Chapter VIII (6)

I should like to pull down the green paper window curtains, and hang up some of snowy muslin. I should like to throw wide open the hall door, and let the south wind play through. I should like to go out into the woods, and collect fresh, sweet wild flowers to arrange in a vase, in place of those defunct dried grasses, and old-aid “everlastings,” I should like to show Zedekiah how to nail together some bits of board, for an embryo lounge; I should like to stuff it with cotton, and cover it with a neat “patch.” I should like to cushion the chairs after the same fashion. Then I should like, when the white-haired old farmer came panting up the road at twelve o’clock, with his scythe hanging over his arm, to usher him into that cool, comfortable room, set his bowl of bread and milk before him, and after he had discussed it, coax him (instead of tilting back on the hind legs of a hard chair) to take a ten-minutes’ nap on my “model” sofa, while I kept my eye on the clouds, to see that no thunder shower played the mischief with his hay.

I should like to place a few common sense, practical books on the table, with some of our fine daily and weekly papers. You may smile; but these inducements, and the comfortable and pleasant air of the apartment, would bring the family oftener together after the day’s toil, and by degrees they would lift the covers of the books, and turn over the newspapers. Constant interchange of thought, feeling, and opinion, with discussions of the important and engrossing questions of the day, would of course necessarily follow.

The village tavern-keeper would probably frown upon it; but I will venture to predict for the inmates of the farm-house a growing love for “home,” and an added air of intelligence and refinement, of which they themselves might possibly be unconscious.

MADAME ROUILLON’S “MOURNING SALOON.”

“You needn’t make that dress ‘deep mourning,’ Hetty; the lady who ordered it said it was only her sister for whom she was to ‘mourn.’ A three-quarter’s length veil will answer; and I should introduce a few jet bugles round the bonnet trimmings. And, by the way, Hetty, Mrs. La Fague’s husband has been dead now nearly two months, so that new dress of hers will admit of a little alleviation in the style of trimming—a few knots of love-ribbon on the bodice will have a softening effect; and you must hem a thin net veil for her bonnet; it’s almost time for her to be out of ‘mourning.’

—“And, Hetty, run down to Stewart’s, right away, and see if he has any more of those grief-bordered pocket-handkerchiefs. Mr. Grey’s servant said the border must be full an inch deep, as his master wished it for his wife’s funeral, and it is the eighth time within eight years that the poor afflicted man has suffered a similar calamity. Remember, Hetty—an inch deep, with a tombstone and a weeping willow embroidered on the corner, with this motto: ‘Hope never dies;’—and, Hetty, be sure you ask him what is the latest style for ‘_half_-mourning’ for grandmothers, mothers-in-law, country cousins, and poor relations. _Dépèchezvous_, Hetty, for you have six ‘weepers’ (weeds) to take off the six Mr. Smiths’ hats. Yes, I know you ‘only put them on last week;’ but they are going to Philadelphia, where nobody knows them, and, of course, it isn’t necessary to ‘mourn’ for their mother there!

—“What are you staring at, child? You are as primitive as your fore-mother Eve. This ‘mourning’ is probably an invention of Satan to divert people’s minds from solemn subjects, but that’s nothing to me, you know; so long as it fills my pocket, I’m in league with his Majesty.”

FASHION IN FUNERALS.

“It has become _unfashionable_ in New York for ladies to attend funerals
to the grave. _Even the mother may not accompany the little lifeless
form of her beloved child beyond the threshold, without violating the
dread laws of Fashion._”

Are there such mothers? Lives there one who, at Fashion’s bidding, stands back, nor presses her lips to the little marble form that once lay warm and quivering beneath her heart-strings?—who with undimmed eye recals the trusting clasp of that tiny hand, the loving glance of that veiled eye, the music of that merry laugh—its low, pained moan, or its last, fluttering heart-quiver?—who would not (rather than strange hands should touch the babe) _herself_ robe its dainty limbs for burial?—who shrinks not, starts not, when the careless, business hand would remove the little darling from its cradle-bed, where loving eyes so oft have watched its rosy slumbers, to its last, cold, dreamless pillow?—who lingers not, _when all have gone_, and vainly strives, with straining eye, to pierce _below_ that little fresh laid mound?—who, when a merry group go dancing by, stops not, with sudden thrill, to touch some sunny head, or gaze into some soft blue eye, that has oped afresh the fount of her tears, and sent to the troubled lips the murmuring heart-plaint, “Would to God I had died for thee, my child—my child?”—who, when the wintry blast comes eddying by, sleeps not, because she cannot fold to her warm breast the little lonely sleeper in the cold churchyard? And oh! is there one who, with such “treasure laid up in Heaven,” clings not the less to earth, strives not the more to keep her spirit undefiled, fears not the less the dim, dark valley, cheered by a cherub voice, inaudible save to the dying _mother_? Oh, stony-eyed, stony-hearted, relentless Fashion! turn for us day into night, if thou wilt; deform our women; half clothe, with flimsy fabric, our victim children; wring the last penny from the sighing, overtasked, toiling husband; _banish to the backwoods thy country cousin_, Comfort; reign supreme in the banquet hall; revel undisputed at the dance;—but when that grim guest, whom none invite—whom none dare deny—strides, with defiant front across our threshold, stand back, thou heartless harlequin, and leave us alone with our dead: so shall we list the lessons those voiceless lips should teach us—

“All is vanity!”

HOUSEHOLD TYRANTS.

“A HUSBAND may kill a wife gradually, and be no more questioned than the
grand seignor who drowns a slave at midnight.”—_Thackeray, on
Household Tyrants._

Oh! Mr. Thackeray! I ought to have known, from experience, that beauty and brains never travel in company—but I _was_ disenchanted when I first saw your nose, and I _did_ say that you were too stout to look intellectual. But I forgive you in consideration of the above paragraph, which, for truth and candour, ought to be appended to the four Gospels.

