Читать книгу: «Fresh Leaves», страница 17

A HOT DAY

Sissing fry-pans, and collapsed flapjacks – what a hot day! Not a breath of air stirring, and mine almost gone. Fans enough, but no nerve to wield ’em. Food enough, but no strength to chew it. Chairs hot; sofa hotter; beds hottest. Sun on the back stoop; sun on the front stoop; and hot neighbors on both sides. Kittens mewing; red-nosed babies crying; poor little Hot-ten-tots! dogs dragging about with protruding tongues and inquiring tails; cockerels feebly essaying to crow. Every thing sticky, and flabby, and limpsy. Can’t read; can’t sew; can’t write; can’t talk; can’t walk; can’t even sleep; hate every body who passes through the room to make it hotter.

Now, just see that fly. If I have knocked her off my nose once, I have done it forty times; nothing will serve her but the bridge of my nose. I say her, because I am sure it is a female, on account of its extraordinary and spiteful persistence.

“Will I have any thing to drink?” No. Wine heats me; lemonade sours me; water perspires me. “Will I have the blinds closed?” No. “Will I have ’em open?” No. “What will I have?” Well – if there’s an old maid to be had, for heaven’s sake, walk her through this room to cool it. “What will I have for dinner?” Now, isn’t that the last drop in my brimming cup? Dinner, indeed! Soup hot; fish hot; beef hot; mutton hot; chicken hot; – ugh! Hot potatoes; hot squash; hot peas; hot pudding; hot children; – ugh! Tell that butcher to make his will, or get out of my kitchen. “Lady down stairs wishes to see me?” In the name of Adam and Eve, take all my dresses off the pegs and show her – but never believe I’d be so mad as to get into them for any body living.

FUNERAL NOTES

Was there ever any thing like these insensate New Yorkers? Peep with me into that undertaker’s shop, sandwiched between a millinery establishment and an oyster saloon. See the coffins, Behemoth and Lilliputian, pyramided in corners, spread out in rows, challenging in platoons, on the sidewalk, the passers-by; while in the windows are corpse-caps, stiffly starched and plaited, with white ribbon strings, ready to be tied under your chin, or mine.

See the jolly owner, seated on a chair in the middle of his shop, with his legs crossed, his hat on the back of his head, nonchalantly smoking, with his children about his knee; as if the destroying angel had charge to pass unvisited his blood-besprinkled door-post; as if eyes now bright with hope were never to weep themselves dim over those narrow houses.

Now a customer comes in; a young man, whose swollen lids tell their own sorrowful tale. The jolly undertaker, wide awake, throws away his cigar stump, hands a chair to the new comer, exchanges a few words with him, draws pencil and paper from his pocket, and taking an infant’s coffin into his lap for a writing desk, commences scribbling down directions. Meanwhile, a hearse rattles up to the door; none of your poor-house hearses, in rusty black, with “seedy” driver, and hang-dog looking horses; but a smart, sonsie, gay-looking New York turn-out – fit for a turtle-consuming, turtle-consumed mayor; with nine huge ostrich feathers, black and white, nodding patronizingly to the a-gape urchins, who stand around the door, who are almost willing to get into a coffin to have a ride with them – with two spanking white horses, equal to Dan Rice’s “Excelsior,” with ostrich feathers in either ear, flowing as their well-combed tails, which whisk gracefully over the black velvet pall and trappings, as if Life were a holiday and Death its Momus.

Now the young man staggers out, shuddering as he passes the hearse, and screening his swollen lids from curious gazers and the obtrusive sunshine, to whom broken hearts are an every-day story. The jolly undertaker rubs his hands, for death is busy and business is brisk. The young man has made no bargain with him beforehand as to prices; how could he? his heart was full of the widowed sister he left behind, and her newly-made orphans; he only remarked, as he left the street and number, “to do what is customary;” and custom requires that carriages shall be provided for all the “friends and acquaintances” who may wish to go. So “friends and acquaintances” gather (when the funeral hour arrives). Why not? The day is fine and a ride to the out-of-town cemetery pleasant, and (to them) inexpensive; they whose eyes scarce rested with interest on the living form, gaze ceremoniously and curiously on the dead; the widow’s tears are counted, the mourning dresses of herself and children scrutinized; the prayer that always falls so immeasurably short of what critical ears demand, is said; a great silence – then a rustling – bustling – whispering – then the coffin is borne past the widow, who sees it through a mist of tears; and then the long procession winds its way through harlequin Broadway, with its brass bands, and military companies, its thundering omnibusses, its bedizened courtezans, its laughing pedestrians, and astonished, simple-hearted country-folk. Wheels lock, milk carts and market wagons join the procession; Barnum’s band pipes from out the Museum balcony merry “Yankee Doodle,” and amid curses and shouts, laughter and tears, the mournful cavalcade moves on.

