Chapter VIII (5)

Here comes an Italian, balancing a shelf-load of plaster Cupids and Venuses, and dove-circled vases. How mournfully his dark eyes look out from beneath his tasseled cap, as he lifts his burden from his head for a momentary reprieve. They tell of weary feet, a heavy heart, and a light purse. They tell, with a silent reproach, that our hearts are as cold as our clime. Oh! not _all_, good Pietro! For your sake, I’ll make myself mistress of that sleeping child; though, truth to say, the sculptor who moulded it has most wofully libelled Nature. Would I could see the sunny skies upon which your dark eyes first opened, and all the glorious forms that beauty wears in your vine-clad home beyond the seas.

How the pedestrians hurry along!—merchants to their cares and their counting-rooms, and shop-girls and seamstresses to their prisons. Here comes a group of pale-faced city children, on their way to school. God bless the little unfortunates! Their little feet should be crushing the strawberries, ripe and sweet, on some sunny hillslope, where breath of now-mown hay and clover blossoms would give roses to their cheeks and strength and grace to their cramped and half-developed limbs. Poor little creatures! they never saw a patch of blue sky bigger than their satchels, or a blade of grass that dared to grow without permission from the mayor, aldermen, and common council. Poor little skeletons! tricked out like the fashion-prints, and fed on diluted skim-milk and big dictionaries—I pity you.

A hand-organ! ground by a modern Peter Schlemel, and accompanied by a woman whose periphery it would be vain to compute by inches, singing,

“I’d be a butterfly.”

Ye gods and graces! if ye heed her prayer, grant that she alight not on my _two-lips_! Now she is warbling,

“Home! sweet home,”

as if she wasn’t making it for me, this minute, a perfect place of torment! Avaunt! thou libel upon feminity!—creep into corduroys, and apply for the office of town crier.

A funeral! That is nothing uncommon in a densely populated city; so, nobody turns to look, as it winds along, slowly, as will the sad future to that young husband—that father of an hour. Sad legacy to him, those piles of tiny robes, and dainty little garments, whose elaborate and delicate embroidery was purchased at such a fearful price. Nature will have her revenge for a reckless disregard of her laws; so, there she lies, the young mother, with the long looked for babe upon her girlish breast. Sad comment upon a foolish vanity.

What have we here?—A carriage at the door? Ah! I recollect; there was a wedding at that house last night—lights flashing, music swelling—white arms gleaming through tissue textures, and merry voices breaking in upon my slumbers late in the small hours.

Ah, yes—and this is the bride’s leave-taking. How proud and important that young husband looks, as he stands on the steps, with the bride’s travelling shawl upon his arm, giving his orders to the coachman! Now he casts an impatient glance back through the open door into the hall, half jealous of the tear sparkling in the young wife’s eye, as the mother presses her tenderly to her breast, as the father lays the hand of blessing on her sunny head, and brothers and sisters, half glad, half sad, offer their lips for a good-bye kiss.

Hurry her not away! Not even the heart she has singled out from all the world to lean upon, can love so fondly, so truly, as those she leaves behind. Dark days may come, when love’s sunshine shall be o’erclouded by cares and sickness, from which young manhood, impatient, shrinks. _Let her linger_: so shall your faith in her young wifely love be strengthened by such strong filial yearning for these, her cradle watchers. Let her linger: silver hairs mingle in the mother’s tresses; the father’s dark eye grows dim with age, and insatiate Death heeds nor prayer, nor tear, nor lifted eye of supplication. Let her linger.

New York! New York! who but thyself would have tolerated for twelve mortal hours, with the thermometer at 90 degrees, that barrel of refuse fish and potatoes, sour bread and damaged meat, questionable vegetables and antique puddings, steaming on that sunny side-walk, in the forlorn hope that some pig’s patron might be tempted, by the odoriferous hash, to venture on its transportation. Know, then, O pestiferous Gotham, that half a score of these gentry, after having sounded it with a long pole to the bottom, for the benefit of my olfactories, have voted it a nuisance to which even a pig might make a _gutter_-al remonstrance. Oh! Marshal Tukey, if California yet holds you, in the name of the Asiatic cholera, and _my_ “American constitution,” recross the Isthmus and exorcise that barrel!

Look on yonder door-step. See that poor, worn creature seated there, with a puling infant at her breast, from whence it draws no sustenance: on either side are two little creatures, apparently asleep, with their heads in her lap. Their faces are very pallid, and their little limbs have nothing of childhood’s rounded symmetry and beauty. “Perhaps she is an impostor,” says Prudence, seizing my purse-strings, “getting up that tableau for just such impressionable dupes as yourself.” “Perhaps she is _not_,” says Feeling; “perhaps at this moment despair whispers in her tempted ear ‘curse God and die!’ Oh! then, how sad to have ‘passed her by, on the other side!’” Let _me_ be “duped,” rather than that wan face should come between my soul and Heaven.

WHEN YOU ARE ANGRY.

“When you are angry, take three breaths before you speak.”

I couldn’t do it, said Mrs. Penlimmon. Long before that time I should be as placid as an oyster. “Three breaths!” I could double Cape Horn in that time. I’m telegraphic,—if I had to stop to reflect, I should never be saucy. I can’t hold anger any more than an April sky can retain showers; the first thing I know, the sun is shining. You may laugh, but that’s better than one of your foggy dispositions, drizzling drops of discomfort a month on a stretch; no computing whether you’ll have anything but gray clouds overhead the rest of your life. No: a good heavy clap of thunder for me—a lightning flash; then a bright blue sky and a clear atmosphere, and I am ready for the first flower that springs up in my path.