I’m on the marrow bones of my soul to you, Mr. Thackeray. I honour you for “turning State’s evidence” against your own culprit-sex. If there’s any little favour I can do for you, such as getting you naturalized (for you are a sight too ‘cute and clever for an Englishman), I’ll fly round and get the documents made out for you to-morrow.

I tell you, Mr. Thackeray, the laws over here allow husbands to break their wives’ _hearts_ as much as they like, so long as they don’t break their _heads_. So the only way we can get along, is to allow them to scratch our faces, and then run to the police court, and show “his Honour” that Mr. Caudle can “_make his mark_.”

Why—if we were not _cunning_, we should get circumvented all the time by these domestic Napoleons. Yes, indeed; we sleep with one eye open, and “get up early in the morning,” and keep our arms akimbo.

—By the way, Mr. Thackeray, what do you think of us, _as a people_?—taking us “by and large,” as our honest farmers say. P-r-e-t-t-y tall nation for a _growing_ one; don’t you think so? Smart men—smarter women—good broad streets—no smoking or spitting allowed in ’em—houses all built with an eye to architectural beauty-newspapers don’t tell how many buttons you wear on your waistcoat—Jonathan never stares at you, as if you were an imported hyena, or stirs you up with the long pole of criticism, to see your size and hear your roar. Our politicians never whip each other on the floor of Congress, and grow black in the face because their _choler_ chokes them! No mushroom aristocracy over here—no “coats of arms” or liveried servants: nothing of that sham sort, in our “great and glorious country,” as you have probably noticed. If you are “round takin’ notes,” I’ll jog your English elbow now and then. Ferns have eyes—and they are not green, either.

WOMEN AND MONEY.

“A wife shouldn’t ask her husband for money at meal-times.”—_Exchange._

By no manner of means; _nor at any other time_; because, it is to be hoped, he will be gentlemanly enough to spare her that humiliating necessity. Let him hand her his _porte-monnaie_ every morning, with _carte-blanche_ to help herself. The consequence would be, she would lose all desire for the contents, and hand it back, half the time without abstracting a single _sou_.

It’s astonishing men have no more diplomacy about such matters. _I_ should like to be a husband! There _are_ wives whom I verily believe might be trusted to make way with a ten dollar bill without risk to the connubial donor. I’m not speaking of those doll-baby libels upon womanhood, whose chief ambition is to be walking advertisements for the dressmaker; but a rational, refined, sensible woman, who knows how to look like a lady upon small means; who would both love and respect a man less for requiring an account of every copper; but who, at the same time, would willingly wear a hat or garment that is “out of date,” rather than involve a noble, generous-hearted husband in unnecessary expenditures.

I repeat it—“It _isn’t every man who has a call to be a husband_.” Half the married men should have their “licences” taken away, and the same number of judicious bachelors put in their places. I think the attention of the representatives should be called to this. They can’t expect to come down to town and peep under all the ladies’ bonnets the way they do, and have all the newspapers free gratis, and two dollars a day besides, without “paying their way!”

It’s none of _my_ business, but I question whether their wives, whom they left at home, stringing dried apples, know how spruce they look in their new hats and coats, or how facetious they grow with their landlady’s daughter; or how many of them pass themselves off for bachelors, to verdant spinsters. Nothing truer than that little couplet of _Shakspeare’s_—

“When the cat’s away
The mice _will_ play.”

THE SICK BACHELOR.

Here I am, a doomed man—booked for a fever, in this gloomy room, up four flights of stairs; nothing to look at but one table, two chairs, and a cobweb; pulse racing like a locomotive; head throbbing as if it were hooped with iron; mouth as parched as Ishmael’s in the desert; not a bell-rope within reach; sun pouring in through those uncurtained windows, hot enough to singe off my eye-lashes; all my confidential letters lying loose on the table, and I couldn’t get up to them if you held one of Colt’s revolvers to my head. All my masculine friends(?) are parading Broadway, I suppose; peeping under the pretty girls’ bonnets, or drinking “sherry-cobblers.” A sherry-cobbler! Bacchus! what a luxury! I believe Satan suggested the thought to me.

Heigh-ho! I suppose the Doctor (whom they have sent for) will come before long; some great, pompous Æsculapius, with an owl phiz, a gold-headed cane, an oracular voice, and callous heart and hands; who will first manipulate my wrist, and then take the latitude and longitude of my tongue; then he will punch me in my ribs, and torment me with more questions than there are in the Assembly’s Catechism; then he’ll bother me for writing materials, to scratch off a hieroglyphic humbug prescription, ordering five times as much medicine as I need; then I shall have to pay for it; then, ten to one, the apothecary’s boy will put up poison, by mistake! Cæsar! how my head spins round; Hippodrome racing is nothing to it.

Hist! there’s the Doctor. No! it is that little unregenerate cub, my landlady’s pet boy, with a bran new drum (as I’m a sinner), upon which he is beating a crucifying tattoo. If I only had a boot-jack to throw at him! No! that won’t do: his mother wouldn’t make my gruel. I’ll bribe him with a sixpence, to keep the peace. The little embryo Jew! he says _he won’t do it under a quarter_! Twitted by a little pinafore! _I_, Tom Haliday, six feet in my stockings! I shall go frantic.

“Doctor is coming!” Well, let him come. I’m as savage as if I’d just dined off a cold missionary. I’ll pretend to be asleep, and let old Pillbox experiment.

