Chapter IX (6)

Trying each other by very moderate standards and measurements, there is great mutual complacency. The oldest boy does not get an appointment in college,--they never expected he would; but he was a respectable scholar, and they receive him with acclamations such as another family would bestow on a valedictorian. The daughters do not profess, as we are told, to draw like artists, but some very moderate performances in the line of the fine arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. They thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the whole family listen and approve. All unite in singing in a somewhat discordant and uncultured manner a few psalm-tunes or songs, and take more comfort in them than many amateurs do in their well-drilled performances.

So goes the world with the Daytons; and when you visit them, if you often feel that you could ask more and suggest much improvement, yet you cannot help enjoying the quiet satisfaction which breathes around you.

Now right across the way from the Daytons live the Mores; and the Mores are the very opposites of the Daytons.

Everything about their establishment is brought to the highest point of culture. The carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is velvet, the flower-beds ever-blooming, the fruit-trees and vines grow exactly like the patterns in the best pomological treatises. Within doors the housekeeping is faultless,--all seems to be moving in time and tune,--the table is more than good, it is superlative,--every article is in its way a model,--the children appear to you to be growing up after the most patent-right method, duly trained, snipped, and cultured, like the pear-trees and grape-vines. Nothing is left to accident, or done without much laborious consideration of the best manner of doing it; and the consequences, in the eyes of their simple, unsophisticated neighbors, are very wonderful.

Nevertheless this is not a happy family. All their perfections do not begin to afford them one tithe of the satisfaction that the Daytons derive from their ragged and scrambling performances.

The two daughters, Jane and Maria, had naturally very sweet voices, and when they were little, trilled tunes in a very pleasant and bird-like manner. But now, having been instructed by the best masters, and heard the very first artists, they never sing or play; the piano is shut, and their voices are dumb. If you request a song, they tell you that they never sing now; papa has such an exquisite taste, he takes no interest in any common music; in short, having heard Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, and others of the tuneful shell, this family have concluded to abide in silence. As to any music that _they_ could make, it isn't to be thought of.

For the same reason, the daughters, after attending a quarter or two on the drawing-exercises of a celebrated teacher, threw up their pencils in disgust, and tore up very pretty and agreeable sketches which were the marvel of their good-natured admiring neighbors. If they could draw like Signor Scratchalini, if they could hope to become perfect artists, they tell you, they would have persevered; but they have taken lessons enough to learn that drawing is the labor of a life-time, and, not having a life-time to give to it, they resolve to do nothing at all.

They have also, for a similar reason, given up letter-writing. If their chirography were as elegant as Charlotte Cushman's,--if they were perfect mistresses of polite English,--if they were gifted with wit, humor, and fancy, like the first masters of style,--they would take pleasure in epistolary composition, and be good correspondents; but anything short of that is so intolerable, that, except in cases of life and death or urgent business, you cannot get a line out of them. Yet they write very fair, agreeable, womanly letters, and would write much better ones, if they allowed themselves a little more practice.

Mrs. More is devoured by care. She sits with a clouded brow in her elegant, well-regulated house; and when you talk with her, you are surprised to learn that everything in it is in the most dreadful disorder from one end to the other. You ask for particulars, and find that the disorder has relation to exquisite standards of the ways of doing things, derived from observation of life in the most subdivided state of European service,--to all of which she has not as yet been able to raise her domestics. You compliment her on her cook, and she responds, in plaintive accents, "She can do a few things decently, but she is nothing of a cook." You refer with enthusiasm to her bread, her coffee, her muffins and hot rolls, and she listens and sighs. "Yes," she admits, "these are eatable,--not bad; but you should have seen the rolls at a certain _cafe_ in Paris, and the bread at a certain nobleman's in England, where they had a bakery in the castle, and a French baker, who did nothing all the while but to refine and perfect the idea of bread. When she thinks of these things, everything in comparison is so coarse and rough!--but then she has learned to be comfortable." Thus, in every department of housekeeping, to this too well-instructed person,

"Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise."

Not a thing in her wide and apparently beautifully kept establishment is ever done well enough to elicit from her more than a sigh of toleration. "I suppose it must do," she faintly breathes, when poor human nature, having tried and tried again, evidently has got to the boundaries of its capabilities; "you may let it go, Jane; I never expect to be suited."

The poor woman, in the midst of possessions and attainments which excite the envy of her neighbors, is utterly restless and wretched, and feels herself always baffled and unsuccessful. Her exacting nature makes her dissatisfied with herself in everything that she undertakes, and equally dissatisfied with others. In the whole family there is little of that pleasure which comes from the consciousness of mutual admiration and esteem, because each one is pitched to so exquisite a tone that each is afraid to touch another for fear of making discord. They are afraid of each other everywhere. They cannot sing to each other, play to each other, write to each other; they cannot even converse together with any freedom, because each knows that the others are so dismally well informed and critically instructed.