“Three breaths!” how absurd! as if people, when they get excited, ever _have_ any breath, or if they have, are conscious of it. I should like to see the Solomon who got off that sage maxim. I should like better still to give him an opportunity to test his own theory! It’s very refreshing to see how good people can be when they have no temptation to sin; how they can sit down and make a code of laws for the world in general, and sinners in particular.

“Three breaths!” I wouldn’t give a three-cent piece for anybody who is that long about anything. The days of stage coaches have gone by. Nothing passes muster now but comets, locomotives, and telegraph wires. Our forefathers and foremothers would have to hold the hair on their heads if they should wake up in 1854. They’d be as crazy as a cat in a shower-bath, at all our whizzing and rushing. Nice old snails! It’s a question with me whether I should have crept on at their pace, had I been a cotemporary. Christopher Columbus would have discovered the New World much quicker than he did, had I been at his elbow.

LITTLE BESSIE;
OR,
MISS PRIM’S MODEL SCHOOL.

School is out! What stretching of limbs; what unfettering of tongues and heels; what tossing-up of pinafores and primers; what visions of marbles, and hoops, and dolls, and apples, and candy, and gingerbread! How welcome the fresh air; how bright the sunshine; how tempting the grassy play-ground! Ah, there’s a drop of rain—there’s another; there’s a thunder clap! “Just as school is out—how provoking!” echo a score of voices; and the pouting little prisoners huddle together in the school-house porch, and console themselves by swapping jack-knives and humming-tops, and telling marvellous stories of gipsies and giants; while Miss Prim, the dyspeptic teacher, shakes her head and the ferule, and declares that the former will “fly into fifty pieces;” upon which some of the boys steal out of doors and amuse themselves by sounding the puddles with their shoes, while others slily whittle the desks, or draw caricatures on their slates of Miss Prim’s long nose.

Drip, drip—spatter, spatter! How the rain comes down, as if it couldn’t help it; no prospect of “holding up.”

Here come messengers from anxious mothers, with India rubbers, extra tippets, and umbrellas; and there’s a chaise at the door for Squire Lennox’s little rosy daughter; and a waggon for the two Prince girls; and a stout Irish girl, with a blanket shawl, to carry home little lame Minnie May, who is as fragile as a lily, and just as sweet. And there’s a servant man for Master Simpkins, the fat dunce with the embroidered jacket, whose father owns “the big Hotel, and wishes his son to have a seat all by himself.”

And now they are all gone;—all save little Bessie Bell, the new scholar—a little four-year-older, who is doing penance over in the corner for “a misdemeanour.”

Bessie’s mother is a widow. She has known such bright, sunny days, in the shelter of a happy home, with a dear arm to lean upon! Now her sweet face is sad and care-worn, and when she speaks, her voice has a heart-quiver in it: but, somehow, when she talks to you, you do not notice that her dress is faded, or her bonnet shabby and rusty: You instinctively touch your hat to her, and treat her very courteously, as if she were a fine lady.

As I said before, this is little Bessie’s first day at school; for she is light, and warmth, and sunshine to her broken-hearted mother. But little Bessie must have bread to eat. A shop-woman offered her mother a small pittance to come and help her a part of every day; but she is not to bring her child; so Bessie must go to school to be out of harm’s way, and her mother tells Miss Prim, as she seats her on the hard bench, that “she is very timid and tender-hearted;” and then she kisses Bessie’s little quivering lip, and leaves her with a heavy heart.

Bessie dare not look up for a few minutes;—it is all very odd and strange, and if she were not so frightened she would cry aloud. By and by she gains a little courage, and peeps out from beneath her drooping eye-lashes. Her little pinafore neighbour gives her a sweet smile—it makes her little heart so happy, that she throws her little dimpled arms about her neck and says (out loud), “I love you!”

Poor, affectionate little Bessie! she didn’t know that that was a “misdemeanour;” had she ever seen that bugbear, a “School Committee.” Miss Prim had;—and Miss Prim never wasted her lungs talking; so she leisurely untied her black silk apron from her virgin waist, and proceeded to make an African of little Bessie, by pinning it tightly over her face and head—an invention which herself and “the Committee” considered the _ne plus ultra_ of discipline. Bessie struggled, and said she “never would kiss anybody again—never—never;” but Miss Prim was inexorable; and as her victim continued to utter smothered cries, Miss Prim told her “that she would keep her after the other children had gone home.”

One class after another recited; Bessie’s sobs became less loud and frequent, and Miss Prim flattered herself, now that they had ceased altogether, that she was quite subdued, and congratulated herself complacently upon her extraordinary talent for “breaking in new beginners.”

And now, school being done, the children gone, her bonnet and India rubbers being put on, and all her spinster “fixings” settled to her mind, visions of hot tea and buttered toast began to float temptingly through her brain, and suggest the propriety of Bessie’s release.

“Bessie!”—no answer. “Bessie!”—no reply. Miss Prim laid the ferule across the little fat shoulders. Bessie didn’t wince. Miss Prim unpinned the apron to confront the face that was bold enough to defy her and “the Committee.” Little Bessie was _dead_!

Well; there was a pauper funeral, and a report about that a child had been “frightened to death at school;” but Bessie’s mother was a poor woman, consequently the righteous Committee “didn’t feel called upon to interfere with such idle reports.”

THE DELIGHTS OF VISITING.

What is it to go away on a visit? Well, it is to take leave of the little velvet rocking-chair, which adjusts itself so nicely to your shoulders and spinal column; to cram, jam, squeeze, and otherwise compress your personal effects into an infinitesimal compass; to be shook, jolted, and tossed, by turns, in carriage, railroad and steamboat; to be deafened with the stentorian lungs of cab-drivers, draymen, and porters; to clutch your baggage as if every face you saw were a highwayman (or to find yourself transported with rage, at finding _it_ transported by steam to Greenland or Cape Horn). It is to reach your friend’s house, travel-stained, cold and weary, with an unbecoming crook in your bonnet; to be utterly unable to get the frost out of your tongue, or “_the beam into your eye_,” and to have the felicity of hearing some strange guest remark to your friend, as you say an early good-night, “Is it possible THAT is your friend, Miss Grey?”

