Doesticks, What He Says Part 11

Ready for a dance; got into the ball-room, which was so full already that each cotillon had only a s.p.a.ce about as big as a pickle-tub--"balance four" and you stepped on somebody's heels and tore off the skirt of some lady's dress--"forward two" and you poked your nose into the whiskers of the gentleman opposite, and felt his neck-tie in your eye, and "promenade all" was the signal for an animated but irregular fancy dance upon the toes of the bystanders.

But this quadrille was voted by most of our ladies to be altogether too antiquated and energetic--the truth is, city dancing is no more like a country jig than a dead march is like a hornpipe--in the one case the ladies slide about with a die-away air, as if one lively step would annihilate their delicate frames; and in the other, they dance, as if they were made of watch-springs and india rubber.

The only way to get an ordinary city girl really interested in a dance, is to have some moustachoed puppy put his arm round her waist, hug her close up to him, spin her round the room till her head swims.

But the dancing couldn't last for ever, and at length we had to prepare for the ride home.

Towards morning the music got tired, the leading violinist was fiddling on one string on the wrong side of the bridge, and the ophicleide man, unable from sheer exhaustion to convey his potables to his mouth, was pouring them into his instrument, which he had regaled with four mugs of ale and a brandy smash, and the little fifer, with his foot in the big end of the French horn, was wasting his precious breath in trying to coax a quick step out of a drumstick, which he mistook for a flageolet.

Compelled to stop dancing. Ladies went to a private room and repaired their damaged wardrobe with pins and other extemporaneous contrivances, known of them alone. Gentlemen put on what hats and great-coats the preceding parties had left, paid the bill--woke up the driver, and all started for home.

Shower came on, making the ladies look like damaged kaleidoscopes, and taking the starch out of the gentlemen's collars--the gum out of their hats, and the color out of their whiskers.

Upset--females got scattered round loose (horses didn't run away, not a bit of it), one young lady had her foot in my overcoat pocket, and both hands clinched in my hair--got out of the snarl at last, and found that I had traps enough hanging to me to manufacture a small-sized new married couple--a set of false teeth in my fur glove--two pairs of patent moustaches, with the springs broken, in my hat-band, half a head of glossy, ringleted hair in my b.u.t.ton-hole, a lace collar hanging to my pantaloons, and my boots full of puff combs.

Righted up at last, hurried over mile-stones, curb-stones, and pebble-stones, till we reached the city--took the young ladies home, and was immediately after arrested by a moist watchman for being a suspicious character, and only identified by my friends in the morning, just in time to keep my name out of the papers.

Am completely disgusted with sleigh-riding--the enjoyment is purely imaginary, and the expense not at all so. Excitement ain't pleasure, any more than sawdust pudding is roast turkey--and then too, the girls are so different--girls here are such touch-me-not creatures, that no one understanding the nature of the animal would venture on a kiss, unless he wanted to get his mouth full of magnesia and carmine; fuss, feathers, furbelows and flummery, will never make a _woman_ out of any of these, until a new saddle and pair of gilt spurs will transform a sucking-calf into a race-horse.

A modern belle stands no kind of a chance with a country beauty--pale cheeks and dingy complexions may be _alleviated_ by chalk and vermillion; but artificial hues are always evanescent, nature alone paints _cheeks_ in fast colors. Sitting up late and guzzling brandy punches won't put the same kind of crimson in the face that is placed there by getting up in the morning, feeding the chickens, chasing the pigs out of the garden, and drinking sweet milk for breakfast. And not only in looks do they differ, but they

"have yet Some tasks to learn, some frailties to forget."

An affected giggle won't pa.s.s muster for a hearty laugh--superficial boarding-school "finis.h.i.+ng" is not education, for bad spelling will show, though the pen be held by jewelled fingers--and bad French, bad Italian, and worse English, are miserable subst.i.tutes for conversation, though uttered by the fairest lips that ever lisped in fas.h.i.+onable drawl.