How gently he treads—how soft his hand is—how cool and delicious his touch! How tenderly he parts my hair over my throbbing temples! His magnetic touch thrills every drop of blood in my veins: it is marvellous how soothing it is. I feel as happy as a humming-bird in a lily cup, drowsy with honey-dew. Now he’s moved away. I hear him writing a prescription. I’ll just take a peep and see what he looks like. Cæsar Aggripina! if it isn’t a _female physician_! dainty as a Peri—_and my beard three days old_! What a bust! (Wonder how my hair looks?) What a foot and ankle! What shoulders; what a little round waist. Fever? I’ve got _twenty_ fevers, and the heart-complaint besides. What the mischief sent that little witch here? She will either kill or cure me, pretty quick.

Wonder if she has any more _masculine_ patients? Wonder if they are handsome? Wonder if she lays that little dimpled hand on _their_ foreheads, as she did on mine? Now she has done writing, I’ll shut my eyes and groan, and then, may be, she will _pet_ me some more; bless her little soul!

She says, “poor fellow!” as she holds my wrist, “his pulse is too quick.” In the name of Cupid, what does she _expect_? She says, as she pats my forehead with her little plump fingers, “’Sh—sh! Keep cool.” Lava and brimstone! does she take me for an iceberg?

Oh, Cupid! of all your devices, this feminine doctoring for a bachelor is the _ne plus ultra_ of witchcraft. If I don’t have a prolonged “run of fever,” my name is n’t Tom Haliday!

She’s gone! and—I’m gone, too!

A MOTHER’S INFLUENCE.

“And so you sail to-morrow, Will? I shall miss you.”

“Yes; I’m bound to see the world. I’ve been beating my wings in desperation against the wires of my cage these three years. I know every stick, and stone, and stump in this odious village by heart, as well as I do those stereotyped sermons of Parson Grey’s. They say he calls me ‘a scapegrace’—pity I should have the name without the game,” said he, bitterly. “I haven’t room here to run the length of my chain. I’ll show him what I can do in a wider field of action.”

“But how did you bring your father over?”

“Oh, he’s very glad to be rid of me; quite disgusted because I’ve no fancy for seeing corn and oats grow. The truth is, every father knows at once too much and too little about his own son; the old gentleman never understood me; he soured my temper, which is originally none of the best, roused all the worst feelings in my nature, and is constantly driving me _from_ instead of _to_ the point he would have me reach.”

“And your mother?”

“Well, there you have me; that’s the only humanized portion of my heart—the only soft spot in it. She came to my bed-side last night, after she thought I was asleep, gently kissed my forehead, and then knelt by my bed-side. Harry, I’ve been wandering round the fields all the morning, to try to get rid of that prayer. Old Parson Grey might preach at me till the millennium, and he wouldn’t move me any more than that stone. It makes all the difference in the world when you know a person _feels_ what they are praying about. I’m wild, and reckless, and wicked, I suppose; but I shall never be an infidel while I can remember my mother. You should see the way she hears my father’s impetuous temper; that’s _grace_, not _nature_, Harry; but don’t let us talk about it—I only wish my parting with her was well over. Good-bye; God bless you, Harry; you’ll hear from me, if the fishes don’t make a supper of me;” and Will left his friend and entered the cottage.

Will’s mother was moving nervously and restlessly about, tying up all sorts of mysterious little parcels that only mothers think of, “in case he should be sick,” or in case he should be this, that, or the other, interrupted occasionally by exclamations like this from the old farmer:—“Fudge—stuff—great overgrown baby—making a fool of him—never be out of leading strings;” and then turning short about and facing Will as he entered, he said—

“Well sir, look in your sea-chest, and you’ll find gingerbread and physic, darning needles and tracts, ‘bitters’ and Bibles, peppermint and old linen rags, and opodeldoc. Pshaw! I was more of a man than you are when I was nine years old. Your mother always made a fool of you; and that was entirely unnecessary, too, for you were always short of what is called _common sense_. You needn’t tell the captain you went to sea because you didn’t know enough to be a landsman; or that you never did anything right in your life, except by accident. You are as like that _ne’er do well_ Jack Halpine as two pease. If there is anything in you, I hope the salt water will fetch it out. Come, your mother has your supper ready, I see.”

Mrs. Low’s hand trembled as she passed her boy’s cup. It was his last meal under that roof for many a long day. She did not trust herself to speak—her heart was too full. She heard all his father so injudiciously said to him, and she knew too well from former experience the effect it would have upon his impetuous, fiery spirit. She had only to oppose to it a mother’s prayers, and tears, and all-enduring love. She never condemned, in _Will’s hearing_, any of his father’s philippics; always excusing him with the general remark that he didn’t understand him. _Alone_, she mourned over it; and when with her husband, tried to place matters on a better footing for both parties.

Will noted his mother’s swollen eyelids; he saw his favourite little tea-cakes that she had busied herself in preparing for him, and he ate and drank what she gave him, without tasting a morsel he swallowed, listening for the hundredth time to his father’s account of “what _he_ did when he was a young man.”

“Just half an hour, Will,” said his father, “before you start; run up and see if you have forgotten any of your duds.”

It was the little room he had always called his own. How many nights he had lain there listening to the rain pattering on the low roof; how many mornings awakened by the chirp of the robin in the apple-tree under the window. There was the little bed with its snowy covering, and the thousand and one little comforts prepared by his mother’s hand. He turned his head—she was at his side, her arms about his neck. “God keep my boy!” was all she could utter. He knelt at her feet as in the days of childhood, and from those wayward lips came this tearful prayer—“Oh God! spare my mother, that I may look upon her face again in this world!”

Oh, in after days, when that voice had died out from under the parental roof, how sacred was that spot to her who gave him birth! _There was hope for the boy! he had recognized his mother’s God._ By that invisible silken cord she still held the wanderer, though broad seas rolled between.