It is to be ushered into the “best chamber” (always a _north_ one) of a cold January night; to unhook your dress with stiffened digits; to find everything in your trunk _but_ your nightcap; to creep between polished _linen_ sheets, on a congealed _mattress_, and listen to the chattering of your own teeth until daylight.

It is to talk at a mark twelve hours on the stretch; to eat and drink all sorts of things which disagree with you; to get up sham fits of enthusiasm at trifles; to learn to yawn circumspectly behind your finger-tips; to avoid all allusion to topics unsuited to your _pro tem_. latitude; to have somebody for ever at your nervous elbow, _trying to make you “enjoy yourself;”_ to laugh when you want to cry; to be loquacious when you had rather be taciturn; to have mind and body in unyielding harness, for lingering, consecutive weeks; and then to invite your friends, with a hypocritical smile, to play the same farce over with you, “whenever business or pleasure calls them” to Frog-town!

HELEN HAVEN’S “HAPPY NEW YEAR.”

“I’m miserable; there’s no denying it,” said Helen. “There’s nothing in this endless fashionable routine of dressing, dancing, and visiting, that can satisfy me. Hearts enough are laid at my feet, but I owe them all to the accidents of wealth and position. The world seems all emptiness to me. There _must_ be something beyond this, else why this ceaseless reaching of the soul for some unseen good? Why do the silent voices of nature so thrill me? Why do the holy stars with their burning eyes utter such silent reproaches? Have I nothing to do but amuse myself with toys like a child? Shall I live only for _myself_? Does not the sun that rises upon my luxury, shine also upon the tear-stained face of sorrow? Are there not slender feet stumbling wearily in rugged, lonely paths? Why is _mine_ flower-bestrewn? How am I better? Whose sorrowful heart have I lightened? What word of comfort has fallen from my lips on the ear of the grief-stricken? What am I here for? What is my mission?”

* * * * *

“And you have only this wretched place to nurse that sick child in?” said Helen; “and five lesser ones to care for? Will you trust that sick child with me?”

“She is not long for this world, my lady; and I love her as well as though I had but one. Sometimes I’ve thought the more care I have for her, the closer my heart clings to her. She is very patient and sweet.”

“Yes, I know,” said Helen; “but I have it in my power to make her so much more comfortable. It may preserve, at least lengthen, her life.”

When little Mary opened her eyes the next morning, she half believed herself in fairy-land. Soft fleecy curtains were looped about her head, her little emaciated hand rested upon a silken coverlet, a gilded table stood by her bed-side, the little cup from which her lips were moistened was of bright silver, and a sweet face was bending over her, shaded by a cloud of golden hair, that fell like a glory about her head.

“Where am I?” said the child, crossing her little hands over her bewildered brain.

Helen smiled. “You are _my_ little bird now, dear. How do you like your cage?”

“It is very, _very_ pretty,” said Mary, with childish delight; “but won’t you get tired of waiting upon a poor little sick girl? Mamma was used to it. _You_ don’t look as if you could work.”

“Don’t I?” said Helen, with a slight blush; “for all that you’ll see how nicely I can take care of you, little one. I’ll sing to you, I’ll read to you, I’ll tell you pretty stories, and when you are weary of your couch, I’ll fold you in my arms, and rock you so gently to sleep. And when you get better and stronger, you shall have so many nice toys to play with, and I’ll crown your little bright head with pretty flowers, and make you nice little dresses; and now I’m going to read to you. Betty has been out, and bought you a little fairy story about a wonderful puss; and here’s ‘Little Timothy Pip;’ which will you have?”

“Mamma used to read to me out of the Bible,” said little Mary, as her long lashes swept her cheek.

Helen started; a bright crimson flush passed over her face, and bending low, she kissed the child’s forehead reverentially.

“About the crucifixion, please,” said Mary, as Helen seated herself by her side.

That Holy Book! Helen felt as if her hands were “unclean.” She began to read: perhaps the print might not have been clear; but she stopped often, and drew her small hand across her eyes. Her voice grew tremulous. Years of worldliness had come between her, and that sad, touching story. It came upon her now with startling force and freshness. Earth, with its puerile cares and pleasures, dwindled to a point. Oh, what “cross” had her shoulders borne? What “crown of thorns” had pierced her brows? How had her careless feet turned aside from the footsteps of Calvary’s meek sufferer!

“Thank you,” said little Mary, rousing Helen from her reverie: “mamma used to pray to God to make me patient, and take me to Heaven.”

Tears started to Helen’s eyes. How could she tell that sinless little one she _knew not how to pray_? Ah! _she_ was the pupil, Mary the teacher! Laying her check to hers, she said in a soft whisper, “Pray for _us both_, dear Mary.”

With sweet, touching, simple eloquence that little silvery voice floated on the air. The little emaciated hand upon which Helen’s face was pressed, was wet with tears—_happy_ tears! Oh, this was what that restless soul had craved! Here at “the cross,” that world-fettered spirit should plume itself for an angel’s ceaseless flight. Ay, and a little _child had led her there_!

* * * * *

Adolph Grey wandered listlessly through that brilliant ball-room. There were sweet voices and sweeter faces, and graceful, floating forms; but his eye rested on none of them.

“Pray where is Lady Helen?” said he, wandering up to his gay hostess with a slight shade of embarrassment.