Though all agree in a secret contempt for their neighbors over the way, as living in a most heathenish state of ignorant contentment, yet it is a fact that the elegant brother John will often, on the sly, slip into the Daytons' to spend an evening, and join them in singing glees and catches to their old rattling piano, and have a jolly time of it which he remembers in contrast with the dull, silent hours at home. Kate Dayton has an uncultivated voice, which often falls from pitch; but she has a perfectly infectious gayety of good-nature, and when she is once at the piano, and all join in some merry troll, he begins to think that there may be something better even than good singing; and then they have dances and charades and games, all in such contented, jolly, impromptu ignorance of the unities of time, place, and circumstance, that he sometimes doubts, where ignorance is such bliss, whether it isn't in truth folly to be wise.

Jane and Maria laugh at John for his partiality to the Daytons, and yet they themselves feel the same attraction. At the Daytons' they somehow find themselves heroines; their drawings are so admired, their singing is so charming to these uncultured ears, that they are often beguiled into giving pleasure with their own despised acquirements; and Jane, somehow, is very tolerant of the devoted attention of Will Dayton, a joyous, honest-hearted fellow, whom, in her heart of hearts, she likes none the worse for being unexacting and simple enough to think her a wonder of taste and accomplishments. Will, of course, is the farthest possible from the Admirable Crichtons and exquisite Sir Philip Sidneys whom Mrs. More and the young ladies talk up at their leisure, and adorn with feathers from every royal and celestial bird, when they are discussing theoretic possible husbands. He is not in any way distinguished, except for a kind heart, strong native good sense, and a manly energy that has carried him straight into the very heart of many a citadel of life, before which the superior and more refined Mr. John had set himself down to deliberate upon the best and most elegant way of taking it. Will's plain, homely intelligence has often in five minutes disentangled some ethereal snarl in which these exquisite Mores had spun themselves up, and brought them to his own way of thinking by that sort of disenchanting process which honest, practical sense sometimes exerts over ideality.

The fact is, however, that in each of these families there is a natural defect which requires something from the other for completeness. Taking happiness as the standard, the Daytons have it as against the Mores. Taking attainment as the standard, the Mores have it as against the Daytons. A portion of the discontented ideality of the Mores would stimulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many things which might easily be made better, did they care enough to have them so; and a portion of the Daytons' self-satisfied contentment would make the attainments and refinements of the Mores of some practical use in advancing their own happiness.

But between these two classes of natures lies another, to which has been given an equal share of ideality,--in which the conception and the desire of excellence are equally strong, but in which a discriminating common-sense acts like a balance-wheel in machinery. What is the reason that the most exacting idealists never make themselves unhappy about not being able to fly like a bird or swim like a fish? Because common-sense teaches them that these accomplishments are so utterly out of the question that they never arise to the mind as objects of desire. In these well-balanced minds we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive line all through life between the attainable and the unattainable, and sets the key of desire accordingly.

Common-sense teaches that there is no one branch of human art or science in which perfection is not a point forever receding. A botanist gravely assures us, that to become perfect in the knowledge of one branch of sea-weeds would take all the time and strength of a man for a life-time. There is no limit to music, to the fine arts. There is never a time when the gardener can rest, saying that his garden is perfect. House-keeping, cooking, sewing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be pushed on forever, without exhausting the capabilities for better doing.

But while attainment in everything is endless, circumstances forbid the greater part of human beings from attaining in any direction the half of what they see would be desirable; and the difference between the miserable idealist and the contented realist often is not that both do not see what needs to be done for perfection, but that, seeing it, one is satisfied with the attainable, and the other forever frets and wears himself out on the unattainable.

The principal of a large and complicated public institution was complimented on maintaining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a diversity of cares. "I've made up my mind to be satisfied, when things are done _half_ as well as I would have them," was his answer; and the same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic sphere.

There is a saying which one often hears among common people, that such and such a one are persons who never could be happy, unless everything went "_just so_"--that is, in accordance with their highest conceptions.

When these persons are women, and undertake the sway of a home empire, they are sure to be miserable, and to make others so; for home is a place where by no kind of magic possible to woman can everything be always made to go "just so."

We may read treatises on education,--and very excellent ones there are. We may read very nice stories illustrating home management, in which book-children and book-servants all work into the author's plan with obliging unanimity; but every real child and real servant is an uncompromising fact, whose working into our ideal of life cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. A husband is another absolute fact, of whose conformity to any ideal conceptions no positive account can be given. So, when a person has the most charming theories of education, the most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot to sit bound hand and foot and see them all trampled under the heel of opposing circumstances.

Nothing is easier than to make an ideal garden. We lay out our grounds, dig, plant, transplant, manure. We read catalogues of roses till we are bewildered with their lustrous glories. We set out plum, pear, and peach, we luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest grapes, and our theoretic garden is Paradise Regained. But in the actual garden there are cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for all the melons, slugs and rose-bugs for the roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, and late and early frosts, droughts, winds, and hail-storms here and there for all.

