts; and the more intelligent the child is, the more necessary this becomes. Many a child is punished because its active mind, having no food, becomes a torment to itself and others. _Give it food!_ Take it up to the Park and show it the animals there. Tell it of their habits, and the way they live in the countries from which they were taken. This is a _cheap_ pleasure, it is true, and may, though it ought not to be, a very commonplace one to you; but you have no idea how it freshens the mind and body of the little one. _Sometimes I almost think that happiness is goodness._ Certainly, till the hard and difficult lesson of life is thoroughly learned, it is wise to lend a helping hand to those who are stumbling after, lest they fall by the way to rise no more.

Perhaps you have some good servants in your house whose underground, plodding life needs relief, who have grown sharp and querulous on account of it; whose lot needs brightening a bit. Send them or take them to some place of amusement; give them a holiday, or half a holiday if you can do no better. You have no idea how this break in their wearisome round will lighten toil for many a day; and more because _you thought of it_, perhaps, than from the pleasure the amusement afforded.

Life presses heavily on most of us in one shape or another. They are not always the greatest sufferers, whose barrel of meal and cruse of oil fail. Therefore, when I open a church door, and the first sentence I hear is about "An _Awful_ God," I sometimes want to invite the speaker to rest himself a bit, and let me try my hand at it. I believe that most people want soothing, and comforting, and encouraging, more than denouncing or frightening, even though the latter be done with good intentions. I know most _women_ have been "punished" enough during the week, without being threatened with it in another world on Sundays. Take that poor soul with a drunken husband, who tries to support him and herself, and no end of children, by washing, and whose husband comes home only to demand her money, and smash up her wash-tub and table and chairs for his amusement. Would you talk to that woman about an "_awful God_," when she stole away to church for a crumb of comfort on Sunday? You had much better buy her a new wash-tub, and put her brute of a husband where--but it won't do to say all one thinks, even out of "meetin'."

_THE GOOD OLD HYMNS._

Did you never know any person who was brought up on the good old _Zion-hymns_, whom they ever failed to move to the foundations when heard? The feet moving on unholy errands linger on their way past the church door, as the melody floats out upon the air. That man--who has wasted life, and energy, and talent, which might have blessed mankind, to reap only the whirlwind--he is back again with his little head upon his mother's lap, while she sings that same hymn, which will never grow old, about "the beautiful river." His eyes moisten as he thinks how pained she would be, were she living, to know him now. The hymn ceases, and the low benediction follows, and as the worshippers emerge, he recollects himself, and with an impatient pshaw! passes on. What, _he_ moved at a "conventicle hymn"? _He_, who for years has never crossed the threshold of a church! He? who believes neither in prayer nor priests, Bible nor Sundays? He, who has "outgrown all that"? Ah! but he hasn't. He _can't_ outgrow it. It is _there_. It _will_ come, whether he desires it or no. Come in spite of all his efforts to laugh or reason it away. Come, though he lives in open derision and mockery of that religion whose divine precepts he cannot efface from his mind. Come, as it did to John Randolph, who, after years of atheism and worldliness and ambition, left on record, "that the only men he ever knew well and approached closely, whom he did not discover to be unhappy, were sincere believers of the Gospel, who conformed their lives, as far as the nature of man can permit, to its precepts." "Often," he says, "the religious teachings of his childhood were banished wholly by business or pleasure; but after a while they came more frequently, and stayed longer, until at last they were his first thoughts on waking and his last before going to sleep." Said he, "I could not banish them if I would."

"Now and then I like to go into a church," said a young man apologetically to a companion who was deriding the idea. "Priestcraft! priestcraft!" exclaimed his companion. "Tell me what possible good can it do you?" "Well," said the young man, "somehow, when I hear those hymns it is like hearing the pleading voice of my mother as I left home to become the graceless fellow I am now. I cannot tell you how they move me, or how they make me wish I were better. If I ever do become better, it will be because I cannot separate them from all that seems, in my better moments, worth embodying in the word 'home.'" Walter Scott said to his son-in-law, when he was on his death-bed, "Be a _good_ man, Lockhart--be a good man; nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." It were easy to multiply instances where earth's gifted and greatest have borne similar testimony, after having tested all that the world had to offer, as an equivalent for "that peace which passeth all understanding."

Parents sometimes say with tears, my boy has forgotten all my teachings. You don't _know_ that. You can't _say_ that till the grave closes over him. Said a good mother I knew, who kept on singing those hymns, and whose faith never faltered through long years, when her only son disgraced the family by intemperance, "John will come right by and by. He _must_." And day after day, when he was brought home helpless, the mere wreck and libel of manhood, she smilingly repeated to all cavillers: "John will come right. I _know_ it. Every day I ask God to _give him back to himself_, and I _know_ He will do it."

And John _did_ come right. Out of that horrible pit of degradation he emerged "clothed and in his right mind." He is now in good business standing, owns the house he lives in, is the comfort and pride of the patient wife who, with his mother, waited woman-like, _Christ-like_, all those weary years for his return. I myself have seen him in church, when the Sacramental wine was passed to him, bow his head reverently and humbly over the cup without raising it to his lips.

Never despair of a child who strays away from _those hymns_. Somewhere between the cradle and the tomb be sure those hymns will find him out.