Chapter VIII (3)

Effie’s violet eyes opened to greet the first ray of the morning sun as he peeped into her room. She stood at the little mirror, gathering up, with those small hands, the rich tresses so impatient of confinement. How could she fail to know that she was fair?—she read it in every face she met; but there was _one_ (and she was hastening to meet him) whose eye had noted, with a lover’s pride, every shining ringlet, and azure vein, and flitting blush. His words were soft and low, and skilfully chosen, and sweeter than music to her ear; and so she tied, with a careless grace, the little straw hat under her dimpled chin; and fresh, and sweet, and guileless, as the daisy that bent beneath her foot, she tripped lightly on to the old trysting place by the willows.

Stay! a hand is laid lightly upon her arm, and the pleading voice of a a mother arrests that springing step.

“Effie, dear, sit down with me on this old garden seat; give up your walk for this morning; I slept but indifferently last night, and morning finds me languid and depressed.”

A shadow passed over Effie’s face; the little cherry lips pouted, and a rebellious feeling was busy at her heart; but one look in her mother’s pale face decided her, and, untying the strings of her hat, she leaned her head caressingly upon her mother’s shoulder.

“You are ill, dear mother; you are _troubled_;” and she looked inquiringly up into her face.

“Listen to me, Effie, I have a story to tell you of myself:—When I was about your age, I formed an acquaintance with a young man, by the name of Adolph. He had been but a short time in the village, but long enough to win the hearts of half the young girls from their rustic admirers. Handsome, frank, and social, he found himself everywhere a favourite. He would sit by me for hours, reading our favourite authors; and, side by side, we rambled through all the lovely paths with which our village abounded. My parents knew nothing to his disadvantage, and were equally charmed as myself with his cultivated refinement of manner, and the indefinable interest with which he invested every topic, grave or gay, which it suited his mood to discuss. Before I knew it, my heart was no longer in my own keeping. One afternoon he called to accompany me upon a little excursion we had planned together. As he came up the gravel walk, I noticed that his fine hair was in disorder; a pang, keen as death, shot through my heart, when he approached me, with reeling, unsteady step, and stammering tongue. I could not speak. The chill of death gathered around my heart. I fainted. When I recovered, he was gone, and my mother’s face was bending over me, moist with tears. Her woman’s heart knew all that was passing in mine. She pressed her lips to my forehead, and only said, ‘God strengthen you to choose the right, my child.’

“I could not look upon her sorrowful eyes, or the pleading face of my gray-haired father, and trust myself again to the witchery of that voice and smile. A letter came to me; I dared not read it. (Alas my heart pleaded too eloquently, even then, for his return.) I returned it unopened: my father and mother devoted themselves to lighten the load that lay upon my heart; but the perfume of a flower, a remembered strain of music, a straggling moonbeam, would bring back old memories, with a crushing bitterness that swept all before it for the moment. But my father’s aged hand lingered on my head with a blessing, and my mother’s voice had the sweetness of an angel’s, as it fell upon my ear!

“Time passed on, and I had conquered myself. Your father saw me, and proposed for my hand; my parents left me free to choose—and Effie, dear, _are we not happy_?”

“Oh, mother,” said Effie (then looking sorrowfully in her face), “did you _never_ see Adolph again?”

“Do you remember, my child, the summer evening we sat under the piazza, when a dusty, travel-stained man came up the steps, and begged for ‘a supper?’ Do you recollect his bloated, disfigured face? Effie, _that was Adolph_!”

“Not that _wreck_ of a _man_, mother?” said Effie (covering her eyes with her hands, as if to shut him out from her sight).

“Yes; that was all that remained of that glorious intellect, and that form made after God’s own image. I looked around upon my happy home, then upon your noble father—then—upon _him_, and,” (taking Effie’s little hand and pointing to the _ring_ that encircled it), “in _your_ ear, my daughter, I now breathe my mother’s prayer for me—‘_God help you to choose the right!_’”

The bright head of Effie sank upon her mother’s breast, and with a gush of tears she drew the golden circlet from her finger, and placed it in her mother’s hand.

“God bless you, my child,” said the happy mother, as she led her back to their quiet home.

A FALSE PROVERB

I wonder who but the “father of lies,” originated this proverb, “Help yourself and then everybody else will help you.” Is it not as true as the book of Job that it’s just driving the nails into your own coffin, to let anybody know you want help! Is not a “seedy” hat, a threadbare coat, or patched dress, an effectual shower-bath on old friendships? Have not people a mortal horror of a sad face and a pitiful story? Don’t they on hearing it, instinctively poke their purses into the furthest, most remote corner of their pockets? Don’t they wrap their warm garments round their well-fed persons, and advise you, in a saintly tone, “to trust in Providence?” Are they not always “engaged” ever after, when you call to see them? Are they not near-sighted when you meet them in the street?—and don’t they turn short corners to get out of your way? “Help yourself,”—of course you will, (if you have any spirit;)—but when sickness comes, or dark days, and your wits and nerves are both exhausted, don’t place any dependence on this lying proverb!—or you will find yourself decidedly humbugged. And then, when your heart is so soft that anybody could knock you down with a feather, get into the darkest hole you can find, and cry it out! Then crawl out, bathe your eyes till they shine again, and if you have one nice garment left, out with it, put it on! turn your shawl on the brightest side; put your best and prettiest foot foremost; tie on your go-to-meetin’ bonnet, and smile under it, if it half kills you; and see how complaisant the world will be when—you ask nothing of it!