The garden and the family are fair pictures of each other. Both are capable of the most ravishing representations on paper; and the rules and directions for creating beauty and perfection in both can be made so apparently plain that he who runneth may read, and it would seem that a fool need not err therein; and yet the actual results are always halting miles away behind expectation and desire.

It would be an incalculable gain to domestic happiness, if people would begin the concert of life with their instruments tuned to a very low pitch: they who receive the most happiness are generally they who demand and expect the least.

Ideality often becomes an insidious mental and moral disease, acting all the more subtly from its alliances with what is highest and noblest within us. Shall we not aspire to be perfect? Shall we be content with low measures and low standards in anything? To these inquiries there seems of course to be but one answer; yet the individual driven forward in blind, unreasoning aspiration becomes wearied, bewildered, discontented, restless, fretful, and miserable.

An unhappy person can never make others happy. The creators and governors of a home, who are themselves restless and inharmonious, cannot make harmony and peace. This is the secret reason why many a pure, good, conscientious person is only a source of uneasiness in family life. They are exacting, discontented, unhappy; and spread the discontent and unhappiness about them. They are, to begin with, on poor terms with themselves; they do not like themselves; they do not like their own appearance, manners, education, accomplishments; on all these points they try themselves by ideal standards, and find themselves wanting. In morals, in religion, too, the same introverted scrutiny detects only errors and evils, till all life seems to them a miserable, hopeless failure, and they wish they had never been born. They are angry and disgusted with themselves; there is no self-toleration or self-endurance. And persons in a chronic quarrel with themselves are very apt to quarrel with others. That exacting nature which has no patience with one's own inevitable frailties and errors has none for those of others; and thus the great motive by which Christianity enforces tolerance of the faults of others loses its hold. There are people who make no allowances either for themselves or anybody else, but are equally angry and disgusted with both.

Now it is important that those finely strung natures in which ideality largely predominates should begin life by a religious care and restraint of this faculty. As the case often stands, however, religion only intensifies the difficulty, by adding stringency to exaction and censoriousness, driving the subject up with an unremitting strain till the very cords of reason sometimes snap. Yet, properly understood and used, religion is the only cure for the evil of diseased ideality. The Christian religion is the only one that ever proposed to give to all human beings, however various the range of their nature and desires, the great underlying gift of _rest_. Its Author, with a strength of assurance which only supreme Divinity can justify, promises _rest_ to all persons, under all circumstances, with all sorts of natures, all sorts of wants, and all sorts of defects. The invitation is as wide as the human race: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you REST."

Now this is the more remarkable, as this gracious promise is accompanied by the presentation of a standard of perfection which is more ideal and exacting than any other that has ever been placed before mankind,--which, in so many words, sets up absolute perfection as the only true goal of aspiration.

The problem which Jesus proposes to human nature is endless aspiration steadied by endless peace,--a perfectly restful, yet unceasing effort after a good which is never to be attained till we attain a higher and more perfect form of existence. It is because this problem is insolvable by any human wisdom, that He says that they who take His yoke upon them must learn of Him, for He alone can make the perfect yoke easy and its burden light.

The first lesson in this benignant school must lie like a strong, broad foundation under every structure on which we wish to rear a happy life,--and that is, that the full gratification of the faculty of ideality is never to be expected in this present stage of existence, but is to be transferred to a future life. Ideality, with its incessant, restless longings and yearnings, is snubbed and turned out of doors by human philosophy, when philosophy becomes middle-aged and sulky with repeated disappointments,--it is berated as a cheat and a liar,--told to hold its tongue and take itself elsewhere; but Christianity bids it be of good cheer, still to aspire and hope and prophesy, and points to a future where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality.

A full faith in such a perfect future--a perfect faith that God has planted in man no desire which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in that future--gives the mind rest and contentment to postpone for a while gratifications that will certainly come at last.

Such a faith is better even than that native philosophical good sense which restrains the ideal calculations and hopes of some; for it has a wider scope and a deeper power.

We have seen in our time a woman gifted with all those faculties which rejoice in the refinements of society, dispensing the elegant hospitalities of a bountiful home, joyful and giving joy. A sudden reverse has swept all this away, the wealth on which it was based has melted like a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen her with her little family beginning life again in the log cabin of a Western settlement. We have seen her sitting in the door of the one room that took the place of parlor, bed-room, nursery, and cheerfully making her children's morning toilette by the help of the one tin wash-bowl that takes the place of her well-arranged bathing- and dressing-rooms; and yet, as she twined their curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a jest and cheerful word for all The few morning-glories that she was training over her rude porch seemed as much a source of delight to her as her former green-house and garden; and the adjustment of the one or two shelves whereon were the half-dozen books left of the library, her husband's private papers, and her own and her children's wardrobe, was entered into daily with a zealous interest as if she had never known a wider sphere.

Such facility of accommodation to life's reverses is sometimes supposed to be merely the result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament; in this case it was purely the work of religion. In early life, this same woman had been the discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with vain longings in the midst of real and substantial comfort, had felt even the creasing of the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable annoyance. Now she has resigned herself to the work and toil of life as the soldier does to the duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, enjoying with a free heart the small daily pleasures which spring up like wild-flowers amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking to the end of the campaign for rest and congenial scenes.