Letters came to Moss Glen—at stated intervals, then more irregularly, picturing only the bright spots in his sailor-life (for Will was proud, and they were to be scanned by his father’s eye). The usual temptations of a sailor’s life when in port were not unknown to him. Of every cup the syren Pleasure held to his lips, he drank to the dregs; but there were moments in his maddest revels, when that angel whisper, “God keep my boy,” palsied his daring hand, and arrested the half-uttered oath. Disgusted with himself, he would turn aside for an instant, but only to drown again more recklessly “that still small torturing voice.”

* * * * *

“You’re a stranger in these parts,” said a rough farmer to a sunburnt traveller. “Look as though you’d been in foreign parts.”

“Do I?” said Will, slouching his hat over his eyes. “Who lives in that little cottage under the hill?”

“Old Farmer Low—and a tough customer he is, too; it’s a word and a blow with him. The old lady has had a hard time of it, good as she is, to put up with all his kinks and quirks. She bore it very well till the lad went away; and then she began to droop like a willow in a storm, and lose all heart, like. Doctor’s stuff did n’t do any good, as long as she got no news of the boy. She’s to be buried this afternoon, sir.”

Poor Will stayed to hear no more, but tottered in the direction of the cottage. He asked no leave to enter, but passed over the threshold into the little “best parlour,” and found himself alone with the dead. It was too true! Dumb were the lips that should have welcomed him; and the arms that should have enfolded him were crossed peacefully over the heart that beat true to him to the last.

Conscience did its office. Long years of mad folly passed in swift review before him; and over that insensible form a vow was made, and registered in Heaven.

* * * * *

“Your mother should have lived to see this day, Will,” said a gray-haired old man, as he leaned on the arm of the clergyman, and passed into the village church.

“Bless God, my dear father, there is ‘_joy in Heaven_ over one sinner that repenteth;’ and of all the angel band, there is one seraph hand that sweeps _more rapturously_ its harp to-day, ‘for the lost that is found.’”

MR. PUNCH MISTAKEN.

“A man will own that he is in the wrong—a woman never; she is only
_mistaken_.”—_Punch._

Mr. Punch, did you ever see an enraged American female? She is the expressed essence of wild cats. Perhaps you didn’t know it, when you penned that incendiary paragraph; or, perhaps, you thought that in crossing the “big pond,” salt water might neutralize it; or, perhaps, you flattered yourself we should not see it over here; but here it is, in my clutches, in good strong English: I am not even “_mistaken_!”

Now, if you will bring me a live specimen of the _genus homo_ who was ever known “to own that he was in the wrong,” I will draw in my horns and claws, and sneak ingloriously back into my American shell. But you can’t do it, Mr. Punch! You never saw that curiosity, either in John Bull’s skin, or Brother Jonathan’s. ’Tis an animal which has never yet been discovered, much less captured.

A man own he was in the wrong! I guess so! You might tear him in pieces with red-hot pincers, and he would keep on singing out “I didn’t do it; I didn’t do it.” No, Mr. Punch, a man never “owns up” when he is in the wrong; especially if the matter in question be one which he considers of no importance; for instance, the non-delivery of a letter which may have been entombed in his pocket for six weeks.

No sir; he just settles himself down behind his dickey, folds his belligerent hands across his stubborn diaphragm, plants his antagonistic feet down on terra-firma as if there were a stratum of loadstone beneath him, and thunders out—

“Come one, come all; this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I.”

FERN MUSINGS.

I never was on an august school committee; but, if I _was_, I’d make a _sine-qua-non_ that no school-marm should be inaugurated who had not been a married mother; I don’t believe in old maids; they all know very well that they haven’t fulfilled their female destiny, and I wouldn’t have them wreaking their bilious vengeance on _my_ urchins (if I had any). No woman gets the acid effectually out of her temper, till she has taken matrimony “the natural way.”

No; I don’t believe in spinster educational teaching any more than I do in putting dried up old bachelors on the school committee. What bowels of mercy have either, I’d like to know, for the poor little restless victims of narrow benches and short recesses? The children are to “hold up their hands” (are they?) if they have a request to make? What good does that do if the teacher won’t take any notice of the Freemason sign? “They are not to enter complaints.” So some poor timid little girl must be pinched black and blue by a little Napoleon in jacket and trousers, till she is forced to shriek out with pain, when _she_ is punished by being kept half an hour after school for “making a disturbance!” They are “not to eat in school,” are they? Perhaps they have made an indifferent breakfast (perhaps they are poor, and have had none at all, and A, B, C, D, doesn’t digest well on an empty stomach); but the spinster teacher can hear them recite with a tempting bunch of grapes in her hand, which she leisurely devours before their longing eyes.

They “must not smile in school,” must they? Not when “Tom Hood” in a pinafore, cuts up some sly prank that brings “down the house;” yes—and the ferule too, on everybody’s hand but his own (for he has a way of drawing on his “deacon face,” to order).

They may go out in recess, but they must speak in a whisper out of doors, as if they all had the bronchitis! No matter if Queen Victoria should ride by, no little brimless hat must go up in the air till “the committee had set on it!”

_Oh_, fudge! I should like to keep school myself. I’d make “rag babies” for the little girls, and “soldier caps” for the boys; and I _don’t think_ I would make a rule that they should not sneeze till school was dismissed; and when their little cheeks began to flush, and their little heads droop wearily on their plump shoulders, I’d hop up and play “hunt the slipper;” or, if we were in the country we’d race over the meadow, and catch butterflies, or frogs, or toads or _snakes_, or anything on earth except a “school committee.”

THE TIME TO CHOOSE.