But if (as there are exceptions to all rules), you should chance to stumble upon a true friend (when you can only render thanks as an equivalent for kindness) “make a note on’t,” as Captain Cuttle says, for it don’t happen but once in a life-time!

A MODEL HUSBAND

Mrs. Perry, a young Bloomer, has eloped from Monson, Massachusetts,
with Levins Clough. When her husband found she was determined to go,
he gave her one hundred dollars to start with.

Magnanimous Perry! Had I been your spouse, I should have handed that “one hundred dollar bill” to Mr. Levins Clough, as a healing plaster for his disappointed affections—encircled your neck with my repentant arms, and returned to your home. Then, I’d mend every rip in your coat, gloves, vest, pants, and stockings, from that remorseful hour, till the millennial day. I’d hand you your cigar-case and slippers, put away your cane, hang up your coat and hat, trim your heard and whiskers, and wink at your sherry-cobblers, whisky punches, and mint juleps. I’d help you get a “ten strike” at ninepins. I’d give you a “night-key,” and be perfectly oblivious what time in the small hours you tumbled into the front entry. I’d pet all your stupid relatives, and help your country friends to “beat down” the city shopkeepers. I’d frown at all offers of “pin money.” I’d let you “smoke” in my face till I was as brown as a herring, and my eyes looked as if they were bound with pink tape; and I’d invite that pretty widow Delilah Wilkins to dinner, and run out to do some shopping, and stay away till tea-time. Why, there’s nothing I _wouldn’t_ do for you—you might have knocked me down with a feather after such a piece of magnanimity. That “Levins Clough” could stand no more chance than a woodpecker tapping at an iceberg.

HOW IS IT?

“Well, Susan, what do you think of married ladies being happy?” “Why I
think there are more AIN’T than IS, than IS that AIN’T.”

Susan, I shall apply to the Legislature to have your name changed to “Sapphira.” You are an unprincipled female.

Just imagine yourself MRS. Snip. It is a little prefix not to be sneezed at. It is only the privileged few who can secure a pair of corduroys to mend, and trot by the side of; or a pair of coat-flaps alternately to darn, and hang on to, amid the vicissitudes of this patchwork existence.

Think of the high price of fuel, Susan, and the quantity it takes to warm a low-spirited, single woman; and then think of having all that found for you by your husband, and no extra charge for “gas.” Think how pleasant to go to the closet and find a great boot-jack on your best bonnet; or “to work your passage” to the looking-glass every morning, through a sea of dickeys, vests, coats, continuations, and neck-ties; think of your nicely-polished toilette table spotted all over with shaving suds; think of your “Guide to Young Women” used for a razor strop. Think of Mr. Snip’s lips being hermetically sealed, day after day, except to ask you “if the coal was out, or if his coat was mended.” Think of coming up from the kitchen, in a gasping state of exhaustion, after making a hatch of his favourite pies, and finding five or six great dropsical bags disemboweled on your chamber floor, from the contents of which Mr. Snip had selected the “pieces” of your best silk gown, for “rags” to clean his gun with. Think of his taking a watch-guard you made him out of YOUR HAIR, for a dog-collar! Think of your promenading the floor, night after night, with your fretful, ailing baby hushed up to your warm cheek, lest it should disturb your husband’s slumbers; and think of his coming home the next day, and telling you, when you were exhausted with your vigils, “that he had just met his old love, Lilly Grey, looking as fresh as a daisy, and that it was unaccountable how much older you looked than she, although you were both the same age.

Think of all that, Susan.

A MORNING RAMBLE.

What a lovely morning! It is a luxury to breathe. How blue the sky; how soft the air; how fragrant the fresh spring grass and budding trees; and with what a gush of melody that little bird eases his joy-burdened heart.

“This world is very lovely. Oh, my God,
I thank Thee that I live.”

Clouds there are; but, oh, how much of sunshine! Sorrow there is; but, in every cup is mingled a drop of balm. Over our threshold the destroying angel passeth; yet, ere the rush of his dark wing sweepeth past, cometh the Healer.

Here is a poor, blind man basking in the sunshine, silently appealing, with outstretched palm, to the passer-by. Through his thin, gray locks the wind plays lovingly. A smile beams on his withered face; for, though his eyes are rayless, he can feel that chill Winter has gone; and he knows that the flowers are blossoming—for the sweet west wind cometh, God-commissioned, to waft him their fragrance. Some pedestrians gaze curiously at him; others, like the Levite, “pass by on the other side.” A woman approaches. She is plainly clad, and bears a basket on her arm. She has a good, kind, motherly face, as if she were hastening back to some humble home, made brighter and happier by her presence. Life is sweet to her. She catches sight of the poor old man; her eye falls upon the label affixed to his breast: “I am blind!” Oh, what if the brightness and beauty of this glad sunshine were all night to her veiled lids? What if the dear home faces were for ever shrouded from her yearning sight? What if she might never walk the sunny earth, without a guiding hand? She places her basket upon the side-walk, and wipes away a tear; now she explores her time-worn pocket; finds the hardly-earned coin, and placing it in the palm of the old man, presses his hand lovingly, and is gone!

Poor Bartimeus! He may never see the honest face that bent so tenderly over him; but, to his heart’s core, he felt that kindly pressure, and the sunshine is all the brighter, and the breeze sweeter and fresher for that friendly grasp, and life is again bright to the poor blind man.

“Oh God! I thank Thee that I live!”