“Ah, you may well ask that! I’m _so_ vexed at her! Every man in the room is as savage as a New Zealander. She has turned Methodist, that’s all. Just imagine; our peerless Helen thumbing greasy hymn-books at vestry meetings, listening to whining preachers, and hunting up poor dirty beggar children. I declare I thought she had too much good sense. Well, there it is; and you may as well hang _your_ harp on the willows. She’ll have nothing to say to you _now_; for you know you are a sinner, Grey.”

“Very true,” said Grey, as he went into the ante-room to cloak himself for a call upon Helen; “I _am_ a sinner; but if any woman can make a saint of me, it is Lady Helen. I have looked upon women only as toys to pass away the time; but under that gay exterior of Helen’s, there was always something to which my better nature bowed in reverence. ‘A Methodist,’ is she? Well, be it so. She has a soul above yonder frivolity, and I respect her for it.”

* * * * *

If in after years the great moral questions of the day had more interest for Adolph Grey than the pleasures of the turf, the billiard room, or the wine party, who shall say that Lady Helen’s influence was not a blessed one?

Oh, if woman’s beauty, and power, and witchery were oftener used for a high and holy purpose, how many who now bend a careless knee at her shrine, would hush the light laugh and irreverent jest, and almost feel, as she passed, _that an angel’s wing had rustled by_!

DOLLARS AND DIMES.

“Dollars and dimes, dollars and dimes,
An empty pocket is the worst of crimes.”

“Yes; and don’t you presume to show yourself anywhere until you get it filled.” “Not among good people?” No, my dear Simplicity, not among “good people.” They will receive you with a galvanic ghost of a smile, seared up by an indistinct recollection of the “ten commandments;” but it will be as short-lived as their stay with you. You are not welcome—that’s the amount of it. They are all in a perspiration lest you should be delivered of a request for their assistance before they can get rid of you. They are “very busy,” and, what’s more, they always will be busy when you call, until you get to the top of fortune’s ladder.

Climb, man! climb! Get to the top of the ladder, though adverse circumstances and false friends break every round in it! and see what a glorious and extensive prospect of human nature you’ll get when you arrive at the summit! Your gloves will be worn out shaking hands with the very people who didn’t recognize your existence two months ago. “You must come and make me a long visit;” “you must step in at any time;” “_you’ll_ always be welcome;” it is such a _long_ time since they had the pleasure of a visit from you, that they begin to fear you never intended to come; and they’ll cap the climax by inquiring, with an injured air, “if you are near-sighted, or why you have so often passed them in the street without speaking.”

Of course, you will feel very much like laughing in their faces, and so you can. You can’t do anything wrong, now that your “pocket is full.” At the most, it will only be “an eccentricity.” You can use anybody’s neck for a footstool, bridle anybody’s mouth with a silver bit, and have as many “golden opinions” as you like. You won’t see a frown again between this and your tombstone!

OUR NELLY.

“Who is she?” “Why, that is our Nelly, to be sure. Nobody ever passed Nelly without asking, ‘Who is she?’ One can’t forget the glance of that blue eye; nor the waving of those golden locks; nor the breezy grace of that lithe figure; nor those scarlet lips; nor the bright, glad sparkle of the whole face; and then, she is not a bit proud, although she steps so like a queen; she would shake hands just as quick with a horny palm as with a kid glove. The world can’t spoil ‘our Nelly;’ her heart is in the right place.

“You should have seen her thank an old farmer, the other day, for clearing the road, that she might pass. He shaded his eyes with his hand when she swept by, as if he had been dazzled by a sudden flash of sunlight, and muttered to himself, as he looked after her, ‘Won’t she make somebody’s heart ache!’ Well, she has; but it is because from among all her lovers she could marry but one, and (God save us!) that her choice should have fallen upon Walter May. If he don’t quench out the love-light in those blue eyes my name is not John Morrison. I’ve seen his eyes flash when things didn’t suit him; I’ve seen him nurse his wrath to keep it warm till the smouldering embers were ready for a conflagration. He’s as vindictive as an Indian. I’d as soon mate a dove with a tiger as give him ‘our Nelly.’ There’s a dozen noble fellows, this hour, ready to lay down their lives for her, and yet out of the whole crowd she must choose Walter May! Oh, I have no patience to think of it. Well-a-day! mark my words, he will break her heart before a twelvemonth! He’s a pocket edition of Napoleon.”

* * * * *

A year had passed by, and amid the hurry of business and the din of the great city, I had quite forgotten Glenburn and its fairy queen. It was a time to recall her to mind, that lovely June morning—with its soft fleecy clouds, its glad sunlight, its song of birds, and its breath of roses; and so I threw the reins on Romeo’s neck, that he might choose his own pace down the sweet-briar path, to John Morrison’s cottage. And there sat John, in the door-way, smoking his pipe, with Towser crouched at his feet, in the same old spot, just as if the sun had never gone down behind the hills since I parted with him.

“And ‘our Nelly?’” said I, taking up the thread of his year-old narrative as though it had never been broken—“and ‘our Nelly?’”

“Under the sod,” said the old man, with a dark frown; “under the sod. He broke her heart, just as I told you he would. Such a bridal as it was! I’d as lief have gone to a funeral. And then Walter carried her off to the city, where she was as much out of her element as a humming-bird in a meeting-house; and tried to make a fine lady of her, with stiff city airs, and stiff city manners. It was like trying to fetter the soft west wind, which comes and goes at its own sweet will; and Nelly—who was only another name for _Nature_—pined and drooped like a bird in a darkened cage.