“The best time to choose a wife is early in the morning. If a young lady
is at all inclined to sulks and slatternness it is just before
breakfast. As a general thing, a woman don’t get on her temper, till
after 10 A.M.”—_Young Man’s Guide._

Men never look slovenly before breakfast; no, indeed. They never run round in their stocking feet, vestless, with dressing-gown inside out; soiled handkerchief hanging out of the pocket by one corner. Minus dickey—minus neck-tie; pantaloon straps flying; suspenders streaming from their waistbands; chin shaved on one side, and lathered on the other; hair like porcupine quills; face all in a snarl of wrinkles because the fire won’t kindle, and because it snows, and because the office boy don’t come for the keys, and because the newspaper hasn’t arrived, and because they lost a bet the night before, and because there’s an omelet instead of a broiled chicken for breakfast, and because they are out of sorts and shaving soap, out of cigars and credit, and because they can’t “get their temper on” till they get some money and a mint julep.

Any time “before ten o’clock,” is the time to choose a husband——_perhaps!_

SPRING IS COMING.

Tiny blades of grass are struggling between the city’s pavements. Fathers, and husbands, sighing, look at the tempting shop windows, dolefully counting the cost of a “spring outfit.” Muffs, and boas, and tippets, are among the things that _were_; and shawls, and “Talmas,” and mantles, and “_little loves of bonnets_,” reign supreme, though maiden aunts, and sage mammas, still mutter—“East winds, east winds,” and choose the sunnier side-walk.

Housekeepers are making a horrible but necessary Babel, stripping up carpets, and disembowelling old closets, chests, and cupboards. Advertisements already appear in the newspapers, setting forth the superior advantages of this or that dog-day retreat. Mrs. Jones drives _Mr._ Jones distracted, at a regular hour every evening, hammering about “change of scene, and air,” and the “health of the dear children;” which, translated, means a quantity of new bonnets and dresses, and a trip to Saratoga, for herself and intimate friend, Miss Hob-Nob; while Jones takes his meals at a _restaurant_—sleeps in the deserted house, sews on his missing buttons and dickey strings, and spends his leisure time where _Mrs._ Jones don’t visit.

_Spring is coming!_

Handsome carriages roll past, freighted with lovely women (residents of other cities, for an afternoon ride). Dash on, ladies! You will scarcely find the environs of Boston surpassed, wherever you may drive. A thousand pleasant surprises await you; lovely winding paths and pretty cottages, and more ambitious houses with groups of statuary hidden amid the foliage. But forget not to visit our sweet Mount Auburn. Hush the light laugh and merry jest as the gray-haired porter throws wide the gate for your prancing horses to tread the hallowed ground. The dark old pines throw out their protecting arms above you, and in their dense shade sleep eyes as bright, forms as lovely, as your own—while “the mourners go about the streets.” Rifle not, with sacrilegious hand, the flowers which bloom at the headstone—tread lightly over the beloved dust! Each tenanted grave entombs bleeding, _living_ hearts; each has its history, which eternity alone shall reveal.

_Spring is coming!_

The city belle looks fresh as a new-blown rose—tossing her bright curls in triumph, at her faultless costume and beautiful face. Her lover’s name is Legion—for she hath also _golden charms_! Poor little butterfly! bright, but ephemeral! You were made for something better. Shake the dust from your earth-stained wings and—_soar!_

_Spring is coming!_

From the noisome lanes and alleys of the teeming city, swarm little children, creeping forth like insects to bask in God’s sunshine—so _free to all_. Squalid, forsaken, neglected; they are yet of those to whom the Sinless said, “Suffer little children to come unto me.” The disputed crust, the savage curse, the brutal blow, their only patrimony! One’s heart _aches_ to call THIS _childhood_! No “spring!” no summer, to them! Noisome sights, noisome sounds, noisome odours! and the leprosy of sin following them like a curse! One longs to fold to the warm heart those little forsaken ones; to smooth those matted ringlets; to throw between them and sin the shield of virtue—to teach their little lisping lips to say “_Our Father!_”

_Spring is coming!_

Yes, its blue skies are over us—its soft breezes shall fan us—the fragrance of its myriad flowers be wafted to us. Its mossy carpet shall be spread for our careless feet—our languid limbs shall be laved at its cool fountains. Its luscious fruits shall send health through our leaping veins—while from mountain top, and wooded hill, and flower-wreathed valley, shall float one glad anthem of praise from tiniest feathered throats!

_Dear_ reader! From that human heart of thine shall no burst of grateful thanks arise to Him who _giveth all_? While nature adores—shall _man be dumb_? God forbid!

STEAMBOAT SIGHTS AND REFLECTIONS.

I am looking, from the steamer’s deck, upon as fair a sunrise as ever poet sang or painter sketched, or the earth ever saw. Oh, this broad blue, rushing river! sentinelled by these grand old hills, amid which the silvery mist wreaths playfully; half shrouding the little eyrie homes, where love wings the uncounted hours; while looming up in the hazy distance is the Babel city, with glittering spires and burnished panes—one vast illumination. My greedy eye with miserly eagerness devours it all, and hangs it up in Memory’s cabinet, a fadeless picture; upon which dame Fortune (the jilt) shall never have a mortgage.

Do you see yonder figure leaning over the railing of the boat, gazing on all this outspread wealth of beauty? One longs to hear his lips give utterance to the burning thoughts which cause his eye to kindle and his face to glow. A wiry sister (whose name should be “Martha,” so careful, so troubled looks her spinstership) breaks the charmed spell by asking him, in a cracked treble, “if _them_ porters on the pier can be safely trusted with her bandbox and umberil.” My stranger eyes meet his, and we both laugh involuntarily—(pardon us, oh ye prim ones,)—_without an introduction!_

Close at my elbow sits a rough countryman, with so much “free soil” adhering to his brogans they might have been used for beet-beds, and a beard rivalled only by Nebuchadnezzar’s when he experimented on a grass diet. He has only one word to express his overpowering emotions at the glowing panorama before us, and that is “_pooty_”—houses, trees, sky, rafts, railroad cars and river, all are “_pooty_;” and when, in the fulness of a soul craving sympathy, he turned to his dairy-fed Eve to endorse it, that matter-of-fact feminine showerbath-ed his enthusiasm, by snarling out “pooty enough, I ’spose, but _where’s my breakfast_?”