* * * * *

How swiftly the ferry-boat ploughs through the wave! How gleefully that little child claps its tiny hands, as the snowy foam parts on either side, then dashes away like a thing of life. Here are weary business men, going back to their quiet homes; and pleasure-loving belles, returning from the city. Pacing up and down the deck is a worn and weary woman, bearing in her arms a child, so emaciated, so attenuated, that but for the restless glance of its dark, sunken eyes, one would think it a little corpse. The mother has left her unhealthy garret in the noisome lane of the teeming city, and paid her last penny to the ferryman, that the health-laden sea breeze may fan the sick child’s temples. Tenderly she moves it from one shoulder to another. Now, she lays its little cheek to hers; now, she kisses the little slender fingers; but still the baby moans. The boat touches the pier. All are leaving but the mother and child; the ferryman tells her to “go too.” She says timidly, “I want to return again—I live the other side—I came on board for the baby,” (pointing to the dying child). Poor woman! she did not know that she could not go back without another fee, and she has not a penny. Loathsome as is her distant home, she must go back to it; but how?

One passenger beside herself still lingers listening. Dainty fingers drop a coin into the gruff ferryman’s hand—then a handful into the weary, troubled mother’s. The sickly babe looks up and smiles at the chinking coin—the mother smiles, because the baby has smiled again—and then weeps, because she knows not how to thank the lovely donor.

“Homeward bound.”

Over the blue waters the golden sunset gleams, tinting the snowy, billowy foam with a thousand iris hues; while at the boat’s prow stands the happy mother, wooing the cool sunset breeze, which kisses soothingly the sick infant’s temples.

“This earth is very lovely. Oh, my God,
I thank Thee that I live!”

HOUR-GLASS THOUGHTS.

The bride stands waiting at the altar; the corpse lies waiting for burial.

Love vainly implores of Death a reprieve; Despair vainly invokes his coming.

The starving wretch, who purloins a crust, trembles in the hall of Justice; liveried sin, unpunished, riots in high places.

Brothers, clad “in purple and fine linen, fare sumptuously every day;” Sisters, in linsey-woolsey, toil in garrets, and shrink, trembling, from insults that no fraternal arm avenges.

The Village Squire sows, reaps, and garners golden harvests; the Parish Clergyman sighs, as his casting vote cuts down his already meagre salary.

The unpaid sempstress begems with tears the fairy festal robe; proud beauty floats in it through the ball-room like a thing of air.

Church spires point, with tapering fingers, to the rich man’s heaven; Penitence, in rags, tearful and altarless, meekly stays its timid foot at the threshold.

Sneaking Vice, wrapped in the labelled cloak of Piety, finds “open sesame;” shrinking Conscientiousness, jostled rudely aside, weeps in secret its fancied unworthiness.

The Editor grows plethoric on the applause of the public and mammoth subscription lists; the _unrecognized_ journalist, who, behind the scenes, mixes so deftly the newspaporial salad, lives on the smallest possible stipend, and looks like an undertaker’s walking advertisement.

Wives rant of their “Woman’s Rights” in public; Husbands eat bad dinners and tend crying babies at home.

Mothers toil in kitchens; Daughters lounge in parlours.

Fathers drive the plough; Sons drive tandem.

SOBER HUSBANDS.

“If your husband looks grave, let him alone; don’t disturb or annoy
him.”

Oh, pshaw! were I married, the soberer my husband looked the more fun I’d rattle about his ears. _Don’t disturb him!_ I guess so! I’d salt his coffee—and pepper his tea—and sugar his beef-steak—and tread on his toes—and hide his newspaper—and sew up his pockets—and put pins in his slippers—and dip his cigars in water—and I wouldn’t stop for the great Mogul, till I had shortened his long face to my liking. Certainly, he’d “get vexed;” there wouldn’t be any fun in teasing him if he didn’t; and that would give his melancholy blood a good, healthful start; and his eyes would snap and sparkle, and he’d say, “Fanny, WILL you be quiet or not?” and I should laugh, and pull his whiskers, and say decidedly, “_Not!_” and then I should tell him he hadn’t the slightest idea how handsome he looked when he was vexed; and then he would pretend not to hear the compliment, but would pull up his dicky, and take a sly peep in the glass (for all that!); and then he’d begin to grow amiable, and get off his stilts, and be just as agreeable all the rest of the evening _as if he wasn’t my husband_; and all because I didn’t follow that stupid bit of advice “to let him alone.” Just as if _I_ didn’t know! Just imagine ME, Fanny, sitting down on a cricket in the corner, with my forefinger in my mouth, looking out the sides of my eyes, and waiting till that man got ready to speak to me! You can see at once it would be— be—. Well, the amount of it is, _I shouldn’t do it_!

BOARDING-HOUSE EXPERIENCE.

Mr. Relph Renoux lived by his wits: _i. e._, he kept a boarding-house; _taking in_ any number of ladies and gentlemen who, in the philanthropic language of his advertisement, “pined for the comforts and elegances of a home.”

Mr. Renoux’s house was at the court-end of the city; his drawing-room was unexceptionably furnished, and himself, when “made up,” after ten o’clock in the morning, quite _comme il faut_. Mrs. Renoux never appeared; being, in the pathetic words of Mr. Renoux, “in a drooping, invalid state nevertheless, she might be seen, by the initiated, haunting the back stairs and entries, and with flying cap-strings, superintending kitchen-cabinet affairs.

Mrs. Renoux was the unhappy mother of three unmarried daughters, with red hair and tempers to match: who languished over Byron, in elegant _negligées_, of a morning, till after the last masculine had departed; then, in curl-papers and calico long-shorts, performed for the absentees the duty of chamber-maids—peeping into valises, trunks, bureaus, cigar-boxes and coat pockets, and replenishing their perfumed bottles from the gentlemen’s toilet stands with the most perfect _nonchalance_. At dinner they emerged from their chrysalis state into the most butterfly gorgeousness, and exchanged the cracked treble, with which they had been ordering round the overtasked maid-of-all-work, as they affectionately addressed “Papa.”