It is true that in the circle of my limited acquaintance I have the honor to number some ladies whose unaffected manners, natural grace, and true politeness place even my usual awkwardness at perfect ease, while their superior intelligence causes me to feel most deeply my extensive _non-acquirements_--but to every one of these I have met twenty who, although they could dance, sing, play the piano; paint on velvet, or work in worsted, flowers unknown in botany, and animals to which ordinary natural historians are strangers; couldn't write an intelligible English note, or read anything more difficult than easy words in two syllables; and if told that wheat bread is made out of kidney potatoes wouldn't know the difference.

I repudiate all this tribe of diluted milk-and-water misses, and should I ever feel matrimonially inclined shall commission some country friend to choose me a wife who can darn stockings, and make pumpkin pies anyhow, and hoe and chop cord-wood, if in any case the subscriber shouldn't be able to meet current family expenses.

XXII.

Cupid in Cold Weather.--Valentine's Day.

In accordance with some heathen custom, the origin of which is unknown to moderns, a certain day is selected in the year, when people send hosts of anonymous letters to other people, generally supposed to be on the subject of love, but which are not unfrequently missives containing angry, malicious, or insulting allusions. This is a day to rejoice the hearts of the penny postmen, who always get their money before they give up the doc.u.ments. This glorious day is, as most people are aware, the fourteenth of February--time when young ladies expect to receive sentimental poetry by the cord, done up in scented envelopes, written upon gilt-edged paper, and blazoned round with cupids, hearts, darts, bows and arrows, torches, flames, birds, flowers, and all the other paraphernalia of those before-folks-laughed-at-but-in-private-learned -by-heart epistles known as "Valentines."

A time when young gentlemen let off their excess of love by lack-a-daisical missives to their chosen fair; praising in anonymous verses their to-other-eyes-undiscoverable-but-to-their-vision- brilliantly-resplendent charms--poetizing red hair into "auburn ringlets,"--making skim-milk-colored eyes, "orbs, the hue of heaven's own blue,"--causing scraggy, freckled necks to become "fair and graceful as Juno's swans," and deifying squat, dumpy young ladies into "first-rate angels."

A time when innumerable people take unauthorised liberties with the name of a venerable Roman, long since defunct, laying themselves under all sorts of obligations, payable in friends.h.i.+p,--pledging any amount of love, and running up tremendous bills of affections, making no solid man responsible therefor, but only signing the all-over-christendom-once-a-year-universally-forged cognomen "Valentine."

Most of these communications are amatory, some sickish, some nauseating, some satirical, some caustic, some abusive; for it seems to be a time which many a man takes advantage of to revenge some fancied slight from scornful lady, by sending her one of those scandalous nuisances, misnamed "comic Valentines;" because he thinks there will be so many of the foul birds upon the wing that his own carrion fledgling cannot be traced to its filthy nest.

Bull Dogge, who is looking over my shoulder, remarks, that the man who would insult a lady, by sending an anonymous letter, would steal the pennies from a blind man, and then coax his dog away to sell to the butcher boys.

And Bull Dogge is right.

A time when the penny postman is looked for with more interest than if he bore the glad tidings so anxiously expected, "Sebastopol not taken,"--Laura Matilda in the parlor, to whom he brings but one, looks with envious eyes upon Biddy in the kitchen who gets two.

A time when men who haven't got a wife wish they had, and those who are provided with that article of questionable usefulness wish they had another; when maids wish for one husband, and matrons for half a dozen.

A time when nunneries and monasteries go into disrepute, and the accommodating doctrines of Mahomet, and the get-as-many-wives-as-you- can-support-and-keep-them-as-long-as-they-don't-fight principles of Mormonism, are regnant in the land.

And above all, a time when independent bachelors like the deponent, are beset with so many written laudations of the married state, by unknown females, that every single blessed man in all the land wishes he could take a short nap and wake up with a good-looking wife and nine large-sized children.

On the morning of this traditional pairing-off day, the postman brought me seventeen letters, all unpaid, and all from "Valentine." Retired to my room--closed the curtains--lit the gas--placed before me a mug of ale and two soda crackers, and proceeded to open and examine the doc.u.ments.