This woman has within her the powers and gifts of an artist; but her pencils and her colors are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour after hour darning her children's stockings and turning and arranging a scanty wardrobe which no ingenuity can make more than decent. She was a beautiful musician; but a musical instrument is now a thing of the past; she only lulls her baby to sleep with snatches of the songs which used to form the attraction of brilliant salons. She feels that a world of tastes and talents are lying dormant in her while she is doing the daily work of a nurse, cook, and seamstress; but she remembers WHO took upon Him the form of a servant before her, and she has full faith that her beautiful gifts, like bulbs sleeping under ground, shall come up and blossom again in that fair future which He has promised. Therefore it is that she has no sighs for the present or the past,--no quarrel with her life, or her lot in it; she is in harmony with herself and with all around her; her husband looks upon her as a fair daily miracle, and her children rise up and call her blessed.

But, having laid the broad foundation of faith in a better life, as the basis on which to ground our present happiness, we who are of the ideal nature must proceed to build thereon wisely.

In the first place, we must cultivate the duty of _self-patience_ and self-toleration. Of all the religionists and moralists who ever taught, Fenelon is the only one who has distinctly formulated the duty which a self-educator owes to himself. HAVE PATIENCE WITH YOURSELF is a direction often occurring in his writings, and a most important one it is,--because patience with ourselves is essential, if we would have patience with others. Let us look through the world. Who are the people easiest to be pleased, most sunny, most urbane, most tolerant? Are they not persons from constitution and temperament on good terms with themselves,--people who do not ask much of themselves or try themselves severely, and who therefore are in a good humor for looking upon others? But how is a person who is conscious of a hundred daily faults and errors to have patience with himself? The question may be answered by asking, What would you say to a child who fretted, scolded, dashed down his slate, and threw his book on the floor, because he made mistakes in his arithmetic? You would say, of course, "You are but a learner; it is not to be expected that you will not make mistakes; all children do. Have patience." Just as you would talk to that child, talk to yourself. Be reconciled to a lot of inevitable imperfection; be content to try continually, and often to fail. It is the inevitable condition of human existence, and is to be accepted as such. A patient acceptance of mortifications and of defeats of our life's labor is often more efficacious for our moral advancement than even our victories.

In the next place, we must school ourselves not to look with restless desire to degrees of excellence in any department of life which circumstances evidently forbid our attaining. For a woman with plenty of money and plenty of well-trained servants to be content to have fly-specked windows, or littered rooms, or a slovenly-ordered table, is a sin. But in a woman in feeble health, incumbered with a flock of restless little ones, and whose circumstances allow her to keep but one servant, it may be a piece of moral heroism to shut her eyes on many such things, while securing mere essentials to life and health. It may be a virtue in her not to push neatness to such lengths as to wear herself out, or to break down her only servant, and to be resigned to have her tastes and preferences for order, cleanliness, and beauty crossed, as she would resign herself to any other affliction. No purgatory can be more severe to people of a thorough and exact nature than to be so situated that they can only half do everything they undertake; yet such is the fiery trial to which many a one is subjected. Life seems to drive them along without giving them time for anything; everything is ragged, hasty performance, of which the mind most keenly sees and feels the raggedness and hastiness. Even one thing done as it really ought to be done would be a rest and refreshment to the soul; but nowhere, in any department of its undertakings, is there any such thing to be perceived.

But there are cases where a great deal of wear and tear can be saved to the nerves by a considerate making up of one's mind as to how much in certain circumstances had better be undertaken at all. Let the circumstances of life be surveyed, the objects we are pursuing arranged and counted, and see if there are not things here and there that may be thrown out of our plans entirely, that others may be better done.

What if the whole care of expensive table luxuries, like cake and preserves, be thrown out of a housekeeper's budget, in order that the essential articles of cookery may be better prepared? What if ruffling, embroidery, and the entire department of kindred fine arts, be thrown out of her calculations, in providing for the clothing of a family? Many a feeble woman has died of too much ruffling, as she patiently sat up night after night sewing the thread of a precious, invaluable life into elaborate articles which her children were none the healthier or more virtuous for wearing.

Ideality is constantly ramifying and extending the department of the toilette and the needle into a world of work and worry, wherein distracted women wander up and down, seeing no end anywhere. The sewing-machine was announced as a relief to these toils; but has it proved so? We trow not. It only amounts to this,--that now there can be seventy-two tucks on each little petticoat, instead of fifteen, as before, and that twice as many garments are made up and held to be necessary as formerly. The women still sew to the limit of human endurance; and still the old proverb holds good, that woman's work is never done.

In the matter of dress, much wear and tear of spirit and nerves may be saved by not beginning to go in certain directions, well knowing that they will take us beyond our resources of time, strength, and money.