* * * * *

At the commencement of my story, Renoux was as happy as a kitten with its first mouse—having entrapped, with the bait of his alluring advertisement, a widow lady with one child. “The comforts and elegances of a home;”—it was just what the lady was seeking: how very fortunate!

“Certainly, Madam,” said Renoux, doubling himself into the form of the letter C. “I will serve your meals in your own room, if you prefer; but really, madam, I trust you will sometimes grace the drawing-room with your presence, as we have a very select little family of boarders. Do you choose to breakfast at eight, nine, or ten, Madam? Do you incline to Mocha, or prefer the leaves of the Celestial city? Are you fond of eggs, Madam? Would you prefer to dine at four or five? Do you wish six courses, or more? There is the bell-rope, Madam. I trust you will use it unsparingly, should anything be omitted or neglected. I am on my way down town, and if you will favour me by saying what you would fancy for your dinner to-day (the market is full of everything—fish, flesh, fowl, and game of all sorts), you have only to express a wish, Madam, and the thing is here; I should be miserable, indeed, were the request of a _lady_ to be disregarded in _my_ house, and that lady deprived of her natural protector. Which is it; Madam—fish? flesh? or fowl? Any letters to send to the post-office, Madam? Any commands anywhere? I shall be _too_ happy to be of service—and bending to the tips of his patent leather toes, Mr. Renoux, facing the lady, bowed obsequiously and Terpsichoreally out of the apartment.

The dinner hour came. An Irish servant girl came with it, and drawing out a table at an Irish angle upon the floor, tossed over it a tumbled table-cloth, placed upon it a castor, minus one leg, some cracked salt-cellars and tumblers, then laid some knives, left-handed, about the table, then withdrew to re-appear with the result of Mr. Renoux’s laborious research “in the market filled with everything,” viz.: a consumptive-looking mackerel, whose skin clung tenaciously to its back bone, and a Peter Schlemel-looking chicken, which, in its life-time, must have had a vivid recollection of Noah and the forty days’ shower, This was followed by a dessert of baker’s stale tarts, compounded of lard and dried apples; and twenty-four purple grapes.

* * * * *

The next morning Mr. Renoux tip-toed in, smirking and bowing, as if the bill of fare had been the most sumptuous in the world, and expressed the greatest astonishment and indignation, that “the stupid servant had neglected bringing up the other courses which he had provided;” then he inquired “how the lady had rested;” and when she preferred a request for another pillow (there being only six feathers in the one she had) he assured her that it should be in her apartment in less than one hour. A fortnight after, he expressed the most intense disgust that “the rascally upholsterer” had not yet sent _what he had never ordered_. Each morning Mr. Renoux presented himself, at a certain hour, behind a very stiff dickey, and offered the lady the morning papers. Seating himself on the sofa, he would remark that—it was a very fine day, and that affairs in France appeared to be _in statu quo_; or, that the Czar had ordered his generals to occupy the Principalities; that Gortschakoff was preparing to cross the Danube; that the Sultan had dispatched Omar Pacha to the frontiers; that the latter gentleman had presented his card to Gortschakoff, on the point of a yatagan, which courtesy would probably lead to——something else!

During one of these agreeable calls, the lady took occasion slightly to object to Betty’s nibbling the tarts as she brought them up for dinner; whereupon Mr. Renoux declared, on the honour of a Frenchman, that “she should be pitched out of the door immediately, if not sooner, and an efficient servant engaged to take her place.”

The next day, the “efficient servant” came in, broom in hand, whistling “Oh, Susanna,” and passing into the little dressing-room, to “put it to rights,” amused herself by trying on the widow’s best bonnet, and polishing her teeth and combing her hair with that lady’s immaculate and individual head-brush and tooth-brush. You will not be surprised to learn that their injured and long-suffering owner took-a frantic and “French leave” the following morning, in company with her big and little bandboxes, taking refuge under the sheltering roof of Madame Finfillan.

* * * * *

Madame Finfillan was a California widow; petite, plump, and pretty—who bore her cruel bereavement with feminine philosophy, and slid round the world’s rough angles with a most eel-like dexterity. In short, she was a Renoux in petticoats. Madame welcomed the widow with great pleasure, because, as she said, she “wished to fill her house only with first-class boarders;” and the widow might be assured that she had the apartments fresh from the diplomatic hands of the Spanish Consul, who would on no account have given them up, had not his failing health demanded a trip to the Continent. Madame also assured the widow, that (although she said it herself) every part of her house would bear the closest inspection; that those vulgar horrors, cooking butter, and diluted tea, were never seen on her Epicurean table; that they breakfasted at ten, lunched at two, dined at six, and enjoyed themselves in the _interim_; that her daughter, Miss Clara, was perfectly well qualified to superintend, when business called her mother away. And that nobody knew (wringing her little white hands) how _much_ business she had to do, what with trotting round to those odious markets, trading for wood and coal, and such like uninteresting things; or what _would_ become of her, had she not some of the best friends in the world to look after her, in the absence of Mons. Finfillan.