“One by one her old friends dropped off, wearied with repeated and rude repulses from her moody husband, till he was left, as he desired, master of the field. It was astonishing the ascendancy he gained over his sweet wife, contemptible as he was. She made no objection to his most absurd requirements; but her step lost its spring, her eye its sparkle; and one might listen long for her merry-ringing laugh. Slowly, sadly to Nelly came that terrible conviction from which a wife has no appeal.”

Ah! there is no law to protect woman from negative abuse!—no mention made in the statute book (which _men frame for themselves_), of the constant dropping of daily discomforts which wear the loving heart away—no allusion to looks or words that are like poisoned arrows to the sinking spirit. No! if she can show no mark of brutal fingers on her delicate flesh he has fulfilled his legal promise to the letter—to love, honour, and cherish her. _Out_ on such a mockery of justice!

“Well, sir; Nelly fluttered back to Glenburn, with the broken wing of hope, to die! So wasted! so lovely! The lips that blessed _her_, could not choose but curse _him_. ‘She leaned on a broken reed,’ said her old gray-haired father, as he closed her blue eyes for ever. ‘May God forgive him, for I never can,’ said an old lover, whose heart was buried in her grave.

‘NELLY MAY, _aged 18_.’

“You’ll read it in the village churchyard, sir. Eighteen! Brief years, sir, to drain all of happiness Life’s cup could offer!”

“STUDY MEN, NOT BOOKS.”

Oh! but books are such safe company! They keep your secrets well; _they_ never boast that they made your eyes glisten, or your cheek flush, or your heart throb. You may take up your favourite author, and love him at a distance just as warmly as you like, for all the sweet fancies and glowing thoughts that have winged your lonely hours so fleetly and so sweetly. Then you may close the book, and lean your cheek against the cover, as if it were the face of a dear friend; shut your eyes and soliloquise to your heart’s content, without fear of misconstruction, even though you should exclaim in the fulness of your enthusiasm, “What an _adorable soul that man has_!” You may put the volume under your pillow, and let your eye and the first ray of morning light fall on it together, and no Argus eyes shall rob you of that delicious pleasure, no carping old maid, or strait-laced Pharisee shall cry out, “_it isn’t proper_!” You may have a thousand petty, provoking, irritating annoyances through the day, and you shall come back again to your dear old book, and forget them all in _dream land_. It shall be a friend that shall be always at hand; that shall never try you by caprice, or pain you by forgetfulness, or wound you by distrust.

“Study _men_!”

Well, try it! I don’t believe there’s any _neutral territory_ where that interesting study can be pursued as it should be. Before you get to the end of the first chapter, they’ll be making love to you from the mere force of habit—and because silks, and calicoes, and delaines, naturally suggest it. It’s just as natural to them as it is to sneeze when a ray of sunshine flashes suddenly in their faces. “Study men!” That’s a game, my dear, that _two_ can play at. Do you suppose they are going to sit quietly down and let you dissect their hearts, without returning the compliment? No, indeed! that’s _where they differ slightly from “books!”—they always expect an equivalent_.

Men are a curious study! Sometimes it pays to read to “the end of the volume,” and then again, it don’t—mostly the latter!

“MURDER OF THE INNOCENTS;
OR,
HOME THE PLACE FOR MARRIED FOLKS.

Happy Mrs. Emily! Freed from the thraldom of housekeeping, and duly installed mistress of a fine suite of rooms at —— Hotel. No more refractory servants to oversee, no more silver or porcelain to guard, no more cupboards, or closets, or canisters to explore; no more pickles or preserves to make; no more bills of fare to invent—and over and above all, mistress of a bell-wire which was not “tabooed” on washing and ironing days.

Time to lounge on the sofa, and devour “yellow-covered literature;” time to embroider caps, and collars, and chemisettes; time to contemplate the pretty face where housekeeping _might_ have planted “crows-feet,” had she not fortunately foreseen the symptoms, and turned her back on dull Care and all his croaking crew.

Happy Mrs. Emily! No bird let loose from a cage was ever more joyous; not even her own little children—for she had two of them, and pretty creatures they were too, with their cherry lips, and dimpled limbs, and flaxen ringlets; and very weary they grew of their gloomy nursery, with its one window, commanding a view of a dingy shed and a tall, spectral-looking distil-house chimney, emitting clouds of smoke and suffocating vapour. Nannie, the nurse, didn’t fancy it either, so she spent her time in the lobbies and entries, challenging compliments from white-jacketed waiters, while the children peeped curiously into the half open doors, taking draughts of cold air on their bare necks and shoulders. Sometimes they balanced themselves alarmingly on the spiral ballustrade, gazing down into the dizzy Babel below, inhaling clouds of cigar smoke, and listening, with round-eyed wonder, to strange conversations, which memory’s cud should chew, for riper years to digest.

“No children allowed at the _table d’hôtel_”—so the “hotel regulations” pompously set forth—the landlord’s tablecloths, gentlemen’s broadcloth, and ladies’ silk dresses being sworn foes to _little Paul Pry fingers_. Poor little exiles! they took their sorrowful meals in the servants’ hall, with their respective nurses, the bill of fare consisting of a re-hash of yesterday’s French dishes (spiced for the digestion of an ostrich). This was followed by a dessert of stale pastry and ancient raisins, each nurse _at the outset_ propitiating her infant charge with a huge bunch, that she might regale herself with the substantials!—mamma, meanwhile, blissfully ignoring the whole affair, absorbed in the sublime occupation of making German worsted dogs.

Papa, too, had _his_ male millenium. No more marketing to do; no more coal, or wood, or kindling to buy; no cistern, or pump, or gas-pipe to keep in repair. Such a luxury as it was to have a free pass to the “smoking-room” (alias _bar-room_), where the atmosphere was so dense that he couldn’t tell the latitude of his nose, and surrounded by “hale fellows well met.” His eldest boy accompanied him, listening, on his knee, to questionable jokes, which he repeated at bed-time to pert Nannie, the nurse, who understood their significance much better than his innocent little lordship.