And now the incongruous showy farce is over, and the “friends and acquaintances” alighting at their respective houses, re-cross their unblighted thresholds, and the widow and children return to their desolate hearth-stone (how desolate, God and themselves only know); while poverty, strange and unbidden guest, creeps stealthily after them, and takes the empty chair.

O clamorous tyrant, Custom! O thoughtless, unfriendly friends, who can mourn for the dead only in carriages, that swallow up the little legacy left for the living, by the dead for whom you profess to grieve!

Beautiful the calm faith of Swedenborg, turning its hopeful eye away from such childish sackcloth mummery; anchoring where no wave of earthly trouble rolls; gliding through the accustomed life-paths, not lonely, not hopeless; feeling still the warm life-clasp, hearing still the loved voices, breaking the bread, or blessing the meat.

THE “FAVORITE” CHILD

Why will parents use that expression? What right have you to have a favorite child? The All-Father maketh his sun to shine alike upon the daisy and the rose. Where would you be, were His care measured by your merits or deserts? Is your child none the less your child, that nature has denied him a fluent tongue, or forgotten her cunning, when, in careless mood, she fashioned his limbs? Because beauty beams not from the eye, is there no intelligence there? Because the rosy flush mantles not the pale cheek, does the blood never tingle at your coldness or neglect? Because the passive arms are not wound about your neck, has the soul no passionate yearnings for parental love? O, how often does God, more merciful than you, passing by the Josephs of your household, stoop in his pity and touch those quivering lips with a live coal from off the altar? How often does this neglected one, burst from out the chrysalis in which your criminal coldness has enveloped him, and soaring far above your wildest parental imaginings, compel from your ambition, what he could not gain from your love?

How often does he replenish with liberal hand the coffers which the “favorite child,” in the selfishness which you fostered, has drained of their last fraction. “He that is first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” Let parents write this on their heart tablets. Let them remember it when they repulse the little clinging arms, or turn a deaf ear to the childish tale of sorrow. O, gather up those clinging tendrils of affection with gentlest touch; trample them not with the foot of haste or insensibility rudely in the dust.

 
“And they, in the darkest of days, shall be
Greenness, and beauty, and strength to thee.”
 

A QUESTION, AND ITS ANSWER

To Mary M., who desires a frank expression of opinion from the undersigned, with regard to her marrying an old bachelor.

Answer. Don’t do it. A man who for so long a period has had nobody but himself to think of, who knows where the finest oysters and venison steaks are to be found, and who has for years indulged in these and every other little selfish inclination unchecked, will, you may be sure (without punning), make a most miserable help-meat. When you have tea, he will wish it were coffee; when you have coffee, he will wish it were tea; when you have both, he will desire chocolate; and when you have all, he will tell you that they are made much better at his favorite restaurant. His shirts never will be ironed to suit him, his cravats will be laid in the drawer the wrong way, and his pocket-handkerchiefs marked in the wrong corner. He will always be happy to wait upon you, provided your way is his way; but an extra walk round a block will put him out of humor for a week. He will be as unbending as a church-steeple – as exacting as a Grand Turk, and as impossible to please as a teething baby. Take my advice, Mary; give the old fossil the mitten, and choose a male specimen who is in the transition state, and capable of receiving impressions.