No. 1 was sealed with beeswax and stamped with a thimble; and from its brown complexion, I should think it had fallen into the dishwater, and been dried with a hot flatiron. I couldn't read it very well--there wasn't any capitals--the g's and y's had tails with as many turns as a corkscrew, the p's bore a strong resemblance to inky hair pins, the h's resembled miniature plum trees; every f looked like a fish-pole, and every z like a frog's foot, and the signature I should judge had been made by the ink bottle, which must have been taken suddenly sea-sick, and have used the paper as a subst.i.tute for the wash-bowl.

All I could understand of it was "my penn is poor, my inck is pail, my (something) for yew shal never" do something else, I couldn't make out what.

No. 2 was in a lace envelope--cuc.u.mber-colored paper, and was perfumed with something that smelt like b.u.mble-bees; handwriting very delicately illegible, proving that it came from a lady--spelling very bad, showing that it came from a _fas.h.i.+onable_ lady--poetry very unfamiliar, commencing "come rest in this" the next word looked like "boots," but that didn't seem to make sense--concluded it must be "barn-yard" as it went on to say "though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here." Couldn't make out whether she was in earnest and wanted me to come and see her, or was only trying to insinuate that I was a stray calf, and had better go home to my bovine parent.

(Bull Dogge says he wonders the ladies take such pains to render their correspondence unreadable--the up-strokes being just visible to the naked eye, and the down-strokes no heavier than a mosquito's leg--and why there is such a universal tendency to make little fat o's and a's just on the line, so that they look like gla.s.s beads strung on a horse-hair--and why they _will_ persist in making their chirography generally so uncertain and undecided that a page of ordinary feminine handwriting looks like a sheet of paper covered with a half finished web, made by 'prentice spiders, and condemned as awkwardly clumsy by the journeymen spinners).

Will somebody answer Bull Dogge?

I soon threw aside No. 2 in disgust, and went on to the others--most of them pictured off with hymeneal designs; plethoric cupids with apostolic necks--flowers the like of which never grew anywhere--birds, intended for doves, supposed to be "billing and cooing," but which, in reality, more resembled a couple of wooden decoy ducks fastened together by the heads with a tenpenny nail--a heart stuck through with an arrow, reminding me of a mud turtle on a fish spear--little boy with a feather duster (supposed to represent Hymen with his torch,) standing by a dry-goods box with a marking brush sticking out at the top of it, (put by courtesy for an altar with a flame on it,) going through some kind of a performance with a young couple (supposed to be lovers intent on wedlock,) who appeared as if they had done something they were ashamed of, and deserved to be spanked and put in the trundle-bed--besides vines and wreaths, bows, arrows, babies, and other articles, the necessity of which to human happiness I have ever been at a loss to discover.

Some were complimentary and some abusive--one was from the bar-keeper and hinted at egg-nogg, insinuating that it wasn't paid for--and one I know was from Sandie, for it accused me of taking more than half the bed-clothes on cold nights. But I couldn't find out who wrote the good ones, and couldn't lick anybody for writing the bad ones, as the boys all denied it; and as they cost me three cents each, I've regretted ever since that I didn't sell them to the corner grocery man to wrap round sausages, and invest the money in a flannel nightcap.

XXIII.

The Kentucky Tavern.

The State of Michigan having been the place of my preparation for College, and the Michigan University the scene of my brilliant though premature graduation, I was not wholly unacquainted with occidental geography. As I entered the Inst.i.tution just mentioned, broke the rules, was tried, convicted, sentenced, punished, fined, suspended, and expelled in an unprecedented short s.p.a.ce of time, no one was more fully prepared than I to admit that "this is a great country."

