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THE LAST BACHELOR HOURS OF TOM PAX

To-morrow, at eleven, then, I am to be married! I feel like a mouse conscious of coming cheese. Is it usual for bachelors to feel this way, or am I a peculiar institution? I trust the parson, being himself a married man, will be discreet enough to make a short prayer after the ceremony. Good gracious, my watch has stopped! no it hasn’t, either; I should like to put the hands forward a little. What to do with myself till the time comes, that’s the question. It is useless to go over to Mary’s – she is knee-deep in dressmaker’s traps. I never could see, when one dress is sufficient to be married in, the need women have to multiply them to such an indefinite extent. Think of postponing a man’s happiness in such circumstances, that one more flounce may be added to a dress! Phew! how stifled this room is! I’ll throw up the window; there now – there goes a pane of glass; who cares? I think I will shave; no I won’t – I should be sure to cut my chin – how my hand trembles. I wonder what Mary is thinking about? bless her little soul. Well, for the life of me I don’t know what to do with myself. Suppose I write down

TOM PAX’S LAST BACHELOR WILL AND TESTAMENT

In the name of Cupid, Amen. – I, Tom Pax, being of sound mind, and in immediate prospect of matrimony (praised be Providence for the same), and being desirous of settling my worldly affairs while I have the strength and capacity to do so, I do, with my own hand, write, make, and publish this, my last Will and Testament:

And in the first place, and principally, I commit my heart to the keeping of my adorable Mary, and my body to the parson, to be delivered over at the discretion of my groomsmen, to the aforesaid Mary; and as to such worldly goods as a kind Providence hath seen fit to intrust me with, I dispose of the same in the following manner (I also empower my executors to sell and dispose of my real estate, consisting of empty demijohns, old hats, and cigar boxes, and invest the proceeds in stocks or otherwise, to manage as they may think best; all of which is left to their discretion):

I give and bequeath to Tom Harris, my accomplice in single blessedness, my porcelain punch-bowl, white cotton night-cap, and large leathern chair, in whose arms I first renounced bachelordom and all its evil works.

I give and bequeath to the flames the yellow-covered novels and plays formerly used to alleviate my bachelor pangs, and whose attractions fade away before the scorching sun of my prospective happiness, like a snow wreath between a pair of brass andirons.

I give and bequeath to Bridget Donahue, the chambermaid of this lodging-house (to be applied to stuffing a pin-cushion), the locks of female hair, black, chestnut, brown, and tow-color, to be found in my great coat breast pocket.

I give and bequeath to my washwoman, Sally Mudge, my buttonless shirts, stringless dickeys, gossamer-ventilator stockings, and unmended gloves.

I give and bequeath to Denis M‘Fudge, my bootblack, my half box of unsmoked Havanas, which are a nuisance in my hymeneal nostrils.

I give and bequeath to my benighted and unconverted bachelor friend, Sam Scott, my miserable and sinful piejudices against the blessed institution of matrimony, and may Cupid, of his infinite loving-kindness, take pity on his petrified heart.

In witness whereof, I, Tom Pax, the Testator, hereunto set my hand and seal, as my last Will and Testament, done this twelfth day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six.

Tom Pax. [L.S.]

Witness, Fanny Fern.

TOM PAX’S CONJUGAL SOLILOQUY

Mrs. Pax is an authoress. I knew it when I married her. I liked the idea. I had not tried it then. I had not a clear idea what it was to have one’s wife belong to the public. I thought marriage was marriage, brains not excepted. I was mistaken. Mrs. Pax is very kind: I don’t wish to say that she is not. Very obliging: I would not have you think the contrary; but when I put my arm round Mrs. Pax’s waist, and say, “Mary, I love you,” she smiles in an absent, moonlight-kind of a way, and says, “Yes, to-day is Wednesday, is it not? I must write an article for ‘The Weekly Monopolizer’ to-day.” That dampens my ardor; but presently I say again, being naturally affectionate, “Mary, I love you;” she replies (still abstractedly), “Thank you, how do you think it will do to call my next article for ‘The Weekly Monopolizer,’ ‘The Stray Waif?’”