Papa, to be sure, had _some_ drawbacks, but they were VERY trifling—for instance, his shirts were quite buttonless, his dickeys stringless, and his stockings had ventilator toes; but then, how could mamma be seen patching and mending in such an aristocratic atmosphere? She might lose caste; and as to Nannie, _her_ hands were full, what with babies and billet-doux.

You should have seen Mrs. Emily in the evening; with sparkling eyes and bracelets, flounced robe and daintily-shod feet, twisting her Chinese fan, listening to moustached idlers, and recollecting, with a shudder, the long Caudle evenings, _formerly_ divided between _her_ husband, _his_ newspaper, and _her_ darning needle.

Then the _petite soupers_ at ten o’clock in the evening, where the ladies were enchanting, the gentlemen _quite entirely_ irresistible; where wit and champagne corks flew with equal celerity; and headaches, and dyspepsia, and nightmare, lay _perdu_ amid fried oysters, venison steaks, chicken salad, and _India-rubber, anti-temperance jellies_.

Then followed the midnight reunion in the drawing-room, where promiscuous polkaing and waltzing (seen through champagne fumes) seemed not only proper, but delightful.

It was midnight. There was hurrying to and fro in the entry-halls and lobbies; a quick, sharp cry for medical help; the sobs and tears of an agonized mother, and the low moan of a dying child; for nature had rebelled at last at impure air, unwholesome food, and alternate heats and chills.

“No hope,” the doctor said; “no hope,” papa mechanically repeated; “_no hope!_” echoed inexorable Death, as he laid his icy finger on the quivering little lips.

It was a dearly bought lesson. The Lady Emily never forgot it. Over her remaining bud of promise she tearfully bends, finding her quiet happiness in the healthful, sacred and safe retreat of the _home fireside_.

AMERICAN LADIES.

“The American ladies, when promenading, cross their arms in front, and
look like trussed turkeys.”

Well, you ought to pity us, for we have no such escape-valves for our awkwardness as you have—no dickeys to pull up—no vests to pull down—no breast pockets, side pockets, flap pockets to explore—no cigars between our teeth—no switch canes in our hands—no beavers to twitch, when we meet an acquaintance. Don’t you yourselves oblige us to reef in our rigging, and hold it down tight with our little paws over our belts, under penalty of being dragged half a mile by one of your buttons, when you tear past us like so many comets?

Is it any joke to us to stand _vis-a-vis_, with a strange man, before a crowd of grinning spectators, while you are disentangling the “Gordian knot,” instead of whipping out your penknife and sacrificing your offending button, as you ought to do?

Is it any joke to see papa scowl, when we ask him for the “needful,” to restore the lace or fringe you tore off our shawl or mantilla?

Do you suppose we can stop to walk _gracefully_, when our minds have to be in a prepared state to have our pretty little toes crushed, or our bonnets knocked off, or our skirts torn from our belts, or ourselves and our gaiter hoots jostled into a mud-puddle?

Do you _ever_ “keep to the right, as the law directs?” Don’t you always go with your heads hindside before, and then fetch up against us as if we were made of cast-iron? Don’t you put your great lazy hands in your pockets, and tramp along with a cane half a mile long sticking out from under your arm-pits, to the imminent danger of our optics? “_Trussed turkeys_,” indeed! No wonder, when we are run a-_fowl_ of every other minute.

THE STRAY SHEEP.

“He’s going the wrong way—straying from the true fold; going off the track,” said old Deacon Green, shaking his head ominously, as he saw young Neff enter a church to hear an infidel preacher. “Can’t understand it; he was taught his catechism and ten commandments as soon as he could speak; he knows the right way as well as our parson; I can’t understand it.”

Harry Neff had never seen a day pass since his earliest childhood that was not ushered in and closed with a family prayer. He had not partaken of a repast upon which the divine blessing was not invoked; the whole atmosphere of the old homestead was decidedly orthodox. Novels, plays, and Byronic poetry were all vetoed. Operas, theatres, and the like most decidedly frowned upon; and no lighter literature was allowed upon the table than missionary reports and theological treatises.

Most of his father’s guests being clergymen, Harry was early made acquainted with every crook and turn of orthodoxy. He had laid up many a clerical conversation, and pondered it in his heart, when they imagined his thoughts on anything but the subject in debate. At his father’s request, they had each and all taken him by the button, for the purpose of long, private conversations—the old gentleman generally prefacing his request by the remark that “his heart was as hard as a flint.”

Harry listened to them all with respectful attention, manifesting no sign of impatience, no nervous shrinking from the probing process, and they left him, impressed with a sense of his mental superiority, but totally unable to affect his feelings in the remotest degree.

Such a pity! they all said, that he should be so impenetrable; such wonderful argumentative powers as he had; such felicity of expression; such an engaging exterior. Such a pity! that on all these brilliant natural gifts should not have been written, “Holiness to the Lord.”

Yes, dear reader, it _was_ a pity. Pity, when our pulpits are so often filled with those whose only recommendation for their office is a good heart and a black coat. It was a pity that graceful gesticulation, that rare felicity of expression, that keen perception of the beautiful, that ready tact and adaptation to circumstances and individuals, should not have been effective weapons in the _gospel armoury_. Pity, that voice of music should not have been employed to chain the worldling’s fastidious ear to listen to Calvary’s story.

Yet it was a pity that glorious intellect had been laid at an unholy shrine; pity “he had strayed from the true fold.” How was it?