I was somewhat familiar with the entire country known as "out west;" had rode over it, walked over it, and been shot through it by steam; had stopped at all sorts of public-houses from the stylish hotel where you can get your liquor in gla.s.s tumblers, have stairs to get to your room with, and can repose on a bedstead, to the unostentatious tavern where the whiskey is served out in a tin dipper, and you have to climb into the garret by a ladder, and sleep on a bundle of straw, under the populous protection of a horse-blanket. But I never so thoroughly understood the discomforts of living at a hotel, as when on one occasion I strayed into the state of Kentucky, the land of good horses, poor jacka.s.ses, glorious corn-bread, and lazy darkies, and stopped at the best house of entertainment I could discover.

Having been thoroughly cooked by the broiling sun, which had unremittingly paid me his ardent devotions during the whole day--having been alternately melted and blistered--having had my skin peeled by the sun like a wet s.h.i.+rt from a little boy's back--having made a perfect aqueduct of myself for twelve hours in the fruitless attempt to keep cool, and having swallowed so much dust that I had a large sand-bar in my stomach, I sat down to write in as enviable a state of mind as can perhaps be imagined. I soon found that this was one of those stranger-traps into which unwary travellers are decoyed, and made to pay enormous prices for being rendered supremely unhappy--a place where _comfort_ is mercilessly sacrificed to _show_--where the furniture is too nice to use, the landlord of too much consequential importance to treat people decently, and where there are so many dishes on the table that there is not room for anything to eat--where the waiters run in mult.i.tudinous directions at the tap of the bell, and seem to occupy most of their time stepping on each other's heels, and spilling soup into the laps of the ladies. Every one of these woolly-headed nuisances expects to be handsomely fed before he will condescend to pay the slightest attention to a guest, and a stranger must disburse an avalanche of "bits," "pics," and "levys," before he can get even a plate of cold victuals.

My experience at the house of entertainment at present under consideration is somewhat as follows:

I endure the inconveniences of the day with what philosophy I may, and retire, to "sleep, perchance." During the night I endeavor to bear without complaining the savage onslaught of ferocious fleas, the odoriferous attacks of bloodthirsty bed-bugs, and the insatiable and impetuous a.s.saults of musically murderous mosquitoes, and eventually fall into a troubled doze, in which, like a modern Macbeth, who is doomed to "sleep no more," I tumble about until I am roused by the infernal clang of that most diabolical of all human contrivances--a gong, a dire invention of the enemy, a metallic triumph of the adversary, compounded of copper, and hammered upon with an "overgrown"

drumstick, by a perspiring darkey who does not "waste his sweetness in the desert air" (more's the pity). After an abortive attempt to wash my face in what is truly _living_ water, with a piece of marbleized soap, and hastily drying it upon three inches of towel with a ragged edge and iron rust in the corners, I proceed to dress.

b.u.t.ton off my s.h.i.+rt neck, which, being a matter of course, does not affect my equanimity half as much as finding that one of the sleeves is torn nearly across, and is only connected with the main body by a narrow isthmus of seam, which is momentarily growing "small by degrees and beautifully less."

Begin to grow impatient; second gong for breakfast; everything on but boots--open the door and find the porter has brought the wrong ones--he always does--ring the bell indignantly and sulkily wait (breakfast disappearing the meanwhile), until the blundering darkey explores his subterranean dominions and eventually returns with the missing articles.

Breakfast at last; waiter sets before me a ma.s.s of bones, sinews, and tendons, which he denominates _chicken_, and then brings me something which he calls _steak_, although but for the timely information I should have supposed it gutta-percha. Pours out a lukewarm muddy mixture supposed to have been originally coffee, which I sweeten with n.i.g.g.e.ry brown sugar, and swallow at a gulp, ignoring the milk pitcher entirely on account of the variety of bugs which have found a "watery grave"

therein; bread hard and greasy, b.u.t.ter oily and full of little ditches where the flies have meandered, knife with an edge like a saw, and fork with a revolving handle, table cloth splotchy, eggs hard as pebbles; rest of bill of fare consists of salt ham, red flannel sausages, hash with hairs in it, dip-toast made with sour milk, burned biscuit, peppery codfish, cold potatoes, mutton chops all bones, and mackerel with head, fins, and tail complete. Stay my stomach with half a gla.s.s of equivocal looking water, and exit.