Mrs. Pax sews on all my shirt-buttons with the greatest good humor: I would not have you think she does not; but with her thoughts still on “The Weekly Monopolizer,” she sews them on the flaps, instead of the wristbands. This is inconvenient; still Mrs. Pax is kindness itself; I make no complaint.

I am very fond of walking. After dinner I say to Mrs. Pax, “Mary, let us take a walk.” She says, “Yes, certainly, I must go down town to read the proof of my article for ‘The Monopolizer.’” So, I go down town with Mrs. Pax. After tea I say, “Mary, let us go to the theater to-night;” she says, “I would be very happy to go, but the atmosphere is so bad there, the gas always escapes, and my head must be clear to-morrow, you know, for I have to write the last chapter of my forthcoming work, ‘Prairie Life.’” So I stay at home with Mrs. Pax, and as I sit down by her on the sofa, and as nobody comes in, I think that this, after all, is better, (though I must say my wife looks well at the Opera, and I like to take her there). I put my arm around Mrs. Pax. It is a habit I have. In comes the servant; and brings a handful of letters for her by mail, directed to “Julia Jesamine!” (that’s my wife’s nom-de-plume). I remove my arm from her waist, because she says “they are probably business letters which require immediate notice.” She sits down at the table, and breaks the seals. Four of them are from fellows who want “her autograph.” Mrs. Pax’s autograph! The fifth is from a gentleman who, delighted with her last book, which he says “mirrored his own soul” (how do you suppose Mrs. Pax found out how to “mirror his soul?”) requests “permission to correspond with the charming authoress.” “Charming!” my wife! “his soul!” Mrs. Pax! The sixth is from a gentleman who desires “the loan of five hundred dollars, as he has been unfortunate in business, and has heard that her works have been very remunerative.” Five hundred dollars for John Smith, from my wife! The seventh letter is from a man at the West, offering her her own price to deliver a lecture before the Pigtown Young Men’s Institute. I like that!

Mrs. Pax opens her writing desk; it is one I gave her; takes some delicate buff note-paper; I gave her that, too; dips her gold pen (my gift) into the inkstand, and writes – writes till eleven o’clock. Eleven! and I, her husband, Tom Pax, sit there and wait for her.

The next morning when I awake, I say, “Mary dear?” She says, “Hush! don’t speak, I’ve just got a capital subject to write about for ‘The Weekly Monopolizer.’” Not that I am complaining of Mrs. Pax, not at all; not that I don’t like my wife to be an authoress: I do. To be sure I can’t say that I knew exactly what it involved. I did not know, for instance, that the Press in speaking of her by her nom-de-plume would call her “Our Julia,” but I would not have you think I object to her being literary. On the contrary, I am not sure that I do not rather like it; but I ask the Editor of “The Weekly Monopolizer,” as a man – as a Christian – as a husband – if he thinks it right – if it is doing as he would be done by – to monopolize my wife’s thoughts as early as five o’clock in the morning? I merely ask for information. I trust I have no resentful feelings toward the animal.

TEA AND DARNING NEEDLES “FOR TWO!”

Not long since, John Bull, in the columns of an English newspaper, growled out his intense disgust at the “trash in the shape of American lady books,” which constantly afflicted him from the other side of the Atlantic.

Here is a book called “Letters from the United States, Canada, and Cuba,” by the Hon. Amelia M. Murray, a lady of supposable refinement, education, and of the highest social position in England; a lady whose daily bread was not dependent upon the immediate publication of her book; who had leisure and opportunity carefully to write, and to correct and revise what she had written.

We propose giving a few extracts to show what advance has been made upon American literature, by our aristocratic British sister. But before beginning, we wish to throw our glove in John Bull’s face, and defy him to produce a greater, or even an equal amount of stupid twaddle, unrhetorical sentences, hap-hazard conclusions, petty, egotistical, uninteresting details, narrow-minded views, and utter want of talent, from between the covers of any American lady book yet published.