There is one word of fear in the vocabulary of the women of our time which must be pondered advisedly,--TRIMMING. In old times a good garment was enough; nowadays a garment is nothing without trimming. Everything, from the first article that the baby wears up to the elaborate dress of the bride, must be trimmed at a rate that makes the trimming more than the original article. A dress can be made in a day, but it cannot be trimmed under two or three days. Let a faithful, conscientious woman make up her mind how much of all this burden of life she will assume, remembering wisely that there is no end to ideality in anything, and that the only way to deal with many perplexing parts of life is to leave them out altogether.

Mrs. Kirkland, in her very amusing account of her log-cabin experiences, tells us of the great disquiet and inconvenience she had in attempting to arrange in her lowly abode a most convenient clothes-press, which was manifestly too large for the establishment. Having labored with the cumbersome convenience for a great length of time, and with much discomfort, she at last resigned the ordering of it to a brawny-armed damsel of the forest, who began by pitching it out of doors, with the comprehensive remark, that, "where there wasn't room for a thing, there wasn't."

The wisdom which inspired the remark of this rustic maiden might have saved the lives of many matrons who have worn themselves out in vain attempts to make comforts and conveniences out of things which they had better have thrown out of doors altogether.

True, it requires some judgment to know what, among objects commonly pursued in any department, we really ought to reject; and it requires independence and steadiness to say, "I will not begin to try to do certain things that others are doing, and that, perhaps, they expect of me"; but there comes great leisure and quietness of spirit from the gaps thus made. When the unwieldy clothes-press was once cast out, everything in the log cabin could have room.

A mother, who is anxiously trying to reconcile the watchful care and training of her little ones with the maintenance of fashionable calls and parties, may lose her life in the effort to do both, and do both in so imperfect a manner as never to give her a moment's peace. But on the morrow after she comes to the serious and Christian resolve, "The training of my children is all that I _can_ do well, and henceforth it shall be my _sole_ object," there falls into her tumultuous life a Sabbath pause of peace and leisure. It is true that she is still doing a work in which absolute perfection ever recedes; but she can make relative attainments far nearer the standard than before.

Lastly, under the head of ideality let us resolve to be satisfied with our own past doings, when at the time of doing we used all the light God gave us and did all in our power.

The backward action of ideality is often full as tormenting as its forward and prospective movements. The moment a thing is done and over, one would think that good sense would lead us to drop it like a stone in the ocean; but the morbid idealist cannot cut loose from the past.

"Was that, after all, the _best_ thing? Would it not have been better so or so?" And the self-tormented individual lies wakeful, during weary night-hours, revolving a thousand possibilities, and conjuring up a thousand vague perhapses. "If I had only done so now, perhaps this result would have followed, or that would not"; and as there is never any saying but that so it might have turned out, the labyrinth and the discontent are alike endless.

Now there is grand good sense in the Apostle's direction, "Forgetting the things that are behind, press forward." The idealist should charge himself, as with an oath of God, to let the past alone as an accomplished fact, solely concerning himself with the inquiry, "Did I not do the best I _then_ knew how?"

The maxim of the Quietists is, that, when we have acted according to the best light we have, we have expressed the will of God under those circumstances,--since, had it been otherwise, more and different light would have been given us; and with the will of God done by ourselves as by Himself, it is our duty to be content.

* * * * *

Having written thus far in my article, and finding nothing more at hand to add to it, I went into the parlor to read it to Jennie and Mrs. Crowfield. I found the former engaged in the task of binding sixty yards of quilling, (so I think she called it,) which were absolutely necessary for perfecting a dress; and the latter was braiding one of seven little petticoats, stamped with elaborate patterns, which she had taken from Marianne, because that virtuous matron was ruining her eyes and health in a blind push to get them done before October.

Both approved and admired my piece, and I thought of Saint Anthony's preaching to the fishes:--

"The sermon once ended,
The good man descended,
And the pikes went on stealing,
The eels went on eeling,
The crabs were backsliders,
The stockfish thick-siders:
Much delighted were they,
But went on their own way."

A VISIT TO THE EDGEWORTHS.

Journeying in Ireland, with my husband and a young friend, some thirty years ago, on arriving in Dublin, having a letter of introduction to Miss Edgeworth, we sent it, with a note from myself proposing to spend a day with her, if convenient and agreeable, and shortly received the following very gracious reply:--

"EDGEWORTHTOWN, September 3, 1836.

"DEAR MADAM,--I hasten to assure you and Professor F---- that we feel highly honored and gratified by your kind intention of paying us a visit. Mrs. Edgeworth desires me to say, that we shall be at home all next week, and we shall be most happy to receive you, and your young friend, Mr. W----, any day after the 5th which may be most convenient to you. We say after the 5th, because on the 5th my sister, (Harriet,) Mrs. Butler, and her husband, the Rev. Mr. Butler, will come to us, and independently of the pleasure they will have, I am sure, in your society, I own I wish that you should become acquainted with them, especially as we are unlucky at this moment in not having any of my brothers at home. My brother-in-law, Mr. Butler, is, as you will find, a man of literature and learning, besides being all that you will like in other respects, from the truth and rectitude and simplicity of his character.