WINTER

Hoary-headed old Winter, I have had enough of you! Not that I shrink from facing your rough breath, in a ten-mile walk, on the coldest day on which you ever made icicles; for I am no fair-weather sailor, not I; I have no thousand-dollar dress to spoil, and I am not afraid to increase the dimensions of my ankle by a never-to-be-sufficiently-adored India-rubber boot. I am dependent neither upon cars nor omnibusses, though I am, like other mortals, sometimes brought up short for want of a ferry-boat; but I am tired of frozen ground. I am tired of denuded trees, and leafless vines and branches, scraping against walls and fences, in the vain attempt to frictionize a little warmth into their stiffened limbs. I am tired of gray skies, and the mournful wailing of the winter wind; the stars have a steel-like glitter, and the moonbeams on the snow petrify me like the ghost of a smile on the face of a wire-drawn old maid. I long, like a prisoned bird, for a flight into green fields – I can not sing without the blossoming flowers. I would go to sleep with them, nor wake till the soft spring sheds warm, joyful tears, to call forth her hidden treasures.

And yet, old Winter, I have liked thee less well than now; when the hungry fire devoured the last remaining faggot, and Nature’s frozen face was but typical of the faces that my adverse fortune had petrified; but who cares for thee or them? So surely as prosperity brought back their sycophantic smiles, so surely shall thy stiff neck be bowed before the bounty-laden Spring. “Hope on – hope ever;” and yet how meaningless fall these words upon the ear of the poor widow, who but a stone’s throw from my window, sits watching beside her dead husband, heeding neither the wailing cry of the babe at her breast, nor the wilder wail of the winter wind, as it drifts the snow against the door.

“Hope on – hope ever.” She looks at you with a vacant stare, and then at the lifeless form before her, as if that were her mute answer. You tell her to trust in God, when it is her bitterest sorrow that the voice of her rebellious heart is, “Ye have taken away my idol, and what have I left?”

“Left?” poor mourner. O, so much, that you can not see until those falling tears have cleared your vision and eased your pain. “Left?” the sweet memory of unclouded earthly love, of which not even death can rob you; tones and looks which you will count over, when no human eye sees you, as the miser tells his hoarded gold.

“Left?” his child and yours, who, with the blessed baptism of holy tears, you will call God’s. “Left?” O, many a household, whose inmates pressing their anguished brows under living sorrows, would bless God for the sweet memories of earthly love that you cling to in your pain. “Left?” tearful mourner; a crown to win, sweeter for the wearing, when thorns have pressed the brow.

“Left?” a cross to bear, but O, so light to carry, when heaven is the goal!

 
“One by one thy griefs shall meet thee,
Do not fear an armed band;
One will fade as others greet thee,
Shadows passing through the land.
 
 
“Do not look at life’s long sorrow,
See how small each moment’s pain;
God will help thee for to-morrow,
Every day begin again.”
 

A GAUNTLET FOR THE MEN

I maintain it: all the heroism of the present day is to be found among women. I say it to your beards. I am sick of such remarks as these: “Poor fellow! he was unfortunate in business, and so he took to drinking;” or – “poor fellow! he had a bad wife, and lost all heart.” What does a woman do who is unfortunate in business, I would like to know? Why – she tries again, of course, and keeps on trying to the end of the chapter, notwithstanding the pitiful remuneration man bestows upon her labor, notwithstanding his oft-repeated attempts to cheat her out of it when she has earned it! What does a woman do, who has a bad, improvident husband? Works all the harder, to be sure, to make up his deficiencies to her household; works day and night; smiles when her heart and back are both breaking; speaks hopeful words when her very soul is dying within her; denies herself the needed morsel to increase her children’s portion, and crushed neither by the iron gripe of poverty, nor allured by the Judas-smile of temptation, hopefully puts her trust in Him who feedeth the sparrows.

She “the weaker sex?” Out on your pusillanimous manhood! “Took to drinking because he was unhappy!” Bless – his – big – Spartan – soul! How I admire him! Couldn’t live a minute without he had every thing to his mind; never had the slightest idea of walking round an obstacle, or jumping over it; never practiced that sort of philosophical gymnastics – couldn’t grit his teeth at fate, and defy it to do its worst, because they chattered so; – poor fellow! Wanted buttered toast, and had to eat dry bread; liked “2.40,” and had to go a-foot; fond of wine, and had to drink Croton; couldn’t smoke, though his stove-pipe did; rushed out of the world, and left his wife and children to battle with the fate that his coward soul was afraid to meet. Brave, magnanimous fellow!