The political question discussed by “the Hon.” authoress, we shall not meddle with further than to say, first, that her book contains not one new idea upon the subject; secondly, that her advocacy of a system which condemns a portion of her own sex to helpless, hopeless, brutal prostitution, reflects as little credit on her standard of what is lovely and of good report in woman, as does her book upon female English literature.

We quote the following specimens of Miss Murray’s style:

“At the house of his sister I saw another work by the same artist: two children, the one as an angel leading the awakened soul of the other, with an inscription below; very pretty!”

Again.

Speaking of the cholera in Boston, and the practice of using hot vinegar there, as a disinfective, she says:

“I was told a carriage of this fumigated liquid had been driven through the streets; there are deaths here every day and some at Newport, but it is not believed to be contagious at present, only carrying off the profligate and the debilitated.”

Again.

“Till my introduction to the Governor of New York I did not know that each State has a Governor. Governor Seymour lives at Albany. Some of those Governors are only elected for two years, and this gentleman does credit to popular choice.”

So much for the Queen’s English! Now for one or two specimens of her penetration. The first quotation we make will undoubtedly cause as much surprise to the very many benevolent associations in Boston (which are constantly deploring their inability to meet the voices of distress which cry, help us!), as it did to ourself:

“I never met a beggar in Boston, not even among the Irish, and ladies have told me that they could not find a family on which to exercise their benevolent feelings!”

Governor Seymour, Miss Murray’s friend, will doubtless feel flattered by the following patronizing mention of him. And here we will say, that it would have been more politic in the Hon. Miss Amelia, when we consider England’s late relations to Sebastopol, had she omitted to touch upon so ticklish a subject as British military discipline.

Speaking of Governor Seymour’s review of the New York troops, on Evacuation Day, she says:

“Governor Seymour reviewed these troops in front of the City Hall with as much tranquillity of manner and simple dignity as might have been evinced by one of the most experienced of our public men!”

One more instance of Miss Murray’s superior powers of observation:

“I have found out the reason why ladies, traveling alone in the United States, must be extravagantly dressed; without that precaution they meet with no attention, and little civility, decidedly much less than in any other country, so here it is not as women, but as ladies, they are cared for, and this in Democratic America!”

In the first place, every body but Miss Murray knows that an American lady never “travels expensively dressed.” That there are females who do this, just as they walk our streets in a similar attire, and for a similar purpose, is undeniable; and that they receive from the opposite sex the “attentions” which they seek, is also true; but this, it seems to us, should hardly disturb the serenity of a “Maid of Honor!”

As an American woman, and proud of our birth-right, we resent from our British sister her imputation upon the proverbial chivalry of American gentlemen. We have traveled alone, and in threadbare garments, and we have never found these garments non-conductors of the respectful courtesy of American gentlemen; they have never prevented the coveted glass of water being proffered to our thirsty lips at the dépôt; the offer of the more eligible seat on the shady side of the cars; the offer of the beguiling newspaper, or book, or magazine; the kindly excluding of annoying dust or sun by means of obstinate blinds or windows, unmanageable by feminine fingers; the offer of camphor or cologne for headache or faintness, or one, or all, of the thousand attentions to which the chivalry of American gentlemen prompts them without regard to externals, and too often (shame on the recipients!) without the reward of the bright smile, or kindly “thank you,” to which they are so surely entitled.

I could cite many instances in contradiction of Miss Murray’s assertion that it is “not as women but as ladies,” that American gentlemen care for the gentler sex in America. I will mention only two, out of many, which have come under my own personal observation.

Every body in New York must have noticed the decrepit old woman, with her basket of peanuts and apples, who sits on the steps near the corner of Canal-street (for how long a period the oldest inhabitant only knows). One day toward nightfall, when the execrable state of the crossings almost defied petticoat-dom, I saw her slowly gather up her decrepit limbs, and undiminished wares, and, leaning upon her stick, slowly totter homeward. She reached the point where she wished to cross; it was slippery, wet, and crowded with a Babel of carts and carriages.