Ah! the solution is simple. “Line upon line, precept upon precept,” is well—but _practice is better_! Religion _must not be all lip-service_; the “fruits of love, meekness, gentleness, forbearance, long-suffering,” must follow. Harry was a keen observer. He had often heard the harsh and angry word from lips upon which the Saviour’s name had just lingered. He had felt the unjust, quick, passionate blow from the hand which a moment before had been raised in supplication to Heaven. He had seen the purse-strings relax at the bidding of worldliness, and tighten at the call of charity. He had seen principle sacrificed to policy, and duty to interest. He had himself been misappreciated. The shrinking sensitiveness which drew a veil over his most sacred feelings had been harshly construed into hard-heartedness and indifference. Every duty to which his attention was called was prefaced with the supposition that he was averse to its performance. He was cut off from the gay pleasures which buoyant spirits and fresh young life so eloquently plead for; and in their stead no innocent enjoyment was substituted. He saw Heaven’s gate shut most unceremoniously upon all who did not subscribe to the parental creed, outraging both his own good sense and the teachings of the Bible; and so religion (which should have been rendered so lovely) put on to him an ascetic form. Oh, what marvel that the flowers in the broad road were so passing fair to see? that the forbidden fruit of the “tree of knowledge” was so tempting to the youthful touch?

Oh, Christian parent! be consistent, be judicious, be _cheerful_. If, as historians inform us, “no smile ever played” on the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, surely _no frown marred the beauty of that holy brow_.

Dear reader, _true_ religion is _not_ gloomy. “Her ways _are_ ways of pleasantness, her paths _are_ peace.” No man, no woman, has chart, or compass, or guiding star, without it.

Religion is not a _fable_. Else why, when our household gods are shivered, do our tearful eyes seek only Heaven?

Why, when disease lays its iron grasp on bounding life, does the startled soul so earnestly, _so_ tearfully, _so_ imploringly, call on its forgotten Saviour?

Ah! the house “built upon the sand” may do for sunny weather; but when the billows roll, and the tempests blow, and lightnings flash, and thunders roar, _we need the_ “_Rock of Ages_.”

THE FASHIONABLE PREACHER.

Do you call _this_ a church? Well, I heard a prima donna here a few nights ago: and bright eyes sparkled, and waving ringlets kept time to moving fans; and opera glasses and ogling, and fashion and folly reigned for the nonce triumphant. _I_ can’t forget it; I can’t get up any devotion _here_, under these latticed balconies, with their fashionable freight. If it were a good old country church, with a cracked bell and unhewn rafters, a pine pulpit, with the honest sun staring in through the windows, a pitch-pipe in the gallery, and a few hobnailed rustics scattered round in the uncushioned seats, I should feel all right: but my soul is in fetters here; it won’t soar—its wings are earth-clipped. Things are all too fine! Nobody can come in at that door, whose hat and coat and bonnet are not fashionably cut. The poor man (minus a Sunday suit) might lean on his staff, in the porch, a long while, before he’d dare venture in, to pick up _his_ crumb of the Bread of Life. But, thank God, the unspoken prayer of penitence may wing its way to the Eternal Throne, though our mocking church spires point only with _aristocratic fingers_ to the _rich man’s heaven_.

—That hymn was beautifully read; there’s poetry in the preacher’s soul. Now he takes his seat by the reading-desk; now he crosses the platform, and offers his hymn-book to a female who has just entered. What right has _he_ to know there is a woman in the house? ’Tisn’t clerical! Let the bonnets find their own hymns.

Well, I take a listening attitude, and try to believe I am in church. I hear a great many original, a great many _startling_ things said. I see the gauntlet thrown at the dear old orthodox sentiments which I nursed in with my mother’s milk, and which (please God) I’ll cling to till I die. I see the polished blade of satire glittering in the air, followed by curious, eager, youthful eyes, which gladly see the searching “Sword of the Spirit” parried. Meaning glances, smothered smiles, and approving nods follow the witty clerical sally. The orator pauses to mark the effect, and his face says, That stroke _tells_! and so it did, for “the Athenians” are not all dead, who “love to see and hear some new thing.” But he has another arrow in his quiver. Now his features soften—his voice is low and thrilling, his imagery beautiful and touching. He speaks of human love; he touches skilfully a chord to which every heart vibrates; and stern manhood is struggling with his tears, ere his smiles are chased away.

Oh, there’s intellect there—there’s poetry there—there’s genius there; but I remember Gethsemane—I forget not Calvary! I know the “rocks were rent,” and the “heavens darkened,” and “the stone rolled away;” and a cold chill strikes to my heart when I hear “Jesus of Nazareth” lightly mentioned.

Oh, what are intellect, and poetry, and genius, when with Jewish voice they cry, “_Away with_ HIM!”

With “Mary,” let me “bathe his feet with my tears, and wipe them with the hairs of my head.”

And so, I “went away sorrowful,” that this human preacher, with such great intellectual possessions, should yet “lack the _one thing needful_.”

“CASH.”[1]

Don’t think I’m going to perpetrate a monetary article. No fancy that way! I ignore anything approaching to a _stock_! I refer now to that omnipresent, omniscient, ubiquitous, express-train little victim so baptized in the dry-goods stores, who hears nothing but the everlasting word cash dinned in his juvenile ears from matin to vespers; whose dangerous duty it is to rush through a crowd of expectant and impatient feminines, without suffering his jacket buttons to become too intimately acquainted with the fringes of their shawls, or the laces of their mantillas! and to dodge so dexterously as not to knock down, crush under foot, or otherwise damage the string of juveniles that said women are bound to place as obstructions in said “Cash’s” way!

Footnote 1:

The boy employed in stores to fetch and carry change.