Again – we are constantly hearing that the extravagance of women debars young men from the bliss of matrimony. Poor things! they can’t select a wife from out the frivolous circle of fashion; there are no refined, well-educated, lady-like, practical girls and women, whom any man, with a man’s soul, might be proud to call wife, nobly struggling for an honest maintenance as writers, governesses, teachers, semptresses, and milliners. They never read such an advertisement as this in the papers:

“Wanted, by a young girl, a situation as governess. She can teach the English branches, French and Italian; and is willing to accept a small remuneration, to secure a respectable home.”

Fudge! None so blind as they who won’t see. The truth is, most of the young men of the present day are selfish to the backbone. “Poor,” too – very poor! – never go to Shelby’s or Delmonico’s for a nice little game supper, washed down with champagne at $2 a bottle; never smoke dozens of cigars a day, at six cents a piece; never invite —themselves to go to concerts, the opera, or the theater! Wish they could afford to get married, but can’t, at least not till, as they elegantly express it, “they meet a pretty girl who has the tin.”

SOLILOQUY OF A LITERARY HOUSEKEEPER

“Spring cleaning!” Oh misery! Ceilings to be whitewashed, walls to be cleaned, paint to be scoured, carpets to be taken up, shaken, and put down again; scrubbing women, painters, and whitewashers, all engaged for months a-head, or beginning on your house to secure the job, and then running off a day to somebody else’s to secure another. Yes, spring cleaning to be done; closets, bags, and baskets to be disemboweled; furs and woolens to be packed away; children’s last summer clothes to be inspected (not a garment that will fit – all grown up like Jack’s bean-stalk); spring cleaning, sure enough. I might spring my feet off and not get all that done. When is that book of mine to get written, I’d like to know? It’s Ma’am, will you have this? and Ma’am, will you have that? and Ma’am, will you have the other thing? May I be kissed if I hadn’t more time to write when I lived in an attic on salt and potatoes, and scrubbed the floor myself. Must I turn my house topsy-turvy, and inside out, once a year, because my grandmother did, and send my MSS. flying to the four winds, for this traditionary “spring cleaning.” Spring fiddlestick! Must I buy up all Broadway to be made into dresses, because all New York women go fashion-mad? What’s the use of having a house, if you can’t do as you like in it? What’s the use of being an authoress, if you can’t indulge in the luxury of a shabby bonnet, or a comfortable old dress? What’s the use of dressing when your cook can outshine you? What is the use of dragging brocade and velvet through ferry-boats and omnibusses, to serve as mats for market-baskets and dirty boots? “There goes Lily Larkspur, the authoress, in that everlasting old black silk.” Well – what’s the use of being well off, if you can’t wear old clothes. If I was poor, as I was once, I couldn’t afford it. Do you suppose I’m going to wrinkle up my face, scowling at unhappy little boys for treading on a five-hundred-dollar silk? or fret myself into a fever because some gentleman throws a cigar-stump on its lustrous trailing folds? no, no; life is too short for that, and much too earnest. Give me good health – the morning for writing, and no interruptions, plenty of fresh air afterwards, and an old gown to enjoy it in, and you may mince along in your peacock dry-goods till your soul is as shriveled as your body.

A BREAKFAST-TABLE REVERIE

I looked up – they were laughing at me – I am accustomed to be laughed at – so it neither moved nor astonished me. They had been laughing because I had been reading so long, and so intently, the advertising page of my daily paper. And why not? when it is often to me the most interesting part of it. To be sure, I look at it with a pair of eyes that have not always been undimmed with tears; I think sometimes of the unwritten tragedy there may be in a four-line advertisement which scarce arrests the careless, laughing eye. I think of the days and nights of misery it took, the suffering and privation, to goad the sensitive heart up to its first appeal to the public ear – the trembling fingers which may have penned it – the tears which well-nigh obliterated it – the leaden feet which bore it, almost helplessly, to its destination.