She looked despondingly up and down with her faded eyes, and I was about to proffer her my assistance when a gentlemanly, handsome young man stepped to her side, and drawing her withered hand within his arm, safely guided her tottering footsteps across to the opposite sidewalk; then, with a bow, graceful and reverential enough to have satisfied even the cravings of the honorable and virginal Miss Murray, he left her. It was a holy and a beautiful sight, and by no means an uncommon one, “even in America.”

Again. I was riding in an omnibus, when a woman, very unattractive in person and dress, got out, leaving a very common green vail upon the seat. A gentleman present sprang after her with it in his hand, ran two blocks, placed it in her possession, and returned to his place, not having received even a bow of thanks from the woman in whose service his nicely polished boots had been so plentifully mud-bespattered.

If “the honorable Miss Murray” came to this country with the expectation that a coach-and-six would be on hand to convey her from every dépôt to the hotel she was to honor with her aristocratic presence, or that gentlemen would remain with their heads uncovered, and their hands on the left side of their vests as she passed, in honor of the reflected effulgence of England’s Queen (supposed to emanate from Miss Murray’s very ordinary person), it is no marvel she was disappointed. We should like to be as sure, when we travel in England, of being (as a woman), as well and as courteously treated by John Bull as was the honorable Miss Amelia by Brother Jonathan in America.

That there may be men, “even in America,” who measure out their nods, and bows, and wreathed smiles, by the wealth and position of the recipient, we do not doubt; for we have seen such, but would gently suggest to “the honorable Miss Amelia” that in the pockets of such men she will generally find —naturalization papers!

A HOUSE WITHOUT A BABY

There was not a child in the house, not one; I was sure of it, when I first went in. Such a spick-and-span look as it had! Chairs – grown-up chairs, plastered straight up against the wall; books arranged by rule and compass; no dear little careless finger-marks on furniture, doors, or window-glass; no hoop, or ball, or doll, or mitten, or basket, or picture-book on the premises; not a pin, or a shred on the angles and squares of the immaculate carpet; the tassels of the window shades, at which baby-fingers always make such a dead set, as fresh as if just from the upholsterer’s. I sat down at the well-polished window, and looked across the street. At the upper window of a wooden house opposite, I saw a little bald baby, tied into a high chair, speculating upon the panorama in the street, while its little fat hands frantically essayed to grab distant pedestrians on the sidewalk. Its mother sat sewing diligently by its side. Happy woman! she has a baby! She thought so, too; for by-and-by she threw down her work, untied the fettering handkerchief, took the child from its prison-house, and covered it with kisses. Ah! she had heard a step upon the stairs —the step! And now there are two to kiss the baby; for John has come to his dinner, and giving both mother and child a kiss that made my lips work, he tosses the babe up in his strong arms, while its mother puts dinner on the table.

But, pshaw! – here come the old maids I was sent to see. I hear the rustle of their well-preserved silks in the entry. I feel proper all over. Vinegar and icicles! how shall I ever get through with it? Now the door opens. What a bloodless look they have? – how dictionary-ish they speak! – how carefully they lower themselves into their chairs, as if the cushions were stuffed with live kittens! – how smooth their ruffs and ribbons!

Bibs and pinafores! Give me the upper room in the wooden house, with kissing John and the bald baby!

GLANCES AT PHILADELPHIA. NUMBER ONE

And this is Philadelphia! All hail, Philadelphia! Where a lady’s aching fingers may be reprieved from the New York thraldom of skirt-holding off dirty pavements; where the women have the good taste, in dress, to eschew the gaudy tulip and array themselves like the lily; where hoops are unknown, or at least so modified as to become debateable ground; where lady shop-keepers know how to be civil to their own sex, and do not keep you standing on one leg an hour after you hand them a bill, while with hawk eye and extended forefinger they peruse that nuisance called the “Counterfeit Detector.” Where the goods, not better than in New York, save in their more quiet hue, are never crammed down a customer’s unwilling throat; where omnibus-drivers do not expectorate into the coach-windows, or bang clouds of dust into your doomed eyes from the roof, thumping for your fare, or start their vehicles before female feet have taken leave of what has nearly proved to so many of us the final step! where the markets – but hold! they deserve a paragraph by themselves.