Ah! here we are at the pier, at last. And now they emerge, our night-travellers, from state-room and cabin, into the fresh cool air of the morning. Venus and Apollo! what a crew. Solemn as a hearse, surly as an Englishman, blue as an indigo-bag! There’s a poor shivering babe, twitched from a warm bed by an ignorant young mother, to encounter the chill air of morning, with only a flimsy covering of lace and embroidery—there’s a languid southern belle, creeping out, _à la tortoise_, and turning up her little aristocratic nose as if she sniffed a pestilence—there’s an Irish bride (green as Erin) in a pearl-coloured silk dress surmounted by a coarse blanket shawl—there’s a locomotive hour-glass (alias a dandy), a blue-eyed, cravat-choked, pantaloon be-striped, vest-garnished, disgusting “institution!” (give him and his quizzing glass plenty of sea-room)—and there’s a clergyman, God bless his care-worn face, with a valise full of salted-down sermons and the long-coveted “leave of absence”—there’s an editor, kicking a newsboy for bringing “coals to Newcastle” in the shape of “extras”—and there’s a good-natured, sunshiny “family man,” carrying the baby, and the carpet-bag, and the travelling shawl, lest his pretty little wife should get weary—and there’s a poor bonnetless emigrant, stunned by the Babel sounds, inquiring, despairingly, the name of some person whom nobody knows or cares for—and last, but not least, there’s the wiry old maid “Martha,” asking “_thim_ porters on the pier,” with tears in her faded green eyes, to be “keerful of her bandbox and umberil.”

On they go. Oh, how much of joy—how much of sorrow, in each heart’s unwritten history.

A GOTHAM REVERIE.

Babel, what a place!—what a dust—what a racket—what a whiz-buzz! What a throng of human beings! “Jew and Gentile, bond and free;” every nation the sun ever shone upon, here represented. What pampered luxury—what squalid misery, on the same _pavé_. What unwritten histories these myriad hearts might unfold. How much of joy, how much of sorrow, how much of crime. Now, queenly beauty sweeps past, in sin’s gay livery. Cursed be he who first sent her forth, to walk the earth, with her woman’s brow shame-branded. Fair mother—pure wife—frown scornfully at her if you can; _my_ heart aches for her. I see one who once slept sweet and fair on a mother’s loving breast. I see one whose bitterest tear may never wash her stain away. I see one on whom mercy’s gate is for ever shut, by her own unrelenting, unforgiving sex. I see one who was young, beautiful, poor and friendless. They who make long prayers, and wrap themselves up in self-righteousness, as with a garment, turn a deaf ear, as she pleads for the bread of honest toil. Earth looks cold, and dark, and dreary; feeble feet stumble wearily on life’s rugged, thorny road. Oh, judge her not harshly, pure but frigid censor; who shall say that with her desolation—her temptation—your name too might not have been written “Magdalen.”

SICKNESS COMES TO YOU IN THE CITY.

How unmercifully the heavy cart-wheels rattle over the stony pavements; how unceasing the tramp of busy, restless feet; how loud and shrill the cries of mirth and traffic. You turn heavily to your heated pillow, murmuring, “Would God it were night!” The pulse of the great city is stilled at last; and balmy sleep, so coveted, seems about to bless you—when hark! a watchman’s rattle is sprung beneath your window, evoking a score of stentorian voices, followed by a clanging bell, and a rushing engine, announcing a conflagration. Again you turn to your sleepless pillow; your quivering nerves and throbbing temples sending to your pale lips this prayer, “Would to God it were morning!”

Death comes, and releases you. You are scarcely missed. Your next-door neighbour, who has lived within three feet of you for three years, may possibly recollect having seen the doctor’s chaise before your door, for some weeks past; then, that the front blinds were closed; then, that a coffin was carried in; and he remarks to his wife, as he takes up the evening paper, over a comfortable dish of tea, that “he shouldn’t wonder if neighbour Grey were dead,” and then they read your name and age in the bill of mortality, and wonder “what disease you died of;” and then the servant removes the tea-tray, and they play a game of whist, and never think of you again, till they see the auctioneer’s flag floating before your door.

The house is sold; and your neighbour sees your widow and little ones pass out over the threshold in tears and sables (grim poverty keeping them silent company); but what of that? The world is _full_ of widows and orphans; one can’t always be thinking of a charnel-house; and so he returns to his stocks and dividends, and counting-room, and ledger, in a philosophical state of serenity.

Some time after, he is walking with a friend; and meets a lady in rusty mourning, carrying a huge bundle, from which “slop work” is seen protruding (a little child accompanies her, with its feet out at the toes). She has a look of hopeless misery on her fine but sad features. She is a _lady still_ (spite of her dilapidated wardrobe and her bundle). Your neighbour’s companion touches his arm, and says, “Good God! isn’t that Grey’s widow?” He glances at her carelessly, and answers, “Should n’t wonder;” and invites him home to dine on trout, cooked in claret, and hot-house peaches, at half a dollar a-piece.

SICKNESS COMES TO YOU IN THE COUNTRY.

On the fragrant breeze, through your latticed window, come the twitter of the happy swallow, the chirp of the robin, and the drowsy hum of the bee. From your pillow you can watch the shadows come and go, over the clover meadow, as the clouds go drifting by. Rustic neighbours lean on their spades at sunset at your door, and with sympathising voices “hope you are better.” The impatient hoof of the prancing horse is checked by the hand of pity; and the merry shout of the sunburnt child (musical though it be) dies on the cherry lip, at the uplifted finger of compassion. A shower of rose-leaves drifts in over your pillow, on the soft sunset zephyr. Oh, earth _is_ passing fair; but _Heaven is fairer_!