"I am much obliged to you for the letters you were so good as to enclose to me. Of all our friends in Boston and Cambridge, we shall, I hope, have time to inquire further and to converse.

"There was only one thing in your letter which did not give us pleasure; and we trust that after your arrival, and after you have had some hours to reflect, and a night quietly to sleep upon it, you will repent and recant, and give up your _cruel purpose_ of giving us only one day. Mrs. Edgeworth will remonstrate with you, I think, more effectually than I can; and in the mean time I promise to allow you till the morning after your arrival to become sufficiently acquainted with the ways of the house and family, before I turn to you, as I shall (I warn you) at breakfast, for your _ultimatum_.

"I am, dear Madam, (for the present,)

"Your much obliged and grateful

"MARIA EDGEWORTH.

"P.S. It must increase my interest in making your acquaintance, my dear Mrs. F., to know that you are sister to Mr. Benjamin R., whose talents I with great reason admire, and for whose kindness and agreeable letters I have equally great reason to be grateful."

* * * * *

The cordiality and frankness of this letter made us all desirous of visiting the writer. We were much struck with the manner in which Mrs. Edgeworth was mentioned and made of importance as the lady of the house, when the whole place was the property of Miss Edgeworth, and she was at least thirty years older than her step-mother. Mr. Edgeworth had been dead several years, and his son had become so embarrassed in his affairs as to be obliged to sell his patrimonial estate; and to prevent its passing into the hands of strangers, Miss Edgeworth had bought it, and made her step-mother mistress of the establishment, whilst she lived with her as a daughter. They were on the very best terms, each admiring and loving the other.

Another member of the family was Mrs. Mary Sneyd, a very aged lady of the old school, and sister to Honora Sneyd, who refused the hand of Major Andre, and became the wife of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. The unhappy fate of the gallant Major is well known; but few persons now living ever read the monody written on his death by Miss Seward, in which she makes her hero say,--

"Honora lost, I woo a sterner bride;
The armed Bellona calls me lo her side."

It was a great pleasure to me to see the sister of two of Mr. Edgeworth's wives,--one belonging to the same period, and dressed in the same style, as the lovely Honora. She did not appear till lunch-time, when we found her seated at the table, in a wheelchair, on account of her lameness. She reminded me of the pictures of the court beauties of the time of Louis XIV. Her dress was truly elegant and very elaborate. Her white hair had the effect of powder, and the structure on it defies description. A very white throat was set off to advantage by a narrow black velvet ribbon, fastened by a jewel. The finest lace ruffles about her neck and elbows, with a long-waisted silk dress of rich texture and delicate color, produced an effect that was quite bewitching. She was wonderfully well preserved for a lady of over eighty years of age, and it was pleasant to see the great attention paid to her by all the family. She was rather deaf; so I was seated by her side, and requested to address my conversation to her. When lunch was over, she was wheeled into the library, and occupied herself making a cotton net to put over the wall fruit, to keep it from the birds. It was worth a journey to Edgeworthtown only to see this elegant specimen of old age.

I had heard that Mr. Edgeworth's house was full of his inventions and contrivances, and when shown to our bed-room, we found such an extraordinary lock on the door, that we dared not shut it for fear of not being able to open it again. That room, too, was unlike any other I ever saw. It was very large, with three huge windows, two of them heavily curtained, and the third converted into a small wardrobe, with doors of pink cotton on a wooden frame. It had two very large four-posted bedsteads, with full suits of curtains, and an immense folding-screen that divided the room in two, making each occupant as private as if in a separate room, with a dressing-table and ample washing conveniences on each side. A large grate, filled with turf, and all ready for lighting, with a great basket lined with tin, and also filled with the same fuel, reminded us strongly that we were in Ireland. Large wax candles were on the mantel-piece, and every convenience necessary to our comfort; at the same time the furniture was so very old-fashioned and dilapidated, that no one in this country would think it possible to use it.

We were shown other contrivances of the former owner, such as a door in the entrance hall, (through which the servants were continually passing,) the motion of which wound up a clock, the face being over the sideboard, in the dining-room. Several doors in the house were made double, in a way that I could not see the use of. Two doors were fastened together at the hinge side, making a right angle with each other, so that in opening one door you shut the other, and had to open that before you could enter, and when that opened, the one behind you shut. Miss Edgeworth said it was for safety in times of danger. She always mentioned her father with great respect, and even reverence, in her manner; but nothing that I saw or heard there raised my opinion of him. I think his never allowing his gifted daughter any retirement, but insisting on her writing all her books in that great library, where he was teaching the children their lessons, and everyone occupied in various ways, was a real act of tyranny; but she did not so regard it.