Ye gods! what butter! Shall I ever again swallow the abominable concoction called butter in New York? That I – Fanny Fern – should have lived to this time, and never known the bliss of tasting Philadelphia butter! – never seen those golden pounds, each separately folded in its fresh green leaf, reposing so temptingly, and crying, Eat me, so eloquently, from the snow-white tubs! What have the Philadelphians done that they should be fed on such crisp vegetables, such fresh fruits, and such creamy ice-creams? That their fish should come dripping to their mouths from their native element. That their meat should wait to be carried home, instead of crawling by itself? Why should the most circumscribed and frugal of housekeepers, who goes with her snowy basket to buy her husband’s dinner, be able to daintyfy his table with a fragrant sixpenny bouquet? Why should the strawberries be so big, and dewy, and luscious? Why should the peas, and cauliflowers, and asparagus, and lettuce – Great Cæsar! what have the Philadelphians done that they should wallow in such high-stepping clover?

I have it!

It is the reward of virtue —It is the smile of Heaven on men who are too chivalric to puff tobacco-smoke in ladies’ faces which beautify and brighten their streets. They deserve it – they deserve their lily-appareled wives and roly-poly, kissable, sensibly-dressed children. They deserve to walk up those undefiled marble-steps, into their blessed home sanctuaries, overshadowed by those grand, patriarchal trees. They deserve that their bright-eyed sons should be educated in a noble institution like “The Central High School,” where pure ventilation and cheerfulness are considered of as much importance as mathematics, or Greek and Latin. Where the placid brow and winning smile of the Principal are more potent auxiliaries than ferules or frowns. Give me the teacher on whose desk blooms the bouquet, culled by a loving pupil’s fingers; whose eye, magnetic with kindness – whose voice, electric with love for his calling, wakes up into untiring action all that is best and noblest in the sympathetic, fresh young hearts before him. A human teacher, who recognizes in every boy before him (be he poorly or richly clad – be he glorious in form and face as a young Apollo, or cramped and dwarfed into unshapeliness in the narrow cradle of poverty) an immortal soul, clamorous with its craving needs, seeking the light, throwing out its luxuriant tendrils for something strong and kindly to cling to, longing for the upper air of expansion and strength. God bless the human teacher who recognizes, and acts as if he recognized this! Heaven multiply such schools as “The Philadelphia High School,” with its efficient Principal, its able Professors and teachers, and its graduates who number by scores the noble and honored of the land, and of the sea.

I love to linger in cemeteries. And so, in company with an editorial friend, Colonel Fitzgerald, of the Philadelphia City Item, to whose hospitality, with that of his lovely wife, I am much indebted, I visited “Laurel Hill.” The group “Old Mortality” at its entrance needs no praise of mine. The eye might linger long ere it wearied in gazing at it. I like cemeteries, but I like not elaborate monuments, or massive iron railings; a simple hedge – a simple head-stone (where the tiny bird alights, ere, like the parting spirit, it plumes its wings for a heavenward flight) for its inscription – the words to which the universal heart has responded, and will respond till time shall be no longer – till the graves give up their dead; “Mother” – “Husband” – “Wife” – “Child” – what epitaph can improve this? what language more eloquently measure the height and breadth, and length and depth of sorrow?

And so, as I read these simple words at “Laurel Hill,” my heart sympathized with those unallied to me, save by the common bond of bereavement; and thus I passed on – until I came to an author’s grave – no critic’s pen again to sting that heart; – pulseless it must have been, not to have stirred with all the wealth of bud and blossom, waving tree and shining river, that lay bathed in the golden, summer sunlight above him. So, God willing, would I sleep at last; but not yet – not yet, my pen, till thou hast shouted again and again —Courage! Courage!– to earth’s down-trodden and weary-hearted.