Its portals unclose to you! Kind, neighbourly hands wipe the death-damp from your brow; speak words of comfort to your weeping wife, caress your unconscious children. Your fading eye takes it all in, but your tongue is powerless to speak its thanks. They close your drooping lids, they straighten your manly limbs, they lay your weary head on its grassy pillow, they bedew it with sympathetic tears; they pray God, that night, in their cottage homes, to send His kind angel down, to whisper words of peace to the broken hearts you have left behind.

_They do something besides pray._ From unknown hands, the widow’s “cruse of oil,” and “barrel of meal,” are oft replenished.

On your little orphans’ heads many a rough palm is laid, with tearful blessing. Many a dainty peach, or pear, or apple is tossed them, on their way to school. Many a ride they get “to mill,” or “hay-field,” or “village,” while their mother shades her moistened eyes in the door-way, quite unable to speak. The old farmer sees it; and knowing better how to bestow a kindness than to hear such expressive thanks, cuts Dobbin in the flanks, then starting tragically at the _premeditated rear_, asks her, with an hysterical laugh, “_if she ever saw such an uneasy beast_!”

Wide open fly their cottage doors and hearts at “Christmas” and “Thanksgiving,” for your stricken household. There may be little city etiquette at the feast, there may be ungrammatical words and infelicitous expressions—but, thank God, unchilled by selfishness, unshrivelled by avarice, human hearts throb warmly there—_loving_—_pitiful_—_Christ-like_!

HUNGRY HUSBANDS.

“The hand that can make a pie is a continual feast to the husband that
marries its owner.”

Well, it is a humiliating reflection, that the straightest road to a man’s heart is through his palate. He is never so amiable as when he has discussed a roast turkey. Then’s your time, “Esther,” for “half his kingdom,” in the shape of a new bonnet, cap, shawl, or dress. He’s too complacent to dispute the matter. Strike while the iron is hot; petition for a trip to Niagara, Saratoga, the Mammoth Cave, the White Mountains, or to London, Rome, or Paris. Should he demur about it, the next day cook him another turkey, and pack your trunk while he is eating it.

There’s nothing on earth so savage—except a bear robbed of her cubs—as a hungry husband. It is as much as your life is worth to sneeze till dinner is on the table, and his knife and fork are in vigorous play. Tommy will get his ears boxed, the ottoman will be kicked into the corner, your work-box be turned bottom upwards, and the poker and tongs will beat a tattoo on that grate that will be a caution to dilatory cooks.

After the first six mouthfuls you may venture to say your soul is your own; his eyes will lose their ferocity, his brow its furrows, and he will very likely recollect to help you to a cold potato! Never mind—_eat it_. You might have to swallow a worse pill—for instance, should he offer to kiss you!

Well, learn a lesson from it—keep him well fed and languid—live yourself on a low diet, and cultivate your thinking powers; and you’ll be as spry as a cricket, and hop over all the objections and remonstrances that his dead-and-alive energies can muster. Yes, feed him well, and he will stay contentedly in his cage, like a gorged anaconda. If he was my husband, wouldn’t I make him heaps of _pison_ things! Bless me! I’ve made a mistake in the spelling; it should have been _pies and things_!

LIGHT AND SHADOW;
OR, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

It was a simple dress of snowy muslin, innocent of the magic touch of a French _modiste_. There was not an inch of lace upon it, nor a rosette, nor a flower; it was pure, and simple, and unpretending as its destined wearer. A pair of white kid gloves, of fairy-like proportions, lay beside it, also a pair of tiny satin slippers. There was no bridal _trousseau_; no—Meta had no rich uncles, or aunts, or cousins,—no _consistent_ god-parents who, promising at her baptism that she should “renounce the pomp and vanities of the world,” redeemed their promise by showering at her bridal feet diamonds enough to brighten many a starving fellow-creature’s pathway to the tomb.

Did I say there was no bridal _trousseau_? There was _one_ gift, a little clasp Bible, with “Meta Grey” written on the fly-leaf, in the bridegroom’s bold, handsome hand. Perchance some gay beauty, who reads this, may curl her rosy lip scornfully; but well Meta knew how to value such a gift. Through long dreary years of orphanage “God’s Word” had been to her what the star in the East was to Bethlehem’s watching shepherds. Her lonely days of toil were over now. There was a true heart, whose every pulsation was love for her—a brave arm to defend her helplessness, and a quiet, sunny home where Peace, like a brooding dove, should fold his wings, while the happy hours flew uncounted by.

Yes; Meta was looked for, every hour. She was to leave the group of laughing hoydens (before whom she had forbidden her lover to claim her), and thereafter confine her teachings to one pupil, whose “reward of merit” should be the love-light in her soft, dark eyes. Still, it was weary waiting for her; her last letter was taken, for the hundredth time, from its hiding-place, and read, and refolded, and read again, although he could say it all, with his eyes shut, in the darkest corner in Christendom. But you know all about it, dear reader, if you own a heart; and if you don’t, the sooner you drop my story the better.

Well; he paced the room up and down, looked out the window, and down the street: then he sat down in the little rocking-chair he had provided for her, and tried to imagine it was tenanted by _two_: then, delicious tears sprang to his eyes, that such a sweet fount of happiness was opened to him—that the golden morn, and busy noon, and hushed and starry night, should find them _ever_ side by side. Care?—he didn’t know it! Trouble?—what trouble could _he_ have, when all his heart craved on earth was bounded by his clasping arms? And then, Meta was an orphan—he was scarcely sorry—there would be none for her heart to go out to now but himself; he must be brother, sister, father, mother—_all_ to her; and his heart gave a full and joyful response to each and every claim.