Madame then caught up the widow’s little boy, and, half smothering him with kisses, declared that there was nothing on earth she loved so well as children; that there were half-a-dozen of them in the house who loved her better than their own fathers and mothers, and that their devotion to her was at times quite touching—(and here she drew out an embroidered pocket-handkerchief, and indulged in an interesting little sniffle behind its cambric folds). Recovering herself, she went on to say, that the manner in which some boarding-house keepers treated children was perfectly inhuman; that she had a second table for them, to be sure, but it was loaded with delicacies, and that she always put them up a little school lunch herself; on which occasion there was always an amiable little quarrel among them, as to which should receive from her the greatest number of kisses; also, that it was her frequent practice to get up little parties and tableaux for their amusement. “But here is my daughter, Miss Clara,” said she, introducing a fair-haired young damsel, buttoned up in a black velvet jacket, over a flounced skirt.

“Just sixteen yesterday,” said Madame; “naughty little blossom, budding out so fast, and pushing her poor mamma off the stage;” (and here Madame paused for a compliment, and looking in the opposite mirror, smoothed her jetty ringlets complacently). “Yes, every morning little blossom’s mamma looks in the glass, expecting to find a horror of a gray hair. But what makes my little pet so pensive to-day?—thinking of her little lover, hey? Has the naughty little thing a thought she does not share with mamma? But, dear me!”—and Madame drew out a little dwarf watch; “I had quite forgotten it is the hour Mons. Guigen gives me my guitar lesson. Adieu: dinner at six, remember—and Madame tripped, coquettishly, out of the room.

Yes; “dinner at six.” Gold salt-cellars, black waiters, and finger-bowls; satin chairs in the parlour, and pastilles burning on the side-table; but the sheets on the beds all torn to ribbons; the boarders allowed but one towel a week; every bell-rope divorced from its bell; the locks all out of order on the chamber doors; the “dear children’s” bill of fare at the “second table”—sour bread, watery soup, and cold buckwheat cakes—and “dinner at six,” only an invention of the enemy, to save the expense of one meal a day—the good, cozy, old-fashioned tea.

Well, the boarders were all “trusteed” by Madame’s butcher, baker, and milkman; Miss Clara eloped with the widow’s diamond ring and Mons. Peneke; and Madame, who had heard that Mons. Finfillan was “among the things that _were_,” was just about running off with Mons. Guigen, when her liege lord suddenly returned from California, with damaged constitution and morals, a dilapidated wardrobe and empty coffers.

Moral.—Beware of boarding-houses; in the words of Shakspere—

“Let those keep house who ne’er kept house before,
And those who have kept house, keep house the more.”

A GRUMBLE FROM THE (H)ALTAR.

This is the second day I’ve come home to dinner, without that yard of pink ribbon for Mrs. Pendennis. Now we shall have a _broil_ not down in the bill of fare. Julius Cæsar! if she only knew how much I have to do; but it would make no difference if she did. I used to think a fool was easily managed. Mrs. Pendennis has convinced me that _that_ was a mistake. If I try to reason with her, she talks round and round in a circle, like a kitten chasing its tail. If I set my arms akimbo, and look threatening, she settles into a fit of the sulks, to which a November drizzle of a fortnight’s duration is a millenium. If I try to get round her by petting, she is as impudent as the——. Yes, just about. Jerusalem! what a thing it is to be married! And yet, if an inscrutable Providence should bereave me of Mrs. Pendennis, I am not at all sure——good gracious, here she comes! Do you know I’d rather face one of Colt’s revolvers this minute, than that four feet of womanhood? Isn’t it astonishing, the way they do it?

A WICK-ED PARAGRAPH.

CONNUBIAL.—Mr. Albert Wicks, of Coventry, under date of December 28th,
advertised his wife as having left his bed and board; and now, under
date of March. 26th, he appends to his former notice, the following:—

“Mrs. Wicks, if you ever intend to come back and live with me any
more, you must come now or not at all.

“I love you as I do my life, and if you will come now, I will forgive
you for all you have done and threatened to do, which I can prove by
three good witnesses: and if not, I shall attend to your case without
delay, and soon, too.”

There, now, Mrs. Wicks, what is to be done? “Three good witnesses!” think of _that_. What the mischief have you been about? Whatever it is, Mr. Wicks is ready to “love you like his life.” Consistent Mr. Wicks!

Now take a little advice, my dear innocent, and don’t allow yourself to be badgered or frightened into anything. None but a coward ever threatens a woman. Put that in your memorandum book. It’s all bluster and braggadocio. Thread your darning needle, and tell him you are ready for him—ready for anything except his “loving you like his life;” that you could not possibly survive that infliction without having your “wick” snuffed entirely out.

Sew away, just as if there were not a domestic earthquake brewing under your connubial feet. If it sends you up in the air, it sends him too—there’s a pair of you! Put _that_ in his Wick-ed ear! Of course he will sputter away as if he had swallowed a “Roman candle,” and you can take a nap till he gets through, and then offer him your smelling-bottle to quiet his nerves.

That’s the way to quench him!

MISTAKEN PHILANTHROPY.

“Don’t moralize to a man who is on his back. Help him up, set him
firmly on his feet, and then give him advice and means.”