In building his house, Mr. Edgeworth would have no drawing-room, no sitting-room, but the one large library, with numerous windows on one side, some made into alcoves by projecting book-shelves. There were a great many books, some fine engravings, beautiful drawings, and very good oil paintings by Mrs. Edgeworth. It was a very pleasant family-room, fully furnished with tables, sofas, and lounges, a curious clock, and various models. A little old-fashioned work-table, with a small desk on it, was used by Miss Edgeworth for writing all her books.

The fourth wife of Mr. Edgeworth was our hostess, and performed her part charmingly. She must have been very pretty, for, though short, fat, and forty, her appearance was very agreeable. Miss Edgeworth was shorter still, and carried herself very upright, with a dapper figure and quick movements. She was the remains of a blonde, with light eyes and hair; she was now gray, but wore a dark frisette, whilst the gray hair showed through her cap behind. She was so plain that she was never willing to sit for her portrait, and that is the reason why the public has never been made acquainted with her personal appearance.

In conversation we found her delightful. She was full of anecdotes about remarkable people, and often spoke from her personal knowledge of them. Her memory, too, was stored with valuable information, and her manner of narrating was so animated that it was difficult to realize her age. In telling an anecdote of Mirabeau, she stepped out before us, and, extending her arm, spoke a sentence of his in the impassioned manner of a French orator, and did it so admirably that it was quite thrilling.

She told us two speeches of Madame de Stael which are worth remembering. Madame Necker was a harsh mother, and always found a great deal of fault with her daughter; but her husband knew his child's merits, and liked her to have her own way. One day a gentleman entered the room, just as Madame Necker flourished out of it, after reprimanding her daughter, who stood abashed in the middle of the room, with tears on her face. He endeavored to console her by saying that she must not mind her mother's reproofs, as long as her father was satisfied with her, and he told her how much M. Necker admired her. To this the girl replied, "_Mon pere pense a mon bonheur present, ma mere songe a mon avenir_." I talked with Miss Edgeworth of a work on Progressive Education by Madame Necker de Saussure; she thought it dull and tedious, and said that Madame de Stael had a great admiration of that cousin, and said of her, "_Elle a tous les talens qu' on me suppose, et toutes les vertus qui me manquent_."

Miss Edgeworth and all her family took the part of the English Government in their treatment of the Irish, and had no sympathy for the wrongs and sufferings of their countrymen. Bigoted Episcopalians, they would grant no rights to the Roman Catholics, and this made them very unpopular in their own neighborhood.

They had been instrumental in establishing a free school for the sons of poor Protestant clergymen in the town which bordered on their grounds, and they took us to see it. It was market-day, so the main street was full of the lower order of Irish, with their horses and carts, asses and panniers, tables and stands full of eatables and articles of clothing. Sometimes the cart or car served as a counter on which to display their goods. The women in bright-colored cotton gowns and white caps with full double borders, made a very gay appearance. As we all passed through the crowd to the school-house, the enmity of the Papists to Protestant landholders was but too evident.

Though Mrs. Edgeworth had been the Lady Bountiful of the village for many years, there were no bows or smirks for her and her friends, no making way before her, no touching of hats or pleasant looks. A sullen expression and a dogged immovability were on every side of us. Mr. Butler, who had but just arrived in Edgeworthtown, was as much struck with it as we were, and it quite excited him. He remarked upon it as a want of manners in the people, and called them uncivilized; but there was more in it than that. It spoke to us Americans of the long train of oppressive measures under which the Irish had groaned for years; of the Protestant clergy paid by rates levied on the Roman Catholics, and of the tyranny exercised by Protestant landholders. Twenty-nine years have passed since I stood in that Irish crowd, and much has been done to improve their condition; all the political disabilities then complained of by the Papists have been removed, oppressive laws have been done away with, emigration has relieved the land of its surplus population; and were it not for the designs of the Romish Church to wrest the island from the dominion of a Protestant power, that country might now be prosperous and happy.

When we visited Miss Edgeworth, she had published her last work, "Helen," and was writing another to be called "Taking for Granted," but I never heard of its being published. She told me that she meant to show the mischief of taking things for granted, and acting upon them as if they were known facts; and she begged me to send her any instances of the evil consequences of "taking for granted" which fell under my observation.

ON A PAIR OF OLD SHOES.