No, I was not vexed that they laughed at me, for how should they, whose life-path had been always flower-bestrown, think of these sad things?

I had been reading what follows. Listen

“A young lady, suddenly thrown upon her own resources for support, desires a situation as Governess. She can teach all the English branches, understands French, German, and Italian, and would be willing to accept even the smallest compensation.”

I saw her! homeless – friendless – heart-broken; willing to accept the most humiliating, grinding conditions for a safe and immediate shelter for her innocence. I saw the cold, calculating eye of some lady fashionist fasten upon the touching appeal. I saw her place the young girl’s pressing necessities in one scale, and her avarice in the other. I saw her include, in her acceptance of the post of governess, that of lace-laundress and nursery-maid; and I saw the poor young creature meekly, even thankfully, accept the conditions, while her wealthy patroness questioned her qualifications, depreciated her services, and secretly rejoiced at securing such a prize, at such an economical rate of compensation.

I saw another young girl similarly situated, but even less fortunate than the one of whom I have spoken. I saw the libidinous eye of a wretch who reads the advertising sheet with an eye to “young governesses,” fasten upon her advertisement. I saw him engage her, as he has others, for some fictitious family, in some fictitious place, constituting himself the head of it, and her escort on the way – only to turn, alas! her sweet innocent trust into the bitter channel of a life-long and unavailing remorse.

I took up the paper and read again:

“Who wants a boy? – A widower, with six children, will dispose of an infant to some family inclined to receive it.”

That a widower might possibly be so situated as to render such a measure necessary, I could conceive, but that a father could pen such a brusque, hilarious, jocular – “halloa-there” – announcement of the fact, rather stunned me.

“Who wants a boy?”

As if it were a colt, or a calf, or a six-weeks young pup – or any thing under heaven but his own flesh and blood! as if the little innocent had never lain beneath the loving heart of her whose last throb was for its sweet helplessness – last prayer for its vailed future.

Shade of the mother hover over that child!

I read again:

“Information wanted of a little girl, who, at the age of five years, was placed, ten years ago, in – alms-house.”

I thought of her cheerless childhood (as I looked around my own bright hearthstone at my own happy children). I saw her yearning vainly for the sweet ties of kindred. I followed her from thence out into the world, where all but herself, even the humblest, seem to have some human tie to make life sweet; I saw her wandering hither and thither, like Noah’s weary dove, without finding the heart’s resting-place; wondering, when she had time to wonder (for the heavy burden of daily toil which her slender shoulders bent beneath), if one heart yet beats on God’s green earth, through which her own life-tide flows.

I think of this – I wonder who it is who “wants information” concerning her. I wonder is it some remorseful relative, some brother, some sister, some father whose heart is at length touched with pity for the unrecognized little exile – ay – such things have been!

“Clerks out of employment.”

Need it be? With acres of fertile earth lying fair in the broad sunshine, waiting only the touch of their sinewy muscles, to throw out uncounted embryo treasures, while ruddy Health stands smiling at the plow!

Then I read of starving seamstresses, with no stock in trade but their needle; nothing but that too often, God help them! between their souls and perdition; and, then, in the very face of my womanly instincts, I say, let them lecture —let them preach – let them even be doctors, if they will (provided they keep their hands off me!)

Then I read, alas! advertisements, which promise youth and purity to lead them through the scorching fires of sin unharmed, unscathed, which say that the penalty annexed by a just God to his violated laws (even in this world), they will turn aside; that a man can take fire into his bosom and not be burned. And then I think that the editor who for paltry gain, throws such firebrands into pure and happy homes should look well that the blight fall not on his own.

But there is comedy as well as tragedy in an advertising sheet. I am fond of poetry; my eye catches a favorite extract from Longfellow, or Bryant, or Percival, or Morris; I read it over with renewed pleasure, blessing the author in my heart the while. I am decoyed into the building to which it serves as a fairy vestibule. Where do I find myself?

By Parnassus! in a carpet-warehouse – in a sausage-shop – in a druggist’s – shoemaker’s – tailor’s – or hatter’s establishment.

Who shall circumscribe American ingenuity where dollars and cents are concerned?

Answer me, great Barnum!