There’s an old-fashioned, verdant piece of wisdom, altogether unsuited for the enlightened age we live in! Fished up, probably, from some musty old newspaper, edited by some eccentric man troubled with that inconvenient appendage, called a heart! Don’t pay any attention to it. If a poor wretch (male or female) comes to you for charity, whether allied to you by your own mother, or mother Eve, put on the most stoical, “get thee behind me” expression you can muster. Listen to him with the air of a man who “thanks God he is not as other men are.” If the story carry conviction with it, and truth and sorrow go hand in hand, button your coat tighter over your pocket-book, and give him a piece of—good advice! If you know anything about him, try to rake up some imprudence or mistake he may have made in the course of his life, and bring that up as a reason why you can’t give him anything more substantial, and tell him that his present condition is probably a salutary discipline for those same peccadilloes! Ask him more questions than there are in the Assembly’s Catechism, about his private history; and when you’ve pumped him high and dry, try to teach him (on an empty stomach) the “duty of submission.” If the tear of wounded sensibility begin to flood the eye, and a hopeless look of discouragement settle down upon the face, “wish him well,” and turn your back upon him as quick as possible.

Should you at any time be seized with an unexpected spasm of generosity, and make up your mind to bestow some worn-out old garment that will hardly hold together till the recipient gets it home, you’ve bought him, body and soul; of course you are entitled to the gratitude of a life-time! If he ever presumes to think differently from you after that, he’s an “ungrateful wretch,” and “ought to suffer.” As to the “golden rule,” that was made in old times; everything is changed now; ‘taint suited to our meridian.

People shouldn’t get poor; if they do, you don’t want to be bothered with it. It’s disagreeable; it hinders your digestion. You’d rather see Dives than Lazarus; and it’s my opinion your taste will be gratified in that particular (in the other world, if it is not in this!)

INSIGNIFICANT LOVE.

“You, young, loving creature, who dream of your lover by night and by
day—you fancy that he does the same of you? One hour, perhaps, your
presence has captivated him, subdued him even to weakness; the next,
he will be in the world, working his way as a man among men,
forgetting, for the time being, your very existence. Possibly, if you
saw him, his outer self, so hard and stern, so different from the self
you know, would strike you with pain. Or else his inner and diviner
self, higher than you dream of, would turn coldly from _your
insignificant love_.”

“Insignificant love!” I like that. More especially when out of ten couple you meet, nine of the wives are as far above their husbands, in point of mind, as the stars are above the earth. For the credit of the men I should be sorry to say how many of them would be minus coats, hats, pantaloons, cigars, &c., were it not for their wives’ earnings; or how many smart speeches and able sermons have been concocted by their better halves (while rocking the cradle), to be delivered to the public at the proper time, parrot fashion, by the lords of creation. Wisdom will die with the men; there’s no gainsaying that!

Catch a smart, talented, energetic woman, and it will puzzle you to find a man that will compare with her for go-a-headativeness. The more obstacles she encounters, the harder she struggles, and the more you try to put her down, the more you won’t do it. Children are obliged to write under their crude drawings, “this is a dog,” or “this is a horse.” If it were not for coats and pants, we should be obliged to label, “this is a man,” in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred!

“Insignificant love!” Why does a man offer himself a dozen times to the same woman? Pity to take so much pains for such a trifle! “Insignificant love!” Who gets you on your feet again, when you fail in business, by advancing the nice little sum settled on herself by her anxious pa? Who cheers you up, when her nerves are all in a double-and-twisted knot, and you come home with your face long as the moral law? Who wears her old bonnet three winters, while you smoke, and drive, and go to the opera? Who sits up till the small hours, to help you find the way up your own staircase? Who darns your old coat, next morning, just as if you were a man, instead of a brute? And who scratches any woman’s eyes out, who dares insinuate that her husband is superior to you!

“Insignificant love!” I wish I knew the man who wrote that article! I’d appoint his funeral to-morrow, and it should come off, too!

A MODEL MARRIED MAN.

Cobbett says that for two years after his marriage he retained his
disposition to flirt with pretty women; but at last his wife—probably
having lost all hope of his reforming himself—gently tapped him upon
the arm, and remarked—

“Don’t do that. I do not like it.”

Cobbett says:—“That was quite enough. I had never thought on the
subject before; one hair of her head was more dear to me than all
other women in the world; and this I knew that she knew; but now I saw
that this was not all that she had a right to from me. _I saw that she
had the further claim upon me that I should abstain from everything
that might induce others to believe that there was any other woman for
whom, even if I were at liberty, I had any affection._”

Now I suppose most women, on reading that, would roll up their eyes and think unutterable things of Mr. Cobbett! But, had _I_ borne his musical name, and had that fine speech been addressed to me, I should immediately have dismissed the—house-maid!

It is not in any masculine to get on his knees that way, without a motive! I tell you that man was a humbug! overshot the mark, entirely; promised ten times as much as a sinful masculine could ever perform. If he had said about _a quarter part_ of that, you might have believed him. His affection for Mrs. Cobbett was skin-deep. He would have flirted with every one of you, the minute her back was turned, to the end of the electrical chapter!

A man who is magnetized as he ought to be, don’t waste his precious time making such long-winded, sentimental speeches. You never need concern yourself, when such a glib tongue makes love to you. Go on with your knitting; _he’s convalescent_! getting better of his complaint fast. Now mind what I tell you; that Cobbett was a humbug!

MEDITATIONS OF PAUL PRY, JUN.

Not a blessed bit of gossip have I heard for a whole week! Nobody’s run off with anybody’s wife; not a _single_ case of “Swartwouting;” no minister’s been to the theatre; and my friend Tom, editor of the “Sky Rocket,” (who never cares whether a rumour be true or false, or where it hits, so that it makes a paragraph), is quite in despair. He’s really afraid the world is growing virtuous—says it would be a hundred dollars in his pocket, to get hold of a bit of scandal in such a dearth of news; and if the accused party gets obstreperous, he’d just as lief publish one side as the other! The more fuss the better; all he’s afraid of is, they won’t think it worth noticing!