—But what a little loiterer! He was half vexed; he paced the room in his impatience, handled the little slippers affectionately, and caressed the little gloves as if they were filled by the plump hand of Meta, instead of his imagination. Why _didn’t_ she fly to him? Such an angel should have wings—he was sure of that.

—Wings? God help you, widowed bridegroom! Who shall have the heart to read you this sad paragraph?

“ONE OF THE NORWALK VICTIMS.—The body of a young lady, endowed with
extraordinary personal beauty, remains yet unrecognized. On her
countenance reposes an expression of pleasure, in striking and painful
contrast to the terrible scene amid which she breathed her last. She
was evidently about twenty years old, doubtless the glory of some
circle of admiring friends, who little dream where she is, and of her
shocking condition.”

WHAT LOVE WILL ACCOMPLISH.

“This will never do,” said little Mrs. Kitty; “how I came to be such a simpleton as to get married before I knew how to keep house, is more and more of an astonisher to me. I _can_ learn, and I _will_! There’s Bridget told me yesterday there wasn’t time to make a pudding before dinner. I had my private suspicions she was imposing upon me, though I didn’t know enough about it to contradict her. The truth is, I’m no more mistress of this house than I am of the Grand Seraglio. Bridget knows it, too; and there’s Harry (how hot it makes my cheeks to think of it!) couldn’t find an eatable thing on the dinner-table yesterday. He loves me too well to say anything, but he had such an ugly frown on his face when he lit his cigar and went off to his office. Oh, I see how it is:

“‘One must eat in matrimony,
And love is neither bread nor honey,
And so, you understand.’”

* * * * *

“What on earth sent you over here in this dismal rain?” said Kitty’s neighbour, Mrs. Green. “Just look at your gaiters.”

“Oh, never mind gaiters,” said Kitty, untying her “rigolette,” and throwing herself on the sofa. “I don’t know any more about cooking than a six weeks’ kitten; Bridget walks over my head with the most perfect Irish _nonchalance_; Harry looks as solemn as an ordained bishop; the days grow short, the bills grow long, and I’m the most miserable little Kitty that ever mewed. Do have pity on me, and initiate me into the mysteries of broiling, baking, and roasting; take me into your kitchen now, and let me go into it while the fit is on me. I feel as if I could roast Chanticleer and all his hen-harem!”

“You don’t expect to take your degree in one forenoon?” said Mrs. Green, laughing immoderately.

“Not a bit of it! I intend to come every morning, if the earth don’t whirl off its axle. I’ve locked up my guitar, and my French and Italian books, and that irresistible ‘Festus,’ and nerved myself like a female martyr, to look a gridiron in the face without flinching. Come, put down that embroidery, there’s a good Samaritan, and descend with me into the lower regions, before my enthusiasm gets a shower-bath,” and she rolled up her sleeves from her round white arms, took off her rings, and tucked her curls behind her ears.

Very patiently did Mrs. Kitty keep her resolution; each day added a little to her store of culinary wisdom. What if she did flavour her first custards with peppermint instead of lemon? What if she did “baste” a turkey with saleratus instead of salt? What if she did season the stuffing with ground cinnamon instead of pepper? Rome wasn’t built in a day;—cooks can’t be manufactured in a minute.

* * * * *

Kitty’s husband had been gone just a month. He was expected home that very day. All the morning the little wife had been getting up a congratulatory dinner in honour of the occasion. What with satisfaction and the kitchen fire, her cheeks glowed like a milkmaid’s. How her eyes sparkled, and what a pretty little triumphant toss she gave her head when that big trunk was dumped down in the entry! It isn’t a bad thing, sometimes, to have a secret even from one’s own husband.

“On my word, Kitty,” said Harry, holding her off at arm’s length, “you look most provokingly ‘well-to-do’ for a widow ‘_pro tem_.’ I don’t believe you have mourned for me the breath of a sigh. What have you been about? who has been here? and what mine of fun is to be prophesied from the merry twinkle in the corner of your eye? Anybody hid in the closet or cupboard? Have you drawn a prize in the lottery?”

“Not since I married you,” said Mrs. Kitty; “and you are quite welcome to that sugar-plum to sweeten your dinner.”

“How Bridget has improved,” said Harry, as he plied his knife and fork industriously; “I never saw these woodcocks outdone, even at our bachelor club-rooms at —— House. She shall have a present of a pewter cross, as sure as her name is McFlannigan, besides absolution for all the detestable messes she used to concoct with her Catholic fingers.”

“Let me out! let me out!” said a stifled voice from the closet; “you can’t expect a woman to keep a secret for ever.”

“What on earth do you mean, Mrs. Green?” said Harry, gaily shaking her hand.

“Why, you see, ‘Bridget has improved;’ _i. e._ to say, little Mrs. Kitty there received from my hands yesterday a diploma, certifying her Mistress of Arts, Hearts and Drumsticks, having spent every morning of your absence in perfecting herself as a housekeeper. There now, don’t drop on your knees to her till I have gone. I know very well when three is a crowd, or, to speak more fashionably, when I am ‘_de trop_,’ and I’m only going to stop long enough to remind you that there are some _wives_ left in the world, and that Kitty is one of ’em.”

And now, dear reader, if you doubt whether Mrs. Kitty was rewarded for all her trouble, you’d better take a peep into that parlour, and while you are looking, let me whisper a secret in your ear confidentially. You may be as beautiful as Venus, and as talented as Madame de Stael, but you will never reign supreme in your liege lord’s affections till you can roast a turkey.

MRS. GRUMBLE’S SOLILOQUY.