See him double, and turn, and twist, like a rabbit in a wood, while that word of command flies from one clerk’s lip to another. Poor, demented little Cash! Where is your anxious maternal? Who finds you in patience and shoe leather? Does your pillow ever suggest anything to your weary brain but pillar-less quarters, and crossed sixpences, and faded bank bills? When do you find time, you poor little victim, to comb your hair, digest your victuals, and say your catechism? Do you ever look back with a sigh to the days of peppermints, peanuts and pinafores? Or forward, in the dim distance, to a vision of a long-tailed coat, a high standing dickey, and no more “_Cash_,” save in your pantaloons’ pocket? Don’t you ever catch yourself wishing that a certain rib of Adam’s had never been subtracted from his paradisiacal side?

Poor, miserable little Cash! you have my everlasting sympathy! I should go shopping twenty times, where I now go once, didn’t it harrow up my feelings, to see you driven on so, like a locomotive! “Here’s hoping” you may soon be made sensible of more than _one_ meaning to word CHANGE!

ONLY A CHILD.

“Who is to be buried here?” said I to the sexton. “Only a child, ma’am.”

_Only_ a child! Oh! had you ever been a mother—had you nightly pillowed that little golden head—had you slept the sweeter for that little velvet hand upon your breast—had you waited for the first intelligent glance from those blue eyes—had you watched its cradle slumbers, tracing the features of him who stole your girlish heart away—had you wept a widow’s tears over its unconscious head—had your desolate, timid heart gained courage from that little piping voice, to wrestle with the jostling crowd for daily bread—had its loving smiles and prattling words been sweet recompense for such sad exposure—had the lonely future been brightened by the hope of that young arm to lean upon, that bright eye for your guiding star—had you never framed a plan, or known a hope or fear, of which that child was not a part; if there was naught else on earth left for you to love—if disease came, and its eye grew dim; and food, and rest, and sleep were forgotten in your anxious fears—if you paced the floor, hour by hour, with that fragile burden, when your very touch seemed to give comfort and healing to that little quivering frame—had the star of hope set at last—had you hung over its dying pillow, when the strong breast you should have wept on was in the grave, where your child was hastening—had you caught _alone_ its last faint cry for the “_help_” you could not give—had its last fluttering sigh been breathed out on _your_ breast—Oh! could you have said—“’Tis _only_ a child?”

MR. PIPKIN’S IDEAS OF FAMILY RETRENCHMENT.

Mrs. Pipkin, I am under the disagreeable necessity of informing you, that our family expenses are getting to be enormous. I see that carpet woman charged you a dollar for one day’s work. Why, that is positively a man’s wages;—such presumption is intolerable. Pity you did not make it yourself, Mrs. Pipkin; wives ought to lift their end of the yoke; that’s my creed.

_Little Tom Pipkin._—Papa, may I have this bit of paper on the floor? it is your tailor’s bill—says, “400 dollars for your last year’s clothes.”

_Mr. Pipkin._—Tom, go to bed, and learn never to interrupt your father when he is talking. Yes, as I was saying, Mrs. Pipkin, wives should hold up their end of the yoke; and it is high time there was a little retrenchment here; superfluities must be dispensed with.

_Bridget._—Please, sir, there are three baskets of champagne just come for you, and four boxes of cigars.

_Mr. Pipkin._—Will you please lock that door, Mrs. Pipkin, till I can get a chance to say what I have to say to you on this subject? I was thinking to-day, that you might dispense with your nursery maid, and take care of baby yourself. He don’t cry much, except at nights; and since I’ve slept alone up stairs, I don’t hear the little tempest at all. It is really quite a relief—that child’s voice is a perfect ear-splitter.

I think I shall get you, too, to take charge of the marketing and providing (on a stipulated allowance from me, of course), it will give me so much more time to —— attend to _business_, Mrs. Pipkin. I shall take my own dinners down town at the —— House. I hear Stevens is an excellent “caterer;” (though that’s nothing to me, of course, as my only object in going is to meet business acquaintances from different parts of the Union, to drive a bargain, &c., &c.)

Well—it will cost you and the children little or nothing for your dinners. There’s nothing so disgusting to a man of refinement, like myself, as to see a _woman_ fond of eating; and as to children, any fool knows they ought not to be allowed to stuff their skins like little anacondas. Yes, our family expenses are enormous. My partner sighed like a pair of bellows at that last baby you had, Mrs. Pipkin; oh, it’s quite ruinous—but I can’t stop to talk now, I’m going to try a splendid horse which is offered me at a bargain—(too frisky for you to ride, my dear, but just the thing for me).

You had better dismiss your nursery girl this afternoon; that will begin to look like retrenchment. Good-bye; if I am not home till late, don’t sit up for me, as I have ordered a supper at —— House for my old friend, Tom Hillar, of New Orleans. We’ll drink this toast, my dear: “Here’s hoping the last little Pipkin may never have his nose put out of joint.”

A CHAPTER FOR NICE OLD FARMERS.

Can anybody tell why country people so universally and pertinaciously persist in living in the _rear of the house_? Can anybody tell why the front door and windows are never opened, save on Fourth of July and at Thanksgiving time? Why Zedekiah, and Timothy, and Jonathan, and the old farmer himself, must go _round_ the house in order to get _into_ it? Why the whole family (oblivious of six empty rooms) take their “vapour bath” and their meals, simultaneously, in the vicinity of a red-hot cooking range, in the dog days? Why the village artist need paint the roof, and spout, and window frames bright crimson, and the doors the colour of a mermaid’s tresses? Why the detestable sunflower (which I can never forgive “Tom Moore” for noticing) must always flaunt in the garden? Why the ungraceful prim poplar, fit emblem of a stiff old bachelor, is preferred to the swaying elm, or drooping willow, or majestic horse-chestnut?