Ah! we’ve some new neighbours in that house; pretty woman there, at the window; glad of that! In the first place, it rests my eyes to look at them; in the next place, when there’s a pretty woman, you may be morally certain there’ll be mischief, sooner or later, _i. e._ if they don’t have somebody like me to look after them; therefore I shall keep my eye on her. That’s her husband in the room, I’m certain of it (for all the while she is talking to him, she’s looking out of the window!) There he goes down street to his business—a regular humdrum, hen-pecked, “ledger” looking Lilliputian. Was not cut out for her, that’s certain! Well, my lady’s wide awake enough! Look at her eye! No use in pursing up that pretty mouth!—that eye tells the story! Nice little plump figure; coquettish turn of the head, and a spring to her step. Well, well, I’ll keep my eyes open.

Just as I expected! there’s a young man ringing at the door; “patent leather,” “kid gloves,” white hand, ring on the little finger—hope she won’t shut the blinds now! There! she has taken her seat on the sofa at the back part of the room. She don’t escape _me_ that way, while I own a spy-glass! Jupiter! if he is not twisting her curls round his fingers! Wonder how old “Ledger” would like _that_!

Tuesday.—Boy at the door with a bouquet. Can’t ring the bell; I’ll just step out and offer to do it for him, and learn who sent it! “Has orders not to tell;” umph! _I’ve_ no orders “not to tell;” so here goes a note to Ledger about it; that little gipsy is stepping RATHER too high.

Wednesday.—Here I am tied up for a month at least; scarcely a whole bone in my body, to say nothing of the way my feelings are hurt. How did I know that young man was “her brother?” Why couldn’t Ledger correct my mistake in a gentlemanly way, without daguerreotyping it on my back with a horsewhip? It’s true I am not always correct in my suspicions, but he ought to have looked at my motives! Suppose it hadn’t been her brother, now! It’s astonishing, the ingratitude of people. It’s enough to discourage all my attempts at moral reform!

Well, it’s no use attacking that hornet’s nest again; but I’ve no doubt some of the commandments are broken somewhere; and with the help of some “opodeldoc” I’ll get out and find where it is!

SUNSHINE AND YOUNG MOTHERS.

FOLLY.—For girls to expect to be happy without marriage. Every woman
was made for a mother; consequently, babies are as necessary to their
“peace of mind,” as health. If you wish to look at melancholy and
indigestion, look at an old maid. If you would take a peep at
sunshine, look in the face of a young mother.

“Young mothers and sunshine!” They are worn to fiddle-strings before they are twenty-five! When an old lover turns up, he thinks he sees his grandmother, instead of the dear little Mary who used to make him feel as if he should crawl out of the toes of his boots! Yes! my mind is _quite_ made up about _matrimony_; it’s a _one-sided_ partnership.

“Husband” gets up in the morning, and pays his _devoirs_ to the looking-glass; curls his fine head of hair; puts on an immaculate shirt bosom; ties an excruciating cravat; sprinkles his handkerchief with cologne; stows away a French roll, an egg, and a cup of coffee; gets into the omnibus, looks at the pretty girls, and makes love between the pauses of business during the forenoon _generally_. Wife must “hermetically seal” the windows and exclude all the fresh air (because the baby had “the snuffles” in the night); and sits gasping down to the table, more dead than alive, to finish her breakfast. Tommy turns a cup of hot coffee down his bosom; Juliana has torn off the strings of her school bonnet; James “wants his geography covered;” Eliza can’t find her satchel; the butcher wants to know if she’d like a joint of mutton; the milkman would like his money; the iceman wants to speak to her “just a minute;” the baby swallows a bean; husband sends the boy home from the store to say _his partner_ will dine with him; the cook leaves “all flying,” to go to her “sister’s dead baby’s wake,” and husband’s thin coat must be ironed before noon.

“_Sunshine and young mothers!_” Where’s my smelling-bottle?

UNCLE BEN’S ATTACK OF SPRING FEVER, AND HOW HE GOT CURED.

“It is not possible that you have been insane enough to go to housekeeping in the country, for the summer? Oh, you ought to hear my experience,” and Uncle Ben wiped the perspiration from his forehead, at the very thought.

Yes, I tried it once, with city habits and a city wife: got rabid with the dog days, and nothing could cure me but a nibble of green grass. There was Susan, you know, who never was off a brick pavement in her life, and didn’t know the difference between a cheese and a grindstone.

Well, we ripped up our carpets, and tore down our curtains, and packed up our crockery, and nailed down our pictures, and eat dust for a week, and then we emigrated to Daisy Ville.

Could I throw up a window, or fasten back a blind in that house, without sacrificing my suspenders and waistband button? No, sir! Were not the walls full of Red Rovers? Didn’t the doors fly open at every wind gust? Didn’t the roof leak like the mischief? Was not the chimney leased to a pack of swallows? Was not the well half a mile from the house?