What a vulgar subject?--By no means, my dear Madam! On the contrary, a most delightful, free and easy, suggestive topic. When the old philosopher enumerated the best old things to burn, drink, etc., he should have specially mentioned old shoes to wear,--John, take away these heavy boots, and bring me my slippers,--my old, loose, easy, comfortable slippers.--There! They are not handsome, I grant you, Madam. But beauty is only skin-deep, you know; and when we talk of tanned skin, I assure you its beauty often conceals unloveliness beneath. They are broad and large;--yes, this foot of mine, which is not particularly handsome in any case, does not look attractive in the old slippers, I acknowledge. Ball would never ask me to sit for a model, nor would Hunt ever wish to paint my pedal proportions, should either see me thus. But--think of the luxury!--My dear Madam, please to put out that elegant little foot of yours,--only the foot,--just as it looks, when you take your afternoon promenade, and all the world admires its beauty. Thank you! What a bewitching little thing it is! How that snug little boot fits it like a glove! Why do you shrink so? I scarcely touched it. Oh, it pinches! I should never dream it; it looks faultless. Is it possible, that, as you sail along with flowing skirts, the very object which the world admires is the source of exquisite pain? When Frank used to greet you with an elaborate bow, could it be that the charming smile you returned was half grimace, as you leaned somewhat carelessly on that narrow sole? I can't tell where it pinches; but were I permitted to see the soft, tender flesh--You would never permit it? And so you go along, gracefully holding up those snowy skirts, and showing to the world the lovely outside, while you inwardly wince and groan over every pebble. Don't you go home, Madam, and hasten to get off that instrument of torture, and luxuriate in the freedom you obtain thereby? Now Ball and Hunt, when they see those charming little booted beauties, would be enraptured to reproduce them in marble and oils. Yet, after all, are not my old splayfooted slippers much more desirable affairs?--No?--You are willing to endure the pain, because of the looks. Thank your stars, my dear Madam, that you have the choice, and that, when you get into that nice little boudoir, you can exchange the suffering of show for the comfort of privacy. Did Frank ever know how they pinched? Didn't he think, that, when you unlaced them, there came out a tiny, comely foot, as plump and fair as a baby's? Frank never knew--till after the wedding--what a squeezing and pinching and doubling and twisting they had undergone, when they were peeping out under the flounces for his special eye. Do you ever wish that you had worn something which had disgusted Frank at the outset? If so, my dear Madam, I wouldn't exchange my old splay slippers for those No. Twos of yours.

Ah, we bear many sorts of coverings over the long and weary road of life! I know of a pair of tiny shoes which you have got carefully treasured up in secret. I know how you sometimes take them out and wistfully gaze on the faded, worn, unlovely little things,--worthless to everybody else, but, oh, so dear to you! I see the trembling tear which you do not care to wipe away, as the image of the little darling who wore them comes up in all its by-gone beauty before you. They will never again be borne toddling to your side. The little feet, once encased therein, will never tread the stony walks of men. They long ago rested on their early march, never to be resumed.--Ah, how many of us would be glad to have buckled on no other than the first sandals of infancy! How many have fallen into the crevasses of the icy paths they trod! How many have trusted to their bold footing, and fallen, when the step seemed surest, down the treacherous steep!

There is Mademoiselle Joliejambe;--would one suppose that the pink slippers, which terminate those silk-shod _mollets_, could be dangerous _chaussures_? My dear Madam, they are worse than the torturing boots of the old Spanish Inquisition. Better for her that she stood in a postilion's jack-boots.--She could never dance in such things?--No! and therefore were they the better; for no Swiss glacier is so slippery as that gas-lighted stage. She is slipping, Madam, into a terrible abyss, while you and I are gazing, delighted, at her entrechats and pirouettes. She is gliding into a crevasse to which Mont Blanc can furnish none so dread.--What do I mean?--Ah, my dear Madam, better, a thousand times, that her young mother had stored away the soft little shoes of her infancy to mourn over, as you do over your treasures, than have lived to see her tie on those satin things, which have borne her into the gaze of men for a brief, brilliant while, and are bearing her on into the flower-brinked snare of ruin!

There is Vanitas over the way;--he once wore just such pigmy affairs. See him walking down the street, treading with a dignified stride, as though he moved a foot above the vulgar pavement. See that poor, tattered wretch approaching. Down goes his coarse heel, crunch, upon the aristocratic toes of our friend; and observe how Vanitas writhes and limps, as the sudden contact with the lower animal has crushed all his pride and dignity out of him. How gladly would he exchange his costly models of modern skill for the sabots of the meanest peasant! Doesn't he carry those twinges around with him all day, and moralize--if Vanitas is capable of moralizing--upon the danger of fashionable, private corns being trodden on by low, vulgar cowhide? Now if Vanitas had not cultivated those excrescent sensibilities by assiduous compression, if he had thought more of big brains than little feet, his tattered, cowhided friend might have trodden harmlessly on his pedal phalanges. My dear Madam, see to it that Frank groweth not such poor grain. Cowhide is a most useful material, and does much for the world. It treads in the mire, that you and I may walk in cleanliness. It stands in the sodden highway and builds up the dry pathway. It kicks aside the rolling stone, that we may not strike our satined step thereon and fall thereby. Those No. Twos of yours would present but a sorry sight, and the tender charms they cover would be sadly torn and bruised, were it not for the path that it treads out before them. While I sit comfortably in my old slippers, and while you trip gracefully along in those laced beauties, poor, vulgar, soiled cowhide is wearily plodding over the rough, unbroken earth, and knows neither my rest nor your pleasure. I will never look angrily, should I chance to feel its weight. And, Madam, do you look kindly and smilingly--and that costs you nothing, I am sure, _with_out you are a Vanitas in petticoats--on its plain and homely worth.