Oh, you needn’t laugh. Instead of the comfortable naps to which I had been accustomed, I had to sleep with one eye open all night, lest I shouldn’t get into the city in time. I had to be shaving in the morning before a rooster in the barn-yard had stirred a feather; swallowed my coffee and toast by steam, and then, still masticating, made for the front door. There stood Peter with my horse and gig, for I detest your cars and omnibuses. On the floor of the chaise was a huge basket, in which to bring home material for the next day’s dinner. On the seat was a dress of my wife’s to be left “without fail” at Miss Sewing Silk’s, to have the forty-seventh hook moved one-sixth of a degree higher up on the back. Then there was a package of shawls from Tom Fools & Co., to be returned, and a pair of shoes to carry to Lapstone, who was to select another pair for me to bring out at night; and a demijohn to be filled with sherry. Well, I whipped up Bucephalus, left my sleeping wife and babies, and started for town; cogitating over an intricate business snarl, which bade defiance to any straightening process. I hadn’t gone half a mile before an old maid (I hate old maids) stopped me to know if I was going into town, and if I was, if I wouldn’t take her in, as the omnibuses made her sick. She said she was niece to Squire Dandelion, and “had a few chores to do a shopping.” So I took her in, or rather, she took _me_ in (but she didn’t do it but once—for I bought a sulkey next day!) Well, it came night, and I was hungry as a Hottentot, for I never could dine, as your married widowers _pro tem_ do, at eating-houses, where one gravy answers for flesh, fish, and fowl, and the pudding-sauce is as black as the cook’s complexion. So I went round on an empty stomach, hunting up my _expressman parcels_, and wending my way to the stable with arms and pockets running over. When I got home, found my wife in despair, no tacks in the house to nail down carpets, and not one to be had at the store in the village; the cook had deserted, because she couldn’t do without “her _city privileges_” (meaning Jonathan Jones, the “dry dirt” man); and the chambermaid, a buxom country girl, with fire-red hair, was spinning round the crockery (_à la_ Blitz) because she “couldn’t eat with the family.”

Then Charley was taken with the croup in the night, and in my fright I put my feet into my coat sleeves, and my arms into my pants, and put on one of my wife’s ruffles instead of a dicky, and rode three miles in a pelting rain, for some “goose grease” for his throat.

Then we never found out till cherries, and strawberries, and peaches were ripe, how many _friends_ (?) we had. There was a horse hitched at every rail in the fence, so long as there was anything left to eat on a tree in the farm; but if my wife went in town shopping, and called on any of them, they were “out, or engaged;”—or, if at home, had “just done dinner, and were going to ride.”

Then there was no school in the neighbourhood for the children, and they were out in the barn-yard feeding the pigs with lump sugar, and chasing the hens off the nest to see what was the prospect for eggs, and making little boats of their shoes, and sailing them in the pond, and milking the cow in the middle of the day, &c.

Then if I dressed in the morning in linen coat, thin pants, and straw hat, I’d be sure to find the wind “dead east” when I got into the city; or if I put on broadcloth and fixins to match, it would be hotter than Shadrach’s furnace, all day—while the dense morning fog would extract the starch from my dicky and shirt-bosom, till they looked very like a collapsed flapjack.

Then our meeting-house was a good two miles distant, and we had to walk, or stay at home; because my factotum (Peter) wouldn’t stay on the farm without he could have the horse on Sundays to go to Mill Village to see his affianced Nancy. Then the old farmers leaned on my stone wall, and laughed till the tears came into their eyes, to see “the city gentleman’s” experiments in horticulture, as they passed by “to meetin’.”

Well, sir, before summer was over, my wife and I looked as jaded as omnibus horses—she with chance “help” and floods of city company, and I with my arduous duties as _express man_ for my own family in particular, and the neighbours in general.

And now here we are—“No. 9 Kossuth Square.” Can reach anything we want, by putting our hands out the front windows. If, as the poet says, “_man made the town_,” all I’ve got to say is—he understood his business!

THE AGED MINISTER VOTED A DISMISSION.

Your minister is “superannuated,” is he? Well, call a parish meeting, and vote him a dismission; hint that his usefulness is gone; that he is given to repetition; that he puts his hearers to sleep. Turn him adrift, like a blind horse, or a lame house dog. Never mind that he has grown gray in your thankless service—that he has smiled upon your infants at the baptismal font, given them lovingly away in marriage to their heart’s chosen, and wept with you when Death’s shadow darkened your door. Never mind that he has laid aside his pen, and listened many a time, and oft, with courteous grace, to your tedious, prosy conversations, when his moments were like gold dust; never mind that he has patiently and uncomplainingly accepted, at your hands the smallest pittance that would sustain life, because “the Master” whispered in his ear, “Tarry here till I come.” Never mind that the wife of his youth, whom he won from a home of luxury, is broken down with privation and fatigue, and _your_ thousand unnecessary demands upon her strength, patience, and time. Never mind that his children, at an early age, were exiled from the parsonage roof, because there was not “bread enough and to spare” in their father’s house. Never mind that his library consists only of a Bible, a Concordance, and a Dictionary; and that to the luxury of a religious newspaper, he has long been a stranger. Never mind that his wardrobe would be spurned by many a mechanic in our cities; never mind that he has “risen early and sat up late,” and tilled the ground with weary limbs, for earthly “manna,” while his glorious intellect lay in fetters—_for you_. Never mind _that_; call a parish meeting, and vote him “superannuated.” Dont’ spare him the starting tear of sensibility, or the flush of wounded pride, by delicately offering to settle a colleague, that your aged pastor may rest on his staff in grateful, gray-haired independence. No! _turn the old patriarch out_; give him time to go to the moss-grown churchyard, and say farewell to his unconscious dead, and then give “the right hand of fellowship” to some beardless, pedantic, noisy college boy, who will save your sexton the trouble of pounding the pulpit cushions; and who will tell you and the Almighty, in his prayers, all the political news of the week.

THE FATAL MARRIAGE.

A very pretty girl was Lucy Lee. Don’t ask me to describe her; stars, and gems, and flowers have long since been exhausted in depicting heroines. Suffice it to say, Lucy was as pretty a little fairy as ever stepped foot in a slipper, or twisted a ringlet.